Persuasion and Rhetoric by Carlo Michelstaedter (1910). Translated from Italian by Wilhelm Snyman and Giuseppe Stellardi (2007). University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
If I now repeat it, as much as I know and am able, since I do it with no intention of entertaining anyone, nor with philosophical dignity, nor with artistic form, but rather as a poor pedestrian who measures the earth he treads with his footsteps, I do not pay an admission fee in any of the established categories, nor do I set a precedent for any new category. At best, I shall have produced . . . a university thesis. – Carlo Michelstaedter, Persuasion and Rhetoric
My initial unrestrained attraction to Persuasion and Rhetoric was warranted by the fact that it was an unconventional, nihilistic doctoral thesis, written by a 23 years old male, who then shot himself very soon after completing it. I was also a young man in my early twenties, attempting to write an unconventional and impetuously derisive Master’s thesis, and because it had by that time long-stopped going well oftentimes I was very close to giving up and caving in. In fact, the similarities in what he had done and what I was attempting were so uncanny they were as disturbing as they were reassuring. The layout of his thesis (two main components, each made up of short chapters, each chapter opening with a ‘summarising quote’, and each chapter subdivided into several numbered but untitled sections) looked like the original template of my own work. The way he had approached his subject matter did not need to be explained to me; I was trying out exactly the same method a century later: although anchored by a discipline and a specific topic, the thesis was mainly interdisciplinary and its main concern was actually beyond the specific topic, an attempt to address broader philosophical and theoretical issues. Nobody wanted to publish his work; I was afraid no one would pass my thesis. Even the epigraphs were more or less the same! My thesis opens with a stern but gentle reprimand from one of Plato’s dialogues, Theatetus: “You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters,” and Michelstaedter’s with an epigraph from Sophocles’ Electra: “I understand that my actions are wrong for my age and ill suited to myself.” As far as it is possible to meet a dead writer who happens to reflect exactly your present preoccupations, behaviour and concerns, Michelstaedter was one of the most unexpected, delightful and shocking. The encounter left me with very uncomfortable feelings because, in the end, like his school teacher, I also found him "minder entsprechend" (not very suitable).
Carlo Michelstaedter was born in Gorizia in 1887, a part of Italy that was then under Austro-Hungarian rule....
(To be continued)
