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The Woman Writer in Late-Nineteenth-Century Italy. Gender and the Formation of Literary Identity

1992; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/q.i..v13i2.10138

2293-7382

Lucienne Kroha, Anne Urbančič,

Italian Literature and Culture

Piccola biblioteca 3 1 9 dellian relativism.Tying this section neatly with the other sections, Bini differentiates between the figures that are intended to signify rettorica (spiritual death) and those that symbolize persuasione (true self-fulfillment)."This is clearly what Michelstaedter was striving for: that authentic expression he had never captured in all his linguistic at- tempts."Bini's "Epilogue" flows logically and predictably from the hermeneutical premises established early in the text and are reiterated and elaborated throughout.In the entire study, Bini emphasizes the impossibility of attaining persuasione in life and her ample quotes from Michelstaedter's letters illustrate well the poet's growing frustration, des- peration, and frequent meditations on suicide.In the "Epilogue," Bini discusses the sig- nificance of the poet's final act and the validity of interpretations of that act as the inevitable conclusion to a failed existence.Overall, it would appear that the book's strengths are also its weaknesses.In coherently tracing the persuasione-rettorica dialectic throughout the life and writings of Michelstaedter, Bini runs the risk of overstatement and restatement of a fundamental paradox identified in the first chapter.The tautness of the interpretive line persuades, but it also excludes readings not accommodated by her theoretical/thematic axis; this is es- pecially true in the case of the chapter devoted to the poetry of Carlo Michelstaedter.Also, Bini's meticulous citing of biographical fact and details contained in the poet's correspondence corroborates her contentions; however, it also tends to create variability in the critical tone of the text; in other words, the discourse varies from the intensely philosophical or analytical to the relatively mundane.Nevertheless, despite the few limitations mentioned in the previous paragraph, Carlo Michelstaedter: The Failure of Language constitutes a valuable monographic study of the work of a Rimbaud-like figure whose distrust of language is more topical today in the context of postmodernist deconstructive discourse than it was in 1910 when Michelstaedter chose absolute silence over problematical rhetoric.