Synopses & Reviews
Friedrich Neitzsche imagined himself belonging to a society of visionaries, thinkers, architects, poets, musicians, and artists running ahead of the mainstream. They were condemned to be misunderstood or ignored in the present, but their work would become significant in the future. To them he addressed the aphorism from which Massimo Cacciaris book takes its name, saying “It is only after death that we will enter our life and come alive, oh, very much alive, we posthumous people!”
Cacciari isolates Vienna as the European capitol of posthumous people at a crucial turning point in Western thinking, as the nineteenth century ended. There he finds Ludwig Wittgenstein, together with Peter Altenberg, Robert Walser, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Adolf Loos, Martin Buber, Egon Schiele, Karl Kraus, Gustav Klimt, and many others. Cacciari treats this extraordinarily rich concentration of activity as the hub upon which European culture wheeled into the twentieth century. He reaches directly to the intellectual content in each of the various figures he discusses.
Synopsis
Cacciari discusses Vienna at a crucial turning point in Western thinking, as the 19th century ended, treating this extraordinarily rich concentration of people and events as the hub upon which wheeled into the 20th century.
Synopsis
An analysis of intellectual and cultural developments in fin-de-si
Synopsis
Friedrich Nietzsche used the phrase 'posthumous people' to describe those thinkers and artists condemned to be misunderstood or ignored by contemporaries but fêted by future generations. Cacciari isolates fin-de-siècle Vienna as the European capital of posthumous people at a crucial turning point in Western thinking. He analyses the work of major cultural and philosophical figures of the period starting from an examination of Wittgenstein's struggle to carry philosophy beyond the barrier of language. This encounter with language is pursued through novels, poems, song cycles, melodramas, art and in the Viennese fascination for Buddhism and Hassidic Judaism. Cacciari revives this distinguished society of posthumous people, and with it he re-opens discussion about fundamental intellectual and philosophical problems seen from a Viennese perspective.
Synopsis
An analysis of the work of major cultural and philosophical figures in fin-de-siècle Vienna starting from an examination of Wittgenstein's seminal struggle to carry philosophy beyond the barrier of language.
About the Author
Massimo Cacciari is the Mayor of Venice.
Table of Contents
Translator's note; Introduction: the view from Steinhof; 1. Posthumous people; 2. Sprachliches; 3. Inquietum cor nostrum; 4. The new domain of Trauerspiel; 5. A critique of the modern; 6. The impossiblity of the tragic; 7. Visit the Serraglio!; 8. Music, voice, text; 9. Wonders and marvels; 10. The misfit; 11. Acheronta movebo; 12. The private Adolf Loos; 13. Lou's buttons; 14. The glass chain; 15. Invalid des Todes; 16. On the mystical again; 17. Abendland; 18. On cliffs and swamps; 19. Centaurs; 20. Weibliches; 21. The eternal child; 22. Songs of the departed; 23. The art of archery; 24. A dark alley in the old city; 25. The star of narration; 26. Kraus's ideogram; 27. Profane attention.