ions of his thought, becomes the very disease of society and of history, the anguishing recognition that human reason cannot explain life, cannot control a world deprived of a teleology (as J. Hillis Miller points out in his The Disappearance of God), and cannot discover or cure the sorrow that lies behind our existence. Here disease, more than a metaphor, appears indeed as an ontological category. It is precisely along Michelstaedter's and Svevo's ultimate developments and conclusions that some contemporary Italian writers, notably Carlo Emilio Gadda, have evolved. Gadda, born in 1893 in Milan (hence almost a contemporary of Michelstaedter, if Michelstaedter were still alive), published his two novels La cognizione del dolore and Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana in instalments in the review Letteratura, but the former remained unfinished, in 1941, because of the outburst of the second World War. In La cognizione del dolore, which, although unfinished, probably is one of today's most important novels, Gadda portrays his tragic alter ego Gonzalo Pirobutirro d'Eltino, who is presented as the epitome of the seven capital sins, but who actually appears as a character in desperate search for the absolute, incapable of compromises (just like Michelstaedter): He was Germanic in his mania for order and silence, in his hatred for dirty papers, for egg shells, for ceremonious manners on the threshold. . . . They told him, 'You have to try hard,' and insisted, 'You've got to make a living.' He had no genius for trying hard, for making a living-two attitudes in which he was clumsier than a seal frying doughnuts. . . . There was, for him, the problem of evil: the tale of disease, the strange tale told by the Conquistadores, who happened to hear the last word of an Inca, according to whom death arrives for nothing, surrounded 64 Ibid., p. 398, italics added. On the Doomsday machines, it might be useful to consult the frightening anthology Arms Control, Disarmament and National Security, ed. by Donald G. Brennan (Brazillier: New York, 1960). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.129 on Fri, 01 Jul 2016 05:47:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
