Heinrich von Kleist: A Study in Tragedy and Anxiety 9781512816167

Table of contents :
Contents
Ρreface
I. Das Erdbeben in Chili
II. Two Lesser Narrative Forms
III. Amphitryon
IV. Über das Marionettentheater
V. Repetitions and Recoveries
VI. Three Themes in Michael Kohlhaas
VII. Stagecraft in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
VIII. Motivation in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
IX. Art and Reality
X. Kleist’s Death
Notes
Index of Names

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Heinrich von Kleist

Heinrich von Kleist STUDIES

IN H I S

AND L I T E R A R Y

WORKS

CHARACTER

by Walter Silz

G R E E N W O O D PRESS, P U B L I S H E R S WESTPORT. CONNECTICUT

® 1 9 6 1 , \ry tire Trustees of the University

of

Pennsylvania

AH rights reserved Originally p u b l i s h e d in 1 9 6 1 by University o f P e n n s y l v a n i a Press, P h i l a d e l p h i a

P r i n t e d in t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s o f A m e r i c a

Prisälla

Contents Preface

9

I Das Erdbeben in Chili

13

II T w o Lesser Narrative Forms

29

III Amphitryon

45

IV Über das Marionettentheater

69

V Repetitions and Recoveries

87

VI Three Themes in Michael Kohlhaas VII Stagecraft in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg VIII

Motivation in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg

173 199 225

IX Art and Reality

247

X Kleist's Death

271

Notes

289

Index of Names

311

7

Ρreface M Y A C Q U A I N T A N C E with Heinrich von Kleist began nearly a half century ago, when I was a student in Professor William Guild Howard's stimulating course on the nineteenth century, old "German 26," in Harvard College. The interest there kindled has not diminished in the long interval. My doctoral dissertation dealt with Kleist's conception of the tragic, and a later book with his kinship with the early German Romanticists. A number of my articles since 1922 have treated subjects in his works. A few of these articles are incorporated in the present group of studies. Chapter VIII is a revised version of a paper presented at the Modern Language Association meeting in 1935 and published in JEGP in 1936. Chapter IV was given as a talk at Yale University in 1958. Chapter V was read in condensed form at the M LA meeting in 1957. This chapter is exceptionally long and inevitably repetitious, but it was necessary to present the evidence in some detail, because the principle involved seems to me central to Kleist's literary character and hence pivotal in my exposition of it.

For the most part, however, the present book is the result of new work done, with the aid of a fellowship of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, during a sabbatical leave in 1960-1961. Over the years I believe I have read all the extensive literature on Kleist, but my own work has been based increasingly on repeated critical readings of Kleist's actual text. This does not attempt to be a general book, "covering" Kleist for the uninitiated reader. It seeks rather to elucidate certain aspects of his mind and production that seemed to 9

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me significant and promised new insights. An attentive reading will, I trust, reveal in these parts the essential outlines of Kleist's artistic personality. It should be noted that all textual references are to volume and page (sometimes line) of the standard edition (Heinrich von Kleists Werke, edited by Erich Schmidt and others, Leipzig and Wien, [1904-1905]), but that all references to Kleist's letters are designated as Bfe. and apply to the second edition of the Werke (ibid., [1937]), Volumes I and II. Periodicals are referred to by the customary abbreviations. W A L T E R SILZ

Columbia University May 31,1961

Heinrich von Kleist

C H A P T E R

I

Das Erdbeben in Chili of Kleist's Novellen to appear in print, Das Erdbeben in Chili (published in Cotta's Morgenblatt in September, 1807) is an excellent example of its genre and a characteristic product of Kleist's imagination and thought. It has the typical earmarks of a Novelle.1 It centers on an unerhörte Begebenheit, both in Nature (a great earthquake) and in human relations: lovers consummating their passion in the garden of a nunnery, the daughter of a proud grandee giving birth on the steps of a cathedral in the midst of a sacred procession certainly constitute ein starkes Stück. A Wendepunkt can be seen in the incendiary sermon by the cathedral canon, and a definite Falke in the infant Philipp, the only person who goes through the whole cruel business unharmed, a symbol of significant relations. The story contains a large constituent of the element of paradox which seems inherent in the Novelle form and which always attracted Kleist. Its content could be summed up in one or two ironical sentences: a public calamity saves two lovers from imminent death, but public rejoicing over rescue from the calamity brings death to the pair; a society suffering under calamity is merciful, but a society saved from calamity is merciless; a community's holiest place and activity can become the scene and occasion of its most brutal violence. Making seventeen pages of print in the standard edition, the Novelle is hardly longer than some of those in Boccaccio's Decameron. T h e action is limited in time, extending from the morning of one day to nightfall of the next. T h e active characters (the two infants are passive) are mature persons who are tested rather than developed by the impact of T H E EARLIEST

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an extraordinary event. It is typical of Kleist that the most important and most fully individuated personage is a woman, Josephe; the others are seen in the main with reference to her. T h e story could have been named for her, as Die Verlobung in St. Domingo for T o n i or Amphitryon for Alkmene. In keeping with the economy of the Novelle, the Vorgeschichte is held to a minimum: Josephe's father, a wealthy aristocrat, and her proud and jealous brother are stock figures; her mother is not mentioned. Josephe's lover, Jeronimo, also receives his light and color only from her; of his past we learn merely that he was employed as a tutor in the heroine's family—this, and the picture of the "state of Nature" later, may have been suggested by Rousseau. Even the law singles out Josephe above Jeronimo: though she has been tried and condemned to death by fire, no court action against him is mentioned. T h e persons, as Novelle characters, are shown only from their "engaged" side and live, as it were, only for the thirty-odd hours of the action. Yet the author gives a touch of vividness even to peripheral figures: in less than two lines, for example, we get a portrait impression of old Don Pedro (III, 303. 8 ff.). It is instructive to observe Kleist's narrative procedure. He opens and closes his tale with a striking, paradoxical sentence. T h e opening one is a brief but arresting exhibit of his hero, about to hang himself in his prison cell. Then, in a recapitulation, the "omniscient" narrator reports earlier developments (295. 8 ff.), including the doings and feelings of the hero in prison u p to the moment of the earthquake. After two pages (by 297. 5) Kleist has caught up with the beginning of his story, and goes on from there: in a paradoxical, instantaneous change, Jeronimo is shown clinging for safety to the very pillar on which he was minded to die. Next, we are given, from the point of view of the moving

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hero, a picture of the situation left by the earthquake. After this account of outward developments there follows one of inner processes in Jeronimo (298. 1-299. 12)> introduced by one of Kleist's well-known Ohnmächten—this time a profound one of fifteen minutes' duration. In its psychological progression, this "interior walk" is as masterly as the exterior one: the onset of returning life and returning memory of the "suppressed" catastrophe, the grateful sense of being alive, still enjoying des lieblichen Lebens voll bunter Erscheinungen—the one great horror having verdrängt (Kleist's word, 298. 19) all earlier ones—and then, via the "eloquent object" of the ring on his finger, the recollection of Josephe and his prison and the bells and the opening situation. As a result, deep dejection, distrust of God, before whom he had but just prostrated himself thankfully, anxious inquiries of passers-by; then lonely and uncontrolled grief and, as its sequel, rebounding hope. Now (299. 12-29) we move on again with the peripatetic hero until his search is miraculously rewarded. T h e omniscient author next reports (299. 30 ff.) on Josephe's movements from the moment when, as the story opened, she approached the place of execution (this recapitulation is later, 301. 12 f., identified as her recital to Jeronimo). In counterpart to her lover's, Josephe's psychological processes are revealed to us: her first primitive impulse to save herself, then the recollection of her child and her rescue of it, and her terrified flight, now to save it from death. As in Jeronimo's case, the "camera" moves along with her: we pass the body of the vindictive archbishop, the empty site of the viceroy's palace; the court where she was sentenced, now in flames; the spot where her parents' house had stood, now a lake boiling forth reddish vapors—truly a Dantesque picture. T h e feel of the baby in her arms helps suppress her woe as she strides from street to street—until the sight of Je-

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ronimo's prison in ruins unnerves her. An Ohnmacht at this point is only prevented by the collapse of a building behind her: durch das Entsetzen gestärkt (300. 33), she is remobilized, kisses her child, which seems to help her inhibit her grief and "registering" of further horrors, and in her turn erreicht das Tor (300/301; cf. 298. 1). It is a mark of Josephe's female psychology that, though she hopes Jeronimo may be among those saved, she does not, like him, go in search of her partner, but at the next crossroads stands still and waits (stand still und harrte; 301. 4 f.) for the coming of the one who, after her child, is dearest to her heart. She does not question passers-by but walks on and looks back and waits again and finally takes refuge in a secluded valley to weep for Jeronimo and pray for his departed soul. But she is, significantly, attending to her child when Jeronimo comes upon her. The picture of motherhood that runs all through Kleist's work—along with his lifelong fatherhood-wish—is, like his work in general, the fruit of dream combined with realistic observation. Having now brought his two protagonists abreast in their recitals, Kleist inserts, as he so often does in plays and stories, a brief interlude of happiness for them: as it were Man, Woman, and Child in a valley of Eden (301. 12-34)—the most romantic landscape in all Kleist's works. Thus the first day, begun in dread, ends in bliss. T h e start of the next day is marked by a paragraph indentation (at 302. 12), the first break since the beginning, seven pages back. There will be only one more such break; the story is virtually a triptych in structure. T h e author now carries on the narration, seeing the action chiefly from the point of view of Josephe, who is continuously "on stage" (3°2-3°5)· After this relatively short paragraph of three-and-one-half pages, telling of a forenoon of happy promise, the third and

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final paragraph of six-and-one-half pages, approximately balancing the opening one in length, records the increasingly sinister events of the afternoon. As the opening paragraph had gone from hopelessness to hope, the closing one goes, symmetrically, in the opposite direction. After preparations in which strange forebodings are combined with practical family arrangements (Josephe again being kept in a leading position), Kleist interposes an impressive description of the setting inside the cathedral, a scene of somber splendor, perhaps an enhanced reflection of Dresden memories. He focuses our attention on his pair and expresses his sympathy for them as unsere beiden Unglücklichen (308. 12). T h e swift and savage final action is now reported blow by blow, with direct quotation of crucial speeches. Though he records bloody details with seemingly dispassionate detachment, Kleist departs from epic objectivity with unusual frequency in this story: he notes the hämische Aufmerksamkeit of Josephe's spying brother (295. 14), he pillories the heartless women of the city (296. 10 if.), he points to the heilige Ruchlosigkeit of one of Josephe's assailants (308. 29) and the heldenmütige Besonnenheit of her champion (309. 31), he voices a rare bitterness at the bloodthirst of a Christian congregation (309. 21 f.), admiration for Don Fernando, dieser göttliche Held (311. 9), and horror at Meister Pedrillo, der Fürst der satanischen Rotte, and his Bluthunde (311. 12 f.).2 T h e prose of Das Erdbeben in Chili displays the familiar features of Kleist's style. T h e most obvious of these is his fondness for indirect discourse, sustained sometimes over pages at a stretch (e.g., 303-306); in other passages direct and indirect speech are intermingled. Favorite locutions, such as auf eine ... Art (300. 14), ein Löwe wehrt sich nicht besser (311. 12; cf. 308. 2 f.); the Separation of subject and verb: eine andere Stimme schreckenvoll, indessen sich ein weiter Kreis des Entsetzens um sie bildete, fragte . . . (308. 27 f.);

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and sentence order of the type Doch da er die Menge, die auf ihn eindrang, nicht überwältigen konnte: leben Sie wohl, Don Fernando, mit den Kindern! rief Josephe (311. i f f . ) or Drauf, ganz mit ihrem Blute besprützt: schickt ihr den Bastard zur Hölle nach! rief er (311. 6 f.), where the sentence pivots on the "dead center" of a colon—such features stamp this prose unmistakably as Kleist's. Imagery is used very sparingly (296. 21 f.; 304. 15 f; 307. 26 ff.). O n the other hand, there is a striking amount of alliteration, especially on w: das Wesen, das über den Wolken waltet («98. 26); nicht zu wanken, wenn auch jetzt die Eichen entwurzelt werden, und ihre Wipfel . . . (299. 8 ff.); wo nur ein weibliches Gewand im Winde . . . (299. 16 f.); wollte sich schon wieder wenden (299. 23); Hände hoch gen Himmel erhebend (307. 33). T h e first eight lines are a typical "packed" Kleistian opening sentence, specifying the time, the name of the hero, and the amazing and paradoxical situation. T h e closing sentence is by contrast relaxed and quiet but also not without a note of paradox. It is noteworthy that Kleist nowhere gives a separate, static picture of the earthquake signalized by his title; we learn of it only through its effects, through the eyes and actions of the persons of the plot. T h e hand of the dramatist is everywhere in evidence. I n such a passage as the following, verbs and participles of motion are prominent, and inanimate things seem to come to life as aggressive monsters: Hier stürzte noch ein Haus zusammen, und jagte ihn, die Trümmer weit umherschleudernd, in eine Nebenstraße; hier leckte die Flamme schon, in Dampfwolken blitzend, aus allen Giebeln, und trieb ihn schreckenvoll in eine andere; hier wälzte sich, aus seinem Gestade gehoben, der Mapochofluß an ihn heran, und riß ihn brüllend in eine dritte. Hier lag ein Haufen Erschlagener, hier ächzte noch eine Stimme unter dem Schutte,

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hier schrieen Leute von brennenden Dächern herab, hier kämpften Menschen und Tiere mit den Wellen, hier war ein mutiger Retter bemüht, zu helfen; hier stand ein anderer, bleich •wie der Tod, und streckte sprachlos zitternde Hände zum Himmel (297. 22-298. 1). T h i s eleven-line passage is evenly divided into two sentences, each consisting of subsentences invariably beginning with hier, as our gaze, through the hero's horrified eyes, is drawn from one "flash" picture to another. 3 Kleist demonstrates in this short tale a prodigious stylistic range. In the Nature setting for the lovers' last night together he paints a lush picture of a tropical May night to rival any Romanticist's. This may claim to be Kleist's most mellifluous prose. Its effect lies in its sensuous appeal and its musical alliterations on vowels and consonants: "Sie fanden einen prachtvollen Granatapfelbaum, der seine Zweige, voll duftender Früchte, weit ausbreitete; und die Nachtigall flötete im Wipfel ihr wollüstiges Lied. . . . Der Baumschatten zog, mit seinen verstreuten Lichtern, über sie hinweg, und der Mond erblaßte schon wieder vor der Morgenröte, ehe sie einschliefen" (301. 27-34). A few hours later, these lovers meet a brutal death in a scene of cruelty and carnage that Kleist paints with equal virtuosity. 4 Kleist is called a realist, but there is a large visionary element in his work also, and beside his vivid pictures of reality stand others of comparable but hallucinatory vividness. In the present story, a good deal of scope is given to Zufall, that amoral force of chance, now helpful and again baleful, that prevents Kleist's world from ever being completely rational. Durch einen glücklichen Zufall (295. 17) Jeronimo is able to re-establish relations with Josephe in the nunnery. It seems hardly credible that a love-night could be staged in a convent garden unobserved, or that Josephe's advanced pregnancy would remain undetected and she be allowed to par-

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ticipate in the Corpus Christi procession, in the course of which she is taken with labor (295. 20 ff.). It is an unlikely Zufall that provides Jeronimo with a rope (296. 32). T h e gigantic Zufall of the earthquake saves him from suicide and Josephe from execution just in the nick of time. A zufällige Wölbung caused by the simultaneous collapse of opposite buildings enables Jeronimo to escape from the prison ruins (297. 12). Chance again, in an infant's movement, leads to the misidentification of Fernando (309. 16 ff.). Apparently it was another chance movement, Donna Constanze's touching of Fernando's sleeve (308. 18 f.), that drew fatal attention to them to begin with. One is reminded of Kleist's speculation about ein zweideutiges Spiel an der Manschette as the circumstance that may have set off the French Revolution (IV. 77). Small causes can produce great consequences in Kleist's incalculable cosmos: the little finger of a child in Die Familie Schroffenstein, the slip of a foot in Der Zweikampf (III, 411), the braying of an ass that might have cost him his own life ( B f e . II, 31). T h e unreality of much in Das Erdbeben is covered over by the great wealth of factual details that persuade us of the reality of these happenings. W e are still wondering how Jeronimo could have found the opportune rope in his (recently restricted) prison when we are shown the particular iron clamp to which he attaches it (297. 1 f.). If we doubt the possibility of such an un-Christian man of Christ im Tempel Jesu as the old canon, our attention is invited to seine zitternden, vom Chorhemde weit umflossenen Hände as he raises them heavenward (307. 32 f.). Even so, much remains unreal, or retains a film of unreality. T h e passers-by whom Jeronimo interrogates seem part of his "inner perception" rather than actual persons. W h o has ever seen, save in a Kafka-esque dream, eine Frau, die auf einem fast zur Erde gedrückten Nacken eine un-

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geheure Last von Gerätschaften und zwei Kinder, an der Brust hängend [I], trug? And from under this incredible load she remarks im. Vorbeigehen, casually, yet as something she has witnessed, that Josephe has been beheaded (298. 3 1 ff.)! Jeronimo and Josephe, treated kindly and cordially by members of the same society that had prepared to make a festive event of Josephe's execution, are overcome by a sense of unreality: if the present be true, then what of the recent past—the prison, the tolling bell, the block—ob sie bloß davon geträumt hätten? (303. 10-15). It seems as if—this als ob feeling fairly haunts the story— all hearts had been reconciled by the frightful shock of nature's upheaval (303. 15 f.). Memory stops there and can reach no further back (303. 16 ff.), as if a line had been drawn under the past and a wholly new start were to be made. "Und in der Tat schien [the verb is again characteristic] mitten in diesen gräßlichen Augenblicken, . . . der menschliche Geist . . . wie eine schöne Blume aufzugehn" (304. 13-16). The picture that follows, of people of all classes mingling with, pitying, and helping one another, sharing their few remaining possessions, als ob das allgemeine Unglück alles . . . zu Einer Familie gemacht hätte (304. 22 f.)— this is the Wunschbild of a new Paradise, as illusory and baseless as the idyllic Rosenfest in Penthesilea or, in Kleist's life, the seeming betterment of his fellow men after the catastrophe of Jena. 5 If this was a brief, happy dream, there is a prolonged nightmarish quality in the final sequence of the story: the cathedral scene. There are the three successive "voices" that come, anonymously, from nowhere (308. 24-29). There is Don Fernando's weird isolation and loss of identity: though he is der Sohn des Kommendanten der Stadt, den ihr alle kennt (309. 1 f., repeated 12 f.), he scans the sea of faces in vain for anyone to recognize him (309. 8 f.), and even Pe-

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drillo's "advertisement" of him brings no response (309. 14 f.). There is the strange appearance and disappearance of the naval officer who comes momentarily to Fernando's aid (309. 27 ff.). There is the wholly unprepared-for emergence of Jeronimo's father and murderer—this also is only a Stimme, though it wields Kleist's favorite Keule (310. 2 1 25). Then comes a "voice" with equally murderous cudgel from another side (310. 27). All these are parts of a wild, dreamlike action, with nameless Stimmen, Hände, ein Haufen, ein Unbekannter reaching in out of the dark to kill. In another sense, it might be said that we have moved from reality into the realm of religious myth. The "real" protagonists, Jeronimo and Josephe, are reduced to mere accessory figures as Fernando, "the divine hero" with his wetterstrahlend Saint Michael's sword, battles the Prince of Darkness and his minions. For the cobbler Pedrillo, like Nicolo in Der Findling, is a very personification of superhuman Evil, ein fanatischer Mordknecht (310. 33), the leader of a Satanic horde ( 3 1 1 . 13), whom no one seems able to harm or stop in his deadly raging. Once Pedrillo's voice is heard, the canon himself falls silent and drops out of the picture; Pedrillo takes over as the secular arm of the Church. After his final act of savagery, smashing a child against a stone pillar, an eerie silence instantly falls and, like phantoms of a dream, the vast assembly vanishes: Hierauf ward es still, und alles entfernte sich ( 3 1 1 . Then, with a strangely vague casualness, Fernando's friend returns (der Marine-Offizier fand sich wieder bei ihm ein) and, in a businesslike manner, expresses regret that "various circumstances" had necessitated his inactivity during this unfortunate affair (311. 20-23)! Don Fernando assures him that there is no need to apologize and merely requests his assistance in removing the bodies I These, at least,

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are indubitably real, but otherwise the fiendish orgy of slaughter is left in the limbo of nightmare, and we return to a staid, bourgeois everyday. Fernando does not dare go home and tell his wife what has happened. She learns of it later, zufällig, from a visitor, has a "good cry," and she and her husband find consolation in adopting the lovers' child, Philipp, in place of their own Juan. This ending has been regarded as positive and optimistic: indomitable Life, symbolized by the child, has the last word. Hermann Pongs, for example, in Das Bild, in der Dichtung (II, 153) says, "in der lebendigen Unschuld, die in dem Kinde immer wieder neu ins Leben tritt, löscht sich Schuld und Irrtum der Menschen aus." He sees in the saved child the assurance of rettende Gegenkräfte, an untrügliches Zeichen einer höheren Ordnung, and even suggests an identification with the Christ child (ibid., p. 292 f.). Günter Blöcker, the author of the most recent German Kleist book, also regards the outcome of Das Erdbeben as positive and forward-looking.® Kleist's actual text does not seem to me to warrant any such optimism. The final summary sentence reads: "und wenn Don Fernando Philippen mit Juan verglich, und wie er beide erworben hatte, so war es ihm fast, als müßt' er sich freuen." This is a muted and triply hedged conclusion. A man who has lost his own son—and much else—is left with a stranger's child, unknown to him only yesterday, and when he compares the two and considers how they came to him, it "seems almost" "as if" he "ought" to be glad. As the result of a confusion of identities, of "doubles" (a minor variation on the Amphitryon theme), one child is saved, the other destroyed. But this is blind chance, es ist ein Wurf, wie mit dem Würfel.'' The child of sin, ironically, is the one saved. And who knows, this Fremdling (312. 3) may turn out to be another

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Findling, a Nicolo, for such are the inscrutable ways of destiny. In this story the forces of society and of Nature, sometimes supporting, sometimes nullifying each other, are shown to be equally unpredictable, irrational, and destructive. There is no security for the individual anywhere. Nature and human nature will still be subject to earthquakes. Life in all its appearances, hostile and benign, is untrustworthy. T h e surviving child is not a symbol of the triumph of love over death and evil; it is an example of the fortuitousness of existence in an incomprehensible world. Das Erdbeben in Chili is comparable to Die Marquise von O . . . as a picture of human depravity on the background of a general upheaval, as a treatment of the social problem of "irregular" motherhood, and in other respects; and both stories end in a forced resignation, in a tame and bürgerlich spirit. On the surface, it is a "happy ending," but more deeply considered it is a patchup over irreparable damage. How can the Marquise ever again trust a man when the one she adored as an angel turned out to be a very devil? How can Fernando ever again believe in his fellows, when they have been by turns saints and fiends? T h e solution in both cases saves the individual for the time being and enables him to go on; but it leaves deeper questions unanswered. T h e most fundamental of these questions is that concerning the nature of God. Is He good? T h e n why does He let such cruel wrongs be done? Is He good but not omnipotent? T h e n he is not God. Does He perhaps himself cause evil deeds and delight in our suffering? Or is He simply remote and indifferent to our lot? Kleist had at least considered the possibility that the Supreme Power might be evil, for in a letter of August, 1806, written in a resigned and philosophical mood, he answers the implied charge in the negative: "F.s kann kein böser Geist sein, der an der Spitze der Welt steht, es ist ein bloß unbegriffener!" 8 And he goes on to speculate

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about the vastness of the universe, without making it clear whether this is to be taken as a reason for our inability to understand God, or for His indifference to our puny planet. But, after further statistical musings on palingenesis, Kleist turns back with dogged resignation to his workbench: " N u n wieder zurück zum Leben! So lange das dauert, werd' ich jetzt Trauerspiele und Lustspiele machen." T h i s is perhaps the most practicable of Kleist's various attempts to make sense of God. He had come a long way from the premature serenity of his early rationalism, when God was the Supreme Reason, the embodiment of justice and of a spiritual perfection in which man could hope, and indeed was intended, to share increasingly; when virtue was the sure road to happiness. Even then, significantly, there had been notes of negation and defense: "Was mit der Güte und Weisheit Gottes streitet, kann nicht wahr sein" (IV, 59. 26 f.). "Ein T r a u m kann diese Sehnsucht nach Glück nicht sein, die von der Gottheit selbst so unauslöschlich in unserer Seele erweckt ist" ( B f e . 1, 21). By the time of Die Familie Schroffenstein, after the Kant crisis, God has become an enigma. Sylvester says, "Ich bin dir wohl ein Rätsel? . . . Gott ist es mir" (lines 1213 f.); and in a moment of baffled triumph he cries: "Gott der Gerechtigkeit! / Sprich deutlich mit dem Menschen, daß er's weiß / Auch, was er soll!" (lines 2609-2611). " O wie unbegreiflich ist der Wille, der über uns waltet!" (Bfe. II, 32) is a cry that re-echoes in Kleist's letters of this period. Dangerous experiences while traveling had deepened his doubt about God's purposes: "Das hätte der Himmel mit diesem dunkeln, rätselhaften irdischen Leben gewollt, und weiter nichts?" (Bfe. II, 27). In Robert Guiskard, God becomes identical with, or is eclipsed by, an equally incomprehensible Fate, vast and annihilating. In Amphitryon,

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divinity is cast in contradictory roles, but chiefly in that of deceiver and tormentor. In the present story, the evidence as to God and His ways is inconclusive. Much of it is couched in accepted, conventional terms, without thereby becoming more reassuring. Jeronimo, in prison, prostrates himself before an image of the Virgin and prays fervently to her as his only resource (296. 24 ff.). Later, miraculously saved, he bows so deeply that his forehead touches the ground to give thanks to God (298. 15 ff.). T h e n , remembering Josephe and her fate, he grows despondent again; he repents his prayer of thanks, and God seems to him a frightful Being somewhere beyond the clouds (298. 25 f.). W h e n he discovers Josephe and their child, he utters a heartfelt Stoßgebet to the Virgin: " O Mutter Gottes, du Heilige!" (299. 27 f.). This is in part a perception of Josephe and the baby in terms of the Virgin and Child. Kleist credits the saving of the lovers to ein Wunder des Himmels (299. 30). T h i s again is simply traditional wording, for as far as the evidence in the narrative goes, he might have written ein Wunder der Natur; there is no proof of God's presence. Ironically, it is Josephe's piety that proves their undoing: when the others hesitate, she eagerly voices her desire to prostrate herself in gratitude before the Creator who has manifested His sublime and incomprehensible power (306. 8 ff.). She is confirmed in this impulse by seeing that her fellow men who have passed through the great cataclysm have been morally benefited by it. Was this God's intent? Soon after this, in His church, His representative depraves men in His name. Was this also God's intent, or has it happened in spite of Him, or as a result of His inattention? Clearly, heaven's champion is defeated in the great contest with hell's. But there is some small comfort in the end.

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On the larger issue Kleist does not commit himself. He leaves the question open or, one might equally well say, clouded. Otto Ludwig was essentially right when he wrote of Kleist: "Der Gott bleibt bei ihm in den Wolken, und dadurch entsteht sein Tragisches."9 Kleist seems never to have doubted the existence of a Supreme Being, but he had deep-seated misgivings as to His nature and our ability to know Him. These haunting misgivings are embodied in Das Erdbeben in Chili. In this respect, too, the story is a characteristic product of Kleist's mind.

C H A P T E R

II

Two Lesser Narrative Forms Das Bettelweib

von

Locarno

KLEIST'S SHORT T A L E Das Bettelweib von Locarno, first published in his Berliner Abendblätter on October 11, 1810, can be taken to illustrate the differences between the anecdote (or the short short-story) and the true Novelle. These differences may be thought of as matters of degree, but they inevitably become differences in kind. Both forms of narration set forth an extraordinary happening, but the anecdote, because of its brevity, must make a more sensational impact. Both are concise, but the anecdote much more so; it appeals (like its nearest relative, the short-story) primarily to the popular reader, the newspaper reader, who wants his story and effect in a nutshell. What is lost in the abbreviation is chiefly character-drawing and motivation in depth. T h e persons of the anecdote (as of the Kriminalgeschichte or the Spukgeschichte, which the Bettelweib approaches) can be mere pawns; the reader does not need or expect to be drawn imaginatively into their inner lives; he wants the "facts," the working out of a plot. As has been pointed out elsewhere,1 the anecdote tends toward a Schlußpointe of momentary and limited effect. It is apt to share with the Kurzgeschichte the aim of transient entertainment without higher artistic pretensions, and it has proved even more usable than the short-story as journalistic space-filler. T h e story of the old beggar woman, told him by his friend Pfuel, must have seemed to Kleist eminently suited to his little octavo newspaper, which Helmut Sembdner has well characterized as above all ein volkstümliches Unterhaltungsblatt?

29

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KLEIST

Emil Staiger, in an extremely subtle and perceptive analysis of Das Bettelweib von Locarno, has rated it as a kleines Meisterwerk.3 In my opinion, it is rather to be ranked with Kleist's minor, journalistic writings than with his masterpieces. Mr. Staiger admits the inferiority of the matter of this tale and its lack of Schmelz and atmosphere; but he finds these faults redeemed by Kleist's narrative art, by the purity of form in which Kleist has here attained das Höchste (p. 118). A re-examination of the text (III, 354-357) will not, I believe, bear out this superlative praise. Not that the little story does not have its strong points. Kleist shows himself a master in the production of Stimmung, weird atmosphere, an art in which he gave hints to E. T . A . Hoffmann. H e produces this effect chiefly through repetition of certain motifs and phrases, thus also underlining the inexorable and unalterable nature of the nemesis that has been visited upon the unfortunate nobleman. T h u s the motif of the Stroh occurs four times, the phrase hinter dem Ofen, unter Stöhnen und Ächzen thrice (the third time heightened to unter Geseufz und Geröchel). T h e sounds of footsteps and tapping crutch also recur; all these phenomena are entirely auditory. Four times the spectral noises are heard: once by the Florentine knight, once by the Marchese alone, once by the couple and a servant, and finally by the couple and their dog, and each time the signs become more indubitable. While there seems to be a short interval between the first and second manifestations (during which the rumor spreads, buyers are discouraged, and the servants affected), the others come on three successive nights, as the climax builds up rapidly. A stroke of genius in a narrative of this sort is the introduction of the dog. T h e animal is dramatically visualized and during the crucial moments holds the center of the stage. As an unprejudiced non-human observer with keen

Two

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31

senses it contributes the final verification and tips the scales to despair and madness for its owners: bei diesem Anblick the Marquise rushes out of the room with hair on end and the Marchese goes into a suicidal frenzy. This use of a dog has been effectively copied by other writers of mystery stories, for instance by Wilhelm von Scholz in Der Kopf im Fenster. Kleist begins with his customary localization and with a concrete exhibit, the ruins of a great old castle; to tell how they came to be is the purpose of his story, and at the end he brings us back to the ruins and the present. This circular movement from and back to an arresting situation is often found in the true Novelle. The style is typically Kleistian; we note his emphatic punctuation, especially the comma, his unconventional sentence order, and favorite expressions such as in der Tat or the exclamatory Aber wie betreten war . . . , Aber wie erschüttert war. . . . T h e dergestalt, daß and auf . . . Weise, which become a mannerism with the later Kleist, occur three times each in this brief, three-page tale. Indirect discourse prevails again. T h e only direct speech in the text is the Marchese's horrified "Wer da?" to which no answer comes—a drastic symbolization, one might say, of Kleistian Man confronting his incomprehensible destiny. Yet it must be admitted that the initial sentence lacks the tension and thrust of Kleist's best openings. Its tenses waver: we are pulled needlessly from past to present to past. Its verbs and participles are weak and colorless, which is unusual in Kleist. T h e main part of the sentence is taken up with the setting, while the really important elements, the chief character and her action, are stowed into a trailing relative clause that is encumbered with two further relative clauses. T o the inconclusive last part of this ill-balanced

32

H E I N R I C H VON

KLEIST

sentence, instead of to its main clause, the thought of the next sentence is connected. T h e closing sentence, too, is not of Kleist's best. It contains too much, and this content is not characteristically concentrated and geballt: the und weakly tacks on a statement that would better have formed a separate sentence. T h e final moralizing note is obtrusive and un-Kleistian. T h e bringing in of the title in the closing line is selfconscious and artificial: in the story itself, the heroine is not "das Bettelweib von Locarno." For the sake of a rounding Schlußeffekt, Kleist has violated the rationale of his narrative and got outside it, as he does nowhere else in his stories. It is, incidentally, implausible that the country folk should have collected the Marchese's whitened boíles and deposited them in the crucial corner of the room—what interest would they have had in doing so? Furthermore, would there be a floor left on which the bones could be laid, in this second-story room that was the very hearth of the conflagration? There are other implausibilities. Mr. Staiger has noted in the opening sentences the contradiction between zufällig and pflegte, as applied to the Marchese's action, and the unsuitable use of Tür for Schloßtor.* These slips may be excused as instances of Kleist's Nachlässigkeit bei allem, was keine Folge hat (Staiger, p. 108), but there are more serious signs of negligence. T h e locale in general is anything but clear and convincing. T h e household seems part feudal, part bourgeois. A marchioness of this period would hardly lodge a stray beggar woman in a second-floor Prunkgemach (sehr schön und prächtig eingerichtet), nor would straw be strewn in such a room. A bare Abstellraum would be a more likely place for the housing of a vagrant and the storing of the hunter's gun, but such a room would not be on the second floor. T h i s old and extensive castle mit hohen und weitläufigen Zimmern (354. 5 f.) seems to have only one, so

T w o

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NARRATIVE

FORMS

33

designated, Fremdenzimmer (356. 10 f.) to accommodate now an old, sick beggar and now a wealthy nobleman whom the owner wants very much to impress (354. 23). T h e Marchese and his wife, on the other hand, are lodged, curiously enough, on the ground floor, as various allusions indicate, among them the (loose) seinem (355. 13) referring to the host's bedroom, to which the guest has descended (herunter, 355. 1) in the middle of the night. T h e indefinite in der nächsten Nacht (355. 21)—next after which?—makes the time relations uncertain. T h e negligently used dasselbe and es of 357. 4 do not refer to the preceding Schloß (line 2) but to the Zimmer of eight lines earlier with its wooden wainscoting; it is this, not the castle, that the owner sets fire to in all four corners (the older, correcter Winkeln for inside corners would have made things clearer than Ecken, 357. 5). T h e Marchese never leaves this fatal room and is consumed there. Since at the end (357) the whole castle is going u p in flames (das Schloß ringsum in Flammen aufgehen), it is unthinkable that the Marquise could induce people to venture into this room, or even into the castle, in efforts to save her husband. Like Die Marquise von O ..., the story is laid im oberen Italien—so Kleist locates Locarno. But the allegedly Italian setting contributes nothing; there is no local color. T h e Marchese, the Marquise, and the florentinischer Ritter (in the Abendblätter print he was a Genuesischer) are not specifically Italian types. T h i s household could as well be German, and it is gutbürgerlich rather than adelig. This nobility is certainly not of the type against which Bürger inveighed! T h e Marchese is guilty of no greater crime than a momentary impatience in dealing with a stranger in his home. He speaks to the old woman unwillig and orders her from one corner of a room to another. He may be a pedantic

34

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KLEIST

Gewohnheitsmensch, a stickler for routine, who is vexed when a particular spot in which he habitually stands his gun is occupied. For once he could have put it into another corner. His action is unfeeling, since the woman is obviously old and decrepit. But he does not turn her out of the house nor even out of this room. T h a t the woman slips and falls is not his intention but an unfortunate accident. One cannot, without being factitious, hold him responsible for her death; it is not his doing in any moral sense. His punishment is out of all proportion to his offense, both from an ethical and an aesthetic point of view. W e are left with a feeling of horror instead of a true tragic emotion. If the motivation and outcome of this tale are unsatisfying, the character-drawing is equally inadequate. T h e persons are all in one plane and do not arouse in us any deep or individual interest. T h e Marchese is the type of country nobleman, with a fondness for hunting and a concern for his estate. T h e Marquise is the charitable lady of the manor, well-meaning but ineffectual; Kleist does not trouble to make final disposition of her. T h e title-heroine herself is left featureless, eine alte, kranke Frau with not even a trait of vengefulness to account for her vindictive return. A distant cousin of the revenant Lisbeth in Kohlhaas, she suggests a Grimmsche Hexe with her stick, but she has none of the witch's wickedness. She may in fact come from some sentimental folk tale of newer date.® It is not surprising that E. T . A. Hoffmann was deeply impressed, indeed fascinated, by Kleist's story, which is so much in his own vein. He alludes to it in letters and pays tribute to it in several of his works: the Serapionsbrüder and the Fragment aus dem Leben dreier Freunde; and in Das Majorat he uses some of Kleist's weird effects. A t about the same time, young Grillparzer evinced an interest in Kleist's stories. In a diary entry of i8i8, he wrote:

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NARRATIVE

FORMS

35

Ich habe einige von Kleists (dessen der sich erschoß) Erzählungen gelesen. Die Süjets sind interessant, die Erzählung ist gut, zum Teil vorzüglich, und doch wandelte mich ein äußerst widerliches Gefühl bei der Lesung an. Es ist offenbar die Haltlosigkeit, die Selbstzerstörung des Verfassers, die, aus allem hervorleuchtend, diesen Eindruck hervorbringt.® T w o points are of interest in this brief notation: (1) that Grillparzer back-interprets Kleist's stories in the light of his suicide, and (2) that he read only a limited number (einige would argue at least three) of Kleist's narratives. Since he speaks of them in the plural, he must have read them in the two-volume Erzählungen which Kleist published in Berlin in 1810-1811; this was the only form in which a group of Kleist's tales was then available. Did Grillparzer read in one or in both volumes? T h e Bettelweib is the second item in Volume II. Did Grillparzer read it, then or within the next year or two? For the curious thing is that in 1820 he made a more extensive diary entry, as follows: Schauerlich und wohl einer Bearbeitung wert ist die Geschichte des Bettelweibes von Locarno, die bei schlechtem Wetter von einer Edelfrau ins Schloß aufgenommen und in einem leeren Saale auf Stroh gebettet, von dem heimkehrenden Schloßbesitzer, der sein Jagdgewehr in den Winkel stellen will, den die Arme einnahm, weggewiesen und rauh geheißen wird, hinter den Ofen zu kriechen. Wie sie sich mühsam an den Krücken aufrafft, auf dem Stroh ausglitscht und schwer verletzt am Ofen niedersinkt und den Geist aufgibt. Ein Gast, dem man bald darauf seine Schlafstätte in demselben Zimmer anweist, erwacht zur Mitternachtsstunde, seltsam erschreckt und hört ein Geräusch durchs Zimmer gehen, wie von stapfenden Krücken und Füßen, die über Stroh gleiten. Zuletzt Stöhnen und Ächzen. Beim Schein der Lampe niemand gewahrend, springt er entsetzt auf und, hinabgeeilt, erzählt er schwer atmend seinen Wirten das schauderhafte Ereignis. Das Gerücht davon verbreitet sich

36

H E I N R I C H VON

KLEIST

bald; das Schloß wird verrufen und weder Gesinde will darin aushalten, noch ein Käufer sich finden, der die beunruhigten Besitzer der Last des ihnen zur Marter gewordenen Besitztums enthöbe. Der Graf, halb ungläubig, halb erbost, schließt sich selbst eine Nacht in das spukhafte Zimmer ein, und auch er muß am andern Morgen seiner Gattin bekennen, ein solches Geräusch vernommen zu haben. Sich selbst mißtrauend aber, und vielleicht einen T e i l des Vernommenen auf Schlaftrunkenheit oder die natürlichen Schauer der Einsamkeit schiebend, beschließt er die Nachtwache noch einmal zu unternehmen und seine Gattin leistet ihm diesmal Gesellschaft. Ein Hund, der Gräfin zu folgen gewohnt und, da man ihn ausschließt, an der T ü r e kratzend, wird zuletzt auch mit eingelassen und so harren sie der Mitternachtsstunde, der Graf den Degen in der Hand, die Gräfin betend, zu ihren Füßen der Hund. Elf Uhr ist längst vorüber, da schlägt plötzlich der Hund an und mit dem ersten Glockenstreich der eben vom Schloßturme herabschallenden zwölften Stunde entsteht im dunkelsten Winkel des weiten Zimmers ein Geräusch wie von Krücken und schleppenden Fußtritten, ein Rascheln wie von Stroh. Der Hund springt auf; bellend, als eine vor ihm hinwandelnde Gestalt verfolgend, weicht er aus der Ecke, der er beim ersten Geräusch zugeeilt ist, schrittweise, scheu und winselnd zurück. Jetzt hat er rückgehend den Ofen erreicht, an dem Graf und Gräfin sitzen und jetzt heult er auf, indes unter Stöhnen und Röcheln das unsichtbare Etwas hart bei den Füßen des starrenden Paares am Ofen niedersinkt. Auf die Klinke der T ü r stürzt die Gräfin, vorbei an ihrem Gatten, der das Licht in einer Hand, den Degen in der andern, halb wahnsinnig um sich haut. Im Schloßhof angelangt, schreit sie um Hilfe und weist dem herbeiströmenden Dienstgesinde auf ihr Fragen sprachlos nach den Fenstern des Spukzimmers, die, allein noch im ganzen Schlosse erleuchtet, mit jedem Augenblicke heller und heller werden. Erst spät begreift man, was sie will. Man eilt hin; aber Flammen schlagen aus der offenen Türe den Andringenden entgegen. Kaum retten sie sich selber, kaum die Gräfin aus dem schon von allen Seiten brennenden, in

Two

LESSER N A R R A T I V E FORMS

37

Schutt und Trümmer einsinkenden Schlosse. Der Graf ward nicht mehr gesehen.7 We must assume that Grillparzer, before he wrote this, had read Kleist's story in some form, without knowing it to be Kleist's. It is inconceivable that, had he read it in Kleist's second volume or in some print with Kleist's name attached to it, he would not have credited it to Kleist in his diary entry. And no one else had published a story like this. In the scant decade that had elapsed since its appearance, Kleist's tale could hardly have become Volksgut and been subjected to transformation as such. It is much more likely, as August Sauer surmised, that Grillparzer read Dos Bettelweib von Locarno in an anonymous reprint, such as appeared, typically, in a Theaterzeitung in 1822, with the subtitle, Eine Sage'.6 Such a pirated newspaper reprint is wholly possible, in view of the brevity of the piece; after all, it had come out in a small newspaper in the first place. Assuming that Grillparzer wrote, as he was wont in such summaries, from memory, Sauer concludes on the basis of some verbal correspondences that Grillparzer had before him either Kleist's version or Kleist's Vorlage. But if it was the latter, it must have been one that Kleist followed very closely, and this is quite unlike him and quite unexampled in his production. We are left, it seems to me, with no alternative but to suppose that Grillparzer failed to read the story in Kleist's volume or even to note its title there, that he read Kleist's text in an anonymous reprint and, not knowing it the work of this "unstable and self-destructive" author, felt sufficiently attracted to it to make note of it as a matter deserving larger poetic treatment—whether narrative or dramatic, he does not specify, but it is more likely to have been something on the order of Das Kloster bei Sendom.tr,9 for after Sappho and

38

H E I N R I C H VON

KLEIST

Das goldene Vlies he would scarcely have gone back to a ghost play of the Ahnfrau type. Such matter would have been relegated to his prose fiction, for which he had a less high regard. Assuming, then, that Kleist's text was available to Grillparzer in a virtually accurate reproduction, it is interesting to see what changes it underwent in passing through Grillparzer's mind and pen. It is clear that he too uses the technique of repetition of key words (Stroh, Ofen, Krücken, Füße, Zimmer), and that he retells substantially Kleist's story, not, however, mit allen Zügen treulich, as Erich Schmidt claimed (III, 439), but rather with certain deviations. A t the beginning, Grillparzer adds the small but significant detail of bad weather as motivation for taking in the beggar. He has the woman lodged, somewhat more plausibly, in a large vacant room, from the darkest far corner of which the ghostly sounds later come. He compresses and improves the sequence of events. Kleist has mehrere Jahre pass after the beggar woman's death before she manifests herself. T h e discovery is made by a would-be purchaser who arrives quite by chance, for nothing has been said about the Marchese's efforts to sell his estate, and certainly the presence of the ghost, as yet undiscovered, was not a reason for doing so. Grillparzer, instead, has a guest bald darauf discover the spook; with a little dramatic touch, he shows him gasping for breath as he reports his experience to his hosts. T h e rumor spreads "rapidly," the castle gets a bad name, the owners find themselves unable to hold their servants or obtain a buyer for the property that has become an affliction to them. T h i s is a more credible progression than Kleist's, for there it is only after a prospective purchaser has disclosed the haunted condition and after the "extraordinary sensation" caused by this disclosure has frightened off a "number" of

T w o

LESSER N A R R A T I V E

FORMS

other buyers, that the rumor arises, befremdend und unbegreiflich [!], among the Marchese's own servants that their castle is haunted! Grillparzer reduces Kleist's four manifestations to three, a n d has no apparent time-lapse between them. He omits the vigil with the "trusted servant," which really added nothing. T h e third test is made by the Count and his wife. Kleist characteristically arms his man with pistols (die er aus dem Schrank genommen) in addition to a sword; Grillparzer contents himself with the latter. He also has the family dog join the pair; but whereas in Kleist the animal fand sich zufällig ein (the same vague verb used for the coming of the Florentine knight), in Grillparzer it is a dog accustomed to follow the mistress about, and it scratches at the door until it is admitted. Grillparzer in fact makes more of the dog's reaction. While in Kleist it retreats, growling and barking, from the middle of the room to the stove, in Grillparzer it first rushes barking to the far corner from which the sound came and then, whining in terror at something it sees and humans cannot, it retreats step by step across the whole length of the room to the stove. Kleist tells us no more about the specter's movements after the point where the dog is roused; his ghost does not "die"; Grillparzer has the "invisible something" complete its routine until it collapses at the very feet of the terrified pair, and he marks its death throes by having the dog set u p a howl. At the climax, the horrified Countess rushes out of the room (the same verb stürzt as in Kleist, with an almost Kleistian word order). But, reaching the courtyard, she does not have her carriage made ready to drive away, abandoning her beleaguered husband, but screams for help, pointing speechlessly to the fire-lighted windows of the Spukzimmer. When the servants understand and obey her wishes, they find the

4o

H E I N R I C H VON

KLEIST

room full of flames. T h e n the whole castle catches fire and quickly collapses in ruins. T h e Count disappears without a trace. 10 T h i s final sequence, again, seems more logical and natural than Kleist's. W e must not, of course, attach too much importance to o u r comparison. For one thing, we have compared a finished work on the one hand with a diary entry on the other. What Grillparzer might have made of his "scenario" no one can say. And so long as we do not know for certain what text Grillparzer had read, we cannot be dogmatic about his "deviations." Nevertheless, it may be permissible to sense in Grillparzer's "variations on a theme from Kleist" a closer relation to Nature, a more balanced and controlled temperament, and one that, like Goethe's, could not but feel an instinctive aversion to the irrational and destructive forces in Heinrich von Kleist. Anekdote

aus dem letzten preußischen

Kriege

If Das Bettelweib von Locarno is an example of an anecdote enlarged in the direction of a mystery story, the Anekdote aus dem letzten preußischen Kriege, in the sixth number (October 6, 1810) of the Berliner Abendblätter, is an example of an anecdote that, remaining within the limits of its genre, comes as near as this genre can to the power of character delineation that distinguishes the Novelle. Inconspicuously published, poorly printed, without Kleist's name or even one of his various editorial symbols, it is nevertheless one of the gems among his minor writings. In its short compass—less than a page and a half in Kleist's small octavo newspaper—there is no room for the analysis of motive or the exposition of inner experience. All is outward action, as the extraordinary frequency of verbs in its text shows. There is no hint of a before and after in the hero's life, no "history" in this unhistorical incident. Yet in a few

Two

LESSER NARRATIVE FORMS

41

minutes of crucial activity a character is evoked, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say: a single trait of character, cool courage in a common soldier, is highlighted in a brilliantly dramatized episode, a small aftermath to a great historical event, the Battle of Jena. About that fateful battle, only a few years past, a number of similar anecdotes had already sprung up. 1 1 One need only set any one of them beside Kleist's to appreciate the unique superiority of his creation. Suspense is exceedingly well built up and maintained. Kleist fairly keeps us on the edge of our chairs: how much longer will the mail delay? Will he get away in time? And then, when we expect a last-minute escape to safety, Kleist gives the screw of suspense another turn by having his hero, instead of retreating, attack a superior force: sprengt auf sie ein; sprengt, so wahr Gott lebt, auf sie ein, in the words of our vicarious spectator, the innkeeper. T h e success of his mad venture seems inconceivable and yet, when it is accomplished, psychologically conceivable, the extraordinary developments far more credible than those in the Bettelweib. While that story, as Emil Staiger pointed out, consists of only twenty sentences, there are considerably more in the shorter Kriegsanekdote; its dialogue style is in fact so lively that it is not always possible to say what shall be called a sentence. There is some of Kleist's characteristic indirect discourse in the subjunctive, but an unusual amount of direct speech is given. T h e eleven-line opening sentence, specifying an "inner" narrator (erzählte mir, auf einer Reise . . . der Gastwirt) is one that would lead us to expect an anecdote; none of Kleist's Novellen begins in this manner or has a second narrator. T h e introductory sentence also tells us the time, place, and circumstances in which the hero is to emerge; the reflexive pronoun announcing him is set down in the second line, but the solitary trooper is identified only

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KLEIST

a half-dozen lines later; his distinguishing trait, extraordinary Tapferkeit, is vouched for, and we are keyed up in expectation to see how it will be demonstrated. With the second sentence begins the dramatic action on the stage of our "inward eye," clearly visualized, with a full complement of speeches and "business," the Kleistian indem and other conjunctions introducing concomitant gestures, with never a dead moment but steadily mounting tension u p to the instant of the trooper's triumphant exit, with an exotic oath, a swaggering "I told you so," and an exultant shout to the rhythm of his posting: "hoho! hohol hoho!" Then, from the wings, as it were, the epilogue by the inner, eyewitness narrator: "So einen Kerl, sprach der Wirt, hab ich Zeit meines Lebens nicht gesehen." T h e trooper, ein einzelner preußischer Reiter, holds the center of the stage. T h e eight indem clauses all apply to him (indem er . . .), and in addition während or nachdem is used to introduce some action of his; he is continuously in view. Nor are we allowed to lose sight of his hat: how he takes it off to wipe his brow and enjoy a moment's respite, how he puts it on again when he finishes drinking, how he crams it down to his eyes when he prepares to launch his attack. T h e concluding sentence, of which the epilogue already quoted is really a part, is of the same length as the opening one, and together they take up one third of the space of the entire anecdote. This final sentence, also, crammed with action and speech, spiked with emphatic verbs (eighteen in a little over eleven lines), is a masterpiece of breathless, excited narration. In a letter to a critical reader, defending two anecdotes printed in the Abendblätter, Kleist called his paper ein Volksblatt.12 Our Kriegsanekdote is quite in keeping with this characterization: it is echt volkstümlich. It has the anonymity of the folk tale: an unnamed narrator is told by the

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unnamed innkeeper of an unnamed village about an experience he had with an unnamed soldier during the recent war. T h e narrative is a simple, uncomplicated, step-by-step report, punctuated by "says I " and "says he," dramatized and picturized, with its main idea: an unheard-of fellow, summed up plainly at the end. Except for the opening sentences and the very last sentence, only the present tense occurs; the isolated rief (188, 20) is doubtless a slip in the original print. 13 T h e use of Maul for Mund, expressions like Quark and die Schwerenot kriegen, or the naturalism of sich vom Pferde herab schneuzen and ausspucken are in the popular spirit. Volkstümlich, too, is the traditional number, three, for the trooper's drinks. This business is a sort of reversal of that in Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm (I, 2), where the Danziger also figures, but the characters and motives involved are different. Kleist's soldier is akin in some ways to Just, but braver than Just probably ever was, and not heimtückisch: where Just would lay an ambush, two to one, the trooper openly takes on opponents one to three. In this little tale from contemporary folk life, an anonymous author sets a monument to an anonymous man of the people, an unknown soldier, a nameless "guy," a Kerl—the word occurs ten times—served by a Wirt and his barmaid, das Mensch, who answers to He! Liese! like her sister in Der zerbrochne Krug. There is nothing of military professionalism about this cavalryman. Even his uniform seems irregular: he wears a Hut, not the regulation Mütze. One feels that this is a civilian, called away from his job to do another job, and doing it in his habitual unhurried, thorough manner. He retains civilian habits like stopping at an inn for a drink (and paying cash for it—no war commandeering!), or smoking his short-stemmed pipe before getting down to work. He is extraordinary yet ordinary; one in a million, yet left within the million, the inexhaustible reservoir of the

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common folk from whom alone, Kleist knew, Germany's salvation could come. T h e man is not rewarded for his exploit, not decorated or knighted; he goes back into the obscurity from which he came when called. But we sense that to the frustrated patriot who wrote this piece he is more than a "real" figure. He grows into a sort of Paul Bunyan of folk myth. He has a touch of ideality, even of knight-errantry. He is a freelance, operating independently of any army unit, justifying Kottwitz's plea for freedom of initiative, accepting battle and "gleichfalls unberufen,/ Den Sieg wo irgend zwischen Wald und Felsen." There is no doubt that Kleist admired him intensely and felt for him, as he wrote concerning the kindred hero of another of his war anecdotes: daß der Kerl, nach meinem innersten Gefühl, verglichen mit dem, was bei Jena vorgefallen, eine so herrliche und göttliche Erscheinung ist, daß mich dünkt . . . die Geschichte könnte, so wie ich sie aufgeschrieben, in Erz gegraben werden.14

CHAPTER

III

Amphitryon Alkmene's

Tragedy

K L E I S T ' S Lustspiel nach Molière, a translation and adaptation, 1 was written in Königsberg in 1806, one might say as an exercise in convalescence. This was the interval following the collapse over Robert Guiskard when Kleist, unable, as he confessed, to refrain from writing poetry, was not yet ready to resume fully original work. Translating from the French was in a sense a sanatory occupation for him, as it was to be later in the century for Conrad Ferdinand Meyer; but Kleist, unlike Meyer, did not restrict himself to an exact rendition. After completing the work, Kleist did not offer it to a publisher. Only when he was a prisoner in France and in need of money did he have his friends sell the manuscript to a bookdealer in Dresden, and it appeared there in the spring of 1807, with a preface by Adam Heinrich Müller. It is mentioned a few times in Kleist's letters of that year, never later, and never in any meaningful way but merely as an article of business. Nevertheless it is in various respects a highly significant and characteristic production, reflecting within necessary limits surprisingly much of Kleist's irrepressible poetic individuality. Kleist kept the framework of Molière's plot. He kept his comic elements and even enhanced them here and there. But he made extensive additions in ideas and characterization, developing certain potentialities of the old story that had been left submerged in Molière and his predecessors. In so doing, Kleist grafted upon a gay and piquant French comedy a deep and metaphysical German tragedy. Or,

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changing the metaphor, one could say that Molière's Amphitryon was a summerhouse of light, sophisticated construction to which the new tenant, deepening its foundations, attached a heavy stone w i n g of different design. As a result, Amphitryon is the least harmonious of Kleist's dramas, though, beginning with the twentieth century, it has often been played and indeed was for years a favorite with a number of metropolitan producers. T h e average theatergoer is not troubled by the artistic imbalance of the work and is ready to accept its tragic elements superficially as "elevati n g " while enjoying its comic parts to the full. In fact, Kleist himself so obviously relished these comic parts and demonstrated, here and in Der zerbrochne Krug, such a gift for comedy, as to pose the puzzling question: how a man with such ability to laugh at life could so soon have f o u n d it unbearable. Perhaps Amphitryon itself suggests the answer. Perhaps the very lack of tact and measure, the obsessive seriousness and single-minded intensity that produced this unbalanced play is the fundamental flaw in Kleist's artistic character—one might be tempted to say, in the German character, had we not come to distrust such national generalizations. Perhaps, also, just the medley of comic and tragic motifs that gives Kleist's play its ambiguous, schillernd aspect is the reason for its theatrical appeal in a disillusioned and unsure age. It is this quality, I suspect, diese geistig reizende Oszillation und Doppeldeutigkeit, that par2 ticularly endeared the play to T h o m a s Mann. W h i l e some American and English scholars, notably Blankenagel and Stahl, 3 have perceived the tragic essence of this play, G e r m a n interpreters, from Brahm to Blöcker, have again and again read it optimistically, seeing A l k m e n e vindicated and triumphant. " D i e Unwandelbarkeit weiblicher T r e u e hat [Kleist] in ihr verkörpert, die aus allen qualvollen P r ü f u n g e n nur leuchtender hervorgeht," wrote

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Brahm. 4 More recently, Benno von Wiese has interpreted the play as a vindication of its heroine's indestructible love: "Alkmene bleibt. . . unverwirrt, sich selbst treu." 5 Hermann August Korff asserts with italic emphasis: "Nicht Verwirrung, sondern Sicherheit des Gefühls trotz aller scheinbaren Verwirrung: das ist in Wahrheit das Grundthema." 8 Günter Blöcker, like Korff, takes certain admiring words of Kleist's many-tongued Jupiter (in Act II, Scene 5) at their face value and likewise concludes: "rein geht die Sterbliche aus der Not hervor," victorious by virtue of "ihr zu traumhafter Sicherheit geläutertes Gefühl." 7 Beyond question, Alkmene is one of the purest embodiments of Kleist's ideal of womanhood and wifehood. Sweet, warm, patient, utterly innocent, she is completely devoted to her husband and lives only in him, in a union she feels to be so complete that her sense of his presence coincides with her sense of her own identity: Eh' will ich irren in mir selbstl Eh" will ich dieses innerste Gefühl, Das ich am Mutterbusen eingesogen, Und das mir sagt, daß ich Alkmene bin, Für einen Parther oder Perser halten. Ist diese Hand mein? Diese Brust hier mein? Gehört das Bild mir, das der Spiegel strahlt? Er wäre fremder mir, als ichl Nimm mir Das Aug', so hör' ich ihn; das Ohr, ich fühl' ihn; Mir das Gefühl hinweg, ich atm' ihn noch; Nimm Aug' und Ohr, Gefühl mir und Geruch, Mir alle Sinn' und gönne mir das Herz: So läßt du mir die Glocke, die ich brauche, Aus einer Welt noch find' ich ihn heraus. (1154-1167) This, her essential and seemingly unerrable feeling, nevertheless errs grievously, and since she is the central figure in

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Kleist's new part of Amphitryon, Kleists play must be adjudged a tragedy, despite the Lustspiel in its subtitle. W h e t h e r A l k m e n e ' s experience is tragic or not must b e determined on her o w n terms, not by the specious sophistries of a m u l t i f o r m Jupiter which so many interpreters seem to have taken over uncritically. She is a woman of the highest marital morality, and infidelity would be out of the question for her. Early in the play she voices her conviction that only marriage sanctions sexual love. She will not a d m i t Jupiter's insinuating distinction between lover and husband: Geliebter und Gemahl! Was sprichst du da? Ist es dies heilige Verhältnis nicht, Das mich allein dich zu empfahn berechtigt? (458 ff.) Later, she reproaches herself severely for even having listened to this doppelsinn'ge Scherz (1135, 1202). She w o u l d deem herself execrable had she heard it from any other lips than her husband's: " F l u c h mir, / Die ich leichtsinnig diesem Scherz gelächelt, / K a m er mir aus des Gatten M u n d e nicht" (1207 ff.). In this scene (I, 4), their first together on the stage, we see the beginning of the mental seduction of A l k m e n e by Jupiter which culminates in the next Act (II, 5). Pressing every advantage, the disguised god has led her to admit that she sensed the superiority of the lover to the husband (487 ff.), that she will remember the lover when the husband returns (499 ff.), and that she f o u n d this prolonged night shorter than any previous ones (506 f.). H e r returning husband's intimation that she has received someone else than him fills her with deep dismay. She is overcome with Schaudern and Entsetzen at the thought that her moral sense and feminine feeling may have deceived her. T h e god intensifies the mental torment by changing the ini-

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tial on the diadem—a motif original with Kleist, symbolizing his recognition of the dubiousness of the phenomenal world and of the heavenly powers themselves. She can only avow her inmost Lebensgefühl; she is as sure of her husband's identity as she is of her own. T h e unconditional force of her avowal here (1154-1167, quoted above) indicates how annihilating must be her eventual realization of error in this very core of her Existenz. Even now she feels that if the charge, supported by the initial, is proved against her, there will be no defense (1224 f.) and no refuge but in death: "so sei der T o d mein Los / Und ew'ge Nacht begrabe meine Schmach" (1243 f·)· Jupiter's reply (1245 ff.) is nothing more than an evasive gallantry. Alkmene's experience with the shifting letters has upset her innerstes Gefühl and destroyed her assurance of innocence (1249-1251). Jupiter's rejoinder that she is guiltless, for whoever approached her was Amphitryon to her, is a glittering sophistry that evades the point and does not satisfy her honest mind, though it has beguiled more learned ones. Her straightforward question "Warst du's, warst du es nicht?" addressed, she thinks, to Amphitryon, is met with equivocation in the pseudopantheistic spirit of later passages: "Ich war's. Sei's wer es wolle. . . . Mich immer hast du, Teuerste, empfangen" (1266, 1270). This is not Amphitryon speaking, and the ich and mich are stark deception. Alkmene again clearly commits herself when she declares leben will ich nicht, / Wenn nicht mein Busen mehr unsträflich ist (1278 f.). She feels unfit to share Amphitryon's house and bed further: Gehl Nicht in deinem Haus' siehst du mich wieder. Du zeigst mich keiner Frau in Hellas mehr. . . . Eh' will ich meiner Gruft, als diesen Busen, Solang' er atmet, deinem Bette nahn. (1309 f., 1331 f.)

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She designates what was "perpetrated" upon her as a "crime" (1343). T h i s is her true verdict, no matter if, a moment later, in a spirit of pious humility that speaks inconsistently in Christian wording, she seems willing to accept it as a divine grace (1368; cf. 1535 f.). But she dismisses this as a mere theoretical suggestion and returns to the Schmerzgedanken of her dishonor (1378) which means for her renunciation of her husband: "Geh du, mein lieber Liebling, geh, mein Alles, / Und find' ein andres Weib dir, und sei glücklich" (1379 f.). T h e r e is tragic irony in her frantic plea to the gods to save her from delusion (Wahn, 1385) when the first and father of the gods is at this moment deluding her. She has already fallen prey to what she apprehends, and her "husband's" argument that only Jupiter could have so deceived the Goldwage of her feeling, the Glockenspiel of her womanly heart, amounts to an admission that deception has occurred ( 1395— 1400). It is clear that she feels as "pain" what Jupiter "inflicted" on her (1412 f.). If she could, she would strike this day of guilt forever from her life, indeed suffer ten deaths rather than live through it again (1308, 1507 ff.). Such statements, rather than the obligatory utterances of pious submission, reveal her real convictions. T h e r e is no doubt that she feels deeply wounded. And there is no doubt that in the course of his wily inquisition in this scene (II, 5), Jupiter has induced her to concede a superior attractiveness in the lover of last night in distinction from the husband. Having duped her into physical infidelity, the god also misleads her into mental infidelity and corrupts her conjugal feeling, with results that appear later. T h i s pivotal scene, which is Kleist's own work, represents, as Stahl justly observes, "the veritable seduction of Alkmene and, at the same time, Jupiter's most signal defeat." 8 In this

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oblique and twisted world, however, the fact that Jupiter has lost does not mean that Alkmene has won. He, to be sure, arranges a public appearance for the purpose of proclaiming to the whole world "Daß niemand deiner Seele nahte, / Als nur dein Gatte, als Amphitryon" (2171 f.). This again is sophistical. It is true that Jupiter could gain access to Alkmene only by assuming the form of her husband, and in so far the god failed. But she failed also, for under this guise an alien, predatory force did in fact invade her most private life. Her innerstes Gefühl has been disabled; there is nothing more she can trust. In Molière, the situation is much more conventional and simpler. Jupiter "clears" Alcmène by explaining publicly that she bestowed her favors on him only in his disguise as her husband, not in his own person. But an acquittal of the gross charge of promiscuity and intentional infidelity would not suffice for Kleist's heroine, as the interpreters who see her "triumph" seem to think. According to Alkmene's standards even involuntary infidelity is a mortal sin and a corruption of her very soul. Her distraught question "Kann man auch Unwillkürliches verschulden?" (1455) is answered by her heart in the affirmative. Molière's Alcmène is a mere love object, a typical lady with charm and "sex appeal" but no depth of character. It would have been a mistake to give her depth. She never has to face an agonized decision like Alkmene's. As a subordinate figure and merely the occasion for the delictum, Alcmène can disappear from the stage at the end of the second act; Kleist must have his heroine present at the denouement. Molière's play is fitly entitled Amphitryon, for the duped husband is the target of its light comedy. Kleist's play should have been entitled Alkmene, for the suffering wife is the chief subject of its deep tragedy. When she is faced with the inescapable choice between

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the t w o Amphitryons, A l k m e n e is overcome by a thorough Verwirrung des Gefühls and cries, " D a ß ich zu ew'ger Nacht versinken könnte!" (2221). T h e Triumph that Jupiter promised her (2178, 2271) turns out to be a hollow and a bitter one. For she makes the wrong decision and chooses the impostor as her Amphitryon. N o amount of "interpretation" can explain away this crucial and final spiritual defeat. 9 T h e extreme vehemence of her long tirade, her cruel lashing of the man she takes for her seducer, reveals to us how deep a w o u n d she has sustained. T h e savagery of this revilem e n t is comparable to Penthesilea's attack on Achilles. Penthesilea merely carries her resentment a step further and kills the man she thinks betrayed her. W h e n we hear A l k mene's vilification of her husband and the expression of her disgust with his very person, we ask ourselves what f u t u r e there can be for these two people together. She calls in question the very foundations of her individual existence when, with tragic irony, she curses herself for her "mistake," curses her senses and her very soul: Verflucht die Sinne, die so gröblichem Betrug erliegen! O verflucht der Busen, Der solche falschen T ö n e gibt! Verflucht die Seele, die nicht soviel taugt, U m ihren eigenen Geliebten sich zu merken! (2252-2256) She vows she will live n o longer in a world where there is no assurance of i n n o c e n c e — a n d her experience has shown there is n o n e — a n d she sums up her unalterable misfortune by saying (to A m p h i t r y o n , when it should be to Jupiter): " G e h ! deine schnöde List ist dir geglückt, / U n d meiner Seele Frieden eingeknickt" (2261 f.). T h a t in the face of this complete failure and unconditional self-condemnation anyone can think A l k m e n e successful and triumphant seems incomprehensible. T h i s is more than just deception of the

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senses; it is vitiation of an innermost sense. T h i s is a deeper a n d more universal tragedy than that summed up in Hamlet's "frailty, thy name is woman." Here, in the person of a woman of superlatively refined moral feeling, humanity as such is proved frail and blind and helpless. Alkmene calls this the bitterest hour of her life (2266) and begs her "husband" to cut it short. But Jupiter is not one to shorten anybody's agony; this long-drawn spectacle is typical of his cruelty. Having beguiled her in private to prefer his Amphitryon to the real one, he now has misled her to announce this preference publicly in extreme and irrevocable terms, making her "inmost sense" confirm the unwitting infidelity of her senses and her body. T h e poor victim begs to be left under an eternal delusion, lest enlightenment forever darken her soul (2305 f.). But the fact is she is not left under this merciful delusion, and we must conclude that her life henceforth is thus darkened. No casuistry and no resort to mythology can alter the fact that for this Alkmene the future will be dark with self-reproach and with mourning over an undeserved misfortune. When J u p i t e r reveals himself at last, she falls unconscious into Amphitryon's arms with the words "Schützt mich, ihr Himmlischen!" (2312). But what protection can be expected from the heavenly ones when the greatest of them has cheated and victimized her? These gods are morally bankrupt, and an appeal to them is at best a figure of speech. Alkmene recovers consciousness to speak a final Ach! as the curtain falls. T h i s enigmatical monosyllable has called forth any number of explanations, ranging from the profound to the absurd. Stahl rightly recognized the tragic force of this " A c h ! " when he termed it "a compressed utterance of overwhelming despair and confusion." 1 0 And, be it said to the credit of German interpreters, Paul Hoffmann heard in it

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den Seufzer einer unheilbar Verwundeten,11 and Röbbeling considered Alkmene at the end in ihrem heiligsten Fühlen getäuscht, innerlich zerbrochen und vernichtet.12 But this Ach! seems to typify the mixed character of the play which it terminates. It echoes and contrasts with an earlier Ach! of happiness (507) that proves to be based on deceit, like Penthesilea's brief illusion. In a woman of Alkmene's strong religious instinct, it would also contain the element of submission to divine will. T h e ancient myth that Kleist seems increasingly aware of toward the end would call for a sigh of relief and satisfaction at this point, while a modern individual, no longer bound to the pagan faith, should feel resentment at a ruthless exploitation. There is perhaps in this final cry a mingling of unutterably conflicting feelings: pain, protest, bewilderment, and a pious acceptance of life's cruelest tragedies as divinely imposed and beyond understanding. Amphitryon Kleist not only elevated Alkmene to the leading position in his play, but he also deepened the character of her husband and gave him tragic stature. Amphitryon is, like Goethe's Valentin in Faust, an honest, brave soldier baffled and dismayed and finally overpowered by supernatural forces in an unfair contest. In the midst of a successful military career and the bridal days of a happy marriage he is suddenly confronted with a Teufelsrätsel (616). He is dumfounded: "Kann man's begreifen? . . . Kann man's fassen?" (697). He is a realist, accustomed to rely on his sound senses; whatever happens in contradiction to them he is ready to ascribe to demonic powers or at most a temporary derangement on his wife's part (III, 1). Soon, however, he feels distraught and terrified, marked for misfortune: " O ihr all-

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mächt'gen Götter, die die Welt / Regieren! Was habt ihr über mich verhängt?" (899 f.). He feels his honor assailed by an opponent he cannot see and fight: he has heard of agencies "from beyond" that may invade his rational world, "doch heute knüpft der Faden sich von jenseits / A n meine Ehre und erdrosselt sie" (910 f.).13 His wife's report of the night of love turns the dagger in a mortal wound (954, 970). By his natural code, he judges the unknown intruder as der nichtswürdigste der Lotterbuben (974), a verdict we should recall at the end, when he accepts this individual's act as a divine favor. Already in the altercation with his wife in this scene (975 ff.) serious notes are struck that threaten to destroy the harmony of their marriage. In the parley with Merkur, ostensibly one of the comic scenes (III, 2), Amphitryon's wrath turns to deep inner disturbance: "Daß mich die Erd' entrafft! Solch eine Schmach!" (1763); "Jetzt ist es aus mit mir" (1769). His brief soliliquy that follows (III, 3) deepens the tragic note. He feels like a man crushed by an "annihilating" blow, a man already buried who sees his widow marry another. Shall he proclaim to the world the shame that has befallen his house, or shall he keep silence? Finally he is filled with a consuming desire for revenge and resolved that the betrayer at least shall not escape alive. All this again is like Valentin, one of the most moving and tragic of Goethe's minor figures. Sosias's testimony in the next scene serves to compound the mystery, and Amphitryon cries " O Himmel! Jede Stunde, jeder Schritt / Führt tiefer mich ins Labyrinth hinein" (1824 f.). He feels that his life's happiness is at stake; he wants the truth and yet fears it: Mein Glück will ich, mein Lebensglück, versuchen. Ol hier im Busen brennt's, mich aufzuklären, Und achí ich fürcht' es, wie den Tod. (1834-1836)

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T h i s is no comic motif or comic utterance. Deception is a legitimate and fertile resource of comedy, but not deception taken at this depth. W e get a feeling of tragic, not comic irony when we hear Amphitryon, like Alkmene, calling on the gerechten Götter for help as a ruthless impostor threatens to steal his wife, honor, power, and his very name, while his own friends hold him helpless (1921 ff.)—this goes beyond the limits of a comic situation. T h e irony in Amphitryon's saying to J u p i ter "you speak the truth, by Zeus" (1941) can still be considered comical, but not so the passion of murderous wrath that speaks in the eminently Kleistian imagery of his closing words; his friends shall weave a net about the house, and he will move in for the kill like a great spider upon a wasp: Und, einer Wespe gleich, drück' ich den Stachel Ihm in die Brust, aussaugend, daß der Wind Mit seinem trocknen Bein mir spielen soll. H e sees in his adversary a spirit of diabolical deceit who would crowd him out of his city, his wife's heart, the memory of the world, and out of the very citadel of his consciousness (2096-2099). T h i s eradication of individual identity may be allowed as humorous, though cruel, in the case of Sosias, who is a comic character of no great worth or dignity; in the case of a man of Amphitryon's calibre, who is far from the cuckold type of comedy, who has in fact no comic traits whatever, the motif becomes wholly tragic. Kleist has made Amphitryon an unusually sensitive and tender man, without the imperiousness of the typical Kleistian male, with much more charity than Valentin shows, and with almost feminine qualities of devotion and compassion that remind us of Prothoe in Penthesilea. What makes his ordeal especially tragic is that he loves his wife deeply. He is never impatient with her, never reviles her, as she does him,

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b u t feels for her in her distress. W h e n he first sees her with his double, his characteristic reaction, besides horror, is pity: " H e r r meines Lebens! Die U n g l ü c k l i c h e ; " (2173). H e yields to her decree: if she recognizes his rival as her husband, he is ready to give u p his identity (2204 f.) and remove himself from her life by suicide (2212). Amphitryon, w h o addresses A l k m e n e lovingly as Alkmene! Meine Braut! a n d tells her she has his life in her hands, w h o understands her aberration even as it destroys their happiness (2208 f f . ) — this is virtually the same man, in almost the same position, as Achilles when, dying under Penthesilea's mad onslaught, he strokes her cheek lovingly and cries: "Penthesilea! Meine Braut! was tust du?" {Pe. 2664). Amphitryon's pleading lines Dir wäre dieser Busen unbekannt, Von dem so oft dein Ohr dir lauschend sagte, Wie viele Schläge liebend er dir klopft? Du solltest diese Töne nicht erkennen, Die du so oft, noch eh' sie laut geworden, Mit Blicken schon mir von der Lippe stahlst? (2215-2220) are a little love song revealing a tenderness and sensitiveness equal to Alkmene's (cf. 1154 ff.). H e makes an extremely mild reply to her merciless tirade, again pitying her more than himself: " D u Unglückselige! Bin ich es denn, / Der dir in der verfloßnen Nacht erschienen?" (2263 f.). 14 H e trusts his wife and her judgment completely and would take her word above all oracles. Even when he does not yet understand why she erred, he is absolutely sure that she is honest in her error (2281-2290). It is characteristic of him that his last word on the stage is a solicitous A Ikmene! Amphitryon, as Kleist has deepened him, is not a comic figure at all. H e is not a boastful buffoon, like his First Commander, the miles gloriosus Argatiphontidas. H e is not a ma-

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terialistic poltroon and liar like Sosias. He has done nothing to make himself ludicrous and therefore his punishment bearable. In his original comedy Der zerbrochne Krug, soon after this, Kleist is much more successful because there he makes both his hero less attractive and his punishment less severe. Adam is not an Amphitryon but a Sosias, not a guiltless noble man but a rogue who deserves what he gets. What is more, in the Krug there is no supernatural factor to cloud and complicate the human plot. At the end, one feels how Kleist wrenches Amphitryon round from his profound tragic character to fit his legendary one and comport with the particular Vorlage in Molière. Nothing is made of the Hercules myth until the very end. There is no thought of a god seeking out a superlative woman in order to produce an ideal hero for the world's benefit—such an enterprise could have claimed religious sanction, but this was clearly not Jupiter's design. T h e herochild is an accidental by-product of an ordinary amorous adventure. Amphitryon now falls to the role of a flattered underling under whose roof a grand seigneur has deigned to take his pleasure. In Molière, Amphitryon is passive and silent during the final scene. In Kleist, he is active and vocal. With Alkmene in a deep swoon, and everyone else prostrated in reverence, Amphitryon stands up and makes sure that the son who is being foisted upon him shall be a prime specimen and that he shall keep his wife. T h e gratified guest grants both timely requests. Here we have the well-worn Amphitryon of comedy, the Amphitruo of Plautus who reckons that he has not come off so badly: "Pol me haud paenitet, / si licet boni dimidium mihi dividere cum love" (Plautus at least gives him a twin of his own). This is the Amphitryon of Molière whose coeur and paix and douceur are all restored by the god's public an-

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nouncement: " U n partage avec Jupiter / N'a rien du tout qui déshonore." This is the Amphitryon whom the theatergoer can remember with a chuckle. But it is not the Amphitryon whom Kleist has presented to us up to this point. T o see him conducting himself thus should fill us with a sense of shame at seeing a fellow man degraded by a bully and submitting to the degradation. W e should be reminded of Schiller's noble dictum: Des Menschen [ist] nichts so unwürdig, als Gewalt zu erleiden, denn Gewalt hebt ihn auf. Wer sie uns antut, macht uns nichts Geringeres als die Menschheit streitig; wer sie feigerweise erleidet, wirft seine Menschheit hinweg. 15 T h e "happy ending" was prescribed for Kleist by the Hercules myth, much as the gruesome ending of Emilia Galotti was prescribed for Lessing by the Virginia legend. In both cases the dramatist is put under constraint, and we are asked to accept a solution that no longer satisfies our modern minds—including the author's at its deeper level. Goethe may have sensed some such discrepancy when, in a conversation with Riemer, he termed Kleist's ending klatrig—something like messy. But then Goethe continued: Der wahre Amphitryon muß es sich gefallen lassen [i.e., must be satisfied], daß ihm Zeus diese Ehre angetan hat. Sonst ist die Situation der Alkmene peinlich und die des Amphitryon zuletzt grausam.18 A critical reader of today might find the final situation peinlich as well as grausam just because Amphitryon is satisfied with his bargain. T h e power of literary precedent is apparent in the play's very title, which accorded well with the traditional treatment since Plautus: Amphitryon was the chief butt of the hoary joke, hence every one of the many versions was prop-

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erly named for him. Kleist's treatment, on the contrary, makes Alkmene the central figure of a new and tragic action. Hence it would have been more appropriate had the work been named for her—as were Petithesilea and Käthchen and the Marquise, and as one or two other of Kleist's tales might have been named for the heroines around whom they center. Jupiter

and the Question

of

God

A major reason for the inconsistencies in Kleist's play is the shifting—not to say shifty—character of the third person in its triangle, its god-villain, Jupiter. He is as unstable a conglomerate as the Fourth King in Goethe's Märchen; incompatible components have gone into his making, and one could say in his case too beim Gusse schienen diese Materien nicht recht zusammengeschmolzen zu sein,17 In II, 5—the longest scene in the play, entirely Kleist's addition and decisive for his new interpretation—Jupiter is various things from a mere adventuring gallant to a world-embracing supreme divinity, der Götter ew'ger, und der Menschen, Vater (1394), and one aspect of him belies another. How, for example, can an omniscient god be deceived or an omnipotent god fail of his aim, or any god make an A bgott of his own creature (1287 f.)? What a pitiful god who must admit to his victim that he could prevail with her only by masquerading as her husband (1405-1409)! T h e r e is no question, either, of her "soul" having received him, it was only her body; nor was he interested in her schönes Herz (1460)—that was not what he sought in her bed! T h e most conspicuous inconsistency is introduced with Jupiter's grand pseudopantheistic utterance in lines 1 4 2 0 1433. Here the sovereign libertine is raised suddenly to an Allumfasser, Allerhalter proclaiming himself in exalted hymnal tones that bear comparison with some sublime passages in Faust:

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Ist er dir w o h l v o r h a n d e n ? N i m m s t d u die W e l t , sein großes W e r k , wohl wahr? Siehst du ihn in der A b e n d r ö t e

Schimmer,

W e n n sie durch schweigende G e b ü s c h e fällt? Hörst du ihn beim Gesäusel der Gewässer, U n d bei dem S c h l a g der ü p p ' g e n N a c h t i g a l l ? V e r k ü n d e t nicht umsonst der B e r g ihn dir, G e t ü r m t gen H i m m e l , nicht umsonst ihn dir D e r felszerstiebten Katarakten Fall?

(1420-1428)

But if such a god were minded to admonish a particular creature of his existence (surely a disproportionate concern!), a great cataclysm, say a flood or earthquake, or a poignant revelation of the beauty of his world would seem a procedure more in keeping with his vast divinity. This god would not have stolen a frivolously prolonged night's enjoyment of an earthly woman by means of a paltry disguise. And why should he take the form of a husband whom, according to the god's plaint, she too much deifies as it is? And would a universal deity of this order, lonely and unloved in his infinite heaven, try to make up his love deficiency by persecuting one of his creatures? These and other speeches in this scene, and his uncanny knowledge of her secret thoughts (14433.), 1 8 should seem highly suspicious to Alkmene as coming from her Amphitryon. If the demand "Doch künftig wirst du immer / Nur ihn, versteh, der dir zur Nacht erschien, / An seinem Altar denken, und nicht mich" (1468 ff.) seems implausible from Amphitryon, it is absurd from Jupiter, since he can appear to Alkmene, and she can remember him, only in the form of Amphitryon, as they are both doing at this very moment, while she asserts with unconscious irony that she will never confound the god with the man (1473). One moment this Allgott stands exposed as a deceived deceiver, his aside Verflucht der Wahn, der mich hieher

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gelockt! (1512) smacking of the "Curses!" of many a foiled villain of melodrama; the next moment he is pleading for the loveless ruler of the universe in elevated language, again a speech that is not very plausible in Amphitryon's person. A n d one may well ask: if this god so yearns for the love of mankind, why does he not court it in men also, instead of only in beautiful women? And if he is indeed a god of love, why does he deal so cruelly with an innocent pair and finally prolong their torture beyond all need? 19 H e avers his eagerness to show himself to Alkmene (1576 ff.), but he never does appear in his own person; he is always skulking behind a mask. Even at the end he appears as Amphitryon, only with a higher voltage, so to speak, that makes him outshine the mortal one. He does not win the contest in his own form; that is to say, he loses it. Neither does he ever make good his promise to introduce Alkmene "at court" (1312 f.), unless it be the momentary display of Olympian deities in the distant background at the close (2348)—and Alkmene is in no state to enjoy that presentation! T h i s supreme deity can be petty in his cruelty. T h e interchange of initials in II, 4 is a cheap trick to turn great supernatural powers to, and it is not clear what Jupiter gains by it except a sadistic satisfaction. W e are reminded of a plaint in one of Kleist's letters: "Ist es aber nicht unwürdig, wenn sich das Schicksal [or God] herabläßt, ein so hülfloses Ding, wie der Mensch ist, bei der Nase herum zu führen?" 20 T h e masquerading and mystification of III, 5, and the mental torment it puts Amphitryon to in public, is a gratuitous cat-and-mouse business which Amphitryon rightly resents as unwürdig (1849). T h e god is not above flattery, lying, and dissimulation. There is again unconscious irony in the First Commander's wishing for divine guidance in determining the impostor: " W o ist des Gottes

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Finger, der uns zeigte, / In welchem Busen. . . / Sich laurend das Verräterherz verbirgt?" (1878 ff.)—the lurking Verräter is the chief of the gods. This celestial adventurer has nothing in common with the grand Nature-god who at the end identifies himself with all visible things: Argatiphontidas und Photidas, Die Kadmusburg und Griechenland, Das Licht, der Äther, und das Flüssige, Das was da war, was ist, und was sein wird. (2297-2300) Such a conception, moreover, plays havoc with all ethical and dramatic relationships. For if Jupiter is all things and all persons, then he is also Alkmene and Amphitryon, and where then is the tragedy? And why should he try to win by stealth the love of mortals who he already is? How can this god personally present on the stage be also the Thebans he is talking to? This concept of a pantheistic deity bristles with contradictions. T h e play closes on the traditional note, with the theatrical devices of a deus ex machina, stage thunder and lightning, an eagle delivering a thunderbolt, and a valedictory by the departing god before a background of opening and closing clouds and a brief vista of Mount Olympus with gods and goddesses reclining on its slopes. Jupiter's speech reflects his conglomerate character in the play. His opening words, expressing his satisfaction and promising a souvenir of it (2316-2318), are those of a condescending overlord rather than of a god. The "triumph" he holds out for Amphitryon (2320) is as empty as that which he offered Alkmene, and the limitless "fame" forecast for his involuntary host is actually that of an egregious cuckold. Amphitryon has no choice but to receive the son fathered by Jupiter, announced inconsistently in Biblical phraseology,21 and described

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(2335-2344) in language comparable to that of Schiller's Dos Ideal und das Leben. T o his very exit, there is an indelible flavor of the theatrical about Jupiter. He has played many parts and shown many faces, personifying, as the chief personage in the world, its shifting and baffling nature. It was a tradition of the Amphitryon matter as a comic subject that the gods should be burlesqued. Kleist conforms to this tradition and to Molière in some scenes, even in passages involving Jupiter, but in others, as we have seen, he asks us to take his gods seriously and solemnly. Molière sustains the burlesque tone throughout and thus sails serenely over hidden depths which Kleist insists on plumbing. It is characteristic of Molière to "debunk" Jupiter's grandiloquent "restoration" of Amphitryon by having Sosias remark slyly " L e seigneur Jupiter sait dorer la pilule." In the person of Merkur, however, who as a lesser deity is assigned to the lower, purely comical plot, Kleist keeps the burlesque character consistently from his first appearance in I, 2, to his parting shot at Sosias (2350 ff.) which parodies Jupiter's self-revelation and by association "downgrades" him. Merkur, like Mephistopheles, does not pretend to hohe Worte; he speaks plainly; his opening words (îoiff.) divulge the true intent of Jupiter's descent to earth and give the lie to his master's later impressive protestations. Merkur objects to Sosias's speaking disrespectfully of Phoebus Apollo as a dissolute tippler (117 ff.), but he himself refers to the goddess Night as an accommodating Kupplerin (519)· Merkur functions as a sort of Leporello to "old father Jupiter" on his latest "amorous earthly adventure." Finding but little sport in Charis, he decides to amuse himself by goading Amphitryon to fury (1697 ff.). This wanton baiting of a helpless stranger is typical of the cruelty attributed to the gods in this play. Merkur's tormenting of Sosias later

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(III, 8) is in the same sadistic spirit, though more humorous in form and effect. Thus, even on the professedly comical level, there is a sinister quality in Kleist's deities that throws a peculiar light on his own Gottesbegriff. His conception of God seems marked, as in this play, by more negative than positive traits. When Ottokar, in Die Familie Schroffenstein, lost in brooding, is asked by Barnabe, "Warum stehst du so / Tiefsinnig? Woran denkest du?," he replies: "An Gott" (Schro. 2194 f.). As he begins to see light in the gloom of a sinister situation, he muses on the nature of a Power that can make such dire consequences follow from such a trifling beginning as a little child's finger. God leaves Man unguided in the dark; He does not speak to him intelligibly; perhaps He has no interest in him. In the Erdbeben, as we have seen, there is no clear commitment on this question. In the Verlobung, the naïve conventional faith of the principal persons (white and black alike) in God's order and justice, and His benevolent interest in man, is not justified by events. There, as in Die Familie Schroffenstein, men fall victim to their own blindness and hatred in a world of deceptive appearances and make-believe. There is nothing to show that God is anything more than an idea in man's mind. In Die heilige Cäcilie, God is a merciless avenger, punishing excessively with madness and ecstasy even would-be desecrators of His Church. In Der Findling, on the other hand, His Church is pictured as corrupt and vicious; it not only does not advance the good but it conspires with evil. It is a merely human institution; there is no evidence of God's presence in it or its operations. T h o u g h Piachi at the end persists in his belief in heaven and hell, there is nothing to prevent us from concluding that these, like God, are a myth. T h e only indubitable reality in this gloomiest of

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Kleist's Novellen is Evil: unmixed, unmotivated, inexplicable, and long unrecognizable Evil. It is absolute, in a sense, personified in a foundling, a stray from nowhere, without human attachments. It invades an orderly and virtuous world and, operating like Jupiter with masks and interchanged letters, corrupts this world to the core. Nicolo is "defeated," as Jupiter is, but the damage he does is equally irreparable. T h e infection of evil (infection, physical and moral, might be called the theme of the story) comes to pervade and pervert Piachi's blameless and kindly nature. Thus evil in the end triumphs, and no God rises to oppose it. T h e outcome of Der Zweikampf, after all is said and suffered, is a solution without God, in purely human terms. If His "decision" in the so-called Gottesurteil had been acted on, a horrible injustice would have been done. It was only Friedrich's human faith in Littegarde, plus delay, that caused the human error to appear. Friedrich puts his finger on the fallacy involved in the "ordeal" when he says "Wo liegt die Verpflichtung der höchsten göttlichen Weisheit, die Wahrheit, im Augenblick der glaubensvollen Anrufung selbst, anzuzeigen und auszusprechen?" (III, 419). He might have gone further and asked: what reason have we to think that there is anyone on the other side to accept the Verpflichtung we project into space? God was not needed for the solution in this story, and nothing is adduced to prove that He is anything but a figment of men's minds. T h e Emperor's concluding words, which are meant to uphold and clarify den geheiligten göttlichen Zweikampf, in fact reduce it to an absurdity and leave God in an impenetrable cloud. In Amphitryon, he comes out of the cloud only to add his divine weight to man's burden in a world of uncertainties and semblances. Having created men limited and deceiv-

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able, he himself takes advantage of their limitations to deceive them. T o the Kant-inspired recognition of the unreliability of the physical world is added the dismaying recognition of a predatory God from the metaphysical realm. T h e work of Kleist's that shows most kinship with Amphitryon, namely Die Marquise von O . . . , remains entirely on the human plane and offers no direct evidence for Kleist's conception of der Geist, der an der Spitze der Welt steht. It is significant, however, that what makes the Count seem to the horrified Marchioness not simply a vicious person but a very fiend is the factor of deception and disguise. He is a devil masquerading as a rescuing angel (III, 294). What he perpetrates brutally, Jupiter manages more subtly and with superhuman wiles; and Jupiter's act outrages two persons. Jupiter, to say the least, has too much of a devil to make a good god. As a dramatic figure he is the source and center of the inconsistencies in Kleist's play. As a theological concept, he is the most disturbing manifestation of Kleist's uncertainty about God.

CHAPTER

Über das

IV

Marionettentheater

THE ESSAY Über das Marionettentheater was published in four installments in the Berliner Abendblätter for December 12 to 15, 1810. It was first reprinted in 1848 by Eduard von Bülow as one of the supplements to his Kleists Leben und Briefe, that earliest attempt at a Kleist biography. T h e n , early in our century, Erich Schmidt, the excellent editor of the first scholarly Kleist edition, characterized the essay as einen feinsinnigen Beitrag zur romantischen Ästhetik (I, 27*). A few years later, Hanna Hellmann, perhaps taking her cue from Schmidt, wrote two notable little books (one 1908, the other, fuller, 1911) which for the first time signalized this essay as the key and formula—she herself called it the Rune and Hieroglyphe—of all Kleist's works, thought, and life. Kleist scholars, almost without exception, followed her lead, and the essay on the marionettes has been accepted as of profound importance, basic to the understanding of Kleist's view of life and in particular his literary theory and practice. T h e interpretation which Fräulein Hellmann so engagingly set forth became coin of the realm and, like so much of our scholarly currency, passed from hand to hand as an unchallenged value. Wilhelm Herzog, in his still valuable book of 1911, admittedly impressed by Frl. Hellmann's work, rated Kleist's essay as "das Reifste und Wertvollste, was uns [Kleist] an geistigen Erkenntnissen zu geben hatte," compressing his entire Weltanschauung with stylistic mastery into a few pages (p. 607); "wir bewundern," Herzog says, "an diesem kunstvollen Essay die Leichtigkeit, mit der ein Künstler die schwierigsten Probleme der Philoso-

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phie nicht berührt, sondern—mit der Grazie des Tänzers— löst" (p. 611). Another early and thorough Kleist scholar, Meyer-Benfey, regarded the essay as not only applicable to Kleist's own works, but valid for the whole range of art. 1 And this valuation of the "rediscovery" years has been handed on and on. Paul Böckmann, in an article in Euphorion in 1927, proceeds from the assumption that Kleist intended in this essay to justify the nature and meaning of his works: "in der er selber Wesen und Bedeutung seiner Dichtung theoretisch zu fassen und zu rechtfertigen sucht" (p. 218). Of this intention on Kleist's part, which writers have repeatedly ascribed to him, there exists no proof whatsoever. Yet, two years later, Gerhard Fricke, disregarding his own word of caution, again alleges such an intent: "[hier] hat Kleist . . . den Versuch gemacht, gleichsam theoretisch das unsichtbare Zentrum all seiner Dichtung auszusprechen." 2 Friedrich Braig, in 1925, made Über das Marionettentheater the very foundation of the mystical "Christian metaphysics" which he arbitrarily erected over Kleist. Helmut Sembdner, in his exhaustive study of the Berliner Abendblätter* upholds the traditional view of the importance of the essay. Of recent writers, Josef Kunz devoted his Frankfurt Antrittsvorlesung of 1953 to Kleist's Gespräch, claiming, trotz Hellmann, to give the first Totalinterpretation of it and its key significance for all Kleist's works and philosophy.4 Benno von Wiese, in Die deutsche Tragödie, also goes on the assumption that Kleist wrote his piece as a manifesto and sees in it one of the two basic symbols mit denen er sein Verhältnis zum Leben gedeutet hat.5 In one of the newest of Kleist books, Friedrich Koch calls the marionette symbol an attempt das Wesen des Menschen neu zu entwerfen.9 As the latest interpretations of Kleist plays in Das deutsche Drama (ed. Β. v. Wiese, 1958) again show, it

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has become de rigueur to bring in Über das Marionettentheater as a revelation beyond question and to imply that one's own work conforms to it. It is not necessary to say anything new about Kleist's essay nor even to have reread it carefully. In all these ink-full years, one solitary Kleistforscher, Karl Schul tze-Jahde, in a footnote to an article on another subject,7 voiced any serious doubt of the validity of this essay and of Kleist's competence as a theorist. In the following pages I wish to elaborate on a few suggestions contained in Schultze-Jahde's footnote and develop a number of my own observations on Kleist's essay. For repeated close readings of its text have convinced me that Über das Marionettentheater is not the epitome of Kleist's wisdom on life and literature, but a geistreiches Feuilleton; an occasional essay for a newspaper, not a flawless and perdurable edifice of aesthetic theory. Kleist himself, who had a pretty sure sense of where his greatness lay, would not, I think, have ranked his few brief theoretical writings among his major works, nor would he have dreamed of the importance which this particular little Plauderei unter dem Strich has assumed in the minds of mythologizing Germanists. Over their labors one is tempted to inscribe as a motto a sentence from the essay itself: "Inzwischen ahndete ich bei weitem die Folgerungen noch nicht, die er [read: die Kleistforschung] späterhin daraus ziehen würde" (IV, 134, 21 f.). The popular character and intent of the piece are evident in its very form. Contrary to Kleist's usual style, in his major narratives, it is broken up into many brief paragraphs of short, uncomplicated sentences. It is in effect a dialogue, though much of it is given in Kleist's favorite indirekte Rede. It is animated with his characteristic gestures, introduced typically by indem, and enlivened with

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personal allusions and anecdotes—in short, an agreeable mixture of Räsonnement and storytelling. One should not measure it with such a carefully wrought, major treatise as Schiller's Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung— though there are some affinities in ideas between them. Syntax and choice of words show here and there a negligence that is rare with Kleist. T h u s Er antwortete, daß ich mir nicht vorstellen müsse, als ob . . . (134. 6) would more correctly read daß ich es mir nicht so vorstellen müsse, als ob. . . . T h e curious fortan (140. 14) seems to be a slip for sofort (or nun). It is inexact and confusing to speak of menschlichen Körperbau in the case of the puppet and the god (141. 22 f.); they are only menschenähnlich, and the distinction is by no means unimportant here. There are occasional non sequiturs in the conversational logic. Thus, when Mr. C. asks his companion whether he did not find the puppets sehr graziös in their movements, the answer is: yes, for a specified group could not have been hübscher gemalt by Teniers (133. 25-30). Aside from the fact that "pretty" painting hardly characterizes the Tenierses, the reply does not quite meet the point of the question. A. says: he had conceived the work of the puppeteer as something mechanical, like turning a barrel organ; C. replies: not at all, for the motions of the puppeteer's fingers have a mathematical relation to the puppets' motions ( 1 35· 9 - 1 2 ) · B u t C. does not say that the puppeteer must be aware of such a relation or calculate it, so again he does not answer A.'s point that the man's activity is geistlos. However, C. continues, he believes that even this last fraction of mind can be removed from the puppets—who are not what A. is talking about! Again, C's expression auch nur zu erreichen (138. 10) implies that the other speaker had claimed that man surpasses the puppet in grace, whereas the other had only voiced his doubt that the puppet surpasses man.

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Other, more important, discrepancies soon become evident. T o begin with a practical consideration: one finds it difficult to visualize the mechanism of Kleist's puppets, and one wonders whether he wrote on the basis of observation or of sheer imagination. Is he recalling performances he saw as a boy in Frankfurt an der Oder or as a young officer— scarcely more than a boy—on the French campaign, in some town in the Rhineland, where, certainly, the Puppentheater were flourishing? Were puppet shows among the distractions (Tabagien . . . Caßeehäuser . . . Schauspiele— letter of March 22, 1801) to which he was driven by his mental crisis in that same "Winter 1 8 0 1 " in which he dates this conversation (133. 7)? Or did he, during that last harassed year in Berlin, drop in at some puppet theater by way of relief, drawn by a bright memory of earlier days? If he did, one must imagine his creative mind turning away from the performance before his bodily eye to a deeper, mythopoeic vista. That was so often the way of this alleged "realist" when he had concrete objects of art or artifice before him. T h e real puppets become, even as he watches them, symbolical and mythical figures such as never swung on strings, such as the practical puppet guild would never have admitted to its ranks. Max von Boehn, in his standard work Puppen und Puppenspiele (München, 1929, Vol. II, p. 128), says bluntly: "[Kleists Artikel] hat mit dem Puppentheater nichts zu tun." It not only sheds no light on technical puppetry, in Boehn's opinion, but is actually misleading: "Trüge der Aufsatz nicht einen so berühmten Namen als Verfasser, würde er wohl aus der Literatur der Marionette längst verschwunden sein." On closer view, the professional reality of Kleist's puppets appears indeed suspect. Near the beginning of the conversation, the author-interlocutor asks Mr. C. how it is possible to govern the dolls without having a myriad strings in one's

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hands, and Mr. C. assures him that it is by no means necessary to control the individual limbs, but only the Schwerpunkt der Bewegung in the interior of the figure; when this is moved, the limbs, being mere pendulums, follow mechanically, by gravity (134. 1-12; 136. 31-137. 2). Now, even if we reduce the puzzling Schwerpunkt der Bewegung to simple Schwerpunkt or center of gravity, how is this to be determined, and where is the single wire to be attached? If in the middle of the body, front or back, the puppet would hardly be able to execute graceful movements, such as Kleist visualizes; if attached at the top of the head, it would not be at the puppet's center of gravity. In any case, meaningful dance movement, to say nothing of expressive dramatic action, could hardly be achieved by dolls attached to single wires, with limbs dangling and incapable of individual motion. Pictures of typical puppets, for example in Boehn's books or in the latest Encyclopedia Britannica, all show multiple wires, not infrequently six or seven (one or two or three to the head, two to the shoulders, two to the hands, two to the knees). I myself have never seen, nor heard of, a puppet attached by only one wire, such as Kleist postulates. T h e more joints and the more wires there are, the more movements of head and limbs can be produced, and the more artistic is the performance. A t one point in the colloquy (136. 18 ff.), Mr. C. is challenged to specify the construction of the ideal puppet he has in mind. But he remains pretty vague about it and does not indicate that he would make any radical changes in the present models. H e advises only an increase in the symmetry, mobility, and lightness (Ebenmaß, Beweglichkeit, Leichtigkeit) which they already have—hardly a very useful set of specifications for a mechanic—and above all eine naturgemäßere Anordnung der Schwerpunkte (des Schwerpunktes would have been clearer). As the subsequent lines show, Mr.

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C. does not intend to depart from the single point of attachment, with pendant, uncontrolled limbs, so one fails to see how anything naturgemäßer could result. A n d while one will readily admit his criticism of certain dancers (die Ρ ... j der junge F . . .) whose lack of grace is due to their preoccupation with specific parts of their bodies, one will not be equally ready to grant that puppets manipulated under Kleist's primitive limitations could equal, to say nothing of surpassing, the variety and significance and grace of human bodies in motion. Yet interpreters have been willing to accept this manifestly absurd proposition. Hanna Hellmann and, in all but identical words, Wilhelm Herzog find the movements of the puppets, "durch einen Schwerpunkt im Innern der Figur regiert, . . . zweckmäßig, also schön." 8 T h i s does not really make sense. T h e movements of the puppets are not governed by a center of gravity inside them, but by the hands of a human manipulator well outside them, and the Zweck to which they (of necessity) conform is in the brain of the man who pulls the strings. Mr. C. declares that the line described by the center of gravity when the puppet is moved is in most cases a straight line, while the dangling limbs describe curves (134. 14 f., 29 ff.). Both assertions appear questionable, and one almost suspects that Kleist is thinking of some physics experiment of his Frankfurt student days rather than a puppet performance. T h e mathematics, too, smacks of an old-fashioned textbook. T h e geometry becomes decidedly mystical: Mr. C. speaks of the "very mysterious" line traced by the soul of the dancer (135. 3-5). Who is this dancer, we ask: is it the puppet? But that has no soul, unless we would charge Kleist with a sleight-of-hand of Romantic Beseelung, substituting a soul for a center of gravity! He does, to be sure, declare moving force, vis motrix, to be the equivalent of soul (136. 29); but

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how could we possibly attribute such a force to an inert doll? Or is the dancer rather the puppeteer himself, the Machinist, who, we are told, in order to "find" that mysterious line must put himself into the marionette's center of gravity, in other words, dance (135. 6-8)? But how are we to envisage this feat? T h e r e is a disconcerting mixture of rationalistic mechanics and romantic spiritualization in this changeful discourse. Since the hope is expressed that the last vestige of mind (Geist) can be removed from the marionettes eventually (135. 16 ff.), we must conclude that they now have some mind or consciousness—a startling thoughtl Yet later on, the author observes ironically that of course the Geist of the marionettes cannot lead them astray, since they have none (137. x8 f.)· T h e illustrative examples that Kleist adduces at various points in his essay do not prove him a sound logician. T h u s the special and astounding grace of dancers with artificial legs (136. 1-12), hardly credible in itself, is an altogether different matter, since it is achieved by self-conscious and selfgoverned human beings, not puppets operated by strings. Conversely, eine vortreffliche Eigenschaft, sought in vain by human dancers, is credited to the puppets because, with their bodies attached at only one point to a string or wire, their limbs obey no force but gravity [this is not strictly true: they react to the antigravity pull of the puppeteer!], these limbs being, Kleist points out, was sie sein sollen, mere dead pendulums (136. 31-137. 4). Of course such limplimbedness would be sought in vain by human dancers (all of them, not just the majority, as Kleist says). But why should they seek it? And would it be desirable even for the marionettes? And do marionettes operate in this way? It would seem that only a rag doll at the end of a (single) string could do so.

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A n o t h e r example: the awkwardness of certain dancers w h o remain conscious of particular parts of their bodies such as spine or elbow (137. 5-12), does not condemn consciousness as such, for one can point to other, quite intellectual, dancers w h o are supremely graceful. T h e factor of volition and intelligence in the art of the dancer or actor is badly underestimated in this discussion. If the puppets, as we are told, have the advantage of being antigrav (an impressive Fremdwort that cannot mean more than leicht) and of " k n o w i n g n o t h i n g " [how can they know}] of the inertia of matter (137. 21 ff.), then they owe this advantage to the muscles of their manipulator, not to any innate virtue of their own; and if "the force that raises them into the air is greater than that which holds them to earth," one might reply that the human dancer too achieves this feat for moments, through his muscles, which is exactly what does it for the puppets, only on a smaller scale and vicariously: the arm- and finger-muscles of the puppeteer! T h e r e is nothing striking nor original in the suggestion that Mme. G . . . would dance more lightly if she could lose weight (137. 25 ff.)—so w o u l d anybody. B u t the amount suggested, sixty pounds, is unplausible and a journalistic exaggeration. O n the other hand, it is fanciful and absurd to claim that puppets, like elves, use contact with the earth only for new energy, whereas we use it for rest ( 1 3 7 / 1 3 8 ) — Kleist is mythicizing the puppets, whose energy actually comes from the human string-puller. T h e two chief illustrative examples in the form of anecdotes do not quite hit the mark. T h e one about the youth w h o tries to imitate the statue (138. 23-139. 31) makes essentially the same point as did die Ρ .. . and der junge F .. . earlier (137. 5-12): that self-consciousness leads to loss of grace. Only, here, the case is developed to a pathological extreme that renders it hardly credible and does not invalidate

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intelligent consciousness as a factor in art and life. This is a case of vanity rather than excess of Reflexion, for more of the latter could conceivably have saved the youth from his narcissistic aberration. It may be regarded as another sign of the haste of newspaper writing that the youth's posture does not correspond to that of the statue, and that it is not a Bewegung, as Kleist has it, but a Stellung that he tries vainly to reproduce. T h e fencing bear (140-141), intended as an example of instinctive assurance, is again an exaggerated case and, as Schultze-Jahde has observed, not really in line with the argument. For the bear wins the bout not because he is antigrav or nicht geziert or has his ursine Seele or Schwerpunkt in the right place—which would have been to the point— nor is his opponent, the human fencer, described as deficient in those virtues. It is a case of Natur vs. Kunst, not Natur vs. Künstelei. T h e logic of Mr. C's summation is odd, too: if grace is more gloriously manifested in the organic world as thought diminishes (141. 13 ff.), that is, as we go down in the scale of organisms, then the amoeba would needs be a much more graceful creature than this prodigious bearl On the other hand, we are told—in keeping with the KantSchillerian rather than the Roussellian Kulturphilosophie— we can regain grace by going forward, pursuing knowledge {Erkenntnis) to its uttermost reaches (gleichsam durch ein Unendliches). We can then, it seems, go either way: backward toward the puppet, which has no consciousness, or forward toward the god, who has infinite consciousness (141. 23-25). But the forward movement, so graphically launched in the picture of the locked gates of paradise and man bravely setting his face to the long journey round the earth (137. 15-17)—that alternative is oddly discarded, and we are left with only the other one, retrogression: we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to relapse (zurück-

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fallen) into the original state of innocence, and this relapse will constitute the final chapter in the history of our world, das letzte Kapitel von der Geschichte der Welt (141. 26-30). This then will coincide with die letzte Periode der menschlichen Bildung (138. 18-20). But the active advance implied by this latter phrase is at variance with the passive retrogression implied by in den Stand der Unschuld zurückfallen. We seem to see eighteenth-century Enlightenment and Primitivism opposed in these formulations. The impressive-sounding dictum on which the essay ends, when we look at it more closely, is not wholly convincing. If eating of the tree of knowledge got us into trouble, eating of it again will hardly get us out. A second eating, as any boy who has indulged in unripe apples knows, does not undo the first eating, but adds to its unhappy effects. The only logical and physiological reversal of eating is regurgitation. Furthermore, no amount of retrogression will ever restore us to being puppets, because we never were puppets. The marionette is not the most primitive stage of humanity, at the opposite extreme from the god: it is a human artifact, indeed a product of a comparatively advanced stage of human development. But even geschichtsphilosophisch betrachtet, return to a state of innocence is impossible: we cannot go back home. Hence, this essay, which has been taken to voice an optimistic philosophy of civilization, ends in fact on a hopeless note. Meanwhile, the alternative possibility, the going forward to godlikeness, has been lost from view. For that matter, this alternative too was a counsel of perfection. How is man, either by taking thought or by abandoning thought, to make himself into a mindless puppet or an infinite-minded god? T o ask the question is to expose the emptiness of the alleged "answer" here offered. And either way out, if either were possible, would eliminate man as a factor. T o declare the

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problem soluble only in non-human terms (god or puppet) is to declare it insoluble for us. T h e portentous symbol of the marionette holds out no help for our human dilemma after all. In his little newspaper essay Kleist is coping with a fundamental antinomy of human nature: the contradiction between our inborn desire for the primitive and unknowing and our equally inborn desire to know more and more. T e n years before this, in a thought-burdened letter from Paris,® a few months after the so-called Kant catastrophe, Kleist had pondered this problem and reached no solution but resignation. If Rousseau, he argued, was right in denying that the sciences have made man happier, then we are caught in endless contradictions. For we should require millennia of development to know enough to realize that we had better know nothing. T o correct this error, we should need to forget what we know. But then the trouble would begin all over again, denn der Mensch hat ein unwidersprechliches Bedürfnis, sich aufzuklären; a moral as well as a physical need, Kleist recognizes, drives man to the sciences. And his conclusion in that letter was that we cannot know God's intent with us (O wie unbegreiflich ist der Wille, der über uns waltet!), nor can we know the ultimate meaning and effect of what we do. Thus early, one must conclude, Kleist found the paradox of consciousness and unconsciousness, the civilized and the primitive, as insoluble as he does, actually, in Über das Marionettentheater. But he realized, also, that the mind cannot be kept down. In the "Paradoxe" Von der Überlegung (IV, 180), printed in the Abendblätter less than a week before (December 7, 1810), Kleist had in fact stated the basic problem of Über das Marionettentheater in simpler and clearer fashion and come nearer to solving it. In this brief aperçu he recognized that reason and feeling, or reflection and action, need not be

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antagonistic but can be reconciled in a fruitful cooperation. Reflection must not be permitted to confuse or inhibit das herrliche Gefühl that is the source of our power to act effectively. T h e function of reflection is rather to follow action and analyze it, thus training and "regulating" the feeling for future moments of action. This is a working compromise that accords with some modern psychological insights. T h a t Kleist could, a few days later, advance a far less practical and less hopeful answer to the same question suggests that the Marionettentheater answer is the expression of a mood rather than the statement of a considered philosophy. Like other individuals of high mental attainments, Kleist felt a recurrent longing for a life free from mental demands and complications. For this longing he found various symbols: the simple man of unquestioning faith whom he observed and envied in the Catholic church in Dresden; the peasant secure at the motherly bosom of Nature, such as he hoped to become in Switzerland; the carpenter in Koblenz whom he wanted to work for. He imputed his unspeakable longing for peace (Ach, ich sehne mich unaussprechlich nach Ruhe!) to the very stars that roll ever more slowly in their courses, striving to come to rest at last.10 T h e marionette may be taken as one more symbol—and, as it proved, the last one—for this craving for peace, for relief from mental pressure, for uncomplicated self-fulfillment. But the marionette is not, it seems to me, the happiest symbol Kleist might have chosen, and that is one more difficulty about his essay. This symbol involves an inevitable antinomy in Kleist's mind. In his early letters, he declared himself aghast at the idea of being eine Puppe am Drahte des Schicksals—better by far to be dead. 11 In his first play, too, the puppet concept has a pejorative value. Yet in the essay the marionette is held up as something man should envy and emulate. T h a t Kleist was aware of the fallacy in

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this is perhaps betrayed by the interlocutor's humorous thought that the puppets should not be given credit for not erring when they do not have the capacity to err: "Ich lachte. Allerdings, dachte ich, kann der Geist nicht irren, da, wo keiner vorhanden ist" (137, 18 f.). T h e marionette, being a thing without consciousness, volition, or thought, cannot seriously serve as a model for man, whose problem is precisely that he has those capacities. In moments of discouragement, Kleist might wish he were a marionette, will-less, supported, and led, as Meyer's despondent young Medici wishes he were one of the statues: "leidlose Steine, wie beneid' ich euch!" (Il Pensieroso). But only a human paragon can have any real significance for a human being. Goethe's Werther offers a certain parallel. When Werther summarizes for Lotte the vacuousness and mechanicalness of society, he uses the figure of the puppet, "Ich spiele mit, vielmehr, ich werde gespielt wie eine Marionette, und fasse manchmal meinen Nachbar an der hölzernen Hand und schaudere zurück" (20. Januar). This corresponds to Kleist's earlier valuation. On the other hand, Lotte, when she dances, is the ideal "marionette" in Kleist's present sense: "Tanzen muß man sie sehenl . . . Sie ist so mit ganzem Herzen und mit ganzer Seele dabei, ihr ganzer Körper eine Harmonie, so sorglos, so unbefangen, als wenn sie sonst nichts dächte, nichts empfände, und in dem Augenblicke gewiß schwindet alles andere vor ihr" (16. Junius). Here, it seems to me, is a living impersonation of Kleist's dream of complete Hingabe and artlessness and consummate grace— self-fulfillment through self-forgetfulness, realized of course only for moments, but by a human being, and therefore humanly meaningful. Kleist's own Käthchen, almost invariably cited as the best personification of his ideal, is a much less satisfactory embodiment, for in her case the question is begged by the superhuman agencies of the fairy tale. And

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Prinz Friedrich, sometimes nominated as the ideal "puppet," cannot be characterized by such a simple tag, as a later chapter will show (see Chapter VIII). Lotte was for the young Goethe a manifestation of uncomplicated humanity to be wistfully regarded by a superior intellect, as the "natural woman" of Der Wandrer is by her visitor or her counterpart in Wahlheim by Werther himself. T h e principle of Ganzheit which so impressed Goethe in Hamann echoes clearly in the Werther passage just quoted. Kleist's notion of an inner Schwerpunkt, a spiritual center of gravity and instinctive assurance, is doubtless not unconnected with the Sturm und, Drang concept of naïve Naturgenie, with Goethe's Mittelpunkt (Wanderers Sturmlied), with Friedrich Schlegel's Zentrum, even with Wieland's and Schiller's schöne Seele as a harmonization of man's dual nature. Kleist was expressing in his essay a persistent wish of his age: to be able to act instinctively, without premeditation, and yet aright. But he obscured its expression by his costume of mystical physics and pseudo-Biblical myth. It is perhaps a symptom of the lack of compelling logic in the essay that one can imagine it, written in a different mood and with a slight change of emphasis, reaching a quite different conclusion. Kleist could equally well have chosen to emphasize the puppeteer instead of the puppets. Instead of showing that grace is unattainable to man, he might then have shown what grace man, committed as he is to consciousness and intellect, can still attain through his puppets, his instruments, the work of his hand and brain. We, whose lot is cast in an age of vastly increased mechanization, know what vicarious beauty and grace man (even granting he had lost all bodily grace of his own) can create in his machines: his ships, his skyscrapers, his airplanes. It is idle to argue about the consciousness or unconsciousness of the puppets. The only consciousness they can possibly express is that of

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the person who works their strings. T h e very simplicity of the instrument poses a challenge to the expressive powers of the modern mind. In the English translation of Max von Boehn's book, Dolls and Puppets (Philadelphia, 1932, p. 5), there is a prefatory note by George Bernard Shaw in which Shaw says that actors can learn from observing puppets, these being "the actor in his primitive form." What this means, to me, is: the puppeteer is producing dramatic effects with limited, primitive means, and an actor sitting in the audience could learn some fundamentals of his art by observing how this is done—in der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister. In other words, the actor would be learning from the puppeteer who "acts" by proxy in his puppets. Only in a like sense can Kleist's Herr C. aver daß ein Tänzer, der sich ausbilden wolle, mancherlei von ihnen lernen könne (133. 18-20). One thing the dancer could never "learn" from the puppets is how to eliminate his mind, for they have never had one to eliminate. T h e factor of mind is inescapable, as Kleist knew. Just as the conscious mind of the puppeteer is manipulating the puppets in such a way that they appear graceful to the dancer in the audience, so the latter is using his mind to observe them and learn from them for the improvement of his conscious art. Even the incredible grace of the dancers with artificial limbs is appreciated only by a denkendes Gemüt (136. 12). T h e very capacity to delight in the primitive or mindless is a prerogative of thinking man. T h e ocean wave has no consciousness; it is the product of physical forces; its beauty and grace are not its achievement but a mental experience of the human observer. And what we admire as the unthinking and therefore graceful actions of wild creatures: the running of deer, the soaring of birds, are probably quite con-

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scious and "businesslike" from the creatures' point of view. It is we who dramatize and poeticize them. T h e very fact that one is stimulated to enlarge on Kleist's essay in this manner is perhaps a further indication of its character: it is a brilliant feuilleton, ein geistreiches Gespräch, full of ideas, if not of flawless reasoning; lively, fesselnd, provocative of thought and also of contradiction—in short, if left and judged in its minor genre, a highly successful performance. But it is not a reasoned treatise yielding a formula applicable to the whole of Kleist. It is not a major work either of aesthetic theory or of literature. Kleist's greatness lay elsewhere.

CHAPTER

V

Repetitions and Recoveries Experiences

and

Problems

No ONE who has read Kleist's works consecutively can have failed to notice the recurrence of certain concepts and expressions in them. Even the casual reader becomes aware of Kleist's fondness for dergestalt, daß and gleichviel and verwirrt, for indem introducing gesture, for having his persons blush and blanch and faint. Minde-Pouet and Fries, in their studies of Kleist's language and style,1 and to a limited extent other scholars, have assembled evidence of such repetitions. Most recently, Sembdner, in a compilation of Kleist's letters, has graphically shown forth passages repeated in these.2 The present chapter, based on many years of reading and rereading Kleist, will seek to augment all this evidence and draw conclusions from it as to Kleist's poetical processes and character. It will appear, I think, that repetition is no mere mannerism in Kleist but a fundamental principle of his nature and his art. It is obviously not a case of an old man repeating himself. It is not because of any poverty of ideas or paucity of vocabulary that certain motifs recur in Kleist; it is because they represent basic notions and life patterns, characteristic ways of perceiving the world, unanswered questions which his honest and pertinacious mind wrestles with again and again. Quite aside from the naively pedantic Ideenmagazin of his rationalistic youth, Kleist possessed an eiserner Bestand of mental concepts and images which kept returning to his consciousness. The very device of an Ideenmagazin is an immature manifestation of this trait. 87

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T h e extraordinary amount of repetition in Kleist proves, for one thing, a retentive memory. It was, as will appear, an auditory memory, for it retained patterns of sound and word music not unlike the leitmotifs of musical composition. It was also a visual and motor memory, recalling situations, relations of figures to one another, characteristic personages engaged in characteristic actions. In other words, a dramatist's memory of high potency. Even when, in cases we are able to verify, his memory did not deliver details accurately, for example, from a painting, it was because creative imagination was already transforming his material dramatically and casting it in certain molds, even as he took it in. Kleist is the most persistent self-plagiarist in German literature. His writings are interlaced with cross references. He was intellectually a sort of ruminant. Certain decisive mental experiences revolve in his consciousness. He grapples with these and gives them poetic shape, but this is not the end of the matter; he works them out again, reshapes them in altered terms. As a Wiederkäuer des Vergangenen Kleist is akin—as he is in some other respects—to Goethe's Werther. But he is a much more dynamic, aggressive nature. He is in every sense the dramatist. He has the instinct for renewed attack that is implicit in the very etymology of the word repeat. He reminds us of the characterization of German art as marked by ein stets erneutes Anstürmen auf ein nie erreichtes Ziel. This is Kleist's life- and art-rhythm, as it was Beethoven's. This is his innate propensity: repetition, resumption, recovery, and re-formation; the restated problem, the remounted assault, the ever-closing and ever-opening circles of this ringförmige Welt (IV, 138). Thus Kleist's life and work are knit together by a web of anticipation and recall. He seems to have lived, like Hölderlin, in the complete context of his existence and work: wherever one takes a cross section of either, one sees the charac-

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teristic configuration of his individuality laid bare. Ideas, motifs, images, phrases, whole lines, whole paragraph structures, characters, situations reappear and re-echo in different works and letters, corroborate and enhance one another, giving a fascinating unity-in-diversity to a life and production which, outwardly regarded, appear fragmentary and truncated. Kleist is never "through" with a theme; sooner or later it will churn to the surface again in the restless sea of a mind das flutend strömt gesteigerte Gestalten. Because of this principle of repetition in Kleist's works, the attempt to date them exactly is much more difficult and less rewarding than in the case of other writers. What absurdities we get into if we take the occurrence of the same motif in a letter and a play as a reason for dating the play was demonstrated many years ago by Minde-Pouet in his comments on an attempt by Richard Weissenfels to do just this.3 Efforts in recent years to reconstruct and date Urformen of Kleist's works show that Minde-Pouet's lesson bears repeating even today.4 T o say that Kleist repeats himself in his letters is to put it mildly. Considering the abundance of parallel passages pointed out by Sembdner, one might be convinced that Kleist wrote from a notebook, his Ideenmagazin, lifting from it prepared parts to insert in letters to various people. Certainly one may conclude that Kleist was a conscious writer, even in his letters. What he writes is at all times literary composition. He shapes and reshapes, he formulates, he imposes inwardly evolved patterns and visions on outwardly observed reality. He uses "blocks," one might say, sometimes reçut and differently fitted, over again. In his letters as in his "creative writing" he is not simply a realist who reports experience but a stylist who fashions it. The Nature descriptions in his early letters that have often been

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called his earliest poems are not depictions of real landscape so much as constructions in dramatized and humanized terms. Already here, the facts of locality are clearly secondary, conformed to subjective mental molds. Nature becomes movable scenery that can be shifted from one inner stage to another, as background for another action, under different lighting. Kleist's letter of January 7, 1805, to his friend Pfuel, for example, is highly specific and personal, in fact embarrassingly so, yet it contains almost verbatim a passage written to a far more distant friend, Varnhagen von Ense, in the preceding year.5 Kleist's letter to Ulrike from St. Omer (Bfe. II, 111 f.) is in a heroically elevated prose with submerged verse rhythms, a somber valedictory in which Kleist the dramatist sees himself critically as a stubborn child and solemnly as a lone wanderer an die Nordküste dieses Landes facing death across the waters. He signs it with his full name, like a testament. In other moments of great personal anguish, Kleist could see his own suffering objectively, as poetry and drama. His so-called Todeslitanei* is another stylized composition, a poetic fiction that transcends reality. His very last letter, to Ulrike, is, with all its genuine tragedy, a stylistic accomplishment of the first order, down to its very dateline; one cannot read it, especially aloud, without feeling the distinctive style and rhythm of Kleist's whole life and expression. "Local color" is therefore usually unimportant in Kleist. How little there is of Italy in the Marquise and the Bettel· weib, or of Haiti in the Verlobung! Scenery and "properties" can be interchanged, and motifs from Kleist's letters pass readily into his Dichtung. Essential features of a thunderstorm observed on a morning of 1800 are revived a decade later in Die heilige Cäcilie (Bfe. I, 155 f.; III, 387).

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T h e memory of an insane m o n k , seen in a W ü r z b u r g hospital at that time ( B f e . I, 125), is enlarged into the picture of the f o u r mad brothers in the Cecilia story. A n o t h e r image, imprinted on the memory of the young traveler and nascent poet one N o v e m b e r afternoon in Würzburg, was to furnish h i m w i t h an indelible pattern for his work and life. Deeply depressed, brooding over impending death, he passed under the stone arch of the city gate: " W a r u m , dachte ich, sinkt wohl das G e w ö l b e nicht ein, da es doch keine Stütze hat? Es steht, antwortete ich, weil alle Steine auf einmal einstürzen wollen—und ich zog aus diesem G e d a n k e n einen unbeschreiblich erquickenden Trost, . . . d a ß auch ich mich halten w ü r d e , w e n n Alles mich sinken l ä ß t " (Bfe. I, 170). T h e image of the arch, fixed in a pencil sketch at the end of the letter, recurs in a crucial passage of Penthesilea, w h e n Prothoe adjures the heroine: Steh, stehe fest, wie das Gewölbe steht, Weil seiner Blöcke jeder stürzen will! Beut deine Scheitel, einem Schlußstein gleich, Der Götter Blitzen dar, und rufe: trefft! Und lass dich bis zum Fuß herab zerspalten, Nicht aber wanke in dir selber mehr, Solang' ein Atem Mörtel und Gestein, In dieser jungen Brust, zusammenhält. (Pe. 1349-1356·) • In this chapter, Kleist's works will frequently be referred to by abbreviations, as follows: Am. = Amphitryon, Bwb. = Das Bettelweib von Locarno, Cä. = Die heilige Cäcilie, Erd. = Das Erdbeben in Chili, Fi. — Der Findling, Gui. = Robert Guishard, Her. — Die Hermannsschlacht, Ho. = Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, Kä. = Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, Ko. = Michael Kohlhaas, Kr. = Der zerbrochne Krug, Mar. = Die Marquise von O . . . , Pe. = Penthesilea, Schro. = Die Familie Schroffenstein, Verl. = Die Verlobung in St. Domingo, Zw. = Der Zweikampf.

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T h e dominant image of the stone arch, which asserts itself so incongruously in the closing lines here, may be sensed still in a critical passage of Der Zweikampf, where Kleist's tragicheroic Weltanschauung is voiced in a like adjuration to the heroine by her most faithful friend: "Türme das Gefühl, das in deiner Brust lebt, wie einen Felsen empor: halte dich daran und wanke nicht, und wenn Erd' und Himmel unter dir zu Grunde gingen!" (III, 419). It is a saving arch, ein großes Portal, das stehen geblieben ist when all the rest of the building has collapsed, through which the Angel conducts Käthchen to safety (Kä. Act III, Sc. 14). In like manner, in the Erdbeben, Josephe, as though shielded by all the angels of Heaven, escapes unscathed aus dem Portal of a building destroyed by an earthquake (III, 300). Her lover is saved by a miraculous Wölbung or arch caused by the simultaneous collapse of opposite buildings (III, 297). Here, as it were, Kleist builds an arch before our eyes to demonstrate his paradoxical principle of sustainment amid ruin. So the "inner arch" of the soul, in Marquise and Zweikampf, maintains itself not only in spite but because of the assaults of the world that would tear it down: das Gewölbe steht, weil seiner Blöcke jeder stürzen will. T h e very opposition and downward pull generate the upholding power—a tragic paradox that is as characteristic of Kleist as the related principle of polarity is of Goethe. Another fundamental insight, found in several of Kleist's letters and formulated most sharply in the words das Schicksal, oder mein Gemüt—und ist das nicht mein Schicksal?,1 went into Penthesilea in the form of an interchange between the High Priestess and Prothoe: Unmöglich, Da nichts von außen sie, kein Schicksal hält, Nichts, ab ihr töricht Herz? —Das ist ihr Schicksall (Pe. 1279 ff.)

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T h e Biblical expression auf den Knieen meines Herzens which Kleist used in his letter to Goethe about Penthesilea8 appears, dramatically heightened, in the play itself, where Prothoe says to her adored leader, "O du, / Vor der mein Herz auf Knieen niederfällt" (2799 f.)· Kleist wrote to his sister from his prison in France: "Das Unglück macht mich heftig, wild und ungerecht; doch nichts Sanfteres, und Liebenswürdigeres, als dein Bruder, wenn er vergnügt ist."9 This personal experience also is expressed in Penthesilea: Das Unglück, sagt man, läutert die Gemüter. Ich, du Geliebte, ich empfand es nicht; Erbittert hat es, Göttern mich und Menschen In unbegriffner Leidenschaft empört. . . . Der Mensch kann groß, ein Held, im Leiden sein, Doch göttlich ist er, wenn er selig ist! (Pe. χ686 ff.) Early in his Swiss sojourn, Kleist noted with satisfaction a motto on a house by the roadside: "Ich komme, ich weiß nicht, von wo? Ich bin, ich weiß nicht, was? Ich fahre, ich weiß nicht, wohin? Mich wundert, daß ich so fröhlich bin" (,Bfe. II, 89). Stripped of its cheerful note and reiterating Man's baffled wo? in the face of Fate, this triadic sentiment is heard years later from the lips of a doomed Roman commander in a German forest: "Wo komm' ich her? W o bin ich? Wohin wandr' ich?" (Her. 1951). T h e converse situation: passages from Kleist's works echoing in his letters, occurs less frequently. He writes to Ulrike from northern France: "Der Himmel versagt mir den Ruhm, das größte der Güter der Erde; ich werfe ihm, wie ein eigensinniges Kind, alle übrigen hin." 10 This is a variation on Agnes's words in Schroffenstein (1296 ff.): "Die Krone sank ins Meer, / Gleich einem nackten Fürsten werf

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ich ihr / Das Leben nach." The letter passage, in turn, is echoed in Prothoe's words to Penthesilea: Willst du . . . Weil unerfüllt ein Wunsch . . . Dir im geheimen Herzen blieb, den Segen, Gleich einem übellaun'gen Kind, hinweg, Der deines Volks Gebete krönte, werfen? (Pe. 667 ff.) Penthesilea herself later reverts to these words: Warum auch wie ein Kind gleich, Weil sich ein flücht'ger Wunsch mir nicht gewährt, Mit meinen Göttern brechen? (Pe. 1199 ®·) This notion came up subsequently even in Kleist's conversations. Biilow reported one of 1809 in which Kleist disapproved strongly of suicide: "Solch ein Mensch komme ihm gerade so vor, wie ein trotziges Kind, dem der Vater nicht geben wolle, was es verlange, und das danach hinauslaufe und die T ü r hinter sich zuwerfe." 11 One could doubtless have found in Kleist's conversations, beyond the cases recorded, evidence of the interrelation between his life and his works. At a crucial place in Käthchen von Heilbronn, the heroine says of her father's poignant words: "Du legst mir deine Worte kreuzweis, wie Messer, in die Brust!" (II, 245). Years later, the censor's crossing out of a patriotic article in the Berliner Abendblätter calls up in Kleist's mind the same picture: "Diese zwei Striche kommen mir vor wie zwei Schwerdter, kreuzweis durch unsere teuersten und heiligsten Interessen gelegt" (Bfe. II, 242 f.). Theobald, in the same play, mentions, with no implications but luxurious rest, "alle Betten, in welchen die Kaiserin ruht" (II, 243). In a last transport, Kleist applies the phrase to his partner in death: "daß mir ihr Grab lieber ist als die Betten aller

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Kaiserinnen der Welt" (Bfe. II, 288 f.). And Theobald's words to his daughter, about to enter a convent: "Gottes Antlitz . . . soll dir Vater, Hochzeit, Kind, und der Kuß kleiner blühender Enkel sein" (II, 244), echo strangely, but with the same personal "wish"-value, in Kleist's "litany": "Mein Weib, meine Hochzeit, die Taufe meiner Kinder" (V, 403; 2. Aufl. VII, 59). The unaussprechliche Heiterkeit of his very last letter echoes a phrase from his earliest published tale.12 Kleist's mental habit of wrestling anew with problems treated in previous works is most apparent in the case of Amphitryon and the Marquise. He starts his action in both from a very similar level: each heroine is content and serene in a happy, "static" situation when an invader enters her world: in the play an adventuring god, in the story an officer of a military invasion, in the course of which the Marquise, equally defenseless, falls prey to male aggression. Both victims are vernichtet. In both we have the problem of "guiltless guilt" in a woman. But in the story Kleist works it out in purely human and contemporary terms: The Marquise is not a sweet young bride with the simple lineaments of legend but an experienced, self-reliant, psychologically more complex modern woman. In resuming the theme, Kleist transposed it to a subtler mode and idiom and reached a solution more acceptable to our times. Specifically, the two plots share the mystery of unwitting conception, the religious note, and the adumbration of the virgin birth {Am. 1368. 2335 f.; III, 275. 4 ff.). Amphitryon, however, came to a prescribed result in terms of ancient myth, whereas the Marquise must face the question of the social status of her fatherless child (III, 275) and resorts to the modern expedient of a newspaper advertisement. The story takes up again Kleist's basic problem of Schein or

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deceptive appearances, but here it is left in human proportions. T h e gebrechliche Einrichtung der Welt is reduced from metaphysical dimensions to mere human frailty, in view of which the wrongdoer is finally forgiven. T h e Alkmene problem is incorporated also in Der Findling. T h e story too deals with the predicament of the pure and innocent woman victimized by a devil-in-disguise, who can gain entrance to her heart only by stealing the semblance of one she loves: "Nicolo fühlte wohl, daß Elvirens reiner Seele nur durch einen Betrug beizukommen sei" (III, 373). A change is rung on the situation here: Nicolo masks himself as one whom Elvire revered virtually as a god, while Alkmene was exploited by the revered god himself. T h e assault on a woman's virtue, attempted in Findling and Zweikampf, accomplished in Amphitryon and Marquise, figures even in the comedy atmosphere of Der zerbrochne Krug. Adam, like Nicolo, is foiled, but the "lever" he stood ready to use was the most personal interest, if not the likeness, of the man his victim loves. Adam is, mutatis mutandis, a reincarnated Jupiter, employing his supreme power in this little world to victimize a legitimate pair. In Marquise and Findling it is the rape of an unconscious woman that is perpetrated or attempted. Again and again we find in Kleist's work and life a close correlation between sexual love and unconsciousness, dream, and death. 13 As the Marquise resumed the Amphitryon problem, so Der Zweikampf resumes the Marquise problem: a widow, still young, of irreproachable virtue, is suddenly charged with unchastity, abandoned and driven out by her family; only late, after a tortuous course that tries her very soul, is her innocence vindicated. T h e brutal father of the Marquise is replaced by two brutal brothers in the Zweikampf. T h e latter story shifts the problem back into the Middle Ages, and brings in public opinion and the public, which

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is so strangely left out of the action in the Marquise. Der Zweikampf, furthermore, takes up again the Schroffenstein problem of baffling appearances. Again, guilt seems proved in particular by a specific object, this time a ring. Again, what opposes the incriminating evidence is only faith in human goodness. From its premises, the Zweikampf might well have ended as Schroffenstein did, with this faith defeated and its adherents killed. If the unfinished Robert Guiskard, as we shall see, is resumed in later works, it is itself a maturer resumption of the Schroffenstein problem, the blind and senseless operation of fate, but with a single protagonist of heroic mold and monumental will substituted for a group of ordinary individuals caught in the toils of distrust, misunderstanding, and vindictive chance. On a less tragic level, Käthchen revives the Amphitryon problem of the failure of the heart to distinguish its true love from a disguised impostor. Graf Wetter, like Alkmene, feels vernichtet and condemns his Seele as an inadequate guide that has misled him (Am. Act I I I , S c . i i ; Kä. Act V, Sc.6). Alkmene's line, "Wohin rett' ich vor Schmerz mich, vor Vernichtung?" (Am. 1225), seems to echo in Wetter's "Wohin flücht' ich, Elender, vor mir selbst?" (II, 300). Among Kleist's briefer writings for the Berliner Abendblätter, Der neuere (glücklichere) Werther shares essential motifs with Der Findling, Sonderbare Geschichte . . . with the Marquise, Geistererscheinung with the Bettelweib, and both Sonderbarer Rechtsfall in England and Geschichte eines merkwürdigen Zweikampfs with Der Zweikampf—and in view of the cross relations among Kleist's works we cannot by any means be certain in all these cases which is Vorstudie and which is Nachzeichnung. A n d Kleist's last play, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, demonstrates most fully and in the moral sphere what his first play had shown only as an in-

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cident of the action and in physical terms: a man rising by his own strength from collapse to heroism: "Doch sollen / W i r stets des Anschauns würdig aufstehn" (Schro. 968.). Rewoven

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It is fascinating to observe how Kleist repeats situations and motifs in different works, sometimes with striking similarity, sometimes with significant variation. Already MindePouet noted similarities in circumstance and wording between Hermannsschlacht IV, 9 and Homburg IV, 1: Hermann accedes to Thusnelda's plea for Ventidius, the Elector to Natalie's for the Prince. Hermann says, " N u n denn, es seil" (1733); the Elector, " N u n denn, . . . so ist er frei!" (1175 f.). Thusnelda exclaims, " O Hermann! Ist es wirklich wahr?" and Hermann replies, " D u hörst" (1739); Natalie cries, " O Liebster! Ist es wirklich wahr?" and the Elector answers, " D u hörst" (1179). T h e opening of Act V of the Hermannsschlacht prefigures the opening of A c t II of Homburg. In both cases, an Aufmarsch zur Schlacht: the leader and his captains come on, and the command halt is passed down the line. In the one case Varus und mehrere Feldherrn, an der Spitze des römischen Heeres . . . treten auf, Varus orders, " R u f t : Halt! ihr Feldherrn, den Cohorten zu!" and his officers echo, " H a l t ! — H a l t ! " In the other case Obrist Kottwitz . . . und andere Offiziere, an der Spitze der Reuterei, treten auf, Kottwitz orders, "Halt hier die Reuterei, und abgesessen!" and his officers echo, " H a l t ! — H a l t ! " In both battles, the commander in chief, who is also the sovereign, has evolved a plan aiming at a definitive victory and the annihilation of an invader's force in swampy terrain: "Und, im Morast des Teutoburger Walds, / Die ganze gift'ge Brut der Hölle zu vertilgen" (Her. 1331 f.); " U n d Wrangel wäre ganz, mit Stumpf und Stiel, / In Gräben und

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Morast, vernichtet worden" (Ho. 1545 f.; cf. 3 1 0 f.). In the earlier battle, Winfried, acting for Hermann, versammelt die Anführer um sich and imparts to them the general Schlachtplan and their individual assignments (Her. 2248 ff.); in the other case the officers versammeln sich um den Feldmarschall who acts for the Elector, imparting to them his Schlachtentwurf and their individual roles in it (Ho. 229 if.)· It has been noted more than once that warfare is a condition common to Kleist's plays and that all his great heroes are warriors. It need not surprise us, then, to find a number of repetitions in the use of this theme. At the beginning of hostilities, say, the challenger encounters his opponent, a nobleman, in a convivial setting which makes a dramatic contrast to the hostilities to follow: "daß der J u n k e r eben, mit einigen muntern Freunden, beim Becher saß" (Ko, I I I , 143); "Der Graf, der eben mit einer Gesellschaft von Freunden, bei der T a f e l saß" (Zw., I I I , 395). T h e hostile emissary may refuse to be seated (Schro. 575 ff.); Zw., I I I , 395). There is a decided resemblance between the opening of hostilities by Sylvester (Schro. Act IV, end of Sc. 2) and by Michael Kohlhaas (III, 166 f.): the assembling of forces (the summoning of Theistiner/Herse; even the number seven), the situation, including the factor of surprise in the attack, the spirit in which it is undertaken, the castle going up in flames, the sullen rage and vengefulness after a long accumulation of wrongs (fancied wrongs in Schro.)—all these details make the Schroffenstein passage read like a first draft of the Kohlhaas one. Even more amazing is the recurrence of this situation in the Verlobung, where we have, as in Kohlhaas, a long paragraph ( 1 4 - 1 5 lines) describing the pseudomilitary Aufbruch of a kleiner Haufe toward the enemy—a paragraph equally crammed with information about successive stages of pre-

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paratory action (including the sending of non-combatants under convoy to safety), written, with a mixture of direct and indirect discourse, in Kleist's tense, propellant prose, and ending with the same triadic rhythm like blows of a hammer: "und brach nach der Tronkenburg auf" / "und brach . . . in die Niederlassung auf" (III, 166. 30-167. 12; 345· 3°-346· 13)· Kleist is fond of finishing off an intricately forged long sentence and paragraph with three such hammer blows, for example, the opening paragraph of the Zweikampf, ending legte er sich nieder und starb (III, 392). Triads of verbs appear also in Kleist's letters, as in the fateful one from St. Omer: durchlesen, verworfen, und verbrannt (Bfe. II, 111). T h e motif of a decisive night assault on a city or fortress connects Guiskard and Marquise. Guiskard plans a Hauptsturm to take Constantinople the following night (373 fL); in the Marquise the enemy commander ordnete . . . einen nächtlichen Überfall an, und eroberte die Festung mit Sturm (III, 250). At the end of a scene in Penthesilea as in Homburg a group of warriors, who have been tensely waiting, decide to intervene in a battle after one of them has said he will assume the responsibility (Pe. Sc. 2; Ho, II, 2). Act II, Scene 3 of Käthchen ends with a young leader taking his followers into action with the words, "Folgt mir, meine Freunde! (Alle ab)"; Act II, Scene 2 of Homburg ends with the same situation and like words: "Folgt mir, Brüder! (Alle ab)." In Penthesilea and Homburg Kleist uses the same device of teichoscopy from a hilltop and the same situation: the leader finds himself (herself) in an exposed position, to the apprehension of his followers: "Bestürzt, bei diesem sonderbaren Anblick, / Umwimmeln alle Jungfraun sie" (Pe. 292 f.); " W i r alle sammeln uns, bei diesem Anblick, / Auf eines Hügels Abhang, schwer besorgt" (Ho. 542 f.).

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T h e theme of ordeal by combat is burlesqued in Käthchen (Act V, Sc. 1) but carried out in dead earnest in the anecdote Geschichte eines merkwürdigen Zweikampfs (III, 160 ff.) and the Novelle, Der Zweikampf; all three duels take place in the presence of the sovereign. In Käthchen: der Kaiser erblaßt und steht auf when he sees the outcome of the fight (II, 296). In the Zweikampf, the Emperor is equally dumfounded, indem er sich leichenblaß von seinem Sitz erhob (III, 425), and his remark to Littegarde, "Nun, jedes Haar auf eurem Haupt bewacht ein Engel I" recalls to us the angel who saved Käthchen from mortal danger. Indeed, Kleist seems to have borrowed some of the medieval trappings for his story from his own earlier play. T h e two last scenes of Käthchen are strangely revived in the last scene of Homburg. A very similar setting is used: in the background a Schloß with a Portal and Rampe, and march music. 14 An Aufzug in both cases assembles all the leading persons of the play to witness the vindication of the hero(ine) and the fulfillment of his dream. T h e planned action is carried through to the bitter end in Kleistian fashion: the Prince still believes he will be executed, and Käthchen still does not know she is the bride. Each is saluted with a threefold Heil! and each, overcome by supreme happiness, faints and is caught in the arms of a friend. T h e passage in Act II, Scene 8 of Käthchen where Graf Wetter reprimands and chastises Freiburg echoes in Act II, Scene 2 of Homburg, where the Prince (he too in error) treats a young officer in like manner. Even the wording is similar: Er [Graf Wetter] reißt ihm den Helm vom Haupt, der Burggraf taumelt and says to his assailant, " D u Rasender, welch eine T a t ! " / "Er [Prinz Friedrich] reißt ihm das Schwert samt dem Gürtel ab," and the officer, taumelnd, exclaims, "Mein Prinz, die Tat, bei Gott—!" 1 5 A moment later, Freiburg cannot speak for blood from his

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head wound that fills his mouth: "Er kann nicht reden. / Blut füllt, vom Scheitel quellend, ihm den Mund" (II, 227). Lisbeth Kohlhaas, returning from her ill-fated expedition, is unable to speak, von aus dem Mund vorquellendem Blute gehindert (III, 165). In the Marquise the Count strikes a soldier in the face with his sword hilt, so that the man staggers back mit aus dem Mund vorquellendem Blut (III, 251). As, here, a young officer of an invading force appears suddenly to inflict summary punishment on lüsterne Hunde of his own army who had attacked a native woman, so in Die Hermannsschlacht a young Roman captain appears suddenly and kills several of the geile Hunde who had assaulted Hally (1535 ff·)· This sanguinary motif is surpassed in savageness by that of the dashing out of a person's brains, which Kleist uses repeatedly. During his attack on the Tronkenburg, Kohlhaas hurls a Junker von Tronka into a corner of the hall, daß er sein Hirn an den Steinen versprützte (III, 167). In the Erdbeben, Fernando sees his infant son, smashed by Pedrillo against a pillar, lying before him mit aus dem Hirne hervorquellendem Mark (III, 3 1 1 ) . In Der Findling, Piachi crushes the wicked Nicolo's head against the wall: drückte ihm das Gehirn an der Wand ein (III, 375). Gustav, in the Verlobung, literally shoots out his brains: des Ärmsten Schädel war ganz zerschmettert, und hing . . . zum Teil an den Wänden umher (III, 352). T h e gruesome motif evidently had a fascination for Kleist. In Käthchen and again in Kohlhaas occurs a minor motif that could be summarized thus: the supreme state authority directs a litigant to go to a nobleman's castle, recover his property, and let the matter rest. The verbal elements common to the two passages (II, 294. 6 ff.; I l l , 158. 23 ff., also 156. 8 ff.) are Burg, abholen, and die Sache ruhen zu lassen. In the play, in keeping with the benevolently miraculous

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character of its plot, the motif has no tragic overtones; in the story it marks an ominous turning point in the action. It is characteristic of a Kleistian personage not to let a matter rest. Near the end of Der Zweikampf, as near the end of Homburg, the hero experiences a high-strung Jenseitigkeit and expresses it in very similar terms (Ho. 1830 ff.; Zw. III, 418). In this scene of the story, as in an earlier scene of Homburg, a woman close to the hero sits at a table weeping over his agitated speech and condition (Ho. 992 + ; Zw., III, 419), and at the close of the highly emotional scene each man returns to his prison inwardly comforted. A situation that repeats itself in Kleist's work is that of a young man or woman who enters a burning building to save something precious; no sooner has he accomplished this than the building collapses. Käthchen, egged by Kunigunde (with murderous intent) to retrieve a document from a burning house, emerges miraculously as the building collapses behind her (Act III, Sc. 12-14). A man of the Tronkas is compelled by Kohlhaas to rescue horses from a burning shed; just after he reappears with them, the shed collapses behind him (III, 169). A young centurion, risking his own life, plunges into a burning house at a mother's cry and saves her child from the flames (Her. 1710®.). Josephe rushes into a burning nunnery to save her child, and as though shielded by angels (as Käthchen visibly is), emerges with her prize unharmed (Erd. I l l , 300). In the Findling we are told of a young Genoese nobleman who braves the flames similarly to rescue a trapped girl (III, 362). T h e motif was so ingrained in Kleist, it seems, that he uses it, late, in the Bettelweib in a situation where it is implausible: with the whole castle aflame, the Marquise is represented as sending servants in to rescue her husband from an upstairs room

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which he himself had set on fire—in other words, to the very heart of the blaze; an incredible assignment (III, 357). A condition that obviously appealed to Kleist's imagination is that of the innocent woman wrongfully accused— suspected of infidelity by her husband or lover (Am., Kr.) or by her family and the public (Mar., Zw.). In the latter two cases the victim is a widow of spotless reputation, who since the death of her husband has been living a quiet, retired life and is disinclined to remarry, despite the urging of her parents. Both women, charged with immorality, are disbelieved by their incensed families and are ejected from their homes under threat of death—a weapon is brandished in each case by a father or brother. Both, having prostrated themselves in avowing their virtue, upon this threat of bodily violence rise, pale with horror, from their knees (III, 273, 400), and embark, on a course of action that eventually leads, by different ways, to their vindication. Minde-Pouet has noted reminiscences of the OttokarAgnes love scene in the Achilles-Penthesilea one and similarities in the portrayal of the two men. A n even closer repetition of detail in a love scene connects Hermannsschlacht (Act V , Sc. 17) and Zweikampf. Ventidius steals into a garden in the evening for a tryst with Thusnelda and is received at the garden gate by her supposed chambermaid, who is really the veiled Thusnelda. Graf Jacob steals at night into Littegarde's castle and is received at the garden gate by a veiled chambermaid playing the part of her mistress (III, 422 f.). In the next, cruel scene of the Hermannsschlacht (Act V , Sc. 18), we witness a Kleistian Umschwung from tender love to violent hatred as Thusnelda revels in seeing Ventidius torn to pieces by a savage bear. T h i s scene seems to echo Penthesilea's slaying of Achilles with the help of savage dogs. Both women after their orgy collapse and lose consciousness.

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T h e motivation in Penthesilea is deeper and the poetry of a higher order than in the Hermannsschlacht, but this reaction is in both cases deeply rooted in Kleist's own psyche. A less destructive but psychologically no less marked instance of the revulsion from love to loathing is pictured near the end of the Marquise. It occurs on the male side in Gustav, in the Verlobung, there as the result of misleading appearances and distrust such as operate tragically in Kleist's initial play. That a woman, at the sudden sight of a man which stirs memories of an earlier love experience, should faint and fall to the ground, dropping a tray of dishes, is surely a specialized happening, yet Kleist carried it over from Käthchen to Der Findling (or vice versa!), again with verbal echoes. Of Käthchen we are told "Flaschen, Gläser . . . und Imbiß, da sie den Grafen erblickt, läßt sie fallen; und leichenbleich . . . stürzt sie vor ihm nieder, als ob sie ein Blitz nieder geschmettert hätte" (II, 186). In Der Findling we read ". . . als Elvire . . . , mit Flaschen und Gläsern, . . . wie durch einen unsichtbaren Blitz getroffen, bei seinem Anblick . . . auf das Getäfel des Bodens niederfiel" (III, 364). Thereafter "man trug Elviren, die an allen Gliedern zitterte, zu Bett, wo sie mehrere Tage . . . darniederlag"— a fate less dire than that of another devoted wife which Kleist reports in similar words: "Kohlhaas brachte sie, die von der Reise völlig zu Grunde gerichtet war, in ein Bett, wo sie . . . noch einige Tage lebte" (III, 364, 165). T h e expulsion of Littegarde from the gates of the family castle shares details with that of Herse from the Tronkenburg (III, 401, 153 f.). Herse, however, has dogs set on him, and the dogs are called by name: "hetz, Kaiser! hetz, Jäger! . . . hetz, Spitz!" Just so Penthesilea, in setting her dogs on Achilles, had called them by name: "hetz, Tigris! hetz, Leäne! / Hetz, Sphinx! . . ." (Pe. 2655 f.). Already in Am-

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phitryon (882) Kleist had used the motif of the recognition of a person by domestic dogs. With similar wording, the old family dog is described authenticating the revenant Lisbeth (HI, 241)· Kleist's fondness for the procedure of Verhör or probing cross-examination is well known. The first, mild case of it occurs in the very opening scene of his first play, where Jeronimus questions the old churchwarden. This passage already sets the dialogue rhythm of thrust and parry that we find more fully developed in Der zerbrochne Krug, a play that might be termed one long Verhör. There are other instances in Schroffenstein: II, 2 (Gertrude-Sylvester), III, 1 (Ottokar-Agnes), III, 2 (Jeronimus-Eustache). In Amphitryon II, 1 we have the situation of a master cross-questioning his servant, who has been maltreated by strangers; that situation recurs in Kohlhaas (III, 150 ff.). T h e next scene shows Amphitryon anxiously questioning Alkmene, and even within this Verhör, an off-stage one between Jupiter and Alkmene is indicated (943). Käthchen opens with two scenes of judicial inquisition, first of the hero, then of the heroine. A novel form of "hearing" is seen in IV, 2, where the Count interrogates the sleeping Käthchen. In Die Hermannsschlacht (Act IV, Sc. 1) Marbod conducts an inquiry to test Hermann's sons. In Homburg, Act IV, 1 and V, 5, we have a sort of hearing. And the Katechismus der Deutschen (IV, 100 ff.) is a particularly pointed example of Kleist's addiction to the technique of cross-questioning. His proclivity toward absent-mindedness is found in his heroes and heroines. Penthesilea, when she first appears, gives an exhibition not only of an extreme Kleistian blush but also of the capacity to abstract completely from outward business because of an intense inner preoccupation (Pe., Sc. 1.). Achilles enters equally oblivious of what his fellow Greeks are saying to him (Sc. 4). Here, as later in the Prince's

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case, a carefully excogitated and promising Kriegsplan (Pe. 573, Ho. 3 1 1 ) is nullified through the young leader's inattention. Sometimes a basic similarity of situation is discernible beneath differing details. Thus the latter part of the fifth scene of Act IV in Schroffenstein and the first scene of Act III in Homburg both present a young hero in (ameliorated) prison, visited by a close friend (or mother) who brings disturbing news and insinuates dire action to come on the part of the ruling personage; this incites the hero, in a fit of desperation, to break prison. Or again, Penthesilea's riding past in the flush of victory and calling out exultantly to the High Priestess who stands beside the road (Pe. 1004 ff.) anticipates in essence the close of the Kriegsanekdote, where the victorious trooper rides triumphantly past the innkeeper standing in his doorway and calls out to him (IV, 190). In the Hermannsschlacht (968 ff.) and in Homburg ( n 6 i f.) the ruler asks his wife (or niece) a question, repeats it impatiently, and gets a similar answer. Hermann asks about Ventidius: "Du sahst ihn? . . . Du sahst ihn?" and Thusnelda replies: "Aus meinem Zimmer eben ging er fort." The Elector asks about the Prince: "Du sprachst ihn? . . . Du sprachst ihn?" and Natalie replies: "In den Gemächern eben jetzt der Tante." A lady is saved by her escort from a wild beast's attack during a hunt in Hermannsschlacht (Act I, Sc. 2) and in Zweikampf (III, 398). In both cases the animal is maddened by a wound and therefore especially dangerous. A somnambulist is examined in his sleep in Käthchen and Homburg; Graf Wetter eavesdrops on Käthchen as the Elector on the Prince, each time "tapping" the sleeper's subconsciousness. In Guiskard (398 ff.) a Knabe who has scaled a hillock peers into Guiskard's tent and sees the leader attiring himself. In Kohlhaas some Jungen climb up to the windows for a peep

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at the notorious incendiary eating his breakfast (III, 193). T h e populace is present: a stylized Volk in Guiskard, a neugieriger Haufe in Kohlhaas. T h e basic similarity of situation shows u p the differences in detail that conform to the character of the two works. Kleist's dramatic Erstling strikes with deep conviction a note that never ceases to reverberate down to the very last of his plays and Novellen: that of das imierste Gefühl. In the very opening scene of Schroffenstein ( 1 4 1 , 147; cf. also 1592, 1 8 1 4 ) this takes the form of that Rechtgefühl, that eventually militant passion for justice, which was to shape and twist the life of Michael Kohlhaas and which was one of Kleist's own ingrained traits. A m i d the incomprehensible havoc of this gloomy tragedy the only rays of hope are the certainty of one's own innocence (Eustache's innerstes Gefühl, 1 6 1 7 f.) and the Gefühl der Seelengüte andrer which for Agnes stands exalted over all knowledge and surmise ( 1 3 5 6 ff.). F r o m here extends a line to that trust in Gefühl, which will f o r m the basis of the solution in Kleist's final play (Ho. 868, 1184). In between, one could instance the operation of the "inmost f e e l i n g " in every plot of Kleist's in verse or prose. A related motif that runs all through Kleist's works is that of Vertrauen,16 It appears already in Schroffenstein, both positively, as a way to understanding and disentanglement (1772), and negatively, as Mißtraun . . . die schwarze Sucht der Seele ( 5 1 5 ) which distorts the vision and poisons the souls of these doomed people. W h e n Ottokar demands unumschränkt Vertraueη of his beloved (771), he is speaking for all Kleist's f u t u r e lovers and f o r Kleist himself. A n d all Kleist's loving women, f r o m Agnes to T o n i and Littegarde, will expect Vertrauen f r o m their lovers in the face of incriminating appearances. T h e y , in turn, will demonstrate that Treue bis in den Tod that is a readiness in Natalie (Ho. 1058) and an accomplishment in Lisbeth, Mariane Con-

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greve, and T o n i herself (III, 163 ff., 329, 351). In all these w o m e n Kleist personified a love willing ganz für das, was man liebt, in Grund und Boden zu gehn such as he sought for vainly in his own life ( B f e . II, 285). T o n i , who trusted Gustav to understand her loving intent despite contrary indications, is a female counterpart to Achilles, w h o went unarmed, in a loving spirit, to meet Penthesilea, and fell prey to her deluded fury. T h e r e is even a characteristic sanguine detail, as each victim tries with dying breath to explain: Er, in dem Purpur seines Bluts sich wälzend (Pe. 2662) and das in seinem Blut sich wälzende Mädchen (III, 350). 17 Each victim, too, puts out a hand to caress the beloved slayer—a Kleistian juxtaposition of the cruel and the tender. T h e theme of die gebrechliche Welt, the frail and imperfect world, is another element of Kleist's Weltanschauung that recurs in various places and varying formulations: der Wunderbau der Welt in Käthchen (II, 294), die allgemeine Not der Welt and die gebrechliche Einrichtung der Welt in Kohlhaas (III, 146, 149), die große, heilige und unerklärliche Einrichtung der Welt and die gebrechliche Welt in the Marquise (III, 274, 294), der Lauf der Dinge hienieden (Bfe. II, 286), die Welt, die gebrechliche and der gebrechliche Mensch in Penthesilea (2854, 3037), die Welt . . . eine wunderliche Einrichtung (IV, 145). T h i s is not only a connective factor in Kleist's life and work, b u t it helps to connect him with the mood of Romanticism. 1 8 A curious motif that doubtless has psychological links with Kleist's view of the world and of sex is one that might be designated as Besudelung or defilement. Already Sylvester (Schro. 924 ff.), anticipating Grillparzer, recognizes the questionableness of all action and the loss of purity which it inevitably entails:

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Das Geschehne muß stets gut sein, wie es kann. Ganz rein, seh' ich wohl ein, kann's fast nicht abgehn, Denn wer das Schmutz'ge anfaßt, den besudelt's. In like vein Prothoe says to Penthesilea after her ordeal: "Siegen geht so rein nicht ab, / U n d jede Werkstatt kleidet ihren Meister" (Pe. 2803 f.). Penthesilea herself, rejoicing over her supposed conquest of Achilles, had longed to cleanse herself of the stains of action by immersion in a stream of joy: O laß mich, Prothoe! O laß dies Herz Zwei Augenblick' in diesem Strom der Lust, Wie ein besudelt Kind, sich untertauchen; Mit jedem Schlag in seine üpp'gen Wellen Wäscht sich ein Makel mir vom Busen weg. {Pe. 1674 ff.) T h e r e may be a sexual overtone in this; there most certainly is in the jealous vehemence of Amphitryon's words to Alkmene: Und war' ein Teufel gestern dir erschienen, Und hätt' er Schlamm der Sünd', durchgeiferten, Aus Höllentiefen über dich geworfen, Den Glanz von meines Weibes Busen nicht Mit einem Makel fleckt' er! {Am. 1282 ff.) H e r e we have the concept of the slinging of m u d u p o n a p u r e and b e a u t i f u l creature which nevertheless (so the " w i s h " goes) remains immaculate. T h i s leads to the notion of the swan submerging after being soiled, of which we get a preliminary formulation near the end of Penthesilea, where the heroine washes off the blood of battle: "Vortrefflich!" says Prothoe, "Das H a u p t ganz unter Wasser, Liebe! So! / U n d wieder! So, so! W i e ein junger Schwan!" (2830 ff.).

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W e find the swan motif again applied to Käthchen as she comes sparkling from her bath in the grotto: Schaut, wie das Mädchen funkelt, wie es glänzetl Dem Schwane gleich, der, in die Brust geworfen, Aus des Krystallsees blauen Fluten steigtl (II, 287) T h e swan motif attains its poetically and psychologically most elaborate expression in the Marquise, where the Russian count relates his fever dream in which the swan Thinka, on which he threw mud as a boy, merges with the figure of the Marquise, whom he sullied by sexual aggression as a man (IH. 263).19 T h e motif of Seuche or pestilence is one for which Kleist shows a certain liking. It operates as a sinister force in Robert Guiskard. It is used in an episode in Die Verlobung, where an infected woman contrives to infect her faithless lover (III, 325). It is a decisive factor at the beginning of Der Findling, and in a figurative sense the Seuche of evil that enters with Nicolo dominates the whole story. T h e trick of shifted letters with which Nicolo tries to trap Elvire (III, 370 f.) is like that worked by Jupiter on Alkmene. T h e motif of surprising a naked girl bathing (in stream, grotto, or lake) occurs respectively in Schroffenstein (265 ff.), in Käthchen (Act IV, Sc. 5-6), and in the verse-idyl Der Schrecken im Bade (IV. 25 ff.). Another motif that repeats in Käthchen is that of the "shakedown" of straw: die Streu ..., die seinen stolzen Rossen untergeworfen wird (II, 188); ein Plätzchen auf dem Stroh . . . , das Euren stolzen Rossen untergeschüttet wird (II, 245); magst ihr wohl eine Streu unterlegen (II, 189). W e meet this again in the Bettelweib: Stroh, das man ihr unterschüttete (III, 354; echoed thrice thereafter) and in the Zweikampf: Stroh, das ihr untergeschüttet war (III, 415). T h e connotations of humility and privation

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are similar to those in the Kerker scene at the end of Faust I. T h e notion of a Bankert or bastard is found in several works, and Kleist dramatizes or pictorializes the word's etymology. Sosias upbraids Merkur as Du von der Bank gefallner Gauner, du (Am. 2055). T h e Elector spurns an illegitimate victory which, ein Kind des Zufalls, / Mir von der Bank fällt (Ho. 15G6 f.). In Sonderbare Geschichte . . . , a punning irony is produced by a mock coat of arms devised for an illegitimate Graf Scharfeneck: sein Wappen . . . , welches die Ecke einer Bank darstellte, unter welcher ein Kind lag (IV, 153). Prinz Friedrich's impulsive action in stopping to pray in a chapel he passes (Ho. 407 ff.) is anticipated by Johann in Schroffenstein (242 ff.). T h e motif of an exaggerated rumor concerning a schwere Verwundung of the young hero, testified to by eyewitnesses, is used in the Marquise (III, 254) and again in Homburg (724 ff.). T h e erroneous report of a person's death is a factor in Erdbeben (III, 298), Marquise (III, 254), and Homburg (510 ff.). T h e renting of windows to people eager to see the Schauspiel of an execution occurs in Homburg (987 f.) and Erdbeben (III, 296). T h e idea of a man refusing to partake of the sacrament in order to pursue his implacable vengeance on an enemy who has warped his life and character figures in both Kohlhaas and Findling. T h e extreme rage of Kleistian characters is also indicated by their foaming at the mouth. T h i s Kohlhaas does when he receives a crucial letter: Kohlhaas schäumte vor Wut, als er diesen Brief empfing (III, 158 f.). Later, the Kämmerer von Tronka is represented as vor Wut schäumend (III, 202). T h e Greek Achilles foams at the lips, and Penthesilea rages among her dogs mit schaumbedeckter Lipp' (Pe. 228, 2568). T h e old commandant in the Marquise vents his indignation, vor Wut schäumend (III, 280). Litte-

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garde's merciless brothers also are reported vor Wut mend on more than one occasion (III, 401, 418).

113

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A theme very appropriate to Kleist's ambitious spirit is that of the Gipfel or peak of attainment. It occurs plentifully in his minor writings: in the essay Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken: "sich auf den Gipfel der Vermessenheit zu schwingen" (IV, 76); in the Katechismus der Deutschen: "auf d e m G i p f e l aller T u g e n d " (IV, 106); in the a n n o u n c e m e n t of Phöbus: "einen G i p f e l noch so herrlicher Schönheit" (IV, 123); in Gebet des Zoroaster: "von welchen Gipfeln, o Herr! der Mensch u m sich schauen kann" (IV, 127); in Brief eines jungen Dichters: "den G i p f e l der Kunst . . . auffinden u n d ersteigen" (IV, 147); in Allerneuester Erziehungsplan: "uns auf den Gipfel unsrer metaphysischen Ansicht zu schwingen" (IV, 215); in Entwurf einer Bombenpost: " d e n V e r k e h r auf den höchsten G i p f e l der Vollkommenheit zu treiben" (IV, 219). Robert and A b ä l a r d compete for des Ruhmes Gipfel (Gui. 251). T h e concept of the peak is of course completely germane to the high-pitched Penthesilea. It is the summit or nothing for the y o u n g leader: Eh' ich Mars' Töchter nicht, wie ich versprach, Jetzt auf des Glückes Gipfel jauchzend führe, Eh' möge seine Pyramide schmetternd Zusammenbrechen über mich und sie. (Pe. 716 ff.) In frenzied hyperbole she conceives of piling Ida on Ossa and f r o m their top p u l l i n g down the very Sun by his flaming hair (1375 f., 1384 ff.). In the more restrained Homburg, on the other hand, w e return to the " n o r m a l " peak concept: Des Daseins Gipfel nimmt Euch wieder aufl (623) Und der die Zukunft, auf des Lebens Gipfel, Heut wie ein Feenreich noch überschaut, Liegt in zwei engen Brettern duftend morgen. (989 ff.)

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T h e tragic thought of swift descent from the summit of life to the grave, so drastically stated here, is found already in Schroffenstein: "So schnell dahin zu sterben, heute noch / In Lebensfülle, in d e m Sarge m o r g e n " (470 f.) and "Sieh, Mädchen, m o r g e n lieg' ich in d e m Grabe, / Ein Jüngling, i c h — n i c h t wahr, das tut dir weh?" (1043 f.). T h i s contains the essence of the Prince's appeal to Natalie and the Electress. In the Verlobung, T o n i is loath to waken Gustav, ihn aus den Himmeln lieblicher Einbildung in die Tiefe einer gemeinen und elenden Wirklichkeit herabzureißen (III, 340). In Der Zweikampf, Littegarde is plunged von der Höhe eines heiteren und fast ungetrübten Glücks in die Tiefe eines unabsehbaren und gänzlich hülflosen Elends (III, 401). T h e Electress falls from the Gipfel to the Abgrund of life on the news of the ruler's death (Ho. 621). Related to this motif of sudden drop from the heights of happiness is one that might be formulated as aus den Sternen niedersteigen. W e find it in the opening words of Schroffenstein: "Niedersteigen, / Glanzumstrahlet, / Himmelshöhen zur Erd' h e r a b . " W e meet it again in Guiskard: O Guiskard! W i r begrüßen dich, o Fürst, Als stiegst du uns von Himmelshöhen nieder! Denn in den Sternen glaubten wir dich schon! (Gui. 408 ff.) in

Amphitryon: Nur schien er selber einer schon mir der Verherrlichten, ich hätt' ihn fragen mögen, O b er mir aus den Sternen niederstiege. (Am. 1198 ff.)

and in

Penthesilea:

O du, die eine Glanzerscheinung mir, Als hätte sich das Ätherreich eröffnet. Herabsteigst, Unbegreifliche, wer bist du? (Pe. 1809 ® )

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115

and it returns, in secularized form, in Homburg (141 ff.), when the Prince sees, as in a dream, the persons of his heart's desire descending to him from a radiant Königsschloß. T h e picture of the gates of paradise or of achievement rattling shut in a hero's face is another one that comports with the aspiration and frustration in Kleist's own life. It represents a pattern basic to his temper, his experience, and his conception of tragedy. T h i s is essentially, though not literally, the fate of Guiskard, thwarted just short of his goal; and at the other end of the scale it makes a comic touch in the Krug, where the fuming Ruprecht finds Eve's door barred in his face. In the last Act of the Hermannsschlacht the predicament of the lovelorn Ventidius, who thinks to meet his beloved and finds instead a locked Gittertor, is essentially like the Prince's at the beginning of Homburg, and even the locales correspond: a Garten hinter dem Fürstenzelt (Her. 2287 -}-) and a Garten hinterm Schlosse (Ho. 114). A t the wild end of Schroffenstein, when old blind Sylvius begs the mad Johann, "Führe mich heim, Knabe, heim!", Johann answers, "Ins Glück? Es geht nicht, Alter, s'ist inwendig / Verriegelt. Komm. W i r müssen vorwärts" (2629 ff.). This prefigures a cardinal idea of Über das Marionettentheater years later: "das Paradies ist verriegelt und der Cherub hinter uns: wir müssen die Reise um die Welt machen," etc. (IV, 137). T h e gates of success rumble open suddenly, but close again just as suddenly: Da ich der Dirne Tür verriegelt finde, . . . . . . Just da sie auf jetzt rasselt . . . (Kr. 967 ff.) Daß eures Tempels Pforten rasselnd auf . . . Mir, wie des Paradieses Tore, fliegen (Pe. 1642 ff.) Sie schließen die Tore wieder hinter ihm zu.

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(variant: Die dumpfen Tore rasseln hinter ihm zu) (Pe. 1739) Die T ü r fliegt rasselnd vor dem Prinzen zu. (Ho. 7 7 + ) O f t e n this concept is joined with another favorite one of Kleist's, the flash of lightning that briefly illuminates or blinds: Geblendet stand ich . . . wie wenn zur Nachtzeit Der Blitz vor einen Wandrer fällt, die Pforten Elysiums, des glanzerfüllten, rasselnd, Vor einem Geist sich öffnen und verschließen. (Pe. 2212 ff.) Des Schlosses T o r geht plötzlich auf; Ein Blitz, der aus dem Innern zuckt, verschlingt sie, Das T o r fügt rasselnd wieder sich zusammen. (Ho. 185 ff.) Instead of the sudden flash there may be a great effulgence of light pouring forth through the heavenly portals: " d a ß sich die Pforte ihm weit / Öffne, des Lichts Glanzstrom entgegen ihm w o g ' ! " (Sehr o. 2097 f.) or Daß eures Tempels Pforten rasselnd auf, Des glanzerfüllten, weihrauchduftenden, Mir, wie des Paradieses Tore, fliegen! (Pe. 1642 ff.) T h e verriegeltes Tor motif connects scenes in two of the Novellen. T h e ejection of Herse from the T r o n k e n b u r g proceeds with almost nightmarish speed; at a signal, the attacking dogs and men vanish inside, the gate is slammed in Herse's face: die Torflügel zusammen, der Riegel vor: und auf der Straße ohnmächtig sink' ich nieder (III, 154). In the case of Littegarde, summarily ejected, mehr tot als lebendig, it is specified that her own brother hinter ihr . . . die Torflügel verschloß, handing her out a Bündel mit Wäsche and einiges Geld (III, 401)—objects that figure also in Herse's case (III, 153, 247). A passage in the Marquise (III, 278) foreshadows in striking detail the situation in the opening scene of Homburg:

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the young hero ardently pursues the withdrawing beloved, breathing his devotion {flüstern in both cases; wich ihm aus Ientweichst du mir), up a Rampe; he snatches at her arm (but Count F. gets no glove!), a door is slammed in his face and bolted, rasselnd; she is gone, and he is left standing outside, thwarted and bewildered. In view of the repetitive tendency of Kleist's mind, it is not surprising to see his personages repeating one another. One can recognize a certain resumption and development of Achilles in Prinz Friedrich, of Alkmene in the Marquise, of Eve in T o n i . We have already had occasion to note the kinship of Achilles and the Prince, especially in that motivation from the subconscious which is so manifest on their first appearance and which ties them both closely to their author. We have also observed traits in which Kleist's earliest dramatic hero, Ottokar, foretells his final one, Friedrich. Elvire is a sister to Alkmene, as Eve is. Sosias is a forerunner of the fertile liar Adam. T h e figure of a cruel father who, seconded by his son, orders his "fallen" daughter out of the house is seen in the Kommendant in the Marquise and Don Henrico in the Erdbeben (III, 273 f., 295). T h e Waffenschmied Theobald and his young daughter in Käthchen anticipate the Waffenschmied Teuthold and his young daughter in Die Hermannsschlacht. Hally, to be sure, is a mere thing, a pathetic corpus delicti, beside Käthchen, but Teuthold is indubitably an afterimage of Theobald. What the latter feared for his daughter becomes brutal fact for Hally. From another angle, Theobald is a distant cousin of Amphitryon, but with no such tragic overtones. Both men are cuckolded by sovereigns who make use of their wives to sire a superlative child. T h e r e is at least a passing hint in Käthchen of the virgin birth (II, 183), which is more palpable in Amphitryon.

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Congo Hoango, in the Verlobung, and Michael Kohlhaas, for all the wide differences in their circumstances, are in one sense brothers under the skin. Both have led peaceful, orderly lives until a crisis comes upon them from without which alters their character and way of life radically. Because of injustice suffered, they in turn become monsters of injustice, Wüteriche. Congo, originally von treuer und rechtschaffener Gemütsart (III, 313) like Kohlhaas, embarks on a ruthless private war which transforms him, so that in his opening lines, as in Kohlhaas, the author is moved to condemn him as ein fürchterlicher alter Neger and grimmiger Mensch (III, 313). If, as some scholars hold, Der Findling is an early work, then Kohlhaas is a repetition, not anticipation, of Piachi: an upright, peaceable, law-abiding tradesman of mature years, turned by injustice into a demon of vengeance, loses his property, his beloved wife, his life (in Fi. his very soul) because of the villainy of another. Both try legal steps, are balked by a corrupt government, and take matters into their own hands. But Piachi is bent only on personal revenge; he has not Kohlhaas's social conscience and desire to protect his fellow citizens from wrong. It is for this reason that Josef Körner regarded Kohlhaas as a maturer, deeper, later treatment of the Rechtsproblem.20 An old hag appears in two fifth acts of Kleist's to personify inescapable doom. Old Ursula, at the end of Schroffenstein, anticipates the Cheruscan Alraune at a like juncture of Die Hermannsschlacht: a mysterious old woman functioning as the mouthpiece of tragic fate and "atmosphere." A sister to both is the weird Zigeunerin introduced at the corresponding place near the end of Kohlhaas. Fries (op. cit., p. 17) has pointed out her resemblance to the Alraune: both prophesy, both walk with crutches, each answers three questions (the

REPETITIONS AND

RECOVERIES

"9

gypsy writes down three future events for Kohlhaas), and the phrase die römische Sibylle is used in connection with both. A kinswoman to them is the old beggar on her crutches in the Bettelweib. T h e figure of a mother who, distrustful of her daughter's behavior, indignantly confronts her, with arms akimbo, turns up in such widely different settings as a Dutch courtroom and a negro hut in Haiti (Variant to Kr., 362; Verl., III, 332 and 343). T w o tales share the figure of a faithful old retainer, steward of a nunnery; in Kohlhaas: der Stiftsvoigt, ein kleiner, alter, schneeweißer Mann (III, 171); in Cäcilie: ein alter, siebenzigjähriger Klostervoigt (III, 378). Both take their stand at the gate (Portal des Klosters/Eingang der Kirche)·, courageous despite age and infirmity, they are ready to fight at the word of an equally courageous elderly abbess. These two men are virtually duplicates, and they have a mild forerunner in the old Kirchenvoigt of Schroffenstein I, 1, as the two abbesses have a gentle sister in the Erdbeben. T h e Erlabrunn abbess, appearing before the Portal of her convent to beseech Kohlhaas's mercy, recalls to us the Chilian abbess who stands before the Pforten of her burning building screaming for help (III, 171, 300). In Käthchen, Theobald in a rhetorical tirade describes Graf Wetter as a Vatermördergeist, An jeder der granitnen Säulen rüttelnd, In dem urew'gen Tempel der Natur; Ein Sohn der Hölle, . . . (II, 294) In Katechismus as "einen der herumschleicht Säulen rüttelt,

der Deutschen, Kleist envisages Napoleon Hölle entstiegenen Vatermördergeist, der in dem Tempel der Natur und an allen auf welchen er gebaut ist" (IV, 105). A n d

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line 4 1 4 of the Krug originally read: " I h r loses Pack, das an den Schranken mir, / U n d allen Pfeilern guter Ordnung r ü t t e l t ! " (IV, 3 2 1 ) . Martin Lintzel (op. cit., pp. 28 ff.) regards the catastrophe of Ventidius in Die Hermannsschlacht as almost a parody on that of Achilles in Penthesilea, repeating, considerably distorted, essential emotional elements of the earlier situation. B u t the apparent deepening of Ventidius's love before his end (see Act V , Sc. 17) raises him nearer to the rank of Achilles, and in a sense he too falls victim to a hate-perverted passion that madly rimes Küsse with Bisse. H e r e too, like surface floats that mark larger things submerged, we find verbal similarities: of Penthesilea it is reported, " D e n Zahn schlägt sie in seine weiße B r u s t " (2670); Ventidius, torn by the bear, cries, "Sie schlägt die K l a u n in meine weiche B r u s t " (2413). Prothoe, Kleist's most winsome embodiment of sisterly love, represents also the traditional figure of the confidante beside Penthesilea, as Hohenzollern beside the Prince. T o this bosom friend the hero/heroine, coming out of a state of somnambulism/unconsciousness, relates real experience as " d r e a m , " beginning with almost identical words: Welch einen Traum entsetzensvoll träumt' ich! . . . Mir war, als ob . . . (Pe. 1556 ff.) Welch einen sonderbaren Traum träumt' ich! Mir war, als ob . . . (Ho. 140 f.) Penthesilea's condition at the beginning of this scene is not unlike the Prince's in the final garden scene: already detached from reality, her mind, like his, roams disembodied in the fernen Glanzgefilden of eternity. Both are then harshly recalled to the actual world, die gebrechliche, / Auf die nur fern die Götter niederschaun.

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121

Hohenzollern functions in Homburg not only as the useful confidant but, like Licht in the Krug (who is also a kind of confidant!), manages to throw light on a dark sequence of events. If we think of the Elector, rather than the Prince, as his "superior," we may say that Hohenzollern is also, like Licht, critical of him and, in a milder degree, "exposes" him and helps to steer the action to its denouement. Hearing the Prince describe his sovereign as der Kurfürst mit der Stirn des Zeus (Ho. 158), we are reminded of the Count in Käthchen, who apostrophizes his ancestor as Göttlicher mit der Scheitel des Zeus (II, 212). T h e Prince, when he faints at the end of the play, approves himself the last of Kleist's unconventional, "unheroic" heroes, as Sylvester Schroffenstein was the first. At the finale of both plays, Kleist assembles the complete cast, as he does also in Amphitryon and, if we count Adam as present by teichoscopy, in the Krug, as well as in some narrative works (Ko., Verl., and Zw.). One figure for which Kleist shows a pronounced predilection is that of the angel—winged, resplendent, protecting, ministering, releasing finally into the infinite. Early in his earliest work we meet the concepts of the ministering angel (Schro. 293 ff.) and of the individual's Schutzengel (Schro. 736 f.). 21 The devoted Gottfried expects twin angels to appear to escort Käthchen, Jünglinge, von hoher Gestalt, mit schneeweißen Fittigen an den Schultern (II, 242). Such is the guardian angel who appears bodily on the stage to save Käthchen from the fire: ein Cherub in der Gestalt eines Jünglings, von Licht umflossen, blondlockig, Fittige an den Schultern (II, 267). Wings as a Kleistian symbol for aspiration rather than ministration are illustrated by the image of Guiskard: Auf deinem Fluge rasch, die Brust voll Flammen, etc. (Gui.

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495 ff.), or Penthesilea: " D a ß ich mit Flügeln, weit gespreizt und rauschend, / Die L u f t zerteilte—1" (Pe. 1338 f.). "Ein Cherubim . . . / Mit Flügeln, weiß wie Schnee, auf beiden Schultern, / U n d L i c h t . . . das funkelte! das glänztel" brings the Count to Käthchen in a shared dream (II, 281). T o Theobald's fervid imagination, the dust raised by the Count's troopers is as great als wär" ein Cherub vom Himmel niedergefahren (II, 186), and the Count's innocence as persuasive als hätten die Cherubim sich entkleidet und ihren Glanz dir, funkelnd wie Mailicht, um die Seele gelegt! (II, 191). Finally, the cherub motif is degraded to the farcical in the Emperor's soliloquy in Act V, Scene 2: daß der Cherub zum zweiten Mal zur Erde steige, etc. (II, 297) and in the wry humor of his words, "Die einen Cherubim zum Freunde hat, / Der kann mit Stolz ein Kaiser Vater sein!" (II, 306). Prinz Friedrich pictures himself as ein Engel mit dem Flammenschwert guarding the throne (Ho. 581 f.), a figure not unlike the cherub who bars the gate of Paradise in the Marionettentheater essay (IV, 137) or that Archangel namesake whose avenging Cherubsschwert Kohlhaas usurps (III, 181). T h e Prince's excited fancy sees a tyrant undeservedly arrayed mit Flügeln, / Nach Art der Cherubime, silberglänzig (Ho. 902 f.); he sees the compassionate Natalie as an angel: Hättst du zwei Flügel, Jungfrau, an den Schultern, / Für einen Engel wahrlich hielt' ich dich! (1062 f.); and in his final ethereal soliloquy he feels himself attaining angelic state: Es wachsen Flügel mir an beiden Schultern . . . (1833). In such angelic (and quite unclassical) guise Prothoe imagines Penthesilea in an earlier version of lines 15391541: Wohin entfloh dein lebensmüder Geist? In welchen fernen Glanzgefilden regt er Das schwanenweiße Flügelpaar? (IV, 340)

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T h e guardian-angel motif is used hypothetically in the Erdbeben, where Josephe and her child escape from the burning convent gleich als ob alle Engel des Himmels sie umschirmten (III, 300); and again in the Zweikampf, where the amazed Emperor says that angels must have guarded every hair of Littegarde's head (III, 425). A winged cherub, white-robed and shining, speaks at Christ's grave in the poem Der Engel am Grabe des Herrn (IV, 16). Ein Cherub . . . auf glänzendem Gefieder and ein Cherub mit gespreizten Flügeln figure in two versions of a poem to Queen Louise (IV, 40, 41). Years earlier, Kleist had been deeply moved by a painting he saw in a French church, and he especially emphasized in it a pair of winged angels soaring down "from the abodes of heavenly bliss" to carry a saint's soul to paradise ( B f e . II, 170). One feels Kleist's deep personal involvement in such figures. In one of his very last letters, written on the brink of self-chosen death, this favorite conception of angels mit langen Flügeln an den Schultern comes to his mind again, joined to the concept of the splendor of multiple suns which links it with the Prince's valedictory {Bfe. II, 289). It is consistent with Kleist's haunting sense of the duplicity of life's appearances that the angelic form should at times conceal an evil spirit, an angel turn out to be a devil. Kohlhaas, the champion of God's justice, becomes a destroying angel, a Würgengel (III, 193)—the word and the development are foreshadowed as early as Schroffenstein: "Gebeut die Rache, und wir wettern wie / Die Würgeengel über Rossitz hin!" (2585 f.). T h e Count who had come to the Marquise's aid like ein Engel des Himmels seems to her for that very reason a fiend incarnate when his crime comes to light (III, 251, 294). With a different twist, this theme operates in Der Findling: Elvire, like the Marquise, had "built up" her rescuer into an angel; so much the greater the

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shock and revulsion when under this guise (though here in a different person) a devil stands revealed. One could readily assemble lengthy lists of Kleist's favorite words and expressions: dynamic verbs such as wettern, wetterstrahlen, keilen with their various prefixes and their related nouns; schmeißen, which he regularly prefers to werfen, and knicken, which he uses in bold and unusual ways; verbs of headlong motion like stürzen, reißen, schmettern; phrases like zu Stein erstarren; epithets like silbern with its various color, sound, and metallic values; turns such as dergestalt, daß or es traf sich, daß; mannerisms such as auf . . . Weise or auf . . . Art; formulas of the type Wie rührst du mich!, Wie nenn' ich dich?, Eine Furie blickt nicht schrecklicher, Du Rasende(r), Du Mensch—entsetzlicher, als Worte fassen . . . ; Entsetzen as a word and emotional reaction in its several formulations: entsetzend, entsetzlich, entsetzensvoll, and the like. All these speech patterns have been noted, especially by Minde-Pouet and Fries, and one could only add here and there to their collections of examples. Already Bonafous 2 2 pointed out that the question, Ward, seit die Welt steht, so etwas erlebt? occurs in various forms as an expression of the unheard-of and prodigious which figures not only in the hyperbolic style of Penthesilea but in other plays and stories. Another favored and characteristic locution is the triple hyperbole introduced by Eher and stating the impossible, balanced by a conclusion introduced by Als; thus Abälard declares: . . . eh' wird Guiskards Stiefel rücken vor Byzanz, eh' wird an ihre ehrnen Tore Sein Handschuh klopfen, eh' die stolze Zinne Vor seinem bloßen Hemde sich verneigen, Als dieser Sohn, wenn Guiskard fehlt, . . . (Gui. 381 ff.)

REPETITIONS AND

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!25

A m p h i t r y o n asserts: Eh' wird der rasche Peneus rückwärts fließen, Eh' sich der Bosphorus auf Ida betten, Eh' wird das Dromedar den Ozean durchwandeln, Als sie dort jenen Fremdling anerkennen. (Am. 2223 ff.) A n d approximately similar utterances can be f o u n d in Amphitryon (1154 ff.), Homburg (872 fr.), and the Marquise (III, 268). In each of these cases and, we may conjecture, in Guiskard, what is so confidently declared impossible turns o u t to be fact; this too is a part of the pattern of paradox and " f a l l " in Kleist's world. In his letter describing Simon Vouet's painting, Kleist uses for Heaven the descriptive phrase die Wohnungen himmlischer Freude (Bfe. II, 170). In Der Findling, the priest paints for Piachi die Wohnungen des ewigen Friedens (III, 375). In the Verlobung, the bodies of the unfortunate lovers are eingesenkt in die Wohnungen des ewigen Friedens (III, 352). T h e interjection He! (with or without a name following) is heard all through Kleist's works. H e is fond also of the colloquial expletive Je, sometimes used with another favorite, Liebe(r), in address. T h e enriched du lieber Liebling occurs in places as far apart as Amphitryon (1379) and the Todeslitanei (V, 403). Recurring ejaculations are Himmel und Erde!, Beim lebend'gen Gott!, and Herr meines Lebens! Kleist's persons like to curse in triads. " B e i m Styx! Bei dem Lernäersumpf! Beim Hades!" cries Odysseus (Pe. 2528), " H i m m e l , Erd' und H ö l l e ! " the Prince (Ho. 470), "Blitz, H o l l ' und T e u f e l ! " cry both the pagan A m p h i t r y o n and the Christian Herse (III, 154). " H ö l l e , T o d und T e u f e l ! " shout Kunigunde's gentlemen, and she herself vents her wrath with "Pest, T o d und R a c h e ! " (Kä., II, 31 i f . ) o r " G i f t ! Asche! Nacht!" and " G i f t , T o d und Rache!" (II, 290 f.);

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this last curse we hear again from the lips of Marbod's counselor Attarin (Her. 1431). Triadic, too, is the formulation of the highest goals of life in Kleist's letters: "ein Weib, ein eignes Haus und Freiheit!" (Bfe. I, 238), "Freiheit, ein eignes Haus und Dich" ( B f e . II, 30), "Freiheit, ein eignes Haus, und ein Weib" (Bfe. II, 49), "ein Feld zu bebauen, einen Baum zu pflanzen, und ein Kind zu zeugen" (Bfe. II, 63), "ein Kind, ein schön Gedicht, und eine große T h a t " (Bfe. II, 97). T h e asseveration Ich will ein Schuft sein, wenn . . . nicht is used in Amphitryon (1051 f., 1632) and, truncated, in the Krug: Ich bin ein Schuft (1794), Ich bin kein ehrlicher Kerl (1108), Ich bin kein ehrlicher Mann (1400), ich will nicht ehrlich sein (231, 1796), or simply ich bin nicht ehrlich (1787). Similarly, Hermann assures Thusnelda: In der Tat! [another favorite phrase] Ein Schelm, wenn ich dir lüge (1053). T h e disloyal officer in the Brief eines rheinbündischen Offiziers protests, Ich will ein Schelm sein, wenn . . . (IV, 83). The comic vocabularies of Amphitryon and Krug, it may be added, share such choice appellations as triefäug'ger Schuft (Am. 1760, Kr. 85) and Schubiak (Am. 1847, Kr. 90). Kleist likes to use zwei in the sense of "few": a small number, a short time or distance. Penthesilea lets her arms drop for zwei Minuten (179)—which means zwei Augenblicke; the latter is used later (1675), and by the Prince to minimize his disobedience: zwei Augenblicke früher, als befohlen (Ho. 849; actually, it was zwei Stunden, 1543). T h e Junker escapes from Erlabrunn zwei Stunden before Kohlhaas gets there (III, 171). Ventidius has a messenger wait zwei Minuten (Her. 528). T h e Prince promises to return to prison in zwei Minuten (951); later, he is delayed zwei Minuten by stopping to look at his grave (1724). T o Alkmene, the night of love seemed zwei kurze Stunden (442; it was in fact seven-

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teen, 520I). Jupiter undertakes to say zwei Worte (Am. 1940, 1943, 2188). Thusnelda is to tip off Ventidius with zwei Wort' (Her. 1740). T h e Elector invites zwei Worte (i.e., a short note) of protest from the Prince (1312), and Natalie urges him to write them (1314, 1349)· The Prince sits down to dash off zwei Zeilen to Kottwitz (699). He conceives life's scope as but zwei Spannen (clearly not "two") either side of the earth's surface (1287 f.). T h e Alraune tells Varus he is but zwei Schritt vom Grab (Her. 1978). T h e favorite numeral appears even in the Prince's frantic vision of death, in zwei engen Brettern (991), where it has much less specific realism than the sechs Bretter und zwei Brettchen of Bürgert Lenore. The number is used again in a sinister (but now literal) sense at the end of the Verlobung, where Gustav is provided with two pistols, one of which he uses to shoot Toni, the other, himself. Kleist furthermore shows an odd liking for figures in pairs. Thus he furnishes Friedrich von Trota in Der Zweikampf with two sisters, Fernando in Das Erdbeben with two sisters-in-law. Kunigunde in Käthchen has two aunts, Rupert Schroffenstein and Hermann have two sons each, Thusnelda two attendant Frauen; and from his first play to his last, Kleist likes to have his lackeys appear in pairs (Schro. 1518, 1822; Ho. 1 4 2 4 + , 1 4 7 3 + ) · In Kohlhaas, Schloßvoigt und Verwalter are an inseparable pair in villainy and its penalty. Anyone who reads Kleist with an attentive eye—and ear —soon becomes aware of verbal echoes, especially in his verse. A characteristic sequence of words, once fashioned, returns to his mind and pen, the more readily if caught in the cadence of a blank-verse line. Kleist's plays teem with similar and even identical lines. A like structure and beat are detectable in such line-pairs as

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a. Welch ruhiges Gemüt hast du gestört! (Schro. 1250) Ach, welch ein Heldenherz hast du geknickt (Ho. 1155) b. T o r , der du bist, laß dir zwei Worte sagen. (Am. 2188) Schelm, der du bist, mit deinen Visionen! (Ho. 195) c. Es ist gehauen nicht und nicht gestochen, (Atn. 701) Geschwätz, gehauen nicht und nicht gestochen. (Kr. 1 1 1 9 ) Even closer correspondence can be seen in the following groups: a. Es wird sich alles dir zum Ruhme lösen. (Am. 1575) Es wird sich alles ihr zum Ruhme lösen. (Kr. 1172) Es wird noch alles sich zum Guten wenden. (Am. 1153) Es wird sich alles, wie du's wünschest, finden. (Kr. 1109) b. Die Frauen, die verherrlichten, in Hellas. (Am. 1357) Die Wälle, die geebneten, in Utrecht. (Kr., Variant, 86) Ein Knäuel, ein verworrener, von Jungfraun. (Pe. 436) c. Folgt, meine tapfern Myrmidonier, mir. (Pe. 621) Folgt, meine Freunde, in die Kirche mir! (Ho. 738) So folgt, ihr Freunde, in den Garten mir! (Ho. 182g) Graf Wetter's solemn line, " H i e r vor des höchsten Gottes Antlitz steh' ich" (II, 295), has its comic counterpart in A d a m ' s brazen, " H i e r auf dem Richterstuhl von H u i s u m sitz' i c h " (Kr. 1855). Death threatens to engulf the R o m a n Scäpio and the Prussian Electress: "Des T o d e s Nacht schlug über mich z u s a m m e n " (Her. 97); " [ T o d e s ] N a c h t . . . / M ö g ' über m e i n e m H a u p t zusammenschlagen" (Ho. 523 f.). Hermann asks: " W e l c h ein W o r t entfiel d i r ? " (Her. 853); the Elector asks: " W a s f ü r ein W o r t entfiel dir?" (Ho. 1092). T h e H i g h Priestess exclaims: " D u Rasende! Was f ü r ein W o r t sprachst d u ? " (Pe. 1 1 1 9 ) ; Natalie exclaims: " D u Rasender! Was f ü r ein W o r t sprachst d u ? " (Ho. 1359). A German leader asks H e r m a n n : " D u Rasender! Hast du auch überlegt?—•" (Her. 2 1 5 ) . H e r m a n n says, " I c h will die Sach' m i r ü b e r l e g e n " (Her. 1090); the Prince: " I c h will die Sach' bis morgen ü b e r l e g e n " (Ho. 1 3 5 1 ) . T h e imprisoned Ottokar

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complains, "Daß ich einem Schäfer gleich / Mein Leid den Felsen klagen muß (Schro. 2325 f.); the lovelorn Wetter: " N u n will ich hier, wie ein Schäfer, liegen und klagen" (II, 2 1 1 ) . Penthesilea confides to her friend Prothoe: "Welch einen T r a u m entsetzensvoll träumt' ich—" (Pe. 1556); Prinz Friedrich to his friend Heinz: "Welch einen sonderbaren T r a u m träumt' ich!" (Ho. 140). Walter tells Adam that if he has not learned how to conduct a trial, "Ist hier der Ort jetzt nicht, es Euch zu lehren" (Kr. 616); Kunigunde teils the Count that what an object means to her, "Ist hier der Ort jetzt nicht, Euch zu erklären" (II, 262). Sometimes we find echoings within the same work. According to Hermann, the Romans regard a German as "eine Bestie, / Die auf vier Füßen in den Wäldern läuft" (Her. 1071 f.); Varus, on the contrary, finds himself treated by the Germans like "ein . . . Hirsch, / Der mit zwölf Enden durch die Forsten bricht" (2510 f.). Kohlhaas drives a Tronka serving-man "mit hageldichten, flachen Hieben der Klinge" to do his bidding; the Chamberlain von Tronka drives a man out of his service "mit wütenden Hieben der Klinge" (III, 168, 203). Sosias's line, "Vollständig und mit Rednerkunst gesetzt" (Am. 35), is recalled by the Elector's, "mit arglist'ger Rednerkunst gesetzt" (Ho. 1612). Penthesilea says she will answer the Greeks with arrows: "Aus Köchern . . . die Antwort übersenden" (Pe. 102); so the Prince bids the Elector answer the Swedes: " M i t Kettenkugeln schreib die Antwort ihm!" (Ho. 1783). Achilles expects early release from Penthesilea's service: "Frei bin ich dann, . . ./ Wie Wild auf Heiden wieder" (Pe. 2478 fi.); the Prince releases his fiancée: "Frei ist sie, wie das R e h auf Heiden, wieder" (Ho. 1026). T h e phrase, " o Herz, was klopfst du?" is heard in Kleist's poem An den Erzherzog Carl (IV, 37) and again, like a musi-

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cal figure extended, in Homburg: "Ach, Herz, was klopfst du also an dein Haus?" (1188). A like protestation is used in two different plays to express disbelief: Las' ich mit Blitzen in die Nacht Geschriebnes Und riefe Stimme mir des Donners zu . . . (Am. 2283 f.) Und stiind's mit Blitzen in die Nacht geschrieben, Und rief' es mir des Donners Stimme zu . . . (Pe. 2964 f.) Like words and cadences turn up again and again in widely separated places: a. An ihrer Jungfraun Spitze aufgepflanzt. (Pe. 59) Auf deinem Weg zur Weser aufgepflanzt. (Her. 2012) b. Auf einem Hügel leuchtend steht er da. (Pe. 1037) Auf einem Schimmel herrlich saß er da. (Ho. 541) c. Die im Gefild' des Tods einander suchen. (Pe. 1015) Ihn im Gefild des Todes aufzusuchen. (Ho. 575) d. Sie wird des Heeres Rückzug decken wollen. (Pe. 1016) Wo sie des Heeres . . . Aufmarsch / . . . decken sollen. (Ho. 130 f.) e. Das weiß ich nicht, und untersuch' es nicht; Das aber weiß ich . . . (Kr. 717 f.) Ich weiß es nicht, und untersuch' es nicht. Das aber . . . fühl' ich . . . (Ho. 1201 f.) f . Drommeten, Tuben, Cymbeln und Posaunen, Des Krieges ganze ehrne Stimme hören. (Pe. 995 f.) Kanonen, Fahnen, Pauken und Standarten, Der Schweden ganzes Kriegsgepäck erbeutet. (Ho. 557 f.) The motherly Countess in Käthchen says reassuringly to her Töchterchen Kunigunde: "Ihr seid zu sehr erschüttert" (II, 240). T h e motherly Electress in Homburg says to her distraught Sohn Friedrich: "Du bist zu sehr erschüttert" (1006). The Countess asks Kunigunde: "Wie denkt Ihr über Eure Zukunft, Fräulein?" (II, 237); in a not dissimilar situation, the Prince asks Natalie: "Wie denkt Ihr über Eure

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Zukunft jetzt?" (588). T h e Countess goes on: " W i ß t Ihr . . ./ Wie Euer Herz darin sich fassen wird?"—which echoes in the Prince's line, "Recht, wie ein großes Herz sich fassen m u ß l " (1344). A n almost identical question and answer make up a line in Käthchen and in Homburg: Wie hoch ist's an der Zeit? G lock halb auf zwölf. (II, 256) Was ist die Glocke jetzo? Halb auf zwölf. (Ho. 124) Imbedded in prose contexts in Käthchen we find the pentameter units, Die Sonne scheint noch rötlich durch die Stämme and Die Sonne schien kaum rötlich auf ihr Lager (II, 211, 248); these reverberate in Kottwitz's line, Die Sonne schimmert rötlich durch die Wolken (Ho. 387). In the opening stage direction of Homburg, the hero is described as halb wachend, halb schlafend; in the Verlobung—a far cry indeed from the Prussian prince and general—a little bastard Negro is described as halb schlafend, halb wachend (III, 346). Certain lines and phrases are repeated verbatim. Die Lust, ihr Götter, müßt ihr mir gewähren turns up in Amphitryon (1948) and Penthesilea (844); Euren Arm, ihr Lieben in Penthesilea (1362) and Homburg (311); Hör', dir zerschlag ich alle Knochen! in Amphitryon (197) and Krug (1199; cf. 1352 f.). T h e Latin phrase praeter propter stands out in Amphitryon (81) and Krug (1741). Auf deine Kappe nimm's comes into Schroffenstein (1844) and Homburg (496); in both cases it is used to shift responsibility for a deed admittedly wrong; thus an idea and its form of expression link Kleist's first play with his last. A peculiarity of Kleist's blank verse to which I called attention some years ago 23 is his use of a present active parti-

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ciple at a typical place (straddling the third and fourth foot) in his pentameter line, as follows: Von allen Hügeln rauschend niederströmt (Gui. 63) Als hätt' ein Großknecht wütend ihn geführt (Kr. 46) In grause Tiefe bäumend niederschaut (Pe. 264) Aus deinem Füllhorn lächelnd mir herab (Ho. 360) Kleist's manifest fondness for this pregnant element of speech—part verb, part adverb, part adjective, animating as it describes—is a mark of his dynamic, dramatic temper, and the sequence in which it recurs seems to conform to a rhythm pattern in his mind. Action and Image Gebärde, gesture, is of the greatest importance in Kleist's stories as well as his dramas; it is, beyond the conventional uses of playwright and narrator, a mode of communication more effective and on occasion more truthful than words. Thus, to take one example, Guiskard's confident words denying his sickness are tellingly contradicted by the simple "business" that accompanies them: his daughter, reading his need in his glance (486 ff.), shoves up a big army drum behind him, and he sits down on it with a sigh of thanks. The spokesman of the people who is addressing him falters and has to be "set going" again. Many more words follow, but the most important fact has been communicated without them: Guiskard is sick, Guiskard and with him his people are doomed. In moments of great emotion, Kleist's persons, unlike Schiller's, express themselves briefly and (or) with a mere gesture. One need only compare Ottokar's simple, "O laß / An deiner Brust mich ruhn, mein lieber Freund. (Er lehnt sich auf Johanns Schulter)" (Schro. 364) with Wallenstein's fine speech in a like situation (Wallensteins Tod, 1689 fr.)

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to see the difference between a great dramatist who is a rhetorician and one who, though a master of words, does not put his complete trust in them. Kleist begins with eloquent silences in his very first play (Stillschweigen in Schro. 1197 + , 1200, 1211 1396, 1400, 1406 etc.), and in his high-strung Penthesilea the final catastrophe is conveyed by silence (Penthesilea schweigt, 2699 ff.) and a prolonged commentated pantomime. So in Homburg, especially at the beginning and end, the spoken word is underlined and deepened by gesture. Kleist frequently uses a Pause to support or replace speech. If, say, in Homburg, Act I, Scene 5 (the Parole-Ausgabe), we had the Prince's words only, we might think him tolerably "on the job"; only his actions, his glances, his procedure with the glove give us the complete "text" and expose both levels of his consciousness. How vital gesture is for the communication of Kleist's meaning would become evident if we deleted all stage directions from his dramas and their equivalent (business introduced typically by indem) from his tales. In the case of perhaps no other dramatist or narrator would so much be lost thereby. In the wide range of Kleist's dramatic "business," a number of actions are noticeably favored. One of these is emphatic ansehen: one character looking full and expressively into the face of another. Sylvester, after listening to Aldöbern's dumfounding accusation, steht auf, sieht ihm steif ins Gesicht (and then—another favorite business—holt einen Stuhl: Schro. 594 -f ). Agnes drinks what she believes to be poison from Ottokar's hand, wobei sie ihn unverwandt ansieht (1307). Eustache, beginning to doubt her husband, sieht ihn an (1517). W h e n she avers Sylvester's innocence, Rupert sieht ihr starr ins Gesicht (1941). Before the Vehme, Käthchen looks questioningly at her Graf, and he with

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candor at the judges (II, 194, 202). A t Käthchen's amazing dream-story, the C o u n t starrt sie an (II, 281). In Die Hermannsschlacht we have the steht ihn an a dozen times ( 5 8 9 + , 6 6 2 - f , 1 0 6 5 + , 1092 - f , 1361 - f , 1808, 2 1 4 4 - f , etc.)—unvaried, except for the tötenden Blick which H e r m a n n shoots at Varus (2516 - f ) . T h e phrase is a little less frequent, but almost equally unvaried, in Homburg (64 + , 103 - f , 747 + , 752, 1313 + , 1487 + , 1813 + ) . T h e business of ansehen is also found plentifully in Kleist's stories, there, of course, in the past tense, and modified by such favorite adverbs as befremdet, betreten, betroffen, zerstreut, or unverwandt or mit großen Augen (e.g., for Ko. alone, III, 159, 181, 184, i86[bis], ìgofbis], 191, 217, 224, 230, 235, 242, 245, 248). In the anecdote Französisches Exerzitium, an artillery captain assigns each man in a battery the spot where he is to stay and die, wobei er ihn ansieht (IV, 191)· A variant of this is the casting down of the eyes, for example when Käthchen, trying to remember, sieht vor sich nieder (II, 198). T h i s expressive business also appears in the narrative works, varied with die Augen (den Blick) zu Boden (zur Erde) schlagen and with varying degrees of adverbial specification (III, 151, 154, 164, 194, 210, 219, 259, 277, 325). It is used twice in Über das Marionettentheater (IV, 136). T h e tendency to daydream so characteristic of Kleist and his heroes is caught in the telescoped phrase vor sich niederträumen (— träumend vor sich niedersehen). Graf Wetter, on hearing Käthchen's strange recital, träumt vor sich nieder (II, 281). Penthesilea is described as a Träumerin (1538), and when we first see her, staring blankly into space (63 ff.), she is surely as geistesabwesend as the Prince. He, of course, repeatedly träumt vor sich nieder (204 -f-, 331 427 + ) , as we can picture Kleist doing at W i e l a n d ' s table.

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Kleist shows an extraordinary concern with the business of seating and the manipulation of chairs. There is a striking case of it in an early scene of Schroffenstein, where, beginning with Sylvester's words to Aldöbern, "verzeih, / Daß ich mich setze, setz' dich zu mir" (560 f.), the idea of sitting down occurs no less than eight times in forty-odd lines, culminating in a veritable barrage: Nun, setz' dich (596); Setz' dich, setz' dich (597); nun, setz' dich (601); Nun, so setz' dich / Doch, Alter (603 f.). T h e situation already instanced in Guiskard finds a curious repetition in Penthesilea. Guiskard sieht sich um. . . . Die Kaiserin zieht eine große Heerpauke herbei, on which Guiskard sich sanft niederläßt (486 ff.). So Penthesilea sieht sich um. . . . Die Amazonen wälzen einen Stein herbei. Penthesilea läßt sich . . . darauf nieder (whereupon, with Kleistian explicitness, setzt sich auch Prothoe, 2796 ff.). Clearly, it would have been less trouble to lead Penthesilea over to the boulder; but there was something in the action of bringing up a seat, be it drum, or stone, or chair, that seemed meaningful to Kleist. Mutatis mutandis, the Guiskard situation echoes in the Marquise, where again a daughter shoves forward a seat for a weakened father: schob ihm einen Sessel hin, damit er sich darauf setze (III, 287). An informal variation of this occurs in the Verlobung, where Babekan, seated in a Sessel, with her foot shoves up a chair for Gustav (III, 318). Theobald, in his workshop, takes care to seat the Count: nötig' ihn auf einen Sessel . . . nieder ( K ä I I , 187). A little later, the Count, in his castle, does the same for Theobald: nöt'ge ihn auf einen Stuhl nieder (190). Kohlhaas observes the same courtesy with the Trödelweib who visits him in prison: nötigte sie . . . auf einen Stuhl nieder (III, 241). Richter Adam, interested in having Gerichtsrat Walter at ease, brings up a chair and prays him be seated; but Walter,

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intent on business, remonstrates, " L a ß t sein" (Kr. 328 f.). I n Käthchen, II, 12, K u n i g u n d e brings u p one chair, the C o u n t another (the old Countess has risen from hers), and Kleist adds sie lassen sich sämtlich nieder (II, 237). A t the beginning of II, 9, K u n i g u n d e setzt sich vor einer Toilette nieder, Rosalie brings in Brigitte and bids her be seated, and a few lines further on, Kleist is careful to add that Brigitte has duly sat down (II, 230). Kleist habitually pictures a person sitting down beside another on a chair, Sessel, or Divan at the beginning of a conversation. Kohlhaas negotiates with the A m t m a n n nachdem sich derselbe bei ihm niedergelassen (III, 159). Lisbeth having thrown herself agitatedly into an armchair, her husband fondly setzte sich zu ihr . . . nieder; a moment later he gets u p again, sits d o w n at a desk, and zog sie auf seinen Schoß nieder (III, 163). Xaviera draws N i c o l o down beside her on her divan (Fi., III, 372). In the little scene of the encounter in the public garden in the Marionettentheater, the author specifically mentions his sitting d o w n beside Mr. C . at the start of their discussion: so ließ ich mich bei ihm nieder (IV, 1 3 3 ) — again a quite dispensable but quite characteristic detail. W h e n Hohenzollern comes to see the arrested Prince, the latter wendet sich und holt Stühle (Ho. 798 -f-). W h e n Natalie comes to see the Elector, he bringt ihr einen Stuhl and asks her to sit down (1186 f.). In both cases, this is not done at the beginning of the scene, and has a definite significance when it is done. Natalie's action in sitting down, overcome by her lover's picture of his impending execution: läßt sich, bei diesen Worten, erschüttert an einen Tisch nieder (992 + ) , emphasize the impact of his words more than a speech of hers could. 2 4 In a scene of quite different tenor, she tries to hurry him into writing a letter by b r i n g i n g up a chair for him (1323 + ) — a service most unconventional

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for a princessi In fact, she is not seated at any time during this scene; but the Prince's sittings down and gettings up contribute markedly to what might be called the dramatic punctuation of the dialogue. T h e chair plays an expressive part in the "stage directions" of Kleist's stories as well. In Kohlhaas, the ChamberIain evinces his gratification at having found—so he thinks —an ally in the Prinz von Meissen indem, er für ihn und den Kurfürsten Stühle von der Wand nahm, und auf eine verbindliche Weise ins Zimmer setzte. Thereupon the Prinz, indem er den Stuhl, ohne sich zu setzen, in der Hand hielt, serves notice, through this very gesture, that he by no means agrees with the Chamberlain (III, 189 f.). T h e Junker von Tronka setzte sich, indem er dies sagte (195), betraying weakness and affliction. T h e Großkanzler, indem er sich niederließ (200) indicates disinclination to accommodate the Junker. When the Kurfürst sich von seinem Sessel erhob (205), he terminates a visit. In the Marquise, the Kommendant, faced with the Count's puzzling suit, setzte ihm, auf eine verbindliche, obschon etwas ernsthafte, Art, einen Stuhl hin (III, 256)— we realize what ceremonial importance the chair hasl T h e Count setzte sich . . . nieder and engages in a lengthy discussion, the unsuccessful termination of which he indicates indem er sich erhob und seinen Stuhl wegsetzte (259). He makes one further suggestion, however, and waits a moment, den Stuhl in der Hand, an der Wand stehend (260), for its effect; then he leaves the room. Later, the Marquise summons a physician, and nötigte ihn . . . auf den Divan nieder (267). In the scene of her father's remorse, there is another seating sequence: the Marquise fragte ihn, ob er sich nicht setzen wolle? . . . wollte ihn auf einen Sessel niederziehen; . . . schob ihm einen Sessel hin, damit er sich darauf setze [!]; but er setzte sich . . . nicht, until finally, after repeated

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urgings, he does sit down: sich endlich . . . niedergesetzt hatte, which marks the end of his penance (III, 287 f.). In Die heilige Cäcilie, we see the mother of the iconoclasts, overcome at finding her sons in a madhouse, ihrer Kräfte beraubt, auf einen Stuhl niedergesunken (III, 381). A friend of her sons tells her their story, nachdem er sie auf einen Stuhl niedergenötigt hatte (382). In Der Zweikampf, Littegarde leads her champion's mother and sisters to their seats in the stands, and later one of the sisters brings up a chair for Friedrich; Kleist is again explicit: "setzte ihm, auf den W i n k der Mutter, einen Stuhl hin, und lud ihn . . . ein, sich darauf zu setzen" (III, 415). In the essay Uber die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken, Kleist departs from his source 25 to bring in his favorite seating business; he has Mirabeau, at the end of his inspired speech, sit down in emphatic self-satisfaction—Worauf er sich, selbst zufrieden, auf einen SiuÄi[!] niedersetzte (IV, 76). Kneeling, in various degrees, is another characteristic activity in Kleist's works. His people fall at each other's feet in a variety of emotions; in Staub zu deinen Füßen is a frequent phrase. T h e Prince kneels frantically before the Electress, Natalie solemnly before the Elector, the Prince in exaltation before his sovereign (Ho. 1767 ff.), Kunigunde gratefully before Graf Wetter (II, 223), Gustav in despair before the dying T o n i . T h e Romans are alleged to compel their captives to kneel before Zeus: "Zeus, ihrem Greulgott, in den Staub zu knien"; on the other hand, reprieved Romans are to kneel before Hermann: "hier im Staube sollen sie / Das Leben dir . . . danken" (Her. 934, 1154 f.). Before the court, Käthchen kneels to the Count, not the judges, and he asks her, "Was neigst du mir dein Angesicht in Staub?" (Π, 193)· Staub, another of Kleist's recurrent concepts, is used more often figuratively than literally. Its figurative connotation is

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frequently death, as in Varus's mich hier mit Dolchen in den Staub zu werfen (Her. 2019); or nothingness, as in Penthesilea's Staub lieber, als ein Weib sein, das nicht reizt (Pe. 1253); or ignominious defeat, as in Achilles's Den Staub . . . / Zu seines Gegners Füßen aufzulecken (Pe. 2367 f.). Staub often signifies humility, where no notion of actual dust is involved: Natalie kneels in the Elector's state chamber zu deiner Füße Staub (Ho. 1081); the Prädikant in the cathedral has his head inbrünstig in den Staub herab gedrückt (III, 383); Käthchen is shown in Staub niederfallend before her Count, and a judge of the Vehme so describes her: in Staub liegt sie vor ihm (II, 196, 197). Käthchen and Theobald kneel before each other, as Theobald says he will before the Count (II, 245). Rescued from the fire by the cherub, Käthchen stürzt vor ihm nieder; in her dream, she fell to her knees before the Count and, coming awake, fällt auf ihre beiden Kniee nieder before him (II, 267, 282, 284). Lisbeth falls on her knees before Kohlhaas (III, 162); so do the old housekeeper at Tronka Castle (168), the Abbess with all her nuns (171), and the Elector with all his suite Ho. 790 + ) . Kohlhaas bends his knee before Luther (185) and the Chamberlain warf sich auf Knieen . . . nieder before his sovereign (234). Count F. kneels in adoration and tenderness before the Marchioness (III, 265). She kneels in utter distraction before her mother (269) and her father (273); in both cases, this progresses to complete prostration and embracing of the knees, an antique gesture which we find also in Homburg (966), Verlobung, and Zweikampf (III, 334, 400). T h e Marchioness kneels in the driveway beside her mother's carriage (III, 283). T h e mother tells of the groom's kneeling before her and her husband (284); she kneels before her exculpated daughter and refuses to be raised up, so that the daughter drops to her knees beside her: legte sich gleichfalls

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auf Knieen vor ihr nieder (285). Such reciprocal kneeling occurs also in Käthchen (II, 245), in the Hermannsschlacht (at the beginning of the final scene), and in the Zweikampf (III, 416, 418). Another kneeling sequence ensues later in the Marquise between the Count and Julietta (291). T h e gesture even invades figures of speech, as when the apocryphal concept of the "knees of the heart" is activated into O du, j Vor der mein Herz auf Knieen niederfällt! (Ρ e. 2799 f.)· Kleist often specifies the raising of the suppliant from his knees. So the Elector, when Natalie has made her plea, erhebt sie (Ho. 1091 +)—which vaguely reminds us of Amphitryon II, 5, where Alkmene likewise is raised from her knees and given ambiguous comfort by a sovereign in ironical command of the situation. T h e Marchioness is lifted from the roadway by her mother and a groom (III, 283); later, she helps her mother to rise (285). Babekan, sitting down, raises her kneeling daughter from the floor (III, 334). In Sonderbare Geschichte we again encounter the characteristic business of zu-Füßen-Werfen and vom-Boden-Aufheben (IV, 151). Sometimes the suppliant insists on some asssurance before letting himself be raised up. Thus Eve wirft sich Waltern zu Füßen; Walter says, Steh auf, but Eve replies, Nicht eher, Herr, als bis Ihr . . . (Variant to Kr42 ff.). Hermann kneels in homage before Marbod; Marbod says, Steh auf! but Hermann insists, Nicht eh'r, o Herr, als bis du mir gelobt . . . (Her., last scene). The Prince kneels before the Electress; she bids him rise: Steh auf . . . Steh auf! but the Prince insists Nicht, Tante, eh'r, als bis du mir gelobt . . . (Ho. 1005 ff.). T h e Obristin will not let her daughter raise her: eher nicht von deinen Füßen weich' ich, bis du mir sagst . . . (III, 285). The kneeling or obeisance is sometimes accompanied by the crossing of the hands on the breast. In Cäcilie, the

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Prädikant läßt sich, mit kreuzweis auf die Brust gelegten Händen, auf Knieen nieder (III, 383). Kohlhaas, just before his execution, ließ sich . . . mit kreuzweis auf die Brust gelegten Händen, vor dem Kurfürsten nieder (III, 247). Earlier, when he left Luther's presence, he had laid his hands on his breast as an Ausdruck schmerzlicher Empfindung (187). In Käthchen, the heroine looks at the Count und legt ihre Hände auf die Brust (II, 194); the Phöbus-print said more explicitly mit kreuzweis auf die Brust gelegten Händen (IV, 356). Kneeling can take extreme forms in Kleist. Käthchen, when she first meets Graf Wetter: leichenbleich, mit Händen wie zur Anbetung verschränkt, den Boden mit Brust und Scheiteln küssend, stürzt sie vor ihm nieder (II, 186). T h e Marquise before her mother: indem sie sich auf Knieen vor ihr niederließ, very soon fiel ganz auf das Gesicht nieder, und umfaßte ihre Kniee (III, 269 f.). The four brothers in Cäcilie lie prostrate at the altar, den Boden mit Brust und Scheiteln küssend (III, 384). In the Erdbeben, Josephe wishes ihr Antlitz vor dem Schöpfer in den Staub zu legen, and the grateful Jeronimo senkte sich so tief, daß seine Stir7i den Boden berührte (III, 306, 298). Littegarde, in her prison cell, retreats, on her knees, before her beloved; she prostrates herself before him, das Antlitz ganz auf den Boden gestreckt; she describes herself as fervently embracing his knees, washing his feet with her tears, writhing before him like a worm in the dust (III, 415). In another moment she has her face completely on the ground between his feet: ihr Gesicht, mit verzweiflungsvoll vorgestützten Händen, ganz zwischen die Sohlen seiner Füße bergend (416). There is an oriental quality in such pictures. Often in connection with kneeling, there is much business with hands in Kleist: taking another's hand, holding it, pressing it, letting go of it, kissing it, raining tears and

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kisses upon i t — a l l are for Kleistian persons forms of emotional expression that surpass words. Kleist himself set the pattern at the beginning of his career in his reaction to Wieland's praise: " . . . d a ß m i r . . . die Sprache vergieng, u n d ich zu seinen F ü ß e n niederstürzte, seine H ä n d e mit heißen Küssen überströmend" (Bfe. II, 103 f.). Years later, Kleist begins a letter—his first expressly patriotic o n e — thus: "Ich mögte Ihre H a n d ergreifen . . . und einen langen und heißen K u ß darauf drücken!" T h i s , he continues, w o u l d express, as words c a n n o t — " D e n n was soll ich Ihnen . . . sagen?"—his j o y f u l emotions over the new prospects for his country.2® In Käthchen, and in the Marquise and other tales, there is frequent kissing of hands and weeping on hands. T o n i , kneeling by her sleeping lover's bed in a transport of tenderness, covers his hand with kisses—without w a k i n g him (III, 340)! Kohlhaas, kneeling, grasps Luther's hand, bends over it and kisses it (III, 185 f.). T h e Saxon Elector presses the Chamberlain's hand between both of his in a personal appeal (227); again he grasps it, presses it to his heart with a sigh (234), holds it d u r i n g a long story, lets it go, and again presses it to his breast (237, 238). Prothoe is moved to kiss Penthesilea's gory hand (2801). A t an important point in Der Findling, we have the full sequence of taking, pressing, kissing, and weeping upon a hand: Dabei faßte er des Alten Hand, drückte und küßte sie und weinte darauf nieder (III, 358). A Königsberg letter to Altenstein closes: "Ich neige mich auf Ihre Hand, und küsse sie, und w e i n e l " (Bfe. II, 147). H o w personal the action of kneeling and hand kissing was for Kleist is shown by the fact that one of his last and deepest letters—to Marie von K l e i s t — b o t h begins and ends with it (Bfe. II, 280, 283). Even a casual reader of Kleist's plays and stories must be struck by the readiness with which his characters blush or

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turn pale. Glutrot, hochrot, hochrot glühend, totenbleich, leichenblaß are typical expressions in his letters as well as his works. He depicts blushing in extreme degree, as for example by Käthchen: eine Röte, daß ich denke, ihre Schürze wird angehen, flammt über ihr Antlitz empor (II, 190); or by Penthesilea: mit der Wangen Rot, war's Wut, war's Scham, / Die Rüstung wieder bis zum Gurt sich färbend (Pe. 97 f.; cf. 69 ff.). Kohlhaas's blush, as he reads Luther's placard: eine dunkle Röte stieg in sein Antlitz empor, tells us more of was in seiner Seele vorging (III, 181) than words could—and he speaks less than a dozen thereafter in this critical scene. One could make a lengthy list of instances of erblassen too, often in alternation with blushing. Kleist expects not only his somnambulant Prince to blush (Ho. 64 + ) but his Princess to turn pale when she hears a letter read ( 1 3 1 3 + ) or Penthesilea to speak mit plötzlich aufflammendem Gesicht (Pe. 1 2 0 9 + ) and Abälard mit einer fliegenden Blässe (Gui. 391 + ) · Of Achilles it is said, Das Blut schießt ihm ins Gesicht (Pe. 2489). These are not true stage directions, being descriptive of, rather than prescriptive for, the actor. Fainting, Ohnmacht, is another emotional reaction that runs all through Kleist's writings from first to last, with instances too numerous to mention. It is even developed into "chain fainting," as in the case of the detested Junker von Tronka, der aus einer Ohnmacht in die andere fiel, or Gustav, in the Verlobung, who likewise aus einer Ohnmacht in die andere fiel (III, 175, 330). There is perhaps no other play on record that ends, like Homburg, with the hero's swooning for joy. Another Kleistian bit of business is that of wreath twining and laureation. Already in Schroffenstein, at the beginning of Act II, we find Agnes so engaged: sitzt an der Erde und knüpft Kränze, of wild flowers with which she then crowns

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Ottokar. In Penthesilea it is roses that are twined (Sc. 6, Sc. 14) for a crown for Achilles and the captive Greeks. T h e height of hyperbole is reached when the despairing Penthesilea would dissolve the very Kranz der Welten (1229 f.). In a play where love becomes destructive, the crown of flowers varies weirdly with one of wounds. Early in the action, Achilles, with a sinister mingling of amorous and murderous desire, had intended such a garland for Penthesilea: Als bis ich sie zu meiner Braut gemacht, Und sie, die Stirn bekränzt mit Todeswunden, Kann durch die Straßen häuptlings mit mir schleifen. (613 ff.) In the end it is he who suffers this fate: Ach, diese blut'gen Rosenl Ach, dieser Kranz von Wunden um sein Haupt! Ach, wie die Knospen, frischen Grabduft streuend, Zum Fest für die Gewürme niedergehn! (2907 ff.) T h e wreath as a symbol for fame was of course in Kleist's mind when he wrote to Ulrike of his endeavor mir den Kranz der Unsterblichkeit zusammen zu pflücken, and of his vain struggles with the supreme drama that was intended zu so vielen Kränzen noch einen auf unsere Familie herabzuringen; and again when he reported that he had been crowned mit einem Lorbeer in Dresden ( B f e . II, 107, 110, 185). Zoroaster, in one of the most exalted passages of Kleist's prose, prays to the Lord: "einen Kranz . . . lehre mich winden, womit ich . . . den, der dir wohlgefällig ist, krönel" (IV, 128). T h e Prince who twines himself a laurel wreath in a dream and is finally granted it in fact, personifies Kleist's own longing for the victor's crown in love and war and poetry. In the letter to Ulrike just cited, Kleist speaks of the sweat of his prolonged effort over Guiskard, mixing this picture

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incongruously with that of the compassionate mother who kisses him and wipes his brow: unsere heilige Schutzgöttinn . . . küßt mir gerührt den Schweiß von der Stime (Bfe. II, 110). It may well be that, as Fries suggests (op. cit., p. 70), Kleist attributes to his heroes his own proclivity to sweat readily in excitement or exertion. At any rate, it is a frequent phenomenon, not limited by sex or rank. Guiskard's schweißerfüllte Nächte (78) are surely an echo of Kleist's own. Achilles, when we first see him, wischt sich den Schweiß von der Stirn (Pe. 492 + ) . Theobald says to Käthchen deine Stime ist voll Schweiß (II, 243). Herse, interrogated by Kohlhaas, trocknete sich den Schweiß von der Stime (III, 151). T h e Elector of Saxony anxiously asks a question, indem, er sich den Schweiß abtrocknete (227); later he falls back on his pillows, während er sich den Schweiß abtrocknete (237). Gustav stares at the dying Toni, indem er sich den Schweiß von der Stirn abwischte (III, 350). T h e mad iconoclasts wischen sich mit einem Tuch den Schweiß von der Stirn (III, 386). T h e Germans, according to the Katechismus der Deutschen, have labored daß ihnen der Schweiß . . . von der Stirn triefte (IV, 107). T h e brave trooper in the war anecdote accepts a drink, indem er sich den Schweiß von der Stirn abtrocknet (IV, 188). Warfare is frequent in Kleist's plots, and one of its stylized features is the tactic of scaling a hill and looking off from it. Guiskard's tent stands on a hill, and so does Hermann's. In Penthesilea we see a band of Greeks welche . . . einen Hügel bestiegen haben (355 -)-)» a n d the warrior maidens likewise ersteigen einen Hügel repeatedly (997 + , 1010, 2590-f)· Prinz Friedrich and his officers besteigen sämtlich einen Hügel (Ho. 430 -(-). At the beginning of Act III of Die Hermannsschlacht, Hermann and his leaders look off from a Hügel, then come down from it; at the beginning

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of Act V, Scene 20, Marbod and his leaders look off from a Hügel, then descend. T h e conventional gesture of the victor planting his foot on a fallen foe is varied and intensified in Kleist. Penthesilea is told, of Achilles, "Den Fußtritt will er, und erklärt es laut, / Auf deinen königlichen Nacken setzen" (780 f.). In despondent mood, she is ready to suffer this fate: Laßt ihn den Fuß gestählt, es ist mir recht, Auf diesen Nacken setzen. (1244 f.) Er soll den Fuß auf meinen Nacken setzen( (1603) Odysseus puts the idea in crass terms: . . . gern möcht' ich, Gesteh' ich dir, die Spur von deinem Fußtritt Auf ihrer rosenblütnen Wange sehn. (534 ff.) Graf Wetter speaks in even more brutal terms as he sets his foot on the felled Theobald's chest: "Was hindert mich, im Grimm gerechten Siegs, / Daß ich den Fuß ins Hirn dir drücke?" (II, 296). Hermann sees Rome as a giant who Den Fuß auf Ost und Westen setzet, Des Parthers mut'gen Nacken hier, Und dort den tapfern Gallier niedertretend. (Her. 4 ff.) T h e victimized Kohlhaas feels an impulse to knock down the castle warden: den . . . Dickwanst in den Kot zu werfen, und den Fuß auf sein kupfernes Antlitz zu setzen (III, 147). Though he himself must succumb, he exults in his power seines Feindes Ferse, in dem Augenblick, da sie ihn in den Staub trat, tödlich zu verwunden (242). Graf Jacob, victor in the duel, sets his foot on the breast of the prostrate Friedrich (Zw., III, 411). In Kleist's patriotic writings, the picture is transferred to Napoleon, an unscrupulous enemy der den König von Preußen . . . zu Boden geschlagen hat,

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und . . . mit seinem grimmigen Fuß auf dem Nacken desselben verweilte, a conqueror whose military genius it would be suicidal to admire in dem Augenblick . . . da er mich in den Kot wirft und mein Antlitz mit Füßen tritt (IV, 9 i , 106). T h e odd feature of a twitching lip (which was to be used later as a Byronic effect by Heine), appears in several places in Kleist. Achilles is enraged by the sardonic curl of Odysseus's upper lip: " M i r widersteht's, es macht mir Übelkeiten, / W e n n ich den Zug um seine Lippe sehe" (Pe. 2451 f.); and he warns him, " H a l t deine Oberlippe fest, U l y ß l " (2496) lest they come to blows. A like häßliches Zucken seiner Oberlippe is ascribed to the villainous Nicolo (Fi., III, 372). In the essay Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken Kleist speculates on the effect which das Zucken einer Oberlippe may have had on the course of the French Revolution (IV, 77). Kleist likes to have his heroes step to windows and look out of them. In a climactic scene of Schroffenstein, Eustache rushes in and throws open a window to disclose the brutal slaying of Jeronimus, of which she gives a brief and gripping picture (1785 ff.). It is proof of Rupert's complicity that he will not go to the window and quell the mob. A pendant to this scene comes one act later (Act IV, Sc. 2) in the rival castle: Sylvester enters, opens a window, and remains standing at it, evincing deep emotion. T h e prospect he sees from the window and describes sums u p in a few lines the whole spirit of the play—gloomy, mysterious, fate-driven: Es ist ein trüber T a g Mit Wind und Regen, viel Bewegung draußen.— Es zieht ein unsichtbarer Geist, gewaltig. Nach Einer Richtung alles fort, den Staub, Die Wolken, und die Wellen.— (2019 ff.)

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In Käthchen, II, 10, the window again figures in a suggestive pantomime: Kunigunde, having looked at herself in a mirror, goes to a window, opens it, and examines with great interest a limed twig on which a cock finch has left a feather. Nothing could be more eloquent of her designs on Graf Wetter. A t the beginning of A c t V of Homburg, Graf T r u c h ß flings open a window to display to the Elector Kottwitz's regiment drawn up in front of the palace—witho u t orders! T h e ruler refuses to be upset; but after T r u c h ß has left, he goes again to the window and looks out for a moment, as he seemingly comes to certain decisions (1424 + ) . Kohlhaas, pondering a fundamental question put to him by Luther, steps to the window, evidently in emotion and recollection (III, 185). T h e Elector of Saxony, blushing deeply, steps to a window to hide his embarrassment (190); so does the Freiherr von W e n k (200). T h e Prinz von Meissen is shown indem, er ans Fenster trat and indem er das Fenster wieder verließ (194). Kohlhaas steps thoughtfully to a window of his house (211), observantly to a window of his prison (239). T h e discomfited Kommendant stand am Fenster, sah auf die Straße hinaus, und sagte nichts (Mar., III, 265). T h e Count, having read the Marquise's advertisement, steps to the window for a moment and becomes sure of his course of action (279). Gustav, emotionally aroused over a story he has told, trat . . . auf einen Augenblick an das Fenster und sah in die Nacht hinaus—seeing, like Sylvester, a stormy, ominous scene (Verl., III, 326). Later, he leans out of another window (326). Still later, under great emotional stress, he again steps to the window; T o n i follows him, and the climax ensues (330). Gustav's last movement is to step to a window and blow his brains out (351). Certain other striking bits of business recur less frequently. Both T h e o b a l d and the Marquise dip a hand into

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a holy-water basin at the door and spray a man (Graf Wetter, Graf F.) whom they consider devilish (II, 190; III, 291 f.). T h e characteristically vehement action of seizing a person by the breast is recorded several times in Kohlhaas (III, 153, 167, 202), and in the Verlobung (III, 342) and Französisches Exerzitium (IV, 191). T h e cruel Kunigunde suggests that her maid wedge Käthchen's head between her knees and force poison down her throat (II, 290); the frenzied Piachi holds the head of Nicolo between his knees and crams his traitorous document into his mouth (III, 375). T h e judges of the Vehmgericht are seen running from the cave in horror, scattering their Taftmäntel und Federhüte (II, 183); the horrified conspirators in Cäcilie rush from the inn, scattering their Mäntel und Hüte (III, 385). Mantel und Federhut becomes something of a stock combination, in Homburg and elsewhere. In that play, the Prince makes a request indem er . . . den Arm sanft um Nataliens Leib legt; and Natalie macht sich von ihm los (701 ff.). In the Verlobung, Gustav speaks to T o n i indem er den Arm sanft um ihren Leib schlug, and when he repeats the gesture, T o n i replies indem sie sich aus seinem Arm loswand (III, 322, 337). T h a t is, the same conduct in widely different locales and social circumstances. T h e business of putting on and taking off eyeglasses is used as readily for an old mulatto woman in Haiti as for the Grand Chancellor of Saxony, with the same wording: indem erjsie sich die Brille von der Nase nahm / wieder aufsetzte (III, 200, 317, 319). Babekan in fact speaks and behaves for the most part like a French lady. These things again show, as his early letters did, how little local color meant to Kleist. He is not a realist bent on reproducing definite localities but a stylist who conforms the matter of reality to molds pre-existent in his own mind.

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Theodor Fontane said, "bei Kleist sind die Dinge groß, nicht die Worte." Throughout Kleist's works we find what we have called the "eloquent object," a thing about which the action turns or which symbolizes significant relations between persons. The Kindesfinger is the fateful corpus delicti in Schroffenstein, the diadem with its shifting initials in Amphitryon, the historic jug in Der zerbrochene Krug, the lock of blond hair in Die Hermannsschlacht, the two black horses in Kohlhaas. As these Rappen reappear at the end, restored, to embody the justice of the horse dealer's original contention, so the Lorbeerkranz which is a thing of dream at the beginning of Homburg becomes a thing of rich reality at the close. Natalie's glove as a token of Liebesglück is foreshadowed by the veil which Johann, in the first scene of Schroffenstein, brings back from a meeting with Agnes and is questioned about by his half brother, as Prinz Friedrich is by his bosom friend. Of unhappier omen are the instruments of violence which appear suddenly on Kleist's walls. In the fiist print of Käthchen, "die Peitschel" was called for by one of the judges (at II, 195, 31 ; see IV, 356). One must assume that it was at hand, on the wall or the judges' bench! Käthchen reports the Count as taking die Peitsche . . . herab vom Riegel and her retreating before it (II, 206). Later, incensed at her persistence, her hoher Herr cries, "Die Peitsche her! An welchem Nagel hängt sie?" and then, Er nimmt die Peitsche von der Wand (253). He apparently keeps the whip in his hand for several pages and finally flings it out through a window, daß die Scherben niederklirren (258).27 In speechless rage, Piachi nahm . . . die Peitsche von der Wand to drive Nicolo out of his house (Fi., III, 374). One wonders how a whip comes to be on the wall of a lady's bedroom. It is less strange (though Kleist notes it as strange) to find an opportune rope on the wall of a hut in St. Domingo

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(III, 341); b u t this rope too functions as an (apparent) instrument of aggression. I n the Marquise, an Italian colonel snatches a pistol f r o m the wall and fires it over the head of his daughter (III, 273). In the Verlobung, a negro insurrectionist snatches a pistol f r o m the wall and fires it a m o n g his foes (III, 347). In the Zweikampf, in a medieval setting, it is a sword that Littegarde's raging brother snatches from the w a l l — t h e verb is reißen each time. In the anecdote Der neuere (glücklichere) Werther, the y o u n g hero shoots himself mit einem Pistol, das an der Wand hängt (IV, 159). Incidentally, w e have here the same paradoxical outcome as in Der Zweikampf: the apparently d o o m e d man recovers, w h i l e his rival unexpectedly succumbs. T h e primitive Keule or c l u b is Kleist's favorite weapon, for offense and (rarely) defense. In his first play, an innocent m a n is killed by a m o b mit Keulen (Schro. 1786 f.). A l k m e n e shrinks f r o m the glances of a crowd die mich, wie Keulen, kreuzend niederschlagen (Am. 2269). Frau Marthe declares, " W a s R e c h t liebt, sollte zu den K e u l e n g r e i f e n " (Kr. 1050). For a leader of the Amazons, the Keule is a w e a p o n all b u t as primitive as the clawing hand: Mit Keulen könnte man, mit Händen ihn / . .. niederreißen (Pe. 1160 f.). H e r m a n n ' s m e n are thought of as armed w i t h clubs: der erste Keulenschlag (Her. 824, 1606) is simply the first military b l o w ; eine Keule doppelten Gewichts is specified for the execution of a R o m a n leader (2219 f.). A society that denies h i m justice, Kohlhaas maintains, puts die Keule, die mich selbst schützt into his hand (III, 183). Jeronimo, like his namesake in Schroffenstein, is felled mit einem ungeheuren Keulenschlage, and a m o m e n t later Constanze and then Josephe are slain in the same manner (Erd., I l l , 310 f.). I n the Verlobung, a y o u n g Portuguese is beaten d o w n mit Keulen (III, 333). In Kleist's patriotic poems, too, the c l u b figures

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as the weapon to be wielded against the French invader: Brüder, nehmt die Keule doch, / Daß er gleichfalls weiche! (IV, 34). Of the three versions of Germania an ihre Kinder, two have Keule, not Spieß, in the refrain (IV, 31, line 23; cf. 387)· T h e splendid rose window of a cathedral (perhaps a vivid Dresden impression) is described in the Erdbeben: die große von gefärbtem Glas gearbeitete Rose in der Kirche äußerstem Hintergrunde glühte, and again in Cäcilie: die prächtig funkelnde Rose im Hintergrund der Kirche (III, 307, 387). A singular detail in the Chilean cathedral scene: an den Wänden hoch, in den Rahmen der Gemälde, hingen Knaben, und hielten . . . ihre Mützen in der Hand (III, 307), is repeated in the poem Der Welt Lauf: Hoch an den Säulen hingen Knaben, j Und hielten ihre Mützen in der Hand (IV, 47). T h e perch in either case seems precarious and unrealistic. T h e Hohlspiegel or concave mirror (presumably a reminiscence of physical studies in Frankfurt) is used in Schroffenstein (531) and again in the Marionettentheater (IV, 141). A colossal grave, ein Grab von acht Ellen Tiefe, is envisaged by Käthchen (II, 245); such a grave is dug for Lisbeth at Kohlhaas's order: ein Grab von acht Ellen Tiefe (III, 166). A box or Schachtel with playthings which belonged to a child and are now to be given to another child is a rather specialized object introduced into a play and a story (Schro. 438 ff.; Fi., III, 370). If real objects are vital in Kleist's works, so are those objects of poetic reality which we call Bilder or images. Here again, as in other areas of Kleist's mental activity, we find marked repetitions and cross relations. One of his most revealing images is that of the storm-tossed oak. It appears first in an early letter: "Der Sturm reißt den Baum um, aber nicht das Veilchen, der leiseste Abendwind bewegt das

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Veilchen, aber nicht den Baum.—Womit hat das eine vortreffliche Ähnlichkeit?" ( B f e . I, 172). T h i s is the germ, the first bare, factual, didactically pointed statement of an observation which self-knowledge and experience were to fill with tragic meaning and tension: the paradox and hazard of greatness. It is preserved in this letter as one of the dried moralische Reveniien which the young rationalist has brought home for Wilhelmine from his Bilderjagd. Less than a year later it appears in maturer form in another letter, this time from Paris: "Die abgestorbne Eiche, sie steht unerschüttert im Sturm, aber die blühende stürzt er, weil er in ihre Krone greifen kann" (Bfe. II, 43). T h e sentimental violet and the schoolmasterly pose are gone; the tragic recognition is concentrated in the last clause, which Kleist underlines; its pentameter form may anticipate, or may be quoted from, his first play, on which he was working about this time: Die kranke, abgestorbne Eiche steht Dem Sturm, doch die gesunde stürzt er nieder, Weil er in ihre Krone greifen kann. (Sehr o. 961 ff.) In a final formulation, the picture is used for the closing lines of Penthesilea, which ring with a note of personal prophecy: Sie sank, weil sie zu stolz und kräftig blühte! Die abgestorbne Eiche steht im Sturm, Doch die gesunde stürzt er schmetternd nieder, Weil er in ihre Krone greifen kann. What was in Schroffenstein an incidental figure of speech is raised in Penthesilea to a choral epilogue epitomizing the heroine and her fate. T h e Lessingian blank verse with its awkward enjambment has yielded to smooth, self-contained pentameters, strengthened by the reduction of two compet-

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ing adjectives to one and the insertion of Kleist's dynamic present participle. Only the last line, which conveys the pride and tragedy of genius, remains unchanged. Finally we hear a faint echo of the heroic figure in Der Zweikampf, when an insignificant wound eventually brings down the redoubtable Graf Jacob wie der Sturmwind eine Eiche (III, 425)·

T h e picture of a Goldwage des Gefühls, a delicately balanced inner scale of feeling or conviction, appears in Alkmene as feminine instinct. Jupiter asks, "Wer könnte dir die augenblickliche / Goldwage der Empfindung so betrügen?" (Am. 1395 f.). It appears as a guiding sense of justice in Kohlhaas: Doch sein Rechtgefühl, das einer Goldwage glich, wankte noch; he is not yet sure whether, before the tribunal of his heart, vor der Schranke seiner eigenen Brust, his opponent is to be adjudged guilty (III, 147). Only after some time, when the scales have tipped, does he feel seine eigne Brust nunmehr in Ordnung (159) and launch himself on his course. For Achilles, the sword is the tongue of decision in the scales of Fate (Pe. 2364). At the glad news that cancels the report of the Elector's death, the Prince urges the messenger, "Sprich 1 Erzähle 1 / Dein Wort fällt schwer wie Gold in meine Brust!" (Ho. 637 f.). Natalie decides to sign a petition Das, in des Herrn Entscheidung . . . j Als ein Gewicht kann in die Wage fallen (1232 f.). And Hohenzollem feels assured that his plea is not lost on the Elector: "Ich bin sicher, / Mein Wort fiel, ein Gewicht, in deine Brust!" (1721 f.). In the face of unexpected hostilities, the Marquise and her mother weigh alternatives of action auf der Wage der weiblichen Überlegung (III, 250). Kleist himself, in view of the hostilities of 1809, had to consider his course of action, and concluded, "Ich . . . finde, man muß sich mit seinem ganzen Gewicht,

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so schwer oder leicht es sein mag, in die Waage der Zeit werfen" ( B f e . II, 221). Allied with the delicate scales of feeling is a Glocke in the heart. Alkmene is sure she possesses a Glocke of innermost feeling that would survive the loss of all physical senses (Am. 1166). T h i s Glockenspiel der Brust can be set ringing by a mere breath or by the quickened pulsebeat of joy (1399 f., 1430). But in the end, Alkmene has cause to curse the inner bell that sounds such false notes (2254). In Penthesilea, the heroine's first tear, which heralds her return to consciousness of what she has done, is conceived as ringing alle Feuerglocken der Empfindung and releasing a flood of sympathetic emotion (Pe. 2783 ff.). T h e picture of the entwining serpent which points up the extreme pessimism of Johann's outburst, "Es hat das Leben mich wie eine Schlange, / Mit Gliedern, zahllos, ekelhaft, umwunden" (Schro. 1048 f.), is reflected, with calmer insight, in the "Paradoxe" Von der Überlegung: "Wer das Leben nicht, wie ein . . . Ringer, umfaßt hält, und tausendgliedrig, nach allen Windungen des Kampfs . . . empfindet" (IV, 180).—Before Achilles's body, Penthesilea says, " U n d wenn mir seine Wunde, / Ein Höllenrachen, gleich entgegengähnte . . ." (Pe. 2893 f.). Natalie tries to frighten the Prince with the same image: "Saht Jhr die Gruft nicht schon . . . / Mit offnem Rachen, Euch entgegengähnen?" (Ho. 1325 f.).—The phrase Parther oder Perser, with the connotation of incredible perfidy, is used by Alkmene (Am. 1158) and by Littegarde (Zw., III, 403).—The figure of the marten, comparatively harmless to Agnes: niemand ist / Uns feindlich, als der Marder höchstens, der / In unsre Hühnerställe bricht (Schro. 743 ff.), is dramatized in Frau Marthe's passionate rhetoric: "Daß sie [Ruprecht's speech] wie der Marder einbricht / Und Wahrheit wie ein gakelnd Huhn erwürgt" (Kr. 1048 f.).—The despairing Johann draws his

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sword on Ottokar: "Mein Leben / U n d deins sind wie zwei Spinnen in der Schachtel. / Drum ziehl" (Schro. 853 ff.). Hermann taunts the quarreling German princes: "Den Römer laßt ihr beid' im Stich, / Und fallt euch, wie zwei Spinnen, selber an" (Her. 253 f.). Amphitryon's vehement spider image (Am. 1950 ff.) is elaborated in even more vindictive terms by the Rheingraf (Kä., Act III, Sc. 2). T h e young lover Kleist writes to his fiancée, "ich sehne mich nach einem T a g e [their wedding day], wie der Hirsch in der Mittagshitze nach einem Strome, sich hineinzustürzen" (Bfe. II, 33). T h i s picture reappears, enlarged and sensually heightened, in the ardent words of Graf Wetter near the end of Käthchen: Der Hirsch, der, von der Mittagsglut gequält, Den Grund zerwühlt mit spitzigem Geweih, Er sehnt sich so begierig nicht, Vom Felsen in den Waldstrom sich zu stürzen, Den reißenden, als ich, jetzt, da du mein bist, In alle deine jungen Reize mich. (II, 308) T h e same picture is invoked more briefly by the amorous Ventidius: Thusnelda! Komm und lösche diese Glut, Soll ich, gleich einem jungen Hirsch, Das Haupt voran, mich in die Flut nicht stürzenl (Her. 2360 ff.) Agnes thinks of Ottokar returning to her gleich einem jungen Rosse, das zuletzt / Doch heimkehrt zu dem Stall, der es ernährt (Schro. 708 f.). Achilles assures Penthesilea he will return to her wie junge Rosse / Zum Duft der Krippe, die ihr Leben nährt (Pe. 1842 f.). T h e voluptuous picture of the Perserbraut who is brought naked, dripping with ointment—auf alle Teppiche niederregnend—to the King's chamber (Kä., Act II, Sc. 1), is toned down to more tasteful terms in Homburg (120 ff.):

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Und weil die Nacht so lieblich mich umfing, Mit blondem Haar, von Wohlgeruch ganz triefend— Ach! wie den Bräut'gam eine Perserbraut, So legt' ich hier in ihren Schoß mich nieder. However, an echo of the niederregnen image can be detected, of all places, in the sonnet to Kleist's adored Queen Louise: Wir sahn Dich Anmut endlos niederregnen (IV, 42). T h e picture of the deep well of inward consciousness, used in the sense of loving thought for Alkmene: Steigst du nicht in des Herzens Schacht hinab? (Am. 1432), recurs with fatal force in the account of Penthesilea's spiritual selfdestruction: Denn jetzt steig1 ich in meinen Busen nieder, / Gleich einem Schacht . . . (Pe. 3025 ff.). T h e vernichtendes Gefühl which Penthesilea draws from deep within to end her life is the converse of that innermost Unschuldsgefühl by which Littegarde sustains her life and sanity (Zw., III, 419)· T h e vision of the Wettlauf, the tense and tragic race of life, which Kleist evoked for his friend Ernst von Pfuel: " W i e öffnete sich die Welt unermeßlich, gleich einer Rennbahn, vor unsern in der Begierde des Wettkampfs erzitternden Gemütern I U n d nun liegen wir, übereinander gestürzt, mit unsern Blicken den Lauf zum Ziele vollendend, das uns nie so glänzend erschien, als jetzt, im Staube unsres Sturzes eingehüllt!" (Bfe. II, 127)—this picture anticipates the basic imagery of Penthesilea, a play that might be described as one sustained race for the supreme goals of life, ending in disaster and utter destruction. 28 T h e figure of the dragon which is used for Kohlhaas: den Drachen, der das Land verwüstete (III, 174), is found also in Homburg as Lindwurm (1106) and as der Drache, der die Marken verwüstete in more extended terms (1550-1554). T h e simile of the river for forces of men in battle is employed in an incipient form in Amphitryon (88 f.), to be

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more vividly elaborated in Homburg (649 ff.). T h e figure of the vine, used to adorn a speech by a minor character in Amphitryon: " U m welchen, wie das Weinlaub, würd' sie ranken, / W e n n es ihr Stamm nicht ist, Amphitryon?" (2196 f.), is richly developed and enhanced in significance in the sixth scene of Act II of Homburg, where it both helps to reveal character and symbolizes an important turn in the plot. In one of Kleist's earliest writings, the Aufsatz, den sichern Weg des Glücks zu finden (which, incidentally, borrows extensive passages from one of his letters), Tugend is rather ornately described as der Sonne gleich, die nie so göttlich schön den Horizont mit Flammenröte malt, als wenn die Nächte des Ungewitters sie umlagern (IV, 62). This image rises to the surface again near the end of Kleist's life, in his sonnet to Queen Louise, whom he likens to the sun breaking through storm clouds: " D u bist der Stern, der voller Pracht erst flimmert, / Wenn er durch finstre Wetterwolken bricht!" (IV, 42); and in Homburg (857 ff.), where it expresses the hero's sublime confidence: Nein, Freund, er sammelt diese Nacht von Wolken Nur um mein Haupt, um wie die Sonne mir Durch ihren Dunstkreis strahlend aufzugehn. Penthesilea's zehntausend Sonnen fused into one ball of fire (631 f.) are reduced to the Glanz der tausendfachen Sonne in Homburg (1832). There is a kindred imagery and lighting in the two plays, more restrained in Homburg in keeping with the author's increased artistic maturity. T h e images both of the sea of eternity and the blazing sun of immortality, which appeared in Prinz Friedrich's valedictory, are seen again in the speech of Friedrich von Trota as he too conquers the fear of death: "der T o d schreckt mich nicht mehr, und die Ewigkeit, soeben noch wie ein

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Meer unabsehbaren Elends vor mir ausgebreitet, geht wieder wie ein Reich voll tausend glänziger Sonnen vor mir a u f l " (III, 418). Here too we feel the throb of Kleist's own life. The Echo of G u i s k a r d T h e extraordinary number of interrelations which we have observed among Kleist's completed works give us reason to expect similar interconnections between these and his unfinished or projected works. Our information about the latter is for the most part meager. W e have a letter of Kleist's in which he offers a novel to his publisher Reimer ( B f e . II, 275) and a late allusion in a letter by Ferdinand Grimm to the existence and loss of such a manuscript. 29 But Grimm obviously has this only on hearsay, perhaps from Reimer, his employer, who had it only from Kleist's brief letter. And this letter, typical of Kleist's naïve business tactics, is plainly designed to whet the publisher's appetite and induce him (1) to print Homburg and (2) to pay the author more for his manuscripts. Moreover, one must reckon in the sanguineness with which Kleist was wont to speak of hopes (business profits, publication, stage performance) as though they were accomplished facts; his letters, held against the actual record, provide proof enough of this habit of mind. Of projected or partially written plays on Peter the Hermit or Leopold of Austria we have no firmer evidence than a few isolated remarks by contemporaries. Pfuel's often-quoted report of an impressive scene in Leopold von Österreich has turned out not to refer to Kleist's work at all, but to another writer's. 30 T h e Geschichte meiner Seele, often mentioned in Kleist literature, may have been nothing more than an expression of Kleist's which persons not very close to him mistook to mean a written work. 31 It seems

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extremely d o u b t f u l that these "lost works" of Kleist's will ever be found. Of only one unrealized project do we possess definite evidence from various sides and in fact a substantial sample: the tragedy Robert Guiskard, Herzog der Normänner. T h i s , therefore, can offer us—as far as it extends—a sound basis for a final testing of our principle of repetition in Kleist's m i n d and works and for a cautious conjecture about the fate of the play. 32 Kleist himself tells us, in the letter dated October 26, 1803, from St. Omer, that he has burned his work so weit es fertig war (Bfe. II, 111). T h e 524 verses he published nearly five years later in Phöbus were, we may conclude, a restoration from memory, approximately faithful, but somewhat modified and affected by Kleist's greater maturity and by the works, above all Penthesilea, which he had produced in the interval. T h e influence may have worked both ways. W e cannot follow the mysterious movements of the poetic mind, and in Kleist's, certainly, alles ist Frucht, und alles ist Samen. It is, on the face of it, unthinkable that a work which for a half-thousand days and nights (so Bfe. II, 110) meant so desperately much to Kleist should not have engTaved itself deeply on his m i n d and left its imprint on other works w h i c h subsequently occupied that mind. Kleist was not a writer to throw off productions quickly nor give them u p readily. O n e feels that he is speaking to himself through his "other soul," Prothoe, when she says to the despondent Penthesilea: So niedrig schlägst du deine Kraft nicht an. So schlecht von jenem Preis nicht wirst du denken, Um den du spielst, als daß du wähnen solltest, Das, was er wert, sei schon für ihn geschehn. (Pe. 1308 ff.)

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Kleist thought too highly of his Guiskard ideal, and had too tenacious a spirit, to renounce the attempt forever. Subsequent plays, to some extent echoing Guiskard, represent repeated assaults upon a peak of dramatic achievement that vas still looming before him when he died; his career was indeed ein stets erneutes Anstürmen auf ein nie erreichtes Ziel. In Penthesilea Kleist symbolized himself and his impassioned struggles with this very Guiskard matter. Penthesilea, as Wilhelm Waetzoldt put it years ago, "ist eine einzige große Klage um Guiskard."33 T h e rise and fall of hope and pride, towering ambition and utter dejection, agonized effort to the limit of human endurance, the staking of all success on one great cast—and the bitter acknowledgment of abysmal failure: these are in Penthesilea's outcry t o Prothoe (1302 ff.) as they are in Kleist's to the Schwesterseele Ulrike ( B f e . II, 110 f.). As Penthesilea, in titanic despair, turns against the man she loves and rends him to pieces, so the frenzied poet had turned savagely upon the beloved child of his brain (das Kind seiner Liebe, Bfe. II, 62) and destroyed it—and then, like his heroine, collapsed. He had r like her, killed a part of himself, and for both of them this was a prelude to complete and final self-destruction. Kleist would have consummated this as swiftly as Penthesilea,. had his plan for death in the invasion of England been realized. As a poetic organism, Robert Guiskard could not be reanimated after its destruction by its creator. But portions o f it, etched on the tablets of a retentive memory, could b e rehearsed, and characters, situations, and language from i t would help shape and color those of succeeding works. Not only personally but artistically Penthesilea constitutes to some degree a Wiederaufnahme of Guiskard. T h e fusion of antique and modern dramatic styles, of fate and

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character as determinants of tragedy; the attempt to compose poetry in accordance with the basic laws of music; the structure of continuous action, without act divisions—these we may assume to have been intended for the whole of Guiskard, as they clearly were for Penthesilea. Of course it is hazardous to compare a fragment of some 500 verses with a completed play of over 3,000. But Kleist's own letter of December 17, 1807, to Wieland invites such a comparison, and invites us to think of Penthesilea as in some sort a fulfillment of what Kleist strove for in Guiskard. In that letter, Kleist expresses the wish that he could declaim Penthesilea to Wieland by his fireside, as he did Guiskard years ago, and he continues: "Soviel ist gewiß: ich habe eine Tragödie (Sie wissen, wie ich mich damit gequält habe) von der Brust heruntergehustet; und fühle mich wieder ganz frei!" (Bfe. II, 192). T h e parenthesis can refer only to Guiskard and not to Penthesilea, but the preceding eine Tragödie can mean eine wirklich große Tragödie such as he aimed at in Guiskard and achieved vicariously in Penthesilea. He would not have counted as a really great tragedy the "elende Scharteke" Schroffenstein nor, as not wholly his own, Amphitryon (by subtitle a Lustspiel), so that we are left with Penthesilea as in fact Kleist's only completed tragedy. The eine Tragödie cannot refer to Guiskard, for the next sentence reads, "In Kurzem soll auch [italics mine] der Robert Guiskard folgen," and Wieland is then to say which is better; Kleist himself does not know. This must mean either (1) that Wieland will soon be getting the Guiskard fragment in the Phöbus print—in which case Kleist himself suggests and sanctions a comparison of this piece with the complete Penthesilea—-or (2) that Kleist, having Penthesilea off his chest, will now complete the inhibited Guiskard. T h e latter is the less likely interpretation. In finishing Guiskard after Penthesilea, Kleist would

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in effect be publishing a play after having published a poetic " b i o g r a p h y " of it; perhaps, indeed, this was one consideration that blocked the completion of the fragment. Be that as it may, the least we can say is that the letter proves a close connection and parity between the two plays in Kleist's thinking. A deeply Kleistian experience w h i c h Guiskard and Penthesilea share is that of the great hero whose aspiration to fame and glory is thwarted just short of the goal. W e find a significant anticipation of this in Kleist's early letters: thrice, with increasing dramatic force, he describes a river (the little Weißritz, the M a i n , the R h i n e ) rushing headlong toward its g o a l — i n the third instance, still und breit und majestätisch . . . sicher, wie ein Held zum Siege—only to find a cliff, a hill, a m o u n t a i n range blocking its course (Bfe. I, 105, 153; II, 22 ff., 38). In Guiskard (495 ff.) we find this conception developed, with all the Kleistian attributes of wings and flames and bridal ardor: Auf deinem Fluge rasch, die Brust voll Flammen, Ins Bett der Braut, der du die Arme schon Entgegenstreckst zu dem Vermählungsfest, Tritt, o du Bräutigam der Siegesgöttin, Die Seuche grauenvoll dir in den W e g — ! Essentially the same situation is pictured, in similar terms of flight, aspiration, and frustration, in Penthesilea (676 ff.): W o sich die Hand, die lüsterne, nur regt, Den Ruhm, wenn er bei mir vorüberfleucht, Bei seinem goldnen Lockenhaar zu fassen, Tritt eine Macht mir hämisch in den W e g — In Penthesilea arises another brilliant leader of a military expedition to a distant land; she too impelled by a soaring personal ambition in the pursuit of w h i c h she does not spare her own people; in both cases, representatives of the people

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protest in vain (so it seems in Guiskard) against the needless sacrifice. In both plays, the Heimatmotif is struck with wistf u l force. We find verbal and pictorial reminiscences. As the Plague is personified in Guiskard (14) striding through the Norman camp mit weit ausgreifenden Entsetzensschritten, so in Penthesilea (2615) Civil War is visualized as striding mit weiten Schritten des Entsetzens. Helena is told, Die Sonne steht, blick auf, dir hoch im Scheitel (Gui. 91); Penthesilea is told, in reply to her question, " W o steht die Sonne?" Dort, dir grad im Scheitel (1320). With a mixture of martial and sexual imagery, Achilles voices his impatience at remaining any longer vom Bette fern der Schlacht, die sie [Penthesilea] umwogt (592). In Guiskard, Abälard had spoken of the Norman as wedded to his freedom, das Ehepaar, / Das mir den Ruhm im Bette zeugt der Schlacht (238). This also anticipates the figure the Elector uses when he insists on a legitimate, not a bastard, victory: Das Gesetz will ich, Die Mutter meiner Krone, aufrecht halten, Die ein Geschlecht von Siegen mir erzeugtl (Ho. 1567 ff.) Guiskard's triumphal entrance after a prolonged "build-up" anticipates a similar procedure with Achilles. Even the climactic line on which each scene closes is almost the same: Jetzt seht, o seht doch her!—Da ist er selbstl (Gui. 406) O seht doch her, seht her—Da ist er schon! (Pe. 485) T h e final ravages of the pestilence in the brain of its victim, the madness that makes him, in des Sinns entsetzlicher Verwirrung, turn with bared teeth upon those he loves best (Gui. 51 i f f . ) , seem like a forecast of Penthesilea's final frenzy, in der Verwirrung ihrer jungen Sinne (Pe. 2608 ff.). In contrast to the poetic splendor and agony of Pen-

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thesilea, into which Kleist put his very soul, Die Hermannsschlacht is only an occasional piece, written hastily in response to a patriotic need. It does not lie in the central line of Kleist's accomplishment. Yet even here we find traces of the great abandoned but unforgettable drama. T h e title heroes have an evident kinship. Guiskard seems a preliminary, necessarily incomplete, study for the fuller portrait, in Hermann, of the great iron-willed, self-mastering, resourceful Volksführer to whom his people look f o r guidance and salvation in a supreme crisis, a central pillar of strength on which everything rests. T h e craftiness which; Guiskard's name implies and of which we get some evidence in the text is a trait more extensively developed in Hermann. Neither, we feel, is a man to scruple about the meansto the end which he pursues with utter singleness of mind.. T h e opening stage direction in Guiskard reads: "Szene: Zypressen vor einem Hügel, auf welchem das Zelt Guiskards steht." T h e opening stage direction of Act III in the Hermannsschlacht is almost a copy of it: "Szene: Platz vor einem Hügel, auf welchem das Zelt Hermanns steht." T h e folk in Guiskard, "in unruhiger Bewegung," are likened t o the storm-whipped ocean: Das heult, Gepeitscht vom Sturm der Angst, und schäumt und gischt, Dem offnen Weltmeer gleich. (Gut. 37 ff.) A like comparison is used in the

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Doch bis die Völker sich, die diese Erd' umwogen, Noch jetzt vom Sturm der Zeit gepeitscht, Gleich einer See . . . {Her. 316 ff.) In the tensest, most dramatic episode of Die Hermannsschlacht (Act IV, Sc. 4-5) Kleist again employs, as in Guiskard, the agitated populace, with a Greis as mouth-

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piece. Here too, das Volk speaks unisono (Her. 1543, 1545 ff., 1575) or with unidentified solo voices. It seems as though Kleist had salvaged for the later play one of his most impressive devices in Guiskard, the folk-scene technique. In contrast to Robert Guiskard and Die Hermannsschlacht, thé common folk have very little part in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg: they are given less than two lines to speak (500 ff.). This restriction to aristocratic personnel is one of those elements of convention the blending of which with elements of innovation makes the particular character of Kleist's last and most successful play. Homburg is as personal in its implications as Penthesilea, but it is far more performable. And it contains even more of the inheritance from Guiskard. In Homburg, one may say, the great ideal of a new dramatic style was first and, for Kleist, last embodied in a full-length play for the living stage. It is not too fanciful to think of Guiskard as an eleventhcentury, Norman Friedrich Wilhelm. Both these rugged individuals are rulers of a nation at war and at the same time its field commanders. Both are astute statesmen, idolized leaders (Angebeteter is used of each: Gui. 432, Ho. 1823), fathers to their people, stern in discipline, resourceful in coping with emergencies, majestic, self-controlled, seemingly impregnable personalities. Both expose themselves to extreme danger: Guiskard by tending the sick in the pestilence, the Elector by taking personal risks in battle; this causes concern in their followers (Gui. 466 fï.; Ho. 542 f., 654). Both, in consequence of this exposure, are reported dead (or, in Guiskard's case, dying). Both, however, "revive," to the consternation of an insubordinate young prince of their retinue. On some of these counts Guiskard, as we have seen, is comparable to Hermann as well as to the Elector. All three rulers, significantly, pair strength with gentleness: Milde

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is expressly credited to Guiskard (427), to Hermann (2264 f.), and to the Kurfürst ( 1 1 1 1 , 1319 f.). Kleists characteristic "unheroic hero," who began in Sylvester Schroffenstein and culminates in Prinz Friedrich, is exemplified by the afflicted Guiskard's jammervolles Stöhnen und Ächzen (144 f.); the stoical was never a part of Kleist's concept of heroism. T h e Elector's natural relation to the persons around him, members of his family and army, and his language to them are not unlike Guiskard's. When the latter addresses Armin as du alter Knabe (Gui. 421), we have very much the Elector's attitude and tone toward Kottwitz. Guiskard's relationship to his daughter Helena is close and affectionate like that of the Kurfürst to his niece Natalie, who likewise loves and reveres him; the mein liebes Kind of the one sovereign (Gui. 489) can be matched by the mein süßes Kind of the other (Ho. 1 1 1 2 ) . Natalie seems to have inherited several traits from Helena, and her potentially tragic position between the Elector and her fiancé, the Prince, is essentially like Helena's between the Duke and her fiancé, Abälard, though this motif is not further developed in the fragment. Abälard is the Duke's nephew; Friedrich is the Elector's virtual nephew. Each young man, hitherto in the ruler's favor, gets into a position of conflict with him and is publicly reprimanded, with further disciplinary action only suggested in the incomplete Guiskard. The Brandenburg Electress and the Norman Duchess are very much of a type: kind, motherly, but weak in contrast to their strong husbands, and not particularly effectual in the action. T h e incident of the Electress's collapsing in Natalie's arms on hearing Mörner's account of her husband's alleged death (Act II, Sc. 5) is very like that of the Duchess's collapsing in Helena's arms on hearing Armin's description of the

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ravages of the plague, a death which she dreads for her husband (Gut. 516 ff.). Armin, der Greis, was long ago recognized for a Norman Kottwitz. 35 T h e two are indeed the same character in different settings: a seasoned, spirited old warrior with white hair and a young heart, who comes before his commander in chief as head of a delegation (Schar in Gui. 315, Ho. 1463) with a petition from his followers, voices their and his own admiration for the leader, yet also conveys, within the restraints of unquestionable loyalty, their criticism of certain of the leader's actions and policies. Of Kottwitz it can be said, as Robert says to Armin, Dein Geist ist jünger, als dein Haupt (173); and both commit eine Jünglingstat (Gui. 178, Ho. 478 ff.). Both, however, scrupulously shun the very shadow of rebellion (Gui. 60 f., Ho. 1261 ff.). Both are untutored but eloquent orators, yet not too logical; the Elector might have said to Kottwitz, after his peroration (Ho. 1603 ff.), what Robert says to Armin: "Ich höre dich, du grauer T o r , bestät'gen, / Was deine Rede widerlegen soll" (Gui. 208 f.). In both plays, the old warrior, reproved by a young prince, retorts sharply (Gui. 188 ff., Ho. 478 ff.). In a similar situation, the older man is ready to withdraw in proud, cold reproach from the presence of his superior (Gui. 311 + , 312 ff.; Ho. 1809 +» 1810 f.). A very characteristic motif, born of Kleist's own experience, is basic to Guiskard as to Homburg: a victorious leader stretches out his hand for the wreath of triumph when an unforeseen fate snatches it out of his reach. This Guiskard symbol of heroic agon and failure went into Penthesilea, as we have seen; in Homburg it is played as a pantomime at the beginning and again at the end, there to reach at length a happy resolution. Yet the prospect at the close of Homburg, as of the Guiskard fragment, is not calm and peace, but renewed fighting.

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Aside from such basic themes, there are more detailed ones that correspond in the two plays. For instance, Abälard has just assured the Normans that Guiskard is stricken with the plague and cannot possibly appear; then his entry is announced nevertheless, and Armin says reproachfully, " O Abälard! O was hast du getan?" (391). Similarly, T r u c h ß has just assured the Elector that the Prince was seriously injured before the battle and could not possibly have led the charge; the next moment, the Prince walks on, and Dörfling says reproachfully, "Truchß! Was machtet Ihr?" (739). W e see at the beginning of Act V in Homburg what was merely reported in Scene 5 of Guiskard: a hasty gathering at the ruler's dwelling as news of a crisis spreads. W e have in both plays the situation of an august ruler condemning the rash act of a young prince, his nephew, or virtual nephew. W e have in both the motif of the ruler's dressing in preparation for going forth to face an "emergency" impersonated in a delegation from his people. In Guiskard we are told in some detail, by classical teichoscopy, how the sovereign arrays himself (402 ff.); in Homburg the same business is more tersely and plainly put: der Kurfürst kleidet sich an, und legt seinen fürstlichen Schmuck an (1427 - f ); but the symbolic value is the same. T h e motif that a chance encounter works in favor of a petition about to be presented to the ruler is used over again: in Guiskard, Helena appears, and a warrior says, "Nun, diesen Zufall . . . nenn' ich günstig!— / Jetzt bringt sich das Gesuch gleich an" (57 f.). In Homburg, Natalie's impromptu idea of summoning Kottwitz is welcomed by Graf R e u ß as aiding his petition: "Ein Ereignis, / Das günst'ger sich dem Blatt nicht treffen könnte!" (1270 f.). T h e language of Homburg shows a high number of correspondences with Guiskard, considering the brevity of the

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latter. There is the figure of the plant of a young man's fortune growing in the sunshine of sovereign favor: Jeder Segen . . . Ziehe deines Glückes Pflanze groß! Die Gunst des Oheims, laß sie, deine Sonne, Nur immer, wie bis heute, dich bestrahlen. (Gui. 297 ff.) Schien er am Wachstum meines jungen Ruhms Nicht mehr fast, als ich selbst, sich zu erfreun? . . . Und er, er sollte lieblos jetzt die Pflanze, Die er selbst zog, . . . (Ho. 833 ff.)38 There is the favorite figure of the scales: . . . ob sein Wort gewichtiger In eurer Seelen Wage fällt, als meinst (Gut. 275 f.) . . . ich bin sicher, Mein Wort fiel, ein Gewicht, in deine Brust. (Ho. 1721 f.) Both the highlighted pictures in Penthesilea: Auf einem Hügel leuchtend steht er da (1037), and in Homburg: Auf einem Schimmel herrlich saß er da, / Im Sonnenstrahl, die Bahn des Siegs erleuchtend (540 f.) are prefigured in Guiskard: Stand Guiskard einst, . . . / Des Volkes Abgott, herrlich vor uns da." (295 f.). Armin's line, Beim großen Gott des Himmels und der Erde (326), echoes in the Elector's line, Nun denn, beim Gott des Himmels und der Erde (1175); Guiskard's impatient, "Ei, was zum Henker, nein!" (446) in Kottwitz's blustering, "Zum Henker, nein!" (391). Of Guiskard it is said, Man sieht ihn still, die Karte in der Hand, / Entschlüsse im Busen wälzen, ungeheure (363 f.); of the Elector: Er könnte—nein! so ungeheuere / Entschließungen in seinem Busen wälzen? (897 f.). The lively colloquial construction that builds up to a question and a surprise answer is used in Guiskard: . . . und nun erkenn' ich—wen? / Des Herzogs Leibarzt, den Jeroni-

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mus (164 f.), and again in Homburg: . . . Fehlt—wer? der Prinz von Homburg noch, ihr Führer (21, again 23 f.). T h e quaint formula, Volk jeden Alters und Geschlechts is taken over from the opening stage direction of Guiskard into Die Hermannsschlacht (Act IV, Sc. 4) and Homburg (Personen and Act II, Sc. 9). In Guiskard, old Armin says warmly to Abälard: "Nun, jeder Segen schütte, der in Wolken / Die Tugenden umschwebt, sich auf dich nieder" (297 f.). In Homburg, the young hero says fervently to the Elector: "Nun fleh' ich jeden Segen dir herab, / Den, von dem T h r o n der Wolken, Seraphim' / Auf Heldenhäupter . . . niederschütten" (1795 ff.).37 Young Robert's Euch selber ruf ich mir zu Richtern auf! (Gui. 268) re-echoes in the Prince's crucial line, Mich selber ruft er zur Entscheidung auf! (Ho. 1342). Armin's revery: Der Greis sieht gedankenvoll vor sich nieder (491 +)> can be matched several times by the Prince's (träumt vor sich nieder 204 + , 332 + , 427 + ) · T h e odd notion of a ruler's being represented by his mere boot occurs only in Guiskard (381 f.) and Homburg (1455 f.). T h e bleiche Lippe that contradicts a man's own confident words is another minor motif shared by these two works only (Gui. 13Ö, Ho. 895 f.). There were doubtless a number of reasons why Kleist never again took up and completed Robert Guiskard. One of them, perhaps, was the impossibility of combining its different style levels, the sublime and the colloquial, satisfactorily into an artistic unity. Another may have been Kleist's realization that this fragment contained so much of the essence of the whole play that in publishing it he had shot his bolt. But whatever all the reasons were, one of them must have been the feeling that he had, consciously and unconsciously, transplanted so much of its substance and form into later works, above all Prinz Friedrich von Homburg. N o one can say what German literature lost through the pre-

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mature death of Heinrich von Kleist. What we can say, in the light of the extraordinary interpénétration of his productions which we have observed, is that what he had yet to give would have been of a piece with what he gave. Of no other German writer, I think—of the many whose work was tragically cut short—could this be said with equal confidence.

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of Kleists Meisternovelle has always been deservedly admired. T h e paragraph immediately following, however (III, 1 4 1 - 1 4 5 ) , seems to me a no less remarkable performance and surely the most indispensable paragraph in the whole, long story. With its slightly over four octavo pages, as printed in the standard edition, it is not much above the average length for a paragraph in Kohlhaas.1 Its very first lines are a good example of a Kleistian sentence, with a strong main stem to which additional modifying elements are attached, as it were, by pegs of commas, and with its central colon marking the turning point, in this case the fateful inroad of das Unerhörte: " E r ritt e i n s t . . . : als er an die Elbe kam. . . ." T h e closing sentence, though of a different structure, is likewise characteristic: here we have a staccato succession of actions, followed by an indication of Kohlhaas's thoughts, with a stretch between verb and prefix (setzte ... fort) such as no other writer but Kleist would have breath for. This paragraph contains the beginning of the whole action, and it constitutes one highly dramatic scene, almost entirely outdoors, with continuous movement and dialogue and characterization of a number of persons through both their words and their motions, as in a real drama. Kleist's favorite indem (sometimes varied with da or some other connective) repeatedly serves to introduce a "stage direcTHE

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tion." We observe Kleist's customary mixture of direct and indirect discourse, the latter sometimes entailing a monotonous succession of daß (e.g., 143. 3 ff.); his typical es traf sich, daß . . . (143. 19); his use of the "eloquent object": the two black horses, first mentioned in 144. 4, are referred to ten times in this paragraph and not allowed to drop out of our sight. T h u s most of the leading characters, and the most important symbol, of the coming story have been introduced to us. T h e stage is set, the initial wrong has been committed, and we have some ground for anticipating how the chief participants will react to it. In short, this brilliant paragraph embodies basic elements of the ensuing plot without by any means giving it away. T h e chief factor of Nature in the scene is the weather. It is a rainy, blowy day, and we are made aware of this fact at the start (141 /142). Half a page later our attention is called to the wind fluttering Kohlhaas's cloak as he digs in his pocket for the toll. W e see the corpulent castle warden buttoning on another vest and standing obliquely to the weather, which does not improve his humor. As the rain opportunely stops, the whole company of gentlemen " f l y " down into the courtyard to view the horses (143. 27 f.). T h e inclement weather to which the skinny Junker is exposed first influences his decision in Kohlhaas's favor: as the storm sets in again and rakes his dürre Glieder he turns away and cries, " L e t the poor sucker g o ! " T h e n , as his warden persists in his demand for security, the Junker tarries for a moment, sheltering under a gateway, holding his coattails in front of his chilled body. His tolerance is plainly wearing thin. Kohlhaas appeals to him again, but he, because at this moment he is deluged by wind-driven rain and hail, renders a snap judgment: the trader must either give up his two Rappen or be sent back where he came from—so schmeißt ihn wieder über den Schlagbaum zurück.

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So saying, the nobleman hastens back to his drinking party. His attitude and tone have given carte blanche to the conspiring warden and steward, countenanced their illegal actions, and even suggested violence. W e have seen a typical demonstration of arbitrary power exercised by the aristocracy that reminds us of scenes in Emilia Galotti and Egmont. A n d we have had an object lesson in human motivation and the way in which petty incidentals like the weather can affect far-reaching decisions. O n e thing that this extraordinary paragraph does is to give us a sufficient picture of Kohlhaas's opponent, the Junker von Tronka. He is physically frail, a soft and pampered young scion of an old family; unwarlike, addicted to his own comfort, a feeble and characterless successor to a worthy father. He is not vicious but weak and self-indulgent. In his circles, horses is a magic and exciting word (143. 24 ÉF.); but it is indicative that he is willing to spend money for a fine stallion for his own pleasure, not for two horses to be used in farm work. W h e n Kohlhaas asks him about the legality of the passport, he shows a vestige of conscience by betraying embarrassment (144. 27), and it is evident that he is simply echoing the warden, to whom he then "passes the buck." O n further protestations from Kohlhaas, the Junker is ready, disdainfully, to let the Schlucker go, so that he himself can get out of the storm and back to his party (144/145). It is the warden who will not let loose his prey, and the steward who suggests retaining the two horses. Again the Junker weakly abets their wrongdoing (which must be as obvious to him as it is to Kohlhaas); again he is moved, not by any special animus against Kohlhaas, and certainly not by principle, but by momentary expediency and his own convenience. So he blurts out an impatient and brutal decision, washes his hands of the matter, and retreats. In just a few

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minutes "on stage" he has given us a complete picture of himself as one of those many weak and unprincipled individuals who do more harm in the world than the far fewer outright villains. In this one pregnant paragraph we also get a fairly complete portrait of the hero in his original, normal state, at the moment of his encounter with destiny. This is important, because it gives us the needed standard to measure his later aberration, and the attentive reader may discern here the very virtues that will bring about his tragedy. We tend to forget that Kohlhaas is a young man and are inclined to think of him as a set, middle-aged, contentious individual. He is only in his thirtieth year when he turns from a peaceable trader into a public menace. Our first impression of him is that of a young businessman of great seriousness and solidity but not without humor and savoir-vivre and youthful resiliency. We first see him on the road with a set of fine horses which are the product of his conscientious care. As a good manager he thinks ahead to further plans for business but also for pleasure. Well-poised and self-controlled, he is not at once disturbed by an annoying innovation on his way. He is free from prejudice against the nobility and was an admirer of the previous lord—whereas the warden has the robber-baron attitude toward merchants as filzige Geldraffer who should be bled. When he is halted a second time, Kohlhaas still keeps his composure and even summons a bit of easy humor on the subject of passports. As a careful businessman he is conversant with the laws that apply to his trade. It is typical of his almost pedantic conscientiousness that he knows this is the eighteenth time he has crossed the border at this place. Even in the face of what he recognizes as illegality and extortion he suppresses an incipient bitterness and restrains his growing hostility toward the castle warden. He shows him-

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self capable of a light polite touch when he assures the noblemen that his fine horses are no finer than the knights who shall ride them. Still utterly reasonable, he tries to avert the trouble he feels brewing by offering the coveted horses at a low price. When this fails because of the baron's selfishness he tries to withdraw on the note of doing future business. T h e warden thwarts this withdrawal by reiterating the demand for a passport. Kohlhaas again evinces his conscientiousness, almost to the point of tediousness, as he pleads with the Junker, and the latter, to whom the matter is much less important, is minded to let him off, but is stopped by a new subterfuge of his subordinates. It is psychologically most interesting and a sign of Kohlhaas's ingenuousness that when he means to ask what security he is to leave "for the passport," he says "for the horses" instead, thus giving his adversaries their cue for demanding that he leave the Rappen themselves. He is inwardly indignant at such shameless exploitation, but, after another vain appeal to the nobleman, he yields to force majeure and complies. We are left with the feeling of depths of passion held in check, and we suspect that a man so insistent on observing the right himself will not for long brook the violation of his right by others. A supremely just man has encountered, for the first time in his orderly and dutiful life, militant injustice. We sense that this is only the beginning, that this man will neither act hastily nor let a wrong rest and that he will before long reach the point of saying, in Richter Adam's words but in a far different spirit, "So nimm, Gerechtigkeit, denn deinen Lauf!" 2 Lisbeth Among Kleist's women characters, Lisbeth Kohlhaas is one of the most winsome, and a significant embodiment of his Frauenideal. She has been much less noticed than her

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husband, who was early recognized as one of Kleist's greatest figures; yet she may claim to be his female counterpart and peer. She is an ideal mate to Michael, in some traits corroborating him, in others differing decidedly, but in every case subordinating her wishes to his and giving him her complete trust and devotion. T h o u g h she remains in the background of her husband's life, she undergoes the same tragic fate, passing with catastrophic suddenness from a serene and peaceful existence to utter despair and violent early death. She is even more a victim of circumstances than he, f o r her freedom of decision is limited by love, as his is not. H i s formidableness reaches the proportions of an invading foreign power; she is completely defenseless, with no weapons but the strength of her devotion and self-sacrifice. W h e n she seeks a hearing from the sovereign authority, she is misjudged as an importunate intruder (165), as Kohlhaas was misjudged as an unnützer Quärulant; and they both r u n afoul of the ruler's entourage. But where he is unrelenting and unforgiving, she is forebearing and forgiving; and though in her heart she feels his course is wrong, she supports him in it to the utmost of her gentle powers. Lisbeth's outward appearance is nowhere described, any more than Michael's is, but we get the impression of a young, spirited, comely, very feminine but stalwart person. Since Kohlhaas is in his thirtieth year, she is presumably still in her twenties, but already the mother of five children. 3 It is characteristic of Kleist that the first time she is mentioned it is indirectly, one might say as an attribute of her husband's character, and as the bearer of his children, for he is clearly primary: die Kinder, die ihm sein Weib schenkte, erzog er [not erzogen sie], in der Furcht Gottes, zur Arbeitsamkeit und Treue (141. 12 f.).4 She is not heard of again until Kohlhaas returns from his momentous journey to Saxony. T h e second time she is mentioned, and the first time

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she appears, she is designated as Kohlhaas's treues Weib (149), and this simple and meaningful title she vindicates to her dying day, and beyond. W h e n Lisbeth first speaks, we hear an intelligent, energetic, capable young housewife. She gives her husband a succinct and clear report of what has happened during his absence (149 f.). She is independent and resourceful: she was prepared to act in his stead in the matter of the horses left at the Tronkenburg, and she shows good judgment in evaluating Herse's story and diagnosing the situation at the castle. Herself a level-headed person, she is glad to see her husband take the matter calmly (150). He, in turn, rejoices when she vigorously seconds aus voller Seele his resolve to appeal to the law against the Tronkas. She not only shares his sense of public obligation to oppose wrongdoing from which others too suffer, but she has beyond this a sense of religious duty: daß es ein Werk Gottes wäre, Unordnungen, gleich diesen, Einhalt zu tun (154, 31 ff.). Her strong religious feeling is manifest again in her dying hour. With practical sense, on the other hand, she promises to find the extra money that the legal proceedings will cost. Kohlhaas is right in calling her sein wackeres Weib (155), using the same honoring adjective (valiant, stout-hearted) that Prinz Friedrich applies to the Elector (1342). T h e scene of the negotiations for the sale of the homestead (a scene in two parts, 159-164) is highly revealing for the character and relations of the couple. It is clear that Kohlhaas has acted in this important matter without consulting his wife. He invites the neighboring Amtmann in, he offers him his property for purchase. Lisbeth turns pale at his words; they are a complete surprise to her and a shock for which her husband had not had the kindness to prepare her — o n e recalls Kleist's own highhandedness with Wilhelmine. Even now Lisbeth does not speak or protest but, with an ex-

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pressive piece of Kleistian "business," picks up her youngest child f r o m the floor and clutches it to her breast, so that we get for a m o m e n t the juxtaposition of her deathly pale face and the baby's ruddy cheeks as she stares down at the paper in her husband's hand that will deprive them of their home. Kohlhaas continues to negotiate with the Amtmann without giving the slightest heed to his wife's reaction. It is the A m t m a n n who turns to her with a jocular remark, while Kohlhaas, with a fanatical single-mindedness like Hermann's, announces that his thoughts are set on purposes in comparison with which his duties as father and head of a household are inferior a n d of n o account (159 f.). Here Lisbeth in her m u t e and simple reaction seems to represent life and sanity, Kohlhaas that self-destructive Maßlosigkeit of idealism which is the scourge and salvation of mankind. W e see a n o t h e r exemplification of Hölderlin's héros, chosen by the gods to suffer for them and for the world: Den brauchen sie; jedoch ihr Gericht Ist, daß sein eigenes Haus Zerbreche der und das Liebste Wie den Feind schelt' und sich Vater und Kind Begrabe unter den Trümmern, Wenn einer wie sie sein will und nicht Ungleiches dulden, der Schwärmer. (Der Rhein, 114-120) W h e n Kohlhaas tells his neighbor that his own soul aims at "great things, which he may soon hear of," we suspect the beginning of a fatal possessedness. Lisbeth's response is merely to kiss her baby again and again and, as Kohlhaas presses his offer, to walk u p and down the room, her breast heaving with emotion so that her kerchief (a Kleistian touch), at which the child tugs, almost falls off. Kohlhaas proceeds with details of sale and signature, seals the bargain with wine, announces his intention of riding to Berlin im-

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mediately on business and promises the A m t m a n n further information on his r e t u r n — a l l this w i t h o u t the slightest mention of his wife or attention to her (161). It is only after the visitor has left that Lisbeth gets a hearing. She falls to her knees before her husband and implores him, if she and her children are not already exiled from his heart (she uses the same word, verstoßen, that Kohlhaas will use of himself to Luther), to tell her w h a t these fearful preparations m e a n — t h a t is, "what is your intention," not, in modern parlance, " y o u can't do this to me!" " W a r u m willst d u dein Haus verkaufen?" [not unser Haus] is her anxious question. Kohlhaas replies that he is u n w i l l i n g to stay in a country that will not protect him in his rights (this is not the real truth, for n o emigration has been planned, and it is not clear where he would go—certainly not to Saxony). H e assumes, he adds, that his wife thinks as he does in this matt e r — a typical Kleistian Vertrauen in the partner's understanding that again reminds us of Kleist's attitude at the time of his project of settling in Switzerland. A s in Kleist's case too, there is genuine affection beneath the imperious behavior: Kohlhaas is sincere in his wish to be w i t h Lisbeth to the end of his days. She, on her part, shows her intelligence by challenging his assumption that the sovereign will not u p h o l d his rights and by her unerring discernment of Kohlhaas's warlike intentions (162 f.). She is appalled to realize how little w i f e and children mean to h i m now. B u t when he makes it an issue of confidence, she blushes and throws her arms around him, with the warm response that Kleist so prized in w o m e n . Kohlhaas brushes the hair from her forehead (another Kleistian touch) and challenges her to say that he should give in, retrieve his horses, and forget the incident. T h i s is just what his Dresden lawyer (156) and his friend the Brand e n b u r g Stadthauptmann (158) had advised h i m to do. It is

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w h a t her own c o m m o n sense and womanly realism tell her is the best of feasible courses, and inwardly she speaks a triple "yes" to his proposition. B u t because she loves him and wants him to do what will satisfy him, she reacts with a selfsubordination, a passionateness, and a wordless gesture w h i c h are all characteristically Kleistian: "Lisbeth wagte nicht ja! ja! ja! zu sagen—sie schüttelte weinend mit dem Kopf, sie drückte ihn heftig an sich, und überdeckte mit heißen Küssen seine Brust" (163. 20 ff.). H a v i n g identified herself with his course, she does not spare herself in advancing it, proving again the courage and good sense she had demonstrated on earlier occasions in her married life (164. 8 f.). H o w e v e r much she subordinates herself to her husband, she is enterprising and unafraid in her dealings with others. She guarantees to get a petition into the Elector's hands, though Kohlhaas warns her that the undertaking is risky. She has a little feminine plan of relying on a residual affection in the heart of an erstwhile suitor, now castellan of the Elector's palace, to facilitate her access to the sovereign. T h i s trip, however, proves the most ill-starred of all Kohlhaas's fruitless attempts to gain redress, as Kleist tells us in a laconic sentence (164. 23 f.), and in one terse further page he brings to a close this touching tale of a woman's devotion. H e r own warm eagerness to present her husband's petition encounters the brutal zeal of a guard "protecting" his sovereign, and Lisbeth sustains a mortal injury. It is characteristic of her that she will not have her husband notified of her condition in advance, to save him preliminary anxiety. H e r pathetic h o m i n g instinct is directed entirely toward him: she insists zu ihrem Manne nach Kohlhasenbrück abgeführt zu werden (165. 14 f.). H e r children are not in her thoughts here, n o r do they appear at her sad homecoming nor at her deathbed. T h i s is a flaw, a blank spot in her por-

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trait, but it is entirely consistent with Kleist's habitual emphasis on the primacy of the male in love and marriage. W h e n she recovers consciousness for a few last moments, Lisbeth once more shows the religious charity of her nature. With critical independence of mind she disapproves of the mechanical ministrations of the clergyman at her bedside and, unable to speak, points out in the Bible her own message of forebearance and forgiveness.® In this faith she dies, perhaps only a week after that fateful day of the Amtmann's visit when her whole beloved world began to collapse around her. Her supreme sacrifice turns out to be vain, and her final message of forgiveness falls upon deaf ears: as Kohlhaas, with flowing tears, kisses her and closes her eyes, he thinks so möge mir Gott nie vergeben, wie ich dem Junker vergebe! (165. 33 f.). Ironically, his very love for the woman he has lost renders it impossible for him to receive her message. Lisbeth's death marks the spiritual turning point in Kohlhaas's career. His first act when he turns away from her deathbed gives the first indication of the imbalance, the megalomania that come to dominate him. He arranges an ostentatious burial which is flagrantly out of keeping with her nature and his own previous character. T h e uselessness of her final effort is officially confirmed before her body is in the ground. During the funeral services Kohlhaas receives the reply to the petition she delivered at such cost in Berlin. He is ordered to fetch his horses home and on pain of imprisonment bring no more action in this case. Kleist's timing of this harsh juxtaposition is pointed up by his dry sentence: Kohlhaas steckte den Brief ein, und ließ den Sarg auf den Wagen bringen (166. 17 f.). His resolution has now hardened in his mind. He kneels once more by her empty bed and then enters upon das Geschäft der Rache. T h e pursuit of justice has become the

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quest for revenge, and the new goal is pursued with the unsparing thoroughness that is ingrained in Kohlhaas. It is ironical, but consonant with this man's and Kleist's own nature, that consideration for the loved woman would not have kept him from asserting his principle at all costs. When, later on, Luther asks him whether he would not have done better to forgive the Junker (a restatement of Lisbeth's position), Kohlhaas is not ready to say unequivocally that to spare her life he would have changed his course. On the very day after her burial,® Lisbeth reappears, in the guise of an old, lame gypsy woman with supernatural knowledge and prophetic gifts. She addresses Kohlhaas as though she knew him and bestows on him, to his utter surprise, an amulet, an important note contained in a leaden capsule, which she assures him will some day save his life. 7 He does not at once recognize her; he is as slow in this respect as Graf Wetter is in recognizing Käthchen in reality after she has been shown to him in a dream. But the old woman comes to Kohlhaas's prison cell, for the Trödelweib whom the Saxon chamberlain picked up in the streets of Berlin to impersonate the Zigeunerin of Jüterbog is none other than the Zigeunerin herself. The cumulative evidence (241, 243) of her identity with Kohlhaas's dead wife includes, as in Käthchen, a birthmark on her neck and, as in the Bettelweib, the reaction of the family dog, and culminates in her signing her farewell note Deine Elisabeth (246. 7).® The internal evidence is even more conclusive, for she acts entirely in Lisbeth's spirit. She makes it clear that she gave Kohlhaas the prophetic note at the Jüterbog fair in order that he should use it to purchase his life and liberty from the Elector of Saxony. Now, when he is at death's door, she urges him to do this and make his peace with his enemies. In other words, she persists in Lisbeth's conciliatory, helpful, and realistic attitude. But Kohlhaas, on his

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part, persists in his unforgiving, vengeful attitude: "Kohlhaas, der über die Macht jauchzte, die ihm gegeben war, seines Feindes Ferse, in dem Augenblick, da sie ihn in den Staub trat, tödlich zu verwunden, antwortete: 'nicht um die Welt, Mütterchen, nicht um die Welti' " (242. 10 ff.). Once more he puts aside her gentle counsel and chooses, like Piachi in Der Findling, to carry his vengeance through to the end, cost what it may. T h e gypsy, like her earlier incarnation, has a mind of her own and, giving him back his nicht um die Welt, she refuses to tell him the content of the prophetic note. But, again like Lisbeth earlier, though she does not approve his course, she faithfully seconds him in it. She sends him a last warning message, but for which his consuming desire for revenge would have been ignobly thwarted after his execution (246. 1-7). T o complete the identification, and round out as it were a circle in Lisbeth's life, this warning message is brought to Kohlhaas by her erstwhile suitor, der Kastellan des kurfürstlichen Schlosses (245. 26—the same phrase used 164. 10 f.). This man, as can be seen by his agitated face and manner, has recognized in the old crone the girl who once figured in his life. 8 T h e gypsy-capsule motif is a strange piece of Kleist's "other" world of wish and vision cropping up amid the sober realities of a late-feudal Germany. Whatever Kleist's reasons for introducing this motif and developing it at such length, one must have been the urge to project his moving representation of wifely fidelity beyond its earthly termination and give it metaphysical validity. Kleist does this in no other case, and it is not in his sources. We feel that the dead loved one who returns into life to aid and counsel holds out not only to Kohlhaas but to Kleist himself, in the spirit of his Sternenglauben, the hope of a Jenseits in which love reigns unlimited and all life's perplexing questions are an-

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swered. " A u f Wiedersehen, Kohlhaas," the gypsy cries, "auf Wiedersehn! Es soll Dir, wenn wir uns wiedertreffen, an Kenntnis über dies alles nicht fehlen!" (243. 16 ff.). Moreover, the delineation of the revenant Lisbeth not only confirms but completes the portrait of the "real" woman. What we found missing in the earlier picture, the mother's loving concern for her children, is supplied in the later account. From the first moment of her appearance (241. 1) the old gypsy on her crutches, who looks to Kohlhaas like Lisbeth as her own grandmother (241. 11 f.), shows affection for the children, especially the youngest. 10 And this time, like a true mother, she takes a tender farewell of them all: "indem sie sich gegen die T ü r wandte, rief sie: 'lebt wohl, Kinderchen, lebt wohl!' küßte das kleine Geschlecht nach der Reihe, und ging ab" (243. 19 ff.). T h u s the story of a rare woman, which Kleist has told in remarkably few pages on two levels of existence, ends on das Ewig-Weibliche of love: the first time it is religious charity, the second and final time a mother's love. Luther

and the

Amnesty

A new stage in the long and involved action of Michael Kohlhaas is reached with the intervention of Dr. Martin Luther. T h e Reformer does not act in any official capacity, and he has no authority to deliver a verdict in the case. He acts as a prominent private citizen endeavoring by persuasion and personal influence to remedy a troublesome public situation. T h e Luther episode is the only authentic element of history in a story that throughout creates the impression of documentary realism. Already Kleist's primary source, the sixteenth-century Märckische Chronic of Peter Hafftiz, tells very briefly the story of Luther's futile effort. 11 Luther's tone and manner, however, are quite different in the two accounts. In Hafftiz,

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he sends Hans Kohlhase a private letter; in Kleist, he issues a broadside, a Plakat (179 f.), which is tacked u p in every town and hamlet of the Electorate. T h a t is to say, a loud, publicized form of utterance not uncomparable to Kohlhaas's own Mandate, a blast (as modern headlines would term it) full of invective, accusation, and inaccuracy. It begins: "Kohlhaas, der du dich gesandt zu sein vorgibst, das Schwert der Gerechtigkeit zu handhaben, was unterfängst du dich, Vermessener, im Wahnsinn stockblinder Leidenschaft, du, den Ungerechtigkeit selbst, vom Wirbel bis zur Sohle, erfüllt? Weil der Landesherr dir, dem du Untertan bist, dein Recht verweigert h a t . . . " — a significant admission. T h i s is no reason, Luther goes on, for rising in revolt with fire and sword. H e sees as the cause of contention ein nichtiges Gut, whereas we know that Kohlhaas is fighting for a principle, not a bit of property ("Kohlhaas, dem es nicht um die Pferde zu tun war," 158. 32 f.). He charges Kohlhaas with giving up the effort to obtain justice after die ersten, leichtfertigen Versuche had failed; actually, Kohlhaas had made repeated earnest attempts, the last of which cost him his wife and home. Luther asks: "Ist eine Bank voll Gerichtsdienern und Schergen, die einen Brief, der gebracht wird, unterschlagen, oder ein Erkenntnis, das sie abliefern sollen, zurückhalten, deine Obrigkeit?" Kohlhaas's Obrigkeit, as Luther conceives it, is the Landesherr, and he knows nothing of the matter and hence can declare before God's judgment seat, "I am innocent of any wrong against this man, for his existence was unknown to me." This amounts to asserting that the sovereign alone counts, that no citizen can say he has been denied justice if it is denied by anyone short of the head of the State, and that this head is not answerable for the acts of anyone below him in the government organization. Luther is arguing in a most vicious circle. T o obtain jus-

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tice one would need to apply directly to the ruler. What dangers this involves was tragically demonstrated by Lisbeth's experience—and her petition was after all handed over for disposal to the very underlings whom Kohlhaas tried to transcend. According to Luther's simplistic reasoning, one should transcend them, whereas it is obviously impossible to do so. Kohlhaas has tried every legal and official channel accessible to him and found his way blocked everywhere by nepotism, corruption, and selfish interests. T h e subordinates are not responsible, since the ruler is the only real Obrigkeit, and he is not responsible because his subordinates will not let the truth get to him. T o countenance this situation, as Luther's Plakat does, is to justify anarchy and chaos. Luther's concluding sentence adds nothing but vituperation and threat: he condemns Kohlhaas as a man bent on Raub and Mordlust, a rebel against authority civil and divine, whose punishment will be execution on wheel and gallows and, after that, eternal damnation. T h e effect of this intemperate outburst on Kohlhaas is indicative of his character and the spirit of his enterprise. He reads Luther's words with consternation and embarrassment. He, who believes himself motivated by zeal for justice, sees himself publicly accused of injustice by the man whose name he most cherishes and reveres (188. 22 ff.). His immediate response is eminently Kleistian: a deep flush which betrays a Verwirrung des Gefühls. He feels disarmed by a sudden sense of total depravity (188. 33 f.). His reaction is emotional and religious; in an expressive gesture he takes off his helmet as he rereads the proclamation. He feels a compelling need to cleanse himself and justify his conduct in the eyes of this highest ethical arbiter. He forthwith puts on a disguise and under cover of night seeks out Luther in Wittenberg. T h e r e ensues a confronta-

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tion of these two so unlike and so like German men, constituting again one long Kleistian paragraph of five pages (182187), one of the vivid dramatic scenes in which Kleist's narrative prose abounds, an argumentative dialogue in which every word has point and weight and every clearly visualized movement has characterizing force. W h e n his visitor identifies himself, Luther falls back upon the rhetorical, fulminating style of his proclamation. In Biblical cadences he cries: "weiche f e m hinweg! dein Odem ist Pest und deine Nähe Verderben!" T h e two men seem to have exchanged roles: Luther is passionate and excited, Kohlhaas restrained and reasonable. He states clearly at the outset his purpose in coming: to refute Luther's opinion of him as an unjust man and to gain Luther's good offices toward obtaining safe-conduct (freies Geleit) to Dresden to submit his case to the ruler (182. 26-30). In this dual purpose Kohlhaas is entirely successful in the end. He not only justifies himself to Luther but wins an advocate in him. Kohlhaas grants that the war he is waging against the community is a crime if he has not been exiled (verstoßen) from that community. Any man, he argues, who is denied the protection of the laws is in fact exiled and put on his own resources, assuming toward the community he has left the status of a warring foreign power. It follows that he cannot be held accountable for any "acts of war" committed during such a state of affairs, such as the vengeance he has already wreaked at the Tronkenburg. Luther replies that the protection of the laws has been denied him only by subordinates, not by the ruler himself, who has no knowledge of the case. But even if he had, and had denied justice, Luther continues, Kohlhaas would have no right to judge him for it, because rulers may be judged only by God. Luther stands, that is to say, on the old doctrine of the divine right of kings, a right that apparently in-

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eludes denying justice at times without forfeit of the kingly character that would seem based on it. Like the Gottesurteil at the end of Der Zweikampf, the ruler ensures justice "if it is his will" to do so. Kohlhaas, however, does not challenge this dubious doctrine but offers, if given assurance that his original complaint will be heard, to disband his forces and return to the status of a peaceable citizen seeking a citizen's fundamental right of justice through law. On being asked what he would demand of the Saxon tribunal, Kohlhaas restates almost verbatim his original contentions: "Bestrafung des Junkers, den Gesetzen gemäß, Wiederherstellung der Pferde in den vorigen Stand; und Ersatz des Schadens, den ich sowohl als mein . . . Knecht Herse, durch die Gewalttat, die man an uns verübte, erlitten" (184. 8 - 1 2 ; cf. 155. 10-13). The legality of these demands was confirmed by the author in the first place (155. 12 ff.), and their justice is now conceded by Luther: "schau' her, was du forderst . . . ist gerecht"; and if only Kohlhaas had managed [as if he had not tried!] to bring them to the attention of the sovereign they would, Luther does not doubt, have been granted point for point (185. 1-6)! Luther then offers to enter into negotiations with the Elector of Saxony for a reopening of Kohlhaas's case. Therewith the "business of the meeting" is disposed of, and Kohlhaas is about to be dismissed. But he has one more Bitte auf seinem Herzen, and the exchanges concerning this reveal the nature of the two men perhaps even more clearly than what has preceded. Kohlhaas, who was so self-assertive in arguing the public and legal question with Luther, is humble and diffident as he takes up a personal, religious concern with the man who is to him the head of his Church and the representative of God. Having missed his wonted church attendance because of his campaign, he begs Luther to hear his confession now and grant him the benefaction of

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Holy Communion. 1 2 Luther, after a moment's thought, says yes, but with a proviso: Kohlhaas must agree to forgive the Junker, ride to the Tronkenburg, fetch back his horses and restore them himself. T h i s was a counsel of Christian charity as and when it was urged by Lisbeth; as now urged by Luther it has become a means of ecclesiastical duress; the difference between lived faith and stiffened dogma is well illustrated here. Luther's attitude is both inconsistent and illogical. In effect, he takes back his earlier admission that Kohlhaas is in the right in demanding that the Junker be punished and made to restore the horses as well as pay compensation. Luther would require Kohlhaas to humiliate himself before a nobleman whose injustice he, Luther, had acknowledged. If Kohlhaas were to accede to this demand, there would be no more point in Luther's taking up his case with the Saxon Elector, as he had promised to do. Luther's requirements could not be fulfilled in any case, for the Tronkenburg has been destroyed and the whereabouts of the horses is unknown. Theologically, Luther's position is most questionable. He has no right to attach conditions to God's mercy as vouchsafed to all Christians through Christ or to use the sacrament as a lever to force a communicant to act in a desired way. As Luther turns his back impatiently upon his visitor and rings for his dismissal (186. 18 f.), he is shutting the door of the Church on a faithful member of it. H e shows himself as obdurate and unforgiving toward Kohlhaas as Kohlhaas toward the Baron. T h e two men here confronted are in truth much alike, and one would expect, on Luther's part especially, more understanding for a kindred nature. 13 T h e r e is, to be sure, a difference in age which makes the older man unable or unwilling to recognize his younger self in the man he faces.

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Luther cannot comprehend why Kohlhaas should move heaven and earth over so small a matter. Yet there was a time when Luther disrupted all Christendom in the equally obstinate pursuit of what seemed to many a small matter but to him was a sacred principle. Kohlhaas could say of himself, as did that earlier Luther, "hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders." Both could have done anders if they had been untrue to their own nature and conviction, could have avoided trouble had they been willing to compromise with their inner Rechtgefühl. Luther's most famous hymn proclaimed the creed that Gut, Ehf, Kind und Weib are expendable earthly possessions, as is life (Leib) itself, in contest with spiritual values. T h i s is exactly what Kohlhaas believes and practises—in agreement with Hermann and with the patriot Kleist. 1 4 Luther too, like Kohlhaas, could have been headed off in the beginning of his insurgence by a more farsighted policy on the part of the powers that be. He too was first regarded as an unimportant Quärulant and Stänker, posing no serious threat to established institutions. And he also "got in deeper" than he had himself anticipated. Luther too, when we consider the ultimate consequences of his pursuit of an ideal of "right," could qualify for the designation as einer der rechtschaffensten zugleich und entsetzlichsten Menschen seiner Zeit. T h e Luther whom Kohlhaas encounters in this scene is the later, the established Luther. T h i s is the year 1540. Luther is an elderly man. He and his cause have "arrived." He is an authority to be listened to, an "elder statesman" whose prestige permits him to intervene, when he deems it timely, in major public affairs. He is no longer the young rebel against injustice and corruption that Kohlhaas now is and that Luther himself was when, at almost the same age, he nailed his theses on the door of the Schloßkirche in this very

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town of Wittenberg. H e faces Kohlhaas with much the same impatience and aversion with which Goethe faced Kleist— the disparity in ages, curiously enough, is numerically almost the same in the two cases—and he too is loath to see the features of his own youth revived in the younger man. Years after the Peasant War, the miner's son again confronts a common man who has revolted against the tyranny and abuses of the nobility and has committed excesses in his turn; and Luther's first and instinctive reaction is to side with authority, to demand the subjection of the individual to Obrigkeit. T h e portrait of Luther in Michael Kohlhaas is by no means idealized, and we may doubt that Kleist intended it to be. Luther comes off much less well than Kohlhaas in this scene. Painfully disappointed, Kohlhaas bows to his decision in churchly matters, but in everything else he has his way. He argues with Luther on terms of give and take: "Fügt Euch in diesen Stücken meinem Willen," he says; "in allem anderen, was sonst noch streitig sein mag, füge ich mich Euch" (184. 32 ff.). He not only justifies himself and his original demands to Luther but gains in him a supporter and intermediary. Luther has had to concede each of Kohlhaas's points. Finally, just before the execution, he grants him also the boon here denied; he sends a special envoy to his prison cell to administer Communion (245). T h u s Kohlhaas's satisfaction vis-à-vis Luther is ultimately complete. And yet Kohlhaas has reason to be less than satisfied with Luther's intervention, for in the long run he does not benefit by it, and it operates to complicate rather than clarify the issues. What Kohlhaas asks Luther to obtain for him is safeconduct (freies Geleit, 182. 29) to Dresden for a new, or rather the first, trial of his case. And it is freies Geleit that Luther undertakes to get for him (185. 22). But already the question Luther raises a moment later, ob der Kurfürst

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Gnade für Recht ergehen lassen wird (185. 25 f.), makes one suspect a muddling of ideas in his mind, for how could the guarantee of safe passage to a trial be construed as an act of mercy and not plain justice? Luther is apparently thinking in terms of amnesty, not safe-conduct. T h e very next morning he writes to the Elector of Saxony and tells him flatly that there is nothing else to do but accept the horse dealer's proposal and, for the purpose of renewing his lawsuit, grant him amnesty for past deeds (187. 15-17). Luther is not merely pleading Kohlhaas's case but overstating it. T h e letter to the Elector (187 f.) is, true to Luther's character, a kind of ultimatum, like his Plakat to Kohlhaas. After speaking bitterly of the Tronkas, he emphasizes the fact that popular opinion is strongly on the side of Kohlhaas, and if the latter's offer is not accepted the populace might easily be aroused to the point where the government would be powerless to control it. Luther is virtually raising the specter of a German Revolution! He holds that Kohlhaas must be accorded extraordinary treatment, as if he were no longer a simple Staatsbürger but a foreign invader; otherwise the Saxon State will never get out of this predicament. Luther, in short, has taken over and magnified Kohlhaas's arguments and put barbs on them. This is a letter fit to make any timid ruler tremble. In the meeting of the Saxon Council of State that ensues, there is at once strong opposition to such sweeping concessions to the insurgent as Luther proposes. Hinz von Tronka slyly points out that Kohlhaas had asked for mere safe-conduct, 15 and that Luther and the Council are confusing two different legal concepts (190 f.). Hinz von Tronka, of course, is an interested party and is not concerned with deeper ethical problems but wants a pat formula that will unite the Council and dispose of Kohlhaas at the cheapest price. T h e Elector, however, is most impressed by fresh reports of

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Kohlhaas's growing military strength and public support which seem to bear out Luther's dark forecast of a popular uprising, so he decides to follow Luther's advice (191. 21 ff.). A few days later he issues a Plakat (191/192) in which he makes it clear at the start that he is acting on Luther's advice; but the document also incorporates other, wilier counsels. It offers Kohlhaas, on condition that he disarm, safeconduct to Dresden for a "renewed investigation of his case." It is to be understood, however, that if his suit on account of the horses is dismissed (abgewiesen)—an outcome that is not to be expected—then he shall be subject to prosecution for taking the law into his own hands; in the contrary event, he and all his men are to be granted Gnade für Recht and full amnesty for all acts of violence committed in Saxony. As the author himself observes, the language of this proclamation is hedged and conditional. It exploits both the sicheres Geleit and the Amnestie ideas. It is only the safeconduct that is clearly guaranteed, on a definite condition which Kohlhaas immediately fulfills: he disbands his army and henceforth—he has Luther to thank for this, in the last analysis—is defenseless in the hands of a crafty and unscrupulous foe. T h e amnesty concept, which the proclamation also operates with, is used virtually as bait; it is not attached to a clear condition but linked with the insinuation that of course Kohlhaas's case will not be "dismissed"—which he is doubtless expected to understand as "lost." (In the end, his case is neither dismissed nor lost; his original contentions are fully vindicated and nevertheless he is executed.) A timid ruler, swayed by stronger minds, afraid to antagonize Luther, or the populace, or the Tronkas, or Kohlhaas himself, distrustful of his people and apprehensive of the future, has taken advantage of the ambiguity introduced by Luther and hopes somehow to please all parties. T h e amnesty motif, repeatedly identified as Luther's

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brain child, die von dem Doktor Luther ausgewirkte Amnestie,16 is inextricably interwoven with the remaining action. Nagelschmidt, that lawless travesty of Kohlhaas, exploits it for his purposes, and his activity in turn gives the Tronkas a chance to emphasize the folly of granting Kohlhaas amnesty in the first place (206). Ironically, it was the proclamation of the amnesty that had saved the villainous Nagelschmidt from being hanged at Kohlhaas's behest (208). T h e Saxon Elector himself eventually pleads the amnesty in Berlin in a last desperate effort to save Kohlhaas from execution and is told not to reproach himself, for it will not be he but the Empire that will be executing Kohlhaas (233) —which does not ease his mind at alll By yielding to Luther's argument, the Elector of Saxony has involved himself and his state in what the most recent writer on Kleist, Günter Blöcker, terms ein unlösbares Rechtsdilemma.1,1 T o gain relief on the immediate level he has violated a principle of justice on a higher level. Excesses such as Kohlhaas committed, indeed had to commit—a Kleistian paradox—in order to gain his right or even bring his case to the attention of the higher authorities, 18 violate, as Blöcker puts it, the law in its ultimate, metaphysical reality. T h e ill-considered act of clemency, the amnesty, cannot be recalled without grave injury to the prestige of the State. T h e Elector and his advisers, among them the anything but disinterested Tronkas, are henceforth under compulsion to devise feints and evasions to maintain the semblance of a legality that was from the first an illegality. Kohlhaas must be condemned, but this can now be done only by means of a constructed pretext and not in the matter in which he is really guilty. Hence the Saxons pick on the opportunity afforded by Nagelschmidt and proceed to "frame" Kohlhaas. T h e latter recognizes already in the change of his status from voluntary

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custody to de facto imprisonment a violation o£ the amnesty, and he forces Freiherr von Wenk, the chief of the Saxon police, to ?dmit this. 19 This breaking of the amnesty occurs before Kohlhaas has taken any steps to identify himself with Nagelschmidt; in fact it is Kohlhaas's desperation caused by the State's breaking of its word that makes him even willing to listen to Nagelschmidt's messenger (217. 20 ff.). Again denied due process of law, Kohlhaas again sees himself driven to self-help. T o gain his freedom, he accepts Nagelschmidt's offer (though not in Nagelschmidt's sense) and thus himself, ironically, provides the grounds for the final proceedings against him, "liefert so selbst den fadenscheinigen Grund zu seiner Aburteilung. Man macht ihm den Prozeß und verurteilt ihn zu einem schimpflichen T o d " (Blöcker, 219). T h i s Dresden sentence, however, as Blöcker does not make clear, is never carried out. Ultimately, Saxony does not proceed on the ground of the Nagelschmidt liaison at all. T h e circumstances under which this evidence was obtained are too dubious, the "plant" too transparent, for it to be urged in court, nor can Kohlhaas's deeds of violence in Saxony be pleaded, for the amnesty ostensibly forgave them. Hence Saxony, under pressure to bring some charge against Kohlhaas before the Imperial power it has invoked (220. 6 ff.), pushes off the responsibility to the Empire itself, which (1) is not bound to respect the Saxon amnesty and (2) can try Kohlhaas for breach of the general öffentlicher Landfrieden instituted by the Emperor (221. 19). Saxony consequently bases its Beschwerde on Kohlhaas's initial raid across a border, his bewaffneten Einfall in Sachsen—which was the least of it!—and asks the Empire, through its attorney, to bring a charge before the Kammergericht (by which Kleist means the Reichskammergericht, or Supreme Court, of the Holy Roman Empire) in Berlin on this ground only,

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Verletzung des öffentlichen, kaiserlichen Landfriedens (238, 21 f.). Kohlhaas pleads in his defense that his Vergleich with the Elector of Saxony (the Amnestie of 191 f.) exempts him from prosecution for his bewaffneten Einfall and acts of violence committed in the course of it; but he is informed that the Imperial power is not limited by this local agreement. He is content with this ruling when he is assured of full satisfaction in his suit against the J u n k e r von Tronka. T h i s suit is successfully carried through in Dresden by a special attorney and the Erzkanzler himself in the name of the Elector of Brandenburg, Kohlhaas's sovereign (246 f.). 20 Thereupon Kohlhaas is sentenced to death, in Berlin, but by an Imperial court. It is, ironically, the Brandenburg Elector, Kohlhaas's (by no means unconditional) supporter, who signs the death warrant. He has done all he could,' if ö tardily, to get Kohlhaas justice in Saxony, but must also administer, for the Empire, the penalty for his subject's breach of Imperial law (246 ff.). Thus, in a crescendo of tragic paradox, Kohlhaas is beheaded for his grandiose attempt, outside the law, to assert demands which were admittedly legal but which the law failed to satisfy. H e is condemned by the State for acts resulting from the State's dereliction of its most essential function, the administering of justice.

CHAPTER

Stagecraft in

VII

PRINZ FRIEDRICH

VON HOMBURG Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, the last and finest of Kleist's dramas, is also the most bühnengerecht or stageworthy. It testifies that Kleist, who never had the advantage—which Schiller and Goethe had so richly—of seeing his work acted, had nevertheless before his end attained complete mastery of the art of the theater, mastery in that simultaneous appeal to the ear and eye that is the special forte of the drama among the arts. That Kleist confidently expected his play to be acted is evident from his stage directions, which are fuller here than in any other of his plays, more vivid, more specific as to movements and gestures that reveal character and feeling, that supplement and sometimes supplant the spoken word. Conversely, the language is such as to suggest attitude and action, even where these are not expressly prescribed— the language, that is to say, of a writer of dramatic genius and instinct who is writing with actors in mind and who sees their every movement. This play is completely actable as it stands; it needs not a single "cut" or change. Had it been put on when it was written, as it fully deserved to be, and won the recognition that no competent critic can deny it today, Kleist would surely have been saved from despair and suicide and gone on to do great things for the German drama, whose modern era he inaugurates. The very opening scene of Homburg is a fine example of Kleist's ability to reconcile showmanship with deeper dramatic qualities. Highly effective as pure "theater," it is also highly important for plot and characterization. The dispo199

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sition is practical as well as picturesque: a formal seventeenth-century garden, with the façade of a palace with lighted windows forming the background; a grassy slope topped by a terrace with balustrade, behind which the court party assembles to look down on the hero sitting in the moonlight under a tree on the other side of the stage; pages with flaming torches—in short, an effective balance of personnel and lighting, an "interesting" Romantic setting, rich and detailed in contrast to the Classical simplicity of the unvarying "grove before the temple of Diana" in Goethe's Iphigenie. W e have a moment to "take in" the picture, while the ladies and gentlemen gather heimlich, a variety of figures and costumes passing out through the shaft of light from the doorway. T h e n Count Hohenzollern takes the floor as a sort of Regisseur. He names the hero at once, and in his opening lines characterizes him as a brave and energetic cavalry commander. In a succinct and vivacious summary, Hohenzollern acquaints us with the situation, then he exhibits his man: he takes a torch from a page to throw light on him [doubtless supported by a stage spotlight]. Hohenzollern remains in charge, answering questions and remonstrances, jocularly exaggerating for effect (59-63), 1 and perhaps thereby strengthening the Elector's impulse to intervene; finally, opening the door for him to retreat as he ends the animated scene with a ringing speech. T h e clang of the door and an effective Pause, such as Kleist is fond of, 2 punctuate the close. For sheer technique, this opening is one of the most brilliant in the whole literature of the drama. In one terse scene of seventy-seven colorful and lively lines, Kleist has (1) provided a virtually complete exposition; (2) introduced, in an almost operatic ensemble, all his persons, especially the hero, and given significant hints of their characters; and (3) got

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his action well under way. In an engrossing "business," complications, symbolized by the glove and furthered by the Elector's interference, have been plausibly initiated. T h e entire play, it may be added, is a model of brevity. With its 1,857 l i n e s it is n o t much more than one third the length of Don Carlos. It is shorter than Iphigenie and even the one-act Zerbrochene Krug. It is shorter than Macbeth, which is exceptionally brief among Shakespeare's plays. T o open a play with a hero who is "not himself" but in an extraordinary, "half waking, half sleeping" state, is in itself a bold and arresting procedure of great dramatic possibilities. It makes possible, for one thing, two different levels of discourse. T h e somnambulant Prince, speaking out of the subconscious and "real" level of his being, addresses the Princess as Natalie, mein Mädchen, meine Braut, the Elector as Friedrich, mein Vater, the Electress as meine Mutter—while the other, waking persons on the stage are still within the frame of reference of Court formality and conscious behavior. T h e Prince's utterances, far exceeding his known Bewußtseinsinhalt, shock and embarrass his auditors. A n essential language intrudes upon the conditioned language of society, with the effect of someone's undressing in public. By this daring and modern device, Kleist has immeasurably advanced our insight into his hero's psyche. Having relied on silent pantomime already in Scene 1 (64 -f), Kleist makes Scene 2 entirely pantomime: every movement of the Prince is specified, and each is natural and characteristic, revealing his state of mind more directly than speech could and more clearly than he himself can know it at this moment. Nothing proves the essentially dramatic nature of Kleist's genius more than his consummate mastery of gesture, Gebärde, both in plays and narratives. T h e actions of his persons are often more eloquent than their words, or belie their

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words. Language, in Kleist's opinion, was at best an inadequate means of communicating essential experience. Already in his early letters we meet the mournful insight "daß es uns an einem Mittel zur Mittheilung fehlt. Selbst das einzige, das wir besitzen, die Sprache, taugt nicht dazu, sie kann die Seele nicht mahlen und was sie uns giebt sind nur zerrissene Bruchstücke. . . . Ach, es giebt kein Mittel, sich Andern ganz verständlich zu machen und der Mensch hat von Natur keinen andren Vertrauten, als sich selbst" ( B f e . I, 211 f.). This latter thought he summed up again years later in a jolting distich in Phöbus:

"Was ich fühle, wie Sprech'

ich es aus?—Der Mensch ist doch immer, / Selbst auch in dem Kreis lieblicher Freunde, allein" (IV, 24). T h e superiority of action to words is well illustrated by a passage already noted (Chapter V). In the tenth scene of Robert

Guiskard,

the Norman duke has staged a magnificent

pretense of health and strength, laughing at the insinuation that he may be infected by the pestilence, speaking in confident, sonorous sentences. But suddenly he hesitates and looks around, and while the other members of his family utter short, anxious questions, his daughter pulls up a large army drum behind him; Guiskard, with (one may imagine) a grateful glance at her and the low words, "Mein liebes Kind!" carefully sits down on it ( i n d e m er sich sanft läßt).

nieder-

This illuminating bit of "business" cancels the bra-

vura effect of all his preceding and following words. T h u s (to anticipate) Natalie's movements at certain moments in the mooted Todesfurchtszene

are truer indices of

her reaction to the Prince's behavior than her words are. When the Prince has told in a frantic speech of seeing his grave dug and of death and corruption staring him in the face, Natalie, in the background, laß sich bei diesen erschüttert

an einem

Tisch

nieder

und weint

Worten

(922 + ) . She

might, in Schiller, have delivered herself of a speech of ex-

STAGECRAFT,

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Friedrich

von Homburg

203

alted pathos, b u t it w o u l d not have conveyed half so well her consternation at her hero's collapse. She puts on a brave front a few minutes later and calls him a hero ( 1 0 5 3 ) , b u t her real shock at his abject state, betrayed momentarily by her action here, is not put into words until she reports the scene to the Elector (1163-1173). A g a i n , in I V , 3, the hat and settling down breitetes Kissen tells nonchalant frame of state of III, 5, than do logue.

Prince's easy action in hanging nachlässig auf ein auf der Erde us even more of his relaxed, mind, his recovery from the the calm, resigned words of his

u p his ausgealmost frantic mono-

T h e immediately following scene, too (IV, 4), is provided w i t h a f u l l " t r a c k " of stage business. From the moment Natalie makes her somewhat theatrical entry, on the arm of a cavalry captain, preceded by a torchbearer and followed by ladies i n w a i t i n g (again Kleist's eye for costume and lighting), to the m o m e n t of her flamboyant exit (her final speech calls for a raised arm and voice), the author has visualized and prescribed almost every movement of his persons. T h e casual observer might conclude that in this critical scene the Prince reaches his decision all by himself, unaffected b y Natalie's various demonstrations. B u t so true a dramatist as Kleist never allows his persons to remain unaffected by one another. W e never have w i t h h i m the speaking and acting "past" each other that w e have for example in Hebbel's Herodes und Mariamne. W e can b e sure, then, that Natalie does affect the Prince's decision, less by what she says (which is for the most part not what she deeply feels) than by her bearing and gesture: particularly her irrepressible dismay w h e n she first realizes the import of the Elector's l e t t e r — t h e erblaßt to be sure is more epic than dramatic—and her just-too-late affectation of sudden joy (the time lag indicated by Kleist's Pause is most tell-

204

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ing here). One feels that her very opposition and questioning have helped to clarify the Prince's mind when he gets up leidenschaftlich and retorts: stop questioning me; you haven't got the pointl (1353 f.), and then is forced in rebuttal to bring out the pointl This is an excellent example of the mental processes set forth by Kleist in his brilliant essay Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden (IV, 74-80)—that, too, the work of a dramatic mind. How natural, again, is the Prince's posture the next moment as he sits, with arms crossed, rereading the letter, responding to Natalie's words of mingled fear and admiration with an understanding pressure of his hand (1358 -f f.). More happens in this scene than meets the ear. It is a beautiful example of communication between lovers that goes far beyond words. T h e high-strung fourth scene of the first Act, in which the Prince gives his excited report of his "dream," ends nevertheless in an unrhetorical, businesslike manner, with Hohenzollern's saying, in substance, "It's late, and before the battle begins I want to get a bit of sleep." Similarly, the following scene (with a shift to our first interior setting) begins in a terse and appropriate manner: distant cannonading sets the mood for the coming battle; the Elector enters briskly, with a question that indicates he is im Bilde and that elicits some to-the-point information from the commander; no time or words are wasted with a formal exposition. This scene (I, 5) is a tour de force of stage management, for Kleist keeps several lines of action going and interweaves them with the greatest skill, with completely natural dialogue, no confusion, and perfect timing. On one side of the stage a group of officers is assembled around the Field Marshal to take down their orders for the day. On the other side, with nice balance of personnel, costume, and business, a group of ladies around the Electress and Natalie, about to

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von Homburg

205

depart. A n air of bustle and expectancy in both the military and the domestic groups. Prince Friedrich, on the outer fringe of the officers' circle, pad and pencil in hand but eyes fixed on the ladies, is plainly divided (and this has been well motivated) between his military duties on the one side and his personal interests on the other. So indeed is the Elector, but in a less critical degree; the Prince is the chief intermediary figure between the two groups. T h e Elector takes a chair behind his wife and niece; this places him so that he faces and speaks toward the audience. A brief conversation ensues, notably natural, in contrast to the formal discourses in the Wallenstein family. It is exactly balanced in length by the first section of the Field Marshal's dictation of orders; this too, with interruptions and repetitions, is wholly lifelike. Just as the Electress's carriage is announced and her party rises to leave, the Prince's turn comes to receive his particular orders. Kleist's stage arrangement makes it graphically clear why the Prince's attention must be deflected, to the obliteration of the most important part of his instructions. He proceeds to "plant" the missing glove, it is duly proved the Princess's, and he turns back with triumphant strut to the military group, just in time to catch that part of the orders that chimes with his elated mood. His actions alone, even without a word spoken, would have made clear to us what is going on in his mind. Under these circumstances, even the Elector's special admonition cannot penetrate to the deeper levels of the Prince's comprehension, and we, after what we have seen as well as heard, are sure that trouble will ensue. Kleist shows in Homburg that he can produce good "theater" without being theatrical. He avoids the easy stage effects that mark the work of many inferior playwrights. So here, as he had the sovereign enter without ceremony, he has him exit in a sachlich, businesslike way: saying, "Bring up my

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horse; I want to be at the battlefield before sunrise!" he goes out, followed by his officers. T h e stage thus cleared of the two groups, our attention is concentrated on the hero, who remains behind and delivers a monologue—a conventional feature here, one must admit, since the Prince, in den Vordergrund tretend, speaks across the footlights frankly to the audience. This is the only case where Kleist ends an act with a monologue. Insofar as people do not normally talk aloud to themselves, a monologue is something artificial. It is an economical device for acquainting us directly with the state of mind of a person who has just had an important experience. Kleist uses monologues sparingly; there are only seventeen in all his plays (none in Guiskard or Penthesilea or Krug), and they become ever shorter; those in Homburg are the shortest. T h e Prince's three (I, 6; IV, 3; V, 10) are strategically placed, they are not merely rhetorical but grow each time naturally out of the particular situation, and they are commendably brief, never exceeding ten or eleven lines. T h e Prince's utterance here (I, 6) makes a most effective act close, in both a theatrical and a deeper dramatic sense. It expresses the hero's exultant mood and his confidence in an ordained success; it leaves us with a realization of tremendous energy and ambition wound up like a coiled spring and in suspense as to its release. Kleist's act endings in Homburg involve in every case a change of scene; they also coincide with logical sectionings in the action and seem to us organic and necessary. They function as emphatic underscorings of action concluded and create suspense as to action to follow. This is true of the ending of Act II, with the somber words of the Elector ordering the Prince's arrest and courtmartial—a sharp contrast to the note on which Act I ended. Act III, notably short, ends in a mood of tense restraint that reflects the Prince's incipient

STAGECRAFT,

Prinz Friedrich von Homburg

207

recovery of self-command, and with important action forecast. In contrast to most plays, the fourth Act has a strong ending, a "fanfare" like that which ended Act I: Natalie, we may be sure with a gesture of command, sets her "subversive activity" in motion. Act V ends, as is fitting for a patriotic play, with a ringing cheer of defiance of the foe. All these act endings, in a sense even the last one, leave us with a feeling of suspense and expectation. After the high-pitched outburst that closed Act I, Act II begins quietly enough, and with one of those touches of comedy that are so frequent in this Schauspiel. A word of command is heard off stage, and is passed on by two officers, as they enter, to troops of cavalry just out of sight. Then, at old Kottwitz's call for help in dismounting, the officers go off again and come back with him. This is an unusual, informal procedure that arouses our interest.3 When the battle begins, heralded by Kottwitz's trumpetlike, "Holla, ihr Herrn, holla! Sitzt auf, sitzt auf I" the officers present go up onto a rise of ground, and we are given a demonstration of the time-honored device of Teichoskopie, made in this instance so vivid with excited speeches, questions, and exclamations that we feel we are ourselves among the immediate observers. Again Kleist achieves a marvel of compression: in little over thirty lines we receive the impression of a complete battle. T h e Prince gets decidedly that impression and is raging to take part before it is too late. Besides the speeches on stage, Kleist vivifies the progress of the battle through sounds farther off: first an opening cannon shot, then Kanonenschüsse in der Ferne, then Schüsse in der Nähe, then heftige Kanonade, then at closer range Musketenfeuer, and at last, after a tense Pause: ein Siegesgeschrei in der Ferne (428 H—462 + ) . This "sound track" is coordinated with the conversation of the officers before us to produce an amazingly vivid "painting" of an old-style battle.

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W h e n the Prince orders his fateful charge, our observers leave, and we do not "see" the rest of the battle. But we hear of it from various sources: almost immediately in general terms through the Hofkavalier (503 fi.), then through the eyewitness reports of Mörner (525 ff.) and Sparren (639 ff.). T h e latter two are of virtually even length; the one affirming, the other denying the sovereign's death, they illustrate the symmetry which is one of the marked features of this superbly wrought play. Each récit is neatly divided into succinct and coherent paragraphs, each with its subject stated in the opening lines and a marked conclusion; the narration is lively, and a static effect is further avoided by interruptions between the sections.4 T h e false report of the Elector's death enables Kleist, with admirable economy, to bring his lovers plausibly together, which otherwise would have required many pages of development. It further furnishes great opportunity to portray emotional rise and fall, a fine bit of tragic irony (609-611), and a drastic Kontrastwirkung such as Schiller would have relished. Hebbel was fully justified in declaring this one of the greatest scenes in German dramatic literature. 5 T h e Prince's presence here, it may be remarked, comes about naturally: he has been pursuing the retreating Swedes and overtakes the ladies' party, which, in consequence of an accident, never got far away from the scene of the fighting. T h e breakdown of a carriage as a stage expedient, to be sure, is not unfamiliar in the drama of the period; we find it, for example, in Minna von Barnhelm and in Kleist's own Zerbrochner Krug. These developments have brought the Prince to the height of his fortunes: a victor in battle and in love, he goes off with a jubilant, " O Cäsar Divus! / Die Leiter setz' ich an, an deinen Stern!" (713 f.). T h e very next words we hear on the stage are those of the Elector condemning him to death

STAGECRAFT,

Prinz Friedrich

von Homburg

209

(715 ff.). By this juxtaposition Kleist produces not only a clashing contrast of moods and speech tones but in the latter scene a heightened effect of solemn pageantry. T h e curtain rises on an outdoor setting in the heart of Berlin, in front of the Altes Schloß. In the background steps lead u p to the open doors of the Schloßkirche, whose illuminated interior provides a further depth of solemnity. W e see the coffin containing Froben's body carried past and set on a richly adorned catafalque as the great bells toll. There is a throng of populace in the square and in the church, but the front of the stage is evenly divided between the Elector and his army leaders on one side and a balancing group of officers and despatch bearers on the other. T h e middle axis, the deep and somewhat raised church vista, remains free, and the coffin forms its center. This grave military-funereal setting, appealing to the eye and ear, is borne in on us before the Elector enters; through dumb show a splendid resonance has been provided for the spoken word. Kleist's cult of the "eloquent object," exemplified at the beginning of the play in the threefold symbolism of laurel wreath, golden chain, and glove (these figure again in Hohenzollem's speech, 1633 ff.), is once more in evidence in the present scene. Kleist is careful to specify that Prince Friedrich as he enters, expecting to be greeted as the victor of Fehrbellin, is carrying three captured enemy flags, Kottwitz two, Hohenzollern, Golz, and R e u ß one each (the other trophy bearers are not individuated). T h e Prince leads in laying his flags, die drei Fahnen, at the Elector's feet as mute evidence of the day's achievement. But instead of being hailed as a victor, he is declared a prisoner: "Nehmt ihm den Degen ab! Er ist gefangen." T h e Elector's curt and heavy words are a bombshell in the theater; there is a catastrophic drop from height to depth. T h e sovereign and virtual father does not even speak to the Prince again but only of

210

H E I N R I C H VON

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him and only once more during the rest of the scene. His action in turning away to read his despatches (762 + ) indicates, more effectually than words could, that discussion is cut off and the arrest is to proceed. T h e two leading figures, Prince and Elector, will not appear again together until the closing scenes of the play (V, 7-11). T o be sure, the Prince is under a form of arrest all this time, but even so it is unusual procedure that might have proved disastrous in the hands of a lesser playwright. A n author less skeptical of the communicative power of speech would probably have arranged an extensive debate between the antagonists. Schiller, for one, would not readily have foregone the opportunity for such a confrontation. T h e Prince having been made prisoner, Kleist does not forget the symbolic flags: Kottwitz, after a moment's hesitation, characteristically venting his feelings in an oath but never wavering in discipline, picks up his two flags; the others follow his example; finally, as the Prince's three flags are left orphaned, a touching testimony to his fate, the old officer picks u p these too, so daß er nun fünf trägt, as Kleist expressly adds. T h i s "business" emphasizes visually both the fall in the Prince's fortunes and Kottwitz's loyal friendship. T h e scene closes, as it opened, with silent pantomime. As far as words go, it ends dryly enough with the Elector's instructions: "Bringt ihn nach Fehrbellin, ins Hauptquartier, / U n d dort bestellt das Kriegsrecht, das ihn richte!" (789 f.). B u t then he turns away and walks up the steps into the church. T h e eloquent flags are borne after him (Kleist makes them almost individuals: Die Fahnen folgen ihm) and are hung u p as costly trophies on the pillars of the nave, while the sovereign with his suite kneels at the bier of Froben and prays, and the organ plays funeral music. T h e synesthetic Stimmung of the beginning is intensified, and the deeper meaning of this agitated scene of fifty masterly

STAGECRAFT, Prinz

Friedrich

von Homburg

211

lines is brought home to us in a moment of silence. Our eyes and thoughts, like those of the people on the stage, are fixed on Froben's coffin. It is the central and most impressive part of the Bühnenbild and as it preaches mutely of the hazards of life and war, it symbolizes the difference between dying in carrying out one's duty and living in disregard of it. Act III, with its less than 300 verses, is a masterpiece of compression and is full of dramatic life. In the Prince's part, especially, it offers great scope for the actor: the eager and confident beginning, the growing uneasiness manifested by actions even more than words, the gettings up and sittings down and Verlegenheitspausen (e.g., 868, 869 -j-) as his friend's arguments increasingly "get under his skin"; then the frantic scene of groveling cowardice in the Electress's room and, before its end, by way of compassion, the beginnings of self-recovery—this role need not fear comparison with Hamlet's. T h e range of emotion here is enormous; yet after all its extravagances, Kleist brings his act to a close in a most restrained manner. T h e Prince takes a warm and grateful leave of Natalie and bids her, in effect, "let me know how you make out"—for Erfolg is used here (1078) in the same neutral sense as the older English "success." Schiller would never have been content with such a prosaic ending; nor would he ever have let a hero sink so low as the Prince does in the earlier part of this scene. T h e opening of Act I V is again specifically visualized by the playwright. H e shows us the sovereign in his workroom, standing at a table set with candles and covered with papers: the dutiful head of the State in the old Prussian tradition. Natalie enters—by the middle door, Kleist directs—and drops to her knees some distance away; this action, with her solemn opening line: " M e i n edler Oheim, Friedrich von der Markl" sets the tone for the scene and indicates its substance: a suppliant appealing to a ruler in a grave case. Be-

212

Heinrich von

Κr.fist

fore she speaks at all, Kleist has interpolated a Pause for the significance of the picture to make itself felt. Natalie refuses to be raised from her knees until she has clearly and honestly stated her case. Then the Elector erhebt sie with a question which opens a spirited conversation marked by Kleist with a sequence of revealing stage directions. At the end Natalie herself is made the bearer of the Elector's letter. This is both dramatically economical and intensifying; it helps to tighten the plot (somewhat as does Just's pawning of the ring with the Innkeeper himself in Minna von Barnhelm), and it makes the test more severe for the Prince, for with this charming representative of life before him, he might be tempted to make the wrong decision. As things turn out, however, he rises to heroism in her presence, as he sank to abject cowardice in her presence; this is symmetrical and satisfying. And the resulting scene (IV, 4) adds to our picture of Natalie, showing her in a new and very feminine role. She may seem at the outset a simple, quiet person, but there are depths in her nature that surprise even her lover (cf. 1065 f.), and fine shades of expression in her part that challenge an actress. She, like the Prince, is not a fixed character to begin with, but one that evolves in the course of the play. Such figures are the greatest triumph of the dramatist's dynamic art. This scene between hero and heroine, the most important of all for the "inward" action, is a masterpiece of vivid and natural stage behavior. Every movement seems to have been completely envisaged. Gesture and facial expression are continuously apparent, corroborating or substituting for words. This is acting drama at its best. T h e reading aloud of a letter, which might threaten a "dead" interval, is held to a minimum; the Elector's note is a model of terseness, while Natalie's confident expectation beforehand (1306) and her consternation seven lines later, followed instantly by feigned

STAGECRAFT, Prinz

Friedrich

von

Homburg

213

elation, are good theater. She has a rich " a c t i n g " part, in more senses than one, to the end of the scene; her gamut runs from tragic anxiety to exuberance and a virtually comic touch at the close. Kleist quotes the Elector's letter verbatim, but he avoids monotony by giving us only the gist of the Prince's reply, and this indirectly: through his words to Natalie

(1380-

1 3 8 5 ) and the Elector's to Kottwitz ( 1 6 1 7 ff.). In that later scene, both

Kottwitz and Hohenzollern

present

lengthy

documents to the ruler, but no part of these is read; instead, their main points are presented in lively speeches, with interruptions and counterarguments by the Elector, w h o himself, for variety, cuts short Hohenzollern's discourse and caps it with a specious conclusion ( 1 7 0 6 - 1 7 1 9 ) . T h e drama is a living present, Darstellung men

Gegenwärtigen,

Schiller (December 23, Schriften, Gegenwart

des

vollkom-

as Goethe defined it in a letter to 1 7 9 7 ) . In Goethe's

Hinterlassene

Grillparzer found the formulation Das Drama

ist

and quoted it with approval. 6 H e himself once

defined the drama as Ansicht lyric Aussicht).1

(as the epic is Umsicht

and the

T h e dramatist has been described as " a

creator of visible poetry." 8 Kleist's practice instinctively conforms to the principle that underlies all these statements. In Homburg

he puts all the important action on the stage for

us to see. Very little is left to occur off stage, and even this is not formally reported but worked into dramatic dialogue, as in I I I , 1 and at the beginning of A c t V . T h e battle itself with its large military maneuvers is necessarily left offstage and reflected by teichoscopy, but Kleist by no means contents himself with a mere lookout's report (as, say, in von Berlichingen,

III, 13, or in Die Jungfrau

von

Götz

Orleans,

V , 1 1 ) ; he distributes the " v i e w i n g " among various persons and develops it into a scene of great interest and animation in its own right. T h i s is supplemented later on by the C a v a -

214

HEINRICH

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lier's report and by the accounts of Mörner and Sparren, which are erlebte Rede in the true sense of the term. Then, in the last act, the arguments of Kottwitz and Hohenzollem again rehearse the story. Thus we learn of the central event, the Battle of Fehrbellin, from widely different angles of distance and personality, which gives it a remarkable depth of reality. Kleist does not hesitate to present a piece of action thrice. Thus what we see enacted in the opening scene is retold in the Prince's account to his friend (I, 4) and repeated again in Hohenzollern's summary to the Elector (V, 5). Yet Ave do not feel that we are hearing the same old story over, for each time it is a new story, seen through a different temperament or in the light of intervening developments; it characterizes the teller and adds a new dimension to the tale. We also hear of the Prince's riding mishap thrice (378 ff., 724 ff., 744 ff.), but this is by no means gratuitous and incidentally furnishes an interesting example of the growth of rumor. Costume is an integral part of Kleist's stage art. T h e Prince who stands in battle dress on the hillock in II, 2 is a different man from the one who steals through the dusk in Federhut und Mantel to beg for his life. 9 It makes a difference whether the sovereign appears in his shirtsleeves (at the beginning of Act V) or in regal array, with his fürstlichen Schmuck on (1427 + ) . In this employment of clothing for dramatic characterization Grillparzer proved a true successor to Kleist. Things, as we have already had occasion to observe, are of paramount importance to Kleist. Once he has introduced a significant object he pays as much attention to it as to a person. This is equally true of his Novellen; the classical example is the two black horses that figure constantly in Michael Kohlhaas. In Käthchen von Heilbronn (III, 6), as we noted earlier, Graf Wetter snatches a whip from the wall;

STAGECRAFT,

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215

two pages later he lays it down; after three more pages he picks it up again and hurls it through a window, shattering the glass. These actions illuminate an emotional progression. In the opening scene of Homburg, we see Hohenzollern snatching a torch from a page, using it to light up his "exhibit," and handing it back to the page. Natalie's glove all but acts in the first few scenes. Kleist expressly notes its entry (70 + ) . He holds it up for us to see in the hand that the puzzled somnambulist puts to his forehead (I, 2). T h e Prince examines it (105), and Hohenzollern's aside (106 f.) underlines its importance. T h e Prince throws it down impatiently (108), then picks it u p again ( 1 3 9 + ) , and this action puts him on the track of his "dream," in the recital of which the glove forms the climax (188 ff.). It is prominent again in I, 5, 10 reappears in the concluding scenes of Act V, and has its due place in the final ensemble as a sort of dramatis persona. In many ways, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg represents a blending of convention and innovation in stage technique. It is a regular play in five acts. It is in verse. Its personnel is limited to the aristocratic class, plus a few lackeys. T h e Volk takes part only once, and has less than two lines to speak: the peasant and his wife in II, 3, are but lay figures. Common soldiers aré mentioned only twice in stage directions (741 + , 763 - f ; cf. Volk before 714); otherwise only the officer class appears. In Hohenzollern we have the traditional figure of the confidant, though he is individuated somewhat beyond that type and given a major share in the plot. There are soliloquies: three by the hero, one by the ruler; but they never exceed a dozen lines and are always to the point of the moment. There are asides, but only six or eight in the whole play, and almost all are limited to one line, rarely t w o — quite in contrast to Hebbel's practice I T h e naming of the title-hero in the first line, and the announcing of the ap-

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proach of a character before he comes on (399, 508, 1732), are in the classical tradition. T h e breakdown of a carriage as a retarding device seems to us more "stock" than it would have to audiences w h o knew the roads even of Kleist's day. O n the other hand, the elements of innovation are conspicuous. T h e play begins and ends with night scenes, and a good deal of the action takes place at night, in contrast to the daylight of the Greeks and the German neoclassicists. H o w unconventional to open a play with the hero asleep in a moonlit g a r d e n — a cavalry general sleepwalking while his troops are moving into position for a decisive b a t t l e — h o w unheard-of to close a play with the hero swooning awayl T h e Prince is as irregular a Prussian soldier as Kleist was in his time. T h e exploitation of the Nachtseite of human life and character, the unsparing delineation of an "unheroic hero" cringing in fear of death, shrieking for life at any p r i c e — this psychological realism seems to us even today so advanced that we can well understand why Kleist's play gained no foothold on the stage a century and a half ago, why even so intelligent a judge as Grillparzer found Kleist's scene disgusting. 1 1 T h i s scene marked an epoch in the G e r m a n theater. It flew in the face of all traditional and current concepts of heroism. Such relentless consistency of characterization and truth to life were new to the stage. A n d even the twentieth century was to find this style too naturalistic. As late as the 1920's and 1930's, as I can testify, Berlin theaters were still replacing Kleist's frank duftend in line 991 with T i e c k ' s vapid leblos. In conformity with the conventional design for a five-act play, the climax comes just after the middle, in the third act; in consequence of the unconventional character of the hero, however, the Höhepunkt is actually a Tiefpunkt, his moral nadir. T h i s anomaly is quite characteristic of Kleist, w h o was fond of paradox and reversal of the accepted.

STAGECRAFT,

Prinz Friedrich

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217

T h e handling of metre and diction represents a compromise. T h e basic pentameter is maintained, but not with such mellifluous regularity as in Goethe's Tasso. Kleist's lines, as spoken on the stage, never stand out as singsong units—the actor cannot "float" on an even wave length—but neither do they suggest prose. T h e metre gives a basic rhythm to the utterance and justifies a certain elevation of diction, but it is never allowed to stand in the way of lively dramatic expression. Among the pentameters we find occasional tetrameters and hexameters and incomplete lines. T h e blank verse in Homburg is of great flexibility, ranging from the poetic numbers of the Prince's account of his dream (172 ff.) or his last soliloquy (1830 ff.) to such colloquial and broken lines as "Arthur! He! Bist des Teufels du? Was machst du?" (93), or "Mir? Nein." "Nicht?" " N e i n ! " — " W o h e r denn also los?" (795), which can at need be pressed into the metrical mold but certainly are not classical examplars of it. Kleist will even set an iambic line back on its heels, as in the Prince's excited, "Träum' ich? Wach' ich? Leb' ich? Bin ich bei Sinnen?" (765). In this play, Kleist completely avoids the convention of terminating acts or scenes with riming couplets. Despite certain forms of court behavior prescribed by history, Kleist has worked out eminently natural human relations among his chief persons. One need only, for instance, compare the Elector's conversations with his wife and niece with those of Schiller's Wallenstein with his duchess and daughter to appreciate Kleist's informality. And where else in the German drama of this period could we find a royal princess bringing u p a chair for a man, snatching a letter out of his hands and keeping it from him, or picking u p his torn-up draft from under his table (1323 -f- ff.)? Yet all this time her ladies in waiting are present (cf. 1296 - f , 1319)—so here again we have freedom and convention combined! T h e ending, too, is anything but traditional. Save for a

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short phrase of feminine compassion, Natalie is not heard from again; the final speeches are by men. Instead of concluding his play with a tableau of happy lovers reunited, Kleist ends on an austere, almost harsh, martial note, with cannonading, march music, exultant shouts, and an outlook, not on happiness ever after but renewed warfare and danger. In respect to the traditional unities also, Kleist steers a middle course between the severe restriction of the classical Iphigenie and the epic looseness of the Sturm und Drang Götz. T h e unity of action is absolute: the main line is held to, with no subplots or episodes or lyric digressions. T h e unity of place is liberally interpreted. There are eleven different locales, but all the action, with the exception of two scenes in Berlin (II, 9 and 10), takes place in and around Fehrbellin: various rooms of its palace and palace garden, its town hall, its battleground, and a village nearby. T h e unity of time, likewise, is liberalized but by no means flouted. If we calculate the time elapsed, with the help of various statements in the text, we find that Kleist has spread his action into four days, or about seventy-two hours, but that not much over the canonical twenty-four hours is used for the actual stage scenes we witness. T h e play opens about eleven o'clock on the evening of June 9; the next day, June 10, is the day of the battle (historically, it was June 28, o.s. 18, 1675). T h e n , between Acts II and III, we can suppose a day's interval (June 11) for the celebration of the Siegesfest and the meeting and deliberation of the court martial. O n the evening of this day the Elector returns from Berlin (800 f.). Acts I I I - V take place on June 12, as we know from the dating of the Prince's letter (1377). Hohenzollern visits the Prince presumably in the late afternoon. Act IV begins just after dusk (Dämmerung, 1164; candles on the Elector's table, and torch 1296 -J-). Between Acts IV and V several

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hours must intervene. T h e last act begins shortly before midnight, as did the first, just about seventy-two hours earlier. Kleist's plot is closely woven, with no gaps in its texture. T h e transitions between scenes and acts are easy and natural. Thus, at line 951 the Prince sets out to see the Electress; at line 958 he appears before her. A t the end of Act III Natalie leaves for the Elector's room; when the curtain rises again we see her enter his presence. A t the end of the scene with him she immediately returns to her room (in another part of the palace) to get her hat and gloves for the short drive to the town hall to deliver the letter to the Prince. Graf R e u ß having called to see her on other business, she, with a new plan forming in her mind (indicated by a Pause in which she steps to a table and thoughtfully puts on her gloves, 1279 + ) , takes him along on her errand and can therefore despatch him without loss of time at line 1391. A l l this, considering the formalities of the circles in which we are moving, is managed with the greatest informality and practicalness. From the very outset, the action proceeds at a steady brisk pace. No time is lost, and there are no "dead" moments. W e are injected in medias res at once. No space is given to a formal, express exposition, but necessary information is supplied on the way, where it is dramatically vital. T h u s H o henzollern's opening speech is in effect the expository monologue that launches many a traditional play; but the information it carries is a natural part of a summarizing question which he is putting to the Elector, who is listening intently. A question is always a good send-off. T h u s tension and, in a sense, action begin with the opening words. Only at one point, between Acts IV and V, does Kleist take liberties with his timing. Graf Reuß, carrying Natalie's order, would have to ride to Arnstein (which is at some distance, see 1245), Kottwitz's regiment of dragoons would have to break camp (and they are not in a Feldlager but billeted:

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kantoniert, 1245) a n t ^ " d e the distance to Fehrbellin—all this in less time than the Prince's letter (despatched, 1379, even before Reuß) takes virtually to cross the street. One can hardly imagine that the intermediaries: Jäger, Schweizer, Heiduck (1477 f.) would be slow on such important business; yet the letter arrives (1475) a hundred agitated lines after it was sent. Kleist has left one or two other loose ends. T h e servant whom the Elector sends out to make an inquiry (1425 f.; his exit is not indicated) does not report back. T h e ruler's es ist mir schon bekannt a few lines later (1438) is sheer "bluff," and his following words represent a shrewd guess. W e hear no more of the fate of the young officer whom the Prince had arrested for insubordination before the battle (485 ff.). W e are doubtless expected to recall this vehement incident when the Prince himself is arrested, after the battle, and feel its tragic irony. T h e very lines spoken over the culprit aid our memory like a recurrent leitmotif: the Prince's Führt ihn gefangen ab, ins Hauptquartier! (491) and the Elector's Bringt ihn nach Fehrbellin, ins Hauptquartier! (790). Such subtle correspondences, indeed, are part of the striking symmetry that distinguishes this beautifully structured play. W e have already noted some of these correspondences. One can pick out any number of others. As the first, involuntary, sight of his grave (981 ff.) unnerved the Prince and reduced him to an ignominious Todesfurcht, so the second, voluntary, sight of it (1729 f.) steels him and exalts him to a supernal Todessucht. His frantically this-worldly plea for an inglorious life (III, 5) is balanced by an equally extreme otherworldly demand for a glorious death (V, 7). In I, 6, he was avid of the Segen of fortune for himself; now he selflessly calls down heaven's Segen upon his sovereign (1795 ff.). As on the earlier occasion the Electress had exclaimed incredulously, "Mein Sohn . . . was sprichst du da?" (1005), so on

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the later one Kottwitz cries to his Sohn, "was sprichst du da?" (1746, 1763). As Kottwitz had shouted, " R u h i g ! " to the Prince who would storm into battle (470), so the Prince shouts, " R u h i g ! " to his friends who would detain him in life (1749); his unbeugsamer Wille is the same but aims at opposite goals. T h e Prince's emotional "line," if we were to represent it graphically, would run from the horizontal of an immature equilibrium at the start to a peak of self-assertion and affirmation of life ( marked by the monologue I, 6 and the exultant 7 1 3 f.), then take a steep downward plunge with his collapse (III, 5), then rise again through stoical resignation (marked by the monologue IV, 3) to world negation and Jenseitigkeit (the monologue V, 10) and reach an indicated horizontal of mature equilibrium at the end—a perfectly symmetrical graph. At the end of III, 1, Hohenzollern suggested to the Prince an appeal to the Electress; at about the same time (III, 3), the Electress was suggesting to Natalie an appeal to the Elector; and the suppliant is sped with the same business of helping him on with his wraps. In III, 5, the Prince selfishly disowned Natalie; in the next scene she selflessly renounces all claim to him (1083 ff.). In II, 6, he was the strong tree ready to support the despondent Natalie's vine; in III, 5, she becomes the pillar of strength on which her broken lover leans. T h e spirit and attitude in which she ends Act IV balance those in which he ended Act I. Her demeanor (and misdemeanor) at the close of Act IV is like his in the battle scene: she too "takes orders from the heart" and in effect sends her regiment into an attack, not on the enemy but on the mind of her uncle—she too bläst Fanfare. T h e one attack has tragic, the other essentially comic results. By such parallels Kleist demonstrates the spiritual affinity between these two people, which is not abrogated, in a deeper sense,

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by the Prince's seeming abandonment of her in V, 8. Kleist has not only created in Natalie his highest embodiment of womanhood, but in Natalie and Friedrich an exemplary couple, harmonizing with and supplementing each other. T h e use of the exchange "Gleichviel!" "Gleichviel?" with its different intonations in line 886 and again in line 1374 is surely not accidental. T h e recurrence of the Prince's favorite expression with a new value in the later scene emphasizes the distance he has come in his rehabilitation. And so the persons and prizes that withdrew from his grasp at the beginning can return and offer themselves to him at the end. T h e symmetrically balanced structure of the play, and its musical, symphonic quality, are most obvious in its opening and closing scenes. T h e initial theme, having been developed and deepened, contested in crashing dissonances, and transposed to another key, is triumphantly restated, enriched and transformed, in the finale. It is the same and yet not the same. What was then make-believe but seemed to the dreaming Prince reality, now has become reality but seems to the waking Prince a dream ( 1856). Things ardently desired were denied, things utterly renounced are richly granted. Kleist could have ended his play with the Elector's tearing up the death warrant (1828 + ) . For that matter, he could have ended it at the point reached by line 1789, without the cruel pretense of the following lines and Natalie's needless suffering in the next scene. These developments throw a somewhat dubious light on the Elector's character and his reputed kindness (Milde); they remind us uncomfortably of Jupiter in Amphitryon and the protracted torments he inflicted on a loving pair by delaying his revelation. What made Kleist nevertheless go through with the further scenes as he did? Chiefly, no doubt, it was the desire for symmetry, both architectural and musical, which has

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just been pointed out. It was also in part that artistic rationality that made him elaborate with logical consistency a figure once begun (as in I, 3). It was in part a matter of poetic justice: the Prince, publicly disgraced, had a right to a public reinstatement; at the very spot where he was ridiculed in the beginning, the dreamer was to be honored in the end. T h e patriotic propagandist also had a further point to make, and the royal pedagogue a tactful lesson to administer to his officers by letting them vote the Prince's pardon instead of proclaiming it as his own act (1818 ff.). But beyond doubt it was also Kleist's strong sense of theater, his showmanship, that dictated this wind-up. T h e notably brief but rich final scene gives him a chance to display his complete cast once more, with picturesque and almost operatic effect: arresting pantomime, a medley of colorful types and costumes; solo, duet, and chorus voices, offstage cannonading, the palace lighting up, resounding cheers, and a Romantic synesthesia of midsummer moonlight, music, and fragrant flowers. O u r attention is focused again on a man in an extraordinary condition: not sleepwalking this time, but blindfolded and in an ethereal, transcendent mood. He thinks he is about to be executed, we know he is not; this gives us a feeling of tragicomic irony and expectation of the moment of revelation and resolution. W e share vicariously in the relieving shouts. A n d the intensely musical composition of the final speeches, building up from constituent parts to the all-inclusive crescendo of the Alle, makes a magnificent curtain. From its first line to its last, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg is stage drama of the highest order.

CHAPTER VILI

Motivation

in PRINZ FRIEDRICH

VON HOMBURG THE BEAUTIFULLY CLEAR and symmetrical structure of Prinz Friedrich von Homburg is perhaps in itself a reason for the oversimple, antithesizing interpretations to which this play has been repeatedly subjected since its first appearance one hundred forty years ago. Some writers have seen in it a vindication of military and civic discipline, with the Elector unconditionally victorious. 1 Others have seen in it free heroism, represented by the Prince, completely triumphant over the dead letter of the law. 2 Others, again, have recognized a compromise between these two extremes; but even the adherents of the "reconciliation theory," though on the whole more perspicacious than their predecessors, have underrated the complexity of the solution. Kleist's earliest editor, Ludwig Tieck, launched the play in 1821 with an oversimple exegesis: the Prince acknowledges his guilt, subordinates himself to fatherland and law, and is pardoned by a benevolent, impregnable sovereign. 3 T i e c k thereby set an unfortunate example for many who came after him. T h e same overschematized simplicity of explanation mars young Hebbel's otherwise clairvoyant essay Über Theodor Körner und Heinrich von Kleist (1835). For Hebbel, the Prince represents the "idea" that strength is superior to law, and courage recognizes only self-imposed restrictions; the solution is brought about by the Prince's giving up this "idea" and realizing, as Hebbel later formulated it, that the State rests upon the principle of subordination. 4 225

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Here, for all their remarkable correspondences, the essential difference between Kleist's and Hebbel's poetic personalities is clearly evident. Hebbel, the rational idealist of Schillerian ancestry, imposes on Kleist's play a rigid moralistic formula that does injustice to its diverse reality, and imputes to its author an abstract purpose that was hardly in his mind. For Kleist seems to start from the visualization of a dramatic situation rather than from an idea. He confirms Grillparzer's dictum: "Kein Dichter in der Welt ist wohl je bei Schöpfung eines Meisterwerkes von einer allgemeinen Idee ausgegangen." 8 Hebbel himself was too rational a nature, and his own plays are too rigorously excogitated, for him to admit the element of irrationality, chance, and strangeness that generates the encircling atmosphere of Kleist's poetic world. Hebbel's, by comparison, is as sharpcut and atmosphereless as the mountains of the moon. Prinz Friedrich von Homburg is not the demonstration of a thesis but the vivid dramatic presentation of life; its characters are not calculable types but many-sided human beings. Kleist's prodigious power of creating, in brief space, real, living persons with natures and motives of modern complexity is most brilliantly demonstrated in his last play, and it has not made "explanation" easy. Had it been his intention to personify in the Elector simply Gesetz and in the Prince simply arbitrary Kraft and Mut, he would have omitted all the scenes preceding the Prince's charge; that would have left the unqualified Willkür which Hebbel's formula demands. But these opening scenes, impressively recapitulated at the close, are indispensable; they emphasize that conditionedness and intricacy of human motive and behavior which seems to me even today the most underestimated aspect of Kleist's play. Hebbel's rationalistic blinders and his antiromantic Tendenz made him miss the meaning of these opening scenes

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altogether. He saw in them only Wucherpflanzen der Romantik and überflüssige ArabeskenLuckily, he opined, nothing depends on the Prince's wreath-twining and glovesnatching activities in Act I, Scene I; and in his own summary of the plot, he omitted all mention of the first four scenes, persuading himself that nothing was lost thereby! Hebbel's interpretation, which made of the play primarily a process of education in which a self-centered, undisciplined young rebel is reformed by a royal pedagogue, was so often echoed and elaborated by patriotic German schoolmasters that the subtler implications of the action were largely lost from view. T h e best of the older Schulausgaben, that by J. Heuwes, Paderborn, 1892, in its tenth edition (1921, p. 145) still saw the play culminating in dem Triumphe des Gesetzes über die willkürliche Eigensucht. Superficially formulated, Kleist's play furnished too neat a Schulbeispiel patriotischer Erziehung to be resisted. Hermann Gilow was one of the most emphatic spokesmen for this view from the 1890's through the First World War, 7 and it was of course exploited by the National Socialists in such books as Walther Linden's Heinrich von Kleist, der Dichter der völkischen Gemeinschaft (Leipzig, 1935). T h u s Kleist's availability for patriotic propaganda has obscured and distorted his deeper values for many of his own countrymen. T h e r e is a tragic irony in the fact that just that part of his work for which he could not get a hearing during his lifetime has had too good a hearing since, whenever a national crisis rendered it opportune. A n d not only political but critical ideologies have sought to bend Kleist's work to their dominant formulas, whether these were the Gefühl und Schicksal of Fricke (1929), or the Wirklichkeit und Dichtung of Lugowski (1936), or the Bewußtsein und Wirklichkeit of Koch (1958). Even the simplistic formulation of Tieck and Hebbel is by no means

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dead today, after so many years: the new edition of the Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte (1958), in its article on the German Drama, which is supposed to summarize the latest scholarship on the subject, repeats the outworn cliché of the Prince's subordination to Staat und Gesetz (Volume I, p. 302, col. 2). T h a t some of the older dogmatic interpreters were inclined to see in Kleist's work the simple morality of Schiller's is not surprising. Detailed comparisons were drawn, for example, between Prinz Friedrich von Homburg and Der Kampf mit dem Drachen; but they served only to prove the greater complexity and modernity of Kleist's plot. Schiller's ballad presents a clear-cut case of transgression, condemnation, contrition, and forgiveness. It contains nothing of the Problematik of passion, of confusion of soul, of an irrational and fortuitous universe. Kleist's problems are, by contrast, amoral, supramoral. Tragedy comes to his heroes and heroines not because they deviate from an ideal of moral perfection but because they encounter a world of imperfection; in being true to their innerstes Gefühl, their innate law, they collide with a defective world order that tragically "confuses" and warps their natures. Kleist removed tragedy from the confine of general moral principles to the psychological area of the modern problematical personality; this makes him, though he died only six years after Schiller, appear to us almost a contemporary. W i t h a deeper insight into the involvedness and relativity of things in this imperfect world, Kleist distributes error and responsibility among all the leading persons of his plot. T h e r e is no villain; neither is there a blameless character like Schiller's Max or Thekla; no one is proved wholly right or wholly wrong. Such a solution requires finer dramatic skill than does the operation with fixed and simple

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characters, and it gives to this play a persuasive lifelikeness that is often missed in the conventional classical drama. In all Kleist's tragedies, not only plays but stories, we can observe this striking distribution of responsibility and error. All his persons suffer more or less from the impact of an alien and enigmatical world. In Amphitryon, for instance, Alkmene's experience is extremely tragic, but Amphitryon's and even Jupiter's is only less so; they are all deceived and frustrated; there is no victor. With the impartiality of the true creator, Kleist bestows his interest, and often his sympathy, on all his characters. His solutions are eminently human adjustments, not the impersonal working out of examples in dramatic algebra. T h e Prince is the chief, but by no means the only, wrongdoer in the play. All the principal persons, without exception, make serious mistakes. They authenticate their humanity, as W. G. Howard pointed out,8 by betraying that most human of weaknesses, the tendency to err. T h e Prince's own transgressions are so generally recognized that we may dispense with discussing them here. From his case, however, that of Natalie is not so far removed as might appear. In summoning Kottwitz's regiment at the pretended behest of the ruler (1265 ff.), Natalie is guilty technically of forgery and, from a military point of view, of insubordination. As titular commander of a regiment she orders a "charge" of a sort, without orders, auf eigne Kappe. Her action is the same in kind as that which brings her lover a sentence of death, yet it brings her not the slightest reproof; virtually the same motif is used in the one instance for tragic, in the other for comic effect. Furthermore, Natalie plays a questionable role in Scene 4 of Act IV, where she exhausts her feminine wiles9 to influence the Prince's decision. A critical observer would find her conduct censurable, since it aims to mislead the Prince

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into a disgraceful action; unintelligent, in so far as she fails to see that the Elector wants the Prince's admission of guilt as a ground for setting him free; and unreasonable, because it tends to defeat her own dearest w i s h — a n d the Elector's—namely, to see the Prince rehabilitate himself as a hero. She is subject to a Kleistian Verwirrung: her love confuses her reason. H e r position toward the Prince is as illogical and risky as the Elector's: they both do not really want the Prince to act as they tempt him to act; if he took them at their word he would break their hearts. T h i s very inconsequence, it should be said, adds to their truth and depth as dramatic characters. Kottwitz, in spite of his age and experience, lets himself be swept off his feet by a childish taunt of cowardice (478 fi.). It is a fine bit of characterization that prepares us, in his testy reply to Dörfling's quiet question (390 ff.), for the inflammability that makes him react so hotly in the next scene, abetting the Prince in his w r o n g course instead of c u r b i n g him. Kottwitz is as impulsive and headstrong in a crisis as the Prince, but unlike him, and like Natalie, Kottwitz continues unregenerate to the end of the play. In his argument before the Elector (1570-1608) he stands where the Prince stood in the beginning: unquestionably brave and loyal, b u t insisting on his liberty to obey his impulses; only in his readiness to pay for that liberty with his head does he show an advance over the Prince's original position. Hohenzollern's action in exhibiting his sleeping friend as a curiosity to the court company (I, 1) is a little indelicate and disloyal, and makes him the prime mover in an unhappy series of events. H e somewhat overplays his hand as a master of ceremonies w h o knows he has an interesting " s h o w " to present. T h e humor involved here smacks more of the barracks than the drawing room, and the Electress

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displays greater tact than her husband when she finds it wrong to make fun of the Prince under these circumstances (34). It is Hohenzollern who insinuates into the Prince's excited and impressionable mind the base suspicion of personal malice on the Elector's part (911 ff.), a suspicion that does no credit to Hohenzollern's intelligence nor to his generosity. 10 It is he again who suggests the supplication before the Electress (933) which leads to the disgraceful Todesfurchtszene. He suggests, furthermore, the abandonment of Natalie (936-939) which is the most disgraceful thing in that much-criticized scene. If he had stopped to think, he could have told himself (and so could the Prince) that the Swedish suit for Natalie's hand came after the Elector's condemnation of the Prince and hence could not have been the cause of it! Hohenzollern's whole counsel here is ill-considered, and unhappily confirms the Prince in his immature and emotional interpretation of his situation. Similarly, it is the Electress who suggests to Natalie that she intercede with the Elector (III, 3). 11 She herself had already done so (1020 f.). Not the Prince alone, but everybody else, even the ruler's wife, commits the grave error of imputing personal motives to him and considering him open to emotional appeal, failing to see that he acts, or means to act, on principle. 12 But the principles of his action are themselves subjected to development and modification. T o the older interpreters, the Elector seemed, to use his grandson's famous phrase, a rocher von bronce, a monumental and immutable representative of law and order who disciplines and reclaims an errant youth. A recent writer of more metaphysical tendency goes so far as to identify him with Reality and with God. 18 T h a t this great ruler is neither a philosophical abstraction nor a divinity, but a fallible human being, is one of the greatest triumphs of Kleist's creative art.

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The Elector is no more ready-made than the Prince is. He undergoes, though less obviously than the younger man, a real change in the course of the play, and his theory of government is correspondingly modified. This change is not avowed, as is that in the Prince, by self-revealing speeches; he does not often tell us what is going on in his mind, and his air of sovereign superiority and inscrutability has baffled many interpreters, while others have likened him to Shakespeare's enigmatical figures. 14 Save for one short soliloquy, his thoughts and feelings are indicated only by action and an occasional significant stage direction, and the poet contrives to preserve the ruler's prestige throughout, even when things are going against him. But his apparent act of clemency at the end masks a transformation comparable to that which the Prince has undergone openly and painfully. T h e Prince of course is enlightened; but long ere all the play is played the Elector has gained a new insight into the nature and limitations both of states and of human beings. Far from being transcendent, he is deeply involved in the extraordinarily vivid action and interaction of this drama. On a momentary whim, with no higher motive than curiosity (40 f., 64, 1716) and a desire to substantiate his own opinion (54 f.), the Elector tampers, publicly and heedlessly, with one of his foremost officers. Far from censuring this officer for sleepwalking in a garden when he should be leading his troops into position for a crucial battle, the ruler condones the officer's negligence by taking advantage of his presence and condition for his own and his court's amusement. A head of state and commander in chief who indulges in such sport at such a moment is neither the perfect sovereign nor the faultless strategist that many interpreters have made of him. His experiment, however, "backfires," and he gets more

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than he bargained for; he is soon in retreat, his ears burning, and the extreme sharpness of his retort to the sleeper (74-77) betrays his own embarrassment and dissatisfaction with himself, just as, later, his bluster to Hohenzollern (1714) shows him "touched" on this point. Immediately, he orders that the Prince be not informed of the "jest" that he has "allowed himself" at his expense (81-84). This is a very significant admission, and it shows that the Elector, if quick to err, is also quick to see his error. His capacity for instant recovery is evidenced several times later on. It is important to note that the Prince, at the start, is dreaming only of military glory to be won in the next day's battle; the laurel wreath he is twining symbolizes this; Hohenzollern, who knows him best, avers it (56-58), and Kleist himself later corroborates it (1636). The deeply disturbing factor of love, personified by Natalie, is overtly injected into the dream and, one may say, into the Prince's undefended subconsciousness, by the Elector. The Prince feels attracted to Natalie, but is not at this point consciously in love with her, else he would not, in a waking state, refer to her merely as a lovely niece of the Electress's who has recently come into his ken (207 f.), nor think of her only in connection with a military assignment (210 ff.); for he is not a dissembler. The seit Jahren of line 603, which has misled some readers, does not mean that the Prince has wanted for years to marry Natalie; this and the following line mean rather that she now fills a place in his heart that has been waiting "for years," that is, ever since his love nature awakened.16 The improvisation added by the Elector to Hohenzollern's "show" has in fact introduced into the sleeper's dream all the persons of whom he is fond (144 ff.), and thus suffused with emotion a vision that was, to begin with, purely and professionally military. By his intrusion the Elector has

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given the Prince what must needs seem to him complete assurance of his success in battle, in love, and in his sovereign's favor ( 1 6 6 3 - 1 6 6 9 ) . Even his angry parting words: " I n dem Gefild der Schlacht / Sehn wir, wenn's dir gefällig ist, uns wieder! / Im T r a u m erringt man solche Dinge nichtl" ( 7 4 - 7 7 ) , by their juxtaposition and by their inevitable stresses as spoken, create the presumption that these boons, unattainable in sleepwalking and dream, are attainable in the coming battle. T h e Prince's eyes are open, as well as his ears; by dangling these prizes before him, the Elector puts them into the realm of possibility, and his final words seem to locate them there with specific conditions. On this seemingly supernatural revelation and royal assurance the Prince acts, a few hours later, with a fervid conviction comparable to that with which Schiller's Johanna enters upon her divinely assigned mission. T h e effect of the first scene on the Prince is most clearly evident in the last scene of the act (I, 6): his whole state of mind (including his only partial understanding of his orders) predisposes him to intervene in the battle, to do his ordained part, to gain the full measure of success of which Fortune has already given him one clear pledge, the now validated glove. T h e Elector, in bringing Natalie into the picture, has brought in this glove, her glove, one of Kleist's most momentous objects, an indubitable link between dream and waking, amazing enough to cause anyone's mind to wander. T h e Elector himself is spellbound by it when it comes to be the symbol of his own complicity ( 1 6 5 2 , 1668, 1692). His intervention has subjected the Prince to an experience so extraordinary, so strangely compact of reality and unreality, that the young officer may well be abstracted from military routine in I, 5, the more so since all the participants in that incredible vision, der ganze Reigen der Menschen, die mein Busen liebt (144 t.), are again on the

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stage, and that most puzzling of dramatis personae, the Glove, with all its implications, leaps into dramatic life. T h e Prince is here indeed "all encompassed with miracles" (1690). That initial scene in the garden, now freighted with additional meaning, continues so to engross the Prince that he fails to hear Hohenzollern's succinct résumé of his orders (422-427). And it must be admitted that Hohenzollern makes a psychologically bad beginning with his minimizing zum Glück nicht diesmal eben viel für dich—there was not much in the orders as to the Prince's action, to be sure, but very much as to his desistance from action. Again (427 +)» as twice before (204 -f-. 332 -(-), he goes off into a revery which has been amply motivated. His tendency to absentmindedness (1703—incidentally, a trait of Kleist's) is, of course, a weakness in his character, but the Elector has provided an irresistible occasion for its manifestation, and Hohenzollern has not helped matters. One may seriously question the military judgment of a commander in chief who has permitted two previous cases of disobedience leading to defeat (349 f.), to pass unpunished and has put the wrongdoer, apparently unreformed— unless reform can be expected to follow from a brief oral admonition (348-352)—a third time into a position of command, in a battle of vital importance (352). 19 When the predictable happens, this time with far more reason than the Elector yet realizes, he incontinently condemns the culprit (720, 736) before a court-martial has even been appointed, and thereby conceivably prejudices its decision. He expects everyone, the Prince included (1310), to concur in this condemnation, and again he miscalculates: his family, and his officers from the Field Marshal down (1466) disagree with him; the regiment that has suffered most from the Prince's premature charge (531 ff.) is the first to petition

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unanimously for his release (1215 f.), and the whole army is of the same mind (1256-1258, 1737 f.).17 O n closer view, the Elector's conduct on the battlefield is not substantially different from that of the man he condemns. He takes risks that are, if anything, more reprehensible, since he is the responsible head of a state that is in a highly precarious situation. As deaf to warning (641) as ever the Prince was, he again (642) insists on riding a white horse, which makes him, as usual (644) a conspicuous target for the enemy's fire, to the great anxiety of his own officers (543 f.). With a reckless daring that makes even the Prince shudder (654) he undertakes a feat practically identical with the Prince's: he charges right up to a Swedish battery that is sending forth a murderous fire (641-653; compare 525535). Only the sacrificial intervention of one of his subordinates saves him from death and Brandenburg from disaster. It is not unreasonable to ask: what would have been the result had the Elector met the fate which Froben suffers vicariously (673 ff.)? N o one, certainly, would have called the Prince to account for his disobedience, for, as soon appears, the Elector is unsupported in this course. What now seems presumptuous on the Prince's part, his stepping into the sovereign's place (581—586), would then have been natural and necessary; instead of an abject criminal, he would then have been the savior of his country! In other words, the whole ensuing action, with all its agony and collapse for the Prince, depends on the accident that Froben, and not the Elector, was the one to fall. 18 What right then has the Elector to preach of "principles"? Far from being the antithesis of the Prince, he is essentially his kin, a more experienced and maturer Prince; and they both are true children of Kleist. T h e Elector has often been made out the personification

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of reason and restraint. But he is in truth an emotional person, though he usually has his emotions under control. Natalie testifies to his qualities of heart (1111, 1319 f.), and it is to them that she appeals in IV, 1. His "heart" is with the officers assembled to intervene on the prisoner's behalf (1442). 19 W h e n he protests that he has the utmost respect for the Prince's feeling (1183 f.), he is not speaking ironically, as some critics have thought; he is genuinely upset by the recognition that his procedure can seem so wrong and heartbreaking (1155) to a man for whose feeling he has this respect. T h e characteristic Kleistian Verwirrung in the Elector ( 1 1 7 4 - f ) , though brief, is fundamentally the same as that produced in Kohlhaas by Luther's proclamation (III, 181): a man whose Rechtgefühl he greatly honors challenges the justice of his action, and this makes him for a moment doubt himself and* confuses his innerstes Gefühl. T h e Elector relies as intuitively on the Prince's feeling as the Prince does on the Elector's. O n this intuitive, emotional basis, and nothing else, the ruler takes a "long chance," and makes the State take one, by his impulsive answer to Natalie and his letter to the Prince. If he has misjudged the Prince's true fibre, and the culprit grasps at the escape offered, the ruler would have completely defeated his purpose, restoring to the State an officer who has learned nothing from his experience and whose quality has been impaired, instead of improved, by the ordeal to which the ruler has subjected him. Reasonably speaking, the Elector should pardon the Prince only if the latter is contrite. But his expectation of the young man's reaction once again (as on the battlefield) has proved wrong; and, "confused" by Natalie's report of the Prince's wretched state, he illogically faces about and declares, in effect, that the prisoner is to be pardoned if he is not contrite. If the Prince admits his guilt, the Elector,

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to be consistent with the terms of his letter and his whole antecedent attitude, must have him executed. If the wrongdoer ignobly begs for release, he is to have it; if he nobly accepts death, he is to have it—this is the position into which the Elector has maneuvered himself in IV, il What then becomes of the rational, infallible, immutable representative of Staatsraison? O n impulse, this ruler has tampered with one of his officers; on impulse, he condemns him without due process of law (720, 736); on impulse, he declares him unconditionally free (1175 f.), a broken but unregenerate mutineer. 20 Surely the Elector shows himself capable of that tyranny which he is at pains to disavow (1112, 1412 if., 1470 f.) and justifies those who, imputing to him despotic designs, assail him with emotional argumenta ad, hominem. T h e closing scenes, too, may well make us doubtful of the Elector's character as an ideal and fatherly ruler. If his Milde is indeed boundless, as Natalie assures us (1319 f.), if he loves her as his süßes Kind, why does he put her (and everyone else) to such anguish, as he carries the cruel make-believe of the execution through to the bitter end, even to blindfolding and death-march drums (V, 10)? T h e arguments which Natalie, Dörfling, and Kottwitz successively bring to bear upon the sovereign (1095 ff., 1460 ff., 1570 ff.) all seek to establish the validity of emotion in a civic and military organization, and one feels that they speak for Kleist. Kottwitz's reasoning is the most vulnerable: his fine speech actually culminates in a justification of the Elector's course. Yet the Elector does not, as a rationalist would, exploit the illogicalness of the speech; on the contrary, he acknowledges its emotional force; he has in fact no answer to it, but falls back on his trump card, calling the Prince to his aid (1609 ff.). Natalie trusts in her feelings where her reason fails

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(1201 f.). She obeys her heart when the Prince has obeyed his (1389 f.); for the Prince's reply to the Elector's letter is dictated by emotion, not reason; it is, after all, his pride that rises to the challenge of the Elector's "greatheartedness" (1343 f., 1380 ff.). A n d from this point on, these two men fairly compete with each other in generous vindication of the feelings of their hearts. T h e word Herz is on everybody's lips throughout the play; all these people, even when they seem antithetical, are reducible to the common denominator of Gefühl. It is absurd to say that in Homburg feeling is disqualified and the law upheld. T h e outcome is, instead, an interpénétration of these two elements. Restriction is seen to be only half of that polarity of forces which is necessary to ethical progress. Restriction alone can never give birth to significant law; it is—to use a different figure—the lignified portion of the tree, whereas the vital pith, from which growth comes, is in that power which Natalie, Kottwitz, and Prince Friedrich himself champion with sometimes inconsequent eloquence. In a magnificent surge of emotion (V, 7) the Prince rises above mere passive subjection to a negative law; he creates a new law in his heart. T h e r e is an immense difference in emotional connotation between das Gesetz of line 871 and das heilige Gesetz of line 1750; the first is an injunction against which the Prince rebelled, the second is an ideal which he posits in ultimate freedom (1752) and embraces with exultant love. His self-sacrificing ardor goes much further than the Elector demanded—one might expect the latter to be again verwirrt at the unforeseen development in the youth, this time upward instead of downward. Strictly speaking— the "subordination" interpreters to the contrary notwithstanding—the Prince does not finally subordinate himself to the military law; he surmounts it in a new burst of self-

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assertion; he is once more taking the bit in his teeth and charging on orders from his heart. Near the end of the play (1633 ff.) Hohenzollern summarizes for us the entire action up to the Prince's transgression. T h i s is by no means a gratuitous repetition, but may be taken as the author's own interpretation, a highly important Fingerzeig. W e should not be misled, as some interpreters have been, by the Elector's jocular sophistry (1714-1719). 2 1 Hohenzollern does not doubt (1721 f.), nor can we, that his argument has told. 22 T h e very sharpness of the ruler's retort (1714) betrays his feeling of guilt; his rebuttal is even weaker than that to Kottwitz, and again he falls back on the Prince as his advocate. Under the compulsion of his kinsman's recital, reinforced by that impressive corpus delicti, the glove, the Elector fällt in Gedanken (1692 + ) — a stage direction quite as significant as those that culminate in verwirrt in the scene with Natalie ( 1 1 4 6 + , 1 1 5 5 + » n 7 4 + ) · A t this point, one may say, he fully realizes for the first time his own implication in the web of circumstances and misunderstandings that have brought disaster to the Prince. He learns that his rigid principles are incompatible with the conditionedness of earthly things, 23 and that one who is himself so censurable may not sit in judgment. His knowledge of the actual situation has been insufficient, 24 and his diagnosis unduly simple. He was sure that in condemning his general for an apparently unqualified act of insubordination he was merely doing his duty, and there could be no different opinion, even on the Prince's part (1309 f.). He sees no ground for exercising the right of pardon with which the court has tempered its verdict (883 f.), but proceeds with preparations for the execution, even to the digging of the grave, the sight of which so unnerves the Prince. A t the beginning of his interview with

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Natalie, the Elector still holds this morally simple and seemingly unshakeable position. He thinks Natalie cannot possibly disagree with him (1092 f.). He sees simply a clash between Willkür and Satzung (1144). There is no real evidence for the widely held view that the Elector meant from the beginning merely to educate the Prince and never seriously intended to execute him. O n the contrary, as Max Herrmann once remarked, 28 he appears, throughout four acts, bent on being a stern judge, and only in the fifth does he realize that he has overstrained a principle in itself admirable. He might conceivably have been made to exemplify, like Kohlhaas, an excess in virtue that turns into a vice; of him it might have been written: sein Pflichtgefühl aber machte ihn zum Tyrannen und Mörder.28 In the fifth scene of the last act, the Elector, hitherto supreme, is isolated and put on the defensive. His outward authority, however, remains unquestioned. He even performs what looks like an act of royal clemency at the end. But this magnanimous Begnadigung, which has impressed so many interpreters, is more apparent than real. If the Prince were the sole culprit, it would be sufficient to spare his life and set him free. A n d this is all that the Elector, in his momentary Verwirrung, undertakes to do (1176 f.). Even after he has thought of the saving proviso (1185), he is ready only to free the prisoner (1313). As late as the end o£ the fourth scene of Act V, when he has the Prince's satisfactory answer in hand, he intends, we must infer, nothing beyond sparing the Prince's life and resuming hostilities: he sends for the death warrant (to be torn up) and the "walking papers" to be handed to the Swedish envoy (1479— 1481). But now there come, in the speeches of Kottwitz and, especially, of Hohenzollern, revelations that change the entire aspect of the case and compel the ruler to grant not

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merely life but, in addition, all the things that make life happy and desirable for the Prince, a typically Kleistian triad of höchste Lebensgüter.27 The Prince gets these prizes of his initial dream as a matter of justice, not of charity. T h e patriotic and pedagogic commentators have made too much of the hero's punishments and too little of his rewards. U p to V, 5, the Elector was ready for mere Begnadigung; at the end of the play he grants much more; and the extent of his own "education" may be measured by the difference between these two adjudications. T h e Prince has been modified by the Elector, but the Elector has also been modified by the Prince. Indeed, they go so far to meet each other that they virtually exchange roles: the Elector relinquishes his right to severe judgment, the Prince is more severe with himself than the Elector had thought of being. He unintentionally puts the Elector to shame by an apotheosis of that absolute discipline which the ruler himself has long since lost the moral right to exact. It is, significantly, not the Elector but the almost transfigured Prince who rebukes, in V, 7 and 8, the champions of his own earlier cause. Kottwitz, Hohenzollern, and Natalie take up the Prince's cudgels, while he takes up the Elector's. But the latter's own original contention, which the Prince now represents in his insistence on death, does not prevail; an Elector modified and educated in the course of the action now repudiates his erstwhile severity by crossing the Prince's will once more, but in the opposite direction: to the young man's consternation, he sets him free and rewards him to boot. One may, if one chooses, see in this interchange of roles a refined irony; at all events, it brings into sharp relief the modification which both men have undergone, not to the detriment but to the enhancement of their human value. T h e strongest force in Hohenzollern's argument is its revelation—more implicitly than explicitly 28 —of the in-

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finite intricacy of life. It brings home to the Elector not merely his own complicity in this case but, beyond that, the questionable nature of the world in which we live. He is made to see, for a moment, through the eyes of the despairing seeker after truth who cried out, "o wie unbegreiflich ist der Wille, der über uns waltet! Was ist böse, absolut böse? Tausendfältig verknüpft und verschlungen sind die Dinge der Welt, jede Handlung ist die Mutter von Millionen andern, und oft die schlechteste erzeugt die besten." 29 T h e insight that came to the solitary young student of Kantian philosophy with such annihilating force in the spring of 1801 was the determinative intellectual experience of his life. It was the philosophical confirmation of a feeling that had been building up in him, as his letters prove. T h e tragic recognition of the relativity, the inscrutable mysteriousness, the inherent "frailty" of our human world underlies all Kleist's subsequent work; it is, to use one of his own terms, the "algebraic formula" of all that he wrote. T h e i r reason disabled, their guiding feeling exposed to disastrous Verwirrung in a world of deceptive appearances, his persons are caught in a network of incalculable causes and effects. T h e y all grope in the dark, and it behooves them to be charitable with one another. Like the older Heine, Kleist evinces a marked interest in sufferers; not the great conquerors or the impregnably happy, but the pitiable victims of an incomprehensible world order are his tragic heroes. In various formulations, as we have seen (Chapter V), the idea of the Gebrechlichkeit der Welt recurs throughout his works. In this "frail" and complex world, Man's ethical responsibility is limited: "Kann Gott von solchen Wesen Verantwortlichkeit fordern?" ( B f e . II, 48). A n extraordinarily just man becomes, in his pursuit of justice, a monster; exquisitely pure women are unwittingly defiled; an exem-

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plary gentleman turns out to be a devil; lovers destroy each other; and parents murder their children. In a world where such things are common, the simple moral issues and solutions of Schiller no longer suffice; traditional heroism and villainy, conventional "guilt" and "atonement" become meaningless. T h e solution finally reached in Homburg is not in terms of any set moralistic formula, but in the spirit of compassionate recognition of the "frailty" of all mundane things. This is for Kleist der Weisheit letzter Schluß—as near as he came to one—and we can only marvel at the creative genius that evolved, from a theoretical recognition of the limitations of the human mind, a dramatic world of such rich import and convincing realness. This convincingly real world is, however, surrounded with an atmosphere of the miraculous and dreamlike. T h e nocturnal opening and closing scenes emphasize and reemphasize the extrarational background of existence, Kleist's "other" world. T h e play re-enters at its close the magical night in which it began, and in its absolving moonlight wide-awake rationality and somnambulant emotionalism make their peace. It is not simply that an absentminded dreamer came to grief because he did not attend to reality, but this vaunted "reality" itself, the poet suggests, is such stuff as dreams are made of. The Prince, awaking from his swoon, asks: "Ist es ein Traum?" and the answer is: " E i n Traum, was sonst?" (1856). But the play does not end on this note. There are two more lines. T h e hero's bewildered query is lost in the battle cry, martial music, and cannonading on which the curtain falls. One feels impelled to ask: has the basic problem been solved, or has debate on it been cut off by a patriotic emergency? It seems to me that the latter is the case and that Kleist's patriotism here veils or deflects one of his characteristic

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tragedies. T h e voice of the patriot is more and more audible as the play progresses, and it speaks now through the Elector, now through the Prince. T h e latter's ecstatic lines from 1749 to 1762 seem out of character, and they overshoot even the Elector's mark; here the patriotic poet glorifies devotion to the State in an unconditional manner which his play has not justified nor demonstrated, but which his own Prussia, in 1810, sorely needed. In the remainder of the scene, too, the young hero speaks for Kleist. By any other interpretation, his attitude is absurd: a man who is conscious, first and last, of no greater crime than excessive zeal in his sovereign's service (848-851, 1769; cf. 1102-1104) should not insist on being shot; but a figure through whose prophetic lips a thwarted publicist pours out his plea for self-sacrifice to the fatherland may well exult in the prospect of patriotic martyrdom, of making himself a flaming torch to light his country's way. One has the feeling that the Prince's course, set for eternity, is forcibly turned back earthward, that the major question is begged by a national exigency. Can one expect a man with such an avidity for the Jenseits as the Prince voices in his last ethereal soliloquy (1830 ff.) to be happy in this world henceforth? 30 Having shaken off all earthly bonds, including Natalie (V, 8), can he "marry and settle down" contentedly? Can he ever again trust himself to the guidance of his Gefühl? And if not that, what can he trust? T o be sure, Kleist's patriotic convictions, embraced by his hero with self-immolating fervor, seem to produce a satisfactory solution; they bring order out of chaos, they provide a rock to which the shipwrecked individual can cling. But this solution, I venture to say, is external and inorganic; it lacks complete validity. In the outer darkness beyond the brave radiance of the patriot's fire there still lurks, unsolved, the metaphysical problem of the incomprehensible

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universe with which man must come to terms. T h e jocose tone of Kottwitz's words dismissing reality as a dream (1856) cannot conceal the fact that here is a question unanswered that will return. One fears that the Prince, in some future crisis, will find the present solution inadequate and will see no refuge but in death. For that was what Kleist himself did. His heart was in the Prince's impassioned plea for unconditional devotion to the native land. But his deeper heart, as his end proved, was in the Prince's transcendent valedictory to a baffling and disappointing world.

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Art and Reality KLEIST'S STATEMENTS about the fine arts (in the narrower use of the term) are not abundant, when we consider that in Paris and Dresden he lived for considerable periods in close proximity to rich and distinguished art collections. His observations, when he does record them in his letters, almost always concern paintings, some of which impressed him deeply and lastingly. His few theoretical writings on art and the artist deal with painting, never with sculpture. He took some note of the latter, nonetheless. In a letter from Paris, soon after his arrival, he tells of a chance encounter with a stranger, from the chilling effect of which, paradoxically, he seeks solace with the marbles of the Louvre: "Geschwind gehe ich nach dem Louvre und erwärme mich an dem Marmor, an dem Apoll von Belvedere, an der mediceischen Venus." 1 He feels deep compassion for "the gods and heroes of the Greeks," whom he finds wretchedly housed in this place:

Recht traurig ist der Anblick dieser Gestalten, die an diesem Orte wie Emigrirte aussehen—Der Himmel von Frankreich scheint schwer auf ihnen zu liegen, sie scheinen sich nach ihrem Vaterlande, nach dem klassischen Boden zu sehnen, der sie erzeugte, oder doch wenigstens als Waisen hoher Abkunft würdig ihrer pflegte.2 We seem to hear an echo of Winckelmann and an anticipation of Heine in these words. In his native Frankfurt an der Oder, of course, Kleist had had no opportunity to view great works of art. And when he was first "exposed" to them, in Dresden in the late 247

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summer of 1800 (he was then on his way to Würzburg, and almost twenty-three), he looked at them with the eyes of a typical eighteenth-century rationalist who believes in methodical preparation for all Bildungserlebnisse, would on no account be childlike, and yet is intelligent enough to know he is missing something: "Wir giengen in die berühmte Bildergallerie. Aber wenn man nicht genau vorbereitet ist, so gafft man so etwas an, wie Kinder eine Puppe. Eigentlich habe ich daraus nicht mehr gelernt, als daß hier viel zu lernen sei." 3 Eight months later he stands again in this place, but with an outlook radically changed by the impact of the "so-called Kantian philosophy." T h e picture gallery and other art collections, and the music in the Catholic church, "das Alles waren Gegenstände bei deren Genuß man den Verstand nicht braucht, die nur allein auf Sinn und Herz wirken. Mir war so wohl bei diesem ersten Eintrit in diese für mich ganz neue Welt voll Schönheit" 4 — a world, one might add, to which Wackenroder had shown the way. Kleist speaks of visiting daily the Greek ideal statues and the Italian paintings, and each time spending hours before Raphael's Madonna, jener Mutter Gottes . . . mit dem hohen Ernste, mit der stillen Größe. He inquires into the possibility of becoming a painter at his advanced age and wishes for the drop of forgetfulness that would permit him to turn Catholic "with rapture" (ibid., 7 f.). Here, Kleist definitely draws near to the position of the Romanticists and anticipates in particular the Nazarene painters. 5 Near the end of this year, from Paris, he again reports on paintings seen. A n d here we begin to discern more clearly a characteristic of Kleist's view of paintings first and last: the type of pictures that draw his attention, his manner of describing them, and the theory he derives from them, all show the concentration of a dramatist's mind on the individual figure and the poet's urge to body forth in his

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own way what the picture suggests to him. He speaks of misguided painters, such as Lebrun, who cover whole walls with highly complicated actions. He holds that the artist should concentrate on one idea (be it Empfindung or Gedanke) or one figure or face: Eine Empfindung, aber mit ihrer ganzen Kraft darzustellen, das ist die höchste Aufgabe für die Kunst, und darum ist Raphael auch mir ein Liebling. In dem Antlitz eines einzigen Raphaels liegen mehr Gedanken, als in allen Tableaus der französischen Schule zusammengenommen, und während man kalt vor den Schlachtstücken, deren Anordnung das Auge kaum fassen kann, vorübergeht, steht man still vor einem Antlitz und denkt.® In Paris, Kleist still fondly recalls the Dresden Madonna and finds that he gets less pleasure out of the Paris collection (ibid., 69). Whether, during the long period which he later spent in Dresden (August, 1807 to April, 1809), he again visited that once beloved picture and the Gemäldegalerie, his letters do not tell us; but it is altogether likely. Neither is there in the letters of his closing years in Berlin (1810-1811) any record of a specific occupation with paintings, yet the Abendblätter contain some fictitious letters of great interest on the subject. It is quite possible, as Erich Schmidt suggested (II, 8), that Kleist saw in Dresden, if not in Paris, one or another painting of battling Amazons that left a trace on Penthesilea, on which he was then engaged. T h e best-authenticated instance of the effect of pictorial art on Kleist's works is that of the origin of Der zerbrochne Krug.7 W e do not know whether Kleist saw in the Louvre Greuze's well-known painting, La cruche cassée, nor whether (which is much less likely) he ever saw in the original Debucourt's painting, Le juge ou la cruche cassée, in which Greuze's appealing figure of the girl with the broken pitcher on her arm was made the center of a larger,

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many-figured composition. It seems certain, however, from both Zschokke's and Kleist's subsequent statements that what provided the initial impetus for Kleist's comedy was the engraving by L e Veau which reproduced Debucourt's work in black and white. It was Debucourt, in any case, who had introduced, both in his title and his scene, the person of a judge and the courtroom locale which Kleist adopted to such brilliant effect. Now, when we have the engraving before us, it is evident that both Zschokke (in his Selbstschau of 1842) and Kleist, in his unpublished Vorrede written (1806 or 1807) several years after the Swiss sojourn, deviate from the facts of the Vorlage. Zschokke's trauriges Liebespärchen does not fit the young people (who are rather expressionless) nor his großnasig [or großartig, if that is the correct reading] the judge; and it is not the keifende Mutter but the rather indifferent-looking girl who holds the jug. Kleist's account of what he saw is characteristically productive instead of reproductive and is obviously colored by his own intervening play. H e says of the engraving: M a n bemerkte darauf—zuerst einen Richter, der gravitätisch auf d e m Richterstuhl saß: vor ihm stand eine alte Frau, die einen zerbrochenen Krug hielt, sie schien das Unrecht, das ihm widerfahren war, zu demonstriren: Beklagter, ein junger Bauernkerl, den der Richter, als überwiesen, andonnerte, vertheidigte sich noch, aber schwach: ein Mädchen, das wahrscheinlich in dieser Sache gezeugt hatte (denn wer weiß, bei welcher Gelegenheit das Delictum geschehen war) spielte sich, in der Mitte zwischen Mutter und Bräutigam, an der Schürze; wer ein falsches Zeugniß abgelegt hätte, könnte nicht zerknirschter dastehn: u n d der Gerichtsschreiber sah (er hatte vielleicht kurz vorher das Mädchen angesehen) jetzt den Richter mistrauisch zur Seite an, wie Kreon, bei einer ähnlichen Gelegenheit, den Oedip, als die Frage war, wer den L a j u s erschlagen? Darunter stand: der zerbrochene K r u g . — D a s Ori-

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ginal war, wenn ich nicht irre, von einem niederländischen Meister. (IV, 318) It is interesting to observe how much action and dialogue Kleist's dramatic mind reads into the static tableau and how he stretches the limited present into a progression: verteidigte sich noch, gezeugt hatte, hatte angesehen—sah jetzt. He rearranges and reinterprets the persons. It is true enough that the judge is sitting gravely on his chair, but the old woman is not exactly standing before him, is not holding the jug, and is not demonstrating the damage done to it; instead, she is clutching the young man and pointing an accusing finger at him. T h e judge is not thundering against the young man nor is the latter defending himself; he is not necessarily a Bauernkerl, and certainly not recognizable as a Bräutigam. T h e girl does not look contrite, like one who has given false testimony—this again is reading too much "plot" into a figure. Above all, the clerk (if he is one) is not looking askance distrustfully at the judge (nor, for that matter, does Sophocles's Creon ever look at Oedipus thus). Kleist's impression that the original painting was by a Dutch master is doubtless due to the setting of his own play, but Debucourt was known even in his day for the Flemish character of his genre painting, and it is manifest here in locale and figures. Le Veau's engraving shows a young official (the clerk?), better dressed and more elegant looking than the judge; the latter appears moody or abstracted and seems an entirely silent and passive observer, while the mother (?), the young fellow, and the father (?) are all addressing or facing the young official. T h e girl does not look distressed but rather bored: the position of her hands and arms is relaxed, not tense. Debucourt's scene is crowded with disconnected groups, and its perspective is not very good; it is the sort of

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zehnfach kompliziert composition to which Kleist had objected so strongly in Paris a few months before. 8 It is probable that, even if he had written his account immediately, with no intervention of time or a drama of his own, Kleist would have departed significantly from the picture before him. For he did so in the case of a painting he saw in a French church and described in a letter to Marie von Kleist. It is the work known as "La Madeleine expirante," by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), and it still hangs in a travée on the south side of the Église de Saint Loup in Chalons-sur-Marne where the poet, an unwilling and unhappy visitor in France, gazed at it in June 1807.® He wrote of it then as follows: In einer der hiesigen Kirchen ist ein Gemälde, schlecht gezeichnet zwar, doch von der schönsten Erfindung, die man sich denken kann, und Erfindung ist es überall, was ein W e r k der Kunst ausmacht. Denn nicht das, was dem Sinn dargestellt ist, sondern das, was das G e m ü t h , durch diese W a h r n e h m u n g erregt, sich denkt, ist das Kunstwerk. Es sind ein Paar geflügelte Engel, die aus den W o h n u n g e n himmlischer Freude niederschweben, u m eine Seele zu empfangen. Sie liegt, mit Blässe des T o d e s Übergossen, auf den Knien, der L e i b sterbend in die A r m e der Engel zurückgesunken. W i e zart sie das zarte berühren. M i t den äußersten Spitzen ihrer rosenrothen Finger nur das liebliche Wesen, das der Hand des Schicksals jetzt entflohen ist. U n d einen Blick aus sterbenden A u g e n wirft sie auf sie, als ob sie in Gefilde unendlicher Seligkeit hinaussähe: Ich habe nie etwas Rührenderes und Erhebenderes gesehen. 10

Vouet's painting is not a masterpiece. T h e observer at once agrees with Kleist in finding it poorly designed. T h e main figure is anatomically bad: a heavy upper torso, with too short legs and no allowance for hips and thighs. T h e two angels, however, are by no means in the act of niederschweben but are already standing solidly on the earth. T h e y do

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not look as though they were "receiving a soul" but rather succoring an exhausted body. T h e y are not "tenderly touching a tender creature with the tips of their rosy fingers," but have a firm grasp on a very substantial person. T h e one is supporting with a well-applied right hand and a well-planted muscular right leg the obviously considerable weight of Magdalene's semirecumbent body; the other is supporting her left arm and hand. She is entirely too Herculean to qualify as a liebliches Wesen, and her eyes seem closed; the tilt of her head is such that, were they open, she would be looking hinauf, not hinaus, and she is certainly not looking at the angels, only one of whom is looking at her, with a quizzical and hardly ethereal glance. T h e r e is indeed a contrast between the pallor of Magdalene and the flesh color of the angels; but without the title (Kleist mentions none), the (rather heavy) wings, and the obligatory skull "property" in the foreground, one might be tempted to see in the painting not a Death of Magdalene but a scene on a Roman street with a pair of athletic young Italians coming to the aid of a fainting woman. 11 T h e ethereality and Jenseitigkeit have been added by Kleist; the Rührendes und Erhebendes is his personal reaction, which we have no right to question. It is clear that the picture appealed powerfully to his mood at the time and aroused his persistent death wish and death dream. T h e attitude of looking out, released at last from life's baffling deceptions, upon realms of bliss unending is implicit not only in Prinz Friedrich's final soliloquy but in Kleist's own last letters, and the motif of the winged angels connects them both with the present passage. Kleist is not primarily a reporter of reality, and here again he has not given an accurate description of the object before him. Rather, he has selected and enlarged on that aspect of it that spoke to and stimulated his mind or mood. He formulates this as a principle when he says that

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the work of art is not what is presented to the senses but what the soul, stimulated by the sense impression, conceives unto itself. T h e outer reality is only the stimulus to the inner vision. This is surely not the creed of a realist. Here and there in Kleist's prose narratives one finds what looks like the trace of an artistic experience without being able to identify it. T h e religiously heightened picture of motherhood that runs all through his work was doubtless inspired to a large extent by the memory of the Dresden Madonna that affected him so deeply. He began, to be sure, with a Rationalistic conception of motherhood as woman's Bestimmung, and he drummed this notion into Ulrike with absurd solemnity. But on this reasoned foundation he later, when he had found his calling, built a radiant poetic-religious ideal with the aid, I suspect, of profound pictorial experience. Thus the emotion with which Jeronimo, in Das Erdbeben in Chili, beholds Josephe and her child and exclaims prayerfully, O Mutter Gottes, du Heilige! (III, 299) may be a late effect of Raphael's Mother and Child. Further on in the same story we get a picture that one of the Nazarener might have painted: " H i e r ließ sich Jeronimo am Stamme nieder [under a pomegranate tree], und Josephe in seinem, Philipp in Josephens Schoß saßen sie, von seinem Mantel bedeckt, und ruhten" (III, 301). T h e mantle is a colorful "property" for the picture; in reality there is no likelihood that Jeronimo would have had one left. Was there in Kleist's memory some painting of " R u h e auf der Flucht nach Ägypten?" And was there some large, baroque canvas of a battle of the angels against the hosts of Satan in the background of the epic combat between Don Fernando and Pedrillo's horde? In Die heilige Cäcilie, it is striking that Kleist specifies dragon claws for the stool on which the victorious abbess rests her foot: den Fuß auf einem Schemel gestützt, der auf

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Drachenklauen ruhte (III, 388). O n e thinks of the standard representation of the triumphant Saint George with his foot planted on a prostrate dragon. It is possible that Kleist derived some inspiration from art for the conception of the hero of his last play. A painting by J. Κ. H. Kretschmar dealing with this subject won much praise and a first prize at the Kunstausstellung in Berlin during the winter of 1800-1801. Kleist was in Berlin at this time, and it is highly probable that he saw the picture. 12 It portrays the critical moment in the story (according to the Memoirs of Frederick the Great) when the Elector and his cavalry commander face each other after the Battle of Fehrbellin. T h e rejuvenation and romanticizing of the elderly, one-legged Landgraf of history have here already been accomplished for the poet by the painter, and it is interesting that Kretschmar's title designates him as Prinz: a slim, youthful figure, he stands with bowed uncovered head and flowing hair before his sovereign, who raises an admonishing forefinger. T h e spirit of the scene, with its halberds and cuirasses and plumed hats, its highlights and deep shadows, especially under the great Eiche in the background, is more romantic than classical, and not ungermane to Kleist's play. Kleist may also have known the prolific Chodowiecki's engraving of the same scene. It is in a more austere and archaic style, with somewhat stiff and angular figures. But Chodowiecki too had rejuvenated the hero. It is conceivable that Schliiter's famous equestrian statue of the Great Elector, which Kleist must have passed many times on the Lange Brücke in Berlin, left its mark on his conception of the ruler, particularly the classical qualities implied in the phrase mit der Stirn des Zeus, and the figure of the mounted, commanding Herrscher und Feldherr. More than Kleist himself perhaps, many of his interpreters have been unconsciously induced by this monumental bronze to see in the

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Elector that unshakable rocher von bronce of which his historical grandson spoke. When Prinz Friedrich, in his high-spirited soliloquy at the end of Act I, begins: "Nun denn, auf deiner Kugel, Ungeheures, / Du, der der Windeshauch den Schleier . . . lüftet," the switch in gender subtly indicates a change in Kleist's thought from a neuter Ungeheures or Glück to a feminine Glücksgöttin with her attributes of billowing veil, spilling cornucopia, and turning globe, which may be due to his recollection of artists' representation of the goddess Fortuna. 13 In the Prince's outburst at the time of his arrest: "Mein Vetter Friedrich will den Brutus spielen, / Und sieht, mit Kreid' auf Leinewand verzeichnet," etc. (777 ff.), an earlier editor surmised pictorial inspiration, perhaps through a painting by J . L. David, which Kleist could have seen in the Lou ντε. 14 Many years ago, on a visit to the Dresden Gallery, I was struck by a painting which seemed to me to have inspired an unusually vivid and heroic image in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg.16 T h e Prince's words describing Natalie's action: Hoch auf, gleich einem Genius des Ruhms, Hebt sie den Kranz, an dem die Kette schwankte, Als ob sie einen Helden krönen wollte (172-174), seem, in view of their context and the stage business involved, startlingly hyperbolic. Natalie had simply held out a laurel wreath as though to place it on the Prince's head. He himself has just spoken of her action moderately enough (163), and he is replying to Hohenzollern's matter-of-fact question, "Nun, und die, sagst du, reichte dir den Kranz?" (»7»)· T h e Prince's high-flown words do, however, apply strikingly to a painting in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden which Kleist may very well have seen during his various sojourns

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in the Saxon capital. It is the w o r k of A n n i b a l e Carracci (1560-1609); it represents a w i n g e d youth (incidentally, of Kleist's favorite type, blondgelockt like the Prince himself and like Kretschmar's hero) in flight, a blaze of golden light about his laurel-crowned head; in his left hand, raised full above his head, is a crown, to w h i c h his aspiring gaze is directed; on the upraised arm are f o u r laurel WTeaths of victory, such as were customary at the Greek games. T h e whole conception is thoroughly in Kleist's spirit; the motifs of w i n g e d spirits and of coronation are among his favorites and can be found everywhere in his works and letters. 16 T h i s painting, according to the records of the Dresden gallery, was acquired in 1746 and was hanging, during Kleist's lifetime, in the same collection (then housed in the Johanneum) w i t h Raphael's Madonna, which, as we have noted, Kleist profoundly admired and often came to see. " T ä g l i c h , " he tells his fiancée in a letter of May 21, 1801, " h a b e ich . . . die italienischen Meisterstücke besucht" ( B f e . II, 7). T h e fact that Raphael's Madonna h u n g at that time together with all the other Italians, not in a separate room as later, increases the probability that Kleist saw Carracci's picture also. T h e entire collection was m u c h less extensive than it is now, and Carracci's painting, because of its size (over 6 by 4 feet) and its character, would hardly have escaped his notice. Originally entitled " L ' o n o r e " or "Il Valore," it bore, since 1771 at least, the G e r m a n words of line 172, " G e n i u s des R u h m s , " words that for Kleist were pregnant with meaning and that do not, so far as I know, represent a c o m m o n concept or phrase. As Kleist's subsequent letters prove, the pictorial impressions of that Dresden visit, suffused as they were with intense private emotion, persisted for a long time. A n d it would b e strange indeed if, d u r i n g the long and stimulating stay in Dresden from 1807 to 1809, w h e n Homburg was taking

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shape in his mind, Kleist had not revisited the paintings that once had stirred him so deeply. 17 His continued interest in the painter's art during the last period of his life is attested by certain theoretical discussions in the form of feigned letters published in his Berliner Abendblätter. T h e views expressed in them are not unrelated to some in his actual letters that we have previously examined. In speaking of the Vouet St. Magdalene, Kleist had appeared willing to forgive poor design for the sake of imaginative invention, Erfindung, because Erfindung ist es überall [= überhaupt], was ein Werk der Kunst ausmacht (.Bfe. II, 170). One might be tempted to see in this an advocacy of the dubious doctrine of the "potential genius," the artist who has ideas and visions but lacks the power to give them shape. W e are reminded, from a different angle, of Conti's speculation (Emilia Galotti, I, 4) on whether Raphael would not still be the greatest of painters even if he had been born without hands. Kleist would have taken no stock in such a doctrine but rather agreed with the bon mot that connects Kunst with Können and mere Wollen with Wulst. T h e indispensableness of formative ability was for him axiomatic; "in der Kunst," he wrote, "kommt es überall auf die Form an, und alles, was eine Gestalt hat, ist meine Sache." 18 When it came to his own art of words, he was by no means willing to condone weaknesses in form for the sake of Erfindung. In the brief Satz aus der höheren Kritik (in the Abendblätter) we read: " W i e rührend ist die Erfindung in manchem Gedicht: nur durch Sprache, Bilder und Wendungen so entstellt, daß man oft unfehlbares Sensorium haben muß, um es zu entdecken" (IV, 147 f.). T h e Brief eines Dichters an einen anderen indicates that Kleist had no patience with the self-conscious cultivation of externalities of form as ends in themselves but aimed, with conscious effort, at a form so refined that it is no longer per-

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ceptible as form distinct f r o m content b u t becomes a transparent vehicle for thought: "Ich b e m ü h e mich," he declares, aus meinen besten Kräften, dem Ausdruck Klarheit, dem Versbau Bedeutung, dem Klang der Worte Anmut und Leben zu geben: aber bloß, damit diese Dinge gar nicht, vielmehr einzig und allein der Gedanke, den sie einschließen, erscheine. Denn das ist die Eigenschaft aller echten Form, daß der Geist augenblicklich und unmittelbar daraus hervortritt, während die mangelhafte ihn, wie ein schlechter Spiegel, gebunden hält, und uns an nichts erinnert, als an sich selbst (IV, 149). T h e emergence, the b o d y i n g forth of this Geist is Kleist's chief concern, and his highly disciplined f o r m is but the means to this end. T o his friend F o u q u é he writes, within the last half year of his life: "die Erscheinung, die a m meisten, bei der Betrachtung eines Kunstwerks, rührt, ist, d ü n k t mich, nicht das W e r k selbst, sondern die Eigentümlichkeit des Geistes, der es hervorbrachte, u n d der sich, in u n b e w u ß t e r Freiheit u n d Lieblichkeit, darin entfaltet." 1 9 T h e basic motivation of the artist is the urge to p u t his o w n ideas on paper or canvas. In a Brief eines Malers an seinen Sohn, the older painter assures the younger one that he need not become saintly in order to portray saints, b u t that the Lust an dem Spiel, Deine Einbildungen auf die Leinewand zu bringen is entirely sufficient (IV, 145). T h e same phrase, daß ihr eure Einbildungen . . . auf die Leinewand bringt, occurs in the Brief eines jungen Dichters an einen jungen Maler, w i t h its plea for originality and independence. H e r e Erfindung, dieses Spiel der Seligen, becomes synonymous with artistic creation as such. Disdainful of m u c h copying in the training of y o u n g painters, the writer demands "imitative creation" f r o m the very start: "gleich vom A n f a n g herein nachzuerfinden"; and even this is to be discarded at the earliest possible m o m e n t for original

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creation, "die Kunst selbst, deren wesentliches Stück die Erfindung nach eigentümlichen Gesetzen ist. . . . Denn die Aufgabe, Himmel und Erde, ist ja nicht, ein anderer, sondern ihr selbst zu sein, und euch selbst, euer Eigenstes und Innerstes, durch U m r i ß und Farben, zur Anschauung zu bringen!" (IV, 146). A l l these statements, early and late, on art and artists serve to confirm the impression we have gained from other aspects of Kleist's writing: he was more intent on expressing an inner world than on depicting the outer world. Kleist had great capacities for realism, but he was no realist at heart. He could never be a convinced realist for the simple reason that his entire productive career was preceded, and in a sense launched, by a catastrophic philosophical experience (the so-called Kanterlebnis) which rendered all forms of reality suspect and untrustworthy to him. T h e belief in the primacy of the inner world and the unreality of life's Schattenspiel was confirmed for the Romantic generation in general by Kant's critical philosophy, though no one else, perhaps, experienced its effects so poignantly as Kleist. From another point of view, however, it merely strengthened the native tendency of Kleist's mind to progress from an outer to an inner reality; in an early letter he writes: "Der erste Blick flog in die weite Natur, der zweite schlüpft heimlich in unser innerstes Bewußtsein." 20 T h e following year (after the Kant experience) he writes in like vein to a friend from Paris: he would gladly tell her about the city "wenn ich nur mehr zum Beobachten gemacht wäre. Aber . . . wer die Welt in seinem Innern kennen lernen will, der darf nur flüchtig die Dinge außer ihm mustern." 21 Actually, as his works prove, Kleist looked at the things outside him more than flüchtig; but they were never so important for him and his art as that Welt in seinem Innern in which their images were received

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a n d transformed. F o r him, always, Kunstwerke sind Producte der Phantasie.22 On his journey to Königsberg in 1805, when he was maki n g a dutiful effort to observe things of importance for his new governmental assignment, he garnered no more, he confesses, than "eine oder die andere flüchtige W a h r n e h m u n g , " a n d he concludes that in such cases it is not the object but the ordering m i n d that counts: " D e n n es kommt überall nicht auf den Gegenstand, sondern auf das A u g e an, das ihn betrachtet, und unter den Sinnen eines Denkers wird alles zum Stoff." 2 3 Kleist's obsession with his innere Welt at a critical juncture in his life is well portrayed by Wieland in a letter reporting on Kleist's stay in Osmannstedt. Wieland tells of his young guest's extraordinary self-absorption which at times seemed to verge on lunacy: how he would sit at table murm u r i n g unintelligible words to himself, as if he were alone; how a chance w o r d in a conversation would send him off into a long revery, like a series of chimes set ringing in his mind. 2 4 T h i s is the very picture of the rapt poet. Kleist was hardly ever successfully at home in the real world, despite his accurate observation and artistic utilization of things in it. In a letter from Paris in 1 8 0 1 , he laments his habitual missing of contacts with actuality: "Ach, es ist meine angeborne Unart, nie den Augenblick ergreifen zu können, und i m m e r an einem Orte zu leben, an welchem ich nicht bin, und in einer Zeit, die vorbei, oder noch nicht da ist." 2 5 T h i s corresponds to Wieland's characterization " d a ß er . . . das A i r eines Menschen hatte, der . . . mit seinen Gedanken an einem andern Ort und mit einem ganz andern Gegenstand beschäftigt ist." 28 On another occasion, Kleist accuses himself of possessing a "thörigt überspanntes Gemüth, das sich nie an dem, was ist, sondern n u r an dem, was nicht ist, erfreuen kann." 2 7 Goethe, we recall, censured

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Kleist impatiently because he wrote for a future and ideal stage, not the existent one. 28 " D i e Wahrheit ist," Kleist confessed to his friend Rühle, "daß ich das, ivas ich mir vorstelle, schön finde, nicht das, ivas ich leiste." 29 Often, in his earlier letters, he had protested, "Ach, ich passe mich nicht in ein A m t " (or in die Welt, or unter die Menschen)·, finally, in his very last letter, am Morgen meines Todes, he reaches the insight: "die Wahrheit ist, daß mir auf Erden nicht zu helfen war." T h e maladjustment in time and place which Kleist himself was aware of is clear to us as we survey his career in the perspective of a century and a half. How "out of step" he was with his age, how belated and misplaced in its intellectual developments! When a rich and momentous literary life ivas teeming in Weimar and Jena, he was a dissatisfied second lieutenant in the Potsdam garrison or a secluded student of science at a backward, provincial university. While he ivas still immersed in Rationalism, the young Romanticists were reducing its last degenerate stages to an absurdity. When he was in Berlin in 1800 and 1801, he paid no attention to the Romanticists who were flourishing there, for his interests were wholly wissenschaftlich. When he ivas studying Kant in a solitary and unguided way and taking Kant's doctrine (or some form or part of it) with such passionate earnestness that he nearly lost his mind over it, his contemporaries had already passed on from Kant to Fichte. T h e r e is no evidence that Kleist ever read Fichte, nor the later Critiques of Kant, which might have stilled his most agonized metaphysical questionings. Kleist had no contact with Fichte in Berlin, even in the field of patriotic interests. On the other hand, the only letter he ever wrote to Friedrich Schlegel concerned patriotic propaganda and not poetry. 30 When Kleist emerged as a poet, it was in the company of shallow litterateurs such as Zschokke and his circle in Bern:

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an eagle fledged in a barnyardl T h e only prominent writer from whom he ever won commendation was Wieland; but Wieland's star, never of the first magnitude, was then already setting. W h e n at last Kleist came into contact with Romanticism, it was with its dilute, derivative Dresden form, represented by such writers as Adam Heinrich Müller and Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert. Later, in Berlin, he was only an unsuccessful outsider to lesser Romanticists like Arnim and Brentano and even Fouqué. T h u s again and again Kleist missed contacts he should reasonably have made and recognition he should have received, and his life is full of those errors and mischances that characterize the world pictured in his works. It was the more natural for him then to emphasize his inner world and assert his individuality. In the Brief eines jungen Dichters an einen jungen Maler he had advised young painters to give up copying and to express themselves. You imagine, he told them, that you must "go through" your masters, Raphael or Correggio or whoever they be, whereas you should turn your backs on them and go off in a diametrically opposite direction toward the peak of art that you envisage (IV, 147). Art is the realization of an original vision. T h i s is said again from confession written in that lonely poet saw so clearly writes to Marie von Kleist and continues:

another angle in a remarkable last desolate summer, when the about a number of things. He of his isolation from the world,

Sie helfen sich mit Ihrer Einbildung und rufen sich aus allen vier Weltgegenden, was Ihnen lieb und werth ist, in Ihr Zimmer herbei. Aber diesen Trost, wissen Sie, muß ich unbegreiflich unseeliger Mensch entbehren. Wirklich, in einem so besondern Fall ist noch vielleicht kein Dichter gewesen. So geschäftig dem weißen Papier gegenüber meine Einbildung

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ist, und so bestimmt in Umriß und Farbe die Gestalten sind, die sie alsdann hervorbringt, so schwer, ja ordentlich schmerzhaft ist es mir, mir das, was wirklich ist, vorzustellen. Es ist, als ob diese in allen Bedingungen angeordnete Bestimmtheit meiner Phantasie, im Augenblick der Thätigkeit selbst, Fesseln anlegte. Ich kann, von zu vielen Formen verwirrt, zu keiner Klarheit der innerlichen Anschauung kommen; der Gegenstand, fühle ich unaufhörlich, ist kein Gegenstand der Einbildung: mit meinen Sinnen in der wahrhaftigen lebendigen Gegenwart mögte ich ihn durchdringen und begreifen. Jemand, der anders hierüber denkt, kömmt mir ganz unverständlich vor; er muß Erfahrungen angestellt haben, ganz abweichend von denen, die ich darüber gemacht habe. 31 T h a t is to say, w h e n the poet faces blank paper, his imagination brings f o r t h f r o m w i t h i n forms definite in o u t l i n e a n d c o l o r (the same phrase Kleist had used in his advice to painters, I V , 146); b u t w h e n he is asked to reproduce " t h a t w h i c h really is," he feels p a i n f u l l y frustrated and paralyzed a n d can attain to no "clarity of internal p e r c e p t i o n " — t h e trees, in other words, get into the way of the forest, the things of real life b l o c k the essential vision. 3 2 T h i s amounts to a rejection of the w o r l d of fact as the source of the poet's p r o d u c t i o n . H i s inspiration comes f r o m w i t h i n . T h e forms he fashions are not to be "grasped w i t h the senses in the actual present"; their existence is of a h i g h e r order. H e n c e his i m a g i n a t i o n must b e absolutely free, u n t r a m m e l e d by any considerations of practical life. In a slightly earlier letter, w r i t t e n in the midst of business distractions, Kleist had voiced his intention of

undertaking

some w o r k of pure fancy (etwas recht Phantastisches).

"Als-

d a n n w i l l ich m e i n e m Herzen ganz und gar, w o es m i c h h i n f ü h r t , folgen u n d schlechterdings auf nichts R ü c k s i c h t n e h m e n , als auf meine eigne innerliche B e f r i e d i g u n g . " H e w i l l n o t w r i t e w i t h an eye to the public and the stage b u t

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show the courage of his conviction that the poet's individual soul is the source of universal poetry: "Kurz, ich will mich von dem Gedanken ganz durchdringen, daß, wenn ein Werk nur recht frei aus dem Schoos eines menschlichen Gemüths hervorgeht, dasselbe auch nothwendig darum der ganzen Menschheit angehören müsse." 33 Kleist is never subservient to reality; he uses it, but he transcends it. He has an extraordinary power of evoking the world that we know and giving it dramatic life, but under its guise he conveys to us his own inner world. What we call realism in his work is sharp observation transmuted into vision, or vision made credible by being clothed in the semblance of everyday reality. His chief personages, male and female, are products of his dreams and wishes, not of his experience in the world of fact or of his reading. Only his peripheral figures: an Abdecker von Dobbeln, a Tronka Schloßvogt, a Frau Brigitte, are taken from the streets of Germany. Where in "real life" has there ever been a Penthesilea, a Käthchen, a cavalry general like Prinz Friedrich? T h e lovely, pure, and devoted women who illuminate Kleist's pages are creations of his yearning. He never met them. He seems to have been as unable to give love as he constantly craved and demanded it. Life brought him no sexual satisfaction nor even experience, so far as we can see, only a strangely substitute one on the threshold of death. T h e children in his works and letters are products of an unfulfilled wish for fatherhood rather than of any real knowledge of children's nature. Everywhere in Kleist's seemingly so real dramatic world there are strangenesses and discrepancies which suggest that it is an inner, visionary realm in realistic costume. Die Familie Schroff enstein, Kleist's determinative Erstling, is a fever dream of distrust and vengeance in a limbo of baffling appearances, a nightmarish landscape brightened intermit-

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tently by the ray of an ideal love. Its locale, its inciting happenings, and the interaction of its persons would never convince a sober, realistic observer. Der zerbrochne Krug, for all its earthy humor, is far from a "documentary" of life in a D u t c h village. Its language is almost everywhere raised, i n syntax and imagery, far above the peasant level, the verse f o r m imposes a marked stylization, and Eve's love reaches i n t o the higher altitudes of Kleist's idealism. Even here, he is preoccupied w i t h an inner world, as D u k e Karl A u g u s t sensed when he charged the playwright with eine Art Abgeschnittenheit, a mental self-isolation that made h i m lose sight of his audience. 3 4 Penthesilea was w e l l characterized by Adolf W i l b r a n d t a century ago as a wildbewegtes Märchen,35 Here, as in Käthchen, b u t in an incomparably more intense and tragic world, Kleist shows a prodigious ability to make a fairy tale credible. O n l y H o f f m a n n can compare with him in such Verwirklichung des Unwirklichen. T h e landscapes and events of Penthesilea are entirely "internal" and visionary; its key line is War je ein Traum so bunt, als was hier wahr ist? (986). T h e r e is very little Greek "color" in the w o r k ; its characters are variations of Kleistian types; its topography is not reasonable; its heroine is not a creature of reality b u t the impersonation of Kleist's own passionate spirit, winsome and savage. 88 Penthesilea can be read as a symbolization of Kleist's struggle with the ideal drama, Robert Guiskard, or as a lyrical and tragic symphony, b u t never as a realistic stage play. Käthchen von Heilbronn, which its author once described as the reverse oí Penthesilea, has all the traditional attributes of a fairy tale and w o u l d become ludicrous if interpreted in terms of reality. 37 Even Die Hermannsschlacht, written for immediate popular and practical effect, has a large component of irreality in its setting and action, and Varus, stand-

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ing in utter dismay hart zwischen nichts und nichts (1979), is an emblematic figure. Prinz Friedrich von Homburg is not in fact "historical drama." Kleist gives the impression of historical realism, but the data of history provide him merely with a point of departure for dramatizing a vision. T h e Prussia of this play is not a reality of 1675, nor of 1810, but a poetic legend of the past and a brave dream of the future: there was no basis in fact at either date for Natalie's picture of Prussia's coming splendor (1130-1138); this is genuine prophecy, a credo quia impossibile. Even the often-praised realism of the Todesfurchtszene is not unmixed. Humanly speaking, the Prince's collapse is convincing, but for the historical character and setting it is incredible, and those who condemned this scene as irreconcilable with military standards of conduct were quite right from their point of view. Kleist is symbolizing kreatürliche Angst in a psychologically convincing way; he is not showing how a Prussian officer and nobleman of high rank in the army of the Great Elector would have acted or have been allowed to act. T h e motif of the grave, again, is mythical and symbolic. Realistically speaking, why should a grave be dug for the Prince with such haste, at night, by torchlight? A n d why in this spot, in a suddenly materialized graveyard—or an even less credible Münster (1325)—on the Prince's path between the Fehrbellin town hall and the palace? A realist would have the Prince more plausibly interred in an Erbbegräbnis on his estates. N o r is this grave a crude "plant" on the ruler's part to break down a culprit; that would contravene Kleist's picture of the Elector. T h i s grave that is ready to spring like a panther from ambush (1329) is an emotional "fact" and a thing of poetic vision. In the Novellen,

too, there are a great many practical dis-

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crepancies in plot and characters that suggest a non-real world peeping out from under the trappings of reality: for instance, the uncharacteristic brutality of Count F. in raping the unconscious Marquise, and the incredible "density" of her family in recognizing the facts; the artificial acts and silences by which the bloody denouement is brought about in the Verlobung; the nightmarish events toward the close of Erdbeben; the baffling interplay of truth and illusion in Der Zweikampf; the supernaturalism in Cäcilie and Bettelweib and Kohlhaas—all these realistically implausible factors deepen the impression that Kleist's work is that of a visionary who imposes an inner world on an outer, a stylist who uses the devices of realism, but not a realist in the true sense of the term. Even in the seemingly so factual world of Michael Kohlhaas, we meet pictures that have mythical, visionary rather than realistic value, for example the two Rappen when Kohlhaas sees them again: "Knochen, denen man, wie Riegeln, hätte Sachen aufhängen können; Mähnen und Haare . . . zusammengeknetet: das wahre Bild des Elends im Tierreiche!" (III, 146). It is implausible that two horses in prime condition could have been reduced to this in a couple of weeks or that the Tronka people would have had any practical interest in doing so. This is not photographic reality; it is an apocalyptic vision of animal misery, just as the wretched youth in the Würzburg hospital described in Kleist's letter of September 13, 1800 ( B f e . I, 125 f.) was a vision of human misery; both are heightened above any "case" actually observed. T h e factor of Umwelt is a curiously unstable one in Kleist. His public, for example, often seems only a backdrop, introduced and withdrawn at need. In Der Zweikampf, there is a gemeine Menge looking on when Littegarde is expelled from her home, but then she is suddenly alone as she

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staggers down the path (though Kleist troubles to add the detail of a railing), and when she collapses at the entrance to the village, she lies unconscious for an hour before being discovered; then suddenly a crowd gathers (III, 401 f.). In the Marquise there is no participation of a public, despite the newspaper publicity! A n d we have already noted the weird m a n n e r in which the mob surges and vanishes in the Erdbeben. O n the other hand, Kleist's works are f u l l of "snapshots" that record sharply authentic aspects of the outward world. T h e r e is a prodigal wealth of realistic and even technical information about various spheres of practical life incorporated in Kohlhaas; indeed, its show of historical truth is so convincing that it was formerly cited in G e r m a n encyclopedias as a "source." Yet its hero, whom w e first see as a peaceful trader on his way to market with a string of horses, is soon revealed as an exemplary and ideal figure, posited by Kleist's intense thirst for justice—and f o r implacable retaliation. A n d how readily the latter part of the story, and its heroine, pass f r o m the natural to the supernatural level and back again! T h e r e is much realism, even coarse naturalism, in the journalistic prose of the Berliner Abendblätter. As editor of a daily city newspaper, Kleist surely had to be close to "real l i f e " ; yet how unresourceful and unworldly were his dealings with the authorities, how Kohlhaasian, not to say Quixotic, his dogged litigation with the Prussian state itself over his little paper! T h e two-sidedness of his activity is well summed u p in A d a m Müller's report to R ü h l e : " K l e i s t gibt mit ungemeinem G l ü c k Berlinische Abendblätter heraus, hat schon viel G e l d verdient, fängt aber schon wieder an, sein sehr großes P u b l i k u m zum Bizarren u n d Ungeheuern umbilden zu wollen, was schwerlich gelingen w i r d . " 3 8 Kleist's poetic world has an extraordinarily

persuasive

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a p p e a r a n c e of reality. It seems to c o n f o r m to the normal laws of cause and effect. B u t there is always the unexpected, the f o r t u i t o u s event, the Zufall a n d es traf sich that vitiate these laws a n d b r i n g his persons face to face w i t h the dark a n d inscrutable features of the universe. A l l through Kleist's w o r k s w e find these reversals and derailments. T h e m o r e confidently a t h i n g is declared true in his world, the m o r e surely w e can expect it to prove false. T h e r e are two levels i n his plays and stories: the level of reason and reality and, ready to e r u p t into this or open u p beneath it, a level of irrational, u n p r e d i c t a b l e chance. It is a situation n o t u n l i k e t h e t w o worlds of E. T . A . H o f f m a n n : the realistic and the fantastic, the c r e d i b l e a n d the incredible. B u t the a n t i n o m y is n o t q u i t e the same f o r the two writers, nor was their react i o n to it. H o f f m a n n h e l d o u t and produced as l o n g as his r a c k e d b o d y w o u l d last. Kleist, despairing of establishing his i n n e r w o r l d w i t h i n the reality of his day, turned his back u p o n reality, shut the d o o r on his life a n d w o r k and, in his o w n phrase, w a l k e d i n t o the other room.

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Kleist's Death for reasons why Heinrich von Kleist took his own life at the age of thirty-four will find no lack but rather an overabundance of motives. They may be classified in general as professional and personal. T h e professional ones are more readily recognizable. Kleist's literary career and reputation were beset by the same incomprehensible mischance that marks so many of his plots. The picture is one of tragic paradox from the start. Here was a poet born into an ancient military family that could accept "verse making" 1 only when it was paired, as in the case of Ewald von Kleist, with deeds of valor and death on the battlefield; a family for whom administrative service was the only conceivable substitute for military service: if a man could not be an officer, he could at least be an official. Heinrich, in obedience to tradition, tried each career in turn and found them both utterly alien to his nature. But his family never recognized the real nature or genius of this member who strove loyally, as he said, to assure their name a place among the stars.

A N Y O N E WHO SEEKS

Kleist was one of the greatest of German dramatists— some indeed have called him the greatest, ranking him above Schiller—yet he never saw one of his plays acted. There were very few performances during his lifetime, most of them in obscure places and not one of them a real success. Kleist was one of the most ardent of German patriots, yet his patriotic writings, intended for inciting effect upon his contemporaries, were not published until a half century after his death. He did not live to see the liberation of his fatherland 271

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from that condition of subjugation to a foreign tyrant that was one of the chief causes of his untimely end. Kleist was not claimed by any literary group or faction as one of theirs because he did not seem worth claiming. T h e condescending remarks of Arnim and Brentano immediately after his death show in what low esteem this armer Kerl was held by his fellow writers. 2 His passing from the scene elicited from Friedrich Schlegel merely a shocked comment on the aberrations to which lack of religious faith can lead. 3 Kleist's name is not so much as mentioned in August Wilhelm Schlegel's Vienna lectures, Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, nor in Madame de Staël's De l'Allemagne. Mme. de Staël, who contributed to Phöbus, must have noticed Kleist's interest in French literature and his productive use of it in Amphitryon and elsewhere, and she may even have met him personally. But in her book she ignores him and instead touts the tawdry Zacharias Werner as the greatest German dramatist surviving Schiller, and she gives much space and praise to Der vierundzwanzigste Februar! T o be sure, Goethe had set the example for her by fostering Werner's dubious talents in Weimar and trying to groom him to be Schiller's successor. T h e Weimar theater, where Kleist's plays could not gain a footing, kept on its repertoire at this very time scores of Kotzebue's paltry pieces. Kleist's friend and literary associate Adam Heinrich Midler, who discusses any number of contemporary writers in his prolific lectures and publications, never promotes Kleist. Yet after his friend's death he declared that what broke Kleist's heart and paralyzed his production was the neglect of his contemporaries! 4 T o the successful writers of his time, we must conclude, Kleist was simply a poor devil who tried hard but never made a go of it. T h e reason why we know so relatively little about his life—and some stretches, it seems, will remain forever dark—is that few of

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the people who knew him considered it worth the trouble to set down what they knew. At the same time, Kleist had a clear intuition of his own genius and future fame. As early as the summer of 1803, full of his Guiskard project, he writes to his sister to offer her the opportunity to support him in it: "Ich erbitte mir also von dir, meine Theure, so viele Fristung meines Lebens, als nöthig ist, seiner großen Bestimmung völlig genug zu thun. Du wirst mir gern zu dem einzigen Vergnügen helfen, das, sei es noch so spät, gewiß in der Zukunft meiner wartet, ich meine, mir den Kranz der Unsterblichkeit zusammen zu pflücken. Dein Freund wird es, die Kunst und die Welt wird es dir einst danken." 5 He foresees early, too, that the conflict between his own conviction of his worth and the world's denial of it will end in disaster: "Ich kann jetzt darüber lachen, wenn ich mir einen Prätendenten mit Ansprüchen unter einem Haufen von Menschen denke, die sein Geburtsrecht zur Krone nicht anerkennen; aber die Folgen für ein empfindliches Gemüth, sie sind, ich schwöre es dir, nicht zu berechnen. Mich entsetzt die Vorstellung."® Kleist's suicide was, in this sense, only the final expression of the poet's despair that had gripped him years before at St. Omer: "Der Himmel versagt mir den Ruhm, das größte der Güter der Erde; ich werfe ihm, wie ein eigensinniges Kind, alle übrigen hin." 7 But before that final step there were to be other failures to fill the poet's cup of bitterness to overflowing. T h e exalted Guiskard ideal proved beyond his powers, and the frantic author finally turned upon his inadequate manuscript with the same destructive fury as Penthesilea wreaked upon Achilles. T h e most intense and personal of Kleist's plays indeed found a publisher, but one who disliked it: Cotta printed Penthesilea but made no effort to sell it—this was verlegen in a most sinister sense I And Goethe's condem-

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nation of the work, which Kleist had submitted to him in diffident reverence, was disheartening. Käthchen von Heilbronn was rejected by Cotta for publication and by Iffland for performance; it met with scant success and brought its author very little reward when it was finally printed in Berlin. If Käthchen, as Kleist foresaw, aroused little interest because it was too remote from the present, Die Hermannsschlacht found no publisher for the opposite reason: it was too uncomfortably close to current issues. On the same ground Homburg could not be staged or published. The destinies of war conspired against the projected Germania, and all the manifold patriotic writings intended for that journal were stifled with it. Kleist's last venture in journalism, the Berliner Abendblätter, after an initial brilliant success, fell prey to government censorship and caused him only frustration and humiliation in the end. As one reads the letters of Kleist's last year, one realizes how deeply the long-drawn, futile controversy with the Chancellor's Office over his ruined paper cut into his very soul, how he wore out his heart and wasted his mental resources in the unequal struggle.8 In the midst of it he gets a letter from Fouqué inviting him out to Nennhausen to see the spring come in. He cannot leave the city, but he feels strongly the call of the outdoors: "Fast habe ich ganz und gar vergessen, wie die Natur aussieht. Noch heute ließ ich mich, in Geschafften, die ich abzumachen hatte, zwischen dem Ober- und Unterbaum, über die Spree setzen; und die Stille, die mich plötzlich in der Mitte der Stadt umgab, das Geräusch der Wellen, die Winde, die mich anwehten, es gieng mir eine ganze Welt erloschener Empfindungen wieder auf." 9 T h e thought of poetic powers wasting under arid Geschäßte must at times have been maddening. Kleist's long letter to Prinz Wilhelm von Preußen re-

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hearses clearly his case against Kanzler von Hardenberg and the injustice and ill-treatment which have sapped his peace of mind, "so viel Unedelmüthigkeiten und Unbilligkeiten, die meine Heiterkeit untergraben." 1 0 He points out that the ruination of his paper leaves him with no resources. In a subsequent appeal to the King himself, the same sordid story is told more briefly, and we seem to hear the outraged voice of Kohlhaas when Kleist reports how he was treated by the officials as an obnoxious Quärulant: "daß man jene Verhandlungen mit der Staatskanzlei, auf welche ich mich berief, als eine lügenhafte Erfindung von mir behandelte und mir, als einem Zudringlichen, Unbescheidenen und Überlästigen, mein Gesuch um Entschädigung gänzlich abschlug!" 1 1 If Kleist did not, like Kohlhaas, "foam with rage" at such insults, they certainly must have added to his feeling of failure and degradation. Seeing no more hope of subsisting in his native land, he weighs, like Kohlhaas, the mournful thought of emigration (ibid.). This was a prospect Kleist dreaded; years before, he had avowed with fervor: "niemals . . . wird mein Herz ein anderes Vaterland wählen, als das, worin ich gebohren bin." 1 2 But he was out of favor with the King and his advisers and thoroughly discredited as one who had twice quit the state service, military and civil. His only friend at court, the gallant Queen Louise—who shared with him an equally brief life in the same ill-starred age—had died during the previous summer, and though she had been an ideal rather than a practical resource to him, her loss was a severe blow to the increasingly isolated poet. He had admired her deeply and seen in her the mainstay of the state in its desperate plight. 18 Even Kleist's thought of re-entering the army on which he had once turned his back was a counsel of despair. He foresaw the alliance with Napoleon which the pusillanimous Frederick William concluded in fact a few months after

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Kleist's death, and he had asked himself bitterly whether he might not find himself fighting against his own country should his plea for a commission be granted. Indeed, it could well have been his fate to fall on the Russian campaign, as he had once so madly hoped to die in an invasion of England. T h e deteriorating political and military situation, finally the prospect of a capitulation to the despot without a blow struck for freedom, had an extremely depressing effect on the patriot Kleist. "Es ist mir ganz stumpf und dumpf vor der Seele," he writes to Marie, "und es ist auch nicht ein einziger Lichtpunct in der Zukunft." He mentions some patriotic writings he has handed to Gneisenau, but, he adds despondently, these are superfluous now, moutarde après diner. In the presence of Gneisenau's strong personality (es ist eine Lust, bei einem tüchtigen Manne zu sein) he feels powers for which the world seems to have no more use stirring to new life within him. But, he tells himself in deep dejection, there is no more point in thinking of this.14 One stark factor in Kleist's final predicament was outright poverty. T h e cessation of the Abendblätter left him without means of livelihood. No publisher wanted his writings, even though, with guileless modesty, he asked for each work only so much as would suffice to keep him alive until he had written another one. 15 He could no longer support himself by his pen in Berlin, and he considered, without much hope, a removal to Vienna. If he had been taken back into the army, he could not have paid for an officer's outfit. His own small fortune was exhausted, and Ulrike, who had helped him out so often, either could not or would not help again. And, as his friend Rahel remarked bitterly after his death, not one of the acquaintances who later censured his act would have lent him ten talers.16 As a matter of fact, most of his friends were away from Berlin or inaccessible during

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that last bleak summer and autumn of 1811. Kleist fell out of touch with the few families he was wont to visit; he is alone in his room in the Mauerstraße from morning till evening, as he writes to Marie, seeing no one for days on end. 17 Left to himself, he began to brood over his personal inadequacy and developed a feeling of persecution, of being marked for failure. "Wirklich, es ist sonderbar," he confides to Marie, "wie mir in dieser Zeit Alles, was ich unternehme, zu Grunde geht; wie sich mir immer, wenn ich mich einmal entschließen kann, einen festen Schritt zu thun, der Boden unter meinen Füßen entzieht." 18 He sees himself as a homeless misfit. Migrating to Vienna seems to him like going out into complete darkness on a stormy night. It is an indescribably dreary thing "immer an einem anderen Orte zu suchen, was ich noch an keinem, meiner e i g e n t ü m l i c h e n Beschaffenheit wegen, gefunden habe" (ibid.). T h i s "peculiar constitution" was not only a personal malorganization, the chronic Verstimmungen in meinem Gemiith that he himself was aware of, 19 but it was his character as a poet. As others, from Goethe to Thomas Mann, have recognized, the very sensitiveness that makes the great writer incapacitates the man for ordinary life. T h e petty assaults to which we all are exposed "in the course of things here below" bear doubly and trebly hard on the creative mind: "Dadurch, daß ich mit Schönheit und Sitte, seit meiner frühsten Jugend an, in meinen Gedanken und Schreibereien, unaufhörlichen Umgang gepflogen, bin ich so empfindlich geworden, daß mich die kleinsten Angriffe, denen das Gefühl jedes Menschen nach dem Lauf der Dinge hienieden ausgesetzt ist, doppelt und dreifach schmerzen." 20 Finally, his sensitivity reaches the point where he can endure no more: "ich schwöre Dir, es ist mir ganz unmöglich, länger zu leben; meine Seele ist so wund, daß mir, ich mögte fast

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sagen, wenn ich die Nase aus dem Fenster stecke, das Tageslicht wehe thut, das mir darauf schimmert" (ibid.). And yet, reason and history tell us, a poet does not need to react thus. If the production of poetry is everything to him, he will persevere in it to his last breath and never himself put a stop to it. There is no evidence that Kleist despaired of his poetic powers, and, after reaching the mastery shown in Homburg, he should have continued to exert them, if his literary career had been his paramount concern. Evidently it did not suffice to hold him fast in life. Evidently there were more intimate, personal forces at work. These are much more difficult to determine. In fact, they cannot be determined but only surmised, and we do well to bear in mind the cautioning words of Kleist's fictional kinsman, Werther: "Habt ihr . . . die inneren Verhältnisse einer Handlung erforscht? Wißt ihr mit Bestimmtheit die Ursachen zu entwickeln, warum sie geschah, warum sie geschehen mußte?" 21 T h e local physicians who conducted the autopsy could break apart Kleist's body and examine it, 22 but no one can tell us all that was in the mind of this man who had come to the point of quelling the strongest of all instincts, the will to live. An external observer could attribute Kleist's death to the tragic accident that during those last lonely months he met Henriette Vogel and cultivated her acquaintance. But this was the sort of accident that was bound to come Kleist's way eventually. He tells Marie, whom he still deeply loves, quite frankly of this "exchange," and explains that what draws him so irresistibly to Henriette is not that she wants to live with him but that she wants to die with him. His own soul, he declares, has become through contact with hers zum Tode ganz reif.23 This phrase gives us pause, for it echoes two lines in Penthesilea, Kleist's most subjective drama, and it strikes chords

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deep in his nature and his past. Twice, in moments of illusory happiness, Penthesilea uses these words; before the second occurrence, she has become ripe for death, and a selfinflicted one, in a sense she does not yet realize. T h e idea of death as a supreme fulfillment, a stepping-off from the pinnacle of life's achievement, is characteristic of Kleist. It speaks in the Prince's lines of passionate self-immolation to the patriotic ideal (Homburg V, η) and, in more muted tones, in this same letter to Marie, one of Kleist's very last: "daß ich sterbe, weil mir auf Erden nichts mehr zu lernen und zu erwerben übrig bleibt." Kleist's Lebensgefühl had always had a strong otherworldly tinge. Already in his teens, apparently under the influence of a work of Wieland's, he had arrived at definite convictions about the continuation of our lives on other stars.24 This metaphysical tendency was not invalidated by his experience with Kantian philosophy, as one should have expected, but runs as an unbroken line straight through his life. T h e vitiation of his rationalistic philosophy leaves him, if anything, more todesbereit, more ready to take off into the Jenseits. T h e very words in which he couches his Sternenglaube are left unchanged by the Kantian crisis. Thus he wrote to his fiancée in the autumn of 1800, still in the vein of his eighteenth-century creed of Glück, Tugend und Bildung: "Das Ziel ist gewiß hoch genug und erhaben, da giebt es gewiß Stoff genug zum Handeln—und wenn ich auch auf dieser Erde nirgends meinen Platz finden sollte, so finde ich vielleicht auf einem andern Sterne einen um so bessern."25 After the crisis, the following year, he writes to a friend: "Erwarten Sie wenig von dieser Erde. . . . Blicken Sie zuweilen, wenn es Nacht ist, in den Himmel. Wenn Sie auf diesem Sterne keinen Platz finden können, der Ihrer würdig ist, so finden Sie vielleicht auf einem andern einen um so bes-

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seni."2® T h e hopes for earthly happiness have painfully diminished, b u t the stars beckon as brightly as ever. Kleist never felt sure of what was on the other side. T h e heavenly fields and long-winged angels of his final letters (e.g., Bfe. II, 289) signify, I believe, a momentary return to early traditional concepts or a concession to Henriette's simpler mind. H e was uncommitted as to the form of life after death, b u t he was always ready to venture into it. Death, then, is not a thing to be feared, and life a possession to be gambled with for high stakes: "Es ist nichts ekelhafter als diese Furcht vor dem T o d e , " Kleist writes to W i l helmine; "das Leben ist das einzige Eigenthum, das nur dann etwas werth ist, wenn wir es nicht achten. Verächtlich ist es, wenn wir es nicht leicht fallen lassen können, und nur der kann es zu großen Zwecken nutzen, der es leicht und f r e u d i g wegwerfen könnte." 2 7 In a happy frame of mind, d u r i n g his idyllic Swiss days, he writes to his fiancée that he wishes for death when he has reached certain cherished goals, "denn das Leben hat doch immer nichts Erhabneres, als n u r dieses, d a ß man es erhaben wegwerfen kann." 2 8 Under far different circumstances, a year and a half later, we find h i m equally ready to throw his life away erhaben—this 2 9 time in a grand military adventure. Kleist's letter of August 31, 1806, written in Königsberg d u r i n g a calm and sheltered interval of his restless life, is all the more revealing of this otherworldly factor in his consciousness. T h e Kant crisis and the Guiskard crisis are far b e h i n d him; he has learned to resign and has "stepped d o w n " both his conception of his genius and his demands u p o n himself. H e is speculating in a relaxed mood on the nature of G o d and the structure of the universe, on life and death and rebirth. T h e r e must be some eternal verities, he muses, out there beyond our world; the vast spaces we glimpse between two linden leaves as we lie on our backs of

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a n evening must hold future lives and future truths for us, obtainable through death. A n d suddenly the old metaphysical excitement erupts: " K o m m , laß uns etwas Gutes thun, und dabei sterben! Einen der Millionen T o d e , die wir schon gestorben sind, und noch sterben werden. Es ist, als ob w i r aus einem Zimmer in das andere gehen." 3 0 Kleist recalls conversations of an earlier date with Pfuel which invariably came around to the theme of death as life's eternal refrain. 3 1 T o P f u e l and to other friends Kleist is known to have proposed joint suicide at one time or another. T h e thought of ending his own life occurs already in an early letter to his fiancée; reproaching himself for some hasty decision, he writes: "Ich will mich nicht mehr ü b e r e i l e n — thue ich es noch einmal, so ist es das letztemal—denn ich verachte entweder alsdann meine Seele oder die Erde, u n d trenne sie." 32 In fact, Kleist's own end is gruesomely prefigured in that of one of his heroes, in a story that may have originated at this very time: in Die Verlobung in St. Domingo, Gustav, having shot his beloved through the heart with one pistol, kills himself with the other, setting the muzzle into his mouth, just as Kleist was to do a decade later. T h i s lifelong affinity with death did not preclude a relatively strong attachment to life. Even after Kant had persuaded him of the unreliability of all phenomena, Kleist was still fascinated by them and made them convincingly alive in his works. H e was, like Novalis, a citizen of two worlds. H e could, with T h e o b a l d , plead for the world as der liebliche Schauplatz des Lebens (II, 244), or with Jeronimo weep for joy at regaining das liebliche Leben voll bunter Erscheinungen (III, 298), or cry with Prinz Friedrich, o Gottes Welt, o Mutter, ist so schön! (995). It is eminently characteristic of Kleist to have his Prince, as he contemplates ecstatically the dazzling radiance of eternity, still picture the cheerful harbor town falling below the verge (1830 ff.) or, a moment be-

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fore his expected execution, respond to the fragrance of a flower and speak of putting it into a glass of water when he gets back to his room. T h e day before his death Kleist could write to a friend: "seien Sie auf Erden, wie es gar wohl möglich ist, recht glücklich! Wir, unsererseits, wollen nichts von den Freuden dieser Welt wissen." 33 Kleist, like Novalis, was content to let die andern / Breite, lichte, volle Straßen wandern; his deeper allegiance, too, was on the other side. With the hope of being recommissioned in the army, Kleist returned to his native Frankfurt one day in October, i 8 n , to ask his sister for a loan to purchase an officer's equipment. This visit proved one of the most powerful forces that drove him to his death. Ulrike apparently showed such great shock at his appearance that he in turn was auf das Allertiefste erschüttert; he left the house at once, and from somewhere else wrote her a note begging her forgiveness, asking merely to see her once more before returning to Berlin, and inviting himself to lunch. 84 A t this meal, sitting between his sisters, with another guest present, Kleist was subjected to a humiliating arraignment which still burns in his heart when he writes of it a month later to Marie. He would rather, he says, suffer a tenfold death than go through that experience again. T o see his merit, great or small, completely denied, to see his own family regard him as a wholly worthless member of human society, no longer deserving of any sympathy —this, he says, not only robs him of all hope for the future but poisons the past for him. 35 It is a crazy situation to envisage: the man who was to bring his family its greatest fame treated by this family as though he had brought it its deepest disgrace. Nowhere else, perhaps, but in the case of Hölderlin is one so shaken by the spectacle of unrecognized genius defenseless before the ordinary world. One must remember that Kleist had always been extremely loyal to his clan and felt that he was working for

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their fame as much as his own. He conceived of a maternal family deity watching over his literary labors. 38 Ulrike in particular had been his stanch supporter and comrade. In another unhappy period years before, shortly after his humiliating interview with the King's adjutant, Köckeritz, he had laid his heart in her hand: "Ach, Ulrikchen, wie unglücklich wäre ich, wenn ich nicht mehr stolz sein könnte! —Werde nicht irre an mir, mein beßtes Mädchenl Laß mir den Trost, daß Einer in der Welt sei, der fest auf mir vertraut! Wenn ich in deinen Augen nichts mehr werth bin, so bin ich wirklich nichts mehr werth!—Sei standhaft! Sei standhaft!" 3 7 What he then feared had now happened. His closest relative, his best friend was through with him, regarded him as a worthless derelict. T h e blow to his selfesteem, his sense of security, his will to live must have been appalling. This was der schwerste Herzensstoß. They never saw each other again. Ernst von Pfuel, one of Kleist's oldest friends, said, after his death: it was well that he died, for his heart was long since broken; but "die Vogel steht daneben, wie eine dumme Zufälligkeit; . . . die Bekannte von gestern, mit dem Gepräge des Unechten an der Stirn." 38 All this is true, and one can sympathize with Pfuel's resentment. Henriette's importance for Kleist consisted essentially in her being an opportune companion in death. There was no relation of love between them in the ordinary sense, and no question of physical union. 39 Their bond was a common wish to die, though for quite different reasons; she knew herself doomed to an early and painful death by cancer. And yet there is an unmistakable element of sexual gratification in Kleist's final act. T h a t suicide held an erotic (sexual or homosexual) value for him is suggested by the fact that he always thinks of it as the act of a pair, never a solitary deed. He proposed suicide à deux to Pfuel, to

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Rühle, to Karoline von Schlieben, to Marie, and perhaps also to Ulrike. But his proposals were always unsuccessful, until in Henriette he made his first and only "conquest"— shutting his eyes to her real motive for consenting. With this comes a feeling of achievement and relief; his soul sings a song of triumph. 40 Utterly serene, versöhnt und heiter like his Prince in the face of death, he takes back his condemnation of Ulrike for abandoning him and wishes her an end nur halb an Freude und unaussprechlicher Heiterkeit dem meinigen gleich.*1 T h e fusion of love and death is quite clear in Kleist's letter to Marie written on this same last day.42 He tells her "wie der T o d und die Liebe sich abwechseln, um diese letzten Augenblicke meines Lebens mit Blumen, himmlischen und irdischen, zu bekränzen . . . ; ich versichre Dich, ich bin ganz seelig." He now kneels and prays, which he never before could, mornings and evenings to thank God for requiting his agonized life durch den herrlichsten und wollüstigsten aller Tode. He expresses regret at the pain he is causing her by his act of infidelity in exchanging her for another Freundinn, and on the conscious level he is quite sincere in this regret. On a deeper, subconscious level he is punishing Marie for failing him, for not "consenting"—to a proposal that substituted death for physical union. He reminds her that he made his proposal many times, aber Du sagtest immer nein. Now he has found a woman who says "yes," a woman die mir die unerhörte Lust gewährt, sich . . . aus einer ganz wunschlosen Lage . . . heraus heben zu lassen,43 and this yielding assent has drawn him to her in ecstasy: "Ein Strudel von nie empfundener Seeligkeit hat mich ergriffen, und ich kann Dir nicht leugnen [ = I want you to feel!], daß mir ihr Grab lieber ist als die Betten aller Kaiserinnen der Welt." This is from the "deep" level; on the superficial one, again, he ends his letter with a picture of

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the conventional heaven (which I doubt he really believed in): 44 "mögte Dich Gott bald abrufen in jene bessere Welt, wo wir uns alle, mit der Liebe der Engel, einander werden ans Herz drücken können." This too could be more deeply read as the wish for an existence free from the unsolved problems of sex: " U n d jene himmlischen Gestalten, / Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib." How much of an erotic factor there may have been in Kleist's relation to his half sister Ulrike we cannot know. If she were not his sister, he had assured her in an early letter, he would be happy to join his life to hers.45 In his letters to others, he sometimes mocks at her mannishness—she "has nothing of her sex but the hips" ( B f e . II, 24)—but at other times he pleads with the ardor of a lover for her approval and favor, and he repeatedly proposes their establishing a household together. It may be that he felt himself rejected as a man, not merely a kinsman, on that last visit to her and wished subconsciously to punish her by laying his body, as it were, on her doorstep. Ulrike long outlived her brother but refused inquirers all information about him, and she is known to have destroyed many of his letters (Bfe. I, vii). One may see in Kleist's last utterances ample evidence of that morbid, pathological element that made him repugnant to Goethe and even to Grillparzer. Yet Kleist was no more pathological than many other people and many other writers; he was only more communicative about it. As a poet, like all great poets, he could be many persons and share many emotions, especially the countless forms of love. As a private individual he was not happily endowed, above all in matters of sex. A n d he had an excessive amount of bad luck; Hebbel was justified in speaking in his sonnet of Kleist's unerhörtes Unglück. H e was in the deepest sense a misfit in the real world, and instead of wondering at his suicide, we should rather wonder that he bore his various afflictions as

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long as he did, and that from a life so maimed by maladjustments and misfortunes he was able to wrest works of high and enduring art. Kleist was by no means at the end of his rope as a writer. It was not the failure of his poetic genius that drove him to suicide. Some of the most moving passages in the letters of his last half year are those that testify to the unexhausted vitality of his mind. H e writes to Marie, in May, 1 8 1 1 , of the highly imaginative and original work he means to undertake as soon as he is free from the toils of his litigation. "Es weht mich zuweilen," he tells her, "bei einer Lektüre oder im Theater, wie ein Luftzug aus meiner allerfrühsten J u g e n d an. Das Leben, das vor mir ganz öde liegt, gewinnt mit Einem mal eine wunderbar herrliche Aussicht, und es regen sich Kräfte in mir, die ich ganz erstorben glaubte." 4 8 In another letter he broaches the even more original and ambitious plan of suspending writing for a year or longer and devoting himself instead to the study of music, for he regards this art, he says, as the root and formula of all the other arts, and he expects to find in counterpoint most important revelations concerning the nature of poetry. 47 Kleist had survived severe crises before; he had come back from depths in which most men would have succumbed, physically or mentally. T h i s time the concentration of destructive forces seemed in truth overwhelming. But it was the man rather than the poet who called a halt. T h e poet could conceivably have gone on writing, even making poetry out of his personal agony, for he has the power that Goethe's Tasso reminds himself of: " U n d wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt, / Gab mir ein Gott, zu sagen, wie ich leide." But Kleist was not the man to do this, any more than Grillparzer's Sappho was the woman. Kleist took trouble in his last moments about a small sum to be paid to his barber and a little valise to be given to his landlord; 48 he showed no

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concern whatever for his literary estate. T h e tormented man destroyed himself and in so doing destroyed the poet and all his unwritten works. For even the greatest poetry is subjected to that strangely ordained partnership of mind and body, spirit and flesh, that Kleist once summed up in the Biichneresque phrase, diese wunderbare Verknüpfung eines Geistes mit einem Konvolut von Gedärmen und Eingeweiden» Kleist's human misfortunes were thus ended, but his literary fortunes continued adverse long after his death. It seemed, in fact, as if a full century of development in drama and prose fiction had to run its course before Kleist's achievement could be seen in proper perspective. T h e r e was no scholarly edition of his works until the twentieth century. T h e theaters of Germany and Austria long ignored him, and when his plays were given, all through the nineteenth century, it was with more or less adulterated texts. Der zerbrochne Krug, which had been so cruelly botched in Weimar in 1808, was not given again for years. Penthesilea had to wait seventy years for even a mangled performance (Berlin, 1876), and Amphitryon was not played until 1899. Soon after Kleist's death, young Theodor Körner got his fingers on Die Verlobung in St. Domingo and purified it into a little play called Toni, a puerile Machwerk which was nevertheless enacted with great solicitude in Weimar—with a stage set designed by Goethe himself—and later on in Berlin; and Kleist's name was not even mentioned in either place.60 When the victory over Napoleon, which Kleist had so passionately striven for, was won at last in 1815, the Royal Theater at Berlin celebrated the happy event by presenting Goethe's bloodless allegory, Des Epimenides Erwachen, and its labeled abstractions posed and declaimed on the very boards that were denied to Prussia's great native son. On

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every ground, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, the work of a true dramatist and a true patriot, should have ennobled this occasion. But Kleist's maturest play did not see the light until Tieck got around to publishing it, in 1821. In that same year, the tenth after the author's death, Käthchen von Heilbronn was staged in his native town—without mention of his name. No critic of any standing said a good word for Kleist while he lived, and he lay in his remote grave by the Wannsee a good half century before the first full-scale biography appeared (Wilbrandt's, 1863). Another half century passed before Kleist became the object of much critical attention. But the attention has remained fitful, a great deal of it called forth by anniversary dates or political emergencies. The German stages do not play him often, except for "occasions." Their repertoires are cluttered with the modern equivalent, domestic and imported, of the Kotzebues with which Kleist had to compete in his day. He has not become popular, even in his own country. It is symptomatic that the Kleist-Gesellschaft, which expired in the Second World War, is only now being modestly revived, as a kind of obligatory anniversary observance. Nor has the voluminous scholarly literature devoted to Kleist yielded anything like an assured consensus of critical opinion about him and his work. Rather, the schreiendste noted by Hebbel in 1850 in reMeinungsverschiedenheiten spect to Prinz Friedrich von Homburg?1 have continued to characterize Kleist literature in general. It is as though the tensions and antinomies of Kleist's own nature had communicated themselves to those who write about him. This is unfortunate, but, in an ironical way that Kleist would have appreciated, it shows again how deep and lasting is the stamp of this extraordinary personality.

Notes Chapter I ι. O n the criteria of the Novelle and their validity, see my Realism and Reality. Studies in the German Novelle, Chapel Hill, 1954, pp. 1-10. 2. T o conclude, with Maria Prigge-Kruhoeffer, Jahrbuch der Kleist-Gesellschaft 1923)24, p. 57, "In diesen Darstellungen [Erdbeben and Findling] sprechen nur die Tatsachen. . . . Alle Novellen Kleists werden allein schon durch seinen objektiven Stil . . . der rein persönlichen Anteilnahme entzogen," is to ignore plain evidence in these and other stories by Kleist. 3. One may suspect an echo of this in the passage opening Chapter 9 of C. F. Meyer's Das Amulett, where the effects of a purely human holocaust are seen by the hero as he walks through the Paris streets. T h e scene following, the fight in Chatillon's house, shares features with that at the Chilean cathedral: a bloodthirsty individual (Lignerolles/Pedrillo) leading a mob denounces incognito persons bent on escape; in both cases, some make their way through the hostile crowd into the open and then, when they are seemingly safe, there is a delayed killing outside. T h e figure of an intolerant priest who inflames a congregation with his sermon (Chapter 4) may also owe something to Kleist. These features are not found in Mérimée's Chronique du règne de Charles IX, which influenced Meyer's narrative in some other respects. 4. One can find a few flaws in Kleist's language. T h e double use of derselbe forms in the sentence 298. 1-3 is awkward and unnecessary. For the antecedent of ihrer Vollendung (299. 2; Vollstreckung would have been a clearer word) we must go back seven lines to Hinrichtung (298.29). Nicht zu fliehen (or sich nicht zu retten) would have made the meaning in 299. 8f. clearer than wanken does. Erworben (312. 5) is a strange word to use when extended to Jeronimo's own son. Derselben (297. 2) is either a slip on Kleist's part or an error of the first imprint that has been retained, hitherto unnoticed. 289

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5. See his letter of December 6, 1806, to Ulrike: "Es scheint mir, als ob das allgemeine Unglück die Menschen erzöge, ich finde sie weiser und wärmer, und ihre Ansicht von der Welt großherziger" (Bf e. II, 158). This was written less than two months after the battle and at a time when the Erbeben was probably already in his mind. 6. Günter Blöcker, Heinrich von Kleist oder das absolute Ich, Berlin, [i960], p. 137. 7. Kleist's letter of August 31, 1806, to Rühle; Bf e. II, 153. 8. August 31, 1806, to Rühle; Bfe. II, 15if. The passage occurs also in Kleist's letter of August 4, 1806, to Altenstein; ibid., 149. These letters, like the one of December 6, 1806, previously cited, may well be contemporary with the genesis of the Erdbeben. 9. Otto Ludwig, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Stern and Schmidt, Leipzig, 1891, V, 348.

Chapter II 1. See my Realism and Reality, Chapel Hill, 1954, p. 7. 2. Helmut Sembdner, Die Berliner Abendblätter Heinrich von Kleists, Berlin, 1939 (Schriften der Kleist-Gesellschaft, Bd. 19), p. 8·. See also the useful fotomechanischer Nachdruck of the Abendblätter, ed. Sembdner, Stuttgart, 1959. 3. Emil Staiger, Meisterwerke deutscher Sprache im 19. Jahrhundert, Zürich, 2, Aufl., [1948], p. 111. 4. E. T . A. Hoffmann has this same odd usage in Das Majorat: die Tür des Schlosses, die große Haupttür des Schlosses (Werke, Bibl. Inst, ed., II, 130, 139). Later on, it may be noted, Kleist does use Tor (357, 1). In Homburg he uses Tür in the stage directions, line 7 7 + , and in I, 2, for the same portal for which he has the Prince use Tor in his account (lines 185, 187). 5. The Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 3. Aufl., III, No. 150, contain a fragment, Die alte Bettelfrau, taken from

NOTES

an 18th-century source, which comes to no point and has no similarity to Kleist's. In legends and fairy tales about beggars, charity to them is shown rewarded and heartlessness punished, according to Bächtold-Stäubli's Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 1927, article Bettler; there is no entry for Bettlerin or Bettelweib. 6. No. 7. XII, 8.

Sämtliche

Werke, Stadt Wien ed., 2. Abt., 7. Bd., p. 130,

295.

Ibid., pp. 2Q2f., No. 762. (In Sauer's 20-V0I. Cotta edition, pp. 1 8 7 É E . ) Ibid., p. 436.

9. T h e burning of Starschensky's watchtower and the finding of human bones in the ruins, near the end of Das Kloster bei Sendomir, may be an echo from Kleist's tale. 10. Der Graf ward nicht mehr gesehen. T h i s favorite locution of Grillparzer's which forms the close of Wieland's Musarion and of Goethe's Der Fischer, is originally Biblical: see Genesis 5: 24, in the German version. 1 1 . Helmut Sembdner has assembled them in his treatise on the Abendblätter (Sehr. d. Kleist-Ges., 19), pp. 8 8 - 9 1 . 12. T o Prinz von Lichnowsky, October 23, 1810; Bfe. II, 242.

13. So Reinhold Steig surmised: Kleist's Werke, 14. See the letter cited in Note 12.

I V , 402.

Chapter III 1. Kleist himself refers to it as an Umarbeitung of Molière's; see his letter of December 17, 1807, to Wieland, Bfe. II, 1 9 1 . 2. Mann's essay on Amphitryon was written in 1926, first printed in Neue Rundschau in 1928 and thereafter in various collections of his essays. T h e phrase quoted is from A del des Geistes, Stockholm, 1948, p. 80. 3. J o h n C. Blankenagel, The Dramas of Heinrich von Kleist, Chapel Hill, 1 9 3 1 , pp. 81 ff.; E. L . Stahl, Heinrich von

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Kleist's Dramas, Oxford, 1948, pp. 59 ff. See also my own Heinrich von Kleist's Conception of the Tragic, Baltimore, 1923, pp. 26 ff. On the other hand, H. W. Nordmeyer's extensive article "Kleist's Amphitryon. Zur Deutung der Komödie," five installments, Monatshefte 38 and 39, 1946-1947, is an attempt to read the play as a consistent comedy. 4. Otto Brahm, Heinrich von Kleist, 3. Aufl., Berlin, 1892, p. 140. 5. Benno von Wiese, Die deutsche Tragödie von Lessing bis Hebbel, 4. Aufl., Hamburg, 1958, p. 304. 6. H. A. Korff, Geist der Goethezeit, IV. Teil, 2. Aufl., Leipzig, 1955, p. 60. Korff's pupil Erhart Kästner, however, voiced a radically different opinion in his Wahn und Wirklichkeit im Drama der Goethezeit, Leipzig, 1929, p. 87: "Kleist wollte in der Alkmene den Menschen hinstellen, der bis ins Letzte hinein vom Wahne betört und verwirrt ist, der selbst in dem innersten Bezirk . . . getäuscht und genarrt ist." 7. Günter Blöcker, Heinrich von Kleist, Berlin, [i960], pp. 139, 172. 8. E. L. Stahl, op. cit., p. 65. 9. E.g., Β. ν. Wiese, op. cit., p. 302: "sie ergreift . . . nur den 'Einzigen' und gelangt in der durch nichts zu erschütternden Gewißheit dieses Du zugleich zu der gnadenvollen Gewißheit ihres Ich." Alkmene loses, I should say, her sureness of both. There is no blinking the fact that she has made a fearful and irreparable mistake and that she so regards it. 10. E. L. Stahl, op. cit., p. 67. 11. Paul Hoffmann, Heinrich von Kleist. Der zerbrochne Krug, Weimar, 1941, p. 49. 12. Friedrich Röbbeling, Kleist's Käthchen von Heilbronn, Halle a. S., 1913, p. 71. Röbbeling is of the opinion that Alkmene's final "AmphitryonI" (2349) is addressed to the departing Jupiter, and Thomas Mann (op. cit., p. 103) seems to share this opinion. 13. This is one of the places where Kleist's wording tragically heightens Molière's. For Kleist's horrified lines 907-gn, the French is simply "O cieli quel étrange embarras! / J e

NOTES

293

vois des incidents qui passent la nature; / Et mon honneur redoute une aventure / Que mon esprit ne comprend pas." 14. Blankenagel, op. cit., p. 95, is especially impressed by the nobility of Amphitryon's character shown at this point. 15. Über das Erhabene, Schiller's Sämtliche Werke, SäkularAusgabe, X I I , 264. 16. Riemer's Mitteilungen über Goethe, 14. Juli, 1807; Kleists Lebensspuren, ed. Sembdner, p. 124. 17. Goethe's Sämtliche Werke, Jubiläums-Ausgabe, X V I , 274. 18. This one hint suggests that Jupiter is capable of doing to Alkmene what Merkur does with "humorous" effect to Sosias, namely rob her of her sense of individuality by convincing her that her very consciousness is his. This is the same soul-destroying weapon that Walther uses in Tieck's Der blonde Eckbert. 19. See J . C. Blankenagel, op. cit., p. 96. 20. T o Ulrike, October 5, 1803; Bfe. II, 1 1 1 . 21. "Dir wird ein Sohn geboren werden, / Dess' Name Herkules," 2336 f. A great many Christian concepts and expressions occur in this ostensibly pagan world. Hölle, Teufel, and Satan are frequent: 139, 616, 897, 1680, 2064, 2og6, 2 1 1 3 (Sohn der Finsternis), 2157, 2179. Jupiter calls Alkmene a Heilige (1259), and his speech 1280-1286 contains Heilige, Teufel, Sünde, Hölle, and Makel. Alkmene speaks like the Virgin Mary (1535 f.) and Sosias quotes St. Matthew (2041 ff.). Occasionally, pagan and Christian notions are found in the same speech (1298 f., 1356-1368).

Chapter IV 1. Heinrich Meyer-Benfey, Kleists Leben und Werke, Göttingen, 1911, p. 363. 2. Gerhard Fricke, Gefühl und Schicksal bei Heinrich von Kleist, Berlin, 1929, p. 150. 3. Helmut Sembdner, Die Berliner Abendblätter Heinrich

«94

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KLEIST

von Kleists (Schriften der Kleist-Gesellschaft, Bd. 19), Berlin, 1939, p. 66. 4. Published in the Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 1954, pp. 234-246. 5. B e n n o von Wiese, Die deutsche Tragödie von Lessing bis Hebbel, 3. Aufl., Hamburg, 1956, p. 298; see also p. 302. T h e r e is, I may add, no question in Kleist of a Rückkehr zum Tier, as Wiese has it, pp. 298, 299. A t the opposite end to the god is the marionette only. More recently, Blöcker, Heinrich von Kleist, i960, p. 177, speaks confusedly of Kleist's marionette symbol as demonstrating Gottesmenschentum, as though the marionette were intermediate between god and man. In Kleist's scheme it is at the other end of the scale from the god. 6. Friedrich Koch, Heinrich von Kleist, Bewußtsein Wirklichkeit, Stuttgart, 1958, p. 170. 7. "Kleists Gestaltentyp," in Zeitschrift für deutsche logie, 1935, pp. 230 f.

und Philo-

8. H a n n a Hellmann, Heinrich von Kleist, Darstellung des Problems, Heidelberg, 1911, p. 13; W i l h e l m Herzog, Heinrich von Kleist, sein Leben und sein Werk, München, 1911, p. 609. 9. T o Wilhelmine, August 15, 1801; Bfe. II, 47. 10. T o Wilhelmine, A p r i l 9, 1801; Bfe. I, 234; the sentence quoted recurs Bfe. I, 238 and II, 10. 11. T o Ulrike, May 1799; Bfe. I, 37.

Chapter V 1. Georg Minde-Pouet, Heinrich von Kleist. Seine Sprache und sein Stil, Weimar, 1897, pp. 204-245. Albert Fries, Stilistische und vergleichende Forschungen zu Heinrich von Kleist, Berlin, 1906, especially pp. 17-25. 2. Helmut Sembdner (ed.), Heinrich von Kleist. Geschichte meiner Seele. Ideenmagazin, Bremen, [1959]. 3. Minde-Pouet, op. cit., pp. 243 f.

NOTES

295

4. See Hans M. Wolff, Heinrich von Kleist. Die Geschichte seines Schaffens, Bern, [1954]. 5. See Sembdner, Geschichte meiner Seele, pp. 285, 287. 6. V, 403; in Minde-Pouet's 2. Aufl., VII, 59, fitly added to Kleist's lyric poetry in Sauer's verse arrangement. 7. T o Ulrike, January 18, 1802; Bfe. II, 88. 8. January 24, 1808; Bfe. II, 199. 9. July 14, 1807; Bfe. II, 174. 10. October 26, 1803; Bfe. II, 112. 11. Eduard von Bülow, Heinrich von Kleists Leben und Briefe, Berlin, 1848, p. 57. Helmut Sembdner (ed.), Heinrich von Kleists Lebensspuren, Bremen, 1957, p. 241. 12. Bfe. II, 293; cf. ErcL., III, 440. 13. See Martin Lintzel, Liebe und Tod bei Heinrich von Kleist, Berlin, 1950. 14. Similarly, at the duel in Zw., Kleist has im Hintergrund a Schloß with a Rampe (III, 407). 15. Cf. the Schloßplatz scene in Ko., with the somewhat similar assault of the Chamberlain upon his man and of Meister Himboldt upon the Chamberlain (III, 202 f.). 16. On the theme of Vertrauen in Kleist's writings, see the articles by H. J. Weigand in Monatshefte, X X X , 1938, and X X X I V , 1942, and the proefschrift by P. F. Smith, Das Vertrauen in Kleists Briefen und Werken, Groningen, 1949. 17. Cf. Zw.: "ihren . . . sich in Staub und Blut wälzenden Sohn" (III, 411). 18. See my Early German Romanticism, Cambridge, 1929, pp. 149 f. 19. C. F. Meyer seems to have borrowed from Kleist the figure of the swan, which he applies to the Virgin at the end of Canto 40 of Huttens letzte Tage. There too sex is equated with defilement—an idea, to be sure, implicit in the religious dogma of "immaculateness." 20. Josef Körner, Recht und Pflicht. Eine Kleist-Studie, Leipzig und Berlin, 1926, pp. 11 f. 21. Cf. also Ko. (III, 182) and Kleist's conception of the patron saint of his family (Bfe. II, 110).

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22. Raymond Bonafous, Henri de Kleist, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1894, p. 412. 23. See my "Note on Kleist's Vene Style" in MLN, CV1II, 1943, 351-355. The occurrences there listed could be added to. 24. In Verl., Kleist uses the same "business" in a different sense: Toni, deceiving her mother and Congo, "Bei diesen Worten . . . setzte sich, als ob sie weinte, an einen Tisch nieder" (III, 342). 25. See Roger Ayrault, Heinrich von Kleist, Paris, 1934, p. 560. 26. T o Altenstein, January 1, 1809; Β je. II, 216. 27. There is a certain parallel to this in Goethe's Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewandeter: "der Hausherr . . . nahm seine größte Hetzpeitsche von der Wand und schwur, daß er das Mädchen bis auf den Tod prügeln wolle" ('Jubiläumsausg. X V I , 205). 28. Helene Herrmann was probably right in surmising that this letter passage marks the genesis of Pe. (Zeitschr. f . Ästhetik u. allg. Kunstwiss., 1924, pp. 276 f.). One might add that in his closing phrase im. Staube . . . Kleist has already coined a typical Penthesilean pentameter. I cannot follow Frl. Herrmann in seeing a Bild des Wettlaufs in the monologue ending Act I; it seems to me to suggest rather the imagery of battle and chase. 29. See Reinhold Steig, Neue Kunde zu Heinrich von Kleist, Berlin, 1902, p. 128; Lebensspuren, ed. Sembdner, p. 462. Grimm's letter is dated May 1, 1816. 30. See Paul Hoffmann in Schriften der Kleist-Gesellschaft, Bd. 17, 1937, pp. 98-103. 31. Paul Hoffmann, in GRM, 1937, pp. 458 ff., seems to me to argue convincingly that this supposed manuscript of Kleist's, long searched for, never existed. Tieck apparently was the first to make the mistake of interpreting this phrase in a letter (to Wilhelmine, March 22, 1801; Bfe. I, 221) as referring to an actual Schrift. Johanna von Haza gave additional support to this notion by her utterance of 1816 (see V, 445, and Lebensspuren, ed. Sembdner, p. 465), and this view was accepted by Erich Schmidt and Minde-Pouet. Sembdner, Geschichte meiner

NOTES

297

Seele, 1959, pp. xi f., adduces no new evidence to prove that the phrase represents an essay of Kleist's or is identical with die große Schrift for R ü h l e mentioned in a letter of June 3, 1801 ( B f e . II, 13). T a k e n in its context, den Verfolg dieser Geschichte meiner Seele (Bfe. I, 221) appears to mean simply "the course of this spiritual (mental) experience"—namely, his experience with the Kantian philosophy, which is the same as das, was seit 5 Wochen durch meine Seele flog and which cannot be compressed on one page of a letter (ibid.). 32. Spiridion Wukadinovic, in his Kleist-Studien, Stuttgart und Berlin, 1904, p. 89, stated his belief that Kleist had gerettet pieces of Guiskard into later works, but W . carried his aperçu no further than a few good points in Pe. Hans Stock's B o n n dissertation, Kleists Dramenbruchstück "Robert Guiskard," 1937, because of its unscholarly methods of comparison and reconstruction, hardly furthers the problem. 33. Zeitschrift für Ästhetik, 1907, p. 50. 34. See my Early German Romanticism, pp. 95, 103. 35. See Otto Brahm, Das Leben Heinrichs von Kleist, Berlin, 1884, p. 115. 36. T h e danger inherent in conspicuous vigor of self-assertion is implied in similar botanical terms in Pe. (weil sie zu stolz und kräftig blühte, 3040) and in Ho. (weil sie sich . . . zu rasch und üppig in die Blume warf, 837 f.). T h e picture of the flower trodden down by a hostile foot (Ho. 836839) is found already in Schro. 2591 f. (implicitly also in the opening lines). 37. T h i s figure is interesting also as an unselfish reversal of that in A c t I, Sc. 6: "stürze / Ganz deinen Segen mir zu F ü ß e n um."

Chapter VI 1. T h e only twenty-nine paragraphs of which Kohlhaas is composed vary in length from a third of a page to nearly rineteen pages.

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2. Cf. Kohlhaas to Luther: "so habe es denn . . . seinen L a u f " (185). 3. As the final pages of the story make clear, there are two boys and three girls. It is significant that only the boys are named: Heinrich and Leopold, presumably after Kleist and his younger brother. In an ironical turn at the end, the sons of this man who lost his life fighting against the nobility are ennobled at the place of his execution and will be educated as royal pages. T h e boys are thus provided for, but nothing more is heard of the little girls. 4. T h e husband's primacy is seen even in the little detail that he takes a sort of judgment seat in the Lehnstuhl while she is sent to bring Herse to him (150). 5. In joining the new Lutheran faith the husband again had led, the wife followed: "zu welchem eben damals aufkeimenden Glauben sie sich, nach dem Beispiel ihres Mannes, bekannt hatte" (165. 23 f.). 6. According to 224. 29. There is some discrepancy in the time statements. According to 166. 26 and 30, it would have been three days, plus the time required for the delivery of Kohlhaas's ultimatum, plus the time his expedition took to reach Jüterbog on its way to attack the Tronkenburg. It is somewhat strange, too, that on such an expedition Kohlhaas should tarry and should stop with his whole band at an inn (225. 10.). 7. T h a t it does not actually save his life proves that for all its supernaturalism Kohlhaas is not a fate story. T h e hero has free will (cf. 243. 2), and he chooses not to make use of the escape the amulet offers. 8. This is the only time her full first name is used in the story. Kohlhaas is addressed as Michael only once, by her (149); one might have expected her to use that name here. 9. Lisbeth missed connection with him in Berlin (see 164. 30 f.), so he had not seen her for a number of years. 10. See 242. 16-22. T h e baby is of Kleist's favorite blond type, like the little boy who figures in the Prince's and Natalie's

NOTES

«99

imagination (Homburg 1047, 1095)—plainly a Wunschbild of Kleist's. 11. See Rudolf Schlösser, Die Quellen zu Heinrich von Kleists Michael Kohlhaas, Bonn, 1913. pp. 7 f. 12. In Hafftiz's Chronicle, Luther, after calling in Melanchthon and other theologian friends to hear Kohlhaas's presentation of his case, the next morning hears his confession and grants him das hochwürdige Sacrament (see Schlösser, op. cit., p. 8). 13. Perhaps a vague and subconscious recognition of kinship is implied in the fact that Luther feels trust in Kohlhaas's mettle: auf ein tüchtiges Element in der Brust des Mordbrenners bauend (179. 28f.). This is not unlike the intuitive Gefühl for the other man which both Prinz Friedrich and the Kurfürst bank on (see Chapter VIII). 14. Kleist preached this doctrine also to his faint-hearted king in his poem An Friedrich Wilhelm den Dritten: even if war should rage in Berlin itself and its towers fall, "sie sind gebaut, o Herr, wie hell sie blinken, / Für beßre Güter in den Staub zu sinken" (IV, 36). 15. It is not clear how Tronka could know this. It seems as if Kleist had lent him his author's omniscience to point out by proxy the flaw in Luther's reasoning. 16. See 211. 33 f.; 230. 28 f.; 231. 78. 17. See Günter Blöcker, Heinrich von Kleist, Berlin, [i960], pp. 217 ff. 18. In Hafftiz, Kohlhase, on the advice of Nagelschmidt, makes a raid into his native Brandenburg in order to induce the Brandenburg Elector to act on his behalf against Saxony {see Schlösser, op. cit., 8). 19. What is in point here is not so much the breaking of the amnesty as the violation of the safe-conduct which guarantees the freedom of the litigant while on his way to and awaiting trial. T h e Elector also shows the confusion of these concepts in his mind when, in the Council of State, he steadfastly refuses to break Kohlhaas's safe-conduct (216, 33 ff.)—as if this had not already been broken 1

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20. Luther was in error when he referred to the Elector of Saxony as Kohlhaas's Landesherr (180. 2); later he correctly designates him as an Ausländer in Saxony (188. 1).

Chapter VII 1. For the sake of uniformity, I follow the line numbering of the Bibliogr. Inst, edition. Erich Schmidt there counts the words, "Graf Truchß! Hier! Und mit dem Grafen T r u c h ß vereint" as two lines (259, 260), and the 2. Aufl., ed. MindePouet, follows suit. It seems more logical, however, to regard this as one hypermetric line, the Hier exceeding the regular pentameter—the more so as Schmidt admits without cavil a similar and even longer unit (253) as one verse. T h e total for the play then would be 1857 lines. 2. Kleist uses such Pausen throughout, as "punctuation" for what one might call paragraphs of speech, as points of rest and Sammlung, or to emphasize a situation or tableau. In Homburg the Pause occurs more than a score of times. 3. T h e officers dismount outside. T h e horses are not brought on—as Professor Kittredge once punned in his Shakespeare course, because stages of that day were not sufficiently stable affairs. At any rate, a naïve realism and possibly unintended comic effects are thereby avoided. 4. T h e same procedure of "paragraphing," with lively interpolations, is followed again, more extensively, in Hohenzollern's speech, 1633-1700. 5. Hebbel's Sämtliche Werke, ed. R. M. Werner, 1. Abt., IX, 42. It is the sixth, not the eighth scene of Act II, as Hebbel has it. 6. See Adolf Foglar, Grillparzers Ansichten über Literatur, Bühne und Leben, Wien, 1872, p. 7; Grillparzer's Gespräche, ed. Aug. Sauer, Wien, 1904 ff., III, 195. Grillparzer himself uses

NOTES

301

Goethe's formulation twice more; see Sämtl. Wke., ed Sauer (Cotta), X I X , 78, 109. 7. Sämtl. Wke., ed. Sauer (Cotta), X V , 68. PMLA 8. W m . G . Howard, " T h e President's Address," X X X V I I , 1922, lxvi. 9. T h e Federhut und Mantel specified in 934 -f- are repeated in 961 and 1163; they are remembered also before 1286, though only the hat is mentioned there. 10. In König Ottokar, 687 -)-, Grillparzer has old Merenberg use a business very like the Prince's in 298 -)-. 11. Grillparzer granted that the Prince's behavior was natural: "Freilich! eine Natürlichkeit, aber die man anspeien m u ß " (Gespräche, ed. Sauer, III, 238). Grillparzer's expression is itself "naturalistic" enoughl

Chapter VIII 1. Tieck, in his Vorrede to the first edition of Kleist's play {Heinrich von Kleists hinterlassene Schriften, herausg. von L u d w i g Tieck, Berlin, 1821, p. lxiv), was the earliest proponent of the "subordination theory." 2. Julian Schmidt seems to have been the first to justify the Prince's action as the revolt of free heroism against the traditional order: see his Gesch. d. dt. Nationalliteratur (first Leipzig, 1853), 4. Aufl., 1858, II, 281, and his introduction to his and Tieck's edition of Kleist's Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1859, I, cix. 3. See Footnote 1; also Tieck's Kritische Schriften, Leipzig, 1848-1852, II, 49. 4. Hebbel's Sämtliche Werke, ed. R . M. Werner, Berlin, 1901 ff., 1. Abt., IX, 40: "Die Kraft steht über dem Gesetz und der M u t erkennt keine Schranken, als sich selbst"; see also IX, 48; X I , 331.

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5. Grillparzer's Werke, Stadt W i e n edition, 2. Abt., VII, 89. 6. Sämtl. Wke., ed. Werner, 1. Abt., X I , 323. 7. E.g., Programm d. Königstädt. Gymnasiums, Berlin, 1893, and Jahrbuch d. Kleist-Gesellschaft, 1921. 8. W m . G. Howard, " T h e President's Address," PMLA X X X V I I , 1922, lxxvii. 9. Feigning ( 1 3 1 3 + ) ' amorous appeal (1315), terrifying (13250., 1364 ff.), petulance and tears (1329-)-, 1330), confusing the issue (1346 ff). 10. T h e Prince's readiness to credit a personal motive on the Elector's part is subtly prepared for already in lines 777 ff.; it is psychologically interesting and truly human that he there imputed to the ruler a desire to emulate ancient R o m a n greatness such as he himself betrayed in lines 713 f. 11. T h e r e is a suggestion of furtiveness in schleich dich zu ihm (956) like that in kam geschlichen (1164). 12. It is clear that T r u c h ß believes (751), as Dörfling did (739), that the Elector would not have been so downright in condemning the charge had he known that the Prince was the leader of it. T h a t is to say, both ascribe personal considerations to the ruler, not the principle that is no respecter of persons. 13. Friedrich Koch, Heinrich von Kleist. Bewußtsein und Wirklichkeit, Stuttgart, 1958, pp. 243, 244 ff. See my review of this book, GR X X X V , i960, 307 ff. 14. See Meta Corssen's excellent book, Kleist und Shakespeare, Weimar, 1930, p. 108. 15. T h e meaning w o u l d be clearer if the second comma (Kleist did use more than he neededl) in line 603 were omitted, m a k i n g schon seit Jahren einsam blühend a unit. I believe that line 930: Wie oft hat dich mein treuer Mund gewarnt! is to be taken in a stock and general sense: Hohenzollern is opposed to all such involvements for his friend. 16. As late as 1818-1820, the Elector recalls the Trotz und Leichtsinn that lost him what should have been two splendid victories. His admonition of 348 ff., despite its forceful and public delivery, remains strangely without effect on anybody. 17. T h e military court, one may construe, finds the accused

NOTES

technically guilty but recommends mercy (883 f.); the Prince's own diagnosis, 819 fL, is therefore not unreasonable on the level of "public opinion"; everybody seems to expect the elector to exercise his right of pardon. 18. It was sheer accident, in the shape of the Elector's apparent fall, that saved the Prince's charge from outright disaster and gave it a new, victorious impetus (see 531-535; 550 fL). It was an accident, again, that Kottwitz missed connection with Dörfling (390-399) and therefore acted on imperfectly transmitted orders; as late as V, 5, Kottwitz has an inadequate conception of the Elector's battle plan. Had it not been for the accident that he saw his open grave, the Prince would not have been so unstrung a moment later before the Electress (see 981 ff., 1003), Natalie could not have reported such a complete breakdown, and the Elector's reaction might well have been different. This element of Zufall is part of the fortuitousness of life with which Kleist was tragically impressed (the frequency of es traf sich, daß . . . in his stories attests it), and it is a real factor in the motivation. 19. He is not, however, above suspecting them of collusion with the Prince, an insinuation that Kottwitz indignantly rejects (1520-1522). 20. T h e Elector commits himself to the pardon before he has any assurance of the Prince's contrition, for his repeated question, "Er fleht um Gnade?" (1157, 1159) remains unanswered. 21. T h e most recent writer who fails to recognize the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy here is Friedrich Koch (Heinrich v. Kleist, 1958, p. 202), who conceives the Elector as showing up die ganze Sinnlosigkeit von Hohenzollerns Logik! 22. It is significant that Kleist uses here his favorite figure of the Wage des Gefühls (see the examples cited in Chapter V). 23. So Josef Körner, Recht und Pflicht. Eine Kleist-Studie, Leipzig & Berlin, 1926, p. 35. 24. T h e ruler is in danger of acting wrongfully because of irsufficient knowledge. So the Prince and Kottwitz (see Footnote 18) err, in part, because of inadequate understanding.

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KLEIST

Homburg contains a large residue of the tragedy of errors illustrated by Die Familie Schroffenstein. 25. See his lecture as reported in the Mitteilungen d. Vereins f . d. Geschichte Berlins, 1916, No. 6, 39 f. 26. Cf. III, 141. Natalie warns the Elector of the danger of his becoming a tyrant (1109 f., 1139 f.). 27. Ruhm, Fürstengunst, and Liebesglück, symbolized respectively by the laurel wreath, the golden chain, and Natalie's hand. Similar triads in Kleist's letters have been pointed out in Chapter V. 28. Arguing with the bias of a friend, Hohenzollern oversimplifies the case, and the Elector is right in rejecting the extreme formulation (1623-1628) which would make him solely to blame. T h e heading and contention of Hohenzollem's "brief": Beweis, daß Kurfürst Friedrich des Prinzen Tat selbst [veranlaßt hat], is provocative and simplistic, and denies the very complexity of things which his exposition itself demonstrates. His argument ends somewhat beside the point (in this respect it is not unlike Kottwitz's), but in the body of it there is deep truth. 29. Bfe. II, 32, 48. 30. One is reminded of Diotima and Hyperion's misgivings about her: "Bist du denn nicht zu groß geworden, um noch wiederzukehren zu dem Glück der Erde? verzehrt die heftige Geistesflamme, die an deinem Leiden sich entzündete, verzehrt sie nicht alles Sterbliche dir?" (Grosse Stuttgarter HölderlinAusgabe, III, 134).

Chapter I X 1. 2. 3. 4.

To To To To

Adolphine von Werdeck, July 29, 1801; Bfe. II, 41. the same, November 29, 1801; Bfe. II, 71. Wilhelmine, September 3, 1800; Bfe. I, 104. Wilhelmine, May 21, 1801; Bfe. II, 7.

NOTES

5. Years later, in the Brief eines Malers an seinen Sohn, in the Berliner Abendblätter, Kleist scoffs at the fallacious requirement of a personal holiness for the painter of Madonnas, calling this eine falsche, Dir aus der Schule [.Nazarener?], aus der Du herstammst, anklebende Begeisterung (IV, 145). 6. T o Frau von Werdeck, November 1801; Bfe. II, 70. 7. See the excellent edition, with a facsimile of the manuscript, by Paul Hoffmann, Weimar, 1941; it also contains the best reproduction of Le Veau's engraving available in Kleist literature. Greuze's and Le Veau's pictures are also reproduced in Franz Servaes's biography of Kleist, Leipzig, 1902. 8. See letter of November, 1801; Bfe. II. 70. — I t is possible, as Paul Hoffmann suggests (op. cit., p. 20), that line 668 of the Krug: Den [Erzbischof von Arras] hat der Teufel ganz und gar geholt, was prompted by a sixteenth-century engraving which represents Bishop Granville of Arras being fetched by the Devil. 9. There is a reproduction of Vouet's painting, in black and white, in Franz Servaes's Kleist, Leipzig, 1902, p. 85. 10. June, 1807; Bfe. II, 170. 11. Vouet lived and painted for many years in Rome before being called back to Paris by Louis XIII. 12. It is reproduced, in black and white and small format, in Minde-Pouet's 2. Aufl., V, and most recently in the school edition of Homburg made by Richard Samuel, London (Harrap), 1957; revised ed., 1961. 13. See Erich Schmidt's note on line 356 (III, 44). 14. Homburg, ed. by J. S. Nollen, Boston, 1899 and later, p. 140. 15. See for the following my note "Homburg, Lines 172174," in Mod. Lang. Notes CI, 1936, pp. 93 f. 16. See Chapter V, above. Very like Carracci's youth, for example, is the Cherub who guides Käthchen to safety: Käthchen von Heilbronn, Act III, Scene 14. 17. Erich Schmidt, in his note on these lines (111,430), suggests that they are a reminiscence of Goethe's Egmont: "Klärchens Traumerscheinung als Viktoria [actually: Freiheit]

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mit dem Kranz." T h e Carraca reminiscence seems to me much closer than this.—The beautiful figure of lines 1833 ff. in Homburg may be a second reflection of Carracci's painting, and one could detect a late echo of it in a preliminary version of Kleist's sonnet An die Königin von Preußen, where a winged spirit, die Palmenkron' in der erhobnen Hand, is conceived as descending to crown the heroic Queen (IV, 40, 17 ff.). 18. T o Collin, February 14, 1808; Bfe. II, 203. 19. April 25, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 259 f. 20. T o Wilhelmine, September 5, 1800; Bfe. I, 109. 21. T o Frau v. Werdeck, July 29, 1801; Bfe. II, 41. 22. T o the same, November, 1801; Bfe. I I 72. 23. T o Altenstein, May 13, 1805; Bfe. II, 130 f. 24. Wieland's letter of April 10, 1804, to Dr. Wedekind in Mainz; see Heinrich von Kleists Lebensspuren, ed. Helmut Sembdner, Bremen, 1957, p. 58 (hereafter cited as Lebensspuren). Ibid., p. 189, there is testimony by Tieck to the same effect. 25. T o Frau v. Werdeck, July 29, 1801; Bfe. II. 41. 26. Wieland's letter; see Note 24. 27. T o Heinrich Lohse, December 23, 1801; Bfe. II, 79 f. 28. Goethe's letter of February 1, 1808, to Kleist; in Lebensspuren, pp. 153 f. 29. August 31, 1806; Bfe. II, 152. 30. June 13, 1809; Bfe. II, 225 f. 31. August 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 278 f. 32. On the other hand, Kleist could summon a distinct image of Wilhelmine on a rainy night in a stagecoach on the way to Würzburg {see his letter of September 1, 1800: Bfe. 1 , 9 5 f.). But that was an ordinary-life photographic reproduction; Kleist was not yet a poet. In young Goethe, characteristically, person and poet do not conflict; cf. Dichtung u. Wahrheit 3. T., 11. Buch: "Wenn gleich die Gegenwart Friedrikens mich ängstigte, so wußte ich doch nichts Angenehmeres, als abwesend an sie zu denken und mich mit ihr zu unterhalten," etc. (Jubil.-Ausg. X X I V , 62.).

NOTES

33. T o Marie, May, 1811; Bfe. II, 261. 34. See Lebensspuren, pp. 173 f. 35. Adolf Wilbrandt, Heinrich von Kleist, Nördlingen, 1863, p. 264. 36. Der ganze Schmerz zugleich und Glanz meiner Seele is in it, according to Kleist's letter of autumn, 1807, to Marie (Bfe. II, 188). T h e MS, according to Helmut Sembdner (Heinrich v. Kleist. Geschichte meiner Seele, Bremen, 1959, p. 414) clearly reads Schmutz, not Schmerz; but that would mean only a harsher and more personal form of the same assertion—or, if a miswriting, all the more revealing. 37. Thus, for example, Hebbel's well-known criticism of the motif of Standesunterschied (Sämtl. Wke., ed. Werner, 2. Abt., III, No. 3323) is completely irrelevant. T h e Standeserhöhung of the heroine at the end is not a social phenomenon at all but a piece of the fairy-tale apparatus, and Käthchen is not really elevated to a Princess but disclosed as one, from the beginning intended to be the "Prince's" bride. 38. October, 1810; Lebensspuren, p. 277.

Chapter X 1. T h e Versehe gemacht jeems to have been the most outrageous count in General von Köckeritz's indictment; see Bfe. Π, 113. 2. See Heinrich von Kleists Lebensspuren, ed. Sembdner, pp. 402, 404 (hereafter cited as Lebensspuren). 3. Lebensspuren, p. 420. 4. Lebensspuren, p. 421. 5. July 3, 1803; Bfe. II, 107. 6. T o Ulrike, October 5, 1803; Bfe. II, l i o f . 7. T o Ulrike, October 26, 1803; Bfe. II, 112. 8. This and several other passages are adapted from my

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article "On Homburg, and the Death of Kleist," in Monatshefte X X X I I , 1940, 330 ff. 9. T o Fouqué, April 25, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. Π, 258. 10. May 20, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 267. 1 1 . June 17, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 272. 12. T o Altenstein, December 22, 1807; Bfe. II, 196· Cf. also his reaction to an earlier prospect of an attractive diplomatic post in Madrid: not Glück, but Verbannung (to Ulrike, June, 1804; Bfe. II, 116). 13. See the letter of December 6, 1806, to Ulrike; Bfe. II, 158. 14. October, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 282. Sembdner, Jahrbuch der Schiller-Gesellschaft I, 1957, 157 ff., argues plausibly for September 17, 18 n , as the date of this letter. 15. T o Cotta, July 24, 1808; Bfe. II, 209. 16. Lebensspuren, p. 379. 17. August, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 278. 18. October, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 282. Sembdner dates this letter September 17, i 8 n ; see Note 14. 19. T o Marie, May 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 261. 20. T o Marie, November 10, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 286. 21. "Am 12. August"; Jubiläums-Ausg. XVI: 50 f. 22. See Minde-Pouet, Kleists letzte Stunden (Schriften der Kleist-Gesellschaft, Bd. 5, 1925). The medical evidence gives the picture of a young man in vigorous health. Sickness was not a reason for Kleist's suicide. 23. November 9 (according to Sembdner, November 19), 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 285. 24. See his letter of March 22, 1801, to Wilhelmine; Bfe. I, 221. 25. November 13, 1800; Bfe. I, 162. The same phrase in a letter to Ulrike, November 25, 1800; Bfe. I, 183 f. 26. July 18, 1801, to Karoline von Schlieben; Bfe. II, 26. Similar disparagements of earthly life occur in later letters, e.g., to Altenstein, August 4, 1806; "Wie kann . . . der Mensch hier glücklich sein! Wie kann er es nur wollen, hier, wo alles mit

NOTES

dem Tode endigt!" ( B f e . II, 148 f.). So to Rühle, ibid., p. 151. 27. July 21, 1801; Bfe. II, 32. This sentiment is echoed by Ottokar as he jumps from the tower: "Das Leben ist viel wert, wenn man's verachtet! / Ich brauch's" (Schroffenstein 2368 f.). 28. May 1, 1802; Bfe. II, 96 f. 29. See his letter from St. Omer: Bfe. II, 112. 30. T o Rühle, August 31, 1806; Bfe. II, 151 f. 31. T o Marie, June, 1807; Bfe. II, 170. 32. August 15, 1801; Bfe. II, 50. 33. T o Sophie Müller, November 20, 1811; Bfe. II, 289 (italics mine). 34. Kleist's undated note to Ulrike; Bfe. II, 283 f. 35. November 10, 1 8 1 1 , ten days before the end; Bfe. II, 286 f. 36. T o Ulrike, October 5, 1803; Bfe. II, n o . 37. July 27, 1804; Bfe. II, 119. 38. Lebensspuren, p. 436. 39. The attachment to Marie, it might be added, was a purely spiritual one. A cousin of Kleist's by marriage, she was at this time a woman of fifty, and sixteen years older than he. 40. T o Marie, November 9 (according to Sembdner, November 19), 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 284. 41. On the day of his death; Bfe. II, 293. 42. I accept Sembdner's dating of this letter as November 21 (not 12), 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 288 f. 43. This phrase is from the preceding letter to Marie (Bfe. II, 287), which Sembdner dates November 19, 1811. 44. Consider, for example, the ending of his letter of November 9 (or 19), 1 8 1 1 , to Marie, on the bliss in Heaven, wenn es wahr ist, daß man darin vergnügt und glücklich ist (Bfe. II, 285). 45. May, 1799; Bfe. I, 34. 46. May (according to Sembdner, summer), 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 261. 47. T o Marie, May (according to Sembdner, summer), 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 261 f. 48. T o Peguilhen, November 21, 1 8 1 1 ; Bfe. II, 291.

310

HEINRICH VON KLEIST

49. T o Altenstein, N o v e m b e r 1 3 , 1805; Bfe. I I , 139. 50. For Goethe's undeserved commendation of Toni Tieck's

(later) just condemnation of it, see Lebensspuren,

444 f· 5 1 . Hebbel's Sämtliche

and pp.

Werke, ed. Werner, 1. Abt., X I , 334.

Index of Names Altenstein, Karl ν. Stein zum, 142, 290, 296, 306, 308, 310 Arnim, L. Achim v., 263, 272 Ayrault, Roger, 296 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 88 Blankenagel, J . C., 46, 291, 293 Blöcker, Günter, 23, 46, 47, 196, 197, 290, 292, 294, 299 Boccaccio, Giovanni di, 13 Böckmann, Paul, 70 Boehn, Max v., 73, 74, 84 Bonafous, Raymond, 124, 296 Brahm, Otto, 46, 47, 292, 297 Braig, Friedrich, 70 Brentano, Clemens, 263, 272 Büchner, Georg, 287 Bülow, Eduard v., 69, 94, 295 Bürger, G. Α., 33 Carracci, Annibale, 257, 305, 306 Chodowiecki, Daniel, 255 Correggio, A. A. da, 263 Corssen, Meta, 302 Cotta, J . F., 13, 273, 274, 308

Frederick William III, King of Prussia, 275, 299 Fricke, Gerhard, 70, 227, 293 Fries, Albert, 87, 118, 124, 145, 8 94 Gilow, Hermann, 227 Gneisenau, Neithardt v., 276 Goethe, J . Wolfgang v., 40, 54, 55, 59, 60, 82, 83, 88, 92, 93, 193, 200, 201, 213, 217, 218, 261, 272, 273, 277, 278, 285, 286, 287, 291, 293, 296, 301, 305, 306, 310 Greuze, J . B „ 249, 305 Grillparzer, Franz, 34-40, 109, 213, 214, 216, 226, 285, 286, 291, 300, 30!, 30» Grimm, Ferdinand, 159, 296 Grimm brothers, 290 Hafftiz, Peter, 186, 299 Hamann, J . G., 83 Hardenberg, K. A. v., 275 Haza, Johanna v., 296 Hebbel, Friedrich, 203, 208, 215, 225, 226, 227, 285, 288, 300, 301, 307, 310 Heine, Heinrich, 147, 243, 247 Hellmann, Hanna, 69, 70, 75, 294 Herrmann, Helene, 296 Herrmann, Max, 241 Herzog, Wilhelm, 69, 75, 294 Heuwes, J., 227

David, J . L., 256 Debucourt, P. L., 249, 250, 251 Fichte, J . G „ 262 Foglar, Adolf, 300 Fontane, Theodor, 150 Fouqué, Friedrich de la Motte-, 259, 263, 274, 308 31!

H E I N R I C H VON

312 Hölderlin,

Friedrich,

88,

180,

282, 304 270, 290 H o w a r d , W . G . , 229, 3 0 1 , 302

Prussia,

123,

275, 306

L u d w i g , Otto, 27, 290

Mérimiíe, Prosper, 289 Conrad

Ferdinand,

45,

82, 289, 295 M e y e r - B e n f e y , H e i n r i c h , 70, 293

K ä s t n e r , E r h a r t , 292 Immanuel,

78,

243,

248,

260, 262, 27g, 280, 2 8 1 , 297 D u k e of

Sachsen-

W e i m a r , 266

M i n d e - P o u e t , G e o r g , 87, 89, 98, 104,

124, 294, 295,

296,

300,

305, 308 M o l i è r e , J . Β . P., 45, 46, 5 1 , 58, 64, 2 9 1 , 292

Kleist, C . E w a l d v., 2 7 1 Kleist, M a r i e v.,

M a n n , T h o m a s , 46, 277, 2 9 1 , 292 Meyer,

I f f l a n d , A . W „ 274

276, 277,

of

L u g o w s k i , Clemens, 227

H o f f m a n n , P a u l , 53, 292, 296, 305

Karl August,

Louise, Queen >57·

H o f f m a n n , Ε . Τ . Α . , 30, 34, 266,

Kant,

KLEIST

M ü l l e r , A d a m Η., 45-

142, 252,

263,

278, 279, 282,

284,

272 Napoleon

286, 307, 308, 309 Kleist, U l r i k e v., 90, 93, 144, 1 6 1 ,

Bonaparte,

119,

146,

275, 287

282, 2 8 3 , 284,

285,

" N a z a r e n e " painters, 248, 254

290, 293, 294, 295, 3 0 7 ,

308,

N o l l e n , J . S., 305

294,

Novalis

254, 276,

N o r d m e y e r , H . W . , 292

3°9 Koch,

Friedrich,

70,

227,

302, 3 0 3 Köckeritz, K . L . v., 283, 307 K ö r n e r , J o s e f , 1 1 8 , 295, 3 0 3 K ö r n e r , T h e o d o r , 287, 3 1 0 K o r f f , Η . Α . , 47, 292 K o t z e b u e , A u g u s t v., 272, 288 K r e t s c h m a r , J . Κ . H „ 2 5 5 , 257 K u n z , J o s e f , 70

(Friedrich

berg), 2 8 1 ,

v.

Harden-

282

P f u e l , E r n s t v., 29, 90, 1 5 7 , 159, 2 8 1 , 283 Plautus, 58, 59 Pongs, H e r m a n n , 23 P r i g g e - K r u h o e f f e r , M a r i a , 289 R a p h a e l , 248, 249, 254, 2 5 7 , 258, 263

L e b r u n , C h a r l e s , 249

R e i m e r , G . Α., 1 5 9

Lessing, G o t t h o l d E., 4 3 , 59, 1 5 3 ,

R i e m e r , F. W . , 59, 293

208, 2 1 2 ,

258

L e V e a u , J . J . , 250, 2 5 1 , 305 L e v i n , R a h e l , 276 L i n d e n , W a l t h e r , 227 Lintzel, Martin, 120, 295

R ö b b e l i n g , F r i e d r i c h , 54, 292 Rousseau, J e a n Jacques,

14, 78,

80 R ü h l e v. L i l i e n s t e r n , Ο . Α., 262, 26g, 284, 290, 297, 30g

INDEX OF

Samuel, Richard, 305 S.auer, August, 37, 295 Schiller, J. Friedrich v., 59, 64, 72, 78, 83, 132, 201, 202, 205, 208, 210, a n , 213, 217, 228, 234, 244, 271, 272, 293 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 272 Schlegel, Friedrich, 83, 262, 272 Schlichen, Karoline v., 284, 308 Schlösser, Rudolf, 299 Schlüter, Andreas, 255 Schmidt, Erich, 38, 69, 249, 296, 300, 305 Schmidt, Julian, 301 Scholz, W i l h e l m v., 31 Schubert, G. H. v., 263 Schultze-Jahde, Karl, 71, 78 Sembdner, Helmut, 29, 70, 87, 89, 290, 291, 293, 294, 295, 296, 306, 307, 308, 309 Servaes, Franz, 305 Shakespeare, William, 201, * n , 232 Shaw, G. B., 84 Smith, P. F., 295 Sophocles, 251 Staël, Mme. de, 272 Stahl, E. L., 46, 50, 53, 291, 292 Staiger, Emil, 30, 32, 41, 290 Steig, Reinhold, 291, 296 Stock, Hans, 297

NAMES

313

Teniers, David, 72 T i e c k , J. Ludwig, 216, 225, 227, 288, 293, 296, 301, 306, 310 Varnhagcn von Ense, Κ. Α., go Vogel, Henriette, 278, 280, 283, 284 Vouet, Simon, 125, 252, 258, 305 Wackenroder, W . H „ 248 Waetzoldt, W i l h e l m , 161 Weigand, H. J „ 295 Weissenfeis, Richard, 89 Werdeck, A d o l p h i n e v., 304, 305, 306 Werner, Zacharias, 272 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 83, 134, 142, 162, 261, 263, 279, 291, 306 Wiese, B e n n o v., 47, 70, 292, 294 Wilbrandt, A d o l f , 266, 288, 307 Wilhelm, Prinz v. Preussen, 274 Winckelmann, J. J., 247 Wolff, Η . M., 295 W u k a d i n o v i í , Spiridion, 297

Zenge, W i l h e l m i n e v., 153, 280, 294. «96- 3°4» 3 o 6 · 3 o 8 Zschokke, Heinrich, 250, 262