Iain Bamforth
Nov 30 2011
Two hundred years ago, on a mild November day on the shore of the Kleiner Wannsee near Potsdam, Heinrich von Kleist shot Henrietta Vogel, terminally ill with breast cancer, then himself. The suicide pact, celebrated by both in a mood of frolic, put an end to a decade of intermittently sustained creative work on his part, as playwright and narrative writer, from his first dramatic work The Schroffenstein Family to the feuilletons produced in the last two years of his life for the boulevard daily, Berliner Abendblätter. Several of Kleist’s key literary productions saw publication in the latter, of which he was Editor, including the speculative and metaphysically daring essay On the Marionette Theatre: it tells how the advent of self-consciousness brings about a fall from grace that leaves humans awkward, opaque and inscrutable, even to themselves. It is not the theological concept of the Fall that preoccupies Kleist, it is the implications of the Fall as what contemporary science would call a “state-shift”. The essay has perhaps become his best-known piece in the English-speaking world; it is certainly his most quoted...more
Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist
Archipelago, 2010
838 K64se
Compiled and translated by Peter Wortsman, this collection of short stories, novellas and literary fragments by German writer Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) is impressive not only for its content but for its relevance centuries later. In “The Earthquake in Chile,†Jeronimo Rugera is jailed for impregnating his student, Donna Josephe, and is contemplating suicide on the day of her arranged beheading when an earthquake thunders through the city and frees him. Rugera, wandering through the rubble-torn streets, is astonished to find that both his love and their baby have miraculously been spared, but the bloodthirsty nature of the surviving townspeople has not abated. Based on a true event, “The Marquise of O†centers on an Italian widow courted by Count F., who asks for her hand in marriage. Meanwhile, she notices her body transforming and when the surprise pregnancy is confirmed, her family banishes her in disgrace, and she seizes upon the plan of advertising in the newspaper for the father to step forward and prove her innocence. A dark, charming collection of twisted fairy tales for grownups. - pub weekly