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Kleist's Struggle with the Problem of Feeling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Sten Flygt
Sten Flygt*
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Northwestern University
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Extract

Despite several assertions to the contrary, Kleist had essentially an unphilosophic mind. He was penetrating and searching, of course, but childlike withal. Consider, for example, his fervent belief in the absolute validity of his rather naïve allegorical interpretations of nature, particularly the image of the vaulted arch which he describes in a letter to Wilhelmine. Or consider again the pedantic and amusing Fragen zu Denkübungen für Wilhelmine von Zenge. They might have been written by a precocious boy, and yet they were actually written in full seriousness by an extremely intelligent man, whose mind, in some respects, remained that of a child, poetic and unsophisticated. It remained absolute and exclusive in its judgments also, pursuing a premise to its last bitter conclusions. What the tension was in this uncompromising personality is generally recognized: in German its two poles are called Gefühl and Verstand. We may call them respectively, feeling and understanding, heart and head, intuitional knowledge and logical deduction, the spontaneous principle and the rational principle. These terms should be understood as simply and naively as Kleist explained the egocentric dilemma in his famous letter to Wilhelmine.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 1943 , pp. 514 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1943

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References

1 November 16–18, 1800. (All references to dates and pages are based on the Erich Schmidt edition, second printing as re-edited by Minde-Pouet.)

2 March 22, 1801.

3 Berlin, 1929.

4 Cf. F. W. Kaufmann, German Dramatists of the 19th Century (Los Angeles, 1940): the suggestive introduction, and the excellent chapter on Kleist.

5 May, 1799.

6 Werke, i, 37.

7 Werke, i, 35.

8 February 5, 1801.

9 March 18–19, 1799.

10 “Studies in the Mind of Romanticism,” Mod. Phil., xvi (1918), 6.

11 1801–02.

12 Ll. 1213–14.

13 Ll. 1014–15.

14 Ll. 2609–11.

15 1802–03.

16 Ll. 511–515.

17 1805–06.

18 Ll. 1569–73.

19 Cf. Walter Silz, “Heinrich von Kleist's Conception of the Tragic,” Hesperia,—Schriften zur germanischen Philologie (Baltimore, 1923).

20 Ll. 1363–68.

21 L. 1410.

22 L. 2262.

23 L. 2303.

24 Ll. 2305–06.

25 Ll. 1363–68.

26 Ll 1270–72.

27 Ll. 1514–22.

28 Ll. 1280–86.

29 Ll. 1300–07, 1322–27, 1410.

30 Ll. 2311–15.

31 Conceived in 1802; completed in 1806.

32 1805–06.

33 Werke, vi, pp. 4–5 of Das Erdbeben.

34 From a letter to Rühle von Lilienstern, August 31, 1806, Werke, ii 153.

35 1806–07.

36 How naïvely simple, almost grotesque, is here Kleist's use of the term “innerliches Gefühl”! Cf. Werke, vi, Die Marquise von O, p. 22 ff.

37 “Ihr Verstand, stark genug, in ihrer sonderbaren Lage nicht zu reissen, gab sich ganz unter der grossen, heiligen, und unerklärlichen Einrichtung der Welt gefangen.” Idem, p. 28.

38 How else interpret the intense gratitude while she still felt herself bound by her vows and subject to her father's authority, the shy half admissions that the count's suit was not unwelcome, the frightened determination not to see the count when she believed herself bound to an unknown stranger, the terror and despair when the truth is known, and finally, her admission that he seemed like a devil only because he had at first seemed to be an angel?

39 Werke, vi, Die Marquise von O, p. 50.

40 1806–07.

41 Kleist's views on the natural subordination of woman to man are too well known to require to be established or amplified here. Cf. J. C. Blankenagel, “The Attitude of Heinrich von Kleist toward the Problems of Life,” Hesperia, ix (1917), 113–60.

42 See Prothoe's speech to the Priestess, ll. 1281–86.

43 This tragic clarity of vision is a forerunner of the famous scene in Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, but there is an all-important difference, to be pointed out later.

44 Note the kinship to the madness brought on by the plague in Robert Guiskard.

45 It may be worth observing that here, in the affirmation of what he most dreaded, even more than in the glorification of the irrational, lies Kleist's deep affinity with the tragic philosopher, Nietzsche.

46 1807–08.

47 Cf. ll. 1336 and 1113.

48 1808.

49 Cf. ll. 853–861.

50 Ll. 1697–98.

51 Ll. 1718–21.

52 L. 2285.

53 Hermann J. Weigand, “Das Motiv des Vertrauens im Drama Heinrichs von Kleist,” MFDU (May, 1938), p. 243.

54 1810.

55 Hermann J. Weigand, “Das Vertrauen in Kleist's Erzählungen,” MFDU (March, 1942), p. 128.

56 1805–06; 1808–09; 1810.

57 Eupkorion, 1908. Wachter's study in Forschungen zur neueren Literaturgeschichte (1918) is to a large extent built on Meyer-Benfey's work.

58 Werke, vi, Michael Kohlhaas, p. 1.

59 Idem, p. 42.

60 1810.

61 Werke, vii, Philosophische und ästhetische Schriften, p. 47.

62 1809–10.

63 It is irrelevant that the details of the visions are different, the important point being that these rather mystic experiences are Kleist's symbol for domination by the spontaneous, and that a symbol is not an allegory in which there should be a point for point correspondence. Be it noted, too, that while Graf vom Strahl, not an exponent of the spontaneous principle, does have the vision, he is not dominated by it, but refuses to let it govern his life.

64 Ll. 54–55.

65 Ll. 74–77.

66 Das Drama Heinrich von Kleists, ii, 358.

67 This is what he tells the Prince in the letter he sends him through Natalie.

68 This rather surprising statement shows how far the Elector is from being an abstraction. That the character who represents reason should also believe in feeling is paradoxical. But it is more than merely paradoxical, as the essay will attempt to show a little farther on.

69 Ll. 1805–06.

70 See Weigand, opera citata.

71 Schluss gebäu, 1. 1707