The Marquise of O and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Heinrich von Kleist (Author), David Luke (Translator), Nigel Reeves (Translator, Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: September 28, 1978

In The Marquise of O-, a virtuous widow finds herself unaccountably pregnant. And although the baffled Marquise has no idea when this happened, she must prove her innocence to her doubting family and discover whether the perpetrator is an assailant or lover. Michael Kohlhaas depicts an honourable man who feels compelled to violate the law in his search for justice, while other tales explore the singular realm of the uncanny, such as The Beggarwoman of Locarno, in which an old woman's ghost drives a heartless nobleman to madness, and St Cecilia, which portrays four brothers possessed by an uncontrollable religious mania. The stories collected in this volume reflect the preoccupations of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) with the deceptiveness of human nature and the unpredictability of the physical world.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation)

About the Author

Heinrich von Kleist, born in 1777, came of an old Prussian military family, but disliked military life and resigned his commission in 1799 to devote himself to studious pursuits. He turned to creative writing in 1801, and during the next ten years created some of the most remarkable plays in German literature. Kleist had an unstable and almost schizophrenic personality and his works relect his passionately uncompromising nature and his periodic fits of wild enthusiasm and morose melancholia. He committed suicide in 1811. David Luke is an Emeritus Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, where he was Tutor in German until 1988. He has published articles and essays on German literature. His translation of Faust Part One was awarded the European Poetry Translation Prize in 1989. Nigel Reeves was Alexander von Humbolt Fellow at the University of Tubingen and from 1975 to 1990 was Professor of German at the University of Surrey. He is currently Professor of German at Aston University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (September 28, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140443592
• ISBN-13: 978-0140443592
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > German

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the Dark Horse of German Literature, January 24, 2008

By 

Tebes "Buchlieber" (Niagara Region, ON) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Marquise of O and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Kleist is the great, dark shadow of the German literary world. Born into a military Prussian family, he chose a literary career over the glory, order and ritual of his ancestors. He became a poet instead of an officer. He wandered from city to city, in search of a home, of solitude, a place to cultivate himself and his literary talents. He worried his friends with his demonic thoughts on suicide. He had a morose character and yet he was equally passionate. Stefan Zweig suggested he suffered from being continually extreme in everything he did, "always the superlative".

This collection of stories is not to be dismissed. "Michael Kohlhaas" is perhaps the quintessential piece; a tale of revenge and the price of vengeance, it is a universal story, appealing to our earthly desire for an "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth". Kleist creates a world of corruption of conflict. The reader wants revenge for the protagonist but how far can one man go to attain justice? What does he lose, what does he gain?

"The Earthquake in Chile" is another disturbing tale. In the wake of a natural disaster, we learn nothing changes the minds and mindsets of people. The earth shakes but the evil of humankind remains deeply rooted.

"The Betrothal in Santo Domingo" - One could see it as the companion piece to the above. In a world of war and rebellion, who can one trust?

"The Beggarwoman of Locarno" is perhaps the most subtle and haunting of ghost stories. Not only does it revel in the mysterious but it is a morality tale revealing the foibles and flaws of a darkened human spirit.

Kleist never became a high ranking officer in the Prussian military but he saw the world falling apart all around him. His stories are a reflection of the dark times he witnessed within his time and within his psyche.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reluctant officer and suicidal gentleman, March 13, 2009

By 

H. Schneider "Hamlet" (Pandistan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Marquise of O and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

As a playwright, German classic Kleist sits on top of the Olymp, right up there with Goethe and Schiller. He also left a relatively small prose oeuvre behind when he died at 34 (in a suicide pact). An unpublished 2 volume novel is said to have disappeared. What we have is this bunch of stories and some journalism, and letters. He is a classic, but he was no classicist (hence no boredom like eg Goethe's Elective Affinities), and also no romantic. He belonged to no school but his own.

His stories take us into worlds of madness. Passions and restrictive social norms collide and cause endless havoc. A frequent motive is what we would call 'honor killings' nowadays: people, usually women, subjected to the extreme punishment for inappropriate relations.
The title story itself (set in Napoleonic times in Italy) is not quite as extreme in this regard: the Marquise 'only' gets expelled from her parents' home and ostracized, because she does not know how she got pregnant. Hard to believe, admittedly. Hardship steels her character and she attacks: she publishes an ad asking for the father to step up, she would forgive him and marry him. When he turns up it is a man whom she had had a crush on, a Russian count and officer who had saved her from rapists during the war, and had found her fainted. Well, well. Since he had been her angel, now he becomes her devil. But all in all, this is a comparatively sane story, as far as the protagonists go.

There is Kohlhaas, the horse trader who becomes a rebel and outlaw in protest against some junkers mistreating his horses and his servant. In a very German solution, he finds justice for the horses, but also for his crimes. Blind justice with her scale works both ways.

Two cases of honor killings:
A young convent woman in Chile in the 17th century gets sentenced to death for being pregnant, gets saved on the way to the scaffold by a huge earthquake, survives, meets the father of her child, believes to be safe, and goes back to Santiago. A mistake.
A noble woman in the 14th century in Germany is subjected to a Gottesurteil (God's verdict?) by duel when an accused murderer, a knight, claims her as his alibi; her admirer challenges the bad guy. A duel is set up which is supposed to decide over truth. If her friend loses, her denial is considered a lie and she will be burned.(Hard to believe, isn't it? But as Kleist wrote somewhere, probability is not always on the side of truth.)

More violence and madness: A mulatta teenage girl in Haiti during the slave rebellion after the French revolution falls in love with a French officer from Switzerland, who is a captive in the black household where she lives. She tries to save him, which would be her end by her own people. The couple makes romantic promises, but he misunderstands her tactics for liberating him (Swiss have a reputation for being slow sometimes), and kills her.

Kleist was his own world in literary matters, did not belong to anybody's school; he was also not in any political camp, definitely not in his 'own' camp, the Prussian military aristocracy that he ran away from. But also not among the freedom singers. His take on the slave rebellion is entirely unsympathetic.

What a pity the novel got lost.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some of the best short stories of all time - KLEISTIAN, February 12, 2008

By 

A. Rubenstein - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Marquise of O and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

These stories by Heinrich Von Kleist give great meaning to the adjective "Kleistian".

His prose is almost poetry and every sentence can be a roller coaster of intensity: from the Duke who in the matter of a line or two, goes from being on top of the world, to an arrow "pierc[ing] him just below the breastbone"; from Jeronimo Rugera who is a just about to hang himself in a Chilean prison until a whole city shakes in an earthquake and his fate changes forever. From the Justice of Michael Kohlhaas, to the thieves and miscreants who conspire against the church of St. Cecilia, who are brought to their knees by the power of the organ- these are stories of fate.

And that fate comes swiftly and blindsides the reader with confounding emotions and a new insight into a world turned upside down. This work was probably a product of Heinrich Von Kleist's own life of highs and lows, and the brilliance in between.

Buy the book, read these stories, you will come away spinning... but enlightened.