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The Marquise of O and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

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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.

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 An unpublished 2 volume novel is said to have disappeared.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.

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.

Whether this book is read for pleasure or education it is amazing. There are so many dymaics played out in the relationships between the characters in each story. There is a lot of exploration into just and unjust violence. As well as an exploration into how language frames our actions towards ourselves and others. All of the stories are worth reading more than once. I especially liked "The earthquake in Chile" and "The Betrothal." I highly recommend putting this book on your must read list. Life will be different after reading Von Kleist. Many of the stories deal with something which is oddly familiar, yet mysterious at the same time (uncanny).

Von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas is the basis for Doctorow's Ragtime. Read the original von Kleist; it's far better.

Because of the intricacy of speech in the days before our short-order transient/on-the- run culture, with all today's media distractions and clashes of civilizations, life in the 17- and 1800's was seen much closer. Little details were magnified, concepts got more-deeply probed; people made a big deal out of nuance. And abstracts like honor and integrity and reputation, too.

Kliest's more-complex and often really-long paragraphs dissect his subjects. So they grow vivid and more keenly felt. Of course moral values back in those times were strict and unyielding. Most everything in The Marquise of O- turns on manners
and mores. They contrast so sharply with ours today as to make us think of ours today.

In our time it's our appetites and ambitions. Suddenly reading about people driven by morality and tradition is quite a comparison to our times. Maybe we have it better, maybe not.

Even though the writing as well as the values are from centuries ago, Kleist's clarity and detailing bring it alive and make it relevant to our here and now. I was entertained and edified. Can't ask for more.

(Of interest, maybe: I got to this title via Francine Prose's READING LIKE A WRITER, which helpfully listed books to read to help make one a better writer. Ms. Prose is right to show us what once was. By contrasting writing styles 'back then to our media-influenced style of today, it helps us maybe understand our here and now. Another kibitz: read ATLANTIC Magazine's 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' (July/August 2008). Whatever google does, reading Kleist does just the opposite.)

The excellent recent review of this German classic by H. Schneider, a classic German though living in Shanghai, has been struck by the cyber-bullies of the Amazon with a barrage of negative votes, something that the company should prevent in the name of its own business welfare.

Herr Schneider gave a fine concise overview of the place of Heinrich von Kleist in German literature, as well as a tantalizing intro to most of the stories in this translated edition. The one story he slighted was the first in the volume, "An Earthquake in Chile," which is first for the excellent reason that it's quite an exciting tale. The description of the great earthquake is as vivid as any account of a disaster I've ever read; I could feel the earth tremble when I read the English, and I nearly rushed to stand under the door frame when i read the Deutsch. It is typical Kleist in ending with consternation; Kleist would not have sympathized with any reader imploring him to end his tale less tragically.

I read 2 stories out of this book so far, and they were quite interesting. I am glad my professor chose this book as one of the many to use this semester!