Dominique Pagani presents Kleist as the only great dramatist of German Romanticism, author of The Prince of Homburg, and often returns to his double suicide "in cheerfulness" with his companion on the shore of the Wannsee1. He sees it as a sign of the epidemic of hypochondria affecting the period2. He also describes him as an "armoured poet", a Prussian aristocrat devoted to arms, who ended up wanting to enlist in Napoleon's armies. He notes that Kleist is the only Romantic Kafka knew well3. Most of his readings focus on On the Marionette Theatre, which he comments on in detail in 20234: thought disturbs grace, and infinite grace comes either from the absence of thought or from an infinite thought5. From this text he draws the problem of the dancer's centre of gravity, an image of a privileged direction, and he connects it with music. What he takes from it is that no going back is possible: one must go to the infinite in knowledge6. Finally, he stresses that Kleist's use of the comic shows a distance and lucidity that set him apart from a naive Romanticism.
Summary produced automatically from 19 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Who is this?
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (German: ; 18 October 1777 – 21 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays The Prince of Homburg, Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, The Broken Jug, Amphitryon, and Penthesilea, and the novellas Michael Kohlhaas and The Marquise of O. Kleist ended his life in a suicide pact by shooting himself together with a close female friend who was terminally ill. […]
18:38Little Catherine of HeilbronnThe only Romantic Kafka knew well; his joyful double suicide; sleepwalking; measuring "the invisible empire of the air."
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Series · 29 Sept 2023Kleist "On the Marionette Theatre" - Pagani - Readings on the Spot
