"Du bist, Du Heilige, vor jedem Zutritt
Mit diamantnem Gürtel angethan.
Auch selbst der Glückliche, den Du empfängst,
Entlässt Dich schuldlos noch und rein."...[15]
Adam Müller wrote an enthusiastic, mystical preface to the play. And in
one of his letters to Gentz he writes: "Hartmann has painted a grand
picture, 'The Three Marys at the Sepulchre.' This and Amphitryon seem
to me to herald a new period in art. For Amphitryon unmistakably treats
of the immaculate conception of the Holy Virgin as well as of the
mystery of love in general." Even Goethe felt this. He said: "The play
contains nothing less than a new, Christian interpretation of the myth
as a parallel to the overshadowing of Mary by the Holy Ghost."
In 1806 Kleist had resigned his appointment and left Königsberg.
When the war broke out between France and Prussia, he was, from a
misunderstanding, imprisoned for a time by the French. In 1808 he
went to Dresden, where he became acquainted with Adam Müller. It was
now Müller's ambition, as it had previously been Fr. Schlegel's,
to influence men's minds in the capacity of prophet and apostle
of Romanticism. He professed ardent admiration for Kleist, and,
unfortunately, succeeded in gaining considerable power over him.
Müller was a phrasemonger, who had acquired some little knowledge of
several sciences, and was at this moment on the point of announcing
a new philosophy, in which there was (so he maintained) none of
the one-sidedness characteristic of all previous systems. Its
distinguishing doctrine was the doctrine of "opposites," of the
constantly changing, constantly renewed and superseded "opposite."
According to Müller, the spirit of the eighteenth century and the
spirit of Romanticism were only disguises of one and the same truth--
a truth of which he no doubt believed himself to have entered into
complete and enduring possession when he joined the Church of Rome in
1805.
For some time after his conversion to Catholicism, Müller's whole
intellectual life resolved itself into mysticism. He studied "the
mysterious life of the clouds," regarded his nervous fear of thunder
and lightning as a special gift bestowed on him by Heaven, and believed
himself able to foretell the intellectual development of genius by
mathematical calculations. In course of time, in fellowship with
Gentz, he entered the field of practical politics, beginning as a
Prussian progressive patriot, ending as a reactionary in the service of
Metternich.
In Dresden, in 1808, Müller and Kleist started the periodical,
_Phöbus_, in which several of Kleist's best works first saw the light.
It is characteristic that what pleased Müller most in _Amphitryon_ was
exactly that element of Pagan--Christian mysticism, already referred
to, which reveals itself in such a speech as the following almost
literal reproduction of the words announcing the birth of Christ:--
"Dir wird ein Sohn geboren, dess Name Hercules."
He did not penetrate into the spirit of the work. The interest of the
play centres in the character of Alcmene, the interest of her character
in the vigour with which she refuses to allow her peace of mind to be
disturbed and her feelings confused, and the interest of her tragic
story in the anguish she suffers when, in spite of herself, her inmost
feelings are agitated and perplexed by the appearance of her husband in
different forms.
Goethe, whose genius enabled him, though he did not understand Kleist's
character, to understand much of the working of his mind, made the
profound remark that what he chiefly aimed at was "confusion of
feeling" (Verwirrung des Gefühls). Kleist was in an abnormal degree
dependent upon security of feeling. Confusion of feeling was to him the
truest tragedy.
His own strong, undivided feeling was unsettled and perplexed again
and again. In conformance with the custom of his family, he became
a Prussian officer; but family tradition and his own inclinations
were at variance; he could not endure the discipline, and left the
army. He fell in love and pledged himself. His feeling for Wilhelmine
was strong, but his instinct of self-preservation as an artist was
stronger; here, too, there was perplexity of feeling, and he broke off
the engagement. He had the feeling that he was a poet, a genius, but
the result of all his efforts was a conviction of his want of real
capacity, and in dire perplexity he determined to enlist in the French
army, hoping to find death in its next campaign. All this explains his
perpetual circling round the theme of perplexity of feeling. We have
the idea very plainly in the admirable little tale, _Die Marquise von
O_. The Marquise knows as little as Alcmene who it is that has embraced
her in the dark; her feelings, too, are perplexed and confused; her
nearest and dearest suspect her; and when the Russian officer, whom she
looks upon as her saviour, but who proves to be the delinquent, returns
to her, loving and repentant, her innocent soul is rent by alternate
paroxysms of hatred and love. In much the same manner, the sense of
justice, originally so strong in the soul of _Michael Kohlhaas_, is
confused by the wrongs he suffers.
Wounded pride led Kleist to quarrel with friends and acquaintances;
a wounded sense of justice tempted him to insult Goethe. He sent
his _Penthesilea_ to the great master, whom he envied as much as
he admired, and was bitterly disappointed when, as might have been
expected, it was entirely disapproved of. Goethe, who, unfortunately,
was only keen-sighted as regarded the repellent side of Kleist's
character, said of him: "In spite of my honest intention to be
sympathetic and judge mildly, Kleist aroused in me nothing but
shuddering aversion, resembling that produced by a body which nature
has made beautiful, but which is attacked by some incurable disease."
When the comedy, _Der zerbrochene Krug_ ("The Broken Jar"), failed
in Weimar, owing to Goethe's arbitrary rearrangement of its acts,
Kleist's feelings became entirely "confused," and he wrote epigrams
on the great man's private life, among others the low, ugly one on the
child, "the precocious genius," who wrote the epithalamium for his own
parents' wedding-day.
It is this same confusion of feeling which gives their morbidness to
all his productions. Even _Michael Kohlhaas_, that masterpiece of the
art of story-telling, at the beginning of which each character is drawn
with the precision of genius, ends in a kind of dream-like confusion.
Towards the close of the story there appear two spectral figures--the
sickly and at last half-insane Elector of Saxony, and an extraordinary
gipsy woman, who, we are given to understand, is possessed by the
spirit of Kohlhaas's dead wife--characters which contrast very forcibly
with the simple, sane personages introduced to us at the beginning.
_Die heilige Cäcilie_ (St. Cecilia) is a Catholic legend, with a moral
pointed against iconoclasm. The author revels here with a certain
satisfaction in superstitious ideas; he makes the saint punish the
haters and destroyers of the art treasures of the Church with sudden
madness.
Kleist early became addicted to indulgence in opium, a fact of which
some of these works remind us.
In the year 1809 the poet appears as an ardent political agitator.
Now, for a time, his voice sounds clear and full. He reproaches his
countrymen with not having sufficient confidence in the mysterious
power of the heart. He calls Napoleon a sinner, whose iniquity it is
beyond the power of human language to express. Such resistance as has
been offered to the French seems to him contemptibly weak. He dislikes
Fichte's _Addresses to the German Nation_, sneers at Fichte himself as
a pedant who talks but cannot act, and expresses unbounded contempt for
the members of the _Tugendbund_ and their puerile inactivity. He writes
a tragedy, _Die Hermannsschlacht_, with the object of inciting his
countrymen to treat Napoleon as Hermann (Arminius) treated Varus. The
following lines in it are aimed at the laggard youth of the day:--
"Die schreiben, Deutschland zu befreien,
Mit Chiffren, schicken mit Gefahr des Lebens
Einander Boten, die die Römer hängen,
Versammeln sich um Zwielicht--essen, trinken,
Und schlafen, kommt die Nacht, bei ihren Frauen.
* * * * * * * * *
Die Hoffnung: morgen stirbt Augustus
Lockt sie, bedeckt mit Schmach und Schande,
Von einer Woche in die andere."[16]
So little care does he bestow on the historical colouring of this play
that he makes Hermann talk of a "bill" (of exchange), and Varus compare
the leader of the Cheruski to a Dervish.
He wanted such a war as the Spaniards used to wage, with murder and
perjury, burning villages and poisoned wells.
The battle of Wagram shattered all his hopes. Aghast, he asked if there
were no such thing as justice upon earth.
Things stood badly now with Kleist--no comfort in public life, no
prospects in private life, no money, no employment, no approbation, no
encouragement. His nearest and dearest did not appreciate him. Shortly
before his death he writes to a motherly friend: "I would rather die
ten times over than endure again what I lately endured in Frankfort,
sitting at the dinner-table between my two sisters. The thought that
what I have actually done, be it little or much, is not acknowledged
by them at all, that I am looked upon as an utterly useless member of
society, no longer worthy of the slightest sympathy, not only robs me
of the future, but poisons the past to me."
Unwilling as he was to return to a profession he had given up twelve
years before, it at last seemed to him that the only possible way in
which he could earn his bread was by re-entering the army. He did
not even own money enough to procure an officer's outfit. An appeal
to Hardenberg for assistance was left unanswered. It was exactly at
this time that Prussia was compelled to enter into an alliance with
Napoleon against Russia. Can one imagine greater "confusion of feeling"
than was now the lot of the unhappy patriot? The author of the
_Hermannsschlacht_, the mortal enemy of Napoleon, forced, as a Prussian
officer, to fight for the humiliator of his country!
This last collision of duties broke his heart. "My soul is so spent,"
he writes, "that I feel as if the very daylight that shines on me when
I put my head out at the window hurts me."
He was ripe for the irrevocable decision. Through Müller he had made
the acquaintance of Frau Henriette Vogel, a gifted woman, who, like
himself, suffered from melancholia, and who imagined that she had an
incurable disease. This lady reminded him one day, that in an early
stage of their friendship he had promised to do anything she might
require of him, let it be what it might. He replied that he was ready
at any moment to fulfil his promise. "Then kill me," she said. "My
sufferings are so great that I can no longer endure life. I don't
believe, though, for a moment that you will do it--the men of to-day
are not men at all." This was enough for Kleist. In November 1811
he and Henrietta drove together to a little inn on the shore of the
Wannsee, a small lake near Potsdam. They were apparently in the best
of spirits, full of jest and merriment all that day and until the
afternoon of the next, when they went down to a retired spot on the
shore, and Kleist shot his friend through the left breast and himself
through the head. They had previously written a strange, mournfully
humorous letter to Adam Müller's wife. It runs as follows:--
"Heaven knows, my dear, good friend, what strange feeling, half
sorrowful, half glad, moves us to write to you at this hour--when our
souls, like two lightsome aërial voyagers, are preparing to take flight
from the world. For you must know that we had determined to leave no
p.p.c. cards upon our friends and acquaintances. The reason probably
is, that we have thought of you a thousand times in as many happy
moments, and pictured to ourselves a thousand times how you would have
laughed good-naturedly if you had seen us together in the green or the
red room. Yes, the world is a strange place! It is not unfitting that
we two, Jette and I, two sorrowful, melancholy beings, who have always
complained of each other's coldness, should have come to love each
other dearly, the best proof of which is, that we are now about to die
together.
"Farewell, our dear, dear friend! May you be happy here upon earth,
as it is doubtless possible to be! As for us, we have no desire for
the joys of this world; our dream is of the plains of heaven and the
heavenly suns, in whose light we shall wander with long wings upon our
shoulders. Adieu! A kiss from me, the writer, to Müller. Tell him to
think of me sometimes, and to continue to be a brave soldier of God,
fighting against the devil of foolishness, who holds the world in his
chains."