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The Beleaguered Citadel: A Study of Kleist’s Die Marquise von O…

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Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Dieser Roman ist nicht für dich, meine Tochter. In Ohnmacht! Schamlose Posse! Sie hielt, weiß ich, die Augen bloß zu. (1, 22)1

Zusammenfassung

Der Aufsatz versucht, die Dialektik, die den Worten “um der gebrechlichen Einrichtung der Welt willen” innewohnt, im Gebaren der Marquise und ihrer Eltern aufzuzeigen: jedes Bemühen, sich in ihrer bedrohten Welt einzurichten, ist letztlich gebrechlich, indem das Unbewußte durchwegs die moralisch-existentielle Sicherheit in Frage stellt.

Abstract

This study seeks to relate the inherent tension in the phrase “um der gebrechlichen Einrichtung der Welt willen” to the behaviour of the Marquise and her parents. Their attempts at making a habitable order (“Einrichtung”) of their experiences are at every turn inadequate (“gebrechlich”): unacknowledged motivation undermines the claim to moral and existential certainty.

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Literatur

  1. See Hans Peter Herrmann, “Zufall und Ich, Zum Begriff der Situation in den Novellen Heinrich von Kleists,” GRM, NF XI (1961), 86ff. Similar tendencies are to be found in Günther Blöcker, Heinrich von Kleist oder das absolute Ich (1960), pp. 176f and Josef Kunz, Die deutsche Novelle zwischen Klassik und Romantik (1966), p. 138, p. 144.

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  2. Walter Müller-Seidel, “Die Struktur des Widerspruchs in Kleists Marquise von O…, DVjs, 28 (1954), 503.

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  3. Ibid. pp. 510f.

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  4. Dorrit Cohn, “Kleist’s Marquise von O…: The Problem of Knowledge,” Monatshefte, 67 (1975), 133.

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  5. See Herrmann, op. cit., p. 78, p. 84.

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  6. John Milfull is one of the very few critics to probe the reconciliation, but I feel that his reading does not do full justice to the complexity of this scene: “Nowhere could it be clearer that the ‘mistress’ really belongs to the father, and that she can only be transferred to the erring son after an act of complete submission.” (“Oedipus and Adam — Greek Tragedy and Christian Comedy in Kleist’s Der zerbrochne Krug,” GLL, 27 [1973], 815).

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  7. I cannot agree with the simplistic view of Donald H. Crosby, who says of the mother in this scene: “She obviously approves of what she sees, and we may imagine that Kleist did, too.” (“Psychological Realism in the Works of Kleist: Penthesilea and Die Marquise von O…,” Literature and Psychology, 19 [1969], 13).

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  8. Cohn, op. cit., p. 132, p. 143.

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  9. See Günther Blöcker, who calls the placing of the advertisement a “hausbacken-vernünftigste” course of action and, in discussing this scene, speaks of the “wunderbare Sicherheit des Seins” (op. cit., p. 138, p. 176). See also Herrmann, op. cit., pp. 77f.

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  10. Cohn, op. cit., pp. 137f. See also Kunz, op. cit., p. 140.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cambridge, UK

    Erika Swales

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  1. Erika Swales
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Swales, E. The Beleaguered Citadel: A Study of Kleist’s Die Marquise von O…. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 51, 129–147 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376298

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376298

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