MODERN EVIDENCE
Essay on the Puppet Theater*
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
WHILE PASSING
the winter of
1801
in M., I met one evening,
in
a
public park, Mr.
C.,
who, a short time before, had been engaged
in this town as leading dancer at the opera, where the public had
given him an extraordinary welcome.
I
told him of my astonishment at having noticed him several
times at a Punch-and-Judy show, which had been set up on the
market place, and which delighted the people with little dramatic
burlesques, interwoven with songs and dances.
He assured me that the pantomimic art of these puppets had
given him much pleasure, making it quite plain that a dancer who
wanted to develop himself could learn many things from them.
Since this utterance, by the manner in which it was made, seemed
to me more than mere fancy,
I
sat down beside
him
to question
him
at some length about his reasons. He asked me whether
I
would not
agree that the movement of the puppets, particularly of the smaller
ones, was exceedingly graceful.
I
could not deny that this was
so,
and that
I
had seen a group of four dancing
a
roundelay in peasant
fashion that could not be improved upon even in
a
drawing by
Teniers.
I then made inquiries about the mechanism of these figures,
and asked him how it was possible-without having myriads of
strings attached to one's fingers-to direct each limb and all of its
parts, the way the rhythm of the dance required it.
*
EDITOR's NoTE:-Heinrich von Kleist, who was born in 1777 and com–
mitted suicide in 1811, is one of the most important of German dramatists and
fiction writers. In such dramas as
Penthesilea, Das Kiitchen von Heilbrcmn, Prinz;
Friedrich von Homburg,
and in such long stories as
Michael Kohlhaas
he suc–
ceeded in finding objective forms for violent emotions and obsessive ideas. Among
the WTiters influenced by the austerity and strict narrative line of his prose is
Franz Kafka. Nietzsche said of Kleist that he was a profoundly tragic poet who
dealt with "the incurable part of nature.'' His "Essay on the Puppet Theater"
is generally considered by German critics and historians of literature to be one of
the finest essays in their language.
