HEINRICH VON KLEIST
227
error and prejudice have at last been miraculously dispelled. Perhaps
it is more useful to state that Kleist has come to be recognized as
a writer of the first rank; that a French adaptation of his last drama,
Friedrich Prinz von Homburg,
recently proved that his work can
be highly appreciated outside Germany; and that a French critic
has paid him the fashionable compliment of considering the same
play in the light of existential philosophy. This last, of course, means
nothing more than that Kleist was one of the many writers of past
centuries who at one time in their lives reached the point at which
Existentialism proper begins, the point where "the strange institu–
tion that is this world"-to use Kleist's words--ceases to tally with
any of the systems designed to explain it.
Kleist's "incurable disease" has become so widespread that–
with the possible exception of
Die Hermannsschlacht-{)ur
apprecia–
tion of his works is not likely to be disturbed by nonliterary con–
siderations. It does not follow that we can disregard the metaphysical
and moral basis of his works for the sake of that purely aesthetic
sphere in which so many writers and critics of our time would like
to have their being; but we should have less difficulty than Kleist's
earlier critics in accepting this basis and moving on to a different
perspective of Kleist's
art.
His seven completed plays and eight long
stories need little support from his biography. Kleist's outstanding
gift as a writer was the powerful imagination that made
it
unneces–
sary for
him
to draw on his immediate experiences and circum–
stances. "When I shut my eyes," he wrote to his fiancee, "I can im–
agine anything I please"; and in another letter to her he described
his
earliest imaginative experiences which, significantly, took the
form of aural hallucinations, the ability to hear whole works of music
performed by nonexistent orchestras in which Kleist could clearly
distinguish each separate instrument. Just because of this uncommon
faculty of self-projection, Kleist's own problems and obsessions are
always perceptible beneath the surface of
his
dialogue and narrative,
like the figured bass in a musical composition. The analogy is Kleist's.
A few months before his death he wrote of his intention to put aside
his literary work and devote himself to two of his earlier pursuits, to
science and music. Of the latter he writes:
I regard this
art
as the root or rather-to put it more scientifically–
as the algebraic formula of
all
the other arts; and just as we already
