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PARTISAN REVIEW
have a poet [Goethe] ... who has based all his ideas about his art on
colors, so I, from early youth, have based all my general ideas about the
art of literature on tones. I believe that the figured bass holds implications
of the utmost importance and relevance to the art of literature.
In Kleist's own case-and what critical generalizations by an
imaginative writer are not, in fact, insights into his own practice, or
deductions made from such insights?-the figured bass corresponds
to the irrational obsessions to which we can trace the genesis of all
his works. On these constant figures-supplied to him, because out–
side the scope of his intellect and his will-all his comic and tragic
inventions are based. While it is more rewarding in the long run to
concentrate on the skill with which Kleist developed and varied the
given scheme, it is impossible to do justice to this skill without un–
dertaking detailed analyses of more than one of his works. In the
present essay, therefore, all I can hope to do is to shed a little light
on Kleist's premises and compulsions, the figured bass of his work.
The "incurable disease" which Goethe had in mind was a con–
fusion of all the faculties brought about by disorientation; but it must
be
mentioned at once that like his state of chronic indecision, this
confusion ceased at the moment when Kleist committed his imagina–
tion and intellect to a literary work. It is present as the metaphysical
kernel of his works, but the works themselves are brilliantly organ–
ized. From this state of confusion misdirected passions broke loose,
only to dash themselves to pieces. On the emotional and erotic plane,
Kleist's instability amounted to nothing less than a confusion of the
male and female principles, a perpetual struggle between his mas–
culine will and a feminine hysteria-like the amorous combat be–
tween Achilles and the Amazon in his
Penthesilea.
A Freudian ex–
planation may suggest itself when we read the following confession–
addressed to his friend von Pfuel who later became a general and
Prussian Minister for War: "Often, when at Thun you stepped into
the lake in my presence, I contemplated your beautiful body with
feelings that were truly girlish"; and, in the same letter: "You re–
stored the age of the Greeks in my heart, I could have slept with
you, dear boy, so entirely my soul embraced you." But when Kleist
concludes: "I shall never marry, so you must be a wife to me, be
my children and my grandchildren," we know that he has only been
indulging in one of
his
countless imaginative experiments. His mo-
