HEINRICH VON KLEIST
229
mentary aberration has turned into a patent absurdity.
The fact is that Kleist's erotic instability w.as not the cause, but
one of the symptoms of his general disorientation. It was this dis–
orientation which bred the emotional possibilities and impossibilities
of which I have given examples. M.any more could be adduced from
his works. The crowning irony of Kleist's career is that his last play
and his last story point to a resolution of the metaphysical, moral and
emotional dilemma to which all his personal failures were due. His
literary works were alw.ays at least one stage ahead of his personal
development; and he did not live to catch up with
Friedrich Prinz
von Homburg
and
Der Zweikampf.
It was not
till
these last works
that Kleist was able to represent a love relationship free from con–
fusion and excess. The love between Homburg and Natalie is as far
removed from the mixture of sensuality, heroism and cannibalism in
Penthesilea
as from the self-obliterating, abject devotion of K1ithchen
von HeiIbronn (whom Kleist, in one of his rare comments on his
own works, described as the minus corresponding to Penthesilea's
plus, "the reverse side of Penthesilea, her other pole, a creature as
mighty by virtue of submission as the other by virtue of action").
The greater maturity of
Homburg
on the erotic plane is exactly
parallel with the difference between the 'happy ending' of
Kiithchen
von Heilbronn
and the real transformation that takes place in
Hom–
burg,
a transcendence of tragedy comparable to that in Shakespeare's
later plays. This transformation is a moral one. The Freudians, of
course, would argue that the moral change proceeds from the erotic,
but-in Kleist's case at least-they would be wrong.
The hero of Kleist's last story, Friedrich von Trota, differs from
Kleist's earlier characters in the quality of his faith; and this, once
more, leads to a difference in the quality of his love.
As
in earlier
works, everything conspires to undermine the hero's faith; even the
judgment of God seems to be against him, for it is the guilty man
who is absolved in the trial by combat.
This
is the most emphatic
statement of a theme that recurs throughout Kleist's works. His char–
acters may be virtuous or even heroic, but their virtues and their hero–
ism have no place in any order .above or outside them. They are
hopelessly disorientated in "the strange institution that is this world."
Error and, more often than not, the very impossibility of
dis–
covering the truth assume a metaphysical significance in Kleist's
