A Natural Disaster and An Immaculate Conception

First impressions are very important, but they can sometimes be deceiving, especially when it comes to books.  For example, my first exposure to Thomas Hardy (admittedly in my teens) was a bit of a disaster, but he's now one of my favourite writers.  With this in mind, and with my ever-so-slightly negative review of Michael Kohlhaas still ringing in my ears, I thought it only fair to give Heinrich von Kleist a second chance.  And a third :)

*****
Michael Kohlhaas was one of three stories in the first volume of Kleist's Erzählungen (Stories), and I decided to give the other two a try, starting with the shortest of the three, Das Erdbeben in Chili (The Earthquake in Chile).  In this brief tale, a young man, Jeronimo Rugera, is in prison, waiting to be executed for having seduced the beautiful Donna Josephe (in a Catholic country in 1647, this was quite a big deal...).  Along comes a major earthquake, and Jeronimo is sprung from both his chains and his prison cell while most of Santiago is left in ruins.  Meanwhile, Josephe is being led to her execution - will she also be saved?  And what will happen to the two lovers if they survive?

Das Erdbeben in Chili is a bitter-sweet tale, telling of divine intervention and human retribution, and I think I must have actually read it before as the plot was very familiar.  The story is divided into three distinct parts: the escape from the destruction of the earthquake; a brief, temporary reprieve in a valley reminiscent of the Garden of Eden; and a final act in a church which has somehow been saved from God's wrath.

Jeronimo and Josephe appear to have been saved to live another day, but, as is often the case in literary fiction, a happy ending is a boring one, and the reader is never confident that all will be well.  Just what kind of depressing ending awaits... well, I'll leave that to the reader to find out ;)

*****
Das Erbeben in Chili is an entertaining tale, but a good short story is not nearly enough to change my opinion of Kleist by itself, so we'll let today's second offering decide.  The last of the three Erzählungen, Die Marquise von O... (The Marquise of O...) is one of Kleist's better-known stories; certainly, it was the one I'd heard most about before reading this collection.

The story starts with an announcement to the effect that the Marquise of O... has sent out a message in a newspaper, asking for the father of her unborn child to reveal himself to her (now that's one hell of an opening sentence!).  We then go back to the start of the story, where the widowed Marquise is caught in a battle for her father's castle and attacked by a lecherous gang of invaders.  Luckily, an honourable officer comes to her aid, and she is saved from the attentions of the soldiers.  A while later, she discovers she is pregnant (without having slept with anyone!), and in the midst of all this confusion, the Duke, her noble rescuer, arrives, pleading for her hand in marriage...

Die Marquise von O... is an excellent story, and one which is far better written and executed than Michael Kohlhaas.  The idea is intriguing, and the opening sucks the reader right into what is ostensibly a mystery, but is actually an examination of family values and attitudes towards infidelity and illegitimacy.  The trials the poor Marquise has with her parents remind me of Effi Briest's family issues (but in reverse...), and Kleist manfully spins the story out, keeping the reader in suspense for as long as possible.

However (and we're going a little way into territory not to be trodden by those who wish to approach the story with an unbiased eye), I felt that Kleist missed a trick with the rather obvious ending.  The one he eventually goes for is probably the one you were expecting all along, and I felt, after having been witness to some rather disturbing family scenes, that there was another, slightly less obvious, but infinitely more disturbing, candidate for the paternity of the Marquise's unborn child...

*****
So, is that enough to redeem Kleist in my eyes?  Well, let's call it a draw: one success, one failure, and one entertaining, but brief, little tale.  Of course, Kleist did write a second volume of Erzählungen - I suppose a final decision can wait until I get around to reading some of those :)

Taking The Law Into Your Own Hands

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Heinrich von Kleist, one of the most famous writers in the German language, and this week Caroline and Lizzy have invited us to pay tribute by reading one of Kleist's works.  I must confess that I probably already have a couple of unread Kleist works somewhere at home in England, as I'm sure they were set texts, either for my A-Levels or the first year of university.  Ones which I conveniently ignored...

This means that the time for giving Kleist a go is long overdue, and today's post will deal with a novella which many of you will have heard of, Michael Kohlhaas.  This interesting little tale is set in sixteenth-century Germany, where the eponymous hero is a horse trader in the east of the country.  On crossing the border from Brandenburg to Saxony one day in the course of his work, a cunning nobleman demands papers (which he has no right to demand).  Kohlhaas is forced to leave two horses behind as surety for his promise to obtain the papers, and when he returns, having been assured that there is no need to obtain any papers, he finds his groom banished from the castle and his horses run-down and skeletal.

Kohlhaas' legal efforts to obtain justice for this treatment are thwarted by nepotism - the nobleman is very well connected -, and his wife's attempts to take the case to a higher source of power comes to a tragic conclusion.  So, the horse trader does what any justice-minded citizen would do in his case: he liquidates his assets, hires some mercenaries and lays waste to the surrounding countryside...

Which is where the reader sits up and says, "Erm, sorry, did I miss something there?".  No, you heard right the first time.  While Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor, Kohlhaas burned everyone's houses down because they wouldn't tell him where his enemy was hiding.  I must admit, it wasn't a plot turn I had been expecting, but the arson and ambushing is fun while it lasts.

That's not all though.  While in Wittenberg, after having been severely rebuked by a certain cleric in a public message, our Michael decides to pay a personal visit to the peeved churchman to straighten out their differences.  Fairly run-of-the-mill, no?  Well, yes, were it not for the fact that not many people drop in unannounced on Martin Luther...

You could be forgiven for wondering how this all holds together, and I would have to say that as entertaining as it is, I don't really think it does.  There were large parts of Michael Kohlhaas where I really wasn't sure if I was enjoying myself, for a variety of reasons.  For one thing, I wasn't a big fan of the writing.  There was an abundance of names and titles, all flung at the reader without pause, making it difficult to hold information in the mind long enough for it to make sense.  I also found the text to be slightly over-punctuated, with an abundance of commas which detracted from my ability to read smoothly (yes, pots and kettles do come to mind somewhat here!).

However, it is the plotting, rather than the language, which is the biggest hurdle with this book.  Kleist wrote his Erzählungen quickly, primarily for financial gain, and at times it feels like it.  The novella just seems to be a collection of ideas flung together in the hope that they will stick and form a coherent story.  The late twist in the plot, a rather Gothic turn of events, seems contrived, and I do wonder if the idea was actually present at the commencement of writing...

There is, of course, more to the story than this.  There are philosophical elements present, especially concerning the right of the individual to take justice into their own hands when the state has failed them.  Also, the late plot twist, while difficult to swallow, does have the effect of maintaining the reader's attention until the final pages (which, let's face it, can only be a good thing).

All in all though (and I apologise in advance to all those who love Kleist), this wasn't one of my more successful forays into G-Lit, and it made me feel that perhaps my late-teens self had the right idea after all.  Michael Kohlhaas is entertaining, but I've read a lot of better books, even over the past few weeks.  Perhaps my next attempt will bring a more pleasing result...