Dictionary of Literary Biography on Ewald von Kleist
Ewald von Kleist achieved fame on the basis of Der Frühling (The Spring, 1749), a long poem that praises the beauty of nature and the simple life of the countryside. His works show a mixture of sentimental yearning for tranquillity and the glorification of steadfast virtue and heroic patriotism.
Ewald Christian von Kleist was born around 7 March 1715 in Zeblin, Pomerania (now Poland), to Joachim Ewald von Kleist and Juliane von Kleist, née von Manteuffel; the famous playwright Heinrich von Kleist, born some sixty years later, was a distant relative. Kleist studied law in Königsberg from 1731 to 1735; he was also well read in the classical literatures, which were to serve as a model for many aspects of his works. The family was relatively poor, making military service an appropriate career for Kleist. He joined the Danish army in 1736; after Frederick II's accession to the throne in 1740, he entered the Prussian army in 1741. Kleist could not afford to marry his beloved, Wilhelmine von der Goltz, ultimately losing her to another man. As an officer he spent most of his time drilling recruits in Potsdam, an assignment he did not enjoy. He participated in the Second Silesian War from 1744 to 1745, was promoted to captain in 1749, and was in Zurich as a recruiting officer from 1751 to 1752.
Kleist found compensation for the lost Wilhelmine and for the monotony of garrison life in his writings. His hypochondria is evident in such lines as "Ich bin der Quaal, ich bin des Unglücks Sohn: / Der Tod allein kann meinen Kummer lindern" (I am the child of torment, the child of misfortune: / Death alone can assuage my sorrow). The Rococo poet Johann Ludwig Gleim, whom he met in 1743, was the first to encourage Kleist in his poetic efforts; Kleist cultivated Gleim's friendship in rather emotional language, as their extensive correspondence shows. Kleist received from Gleim the support he needed; Gleim, in turn, profited from Kleist's military knowledge for his Preußische Kriegslieder in den Feldzügen 1756 und 1757 von einem Grenadier (Prussian Songs of Wars in the Campaigns of 1756 and 1757 by a Grenadier, 1758). Soon Kleist's circle of literary acquaintances widened to include Karl Wilhelm Ramler, Salomon Geßner, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The latter had Kleist in mind when he addressed his literary weekly Briefe, die Neueste Litteratur betreffend (Letters on the Most Recent Literature, 1759-1760) to "Herrn von N**." Lessing might also have been thinking of Kleist when he created the character Tellheim in Minna von Barnhelm (1767).
Kleist experimented with a variety of genres; some of these, such as the epigram, were in the tradition of the preceding Baroque period. He wrote anacreontic poetry, but its lightness did not suit his temperament. The predominant theme of his poems is praise of the countryside, a theme that goes back to Virgil and Horace and one that found expression in the eighteenth century in Albrecht von Haller's Die Alpen (The Alps, 1729) and James Thomson's The Seasons (1726-1730; translated into German by Barthold Heinrich Brockes as Die Jahreszeiten, 1745). Peculiar to Kleist is his subjective, sentimental approach to nature, an approach that makes him mourn again and again the lost harmony of man with nature and criticize the evils of the court and the city. Enjoyment of the beauty of nature--the forest, the flowers, wild and domesticated animals, the shepherd, and the farmer and his family--often yields to melancholic longing for an idyllic pastoral life. The reader learns as much about the author's sentiments and his meditations as about the natural setting that releases his varying moods. Good examples are "Das Landleben" (Life in the Countryside), "Sehnsucht nach Ruhe" (Longing for Peace), and especially Der Frühling. (Kleist repeatedly revised the latter poem; when it first appeared it had 460 lines, but only 398 lines make up the last version published during the author's life [1756]. It is written in Homeric hexameter but with anacruses--that is, each line begins with an unstressed syllable.)
Lessing's Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise, 1779) made blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) the verse for the so-called classical dramas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. Kleist, though, had already used blank verse in Cißides und Paches (1759), with all masculine lines. The poem celebrates the heroism of two Macedonian warriors who are defending Lamia against the vastly superior force of the Athenians and who die rather than surrender. Ode an die Preußische Armee (Ode to the Prussian Army, 1757), in which Kleist directly addresses Friedrich II, is in the same heroicpatriotic vein. Kleist also tried his hand at a dramatic dialogue, Seneka ein Trauerspiel (Seneca, a Tragedy, 1758), which tells of the death of the Stoic philosopher and his wife. It is patterned on Klopstock's Der Tod Adams (The Death of Adam, 1757).
During the Seven Years' War Kleist was stationed in Saxony; he was promoted to major in 1757. His wish to prove his patriotism and courage in battle was fulfilled when he led a charge at the battle of Kunersdorf on 12 August 1759 and was wounded. He died from his wounds in nearby Frankfurt an der Oder on 24 August. As Lessing was to comment: "Er hat sterben wollen" (He wanted to die).
While Der Frühling remained popular into the nineteenth century, especially as a text used in schools, critics perceived weaknesses in Kleist's works. In Laokoon (1766) Lessing says that Kleist was conscious that Der Frühling consisted of an accumulation of arbitrarily selected landscape pictures and intended to give the poem a more sequential structure. Such a change, however, would have produced a different poem, one that no longer would arouse emotions. Schiller, in the landmark aesthetic essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, 1795-1796), places Kleist among the sentimental authors and characterizes him as one "who flees that which is in himself and searches for what is forever outside of him; never is he able to overcome the bad influence of his century."
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