[Kein Ort. Nirgends] which bears no genre designation, is, it seems, best described as a novella telling the story of a fictitious Christa Wolf 1929– © 1984 Nancy Cramptonmeeting of two well-known figures of the Age of Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist and Caroline von Günderrode, both deeply unhappy and suicidal. They are presented in a circle of well-known German romantics…. The scene is well set: Kleist, the writer and Prussian officer, torn between the real and the ideal.

Kleist, as usual, is described as the moody figure unable to "adjust to any conventional relationship in this world." Günderrode suffers from, among other things, bourgeois discrimination against women…. Slowly, the two suicidal figures are drawn together….

In both dialogue and narrative the novella is focused in psychological undercurrents and striking in its constant shift of point of view, from omniscient author to Kleist's and Günderrode's inner monologue, to...