do indeed rise at all above mediocrity. There
is, however, no very deep psychological insight needed
in order to know how the whole man will be affected
by an event which sweeps down upon him like a stormwind,
and very ordinary talents may safely attempt tasks
of this kind; just as, for example, every painter
with some technical skill can represent despair, fear,
terror, all those emotions, in short, which only permit
of one expression; whereas a Rembrandt is required,
if a gipsy encampment is to be pictured. Kleist,
therefore, set himself other tasks; he knew and had
perhaps experienced in his own person, that life’s
process of destruction is not a deluge but a shower,
and that man is superior to every great fatality,
but subject to every pettiness. He proceeded from
this theory of life, when he delineated his
Michael
Kohlhaas, and I maintain that in no German novel
have the hideous depths of life been projected upon
the surface in such vivid fashion as in this, when
the theft by a squire, of two miserable horses, forms
the first link in a chain, which extends upward from
the horse-dealer Kohlhaas to the ruler of the Holy
Roman Empire, and crushes a world by coiling round
it. I should like to analyze the novel more in
detail, but am glad that the limits of my essay, or
rather the patience of my readers and auditors, do
not permit me to do so; for the members of the society
will thus feel prompted the sooner to acquaint and
familiarize themselves with the works of Heinrich
von Kleist, if they have not already done so.
While hastening on to the close, I must, in accordance
with the introduction to this essay, call attention
to the fact that Kleist, no less than Koerner, did
not leave unheeded the claims that his country properly
made upon him in the portentous age in which he lived.
In his breast, as in that of his contemporaries, there
glowed the flame of enthusiasm for the honor and freedom
of his people; and the oppression that they endured,
the internal and external slavery in which he beheld
them sunk, placed the pistol in his hand. I mention
this because it has been imputed to the poet Koerner
as a great merit that he was at the same time a martyr.
But Kleist could behold his country unworthily treated
without for that reason having unworthy thoughts of
the man who was treading it in the dust; he was great
enough to be able to forgive Napoleon the pain which
he could not endure. He wrote no war-songs for
patriotic journeymen-tailors and high-minded counter-jumpers,
but he described Hermann’s Battle and the battle
of Fehrbellin; he called the dead to life in order
to arouse the living.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: The extracts from The Prince
of Homburg are taken from Mr. Hagedorn’s
translation, Volume IV of THE GERMAN CLASSICS.]
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