59th out of 414 books
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294 voters
The Marquise of O and Other Stories
From 'The Marquis of O--', in which a woman is made pregnant without her knowledge, to the vivid and inexplicable suffering portrayed in 'The Earthquake in Chile', his stories are those of a man swimming against the tide of the German Enlightenment, unable to believe in the idealistic humanism of his day, and who sees human nature as irrational, ambiguous and baffling. It...more
Paperback, 320 pages
Published
September 28th 1978
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1808)
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Irreligious, perverse, and shocking even to this day. Von Kleist's discontent with the social structures of his time—most especially the church, the law, and the vagaries of community life—makes his tales perhaps more politically rich than his contemporary Hoffmann, although both are equally skillful in plumbing the depths of the human psyche when it comes to matters of love, survival, family, and even gender.
Von Kleist's style is very proto-modernist: his paragraphs run on for pages with no app...more
Von Kleist's style is very proto-modernist: his paragraphs run on for pages with no app...more
Reading Kleist is an exhilarating experience that can be very unpleasant. I don’t think any stories have ever moved me the way Kleist’s do, but I’m having a hard time describing this effect in words. I’d like to say that his sentences manage to capture the beauty and anxiety of a single moment, but that makes absolutely no sense. Maybe I can get to it by thinking about something else.
Do expectations ruin our experience of the future, or do they help us tolerate it? The answer is both. Moreover,...more
Do expectations ruin our experience of the future, or do they help us tolerate it? The answer is both. Moreover,...more
Von Kleist is groszartig. Is it a coincidence that these shocking stories stem from the pen of what was quite likely a manic depressive who eventually committed suicide? There have been numerous studies confirming positive correlation between displays of genius and people with an overactive mental stasis.
What is shocking these days? Are there any wonders left us to marvel at? The only film that shocked me in the last ten years was ‘the Others’: for inverting the Ghost story on its head by a sim...more
What is shocking these days? Are there any wonders left us to marvel at? The only film that shocked me in the last ten years was ‘the Others’: for inverting the Ghost story on its head by a sim...more
Like workers who bring the factory to a standstill by following every rule, Kleist's heroes stick so stubbornly to some kind of code, whether positive--of law, love, filial piety--or negative--of dogma, self-love, filial disgust--that they bring structures down around them. The outcomes of his stories are always perverse. Through the characters' belief in the law, they become outlaws, through the ferocity of their love, they sacrifice those they love, through the depth of their faith, they submi...more
L’avevo già letto, in precedenza, ma, debbo confessare, l’ho maggiormente apprezzato in questa seconda lettura. Gli scrittori romantici non sono mai stati tra i miei preferiti, tuttavia questo racconto presenta diverse notevoli particolarità. In primo luogo il ritmo, che è incalzante e veloce, tanto che, quando si arriva alla fine, si ha l’impressione di aver fatto una lunga corsa e di avere il fiato corto. I fatti, le considerazioni e gli stessi dialoghi vengono presentati al lettore con una ra...more
Where this not German literature I would say this book very much falls into the Gothic category. The stories were full of evil catholics, unwed mothers and unspeakable activities by the church. The style (in translation) seems half way between a William Morris style re-creation of medivael stories and the gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of the short stories are a little odd in places, the timing seemed strange, stories seemed to end abruptly of go on too long in places. Michae...more
Dec 15, 2010
Terence
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Terence by:
Francine Prose
Shelves:
short-story-collections
I originally gave The Marquise of O - three stars (“I liked it”) but upon reflection I feel I have to round it up to four. There are no clunkers in the collection of Heinrich von Kleist’s short prose work (he was also a poet, playwright, and wrote operas) and the translations are excellent, retaining the robust, Teutonic sentences of the original German without sacrificing readability.
Von Kleist is another one of those fortuitous discoveries that I wish I had made before entering my twilight yea...more
Von Kleist is another one of those fortuitous discoveries that I wish I had made before entering my twilight yea...more
Feb 14, 2009
Jeff
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Jeff by:
Thomas Foster's <i>How to Read Novels Like a Professor</i>
Shelves:
prof-foster-recommends
#1: SPOILER WARNING: DO
NOT
READ THE INTRODUCTION FIRST, unless you want to know virtually the entirety of every story in the book before you read it yourself.
#2: If you're knowledgable about late 18th and early 19th century European culture and politics, you'll understand the writer's vantage point much better than i do.
I read this book because Thomas Foster spoke so highly of the title story, "The Marquise of O--." His praise began effusively with discussion and dissection of the first senten...more
#2: If you're knowledgable about late 18th and early 19th century European culture and politics, you'll understand the writer's vantage point much better than i do.
I read this book because Thomas Foster spoke so highly of the title story, "The Marquise of O--." His praise began effusively with discussion and dissection of the first senten...more
Jan 04, 2010
Dan
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Dan by:
Stanton de v. H.
Shelves:
short-stories
Representing events that can be explained equally well as natural or as supernatural, some of Kleist’s stories are instances of fantastic literature. Moreover, while Kleist’s employment of the uncanny and the unexpected may reflect a Romantic interest in gothic conventions, it can be argued that in these stories he was not so much attempting to exploit the sensationalism of such devices as bizarre coincidences and pathological obsession (as writers like Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft would l...more
Jan 08, 2008
Mason Fake Name Here
added it
Recommends it for:
people who enjoy pre-20th century German and Prussian fiction.
Recommended to Mason by:
Alexander Gelley
Shelves:
german-prussian-fic-pre-20th
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There is a dichotomy of the good/evil rapist and an ultimate happy ending CAN be achieved if one is using senses.
What a great quandary- almost like a sitcom in its farcical simplicity- yet its extremely daring and controversial topic could never be televised for today‚s prudish audiences. For its bold controversial risks, I loved the opening scene with the newspaper advertisement requesting the anonymous father of her child to respond and marry her. This reader is hooked in to watch the unfoldi...more
What a great quandary- almost like a sitcom in its farcical simplicity- yet its extremely daring and controversial topic could never be televised for today‚s prudish audiences. For its bold controversial risks, I loved the opening scene with the newspaper advertisement requesting the anonymous father of her child to respond and marry her. This reader is hooked in to watch the unfoldi...more
I read this collection around 15 years ago and remember nothing about the stories other than the title one except that I enjoyed them. However, only a few years ago, one Xmas soon after my grandfather died, I happened to watch Rohmer's film of "The Marquise of O" back-to-back with Sturges's "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," and this proved, all around, a highly emotional and illuminating conjunction.
This book is slow going for me...I can't seem to read it before bed without falling asleep, and have even put it into my bathroom so that I'll be forced to read it while I'm on the can.
For some reason, it doesn't seem to take.
Perhaps I should familiarize myself with him as well as the time frame he's operating in, and give it another go.
Michael Kohlhaas had me hooked though. Need to read it again.
I feel like this book is a workout for my brain, which can be good if you're in the mood for it, a...more
For some reason, it doesn't seem to take.
Perhaps I should familiarize myself with him as well as the time frame he's operating in, and give it another go.
Michael Kohlhaas had me hooked though. Need to read it again.
I feel like this book is a workout for my brain, which can be good if you're in the mood for it, a...more
to journalistic view of the stories. few dialogs for the amount of facts, the author was everywhere ex: and he did that and than he said that and than,and than,and than).
the only thing i thought was original was the reaction of the people or majority towards few individuals not commonly accepted by society, perfect example was "earthquake in chile"
the only thing i thought was original was the reaction of the people or majority towards few individuals not commonly accepted by society, perfect example was "earthquake in chile"
The plots in the stories are really complicated, and involve coincidences...kind of like Cohen brothers movies, and the characters are usually doomed. Kleist spends a lot of time giving concrete examples explaining what makes a character act a certain way...lots of back history. There's a subtle, morbid humor...the narrative is a little awkward because of translation issues, but the prose is very easy to understand.
Francine Prose raved about The Marquise of O in Reading Like a Writer and I was on the hunt for a copy for months, until I finally found a weathered paperback in a Southern Pines, NC, book store. These stories are unlike any I have ever read. They are suspenseful and simultaneously understated. He'll leave your mind reeling.
On 2nd read, I found a grand array of intriguing turns in the long, Germanic sentences and paragraphs here, though I must admit that I found the title story the least interesting of the bunch. Among the aforementioned turns I would also include the turns of justice, for though Kleist at times seems to be lacking in any, and in "The Earthquake in Chile" and even "The Betrothal in Santo Domingo," a story like "The Duel" shows that Kleist's justice was simply indirect, possibly more for the grander...more
May 13, 2011
Alex
marked it as to-read
Suggested by Hesper. German anti-Enlightenment smackdown. So that's an interesting point of view.
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The dramatist, writer, lyricist, and publicist Heinrich von Kleist was born in Frankfurt an der Oder in 1777. Upon his father's early death in 1788 when he was ten, he was sent to the house of the preacher S. Cartel and attended the French Gymnasium. In 1792, Kleist entered the guard regiment in Potsdam and took part in the Rhein campaign against France in 1796. Kleist voluntarily resigned from ar...more
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“In M---, an important town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O---, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-brought-up children, inserted the following announcement in the newspapers: that she had, without knowledge of the cause, come to find herself in a certain situation; that she would like the father of the child she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; that she was resolved, out of consideration to her family, to marry him.”
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May 12, 2012 08:43pm
May 13, 2012 06:14am