The Marquise of O and Other Stories

The Marquise of O and Other Stories

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3.93 of 5 stars 3.93  ·  rating details  ·  672 ratings  ·  50 reviews
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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Proustitute
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
Yadel
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
knig
Mar 17, 2012 knig rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: 2012
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
John
My favorite story in here was "The Foundling," a really eerie, uncanny tale. I wish some of the stories, like "Michael Kohlhaas" and "The Duel" weren't so bogged down with details and characters though.
Quinn Slobodian
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
Arwen56
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
Mel
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
Terence
Dec 15, 2010 Terence rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Terence by: Francine Prose
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
Jeff
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>
#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
Dan
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
Mason Fake Name Here
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
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Fiona
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
Elise
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.
Lucia
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
Cristi
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"
Dylan Alford
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.
Abby
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.
Micaela
Los cuentos de Von Kleist recuerdan un poco a los de Gustavo Adolfo Becquer y a Horace Walpole. Son muy interesantes, con ciertos componentes sobrenaturales y siempre una moraleja al final. Mis preferidos: "Los desposorios de Santo Domingo" y "El desafio".
Stephen
What a strange, troubled man Kleist was -- and it show here on the page. (He ended his life and that of a terminally ill actress in 1811 after the two agreed to a suicide pact.) Earthquake in Chile is worth the price of admission alone.
Michael
Kleist was in many ways the antithesis to the gentleman of the enlightenment. His stories are filled with uncertainty, violence, and a haunting sense of unsease. In each piece a deep distrust of human psychology, both the collective and the individual, is prevalent.
Rachel
I really wanted to like von Kleist--a crazy German Romantic who committed suicide, a writer cited so lovingly by so many others I've read--but no. He's like that friend who takes five hours to tell you what he ate for dinner last night. I don't get it.
Edward Wakefield
These tales are magical, steeped in tragedy, darkness and acumen. Michael Koelhaas is a favourite. This will cast a long shadow over your thoughts.
John
The novella Michael Kohlhaas, contained in this book, inspired the Coalhouse Walker scenes in Doctorow's Ragtime. All stories are worth reading.
Richard
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
Alex
May 13, 2011 Alex marked it as to-read
Suggested by Hesper. German anti-Enlightenment smackdown. So that's an interesting point of view.
Emily Lovitch
According to Wikipedia his plays are apparently far more lively. Reading his short stories, they came off as detached, listless. It was like reading police reports about people who littered.
martin
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Alice
Every word perfectly chosen!
Dennis
Some of the best short fiction I've ever read.
Austin Alter
Confounding and beautiful.
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La marchesa di O...  / Michael Kohlhaas (Paperback)
The Marquise of O-- and Other Stories (Paperback)
The Marquise of O- (and other stories)
The Marquise of O--, and Other Stories (Hardcover)
La marchesa di O... e altri racconti (Hardcover)

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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
More about Heinrich von Kleist...
Michael Kohlhaas Der zerbrochne Krug Die Marquise von O... / Das Erdbeben in Chili The Marquise of O Penthesilea: A Tragic Drama

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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.” 2 people liked it
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