—Thomas MannKleist’s narrative language is something completely unique. It is not enough to read it as historical—even in his day nobody wrote as he did. An impetus squeezed out with iron, absolutely un-lyrical detachment brings forth tangled, knotted, overloaded sentences painfully soldered together and driven by a breathless tempo.
Heinrich von KleistHeinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) was a German poet, novelist, and short-story writer. After serving in the Prussian Army during the Rhine campaign of 1796, he enrolled in Viadrina University, where he studied law and philosophy. Eventually, after much travel, he settled in Berlin. He passed away in 1811.
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
—Thomas MannKleist’s narrative language is something completely unique. It is not enough to read it as historical—even in his day nobody wrote as he did. An impetus squeezed out with iron, absolutely un-lyrical detachment brings forth tangled, knotted, overloaded sentences painfully soldered together and driven by a breathless tempo.
—Susan SontagWhat revolted the mature Goethe in the young Kleist, who submitted his works to the elder statesman ‘on the knees of his heart’—the morbid, the hysterical, the sense of the unhealthy, the enormous indulgence in suffering out of which Kleist’s plays and tales were mined—is just what we value today. Today Kleist gives pleasure, most of Goethe is a classroom bore.
—Paul AusterHis sentences are remarkable—great hatchet-blows of thought, an implacable narrative speed, a pulverizing sense of inevitability. No wonder Kafka liked him so much …
—Franz KafkaI did not write to you last night, it got too late because of Michael Kohlhaas (have you read it? If not, don’t! I shall read it to you!); apart from a short section which I had read the day before, I finished it in one sitting. Probably for the tenth time. This is a story I read with true piety; it carries me along waves of wonder.
