In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the very moment of the great earthquake of the year 1647, in which many thousands of people perished, a young Spaniard accused of a crime, Jeronimo Rugera by name, was standing by a pillar of the prison in which he had been confined and was about to hang himself.
The Wikipedia has more details about the story. Frankly it is hardly a realistic story and it reads rather like a tall tale but it is written in a remarkably breathless style and I was surprised by how violent it was. I read somewhere that Kafka claimed Kleist as one of his influences too.
Kleist himself died in a violent and strange manner, in a suicide pact with a woman who was suffering from a terminal disease. This article has more details and looks very interesting but most of it went over my head.
oh dear oh dear, we read this at school, I remember very vividly...Kleist, Alok, what next? had a look just now in the internet, but could not find these:he has written some short essay-like pieces,they are at any rate not at Gutenberg, they go sometimes as philosophical writings and there is one about 'the slowly establishing of thought via speaking' - madethis translation up, but must be something like that and this is a very lovely little essay.
ReplyDeleteThis earthquake had quite an impact, a lot of people referred to it in their writings, it must have been quite bad.
Actually my neighbourhood library only has his plays, The Prince of Homburg and others. I found this story in a german short story anthology which I found in a used books sale. It contains stories by Hauptmann, ETA Hoffman and Brentano none of whom i have read before. also short pieces by rilke, schnitzler and of course mann and kafka. I had read only the last two -- the death in venice and in the penal colony before.
ReplyDeleteI want to read more by Kleist. Will look for some collected writings collections.