Volume 29, Number 21 & 22 · January 20, 1983
The Prince of Pure Feeling
By Sanford Schwartz
An Abyss Deep Enough: Letters of Heinrich von Kleist with a Selection of Essays and Anecdotes
edited and translated by Philip B Miller
Dutton, 297 pp., $16.95
Plays
by Heinrich von Kleist, edited by Walter Hinderer
Continuum, 341 pp., $17.50; $8.95 (paper)
For over a hundred and fifty years, Heinrich von Kleist has been thought of not only as one of the most individual of the great Romantic writers, but as a force who will make you feel stronger and surer about yourself. His letters—now available in English for the first time, in An Abyss Deep Enough—have that awakening force. Written between 1793, when he was fifteen and still in the army, and November 21, 1811, the day of his death, they are about a boy's, and then a young man's, desire to see himself in relation to eternity. Well over half of them were written between 1800 and the spring of 1802, when Kleist was in his early twenties, to Wilhelmine von Zenge, his fiancée. He is proud to sign off many of the letters with 'your lover,' and he often talks about their upcoming marriage and the children they will have. But these aren't love letters. Heroic and uncertain in almost the same breath, he always wants to pose, and answer if he can, the biggest questions of life and experience.
Review, 7422 words
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