Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, The - Softcover

Heinrich Von Kleist; Peter Wortsmann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 098195572X ISBN 13: 9780981955728

Publisher: Archipelago Books, 2010

Synopsis

This amazing collection of Kleist's short fiction, novellas, essays and fragments gives readers an extraordinary and penetrating overview of the life and work of one of the most influential and unusual writers in the history of German literature. From 'The Earthquake in Chile', a damning invective against moral tyranny, to 'Michael Kohlhaas', an exploration of the violent price of justice, Kleist unrelentingly confronts the dangers of self-deception and the ultimate impossibility of existence in a world bound by absolutes.

About this title

About the Author

Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), one of Germany's most enigmatic and celebrated authors, was an aristocrat by birth, a rebel by inclination, a Romantic by temperament, and a stylist of uncompromising rigor whose writings in multiple modes, including drama, fiction, and expository prose, have grown all the more pertinent over time. Kleist lived a restless, roving life, serving stints as a soldier, a bureaucrat, a prisoner, and an unsuccessful newspaper editor. Finding himself in financial straits and personal despair, Kleist, together with his terminally ill lover, committed suicide near the Wannsee in Berlin in 1811. Recipient of the 2012 Gold Grand Prize for Best Travel Story of the Year, Peter Wortsman is the author of A Modern Way to Die: Small Stories and Microtales, the plays The Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words, the recent memoir Ghost Dance in Berlin: A Rhapsody in Gray, and the forthcoming novel Cold Earth Wanderers. His translations from the German include Robert Musil[s Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, Heinrich Heine[s Travel Pictures, Peter Altenberg[s Telegrams of the Soul, and Tales of the German Imagination: From The Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann, an anthology published by Penguin Classics.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Earthquake in Chile

In Santiago, the capital of the Kingdom of Chile, at the very moment when the great earth tremors of the year 1647 struck, in the wake of which many thousands found their doom, a young Spaniard by the name of Jeronimo Rugera, accused of a crime, stood beside a pillar in the prison where he’d been incarcerated and intended to hang himself.

Edition details

• Publisher: Archipelago Books
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 098195572X
• ISBN 13: 9780981955728
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 283