Victory of the Losers - According to Heinrich von Kleist

A Porous Line of Defense

"I ... had to do violence to myself in order to keep my sanity ... and (not to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch) ... surrender myself unreservedly. I did not do so because I told myself that such a surrender would appear to him as what it really was, an act of gratitude, and that in his eyes it would have diminished the value of my possessions and thus his happiness." Wanda von Sacher-Masoch  

Julietta tries to make her mother realize that she is pregnant without having a clue how this could have happened. The beautiful young widow hasn't had sex for ages. Sometimes she touches herself and thinks of the Russian cavalry captain who so gallantly and ruthlessly saved her from the mob. 

Heinrich von Kleist twists the tense dialog between mother and daughter. He turns Julietta's thoroughly duped father into an unsuspecting final point-setter. The old man shows up. The mother is already wrapped in the brocade of irrelevance. The daughter falls silent as an almost lawless widow. The parental home is a cold hermitage: a hostel for the declassed.

Kleist ignores this. He suggests an intact family business, which also includes Julietta's brother, the forester of G... Kleist introduces him thus. I'll adopt the formality, although I won't hide the fact that I certainly toyed with the idea of giving the forester a first name for half a day. Why not? That's the freedom I mean. I could go for a walk with Julietta and take her away from her upper Italian dreariness. I can see her in Florence. Julietta in a jade-green costume, a bit Ingeborgian-Bachmannian*. We sip our caffè doppio in an arcaded café in Merano. The heat broods us in front of a poorly imitated 1950s chic backdrop.  

*Ingeborg Bachmann (1926 - 1973) was an Austrian writer who had an iconic impact on German-language post-war literature. She burned to death in her bed.

In 1958, Ingeborg Bachmann met her colleague Max Frisch, whom she initially only admired, but who then followed Paul Celan in the role of lover. The relationship ended in 1963. The separation legalized a new relationship between the writers. Frisch shares Bachmann's new happiness. He virtually demands her consent. Bachmann suffers his descriptions of the abandoned woman in 'Mein Name sei Gantenbein' as an exposure, although her active attention accompanied the manuscript right up to publication. Bachmann fights back with Revenge-Text. The unfinished book 'Goldmann fortifies' a porous line of defense. 

The forester hears from the valet de chambre that Count F..., who has been declared dead, wishes to be received. Kleist's scoring policy makes no sense to anyone. The forester of G... gets three points without a space. In the Count's case, the author subtracts the F from the dots. I don't think anyone would go so far as to accuse Kleist of negligence. 

"The astonishment (leaves) everyone speechless."

The landlord, who has been informed, does not miss the opportunity to open the door in person. 

"Beautiful, like a young god, (even if) a little pale in the face", the Count appears. In their confusion, the hosts shower him with reproaches. Their behavior soon changes. Now the family erupts in jubilation. 

The Marquise thinks the guest is her personal Jesus. The resurrected man asks how she is ... he notices a "strange faintness" ... before proposing to her.

The padre della sposa asks the fantasma urgently to take a seat.

"The colonel (speaks): in fact, we will believe that you are a ghost until you have told us how you rose from the grave in which you were laid at P..."

The Count prepares to give his medical history. He was as good as shot dead. No one doubted his complete otherworldliness. So abandoned, he was taken in the funeral train to P... The good man reveals that during this time (and afterwards) the Marquise was his only thought; that he could not describe the pleasure and pain that (embraced) in this imagination.

A miraculous restoration followed. We all know what it's like when the dead don't rest and haunt us. The count went straight back into the army to keep his fortunes going. He wrote letters to the Marquise to vent his heart. The letters vanished into thin air.