Book description
In The Marquise of O-, a virtuous widow finds herself unaccountably
pregnant. And although the baffled Marquise has no idea when this
happened, she must prove her innocence to her doubting family and
discover whether the perpetrator is an assailant or lover. Michael
Kohlhaas depicts an honourable man who feels compelled to violate the
law in his search for justice, while other tales explore the singular
realm of the uncanny, such as The Beggarwoman of Locarno, in which an
old woman's ghost drives a heartless nobleman to madness, and St
Cecilia, which portrays four brothers possessed by an uncontrollable
religious mania. The stories collected in this volume reflect the
preoccupations of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) with the deceptiveness
of human nature and the unpredictability of the physical world.
Heinrich von Kleist, born in 1777, came of an old Prussian military
family, but disliked military life and resigned his commission in 1799
to devote himself to studious pursuits. He turned to creative writing
in 1801, and during the next ten years created some of the most
remarkable plays in German literature. Kleist had an unstable and
almost schizophrenic personality and his works relect his passionately
uncompromising nature and his periodic fits of wild enthusiasm and
morose melancholia. He committed suicide in 1811.
David Luke is an Emeritus Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, where he
was Tutor in German until 1988. He has published articles and essays
on German literature. His translation of Faust Part One was awarded
the European Poetry Translation Prize in 1989.
Nigel Reeves was Alexander von Humbolt Fellow at the University of
Tubingen and from 1975 to 1990 was Professor of German at the
University of Surrey. He is currently Professor of German at Aston University.
