Author: Timothy J. Mehigan
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135189
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Kleist viewed anew as a major contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian thought. The question of Heinrich von Kleist's reading and reception of Kant's philosophy has never been satisfactorily answered. The present study aims to reassess this question, particularly in the light of Kant's rising importance for the humanities today. It argues not only that Kleist was influenced by Kant, but also that he may be understood as a Kantian, albeit an unorthodox one. The volume integrates material previously published by the author, now updated, with new chapters to form a greater whole. What results is a coherent set of approaches that illuminates the question of Kleist's Kantianism from different points of view. Kleist is thereby understood not only as a writer but also as a thinker - one whose seriousness of purpose and clarity of design compares with that of other early expositors of Kant's thought such as Reinhold and Fichte. Through the locutions and idioms of fiction and the essay, Kleist becomes visible for the first time as an original contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian ideas. Tim Mehigan is Professorial Chair of German in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and Honorary Professor in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Heinrich Von Kleist: Writing After Kant (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture)
Author: Timothy J. Mehigan
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135189
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Kleist viewed anew as a major contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian thought. The question of Heinrich von Kleist's reading and reception of Kant's philosophy has never been satisfactorily answered. The present study aims to reassess this question, particularly in the light of Kant's rising importance for the humanities today. It argues not only that Kleist was influenced by Kant, but also that he may be understood as a Kantian, albeit an unorthodox one. The volume integrates material previously published by the author, now updated, with new chapters to form a greater whole. What results is a coherent set of approaches that illuminates the question of Kleist's Kantianism from different points of view. Kleist is thereby understood not only as a writer but also as a thinker - one whose seriousness of purpose and clarity of design compares with that of other early expositors of Kant's thought such as Reinhold and Fichte. Through the locutions and idioms of fiction and the essay, Kleist becomes visible for the first time as an original contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian ideas. Tim Mehigan is Professorial Chair of German in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and Honorary Professor in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135189
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Kleist viewed anew as a major contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian thought. The question of Heinrich von Kleist's reading and reception of Kant's philosophy has never been satisfactorily answered. The present study aims to reassess this question, particularly in the light of Kant's rising importance for the humanities today. It argues not only that Kleist was influenced by Kant, but also that he may be understood as a Kantian, albeit an unorthodox one. The volume integrates material previously published by the author, now updated, with new chapters to form a greater whole. What results is a coherent set of approaches that illuminates the question of Kleist's Kantianism from different points of view. Kleist is thereby understood not only as a writer but also as a thinker - one whose seriousness of purpose and clarity of design compares with that of other early expositors of Kant's thought such as Reinhold and Fichte. Through the locutions and idioms of fiction and the essay, Kleist becomes visible for the first time as an original contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian ideas. Tim Mehigan is Professorial Chair of German in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and Honorary Professor in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Heinrich Von Kleist: Writing After Kant (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture)
Author: Timothy J. Mehigan
Publisher: Camden House (NY)
ISBN: 9781571137852
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Kleist viewed anew as a major contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian thought.
Publisher: Camden House (NY)
ISBN: 9781571137852
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Kleist viewed anew as a major contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian thought.
Heinrich Von Kleist and Modernity (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture)
Author: Bernd Fischer
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135065
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
New essays employing a multitude of approaches to the works of Kleist, in the process shedding light on our present modernity. Modernity, according to some views, poses the problem of homo politicus -- the problem of how to act in a moral universe without a "master narrative," without a final foundation. From this angle, the oeuvre of Heinrich vonKleist -- novellas, dramas, and essays -- addresses problems emerging from a new universe of Kantian provenance, in many ways the same universe we inhabit today. This volume of new essays investigates Kleist's position in ourever-changing conception of modernity, employing aesthetic, narrative, philosophical, biographical, political, economic, anthropological, psychological, and cultural approaches and wrestling with the difficulties of historicizingKleist's life and work. Central questions are: To what extent can the multitude of breaking points and turning points, endgames and pre-games, ruptures and departures that permeate Kleist's work and biography be conceptually bundled together and linked to the emerging paradigm of modernity? And to what extent does such an approach to Kleist not only advance understanding of this major German writer and his work, but also shed light on the nature of our present modernity? Contributors: Seán Allan, Peter Barton, Hilda Meldrum Brown, David Chisholm, Andreas Gailus, Bernhard Greiner, Jeffrey L. High, Anette Horn, Peter Horn, Wolf Kittler, Jonathan W. Marshall, Christian Moser, Dorothea von Mücke, Nancy Nobile, David Pan, Ricarda Schmidt, Helmut J. Schneider. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German at the Ohio State University. Tim Mehigan is Professor of German in the Department of Languagesand Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135065
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
New essays employing a multitude of approaches to the works of Kleist, in the process shedding light on our present modernity. Modernity, according to some views, poses the problem of homo politicus -- the problem of how to act in a moral universe without a "master narrative," without a final foundation. From this angle, the oeuvre of Heinrich vonKleist -- novellas, dramas, and essays -- addresses problems emerging from a new universe of Kantian provenance, in many ways the same universe we inhabit today. This volume of new essays investigates Kleist's position in ourever-changing conception of modernity, employing aesthetic, narrative, philosophical, biographical, political, economic, anthropological, psychological, and cultural approaches and wrestling with the difficulties of historicizingKleist's life and work. Central questions are: To what extent can the multitude of breaking points and turning points, endgames and pre-games, ruptures and departures that permeate Kleist's work and biography be conceptually bundled together and linked to the emerging paradigm of modernity? And to what extent does such an approach to Kleist not only advance understanding of this major German writer and his work, but also shed light on the nature of our present modernity? Contributors: Seán Allan, Peter Barton, Hilda Meldrum Brown, David Chisholm, Andreas Gailus, Bernhard Greiner, Jeffrey L. High, Anette Horn, Peter Horn, Wolf Kittler, Jonathan W. Marshall, Christian Moser, Dorothea von Mücke, Nancy Nobile, David Pan, Ricarda Schmidt, Helmut J. Schneider. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German at the Ohio State University. Tim Mehigan is Professor of German in the Department of Languagesand Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Heinrich Von Kleist and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Violence, Identity, Nation (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture)
Author: Steven Howe
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135545
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
By reconsidering Kleist's reception of Rousseau and placing it in historical context, this book sheds new light on a range of political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Heinrich von Kleist is renowned as an author who posed a radical challenge to the orthodoxies of his age. Today, his works are frequently seen to relentlessly deconstruct the paradigms of Idealism and to reflect a Romantic, even postmodern, perspective on the ambiguities of the world. Such a view fails, however, to do full justice to the more complex manner in which Kleist articulates the tensions between the securities of Enlightenment thought and the anxieties of the revolutionary age. Steven Howe offers a new angle on Kleist's dialogue with the Enlightenment by reconsidering his investment in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Where previous critics have trivialized this as intense but fleeting and born of personal identification, Howe here establishes Rousseau's importance as a lasting source of inspiration for the violent constellations of Kleist's fiction. Taking account of both Rousseau'scritique of modernity and his later propositions for working toward the Enlightenment promise of emancipation, the book locates a mode of discourse which, placed in the historical context of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, sheds new light on the political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Steven Howe is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is co-editor, with Ricarda Schmidt and Seán Allan, of Heinrich von Kleist: Konstruktive und Destruktive Funktionen von Gewalt (forthcoming, 2012).
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135545
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
By reconsidering Kleist's reception of Rousseau and placing it in historical context, this book sheds new light on a range of political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Heinrich von Kleist is renowned as an author who posed a radical challenge to the orthodoxies of his age. Today, his works are frequently seen to relentlessly deconstruct the paradigms of Idealism and to reflect a Romantic, even postmodern, perspective on the ambiguities of the world. Such a view fails, however, to do full justice to the more complex manner in which Kleist articulates the tensions between the securities of Enlightenment thought and the anxieties of the revolutionary age. Steven Howe offers a new angle on Kleist's dialogue with the Enlightenment by reconsidering his investment in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Where previous critics have trivialized this as intense but fleeting and born of personal identification, Howe here establishes Rousseau's importance as a lasting source of inspiration for the violent constellations of Kleist's fiction. Taking account of both Rousseau'scritique of modernity and his later propositions for working toward the Enlightenment promise of emancipation, the book locates a mode of discourse which, placed in the historical context of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, sheds new light on the political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Steven Howe is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is co-editor, with Ricarda Schmidt and Seán Allan, of Heinrich von Kleist: Konstruktive und Destruktive Funktionen von Gewalt (forthcoming, 2012).
Heinrich Von Kleist's Poetics of Passivity (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture)
Author: Steven R. Huff
Publisher: Studies in German Literature L
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
"This book scrutinizes for the first time a key element in Kleist's thought and poetic process: his obsession with the problem of passivity. Scholars have long been attracted to the dynamic, larger-than-life characters in Kleist's fiction and drama, overlooking the fact that Kleist's works often turn on moments of stasis, as these same protagonists are suddenly and sometimes brutally rendered passive. Through a careful, historically grounded, and original investigation incorporating extensive primary research in late-Enlightenment natural philosophy and eighteenth-century medical practices, the study sheds light on these nodal points in Kleist's work, contending that these structures of passivity are so pervasive and so systematic in his work that they can justifiably and profitably be viewed as constituting a kind of poetics."--BOOK JACKET.
Publisher: Studies in German Literature L
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
"This book scrutinizes for the first time a key element in Kleist's thought and poetic process: his obsession with the problem of passivity. Scholars have long been attracted to the dynamic, larger-than-life characters in Kleist's fiction and drama, overlooking the fact that Kleist's works often turn on moments of stasis, as these same protagonists are suddenly and sometimes brutally rendered passive. Through a careful, historically grounded, and original investigation incorporating extensive primary research in late-Enlightenment natural philosophy and eighteenth-century medical practices, the study sheds light on these nodal points in Kleist's work, contending that these structures of passivity are so pervasive and so systematic in his work that they can justifiably and profitably be viewed as constituting a kind of poetics."--BOOK JACKET.
The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism
Author: Paul Hamilton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191064971
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 865
Book Description
TThe Oxford Handbook to European Romanticism brings together leading scholars in the field to examine the intellectual, literary, philosophical, and political elements of European Romanticism. The book focuses on the cultural history of the period extending from the French Revolution to the uprisings of 1848. It begins with a series of chapters examining key texts written by major writers in languages including: French; German; Italian; Spanish; Russian; Hungarian; Greek; and Polish amongst others. A second section then explores the naturally inter-disciplinary quality of Romanticism, exemplified by the different discourses with which writers of the time set up an internal, comparative dynamic. These chapters highlight the sense a discourse gives of being written knowledgeably against other pretenders to completeness or comprehensiveness of self-understanding of the time. Discourses typically advance their own claims to resume European culture, collaborating with and at the same time trying to assimilate each other in the process. The main examples featured here are: history; geography; drama; theology; language; philosophy; political theory; the sciences; and the media. Each chapter offers an original and individual interpretation of an inherently comparative world of individual writers and the discursive idioms to which they are historically subject. Together the forty-one chapters provide a comprehensive and provocative overview of European Romanticism.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191064971
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 865
Book Description
TThe Oxford Handbook to European Romanticism brings together leading scholars in the field to examine the intellectual, literary, philosophical, and political elements of European Romanticism. The book focuses on the cultural history of the period extending from the French Revolution to the uprisings of 1848. It begins with a series of chapters examining key texts written by major writers in languages including: French; German; Italian; Spanish; Russian; Hungarian; Greek; and Polish amongst others. A second section then explores the naturally inter-disciplinary quality of Romanticism, exemplified by the different discourses with which writers of the time set up an internal, comparative dynamic. These chapters highlight the sense a discourse gives of being written knowledgeably against other pretenders to completeness or comprehensiveness of self-understanding of the time. Discourses typically advance their own claims to resume European culture, collaborating with and at the same time trying to assimilate each other in the process. The main examples featured here are: history; geography; drama; theology; language; philosophy; political theory; the sciences; and the media. Each chapter offers an original and individual interpretation of an inherently comparative world of individual writers and the discursive idioms to which they are historically subject. Together the forty-one chapters provide a comprehensive and provocative overview of European Romanticism.
Aesthetic Vision and German Romanticism
Author: Brad Prager
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571133410
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Crosses disciplinary boundaries to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience and the interplay of text and image in Romantic epistemology. The work of the groundbreaking writers and artists of German Romanticism -- including the writers Tieck, Brentano, and Eichendorff and the artists Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge -- followed from the philosophical arguments of the German Idealists, who placed emphasis on exploring the subjective space of the imagination. The Romantic perspective was a form of engagement with Idealist discourses, especially Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Through an aggressive, speculative reading of Kant, the Romantics abandoned the binary distinction between the palpable outer world and the ungraspable space of the mind's eye and were therefore compelled to develop new terms for understanding the distinction between "internal" and "external." In this light, Brad Prager urges a reassessment of some of Romanticism's major oppositional tropes, contending that binaries such as "self and other," "symbol and allegory," and "light and dark," should be understood as alternatives to Lessing's distinction between interior and exterior worlds. Prager thus crosses the boundaries between philosophy, literature, and art history to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience, examining the interplay of text and image in the formulation of Romantic epistemology. Brad Prager is Associate Professor of Germanat the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571133410
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Crosses disciplinary boundaries to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience and the interplay of text and image in Romantic epistemology. The work of the groundbreaking writers and artists of German Romanticism -- including the writers Tieck, Brentano, and Eichendorff and the artists Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge -- followed from the philosophical arguments of the German Idealists, who placed emphasis on exploring the subjective space of the imagination. The Romantic perspective was a form of engagement with Idealist discourses, especially Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Through an aggressive, speculative reading of Kant, the Romantics abandoned the binary distinction between the palpable outer world and the ungraspable space of the mind's eye and were therefore compelled to develop new terms for understanding the distinction between "internal" and "external." In this light, Brad Prager urges a reassessment of some of Romanticism's major oppositional tropes, contending that binaries such as "self and other," "symbol and allegory," and "light and dark," should be understood as alternatives to Lessing's distinction between interior and exterior worlds. Prager thus crosses the boundaries between philosophy, literature, and art history to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience, examining the interplay of text and image in the formulation of Romantic epistemology. Brad Prager is Associate Professor of Germanat the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Passions of the Sign
Author: Andreas Gailus
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801889049
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Passions of the Sign traces the impact of the French Revolution on Enlightenment thought in Germany as evidenced in the work of three major figures around the turn of the nineteenth century: Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist. Andreas Gailus examines a largely overlooked strand in the philosophical and literary reception of the French Revolution, one which finds in the historical occurrence of revolution the expression of a fundamental mechanism of political, conceptual, and aesthetic practice. With a close reading of a critical essay by Kleist, an in-depth discussion of Kant's philosophical writing, and new readings of the novella form as employed by both Goethe and Kleist, Gailus demonstrates how these writers set forth an energetic model of language and subjectivity whose unstable nature reverberates within the very foundations of society. Unfolding in the medium of energetic signs, human activity is shown to be subject to the counter-symbolic force that lies within and beyond it. History is subject to contingency and is understood not as a progressive narrative but as an expanse of revolutionary possibilities; language is subject to the extra-linguistic context of utterance and is conceived primarily not in semantic but in pragmatic terms; and the individual is subject to impersonal affect and is figured not as the locus of self-determination but as the site of passions that exceed the self and its pleasure principle. At once a historical and a conceptual study, this volume moves between literature and philosophy, and between textual analysis and theoretical speculation, engaging with recent discussions on the status of sovereignty, the significance of performative language in politics and art, and the presence of the impersonal, even inhuman, within the economy of the self.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801889049
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Passions of the Sign traces the impact of the French Revolution on Enlightenment thought in Germany as evidenced in the work of three major figures around the turn of the nineteenth century: Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist. Andreas Gailus examines a largely overlooked strand in the philosophical and literary reception of the French Revolution, one which finds in the historical occurrence of revolution the expression of a fundamental mechanism of political, conceptual, and aesthetic practice. With a close reading of a critical essay by Kleist, an in-depth discussion of Kant's philosophical writing, and new readings of the novella form as employed by both Goethe and Kleist, Gailus demonstrates how these writers set forth an energetic model of language and subjectivity whose unstable nature reverberates within the very foundations of society. Unfolding in the medium of energetic signs, human activity is shown to be subject to the counter-symbolic force that lies within and beyond it. History is subject to contingency and is understood not as a progressive narrative but as an expanse of revolutionary possibilities; language is subject to the extra-linguistic context of utterance and is conceived primarily not in semantic but in pragmatic terms; and the individual is subject to impersonal affect and is figured not as the locus of self-determination but as the site of passions that exceed the self and its pleasure principle. At once a historical and a conceptual study, this volume moves between literature and philosophy, and between textual analysis and theoretical speculation, engaging with recent discussions on the status of sovereignty, the significance of performative language in politics and art, and the presence of the impersonal, even inhuman, within the economy of the self.
A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Von Kleist
Author: Bernd Fischer
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571131775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
For over 150 years, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) has been one of the most widely read and performed German authors. His status in the literary canon is firmly established, but he has always been one of Germany's most contentiously discussed authors. Today's critical debate on his unique prose narratives and dramas is as heated as ever. Many critics regard Kleist as a lone presager of the aesthetics and philosophies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernism. Yet there can be no question that he responds in his works and letters to the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates of his time. During the last thirty years, the scholarship on Kleist's work and life has departed from the existentialist wave of the 1950s and early 1960s and opened up new avenues for coming to terms with his unusual talent. The present volume brings together the most important and innovative of these newer scholarly approaches: the essays include critically informed, up-to-date interpretations of Kleist's most-discussed stories and dramas. Other contributions analyze Kleist's literary means and styles and their theoretical underpinnings. They include articles on Kleist's narrative and theatrical technique, poetic and aesthetic theory, philosophical and political thought, and insights from new biographical research. Contributors: Jeffrey L. Sammons, Jost Hermand, Anthony Stephens, Bianca Theisen, Hinrich C. Seeba, Bernhard Greiner, Helmut J. Schneider, Tim Mehigan, Susanne Zantop, Hilda M. Brown, and Seán Allan. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German and Head of the Department of German at Ohio State University.
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571131775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
For over 150 years, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) has been one of the most widely read and performed German authors. His status in the literary canon is firmly established, but he has always been one of Germany's most contentiously discussed authors. Today's critical debate on his unique prose narratives and dramas is as heated as ever. Many critics regard Kleist as a lone presager of the aesthetics and philosophies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernism. Yet there can be no question that he responds in his works and letters to the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates of his time. During the last thirty years, the scholarship on Kleist's work and life has departed from the existentialist wave of the 1950s and early 1960s and opened up new avenues for coming to terms with his unusual talent. The present volume brings together the most important and innovative of these newer scholarly approaches: the essays include critically informed, up-to-date interpretations of Kleist's most-discussed stories and dramas. Other contributions analyze Kleist's literary means and styles and their theoretical underpinnings. They include articles on Kleist's narrative and theatrical technique, poetic and aesthetic theory, philosophical and political thought, and insights from new biographical research. Contributors: Jeffrey L. Sammons, Jost Hermand, Anthony Stephens, Bianca Theisen, Hinrich C. Seeba, Bernhard Greiner, Helmut J. Schneider, Tim Mehigan, Susanne Zantop, Hilda M. Brown, and Seán Allan. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German and Head of the Department of German at Ohio State University.
Heinrich Von Kleist
Author: Günter Blamberger
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783846765746
Category : Anxiety in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Kleist has fascinated readers like no other German writer. How did a one-time soldier with an unremarkable literary education become one of the greatest innovators of German literature? What allows for the tragedy of his life? In what ways does his work speak to us today? In his great biography Günter Blamberger gives us a new Kleist: Unlike conventional approaches, he does not try to understand Kleist's life from the perspective of its end--from the perspective of his suicide as the final catastrophe of a life in permanent crisis. Rather, he remains at eye-level with Kleist's present, narrating from the perspective of Kleist's experience--in the moment with him--capturing the unsettling or the astonishing in each phase of his life, the explosive nature of each one of his risky experiments in living and writing. The result is an indispensable work of German literary history--a vivid, captivating biography of one of the greatest literary geniuses of all time.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783846765746
Category : Anxiety in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Kleist has fascinated readers like no other German writer. How did a one-time soldier with an unremarkable literary education become one of the greatest innovators of German literature? What allows for the tragedy of his life? In what ways does his work speak to us today? In his great biography Günter Blamberger gives us a new Kleist: Unlike conventional approaches, he does not try to understand Kleist's life from the perspective of its end--from the perspective of his suicide as the final catastrophe of a life in permanent crisis. Rather, he remains at eye-level with Kleist's present, narrating from the perspective of Kleist's experience--in the moment with him--capturing the unsettling or the astonishing in each phase of his life, the explosive nature of each one of his risky experiments in living and writing. The result is an indispensable work of German literary history--a vivid, captivating biography of one of the greatest literary geniuses of all time.