Selected Writings

by HeinrichVonKleist (Author), David J . Constantine (Editor)

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $22.85

  A reprint of the J M Dent edition of 1997. Heinrich von Kleist was born and grew up in the Enlightenment and died in a suicide pact in 1811, aged only thirty-four. He left behind him literary works which are among the most disturbing and amusing of any produced in that revolutionary and romantic period.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.44

  This selection contains all Kleist's stories, including the notorious `Marquise von O' and the almost novel-length 'Michael Kohlaas', as well as three of his plays (The Broken Jug, Amphitryon and Prince Friedrich of Homburg) and a selection of anecdotes and letters. Much of Kleist's effect is produced by his highly idiosyncratic and expressive syntax and language. David Constantine's translation brilliantly reproduces his strangeness in English. Kleist grew up in the optimistic faith of the Enlightenment but moved as a writer into a much less comfortable world. He is both deadly serious and grotesquely comic. In his radical scepticism and longing for love, he reaches beyond his time into ours.