‘ZWISCHEN ERDE UND HIMMEL’ : KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS 157

22 cf . Semdner’s comments on Kleist’s source material, EnhYungen, p. 257.

23 6. Enuhhngen, p. 195, where Nicolo is actually compared to Tartuffe. 24 Ibid., p. 182. 21 cf. H. J. Kreutzer, Die dcbteniche Entwickfung Heinrid von Kfeists, Berlin, 1968, p. 186. 26 Ibid., p. 191. 2’ 6. W. Mifller-Seidel. Verseben undErhennen, Cologne, 1961, pp. 40ff. 28 Kreutzer, op. cit. , p. 191. 29 Ellis, op. cit. , 45.

‘ZWISCHEN ERDE UND HIMMEL’ : KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE

TO CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

BY H. M. BROWN

The recent focus of attention on the role played by the visual arts in Kleist’s writings’ has helped to open up important new angles on his works. It has been noted that Raphael more than any other single painter captured Kleist’s affections and admiration-and indeed references to the exemplary character of this painter’s works spread over the entire span of Kleist’s creative career. The reasons for this predilection are twofold. Firstly, it can be regarded as a ‘Zeitphanomen’: from Winckelmann through to Wackenroder and Tieck Raphael’s pre-eminence as a painter is proclaimed with almost monotonous regularity. Secondly, we note from Kleist’s early letters the importance he attached to fast-hand encounters with outstanding examples of Raphael’s artistry in the Dresden Gallery, repository of the Sistine Madonna,2 and the Louvre-swollen to overflowing at the time of Kleist’s visits with the booty from Napoleon’s Italian campaigns and including among others Raphael’s depictions of Archangels.’ The pattern of Kleist’s taste in painting during these crucial early years is straightforward and conservative: he favours figure-painting4-as we might expect from someone not very conversant with art-appreciation-and shows a marked preference for religious subjects such as Madonnas and Saints. It is noticeable that, characteristically, he is attracted to two extremes in this field-first to idealized womanhood (as represented by the Sistine Madonna), that is woman in her mainly passive and selfless role,’ and secondly, idealized manhood, as represented by the dynamic and heroic Archangel figures, all vigorously engaged in routing or slaying dragons or other monsters with their swords or lances. These ‘stofflich’ estimations of pictorial masterpieces suggest a clear anti-Classical bias in Kleist’s approach to the visual arts which would have met with the stem disapproval of, say, the Pmpyl&n editors. As for landscape-

158 ‘ZWISCHEN ERDE LJND HIMMEL.’: KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS

painting, Kleist’s response at the time of his gallery-visits remains largely uncertain and undocumented, although he would have had an ample opportunity in both Dresden and Paris to inspect masterpieces by such celebrated painters as Lorrain and Poussin. The numerous descriptions of landscapes, especially rivers, that appear in the letters written around the time of the Wiirzburg (1800) and Dresden and Paris journeys (1801) do indeed bear witness to prevailing fashions in landscape painting, as, for instance, when he describes the Elbe valley as seen from the Briihlsche Terrasse at Dresden as ‘ein Gemalde von Claude Lorrain’.6 Kleist’s descriptions are notable, in fact, for their self-consciousness and for their tendency to superimpose upon natural phenomena human allegorizing functions or stereo- typed significance. They reveal little sign of originality.

Despite the fact that Kleist’s enthusiasm for Raphael as a unique exemplar among painters remained undiminished-and indeed receives succinct formulation in a late letter to FouquE (April, 1811) in which Raphael’s sublimity and Teniers’ genre-type realism are presented as two polar antitheses in the field of pictorial representation-it would be incorrect to suggest that his views about the artistic process itself underwent no development. Indeed a series of essays’ on aesthetic topics written for the Berliner Abendblatter by Kleist reveals a much more highly differentiated and more analytical approach to the visual arts than had obtained in the letters covering his impressions of the galleries in Dresden and Paris. Kleist’s earliest responses are marked by a highly exalted conception of the artist’s role as one of total dedication to an ideal* (doubtless this attitude was closely linked to the already noted idealization of subject-matter). He notes appreciatively the sheer dedication and spirituality of young painters learning their craft in Dresden’ and can himself be seen striking a similar attitude some months later on completing the fmt draft of Die Familie Ghonorez in Paris: ‘ . . . ich habe mir ein Ideal ausgearbeitet, aber ich begreife nicht, wie ein Dichter das Kind seiner Liebe einem so rohen Haufen, wie die Menschen sind, ubergeben kann’.l0 Compare this with the more sober approach to the creative process now presented in the Berliner Abendblatter essays: in the ‘Brief eines Malers an seinen Sohn’ , for example, which has creative inspiration as its main theme, Kleist seems to have completely abandoned the notion of the artist as a quasi-vestal virgin, tending and guarding the precious work of art from the prying eyes of the vulgar.

The context of discussion in this essay is-signficantly-the painting of Madonnas, and the main point made by the artist-father (here Kleist‘s spokesman) is the need for spontaneity and joyous abandon during the process of artistic creation (associated with human procreation in an analogy which might have shocked some of his readers) and the rejection of a self-conscious, puritanical idealism such as the artist-son feels impelled to practice in accordance with the tenets of the ‘Schule’ to which he owes allegiance. Because the father refers to the sacrament of Communion being taken by members of this ‘School’ as an aid to artistic inspiration, it has been thought that Kleist is alluding to some incident which had been recounted in the Archiv fiir Literatar Kanst and Politid concerning

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Raphaelll-Raphael being the admired model of so many artists and ‘Schools’ during the early nineteenth century (ranging from Wackenroder and Tieck in the Helzensergiessungen to the Nazarenes, who by 1810 had already moved on from their Lukas-brotherhood in Vienna to the monastery of St. Isadoro in Rome and were attempting to give practical embodiment to the ‘Klosterbruder’ ideals). But it is noteworthy that neither in the Helzensergiessungen nor in Sembdner’s suggested source is there a specific reference to the sacrament of Communion as a likely aid to artistic inspiration. l2 Perhaps, too, it is significant that Kleist does not choose to mention Raphael at all in the course of this essay concerning the painting of Madonnas: he is dealing with contemporary trends, which are moreover explicitly contrasted with the methods adopted by the ‘Old Masters’ (foremost among whom is, presumably, Raphael, which makes something of a nonsense of Sembdner’s suggested ‘source’). Kleist is primarily interested in drawing attention to what he sees as a particularly harmful tendency in contemporary painting-namely the intervention of self-conscious attitudes during the creative process (religiosity being but one of such possible attitudes)- and his censure is probably all the keener because he was aware of having himself been guilty of this fault in earlier days. Nor is it clear that in thus reprimanding the ‘School’ for having inculcated such bad habits in his son the father is referring to ‘die Romantissphe Schule’ as several commentators appear to assume. l 3 It is doubt- ful whether this would have been a meaningful concept when used with reference to painting at this time. Admittedly, Kleist uses a very similar phrase with reference to literature in the ‘Brief eines Dichters an einen anderen’ , l4 where it is clear from the context (a discussion of paradox) that he is referring to the Jena Romantics, particularly Friedrich Schlegel. But it seems far more likely that by ‘Schule’ Kleist is referring to the by now increasingly publicized activities and objectives of the groups of German painters gathering together in Rome, the Nazarenes possibly, or at least their forerunners such as the Riepenhausen brothers, whose illustrations to Tieck’s Genoveva Goethe had reviewed rather sharply in the Jenaet Allgemeine Literatulzeitung , where he wrote of ‘das klosterbrudisirende, sternbaldisirende Unwesen’ . KIeist now aptly sums up his own view of the co-existence of down- to- earth and sublime qualities in the creation of a work of art by referring to the artist’s ‘progeny’ as creatures poised ‘zwischen Erde und Himmel’, an interesting formu- lation when we think back to his own exalted and one-sided ideals of some years before.

The Berliner Abendblatter essays by Kleist include one especially interesting contribution to the subject of contemporary landscape painting-a branch of the visual arts which, as we noticed, Kleist had hitherto neglected though it was one where the contributions of Romantic painters (Turner and Constable in England, Philip Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich in Germany) were to prove so much more valuable than the field of figure-painting based on religious subjects (in this respect the Nazarenes were consciously looking backwards). Kleist’s essay entitled ‘Empfindungen vor Friedrich Seelandschaft’ records his reactions to Friedrich’s ‘Monch am Meer’ and it was based on a much longer essay, written jointly

160 ‘ZWISCHEN ERDE UND HIMMEL’: KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS

by Arnim and Brentano, containing an extremely witty dialogue composed of the random and at times outrageously frivolous comments made by a series of spectators as they walk past the exhibits on show. But such were the liberties taken by Kleist in his editorial capacity that he was obliged to provide a brief apologetic note a week later16-presumably because of Brentano’s indignation-and to state that the views expressed in the essay were his own. l7

The chances of Friedrich and Kleist being personally acquainted in Dresden are overwhelmingly strong: Kleist could have been in touch either through Ruhle-a very close friend of Friedrich’s-or Pfuel, or Harunann (who defended Friedrich’s controversial picture known as the ‘Tetschener Altarbild’ against an attack by Ramdohr in an essay in Phiibw). Moreover, Kleist had lodgings very near to Friedrich (in the Pirnaer Vorstadt). Friedrich’s reputation was at this time growing: Goethe reviewed some of his works favourably in the Jenaer Aflgemeine Literatw-Zeitung , l8 including-most interestingly-the sepia cartoon for the later contentious ‘Tetschener Altarbild’ painting, stripped, of course, in that earlier form of its bold frame which was composed of intertwining corn-sheaves and vine-leaves-an obvious symbolic allusion to the sacrament of Communion-which affords an explicitly allegorical interpretation to accompany the visual image of the mountain Cross with its crucified figure against the twilit landscape and sky. The dispute over the ‘Tetschener Altarbild‘ which flared up in 1808 after what was really a private viewing of the painting in the painter’s studio (for which it was never intended) l9 itself gave the artist much sensational publicity, ihough hardly wide popularity, and he was to remain an isolated figure in the history of German landscape painting.

In essence, this was a debate between the entrenched supporters of the school of uaditional stylized landscape-painting as practised by seventeenth and eighteenth century masters and those who were alive to the possibilities of a new Romantic mystical and allegorical approach to landscape-painting. Kleist must have been fully aware of the issues involved, particularly as editor of Phobus (Hartmann’s ‘defence’ appeared in February, 1809). First-hand acquaintance with Friedrich’s works in Dresden may well have given him the confidence to tackle the-for him- new subject of landscape-painting when an opportunity arose in the Abendbfatter to report on the exhibition of the ‘Monch am Meer’ in Berlin.20 Even so, this was a bold venture-the more so since this particular painting with its reduction of landscape to the barest essentials (sea, sky and sand, plus the tiny figure of the monk) might almost be seen to anticipate Expressionist technique (for example, Munch’s celebrated ‘The Cry’) and certainly would have been more ‘difficult’ and more problematic for the contemporary viewer than even the ‘Tetschener Altarbild’, since he receives no assistance towards interpretation here from an allegorical frame. Indeed, ironically, as Kleist points out in a frequently quoted remark in his essay, fat from using the customary devices of perspective and allowing the foreground to lead the viewer into the scene gradually, this stark painting eschews all such effects, leaving him feeling singularly exposed and unprotected:

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‘und da es in seiner Einformigkeit und Uferlosigkeit, nichts, als den Rahm, zum Vordergrund hat, so ist es, wenn man es beuachtet, als ob Einem die Augenlider weggeschnitten waren’. Such an effect, as well as being disturbing, must have seemed extremely daring and novel at the time and Kleist’s bewilderment and his sense of his own inadequacy at accounting for the emotions the picture inspired in him show through clearly in the final sentence of the essay: ‘Doch meine eignen Empfindungen uber dies wunderbare Gemdde sind zu verworren . . .’ The essay thus ends on an open note and Kleist modestly admits that he will listen attentively to the remarks of other viewers as they pass by (but he does not supply these remarks) before finally committing himself to a definitive judgement. Kleist’s frankness here compares interestingly with the nonchalance-or is it simply uncommittedness?-of Brentano’s and Amim’s estimations of the work. The bulk of their essay is actually composed of the comments of other viewers-but comments so fatuous and philistine2* as to shed no light whatsoever on Friedrich’s painting. For guidance about this we have to turn to what might be described as the ‘frame’ flanking the dialogue section, that is, to the introduction with its generalized statements about landscape as a subject for painting and the concluding section, in which ‘ein glimpflicher langer Mann’ (i.e. Arnim in disguise) provides his own views on (a) the comments of the spectators in the preceding dialogue section, viz.: ‘Es ist gut, dass die Bilder nicht horen konnen; sie hatten sich sonst lugst verschleiert’22 and (b) the picture itself, a view which is almost as disappointing for its lack of penetration, since after praising the artist’s unusual choice of locality and season he takes him to task for his faulty execution: ’Es wiirde nicht schwer sein, ein Dutzend Bilder zu nennen, wo Meer und Ufer und Kapuziner besser gemalt sind. Der Kapuziner erscheint in einer gewissen Entfernung, wie ein brauner Fleck’. Despite the superficiality of these impressions, the narrator (i.e. Brentano) declares himself delighted with his companion’s pronouncements and the matter rests on a cosy note with the two men returning home together, their minds presumably undisturbed by any thoughts that might have been provoked by Friedrich’s uncomfortable picture: ‘Diese Rede gefiel mir so wohl, dass ich mich mit demselben Herrn sogleich nach Hause begab, wo ich mich noch befinde und in Zukunft anzuueffen sein werde.’ Is Brentano, perhaps, simply mocking his own philistinism? This would not be untypical but whatever.the case may be we cannot credit him with having made a really serious attempt to come to grips with Friedrich’s problematic painting, except perhaps-and that only briefly- in the opening paragraph (to which I shall return).

Kht, then, are we to deduce from Kleist’s reworking of Brentano’s and A m i m ’ s essay about his ability to grapple with these problems? We have already seen that landscape-painting was not his most favoured medium to date and that he had lavished his attention instead on figure-painting, especially of Biblical subjects. But we have already noted the seriousness and honesty of his attempt to analyse the powerful emotions that the work inspired in him and which, unlike Brentano and Amim, he w2s incapable of dismissing with banter or irony. Kleist’s seriousness

162 ‘ZWISCHEN ERDE LJND HIMMEL’: KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS

is further reflected in his strong sense of personal identification with the lone figure in the painting (it is characteristic of Friedrich to set the human figure as a tiny, insignificant spot against the immensities of nature).23 Now Arnim and Brentano had already established the germ of this point in the opening section of their essay and it might be useful to summarize their argument since it is the only contribution of any substance they make towards an analysis of the attist’s methods of presentation. They are immediately concerned to draw a contrast between the mood of solitude created in the observer of a natural landscape and that evoked by pictorial means. The immensity of the elements and the sense of infinity and of limitless expanse can be experienced with pleasure and exhilaration because this sense of immensity is accompanied at the same time by real sensations of the life-force all around, and especially discernible in the acoustical phenomena (e.g. the roaring of the waves, wind, the screaming of sea-birds) and in movement (e.g. the effect of wind on clouds). But a pictorial representation is lacking in this dimension of vitality and thus a subject such as that selected here by Friedrich leaves the spectator as far removed from ‘life’ as could be and exposed to a prospect of infinite desolation and solitude.** Nor does the sparseness or the internal disposition of the images within the picture serve to convey a compensating dynamic, so that the observer is then automatically forced as a living, sentient being to identlfy with the kindred figure of the monk and we are led to what is regarded as a wholly unusual identification of spectator and Kapuziner:

. . . und das, Was ich in dem Bilde selbst finden sollte, fand ich erst zwischen mir und dem Bilde, niimlich einen Anspruch, den mir das Bild that, indem es denselben nicht erfiillte, und so wurde ich selbst der Kapuziner, das Bild ward die Dune, das, aber, wohinaus ich mit Sehnsucht blickte, die See, fehlte ganz . 2s

But having reached this point, where the spectator is left looking out-at bleak nothingness-Brentano stops short and turns back to happier, more frivolous thoughts, allowing the other spectators to take over. Kleist, on the other hand, follows Brentano meticulously to this point in the argumentz6 but he goes even further, and, delving several pages further on in Brentano’s dialogue section, he now extracts from it a remark made by one of the spectators about the Kapuziner: ‘er ist die Einheit in der Allheit, der einsame Mittelpunkt in dem einsamen Krei~’.~’ In that context the remark had provided a deliberately pompous and comic answer to the naive question from the child: ‘Er ist wohl so ein Kapuziner, der das Wetter anzeigt, wie vor unserem Fenster?’ However, Kleist gives it an entirely new significance, regarding the monk’s position vis-his the elements in terms of an apocalyptic vision of the human condition: ‘Nichts kann trauriger und unbehaglicher sein als diese Stellung in der Welt, der einzige Lebenspunkt im weiten Reiche des Todes, der einsame Mittelpunkt im einsamen Kreis! Das Bild liegt, mit seinen zwei oder drei geheimnissvollen Gegensthden wie die

‘ZWISCHEN ERDE UND HIMMEL’: KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS 163

Apokalypse da, als ob es Youngs Nachtgedanken hatte’.28 Little wonder that Kleist was obliged to ‘apologize’ to Brentano for having altered his essay, though I think it is m e to say that it was more a question of his having deepened and developed Brentano’s points than of his having rejected his method of analysis or his assump- tions out-of-hand.

We have already noted that Kleist’s searching honesty and earnestness of approach when confronted by a form of painting so novel and daring as Friedrich’s had yielded insights into its meaning which were remarkably original and fresh29 for his day. But it would be mistaken to overestimate the extent of his pioneering work or to ignore- the fact that towards the end of his essay a new factor appears which makes his position much more complex. A curious dichotomy is to be observed after the apocalyptic vision is reached of man contemplating the void, as if one part of his mind is incapable of accepting what the other part has so clearly and deliberately established; as if his spontaneous judgement had outstripped his critical resources. Thus, while admitting that the sheer expressiveness of Friedrich’s images represents a completely new approach to landscape-painting , he qualifies this praise with an exaggerated example of what such an artist could achieve with the sparsest and most unpromising of materials, namely a sandy tract of land in the Mark Brandenburg, complete with a berberis bush and a crow preening its feathers. Nor is Kleist content to leave matters there: with his customary fondness for hyperbole he now caps this with another unlikely possibility, namely that the very materials of which the landscape is composed (e.g. chalk, water) might be utilized for the purpose of depicting it and that the effect achieved-the ultimate in ‘expressiveness’-would be to cause the very denizens of that landscape (e.g. foxes and wolves) to break into howls:3O ‘das Sakste, was man, ohne d e n Zweifel, zum Lobe fiir diese Art von Landschaftsmahlerei beibringen kann’. But this would be a travesty of ‘realistic’ technique, as Kleist must well know, and one can only assume that these exaggerated attempts to quallfy Friedrich’s achievement spring from Kleist’s genuine ‘Verwirrung’ and the fact that the work cannot be examined with reference to any of the established critical canons: either of perspective, or of figure-painting or of colouring . Eighteenth-century landscape painting had firmly established man’s position within the natural world and shown him in harmony with surroundings upon which he exercised order and control. Friedrich’s tiny figures, on the other hand, appear to be engulfed by wild and elemental forces and it is no surprise to find Kleist-who in any case, as we have repeatedly emphasized, had no extensive experience of the genre-unable to invent the new critical criteria necessary to evaluate it. The surprising thing is that despite all the evidence amassed to illustrate the conservatism of his taste in the visual arts and despite the fact that he had hitherto tended to find in painting an outlet for his escapist tendencies-whether by contemplating examples of idealized womanhood in Raphael’s and other painters’ Madonnas or ascendant male figures in his Saints- his spontaneous response to the ‘avant-garde’ Friedrich’s painting was to be so sure, so untrammelled by any idealism, and his observations so sharp. His

164 ‘ZWISCHEN ERDE UND HIMMEL’: KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS

achievement here, I would suggest, is a very tangible sign of a process of development and an extension of his own aesthetic horizons which had been going on for some time and which is also reflected in the other Bedner Abendbhtter essays mentioned above. The most outstanding feature of this enhanced sensitivity and critical insight into both theoretical and practical aesthetic matters is the new independence of judgement Kleist shows: whereas his assessments of his favourite Old Master paintings had been entirely lacking in originality, we feel in these contributions to the Berliner Abendblatter that we are now hearing Heist’s own authentic voice on aesthetic matters. This new, more independent approach to the visual arts is reflected, too, in Heist’s growing interest in the relationship of the different art-forms to one another (cf. Maler-Dichter Brief). We know from a letter of the summer of 1811,31 for instance, that he was planning to drop creative writing for a year or so just so that he might make some detailed studies of the art of music, which, he felt, was to be regarded as a ‘Wunel’ or ‘algebdsche Formel’ to all other art forms. Given the evidence of his very considerable progress in the field of appreciation of the visual arts we might have expected these studies to have yielded interesting fruit.

NOTES

Reference is made throughout to Heinrich von Kleist, Samtlicbe WerRe und Btiefe, 2 vols. ed. H. Sembdner, Munich, 1965 (SW). ’ Foremost in the field. has been W. Silz, Heinricb uon Heist, Studies in his worh and literay

cbamcter, Philadelphia, 1961, 247-270. See as0 H. J. Kreutzer, Die dkbtetircbe Entwicklung Heinrich von Heirt, Berlin, 1968, 198-202 and P. Horwath, ‘ A d den Spuren Teniers. Vouets und Raphaels inKleists MicbaelKoblbm’, Seminar (1969), 102-113.

* Kleist probably saw this for the first time on his visit to Dresden of 1800 (though first mention of it comes only on the occasion of his second, more successful visit of 1801).

These were the two St. Michaels (‘St. Michael conquering Satan’ and ‘St. Michael fights with monsters’) and the St. George.

Compare with Schclling, who rated figure-painting superior to all other forms of painting, 6. Schelling, Werke, 111, Ermzungsband, 1959, p. 197.

Cf. Horwath, op. cit., 106.

SW 11,641.

’ E.g. ‘Brief eines jungen Dichters an einen jungen Maler’, ‘Brief eines Dichters an einen anderen’, ‘Brief eines Malers an seinen Sohn’ and ‘Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandxhaft’ .

Kleist himself compares this idealization-which he admits to amount to ‘Schw&merei’-to that practised by medieval troubadours, for whom ‘Traumgestalten’ replaced flesh-and-blood human beings, cf. SW 11,701.

Cf.SWII,651.

lo Cf. SW XI, 694. It has been suggested that Kleist was influenced here by a ‘Xenie’, cf. Sembdner SW 11,916.

‘ZWISCHEN ERDE UND HIMMEL’: KLEIST AND THE VISUAL ARTS 165

Cf. Sembdner SW 11, 928 who quotes as Kleist’s possible source, in excerpt form, a passage from the Archiv f i r Literatur Kunst und PofittR (Hamburg), which he had earlier quoted in full in Die Berliner Abendbfatter Heinnibs von Kieist, Berlin, 1939, p. 67. The omissions are significant: the title ‘Religion, die hkhste Stufe der Kunst’ as well as the last line: ‘So sprach der Mann, dessen letztcs Kunstwerk eine-Verklhng war’ point beyond rather than towards Kleist ’s essay. ‘Raphaels Traum’ in the Henensergiessungen might equally well be considered a possible source.

l2 Both merely refer to ‘prayer’ and both entail the appearance of visions of the Madonna which serve as models to her painters.

l3 E.g. H. Sembdner, Die Berfiner Abendbfatter Heinnchs von Heist, Berlin, 1939. p. 68, and T. Kaixr, Vergfeich akr verschie&nen Fassungen von Kkirts Dramen, Bern und Leipzig, 1944, p. 379.

I4 Cf. ‘Aber diese Unempfindlichkeit gegen das Wesen und den Kern der Poesie . . . klebt deinem Gemiit iiberhaupt, meine ich. von der Schule an, aus welcher du stammst’, SW 11,348.

Jenaer Affg. Literatur-Zeitung vom Jahre 1805, zweiter Jahrgang, I11 Band. Quoted in R. Benz, Goethe unddie Romantische Kunst, Miinchen, n.d., p. 120.

l6 Kleist’s original essay appeared on 13 October, 1810. the ‘Erkliimng’ on 22 October. Arnim’s and Brenrano’s essay is reproduced with slight modifications in Brentano’s GeJammefte Werke, Band IV, pp. 424-429, Frankfurt a. M., 1852, and in K. K. Eberlein, Caspar David Friedrich Behenntnisse, Leipzig. 1924, pp. 250-259.

’’ ‘Nur der Buchstabe desselben gehort den genannten beiden Hem; der Geist aber, und die Verantwortlichkeit dafiir, so wie er jetzt abgefasst ist, mir.’ SW 11,455.

Jenaer Affgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 1809, 2 , Cf. R. Benz, Goethe rrnd die Romanrirche Kunst, Miinchen, 1949, p. 133.

l9 The painting, together with its ‘integral’ frame, was commissioned by Graf and Grjdfin Thun for their house-chapel in Tetxhen.

2o The work was exhibited in the Berlin exhibition which opened on 23 September, 1810, and was subsequently purchased by the King of Prussia.

21 For example, note the pretentious and misplaced literary allusions to Young, Klopstock, Kmgarten, Ossian, etc. It is difficult to agree with the numerous German commentators who find profundity in such remarks, e.g. Erwin Kluckhohn, in an otherwise admirable essay in Junge Geirteswksenscbafien 2, 1939,65.

22 Eberlein, op. cit., 258.

23 As W. Vaughan points out, however, Kleist’s emphasis on Friedrich’s supposed concern with the helplessness of man may be misplaced and the monk’s gesture might more accurately be seen as one ofcontemplation rather than despair, cf. C. D. Friednib pate Gallery Catalogue, 1972), p. 33. Kleist is probably still inclined to accord the human figure its uaditional importance within the landscape.

24 It is interesting that a contemporary viewer, Marie von Kiigelgen, stressed the absence of life and movement in the painting. Infra-red technique has revealed that originally Friedrich had provided this in the form of two ships on the sea. Cf. H. Borsch-Supan, Caspar David Friedrich, London, 1974, pp. 79-84, and Hamburg Kunsthalle Exhibition Catalogue, 1974, p. 162.

25 Brefftanos Schnpen, Bd. IV, Frvlkfurt am Main, 1852,424, also quoted in Sembdner, Die Berliner AbendbkterHeinncbs von Weirt, Berlin, 1939, p. 181.

~

166 HEINRICH VON KLEIST AND THE FINE ARTS

26 Barring one or two small changes made for the purposes of clarification, e.g. ‘die Stimme des Lebens’ for ‘seine Stimme’ and-presumably to preserve the earlier parallelism-the replacement of the phrase ‘einen Anspruch, den mir das Bild that, indem es denselben nicht erfiillte’ by ‘einen Anspruch, den mein Herz an das Bild machte und einen Abbmch, den mir das Bild that’.

” Eberlein, op. cit. , p. 254.

28 Kleist takes over Brcntano’s literary allusion here (and occasionally elsewhere too, cf. references to Kosegarten and Ossian) .

*%U. Vaughan, op. cit., 30 has drawn attention to this point. For contemporary views of the painting- most of which were unfavourable-see H. Borsch-Supan, C. D. Fnednch, London, 1974, pp. 79-84.

30 There is a strong similarity here with the effect produced by the intonation of the Gforio by the four mad brothers in Die Heilige Ciicilie: ‘So rnogen sich Leoparden und Wolfe anhoren lassen, wenn sie zur eisigen Winterzeit, das Firmament anbriillen . . .’, SW 11, 223 at least as judged by Veit Gotthelf (who is admittedly prone to exaggeration).

31 SWII, 875.

HEINRICH VON KLEIST AND THE FINE ARTS- KLEIST AND BURY, OR KLEIST AND LETHIERE?

BY STUART ATKINS

In her recent monograph Kfeists Kampf mit Goetbe, Katharina Mommsen pays much greater attention to Kleist’s interest in the visual arts than do his earlier biographers and critics. For example, in his sketch of Kleist’s career, Wilhelm Scherer in 1883 referred only in passing to the journal that Kleist edited with Adam Miiller, neither naming nor characterizing it: ‘Seit dem Juli 1807 hielt er sich zu Dresden auf, verkehrte mit Tieck und anderen Schriftstellern und gab eine &i&ift heraus. ‘ 2 And in 1953 the authors of an often reprinted ‘Chronologischer Abrii3 der deutschen Literaturgeschichte’ were content to identify that journal thus: ‘Die 2 s . Pbobus (1808) in Dresden, hgg. Kleist und Adam Muller, brachte hauptsachlich Vorabdrucke aus Werken Kle i~ ts . ’~ But although it is usually characterized simply as a ‘literarische Zeitschrift’,4 or even as a mere ‘literarisches Zwischenspiel . . . zwischen der Germania und den Berliner Abendblattern’,’ in Kleist’s and Miiller’s fmt announcement of Phobus it is called a ‘Kunstjournal’; its contributors and their collaborators are identified as ‘Kunstler’, ‘Kunstfreunde’, ‘Kunstkritiker’, and ‘Kunstkenner’; and its reader is promised not literary offerings, but that Kunstansichten . . . werden . . . wohltatig wechselnd aufgehhrt werden. I G I t is, moreover, completely consistent with this emphasis on the fine arts that the only collaborator named in the ‘Ankundigung’ is Ferdinand Hartmann, ‘ein deutscher Maler, . . . hinlanglich gekannt und

‘Kunstwerke . . . und