Heinrich von Kleist 7-13-07
"Wenn daher eine Vorstellung verworren ausgedrückt wird, so folgt der Schluß noch gar nicht, daß sie auch verworren gedacht worden sei; vielmehr könnte es leicht sein, daß die verworrenst ausgedrückten gerade am deutlichsten gedacht werden."
—Kleist, Heinrich von. "Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden (1805)." Projekt Gutenberg. Der Spiegel. (Link on Other sites to see page.)
I organize my library a little differently than others, perhaps. Separating out fiction from all the rest may not be all that different, but then idiosyncrasy shows itself. The next organizing principle is continent of origin; then related language family; then country of origin. This means that Franz Kafka will not appear between a Japanese author and a Vietnamese author, for example, although tough decisions need to be made as to whether he should be Czech (as is correct geographically) or German (as he is traditionally). Within country, authors are organized alphabetically and then each of their works is organized alphabetically. For a while, I organized books chronologically, but for some authors, that becomes difficult: posthumous releases in particular can throw the whole thing off; incomplete works call for thought and judgment better left to specialists. I've already had people comment on the fact that I alphabatize my music; thank goodness they don't realize that my real love in organizing is in the library. The first country on the shelf (due to my prior studies) used to be Germany. When I moved recently, I decided to start with US and Canadian authors, hoping to push one of the taller German books onto a lower and taller shelf. Now this leaves me with a very tall book from an English writer on the topmost, shorter shelf. It isn't a perfect system, but it makes me happy. I may write much more extensively just on this someday, since the complexities can leave me happily dazed before my bookshelf.
I bring this up because I wanted to start out this writing project by going back over some authors I had read before and mining them for ideas and issues. I decided to start with the Germany section to help with the additional mission of preparing for translation, only to find out that the first book was a collection of translated stories and not, as I had thought, a book from Achim von Arnim. Rather than reorganize the library again and change the way I deal with these story collections (and I am not kidding when I state that I am just looking for reasons to reorganize the library since I enjoy it so much), I decided to bite the bullet and see what those stories were and keep to my initial methodology. This brings me to the first author in the collection, Heinrich von Kleist.
Anyone who has studied German will have read Heinrich von Kleist. He begins almost every seminar on the Novella. He's the guy nestled in between Enlightenment and Romanticism in almost every survey course. Of course, his life story only adds to the attraction. The Projekt Gutenberg site (the German Project Gutenberg hosted by Der Spiegel online) doesn't describe it in the dramatic way as some others, but the main points are there: he was accused of being a spy and arrested; later, he met and worked with many of the big literary names at the time; and at the age of 34, he committed suicide with a terminally ill woman on the banks of the Wannsee. If more Americans read him, there would no doubt be a movie about his life. In reading over his biography again, I realized that I had been to his birthplace, Frankfurt an der Oder. This is a small city on the border between Germany and Poland. It was almost entirely leveled during the Second World War due to heavy fighting (no surprise there). One of the buildings remaining from before the war is the old Town Hall, which has a small golden herring on its highest spire, a symbol of its affluence as a city in the Hansegruppe Brandenburg. I was there to see that herring and had no idea of the Kleist connection.
This short story collection on my shelf surprised me. First, I realized I hadn't really read Kleist in English, except for one class in which we read Michael Kohlhaas in translation. Secondly, I was surprised by the stories in this collection. Three stories took up six pages. One, which I thought was going to be a story that I enjoyed reading before, turned out to be something I had never seen (except, probably, when I first read this collection and then shelved it; obviously the Kleist stories were not the reason for this purchase). The editorial work on the Kleist selection seems poor. Lastly, I thought I had more of him in the library, but as a person who has moved a bit, I have owned and given away many, many books. It now appears that my Kleist stories are sitting happily (or perhaps not so happily– I can't be sure) somewhere else in the United States than on my bookshelf, although I still have a few plays of his. This led me to visit the Projekt Gutenberg site and look up Kleist. Here I found the stories I am more familiar with and a totally new treasure, Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden. There is a lot to talk about with Kleist, in particular with regards to the translation of his writing, but I'd like to focus on this for now.
The title, On the gradual creation of ideas through speaking, pretty much says it all. Of course, this is my translation. My creative license comes in with the translation of "Verfertigung", which has to do with manufacturing and fabrication, but those words are bit heavy and industrial in English, which is exactly the opposite of the emotional aspect Kleist emphasizes. It appears that this essay does not appear in English, at least as far as my quick search indicates, and it is not in the standard canon of things to read by Kleist. It is pretty obvious why. Unlike his plays and stories, there is no morally or emotionally gripping storyline. It is a short essay explaining how deep thought may indeed produce somewhat nonsensical utterances, which can come to fruition by talking about them: not necessarily discussing them, but just saying them out loud to someone. If this is a defense of sounding like you don't know what you are talking about, then I am all for it. Seeing this title and realizing I had visited Kleist's birthplace has made me feel closer to him than I ever did before. Considering that most descriptions of Kleist have some reference to the emotional and/or dramatic aspect of his stories, this should not be a big surprise that the unfinished but emotional utterance is valued over the well thought out, rote, emotionally distant assertion. I now wonder what level of editing Kleist's stories went through.
The quote that starts this entry says roughly,
"If an idea is expressed convolutedly, the conclusion does not at all follow that the idea also was thought convolutedly; it could much more easily be the case, that the most convolutedly expressed ideas are those most articulately thought."
Kleist gives examples of this, one of which is personal, describing how he figures out his studies by explaining issues to his sister even though she knows nothing about what he is studying. He also describes the experience of an oral exam with this viewpoint in mind. I, personally never a fan of the oral exam for exactly these reasons, have found a new friend, albeit one who lived 200 years ago.
After an example Kleist takes from Lafontaine, he writes,
Ein solches Reden ist wahrhaft lautes Denken. Die Reihen der Vorstellungen und ihrer Bezeichnungen gehen nebeneinander fort, und die Gemütsakte, für eins und das andere, kongruieren. Die Sprache ist alsdann keine Fessel, etwa wie ein Hemmschuh an dem Rade des Geistes, sondern wie ein zweites mit ihm parallel fortlaufendes, Rad an seiner Achse.
My quick translation: Such a speech is truly thinking out loud. The ranks of ideas and their descriptions walk away side-by-side, and the mind's record, for one and the other, comes together. Language is therefore no chain, like a chock on the wheel of the spirit, but rather like a second wheel on the axel, going with it in parallel.
Kleist has great faith in language, but he does not confuse the thing (idea) with its manifestation (ahh, Ding-an-sich, we meet again). This side-by-side development of language and thought, each helping the other in progress, does not confuse the two. Can anyone know the thoughts of another person? Sometimes, even that person needs some help in formulating a coherent statement of understanding, which may only be achieved through outward expression. Language is a tool for use by both the speaker and listener, leading to understanding for both. The images of the ranks walking on and of the wheel speak to the inherent mobility of thought expressed. Once released by the speaker, these ideas move on, but no final destination is given. Do you know where your thoughts will lead you and those you share them with? I've certainly continued to think about things people said to me years ago (and I mean that in a good way).
And so, with my new appreciation for Heinrich von Kleist (the more I say it, the more I think it should be a curse like "Heinrich H. Kleist!"), I look forward to re-reading through a couple more stories and sharing more of Kleist's literary thoughts with you.
F.Scott Fitzgerald 7-2-07
"When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better."
—Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Crack Up." New Directions: New York, 1956. p. 180.
F. Scott Fitzgerald has been my favorite author for a long time. There are periods of time, years, when I don't read him and once I go back, I fall in love all over again. I have no good explanation for this since my first experience reading him was no better than most Americans: I was assigned to read The Great Gatsby in high school English.
The teenage years are not particularly subtle years and I think a lot of assigned literature is read quickly without any thoughts beyond the essay to follow. Although I felt like I didn't fully understand Gatsby when I first read it (in particular that shirt scene), I knew I loved the tone and style of the language. It was also his ability to describe social interaction that stood out. Certainly his stories are set in a particular time in the U.S., but the characters continue to live beyond that time. More than once I have wanted to comment on a look based on a description in one of Fitzgerald's Basil short stories, only to realize that this wasn't a shared experience I could easily reference to anyone, although it felt like it should be. Maybe I should develop a required reading list for my friends, but then I am pretty sure I wouldn't have very many friends.
Recently, I again picked up Fitzgerald and read The Crack Up. Part of this collection is a notebook, admittedly edited by the publisher, with various notes, sketches and poems Fitzgerald had assembled. The quote at the top is one of these notes. My own thoughts ran with this one:
- Is this how cliches are made? Is it the overuse by unimaginative hacks that burn a very good turn of phrase into the ashes of familiarity so that we no longer see or appreciate what brilliance this was the first time someone used it?
- In junior high, we were required to write stories. I remember the teacher reading my story and saying to me, "Young writers always have things happen 'suddenly.'" At the age of 13, I just didn't want to be like everyone else, but now I see the problem with these dramatic words. Relying on them to create tension is a bit cheap. A masterful storyteller never needs them, or maybe needs them, but not as the sole source for mood and excitement.
- Like most literate people, I think I have a command of language and if only I focused, I could write the next great novel (or short story, depending on how much time I have). Long ago I was told that I tell facts and not stories, so there is already one strike against my brilliant writing career. Secondly, this quote reminds me that it is hard to write well and be original: it takes much more than the ability to spell to go beyond literate and become a first-rate author.
And so, here I am, writing. A long term (and now perhaps with some motivation it will be short term) goal has been to translate some stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann. I've stalled out twice, overcome with the difficulty of the attempt to capture the feel that makes something good, no actually, first-rate literature and put it into another language. So, I've put forward a task for myself to find some quotes from books I've read and write based on them. I hope this will help me to understand and translate better. To the best of my ability, I will keep to "plain heroines and ordinary mornings" as much as possible, since this is a beginning. Maybe someday I'll grow into something more interesting and superlative, but then again, a series of facts isn't all that bad - is it?
Last update: July 27, 2007