#Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist

[majestativa]

The loveliest night had fallen, a wondrously mild, scented night, so silvery and still as only a poet could have dreamed up.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[weil-weil-lautre]

In a burst of emotion which she was not able to hold back, for all the misery that the preceding day had wrought, she called it an act of deliverance the like of which heaven had never released upon the world. And amidst these awful moments that had brought about the destruction of all of humanity's worldly possessions, and during which all of nature threatened to be engulfed, it did indeed seem that the human spirit itself blossomed like a lovely flower. In the fields all around, as far as the eye could see, there were people of all social classes lying together, nobles and beggars, matrons of once stately households and peasant women, civil servants and day laborers, monks and nuns: all commiserating with each other, helping each other, cheerfully sharing the little of life's necessities they'd been able to salvage, as though the common calamity had joined all those who'd managed to survive it into a single harmonious family of man. Instead of the meaningless chatter for which the world ordinarily furnished material aplenty at teatime, people now recounted cases of inconceivable heroism; they spoke of individuals who in the past had been but little respected in society who rose to the grandeur of ancient Romans; countless examples were given of fearlessness, of cheerful recklessness in the face of danger, of self-denial and godly self-sacrifice, of the unflinching abandonment of life as though it were the most worthless possession, which one was likely to find again round the next bend. Indeed, seeing as there was not a soul to whom something stirring had no happened on that day or who had not himself performed some magnanimous deed, the bitter pain in every human heart was so that it was impossible to assess whether the sum of general well-being had not increased just as much as it had diminished.

Heinrich von Kleist, “The Earthquake in Chile” from The Selected Prose, 24-25

#heinrich von kleist #kleist #diss #literature #quote

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

current reading list for 2019

crossed = finished bolded = currently reading plain = to read

CURRENTLY READING Erotism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire Violence and the Sacred by René Girard Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist

TO READ to resume The Horror Reader edited by Ken Gilder The Collected Works of Clarice Lispector Là-Bas by J.K. Huysman On Touching by Jacques Derrida Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection by Julia Kristeva

novels The Border of Paradise by Esmé Weijun Wang Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (reread) Justine by Lawrence Durrell Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (reread) I’m Starved For You by Margaret Atwood The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood The Name of the Rose (reread) by Umberto Eco The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille Sunshine by Robin McKinley Nightwood by Djuna Barnes Malina by Ingeborg Bachman The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride Enfermario by Gabriela Torres Olivares Monsieur Venus by Rachilde The Marquise de Sade by Rachilde

Hannibal Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris Monsters of our own Making by Marina Warner “Monsters of Perversion: Jeffrey Dahmer and The Silence of the Lambs” by Diana Fuss

short stories The Wilds by Julia Elliot The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt Severance by Robert Olen Butler

poetry Extracting the Stone of Madness by Alejandra Pizarnik The Complete Poems by William Blake Unholy Sonnets by Mark Jarman collected works of Charles Baudelaire collected works of Arthur Rimbaud

theatre Faust by Goethe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

nonfiction (history, biography, memoir) Love's executioner and other tales of psychotherapy / Irvin D. Yalom. Countess Dracula by Tony Thorne The Bloody Countess by Valentine Penrose Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsebet Bathory by Kimberly L. Craft Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schmutt Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middles Ages by Nancy Caciola Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici Blake by Peter Akroyd The Trial of Gilles de Rais by Georges Bataille The Marquis de Sade by Rachilde  Blake by Peter Akroyd Dinner with a Cannibal: The Complete History of Mankind's Oldest Taboo by Carole A. Travis-Henikoff The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan Emily Brontë by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson  Lives of the Necromancers by William Godwin A History of the Heart by Ole M. Høystad In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

essays When the Sick Rule the World by Dodie Bellamy Academonia by Dodie Bellamy The Body of Frankenstein's Monster by Cecil Helman

academia Monsters of Our Own Making by Marina Warner Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader edited by by Marina Levina and Diem My Bui Essays on the Art of Angela Carter: Flesh and the Mirror edited by Lorna Sage The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food edited by Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Donna Lee Brien

the gothic Woman and Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth by Nina Auerbach Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by J. Halberstam Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic by Eugenia C. Delamotte Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic by Anne Williams Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror Film by Xavier Aldana Reyes On the Supernatural in Poetry by Ann Radcliffe The Gothic Flame by Devendra P. Varma Gothic Versus Romantic: A Reevaluation of the Gothic Novel by Robert D. Hume  A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke Over Her Dead Body by Elisabeth Bronfen The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology by Kate Ellis Gothic Documents: A Sourcebook, 1700-1820 by E. Clery Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic edited by Fred Botting  The History of Gothic Fiction by Markman Ellis The Routledge Companion to the Gothic edited by Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy  Gothic and Gender edited by Donna Heiland Romanticism and the Gothic Tradition by G.R. Thompson Cryptomimesis : The Gothic and Jacques Derrida's Ghost Writing by Jodie Castricano

religion The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore by Piero Camporesi Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages by Nancy Caciola “He Has a God in Him”: Human and Divine in the Modern Perception of Dionysus by Albert Henrichs The Ordinary Business of Occultism by Gauri Viswanathan The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity by Peter Brown

cannibalism Eat What You Kill: Or, a Strange and Gothic Tale of Cannibalism by Consent Eat What You Kill: Or, a Strange and Gothic Tale of Cannibalism by Consent Charles J. Reid Jr. Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe by Merrall Llewelyn Price Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature by Heather Blurton Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity edited by Kristen Guest

crime Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

theory/philosophy Life Everlasting: the animal way of death by Bernd Heinrich The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays by René Girard Interviews with Hélène Cixous Symposium by Plato Phaedra by Plato Becoming-Rhythm: A Rhizomatics of the Girl by Leisha Jones The Abject of Desire: The Aestheticization of the Unaesthetic in Contemporary Literature and Culture edited by Konstanze Kutzbach, Monika Mueller The Severed Head: Capital Visions by Julia Kristeva

perfume & alchemy Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent by Jean-Claude Ellena The Perfume Lover: A Personal Story of Scent by Denyse Beaulieu Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell by Jonathan Reinarz Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent by Mandy Aftel Das Parfum by Patrick Süskind Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture by Catherine Maxwell “The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Perfume”

medicine Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery by Richard Hollingham Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris

articles “The Dread Gorgon” by Caroline Alexander “Ruggiero’s Deceptions, Cherubino’s Distractions” by Mary Reynolds “A Thing of Shreds and Patches” by J’Lyn Chapman “Dissection” by Meehan Crist

unsorted Dwellings of the Philosophers by Fulcanelli Mysteries of the Cathedrals by Fulcanelli Jean Cocteau, from ‘Orphée’ The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio*

FINISHED Red Dragon by Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris Hannibal by Thomas Harris Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi (reread) Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez (reread) Painting Their Portraits in Winter: Stories by Myriam Gurba The Sadeian Woman by Angela Carter the collected poems of Emily Brontë Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Frye A Monster’s Notes by Laurie Sheck Cain by José Saramago House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (reread) Such Small Hands by Andres Barba House of Incest by Anaïs Nin Macbeth by William Shakespeare Hannibal Lecter and Philosophy: The Heart of the Matter edited by Joseph Westfall The Body: An Essay by Jenny Boully A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu Cabinet of Curiosities by Guillermo del Toro John Donne’s Holy Sonnets Surfacing by Margaret Atwood Literature and Evil by Georges Bataille Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi Richard III by William Shakespeare The Dead Seagull by George barker Power Politics by Margaret Atwood

#sp #reading list #bookmark

[majestativa]

His words overwhelm. His stories suck you into a visceral virtual reality.

— Peter Wortsman, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, on Heinrich von Kleist, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

Inhumanities […] have long since disgusted me in my heart of hearts.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

A feeling of trepidation hovered like a vulture round his heart.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

As the sun set, it seemed to me as if my happiness were sinking. I shuddered at the thought that I might perhaps have to abandon everything dear to me.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

I thought to myself, the spirit can’t go wrong if there’s no spirit to begin with.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

She slunk into a dark valley shaded by stone-pines to pray for his soul which she believed to be departed; and it was here in the valley that she found this beloved person, and so found bliss, as if it were the Valley of Eden.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

To you I can confide; in your complexion I can see reflected a shimmer of my own.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

... as if all the angels in heaven stood guard over her.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

Here a brave soul tried to help; here stood another, pale as death, stretching his trembling hands in silence to the heavens.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

As to character development, such as it is, Kleist’s protagonists resemble the mercilessly pummeled dummies in car crash tests and the anatomical figures in medical atlases, in which the outline of the digestive tract is visible under the musculo-skeletal system and the skin. You can practically hear the heart thumping and see the words congeal in a vapor of raw emotion, but try and identify with them and you’ll fall flat.

— Peter Wortsman, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, on Heinrich von Kleist, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009)

[majestativa]

Kafka extolled Kleist in a letter to his own betrothed, the subsequently forsaken Felice Bauer, as “one of the four men I con- sider to be my true blood-relations.”

— Peter Wortsman, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, on Franz Kafka, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009) #Franz Kafka #Felice Bauer

[majestativa]

“Take P . . . , for instance,” he continued, “when she dances the part of Daphne, and turns around to peer at Apollo, who is pursuing her, her soul sits in the axis of the spine; she bends as if she were about to break, like a Naiad from the School of Bernini.”

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009) #Daphne #Apollo #Gian Lorenzo Bernini #Her soul sits in the axis of the spine

[majestativa]

The Frenchman says, l’appétit vient en mangeant,* and this experiential verity still applies if we parody it and say, l’idée vient en parlant.

— Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, transl by Peter Wortsman, (2009)

#German #Heinrich von Kleist #Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist #Peter Wortsman #(2009) #François Rabelais #Gargantua