Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist (25 page)

In the meantime, the Elector of Saxony, still prey to his obsessive thoughts, called for two astrologers, Oldenholm and Olearius, at the time highly respected in Saxony, and asked them to advise him concerning the secret contents of that slip of paper that mattered so much to him and to future generations of his line; and since, after several days of concerted stargazing in the tower of his Dresden castle, the two could not come to a consensus as to whether the prophecy applied to his distant descendants in centuries to come or to the present moment, concluding that it perhaps referred to his still quite bellicose relations with the Polish Crown, instead of easing His Lordship's malaise, not to mention his despair, all this learned disputation merely served to aggravate his frenzied state of mind to an almost unbearable degree. To make matters worse, at around the same time, the Lord High Chamberlain instructed his wife, who was preparing to follow him to Berlin, to inform the Elector prior to her departure in as delicate a manner as possible of his failed attempt to do His Lordship's bidding, due to the disappearance of an old woman he'd entrusted with the task, and consequently, that there was little hope left of his acquiring the slip of paper in Kohlhaas' possession, insofar as, at this late date, following a thorough scrutiny of the case, the death sentence had already been signed by the Elector of Brandenburg and the date of execution had been set for the Monday following Palm Sunday. The news tore at the Elector's heart, and like a lost soul he locked himself in his room for
two days, taking no meals, tired of living, and, on the third day, after abruptly informing the government officials at court that he was going on a hunting trip with the Prince of Dessau, suddenly disappeared from Dresden. Where he was actually headed, and if Dessau was indeed his destination, we cannot confirm, since, curiously enough, the various chronicles upon which we have drawn for our account contradict and nullify each other in this regard. The one thing we know for certain is that at this time the Prince of Dessau lay sick in bed, in no shape to hunt, at the castle of his uncle, Duke Heinrich, and that on the following evening Lady Heloise turned up at the door of her husband, the Lord Chamberlain, accompanied by a certain Duke von Königstein, whom she gave out to be her cousin. In the meantime, on the orders of the Elector of Brandenburg, the death sentence was read to Kohlhaas, his chains were removed and the documents concerning his holdings that had been taken from him in Dresden were returned; and since the legal counselors assigned to him by the court asked how he wished to have his property dispersed following his death, he drafted a last will and testament with the aid of a solicitor, naming his children as benefactors and designating his faithful old friend, the Magistrate of Kohlhaasenbrück, their legal guardian. Thus his last days were the very picture of peace and contentment; following a special edict by the Elector, the Zwinger Castle, where he was imprisoned, was opened, and all his friends, of which there were many in Berlin, were granted free access to visit with him day and night. Indeed, he had the satisfaction of seeing the theologian Jakob Freising, an emissary sent by Dr. Luther, enter his cell carrying a doubtless quite extraordinary letter, which, alas, has since been lost, and from this man of the cloth,
accompanied by two Brandenburg deacons, receiving the blessing of Holy Communion. Thereupon, notwithstanding public sentiment that never stopped hoping and praying for a pardon, came the fateful Monday following Palm Sunday on which he was to be reconciled with the world on account of his rash attempt to seek justice for himself. Thus did he step out the prison gates, surrounded by a heavy detail of armed guards, with his two boys in his arms (which special dispensation he had expressly requested and been granted by the court), lead by the theologian Jakob Freising, when the majordomo of the Elector's palace pushed his way toward him through a mournful crowd of well-wishers who pressed his hands and took their leave, and with a troubled look the official passed him a message, which, as he said, came from an old woman. Staring, astonished, at the man he hardly knew, Kohlhaas unfolded the paper, which had been sealed in lacquer with a signet ring, whose mark he immediately recognized as that of the old gypsy woman. But who could describe the emotion that gripped his heart upon reading the following message: “Kohlhaas, the Elector of Saxony is in Berlin; he has already pushed his way forward to the executioner's block, and is recognizable, should you be interested, by a hat festooned with blue and white feathers. I hardly need tell you his intention; as soon as you've been beheaded, he means to grab the tube and open the message rolled up in it. Your Elisabeth.” Profoundly agitated, Kohlhaas turned to the majordomo and asked if he knew the strange woman who gave him the message. To which the latter replied: “Kohlhaas, the woman . . .” and suddenly stopped mid-sentence, so that, dragged along by the crowd that now once again swarmed around him, the prisoner did not manage to decipher what the man,
who started trembling all over, had uttered. Arriving at the place of execution, he found the Elector of Brandenburg already waiting there with his retinue, among whom he recognized the Arch-Chancellor Sir Heinrich von Geusau seated on horseback amidst an immense crowd of onlookers. To his right stood the Court Assessor Franz Müller with a copy of the death sentence in hand; to his left, his own counsel, the legal scholar Anton Zäuner, holding the verdict of the Dresden High Court; a herald standing before him in the center of the half-open circle of the crowd grasped a bundle and gripped the reins of his two hale and hardy nags, which stamped their feet with pleasure. For the Arch-Chancellor Sir Heinrich had, in the name of his liege, the Elector of Brandenburg, pursued and won his legal case against Junker Wenzel von Tronka point for point and without the slightest accommodation; consequently, after having a flag waved over their heads to denote their official restitution, the horses, which had been retrieved from the horse skinner and fed their fill and properly groomed by the Junker's men, were returned, in the presence of a commission assembled for this express purpose, to Kohlhaas' lawyer at the marketplace in Dresden. Whereupon, as Kohlhaas was led forward by the guards, the Elector of Brandenburg declared: “Well, Kohlhaas, today is the day you have gotten your just due! See here, I am delivering back to you all that you forfeited by force at Tronkenburg Castle, and what I, as your liege lord, was duty-bound to retrieve: horses, scarf, guldens, linen, including the cost of caring for your man Herse who fell at Mühlberg. Are you satisfied with me?” And upon reading through the entire decision of the Dresden court which the Arch-Chancellor handed him, his eyes aflutter, the horse trader set the two children he'd been holding in
his arms on the ground beside him; and after finding in the decision a paragraph condemning Junker Wenzel to two years in prison, overcome with emotion, and with his hands crossed over his breast, he knelt down before the Elector. Smiling up at the Arch-Chancellor, rising then and placing a hand on the Elector's lap, he assured him with heartfelt emotion that his greatest wish on earth had been fulfilled; he stepped toward the horses, looked them over and clapped a hand on their fat necks; and cheerfully declared to the Arch-Chancellor, stepping back to him: “I bequeath these horses to my sons Heinrich and Leopold!” Dismounting, the Arch-Chancellor, Sir Heinrich von Geusau, assured him, in the name of the Elector, that his last wishes would be faithfully followed, and urged him to distribute the other things gathered in the bundle as he saw fit. Hereupon, Kohlhaas called forth Herse's old mother whom he spied in the crowd, and handing her his last possessions, said: “Here, little mother, they're yours!” This included the sum of money for damages, which, he added, ought to help pay for her care and comfort in her old days. The Elector cried out: “Now then, Kohlhaas, the horse trader, you to whom justice has been done, prepare yourself to give your due to His Imperial Majesty, whose legal counselor stands here, and to pay the price for your cross-border disruptions of the peace!” Removing his hat and flinging it to the ground, Kohlhaas said he was ready, and, after once again picking up his children and pressing them to his breast, he handed them to the magistrate of Kohlhaasenbrück; and while the latter led them away, quietly weeping, he strode toward the execution block. No sooner had he unwound the kerchief from his neck and opened the pouch, than, with a fleeting glance at the circle of people that surrounded him, he spotted, in
close proximity, the gentleman with the blue and white feathers in his hat standing between two knights who half-hid him from view. Taking a sudden stride forward, in a manner alarming to the guards, Kohlhaas untied the tube from around his neck; he removed the slip of paper, unsealed it, and read it through; and with his steady gaze glued to the man with the blue and white feathers in his hat, the latter looking on hopefully, he stuffed the paper in his mouth and swallowed it. At that very moment the man with the blue-and-white-feathered hat trembled and collapsed unconscious. But as his stunned companions bent down to him and lifted him up off the ground, Kohlhaas leaned over the block, where his head fell to the executioner's axe. Here ends the story of Kohlhaas. Amidst a murmuring crowd, his body was laid in a coffin; and while they carried him for proper burial to the churchyard outside town, the Elector called for the sons of the deceased, and, turning to the Arch-Chancellor, proclaimed that they were to be raised in his page school at court and dubbed them knights. Soon thereafter, torn in body and soul, the Elector of Saxony returned to Dresden, where chronicles can be found that relate the rest of his story. But in Mecklenburg, in the previous century, there still lived a few happy and stouthearted descendants of Michael Kohlhaas.

To R. v. L
.
*

· · ·

If you want to know something and can't find it out through meditation, then I advise you, my dear, quick-witted friend, to talk it over with the next acquaintance you happen to meet. It doesn't have to be a sharp-witted thinker, nor do I mean to imply that you should
seek your interlocutor's counsel: not at all! But rather, to begin with, just tell it to him. I see you're looking puzzled, and promptly responding that you were taught in childhood not to speak of anything but matters you already fully grasp. But back then you probably directed your curiosity toward
others
; I want you to speak with the sensible purpose of enlightening
yourself
, and so, applied differently in different circumstances, both precepts may well be able to subsist side by side. 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
.
^†
Often I sit at my desk bent over my law books, and wracking my brain over some twisted disputation, attempt to find the optimal angle from which best to decide the matter. Then I generally stare directly into the light so as to try to illuminate at the brightest point possible the great effort with which my innermost being is gripped. Or else if faced with an algebra problem, I look, sometimes to no avail, for the first equation that expresses the given conditions, and whose subsequent solution can readily be established by simple calculation. But listen, my friend, if I speak of it with my sister, who is seated behind me and busy over her own business, I promptly find the solution that I might never have found in hours upon hours of brooding. It is not as if she literally spelled it out for me; for neither does she know the law books nor has she ever studied Euler or Kästner.
^‡
Nor is it as if she had led me with insightful questions to the salient point, although this may very well happen often
enough. But because I do have some kind of an obscure inkling that harbors a distant relation to that which I am seeking, if only I utter a first bold beginning, as the words tumble out, the mind will, of necessity, strain to find a fitting ending, to prod that muddled inkling into absolute clarity, such that, to my surprise, before I know it the process of cognition is complete. I mix in unarticulated sounds, draw out the conjunctions, add an apposition, even though it may not be necessary, and make use of other speech-stretching rhetorical tricks to gain time enough to hammer out my idea in the workshop of reason. Nothing, meanwhile, is more helpful than a gesture from my sister, as though she wished to interrupt; for my, in any case, already strained mind will only be all the more roused by this external attempt to wrest a train of thought on which it was set, and like a great general, when pressed by changing battlefield conditions, I too will find my intellectual capacity stoked to yet a higher degree of performance. This is how I understand of what use Molière's chambermaid might be to him; for if, as he maintains, he trusted her judgment as able to inform his own, this would bespeak a modesty I do not believe he possessed. But consider, rather, that, when speaking, we find a strange source of enthusiasm in the human face of the person standing before us; and from a look that signals comprehension of a half-formulated thought we may often draw the expression needed to find the other half. I believe that many a great orator at the moment he opened his mouth did not yet know what he was going to say. But the very conviction that he would derive the necessary inspiration from the situation and the resultant stimulation of his state of mind made him bold enough to trust chance to favor his send-off. I am reminded of Mirabeau's “thunderbolt” of inspiration
with which he made short shrift of the majordomo, who, following the conclusion of the king's last royal session on June 23, in which the monarch ordered the estates general to disburse, returning to find them still lingering in the council chamber, said majordomo inquired if the king's order had been received. “Yes,” replied Mirabeau, “we've received the king's order” – I am convinced that in uttering these ordinary opening words, he had not yet conceived of the verbal bayonet thrust with which he concluded: “Yes, indeed,” he repeated, “we heard him” – we can see that he does not yet rightly know what he means to say. “But what empowers you, Sir,” – he went on, and then, suddenly, a rush of heretofore inconceivable concepts rolls off his tongue – “to issue orders to us? We are the representatives of the nation.” – That was just what he needed! “The nation gives orders and receives none.” – and promptly, thereafter, he rose to the pinnacle of presumption: “And let me be perfectly clear, Sir” – and only now does he find the words to express the act of resistance to which his soul stands ready: “You can tell your king that we will not leave our seats, save at the point of a bayonet.” – Whereupon, well pleased with himself, he sank into his chair. – If we try to imagine the majordomo, we cannot picture him on this occasion as anything but altogether at a loss for words, intellectually bankrupt; this, according to a related law of physics, by which, when a body devoid of electrical charge comes in contact with an electrified body, a negative charge is stirred up in it. And just like in the electrified body, in which, due to a reciprocal effect, the electrical charge is subsequently increased, so too, in flooring his opponent did our speaker's spirit soar to the height of bravado. Perhaps such daring was sparked in the end result by the insolent twitch of the majordomo's upper lip,
or a duplicitous turn of the cuff, which in France can bring about the overthrow of the social order. We read that, as soon as the court official had departed, Mirabeau stood up and suggested: 1) that they immediately declare themselves a National Assembly, and 2) declare themselves invulnerable. For like a Kleistian jar,
^*
having emptied himself, he had once again become neutral, and retreating from his bravado, he suddenly gave vent to a fear of the kings' authority and a newfound caution. Here we have proof of a remarkable accord between phenomena of the physical and the moral world, which, were one to follow it through, would likewise manifest itself in secondary effects. But let me leave my simile and return to the matter at hand. Lafontaine likewise gives a remarkable example of the gradual completion of a thought from a pressed beginning in his fable “Animals Sick with the Plague,” in which the fox is compelled to offer the lion an apology without knowing what to say. You are surely familiar with this fable. The plague is ravaging the animal kingdom, the lion calls together the mighty ones to reveal to them that if heaven is to be appeased one of their number will have to be sacrificed. There are many sinners among them, the death of the greatest of these will have to save the others from their demise. He bids them therefore to candidly confess their offenses. The lion, for his part, admits, in the pangs of hunger, to having polished off a lamb or two; even dispatched the sheepdog if he came too close; and that, indeed,
at greedy moments, he had chanced to consume the shepherd. If no other creature perpetrated greater offenses, he was prepared to die. “Sire,” says the fox, wishing to deflect the storm from himself, “you are too magnanimous. Your noble zeal takes you too far. What is it to throttle a lamb? Or a dog, that ignoble beast? And
quant au berger
,”
*
he continues, for this is the thrust of his remark: “
on peut dire
,”
^†
– although he does not yet know what – “
qu'il méritoit tout mal
,”
^‡
he hazards; and herein finds himself in a fix; “
étant
”
^§
a poor choice of words, which, however, buys him time: “
de ces gens là
,”
^#
– and only now does he find the thought that saves his skin: “
qui sur les animaux se font un chimérique empire
.”
**
– And now he proves the donkey the blood-thirstiest of beasts (who eats up every green in sight) and so the most suitable sacrifice, whereupon all leap on him and tear him apart. – Such a discourse is indeed a true thinking-out-loud. The series of ideas and their designations proceed side by side, and the emotional connotations for the one and the other are congruent. Language is as such no shackle, no brake-shoe, as it were, on the wheel of the intellect, but rather a second, parallel wheel whirling on the same axle. It is something else altogether when the intellect is done thinking through a thought before bursting into speech. For then it is obliged to dwell on the mere expression of that thought, and far from stimulating the intellect, this has no other effect than
to let the steam out of excitement. Therefore, if an idea is expressed in a muddled manner it does not at all necessarily follow that the thinking that engendered it was muddled; but it could rather well be that those ideas expressed in the most twisted fashion were thought through most clearly. We often find in a gathering in which lively conversation fosters a fertile intellectual atmosphere that individuals who ordinarily hold back, because of their poor grasp of language, suddenly catch fire, and with a jerking gesture, hold forth, expounding some enigmatic gem. Indeed, once they've attracted everyone's attention, they seem to suggest with embarrassed gestures that they themselves don't rightly know what they wished to say. It is altogether likely that these ordinarily tongue-tied people thought up something very apt and very clear. But the sudden gearshift involved in the passage of their intellect from the state of thought to that of expression subdued the very burst of mental agitation needed both to grasp the idea and to bring it forth. In such cases, a facility with language is all the more indispensable, so that we may as quickly as possible follow up the idea that we thought, but could not immediately express, with a fitting formulation. And in any case, of two individuals able to think with equal clarity, the one who can speak more quickly than the other will have an advantage, since he can, as it were, send more reinforcements out into the battlefield of discourse. In the examination of lively and educated intellects, we can often see how essential a certain excitement of the mind is, if only to permit the re-evocation of ideas that we have already formulated, especially when, without any introduction, such individuals are made to answer questions like: What is the state? Or: What is property? Or questions of that sort. Had these young people
attended a gathering at which a discussion of state or property were already well underway, they would no doubt, through a comparison, abstraction and summation of these concepts, have no trouble finding the definitions. But when the mind has had absolutely no priming, we see our young scholars get stuck, and only a foolish examiner would conclude from this that they do not know the answer. For it is not we who know, but rather a certain state of mind in us that knows. Only ordinary intellects, young people who yesterday memorized the meaning of the political concept of
state
and will already have forgotten it tomorrow, will have the answer at hand. There is perhaps no worse occasion than a school examination to put one's best foot forward. And it is precisely because the experience is already so unpleasant and so injurious to our sensitivities, so irritating to the one being examined to be perennially on display, when such a learned horse trader tests us on our knowledge, be it five or six of us, so as to buy or dismiss us. It is so difficult to play a human intellect and tease out its true tone, for the heartstrings are so easily brought out of tune by unskilled hands that even the most seasoned judge of character, the most able practitioner of the midwifery of the mind, as Kant puts it, could, on account of his unfamiliarity with his young charge, do unwitting damage. What generally helps such young people, even the most ignorant, garner a good grade, by the way, is the fact that when the exam is conducted in public the examiners themselves are too ill at ease to allow for a fair assessment. For not only do they frequently feel the indecency of these entire proceedings – one would already be ashamed to demand that someone empty out his purse in front of us, let alone his soul! – but the examiners themselves must also undergo a perilous appraisal of their own
intellectual capacity, and they may often thank their lucky stars to emerge from the exam without having laid themselves bare in a manner more shameful perhaps than that suffered by the young lads from the university whom they just examined.