Kleist oder die Sabotage des Erhabenen

Sbarra, Stefania

doi:10.3917/eger.265.0043

In Heinrich von Kleist’s letters to Wilhelmine von Zenge until the so called Kant- crisis, writing is motivated by a pedagogic intention, which is characterized by a will of education based on a hopeful faith in the perfectibility of man. Here we assume that in his Œuvre the reader’s education, in spite of the erosion of those contents, still plays an important role in terms of motivation : as exercise for the reader, as a kind of stress test for modern consciousness which faces the loss of familiar paradigms without already having new ones for the interpretation of the world. This will be shown in particular in the discourse about “Bildung” and sublimity.

In Heinrich von Kleist's letters to Wilhelmine von Zenge until the so called Kant-crisis, writing is motivated by a pedagogic intention, which is characterized by a will of education based on a hopeful faith in the perfectibility of man. Here we assume that in his Œuvre the reader's education, in spite of the erosion of those contents, still plays an important role in terms of motivation : as exercise for the reader, as a kind of stress test for modern consciousness which faces the loss of familiar paradigms without already having new ones for the interpretation of the world. This will be shown in particular in the discourse about "Bildung" and sublimity.