Reading Race in Kleist's "Die Verlobung in St. Domingo"

Abstract

Heinrich von Kleist's Die in St. Domingo is a unique literary work both within the context of early nineteenth-century literature and Kleist's own body of work. On the one hand it displays many thematic and stylistic elements which are typical of Kleist's other Erztihlungen, such as its dark, mysterious mood, thematization of violence and sexuality, and emphasis on language and (mis)communication. However, the unique central issue implicitly informing the historical subject and explicitly effecting the structure of actions within the piece is race. One glance at recent scholarship on Die in St. Domingo as represented in various scholarly journals clearly reveals a debate on the centrality and meaning of race for understanding this piece of Kleist's work.' Indeed the importance of this issue bears upon the greater context of Die in St. Domingo within the author's collected works, as well as raising implications for the assessment of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial texts in German literature. The secondary literature on this disputed novella2 can be split into two main categories, those that attempt to view it within the context of Kleist's other stories, establishing structural and stylistic similarities, and those which deal specifically with the question of race that is so prominent in the piece. Authors within the first category tend to investigate some overarching theme or characteristic in the works of Kleist, which they feel is typical or essential to understanding his works. Typically, such studies are conducted in lengthier analyses of multiple works from Kleist in the same genre. Although these approaches explicate important facets of Kleist's writing style and narrative techniques, they ignore or reduce the centrality of race as a constitutive element of Die in St. Domingo.3 For example, many critics view Kleist's works within the complex of language as communicative means and the Verlobung has been characterized as exemplary because of the recurring motif of miscommunication in the ruses and betrayals. 4 Others have employed the framework of the Kant-Krise to characterize the novella's sudden plot reversals as indicative of an author who posits the limits of knowledge as a source of tragic developments.5 On a completely different track, the novella has also been viewed as only apparently concerned with race or class distinctions,