Taught by Success. Kleist's Prince of Homburg

Abstract

Over half a century ago Arturo Farinelli began his interpretation of Prinz Friedrich von Homburg with the words: Ein Verhiingnis ist es wohl, daB das letzte sonnenklare Drama Heinrich's von Kleist von den driingenden Schatten einer griibelnden Kritik verdunkelt wird. . . .I In subsequent years the green bay tree of speculative criticism has so flourished that it has become almost impossible to see the homely flowers (11. 1840-44) or the simple laurel (1. 48) of Kleist's last play through its luxuriating branches. Indeed, speculation has become so rampant-I dare not say: rank--that anyone who called Prinz Friedrich sonnenklar would now seem merely naive. And yet the play, shorter than Goethe's almost schematically neoclassical Iphigenie auf Tauris, is certainly not so obscure or so complex as obfuscating interpretations would often have it. It is to demonstrate that at least some aspects or elements of Kleist's drama are more clear and simple than has been claimed that the following observations are offered.