The Kleist Variations-Three Plays

mhe 1!leist )Jariations

Heinrich von Kleist, by Maurice Sendak

\1rhe 1Rleist l'ariations Three Plays Based on plays by Heinrich von Kleist

THIRD EDITION

Eric Bentley

Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois

Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois 60208-4170 Copyright © 1982, 1990, and 2005 by Eric Bentley. Published 2005 by Northwestern University Press. First published 1982 by Oracle Press and then 1990 by Southern Illinois University Press. All rights reserved. Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the copyright union, is subject to a royalty. All rights, including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign language, are strictly reserved. All inquiries regarding performance rights for these plays should be addressed to Jack Tantleff, William Morris Agency, 1325 Sixth Ave., New York, NY 10019. Third edition Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 0-8101-2115-8 Front cover: Bronze sculpture of St. Michael and the Devil, by Jacob Epstein, found on the south side of Coventry Cathedral. Photograph used by kind permission of the Chapter of Coventry Cathedral. Frontispiece: Heinrich von Kleist, courtesy of Maurice Sendak. This portrait shows Kleist modernized for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, much like the Kleist of Eric Bentley's variations. page 211: Portrait of Eric Bentley courtesy of Lamont O'Neal

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available from the Library of Congress. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. '00

Not everyone can or will do that: give his specific fears and desires a chance to be of universal significance. - Robert Coles

Contents Worship: Its Wonder and Guises

ix

Concord Preface: In the Matter of Heinrich von Kleist The Play 10

The Fall of the Amazons Preface: On Hating the Other Sex The Play 73

66

Wannsee Preface: On Hoping Against Hope The Play 135

128

Afterword: In the Matter of Eric Bentley

200

2

Worship: Its Wonder and Guises In an age in which uncertainty has become one of the sure things we can depend upon, and in which cult belief has grown as a counter for our tattered souls, what is it that you can say you believe in? A reply by Eric Bentley

It is not the problem of Uan age" but a problem for all time, because, as Samuel Butler put it, ulife is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises." A corollary of this is that one should not draw excessive conclusions, as do not only the ucults" your questionnaire cites but most of the religious outlooks and all of the quasireligious political outlooks: religion and quasi-religious politics will settle for nothing less than paradise, whether in heaven or on earth. However, retreats from millennialism to pure skepticism or conservatism will not avail us either. As Maimonides said, to repudiate the Messianic idea altogether is to repudiate the whole Torah . ... What is it I can say UI believe in" ~ Not, certainly, that the Kingdom of God is at hand. But still it must be for God one waits, not for Godot. Is this theological language something I can say UI believe in" ~ No; not in a literal sense. But I can find no other language to express, however figuratively, what I truly believe. No other language - except the even more figurative language of my plays. -From Confrontation magazine, Summer, 1979

~oncord A Comedy Based on The Broken Tug

Preface: In the Matter of Heinrich von Kleist (The interviewer Jerome Clegg investigates Eric Bentley's tamperings with the masterpieces of Heinrich von Kleist.) CLEGG: Three of them was it - The Broken Jug, Penthesilea, and Das Kiitchen von Heilbronn~ Why just those three? BENTLEY: CLEGG:

I lil<ed them. I stilllil<e them. Das Kiitchen von Heilbronn: what commended it to

you? That there's nothing like it in English. CLEGG: Except, now, your play Wannsee~ BENTLEY: Which is not like it. Which is merely a by-product of my own infatuation with it, an excuse for l<eeping the German text close company. Intimacy I enjoy! BENTLEY:

CLEGG: If you didn't hope to create the special quality of Das Kiitchen in English, what did you hope to do? BENTLEY: Draw on some of the magic of that play for a few conjuring tricks of my own. CLEGG: Plagiarism? "Based on" equals "stolen from"? BENTLEY: But in an anarchistic utopia where there is no distinction between stolen and borrowed! I take it where I find it, says Moliere. Shakespeare does not even bother to tell anyone that Measure for Measure is "based on" another play. CLEGG: You are Shakespeare? BENTLEY: Who said works of art owe more to other works of art than to life? CLEGG: Brecht? BENTLEY: E.H. Gombrich. But Brecht was listening. 'Anyone can be creative," he once told me, "what tal<es talent is re-writing someone else." CLEGG: And whether it tal<es talent or not, you propose to do it? Rather than merely translate-reproduce-someone else? BENTLEY: Merely? That is sometimes the hardest thing of all. I

2

Concord thinl< I know German, but I don't thinl{ I can "merely" translate, reproduce, Das Katchen von Heilbronn: if "reproduce" means, as surely it should, "reproduce all its effects" - all the effects it has upon a reader of the German. CLEGG: Then why didn't you just wall< away? BENTLEY: I did. But it wall<ed with me. The characters, the story, lingered in my mind. And story is all- did someone say that? CLEGG: You just did. BENTLEY:

But stories must be re-told-with subtractions and

additions. CLEGG: Wannsee, may I conclude, was not intended to be Das Katchen minus something, or not only minus something, but definitely plus something? Isn't that rather arrogant? BENTLEY: Arrogant or not, am I entitled to answer your question or to write my play? Should one rob Kleist of much of his poetry, and not mal<e him a present of anything in return-just to show you one is not arrogant? CLEGG: You made him a present of much Anglo-Saxon humor. I laughed. BENTLEY: Too much? Too little? Or shouldn't you have laughed at all? CLEGG: Ar you imitating Tom Stoppard? BENTLEY: No. CLEGG: Are you sure? BENTLEY: Yes. CLEGG: OK. Is your adaptation problemBENTLEY: My what? CLEGG: Solved merely by replacing poetry with comedy? BENTLEY: No. CLEGG: Then? BENTLEY: In Wannsee, I wanted to create a single world in which both romantic poetry and extravagant, even coarse, comedy had a part. CLEGG: You also wanted to put Heinrich von Kleist on stage. BENTLEY: His ghost, anyway. CLEGG: Das Katchen is imbued with Christian optimism; yet its author committed suicide.

3

The Kleist Variations I wanted to dramatize just that contradiction.

BENTLEY: CLEGG:

Why? Why not?

BENTLEY: CLEGG:

To show Kleist's inconsistency? Is that interesting?

BENTLEY: CLEGG:

You tell me.

BENTLEY: What is ... contrary to the appearances ... is potentially interesting. CLEGG: To all appearances, Kleist was a pessimist. And pessimists try to tall< themselves into optimism.

Poor Kleist tall<ed himself into suicide till it was too late to tall