Providence as history in Kleist's prose (On a path to the realistic novella)

Abstract

Heinrich von Kleist's novellas are characterized by a caleidoscopic alternation of the lands and the eras, where and when over and over again take place natural and (or) historical disasters. The heroes of these novellas, who find themselves in the sphere of such disasters, intuitively perceive providential intervention in their life and follow it in their behavior. In the novella “Michael Kohlhaas” (1808/1810) the land and the folk show themselves as the epically unified subject of national history, and the basis of the historical disasters are the irreversible social transformations. As for Providence, which shows itself as a chain of incidents, it becomes the symbolic sign of these transformations. This makes the narrator a hypostasis of the author's figure. Unlike the narrator, this “author” can not only discern providential intervention in the described events but also can understand its historical underpinnings and dialectic. Together, the author, the narrator and “providential” history as their common subject are clearing the path to the realistic novella of the coming 19th century, when the social logic of life and of history was freed from the “providential” shell.