The story goes that Haiti saved the United States. Haitians tell it with pride, and rightly so: by resisting Napoleon’s forces in Saint-Domingue, they disrupted his ambitions in the Americas, forcing the sale of Louisiana and weakening the French imperial hold. Bob Corbett, a scholar of Haitian history, writes that Haiti was not a peripheral battleground but the centrepiece of Napoleon’s colonial empire, “the plum,” he calls it. From this reversal in scale, the story begins.
This is the setting for Kleist’s Betrothal in San Domingo: the Haitian revolution as catastrophe and crucible. The narrative is as taut as anything he wrote. Its violence is immediate, its betrayals unrelenting. A Romantic tragedy, where Romanticism flinches under historical pressure. The heroine misreads an act of protection; the hero, in turn, misreads her. The sequence of mistrust is too quick to be corrected. What follows is ruin, followed by Kleist’s faint suggestion of redemption, a gesture not of hope, but exhaustion.
I came to the story through a footnote in conversation, and stayed because the intensity left no exit. Its sister tale, The Chilean Earthquake, moves similarly: colonial violence, natural disaster, and the false consolations of narrative closure. But Betrothal holds longer in the mind.
Kleist took a bit of a bashing on Tony’s post yesterday, so I’m really glad someone else is a fan. I’ve been wondering what other Kleistian something I should read this week. I’ve just found it.
I find that Kleist is one of those writers that polarises readers. Tony is not the first reader to find Michael Kohlhaas entertaining but problematic, particularly that gypsy scene that is referenced in the comments to your post on the story.
I enjoy Kleist’s passion for the extremes of emotion and violence. He is not subtle but always finds a way to pull his stories back from becoming nihilistic. In Michael Kohlhaas he appears to be pushing to the edge what happens when a man, both moral and on the edge of insanity, decides they are the source of laws/rules.
You wrote very perceptively the other day about Kleist being driven mad by Kant; I think there is a lot of truth in that and that he explores those issues of moral philosophy in his stories.
Well, my post today is a little more positive (although, after the ‘Michael Kohlhaas’ review, the only way really was up!). I’m sure that I’ll read the second volume of ‘Erzählungen’ at some point – perhaps it’s a shame that I chose the story I did as my introduction to Kleist…
Though I’ve read The Marquise of O several times, it is my least favourite of Kleist’s shorter stories. The Earthquake in Chile is perhaps my favourite. I think he conveys tension well.
Haiti was also the first black Republic and did indeed deafeat Napoleon’s army which you wouldn’t find in any French history book, that’s for sure.
This isn’t my favourite of his story but it has all the typical “ingredients” so to speak.
None of which I knew before reading the back-story to Betrothal, all very fascinating. I enjoyed it very much, though not my favourite.
Hmm, I much preferred ‘Die Marquise von O…’ – I suppose that’s why we need to read what other people think 🙂
This story and Michael Kohlhaas are absolute masterpieces, and everything else Kleist did is amazing. One of my favorites. He defies much more comment beyond that; I’m just wildly enthusiastic.
Do you know the story of his suicide? He found a woman who was already dying, left his wife for her, then arranged a joint suicide pact with the other woman, leaving a suicide note telling his wife he would love her forever.
One of my favourites too.
Kleist was married? I don’t think so, but engaged at one point. He broke that engagement before meeting Henriette Vogel and shooting her and himself.