Brev.

DEL 2.

Hence, can it be that you, the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, have in all sincerity, from the bottom of your heart, sung a hymn to the nefarious Russian clergy whom you rank immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy? Let us assume that you do not know that the latter had once been something, while the former had never been anything but a servant and slave of the secular powers; but do you really mean to say you do not know that our clergy is held in universal contempt by Russian society and the Russian people? About whom do the Russian people tell dirty stories? Of the priest, the priest’s wife, the priest’s daughter, and the priest’s farm hand. Does not the priest in Russia represent the embodiment of gluttony, avarice, servility, and shamelessness for all Russians? Do you mean to say that you do not know all this? Strange! According to you the Russian people is the most religious in the world. That is a lie! The basis of religiousness is pietism, reverence, fear of God. Whereas the Russian man utters the name of the Lord while scratching his ass. He says of the icon: If it works, pray to it; if it doesn’t, it’s good for covering pots.

Take a closer look and you will see that this is by nature a profoundly atheistic people. It still retains a good deal of superstition, but not a trace of religiousness. Superstition passes with the advances of civilization, but religiousness often keeps company with them too; we have a living example of this in France, where even today there are many sincere Catholics among enlightened and educated men, and where many people who have rejected Christianity still cling stubbornly to some sort of god. The Russian people is different; mystic exaltation is not in its nature; it has too much common sense, a too lucid and positive mind, and therein, perhaps, lies the vastness of its historic destinies in the future. Religiousness has not even taken root among the clergy in it, since a few isolated and exceptional personalities distinguished for such cold ascetic contemplation prove nothing. But the majority of our clergy has always been distinguished for their fat bellies, scholastic pedantry, and savage ignorance. It is a shame to accuse it of religious intolerance and fanaticism; instead it could be praised for exemplary indifference in matters of faith. Religiosity among us appeared only in the schismatic sects who formed such a contrast in spirit to the mass of the people and who were numerically so insignificant in comparison with it.

I shall not expatiate on your panegyric to the affectionate relations existing between the Russian people and its lords and masters. I shall say point-blank that panegyric has met sympathy nowhere and has lowered you even in the eyes of people who in other respects are very close to you in their views. As far as I am concerned, I leave it to your conscience to admire the divine beauty of the autocracy (it is both safe and profitable), but continue to admire it judiciously from your beautiful far-away: at close quarters it is not so attractive, and not so safe.... I would remark but this: when a European, especially a Catholic, is seized with religious ardor he becomes a denouncer of iniquitous authority, similar to the Hebrew prophets who denounced the iniquities of the great ones of the earth. We do quite the contrary: no sooner is a person (even a reputable person) afflicted with the malady that is known to psychiatrists as religiosa mania than he begins to burn more incense to the earthly god than to the heavenly one, and so overshoots the mark in doing so that the former would fain reward him for his slavish zeal did he not perceive that he would thereby be compromising himself in society’s eyes.... What a rogue our fellow the Russian is!

Another thing I remember you saying in your book, claiming it to be a great and incontrovertible truth, is that literacy is not merely useless but positively harmful to the common people. What can I say to this? May your Byzantine God forgive you that Byzantine thought, unless, in committing it to paper, you knew not what you were saying.... But perhaps you will say: “Assuming that I have erred and that all my ideas are false, but why should I be denied the right to err and why should people doubt the sincerity of my errors?” Because, I would say in reply, such a tendency has long ceased to be a novelty in Russia. Not so very long ago it was drained to the lees by Burachok and his fraternity. Of course, your book shows a good deal more intellect and talent (though neither of these elements is very richly represented) than their works; but then they have developed your common doctrine with greater energy and greater consistence; they have boldly reached its ultimate conclusions, have rendered all to the Byzantine God and left nothing for Satan; whereas you, wanting to light a taper to each of them, have fallen into contradiction, upholding, for example, Pushkin, literature, and the theater, all of which, in your opinion, if you were only conscientious enough to be consistent, can in no way serve the salvation of the soul but can do a lot toward its damnation.

Whose head could have digested the idea of Gogol’s identity with Burachok? You have placed yourself too high in the regard of the Russian public for it to be able to believe you sincere in such convictions. What seems natural in fools cannot seem so in a man of genius. Some people have been inclined to regard your book as the result of mental derangement verging on sheer madness. But they soon rejected such a supposition, for clearly that book was not written in a single day or week or month, but very likely in one, two, or three years; it shows coherence; through its careless exposition one glimpses premeditation, and the hymn to the powers-that-be nicely arranges the earthly affairs of the devout author. That is why a rumor has been current in St. Petersburg to the effect that you have written this book with the aim of securing a position as tutor to the son of the heir apparent. Before that, your letter to [Minister of Education] Uvarov became known in St. Petersburg, wherein you say that you are grieved to find that your works about Russia are misinterpreted; then you evince dissatisfaction with your previous works and declare that you will be pleased with your own works only when the Tsar is pleased with them. Now judge for yourself. Is it to be wondered at that your book has lowered you in the eyes of the public both as a writer and still more as a man?

As far as I can see, you do not properly understand the Russian public. Its character is determined by the condition of Russian society in which fresh forces are seething and struggling for expression; but weighed down by heavy oppression, and finding no outlet, they induce merely dejection, weariness, and apathy. Only literature, despite the Tatar censorship, shows signs of life and progressive movement. That is why the title of writer is held in such esteem among us; that is why literary success is easy among us even for a writer of little talent. The title of poet and writer has long since eclipsed the tinsel of epaulets and gaudy uniforms. And that especially explains why every so-called liberal tendency, however poor in talent, is rewarded by universal notice, and why the popularity of great talents that sincerely or insincerely give themselves to the service of orthodoxy, autocracy, and falsely understood nationality declines so quickly. A striking example is Pushkin who had merely to write two of three verses in a loyal strain and don the kammeriunker’s[courtier’s] livery to forfeit popular affection immediately! And you are greatly mistaken if you believe in all earnest that your book has come to grief not because of its bad trend, but because of the harsh truths alleged to have been expressed by you about all and sundry. Assuming you could think that of the writing fraternity, but then how do you account for the public? Did you speak the bitter truth any less harshly and with less honesty and talent in The Inspector General and Dead Souls? Indeed, the public was worked up to a furious pitch of anger against you, but The Inspector General and Dead Souls were not affected by it, whereas your latest book has been an utter and disgraceful failure. And here the public is right, for it looks upon Russian writers as its only leaders, defenders, and saviors against Russian autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality, and therefore, while always prepared to forgive a writer a bad book, will never forgive him a pernicious book. This shows how much fresh and healthy intuition, albeit still in embryo, is latent in our society, and this likewise proves that it has a future. If you love Russia, rejoice with me at the failure of your book!

DEL 3.

I would tell you, not without a certain feeling of self-satisfaction, that I believe I know the Russian public a little. Your book alarmed me by the possibility of its exercising a bad influence on the government and the censorship, but not on the public. When it was rumored in St. Petersburg that the government intended to publish your book in many thousands of copies and to sell it at an extremely low price, my friends grew despondent; but I told them then and there that the book, despite everything, would have no success and that it would soon be forgotten. In fact it is now better remembered for the articles that have been written about it than for the book itself. Yes, the Russian has a deep, though still undeveloped, instinct for truth.

Your conversion may conceivably have been sincere, but your idea of bringing it to the notice of the public was a most unhappy one. The days of naive piety have long since passed, even in our society. It already understands that it makes no difference where one prays and that the only people who seek Christ and Jerusalem are those who have never carried Him in their breasts or who have lost Him. He who is capable of suffering at the sight of other people’s sufferings and who is pained at the sight of other people’s oppression bears Christ within his bosom and has no need to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The humility you preach is, first of all, not novel, and, second, it savors on the one hand of prodigious pride, and on the other of the most shameful degradation of one’s human dignity. The idea of becoming a sort of abstract perfection, of rising above everyone else in humility, is the fruit of either pride or imbecility, and in either case leads inevitably to hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, and incomprehensibility. Moreover, in your book you have taken the liberty of expressing yourself with gross cynicism not only of other people (that would be merely impolite) but of yourself -- and that is vile, for if a man who strikes his neighbor on the cheek evokes indignation, the sight of a man striking himself on the cheek evokes contempt. No, you are not illuminated; you are simply beclouded; you have failed to grasp either the spirit or the form of Christianity of our time. Your book breathes not the true Christian teaching but the morbid fear of death, of the devil and of hell! And what language, what phrases! “Every man hath now become trash and a rag” -- do you really believe that in saying hath instead of has you are expressing yourself biblically? How eminently true it is that when a man gives himself wholly up to lies, intelligence and talent desert him. If this book did not bear your name, who would have thought that this turgid and squalid bombast was the work of the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls?

So far as I myself am concerned, I repeat: You are mistaken in taking my article to be an expression of vexation at your comment on me as one of your critics. Were this the only thing to make me angry I would have reacted with annoyance to it alone and would have dealt with all the rest with unruffled impartiality. But it is true that your criticism of your admirers is doubly bad. I understand the necessity of sometimes having to rap a silly man whose praises and ecstasies make the object of his worship look ridiculous, but even this is a painful necessity, since, humanly speaking, it is somehow awkward to reward even false affection with enmity. But you had in view men who, though not brilliantly clever, are not quite fools. These people, in their admiration of your works, have probably spouted out more rapturous nonsense than anything sensible you may have said about them; still, their enthusiastic attitude toward you springs from such a pure and noble source that you ought not to have betrayed them completely to your common enemies and accused them, into the bargain, of wanting to misinterpret your works. You did that, of course, while carried away by the main idea of your book and through indiscretion, while Viazemskii, that prince in aristocracy and lackey in literature, developed your idea and printed a denunciation against your admirers (and consequently against me most of all). He probably did this to show his gratitude to you for having exalted him, the poetaster, to the rank of great poet, if I remember rightly for his “pithless, dragging verse.” That is all very bad. That you were merely biding your time in order to give the admirers of your talent their due as well (after having given it with proud humility to your enemies) —I was not aware; I could not, and, I must confess, did not want to know it. It was your book that lay before me and not your intentions: I read and reread it a hundred times, but I found nothing in it that was not there, and what was there deeply offended and incensed my soul.

Were I to give free rein to my feelings this letter would probably grow into a voluminous notebook. I never thought of writing you on this subject, though I longed to do so and though you gave all and sundry printed permission to write you without ceremony with an eye to the truth alone. Were I in Russia I would not be able to do it, for the local “Shpekins” open other people’s letters not merely for their own pleasure but as a matter of official duty, for the sake of informing. This summer incipient consumption has driven me abroad, and Nekrasov has forwarded me your letter to Salzbrunn, which I am leaving today with Annenkov for Paris via Frankfort-on-Main. The unexpected receipt of your letter has enabled me to unburden my soul of what has accumulated there against you on account of your book. I cannot express myself by halves, I cannot prevaricate; it is not in my nature. Let you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my conclusions. I shall be the first to rejoice in it, but I shall not repent what I have told you. This is not a question of your or my personality; it concerns a matter that is of greater importance than myself or even you; it is a matter that concerns the truth, Russian society, Russia. And this is my last concluding word: If you have had the misfortune of disowning with proud humility your truly great works, you should now disown with sincere humility your last book, and atone for the dire sin of its publication by new creations that would be reminiscent of your old ones.

Det där är ur ett brev till kusinen Marie von Kleist daterat 10:e november 1811.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_von_Kleist

Under förhöret berättade värden att de två gästerna vid sin ankomst bett om papper och satt sig att skriva ett par timmar. Sen gick de ut och tog en promenad, verkade enligt ögonvittnen vara vid gott humör. Så verkar det också i brevet till systern. Där står att han är helt och fullkomligt lycklig och att han önskar att himlen skall vara god nog att ge henne en åtminstone hälften så lyckad död.

Skönt att han var lite lycklig på slutet iallafall. Verkar inte som att han hade något vidare flyt i livet. Förstår dock inte varför man väljer att skjuta sig just i hjärtat. Beror det på att ett skott i huvudet lika gärna kunde resulterat i invalidisering, eller på att de befann sig i artonhundratalets Tyskland?

Hur som helst är det dags att gå och lägga sig.

Med sin officersbakgrund visste han, att man bör skjuta sig genom munnen snett uppåtriktat och gjorde det också. Henriette sköt han dock genom hjärtat.

http://images.derstandard.at/t/12/20...9182911227.jpg

Rahel Varnhagen (1771 – 1833) född Levin skrev ett medlidsamt och inkännande brev, som jag inte orkar skriva av just nu efter vännen Kleists död.

Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777 - 1843), upphovsmannen till Undine som även tonsattes av Hoffman, var en smula mer soldatmässigt direkt:

Hintret' ich an die Gruft und ruft dreimal: Feuer! wie ein Kriegsmann!

Annars gör mig Kleists och Henriettes gemensamma sorti alltid något alldeles förbannat melankolisk. Hur de jagade varandra skrattande som barn och drack sitt morgonkaffe med utsikt över nejden vid ett värdshusets utställda bord och sedan...



Inget tyder på att han hade en aning om att nån skulle ställa ljus vid graven 200 år efteråt.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Kleistgrab.jpg

- Jaja, frukta intet, för att tala med en annan gammal preussare vars liv ändade tämligen på sniskan hans hurtiga toner till trots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asORY...feature=relmfu

Samma dag som Fjodor Dostojevskij skulle arkebuseras skrev han till sin bror Michail.


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