Zusammenfassung
Eine Analyse der Propositionsstruktur des Werks zeigt, wie Kleists Prosasyntax einen Versuch darstellt, eine sprachliche Erzählwelt aufgrund von Leserwahrnehmungen aufzubauen. Hauptsätze, Zeit-, Beschreibungs- und Kommentarnebensätze bilden eine Werkstruktur, die nicht nur einen Ereignisverlauf, sondern auch dessen implizite Bewertung dem Leser vermittelt.
Abstract
An analysis of the propositional structure of the work demonstrates that Kleist’s prose syntax represents an attempt to build a narrated world on the basis of categories of reader perception. Main, time, description, and commentary clauses form a narrative which is constructed to convey not only a series of events, but also an inherent evaluation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Literature
Although not explicitly relying on the langue/parole distinction as made by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (1966), the linguistics of the Prague School evaluate poetic language in this fashion, with respect to the linguistic norm of the available language. See, for example, Jan Mukařovský, “Standard Language and Poetic Language,” in A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style, ed. & trans. Paul Garvin (1964), pp. 17–30.
The very existence of a “Kant crisis” in Kleist’s thought is often placed in doubt. As Eberhard Siebert states in the exhibition catalogue Heinrich von Kleist: Zum Gedenken an seinen 200. Geburtstag, sponsored by the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz and the Heinrich-von-Kleist-Gesellschaft: “Kleists sogenannte Kantkrise vom Frühjahr 1801 wurde und wird in der Forschung überaus unterschiedlich beurteilt. Ernst Cassirer vermutete den Anstoß dazu überhaupt nicht bei Kant, sondern in Fichtes Schrift ‘Die Bestimmung des Menschen ‘(Anm.: dieser Aufsatz heißt “Heinrich von Kleist und die Kantische Philosophie,” 1919). Auch die marxistische Literaturwissenschaft sucht den Anlaß nicht bei Kant … als ‘eine durch die Preußenerfahrung bedingte Lebenskrise‘” (p. 28). The discussion continues into the present: see, for example, Karl Otto Conrady, “Das Moralische in Kleists Erzählungen” (in Wege der Forschung), who states “Die sogenannte Kantkrise kann schwerlich überschätzt werden” (p. 714); Joachim Maass, Kleist: Die Geschichte seines Lebens (1977), who states that Kleist’s security “in nichts aufgelöst hatte” (p. 49)
and Klaus Birkenhauer, Kleist (1977), who states that the crisis is overrated, “weil die Kleistforschung diesem Lebensabschnitt einen viel zu hochtrabenden Namen zu geben pflegt” (p. 109).
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, orig. 1781, 2nd ed. 1787. In this context, see particularly the derivations included in the “Transcendental Analytic,” First Division, Book I, Chapter II.
A propositional analysis as posited here represents a synthesis of elements of linguistic text analysis and text theory. At present, the most complete exposition of the factors relevant to a semantically-adequate linguistic approach to text interpretation is provided in tagmemics, particularly as represented in R. E. Longacre, An Anatomy of Speech Notions (1976). The underlying premise of a tagmemically-based text or discourse analysis is that of whole meaning to be communicated, a meaning which forces the existence of a functional set of entailed semantic requirements (the components of the whole meaning of a particular discourse) and their various possible syntactical realizations. Thus traditional grammatical categories are re-categorized within a nexus of grammatical/logical relationships established within the parameters of a particular discourse. In an analysis of prose such as Kleist’s, a full tagmemic analysis is not as informative as the modification posited here, a propositional analysis, due to the extreme re-norming of linguistic conventions present in these works and to his interest in a new chanelling of linguistic data to the reader.
For the central tenets of New Criticism, see W. K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon (1954); for a linguistic approach to literature
Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art (1973); for a semiotic/structuralist discussion
Roland Barthes, S/Z (1974). Perhaps the classic discussion of “Das Bettelweib von Locarno” in terms of the implications of its surface prose style is that by
Emil Staiger, “Zum Problem des dramatischen Stils,” in Meisterwerke deutscher Sprache aus dem 19. Jahrhundert (1963), and reprinted in Wege der Forschung, Band CLXVII: Heinrich von Kleist, ed. Walter Müller-Seidel (1967).
The propositional breakdown presented here is developed with reference to the text of “Das Bettelweib von Locarno” as included in Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Sembdner, 2nd ed. (1961).
There is psycholinguistic evidence for the likelihood of a reader overlooking tense differentiations in favor of the propositional or semantic content of the verbs involved. June K. Phillips, in “Second Language Reading: Teaching Decoding Skills,” Foreign Language Annals, 8, No. 2 (1975), reports on students reading strategies employed with respect to an unknown text. Their recall was fixed primarily on nouns; verbs were recalled not according to their specific time values, but only according to their informational value: “tenses were constantly merged to the present. Few students read the tense markers in verb forms and only retreived lexical information from them … Often the sentence itself contains no improbable or impossible meaning when the wrong tense is assigned, allowing the reader to proceed without further consideration or revision” (p. 230).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Arens, K.M. Kleist’s “Bettelweib von Locarno”: A Propositional Analysis. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 57, 450–468 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03375962
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03375962