The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist Read Free Book Online Page A

introduction increases the story’s dramatic poignancy: the mother of the four young men, having heard no news of them for all these years, comes to Aachen to make inquiries and to her horror discovers them in the madhouse, oblivious to everything but their strange monotonous life of religious contemplation and repetitive cacophonous chanting. She is told nothing about the connection between their madness and the intended iconoclastic riot, which has long been forgotten by most of Aachen. This omission of the explanatory connection creates a dramatic suspense which in the long fourth paragraph Kleist proceeds to resolve, using the device of retrospective (‘flashback’) narration. The mother visits a further new character, the cloth-merchant Veit Gotthelf, a former friend of the brothers, and his account takes us back to the point at which the second paragraph ended. During the Mass on Corpus Christi Day six years before, he and the other would-be iconoclasts had been awaiting the signal to disrupt the service, which one of the brothers was to have given. But no signal was given: instead, the brothers had suddenly bowed their heads as the music began and sunk to their knees in an attitude of the utmost devotion. After the service their followers had dispersed in bewilderment; later, having vainly waited for the brothers, Veit Gotthelf and some friends went back to the convent church and there found them still kneeling in prayer. Then follows the vivid description of their strange and terrifying behaviour at the inn that night and their eventual consignmentto the asylum. But Veit Gotthelf’s narrative still leaves one link missing: what is the explanation of the immediate and astonishing effect of the liturgical music on the four young disbelievers? The process of detection is not yet complete, Kleist’s story is still circling around its own central mystery, namely the apparent celestial intervention. The disclosure of this is reserved deliberately until the penultimate fifth paragraph, in which the mother hears a second flashback account from the Abbess herself. This tells of the inexplicable double location of Sister Antonia, and of the official recognition of the whole occurrence as a miracle; the Abbess states in conclusion that she has only just received a letter from the Pope confirming this recognition. Having stopped just short of the central point three times we thus finally reach it and Kleist adds: ‘here this legends ends’. The double title
St Cecilia or The Power of Music
seems deliberately to leave open the question of whether the sudden conversion of the brothers is to be explained in terms of supernatural intervention or merely of psychopathology; the final narrative of the Abbess, with its evidence of Sister Antonia’s incapacitation, seems to decide in favour of the former hypothesis; on the other hand, by the designation ‘legend’, the narrator seems to disclaim responsibility for the truth of what the Abbess states. Thus an ambiguous balance is achieved. Again, the ‘miracle’ is described with characteristic paradox as ‘both terrible and glorious’ – as in
The Earthquake in Chile
, the divine action has a double aspect. The wrath of God or of St Cecilia smites the brothers into a state in some ways resembling demonic possession, though in other ways it is a state of contentment, and we are told that they eventually die a peaceful death after once more howling the
Gloria in excelsis
.
    One other detail seems relevant in this context. Ever since the day on which it saved the convent, the score of the anonymous Italian setting of the Mass has been kept in theAbbess’s room. The mother of the four converts looks at it when she is there, and is told that this was the music performed on the fateful morning; she then notices with a feeling of dread that it happens to be standing open at the
Gloria
. The sentence describing her reaction suggests