[sthlm keywords] - Kleist's Earthquake of Chile
SUSPENSION, COLLAPSE, COINCIDENCE
In this masterful novella, one of eight collected Erzählungen, poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) draws on two historical events: the 1647 earthquake in Santiago, Chile, and the earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal of 1755. Both of these natural disasters utterly shattered many of the fundamental beliefs of the Enlightenment. Kleist calls into question whether God and Divine Providence are good and whether the world order is rational. His story of violence and passion contradicts Rousseau’s assertion of the innate goodness of human nature, as well as his belief in revolution and the claim that all social barriers can be overcome. In powerful prose, Kleist describes mob behavior and demagoguery, radically criticizes institutionalized religion, demonstrates the conflict between individual morality versus society’s conventions, and plumbs the human capacity for greatness through self-sacrifice. Kleist’s narrative is characterized by extraordinary economy and vividness in his account of a catastrophe in which human beings are driven to the limits of their endurance by the violence of others or by nature.
Jeronimo can escape his prison cell because, in Kleists's story, an earthquake makes two buildings collapse into eachother. And so in a state of suspension, a new space is created that - metaphorically - creates the opportunity of a meeting to take place.
