Victor A. Finogenov, Junior Researcher of the Department of Literary Studies, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nakhimovsky Avenue, 51/21, 117418, Moscow, Russia.
The article explores ethical issues related to the problem of executions and suicide in Kleist’s works. The theme of punishment is found everywhere in his work, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is always a matter of life and death. The sentence may be heavenly; in other cases it is pronounced by the state power; finally, the individual executes himself. Most often, Kleist uses the second option: it is the judicial twists and turns that form the plot basis of “The Broken Jug”; in “The Prince of Homburg”, “The Duel”, “The Earthquake in Chile”, “The Foundling”, and “Michael Kohlhaas”, the main characters either end their lives on the scaffold or are on the verge of execution; the theme of many of Kleist’s anecdotes is built around the death sentence. The comparison of the motives of execution and suicide allows us to correlate the social and individual ethics in Kleist’s work, since both are based on the concept of the physical destruction of the human body.
Heinrich von Kleist; execution; suicide; ethics.
10.05.2025
10.06.2025
Finogenov, V.A. “The Motif of Execution in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 3(69), 2025, pp. 119–137. (In Russ.)
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