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Louis F. Peck,
An Adaption of Kleist’s „Die Familie Schroffenstein“,
in: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 44
(Januar 1945), 9-11
Eine frühe Adaption von Kleists „Die Familie Schroffenstein“
M. G. LEWIS’S Romantic Tales (1808)\1\ contains a prose narrative in twelve chapters entitled
Mistrust, or Blanche and Osbright; a Feudal Romance.
In his preface the author states, not very helpfully, that
it is „of German origin“ and that „the idea
of ‚Mistrust‘ was suggested by a Tragedy, from which
I have borrowed a great part of the plot, and one of the most
striking scenes: I have also occasionally inserted in my Narrative
such speeches as pleased me.“\2\
Lewis, who was habitually – even ostentatiously –
careless in identifying his sources, was in this case probably
ignorant of the authorship of the tragedy to which he referred,
if, as seems likely, he was acquainted with only the anonymous
first edition. When he wrote his preface for Romantic Tales,
moreover, he may even have forgotten the title of the German
work. It was his practice, when translating an rewriting another’s
story, to change the title of the original and to rename the
characters, and when he published his own version, often years
later, to recall vaguely that it was „from the German.“
Wide and careless reading also increased the difficulty of
making specific acknowledgments, as the following complacent
footnote from one of his dramas suggests: „I suspect,
that somewhere or other there exists a scene in some degree
resembling this interview between Rugantino and the conspirators;
but wheter I read it in english or french, spanish or german,
I have not the most distant recollection.“\3\
 Whether
in the present instance Lewis had or had not forgotten, students
of German-English literary relationships of the Romantic period
may wish to note that his source for Mistrust was Heinrich
von Kleist’s five-act tragedy Die Familie Schroffenstein,
published anonymously in Bern, 1803.\4\
A glance at Lewis’s version may interest Kleistians curious
to know the treatment accorded this drama in the hands of
a „Gothic“ romancer.
Die
Familie Schroffenstein portrays a disastrous feud, kept
alive by jealousy and false suspicions, between the houses
of Rossitz and Warwand. Whatever philosophy Kleist meant to
express, Lewis considered the story, as his title Mistrust
suggests, a warning against hastily formed, uncharitable suspicions.
His statement concerning his source by no means exaggerates
the extent of his borrowing. He availed himself of Kleist’s
principal characters, though he changed all names: thus Rupert
of Rossitz and Silvester of Warwand become respectively Rudiger
of Frankheim and Gustavus of Orrenberg; Kleist’s lovers,
Ottokar and Agnes, are renamed Blanche and Osbright; and Jeronimus
becomes Ottokar, a name presumably suggested by Kleist’s
hero. The blind and aged Silvius of Warwand, who plays no
essential part in Die Familie Schroffenstein, Lewis
omitted, though some of this character’s speeches are
retained. When Lewis admitted borrowing „one of the most
striking scenes,“ the reader can only wonder which, of
a generous number of possibilities, he had in mind. The first
seven chapters <10:> of Mistrust reproduce rather
closely story in Acts I-III of the drama and several conversations
are translated or paraphrased. At the same time, he freely
added, omitted, and rearranged details. Kleist’s hero,
for instance, swears vengeance in the opening scene, and later
discovers that the girl he loves is the daughter of his hereditary
enemy. Lewis’s Osbright, on the other hand, is merely
a spectator at the oath-taking scene; he had, we later learn,
once rescued the heroine from banditti and already knows her
name when the story begins. From Act IV Lewis took practically
nothing except the cottage scene (Scene 3), in which
Ottokar (Lewis’s Osbright) finds the country girl Barnabe
chanting spells and stirring the witch broth and learns from
her the true circumstances of his brother’s death. To
this scene Lewis devoted Chapter VIII, omitting entirely the
episode of the hero’s imprisonment and melodramatic escape.
Act
V of Die Familie Schroffenstein contains but one scene,
the cave in which Ottokar an Agnes meet. Aware theat his father
Rupert has determined to kill Agnes, Ottokar changes costumes
with her and causes her temporarily to withdraw. Rupert enters,
mistakes Ottokar for Agnes, and kills his own son. After Rupert’s
departure and Agnes’s return, Silvester, her father,
arrives, and equally misled by the change of costumes, stabs
to death his daughter Agnes. Then, drawn by that strange magnetism
so often observed in final scenes, all the principal characters
find their way to the cave, where a sorrowful reconciliation
is effected.
Lewis
rejected almost entirely this fifth act. Perhaps he considered
it too abrupt an ending, for he concludes Mistrust
with an eloborate cescendo of thrills sustained through four
chapters. His hero, Osbright, having resolved to elope with
Blanche or die in a crusade, summons her to the cave. She
joins him after escaping by the help of disguise from the
castle of Orrenberg, where her parents had confined her. Barbara
(Kleist’s Barnabe), having been captured and released
by Rudiger’s men, overhears their plans and warns the
lovers of approaching danger. Blanche and Osbright thereupon
exchange costumes, and the former walks safely by Rudiger,
only to be captured by her father Gustavus, who, supposing
her Osbright, imprisons her at Orrenberg. Gustavus next overcomes
Rudiger, but, too noble for revenge, determines to conquer
his enemy by generosity. In the hall of Orrenberg he proffers
Rudiger friendship and proposes the union of the two houses
by the marriage of Blanche and Osbright. When the supposed
Osbright is led forth and proves to be Blanche, Rudiger rushes
in horror from the hall. Though the matter is by no means
clear, it seems that Rudiger has somehow arranged for the
assassination of the supposed Agnes. As the villain now hastens
to the cave to present this deed, the modern reader experiences
genuine fear that he will arrive just in time. But the fear
is illfounded – whatever weaknesses characterized
Gothic fiction, the incongruously happy ending was not one
of them. Rudiger not only finds his son assassinated, but
also kills himself, and in a melancholy summary the other
characters are variously consigned to convent, pilgrimage,
and grave.
In
most cases Lewis adopted Kleist’s characters ready-made,
merely exaggerating their leading traits. Upon two, however –
Rupert of Schroffenstein and his natural son Johann –
he bestowed particular attention. The former, as presented
by Kleist, is a man driven to commit murder by an inordinate
passion for vengeance, yet who suffers bewilderment and horror
when the deed is done. Following this lead, Lewis devoted
several pages to the analysis of Rudiger’s motives. When
this charakter takes an active part <11:> in the narrative,
however, he loses all semblance of humanity and leaps up before
us like a ludicrous nightmare. Kleist’s Rupert, solemnly
swearing vengeance in the presence of his supposedly murdered
child, is tame compared with Lewis’s Rudiger, who, in
a paroxysm of grief and rage plunges into the grave, rips
open the coffin, and holds the dead child aloft. His appearance,
exhibiting a peculiar vividness and distortion which Lewis
could achieve, is no less startling than his actions:
With involuntary horror the friars started back, and them
as if changed to stone by a Gorgon’s head, they remained
gazing upon the dreadful countenance, which presented itself
before them. Count Rudiger’s stature was colossal; the
grave in which he stood, scarcely rose above his knees. His
eyes blazed; his mouth foamed; his coal-black hair stood erect,
in which he twisted his hands, and tearing out whole handfulls
by the roots, he strewed them on the coffin, which stood beside
his feet.\5\
In view of the predilection of Gothic fiction for the theme
of insanity, Lewis’s preoccupation with Kleist’s
Johann ist not surprising. In the German work this youth,
frustrated in his love for Agnes, first desires to die in
a duel with his half-brother, then losing his mind, attempts
to force Agnes to kill him. Lewis leads up to Eugene’s
(Johann’s) insanity, which in the drama is unconvincingly
sudden, by supplying a life history. Eugene’s mother,
it appears, broke conventual vows to elope with the already
married Rudiger but, overcome by remorse, disappeared after
the birth of the child. Ten years later Eugene, already strange
and melancholy, was shocked by the return of his unknown mother,
who at the point of death told him the secret of his parentage.
This episode and the death of his younger half-brother prepared
the way for his ultimate insanity.
Although
Lewis showed ingenuity in expanding Kleist’s story and
took advantage of the greater freedom allowed by narrative
form to motivate the dramatist’s stormy characters, his
adaption of Die Familie Schroffenstein is not a memorable
production. It is nevertheless an interesting specimen of
German Romantic literature reworked for the Gothic market
in England.
LOUIS
F. PECK
University of
Tennessee
\1\ Four vols., London.
Mistrust appears in Vol. 1.
\2\ Romantic
Tales, I, viii-ix.
\3\ Rugantino, or
The Bravo of Venice, New York, D. Longworth, 1810,
p. 17. Rugantino was first published in London,
1805.
\4\ These details of
publication I take from John C. Blankenagel, The Dramas
of Heinrich von Kleist: A Biographical and Critical Study,
Chapel Hill, 1931, p. 54. Professor Blankenagel’s
summary of Die Familie Schroffenstein first led me
to compare Kleist’s drama with Lewis’s story.
\5\ Romantic Tales,
I, 20-21.
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