He committed suicide at 34, but Heinrich von Kleist was no nihilist. His work, though, is riven with flickering hope and mountainous sorrow
Dan Fredenburgh in Heinrich von Kleist's play The Prince of Homburg. Photograph: John Haynes/RSC
In one of the last notes he wrote before shooting himself in 1811, Heinrich von Kleist commented that "the world is a strange set-up". This notion, as terrible as it is mundane, is conveyed repeatedly in the eight tales that represent his slim but influential contribution to the development of the short story.
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