Amphitryon (Kleist)

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Data
Title: Amphitryon
Genus: tragicomedy
Original language: German
Author: Heinrich von Kleist
Literary source: Amphitryon (Molière)
Publishing year: 1807
Premiere: 1899
Place of premiere: New theater in Berlin
people

Amphitryon is a tragic comedy in three acts by Heinrich von Kleist , which was written in Dresden in the summer of 1803 . The first print appeared in Dresden in 1807. The world premiere took place in 1899 at the New Theater in Berlin .

action

Alkmene awaits the return of her husband Amphitryon from the war against the Athenians. Instead, however, Jupiter appears to her in the form of her husband and the two spend a night of love together. When the real Amphitryon returns to Thebes the next morning and Alkmene tells him about the night they supposedly lived through together, he feels betrayed by his wife. Jupiter reappears to Alkmene in the form of her husband and explains to her that the god of thunder himself visited her because she had awakened his vengeance through idolatry. When the two Amphitryon figures face each other at the end, both the generals and Alcmene consider the Jupiter Amphitryon to be the real one. Jupiter clears up the misunderstanding and grants Amphitryon a wish as a reparation. Amphitryon wants a son fathered by Jupiter with Alcmene, whereupon Jupiter prophesies the birth of Hercules , for which Amphitryon thanks the father of gods. As a mirror image of this, there is a comical level on which Mercury assumes the form of Sosias, but, unlike Jupiter, fails to seduce his wife Charis.

Work analysis

Origin background

Initially, Kleist had only planned a German translation of Molière 's play of the same name . Especially in the final part, however, he moved further and further away from the French original and gave the pure social comedy Molières a deeper meaning. Kleist's piece still bears the subtitle “a comedy after Molière”.

Generic question

Amphitryon - the one who exists twice - offers through its bivalence experience areas for comedy and tragedy . In Kleist's Amphitryon, the necessary comic is only superficially superficially applied to the actual tragic plot. The story could also be told without the comic. The final solution to the conflict in which all the characters in Kleist's Amphitryon are stuck is the decisive sign: Kleist's Amphitryon is a comedy with tragic moments.

Content aspects

Thematic focus

"Amphitryon"; the term comes from the Greek and already in the title indicates the characteristic of the piece that creates the action. The prefix "Amphi-" means something like "on both sides" or "double". Amphitryon is represented “twice” in the play, because Jupiter goes to the people in the form of the Theban general, since anyone would die if he saw his true form, and on the first night he begets Hercules. Through this act, Jupiter thrusts Alcmene, who was impregnated by him, and her husband Amphitryon into a tragic and seemingly unsolvable conflict, which triggers the problem of identity and leads to the fallibility of feelings. Amphitryon is about the knowledge of the ego, the justification and questioning of the true self-certainty and the overcoming of the identity crisis. So the play is not just a social comedy like Molière's .

place and time

The play takes place in the mythological Thebes in a fabulous prehistory.

material

The origin of the Amphitryon material is the legend of the conception and birth of the half-brothers Heracles and Iphicles . There is a long chain of dramatic arrangements such as: B. by Plautus and Molière . Today there are over 50 different works that deal with this subject. Although Kleist resorted to a historical work in his work, he kept the original name of the piece, as Molière himself had done. Kleist did not take over everything his predecessors submitted, but adapted the material to the new, German social context. He reworked many comical elements from Molière's original and removed some, but also expanded some comical aspects.

Formal aspects

Kleist pays attention to the three units (unity of place, time and action) and writes his verse drama in blank verse (inconsistent iambic five-pointer ).

swell

In addition to Molières Amphitryon (1668), which he used in the Paris edition of 1734, and JD Falks Amphitruon ( Halle 1804), Kleist also seems to have known Rotrous Les Sosies (1636).

Text transmission

First printing: Heinrich von Kleist's Amphitryon, a comedy based on Molière. Edited by Adam H. Müller . Dresden, in the Arnoldische Buchhandlung undated (May 1807). ( Digitized version and full text in the German Text Archive ) Then title edition : New cheaper edition. Dresden. 1818 with a preface by the editor.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Warning: Elements of a pragma semiotics in comedy. In: The comic. Poetics and Hermeneutics VII. Munich 1976, quoted in: Ralf Simon: Theory of Comedy. 2001, p. 49.
  2. ^ Christian Rell: Amphitryon "- A comedy with tragic moments. The question of genre in Kleist's" Amphitryon ". GRIN Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-638-64829-5 .