The horror in the bath
The horror in the bath is a dramolet (original name: "An Idylle") by Heinrich von Kleist .
Subject and content
Kleist chose the form of the scene of a verse drama for the text . In this short drama, he ironically addressed the breaking of taboos that voyeurs break when observing the naked . A locus amoenus is chosen as the setting .
What is remarkable about the text is that this act of voyeurism is committed by a young woman who, to the horror of the exposed, pretends that she (“the perpetrator”) is a boy, as if it were his sister Ulrike , who is dealing with Kleist's fiancé Wilhelmine von Zenge a joke allowed.
The text takes up motifs from the legends of classical antiquity ( Diana and Actaion ) and the Old Testament (observation of Susanna in the bath ).
At first glance, Kleist's text has a subliminal lesbian undertone. Presumably, however, the “Idylle” is rather the disguised literary processing of one of Kleist's own bathing experiences - with explicit homoerotic connotations - with his childhood friend Ernst von Pfuel on Lake Thun .
Reception history
Kleist had the dramolet printed in March 1809 in the Phöbus magazine published by himself and Adam Heinrich Müller (11th and 12th copies, November – December 1808, delivered late).