Kleist and Haiti: The Haitian Revolution in Heinrich Von Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo

Abstract

This article revisits the question of how to interpret Heinrich von Kleist's short story "Die Verlobung in St. Domingo". While Kleist specialists have tended to insufficiently relate the story to the developing field of Haitian studies, scholars more attuned to the literary history of the Haitian revolution have only inadequately understood the characteristic textual ambivalences of Kleist's style and politics. In trying to bridge the gap between these two reading modes, the article discusses Kleist and his short story in a double context of Prussian and Caribbean politics.