The Haunting Primacy of a Ghost Story: Secondary thoughts on the Hermeneutical Challenge of Kleist's “Das Bettelweib von Locarno”

Abstract

This article discusses the hermeneutical challenge which Heinrich von Kleist's “Bettelweib von Locarno” poses to textual analysis. It argues that this short novella effectively exemplifies a fundamental principle of literature because it highlights the difference between the textual features of a literary work and its realization in the mind of a reader. Strategically approaching Kleist's novella in the manner of a close reading, this article shows that such an anatomizing analysis of the text is irreconcilable with an intuitive reading of it: while a first, unbiased reading construes Kleist's text as a ghost story with moral significance, a scholarly close reading breaks down the text into erratic components and insufficient causalities. The ghost story and its moral implications thus withdraw from the close reader. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that Kleist's ghost story provides rich insights into the interplay of a literary work's experiential superstructure with its textual basis.