World Public Library

Two Essays by Kleist : On the Marionette Theatre and On the Assembly of Thought while Talking

Andrew Thomas Jansen, Translator, Heinrich von Kleist

2018

Abstract

We see that in matter, in the organic world, as reflection becomes darker and weaker, grace always emerges brighter and stronger. —But, like how the intersection of two lines at the same side of a point, after a passage through the infinite, suddenly appears again at the other side, or like how the image in a concave mirror stretches endlessly away until it suddenly greets us again: so it stands, when knowledge has gone through infinity, it comes to grace again; so that simultaneously, in the human body’s form, grace shines purest either in bare emptiness or in infinite awareness, i.e., in the form of a god. And so, I said a little scattered, must we eat again from the tree of knowledge to fall back into innocence? --On the Marionette Theatre

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