KLEIST, Franz von. Das Glück der Liebe.

The Joys of Love

KLEIST, Franz von. Das Glück der Liebe. Berlin: [Johann Georg Langhoff for] Friedwich Vieweg the Elder. 1793.

8vo. Contemporary drab wrappers; pp. [2 (blank)], 21, [1]; stipple-engraved vignette depicting Franz and Albertine von Kleist to title; soiling and staining to wrappers; light foxing, else internally very good; 1831 inscription to inner front cover ‘Cette brochure m’a été donné à Baden-Baden (Grand Duché) au mois d’8bre [...] par le B[ar]on von Neuenstein’ (see below).

First separate edition of this love poem by the twenty-four-year-old poet and Prussian officer Franz von Kleist, published a year after his marriage to Albertine von Kleist (née von Jung) and dedicated to her.

Although Kleist died at the age of twenty-seven, his output was prolific, and he was widely read during his lifetime. The 1790 Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung wrote of the ‘talents, lively imagination, and warm feeling’ conveyed by Kleist’s ‘gentle and melodious’ work but critiques his tone (‘almost always very strained’), ‘indiscernible plots’, rough transitions, and language ‘so distorted by excessive ornamentation that one can only guess the poet’s meaning with great difficulty, and sometimes not at all’ (Deutsche Biographie, trans.).

The poem seemingly first appeared in 1790, appended to the second edition of the poet’s ‘Hohe Aussichten der Liebe’ and also issued with ‘Das Glück der Ehe’ (‘The Happiness of Marriage’), a companion piece to the present work published separately in 1796. Here, Kleist describes the transformative powers of Albertine’s love and the bliss of marriage (she is mentioned by name or addressed directly in the second person eight times). The engraving to the title-page of this edition, depicting Franz and Albertine von Kleist, was drawn from life and produced by Johann Friedrich Bolt (1769–1836).

Provenance: Given to an unknown recipient in Baden-Baden in October 1831 by Baron von Neuenstein, i.e. Joseph Karl Franz Xaver Freiherr von Neuenstein (1767–1838). Von Neuenstein was commander of the Baden contingent – a military force of five to seven thousand troops sent by the Grand Duchy of Baden as part of the Confederation of the Rhine – under Napoleon Bonaparte. After the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Neuenstein was appointed adjutant general of the Baden infantry, a position he held until his retirement in 1832.

OCLC finds seven copies in the US (Berkeley, Duke, Harvard, Indiana, Tennessee, Wisconsin-Madison, Yale) and one in the UK (BL), to which Library Hub adds another, at Bristol.

VD18 11182733.

SKU: 2126376