Der zerbrochene Krug; The Broken Jug

Der zerbrochene Krug; The Broken Jug (written 1802-06, first performed 1808, published 1811)

Kleist once commented: ‘Ich glaube, dass im Generalbass die wichtigsten Aufschlüsse über die Dichtkunst enthalten sind’; ‘I believe that figured bass contains the most important information about the art of poetry’. That sense, which he does not spell out in any detail, that literature is made by the pulse and heartbeat of language as music may apply with particular force to Der zerbrochene Krug; The Broken Jug. The play consists of thirteen scenes and clearly demands to be performed without a break. It has immense drive and vitality, and that energy is anchored in both its thematic and linguistic rhythms. Essentially the plot revolves around a trial in a village courtroom. Adam, the judge, when he first appears, is definitely the worse for wear; his head is battered and bruised and his judge’s wig (which might restore his dignity somewhat) is nowhere to be found. His unprepossessing condition is, as we gradually discover, not unconnected to the events explored in the trial. Frau Marthe wants damages for the destruction of an old, cherished jug which occurred the evening before. She has no doubt who is the culprit – Ruprecht, the beloved of her daughter Eve. He was with her in her room that evening which ended in an immense commotion in which the jug was shattered. But he denies the charge; he admits that he did go to visit Eve, but was horrified to hear a man’s voice in her room. He gave chase to the intruder who managed to escape by throwing sand into Ruprecht’s eyes so that he (the intruder) could not be identified. Eve, when she is cross-questioned, refuses to give evidence, insisting that this court room is not the appropriate place. Finally, a neighbour, Frau Brigitte, is called; she witnessed a man climbing out of Eve’s window, and that man lost a wig, a judge’s wig, in the tangle of greenery and briars outside the window. It becomes clear that Adam was the culprit; he had invented a story that Ruprecht was to be called up and sent off to fight in the East Indies, and that he, Adam, could – in exchange for sexual favours from Eve – arrange for Ruprecht to avoid conscription. Adam manages to escape. All ends happily, as one expects of comedy. But only just. Adam is a figure of monstrous vitality and that energy is displayed to the full in his coping with a situation where he has both to conduct and to subvert a trial. He explains his wounds and scratches by saying that he fell out of bed in the morning; he accounts for the missing wig by claiming that it has been sent for repair, that it caught fire, that the cat gave birth to kittens in it. The forensic situation gives breathless pressure to the events, and that constant threat of discovery provides the plot-driven tension of the play. That tension is compounded by the fact that, on this particular day, Gerichtsrat (court councillor) Walter, is monitoring the conduct of village courts. One cannot help feeling that, without Walter’s presence, Adam would probably mange to browbeat the witnesses and get away scot free. Adam is well named. Licht says:

Ihr stammt von einem lockeren Ältervater

Der so beim Anbeginn der Dinge fiel.

You are descended from a loose grandfather

Who fell like this at the beginning of things.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/kleist/krug/krug011.html

His offence, his re-enactment of the first fall of man, is driven by sexual desire. The sin is his alone, however; in this play his Eve is blameless. But issues of transgression and judgment are omnipresent; in the Old Testament Adam is judged by God, Dorfrichter (village judge) Adam is judged by the logic of legal process, underpinned by the greater authority of Walter. But there is something manic and terrifying about Adam – with his club foot, he is a ‘Hinketeufel’, reminding us of the Devil in the Garden of Eden. The last description we have of him is of a monstrous figure whipped on through the winter landscape by his wig:

Jetzt kommt er auf die Strasse. Seht! Seht!

Wie die Perücke ihm den Rücken peitscht.

Now he’s got to the street. Look! Look!

How his wig whips his back.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/kleist/krug/krug121.html

Behind the comedy and the satisfying discomfiture of Richter Adam there vibrates the older, darker story of the loss of paradise. Moreover, there is another narrative that is implicated in Kleist’s play – the story of King Oedipus who sets out to find the source of the curse that weighs on Thebes – only to find that he himself is the culprit. That echo is foregrounded in the moment when Ruprecht reports that Adam threw sand into his eyes; he remembers cursing his watering eyes and wishing they did not have to witness the scene (as he thinks) of Eve’s betrayal of him:

Ich hätte meine Augen hingegeben,

Knippkügelchen, wer will, damit zu spielen.

I would have given my eyes away

Little balls, who wants to play with them.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/kleist/krug/krug072.html

In thematic terms, then, Der zerbrochene Krug; The Broken Jug is a manically driven play. The language too contributes to that immense drive. At one level, the verse provides a powerful rhythmic beat which animates the great set piece speeches. Frau Marthe’s circumstantial description of her beloved pot in Scene 7 is an obvious example. But the same is true of the other characters. Once they, as it were, get going, there is no stopping them. But there are also moments when the verse lines are broken up into short statements, often cascading single words. Take the moment of Adam’s departure from the scene:

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/kleist/krug/krug112.html

The invasion of order by disorder is embedded in the very texture of Kleist’s verse. Its particular feel can perhaps be illuminated by a seemingly far-fetched comparison. In Act Two of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro the governing rhythm of action and reaction in the musical statement (aria or ensemble followed by a harpsichord recitative, followed by an aria or ensemble, and so on) is overridden by the sheer complexity of events as characters come and go, jump out of windows into the garden, as Figaro desperately invents new explanations to pacify the ever-suspicious count. And the music replicates that breathless stream of events as, without a break, duet, trio, quartet, quintet, quartet, septet follow one another in over twenty minutes of through-composed music. The effect in the theatre is literally breathtaking. And something similar happens with the onward rush of Kleist’s Der zerbrochene Krug; The Broken Jug.

Further Reading

Seán Allan, ‘“So glaubst du jetzt, daß ich dir Wahrheit gab?” Gender, Power and the Performance of Justice in Kleist’s Der zerbrochene Krug’, in Heinrich von Kleist and Modernity, ed. by Bernd Fischer and Tim Mehigan (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011), pp. 55-70

Kenneth S. Calhoon, ‘Sacrifice and the Semiotics of Power in Der zerbrochne Krug’, Comparative Literature 41 (1989), 230-51

Michael Minden, ‘Kleist, Der zerbrochne Krug’, in Landmarks in German Comedy, ed. by Peter Hutchinson (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 55-70

Dorothea von Mücke, ‘The Fragmented Picture and Kleist’s Zerbrochener Krug’, in Heinrich von Kleist and Modernity, ed. by Bernd Fischer and Tim Mehigan (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011), pp. 41-54

Mark G. Ward, ‘Kleist’s Der zerbrochene Krug and Romanticism’, Orbis Litterarum 35:1 (1980), 20-46

Mark G. Ward, Laughter, Comedy and Aesthetics: Kleist’s ‘Der zerbrochene Krug’ (Durham: University of Durham, 1989)

Web Link

https://annotext.dartmouth.edu/texts?language_id=10000

Der zerbrochene Krug in German; click on a word for the English translation