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THE COMPAKATIST The comparison of Kleist and Balzac does not limit itself to noting that both writers deal with the anxiety of death or use scenes of death to call attention to insufficiencies of contemporary conventions; Guenther shows how their writing deals with another kind of death--the death of meaning. Balzac's narrative fragmentation and Kleist's discovery ofthe interchangeability ofcontrasting values, destabilizes the cohesion and progression of literary texts. Both writers saw themselves to a great extent as secretaries or chroniclers oftheir time, documenting contemporary social and political trends. They needed therefore to represent the world in coherent psychological terms. From that perspective, scenes of death become of critical importance, since death marks the moment in a text when language cannot capture an experience with any fidelity. Although both writers explore death and its representation in different ways, Guenther finds a significant common denominator: "the fascination with modifying narrative convention, especially as this intersects with the mimetic project" (15). One ofGuenther's major goals is to show how the depiction of scenes ofdeath helps to highlight Kleist and Balzac's questioning of the adequacy of mimesis. In carrying out that objective, Guenther questions traditional critical approaches to the two writers, which
The Comparatist – University of North Carolina Press
Published: Oct 3, 1997
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