Kleist
further says in the same letter: "Her resolution to die with me drew me,
I cannot tell you with what unspeakable and irresistible power, into her
arms. Do you remember that I asked you more than once to die with me.
But you always said 'No.'" From this and other passages it is clear that
Kleist would have taken his life in any case, and that he only seized
this specific opportunity to plunge into the ecstasy of a common death.
The thought of the love-death is often present in the hearts of
individuals who are genuinely in love. We read in Schlegel's _Lucinda_:
"There (in a transcendental life) our longings may perhaps be
satisfied." And in Lenau's letters to Sophy the same thought is more
than once apparent.
The idea reached perfection and immortality in Wagner's "Tristan and
Isolde." It is Wagner's world-famous deed to have lived through and
embodied this complex of emotion for the first, and so far for the last
time; his lovers are in a superlative degree representative of human
love; they typify the climaxes of human emotion.
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