SOURCE: "The Apparent Ambiguity of Kleist's Stories," in German Life & Letters, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, January, 1978, pp. 144-57.

In the following essay, Martin explores the apparent contradictions in Kleist's short fiction, maintaining that there is in fact an "underlying order" and that "Kleist's own views, his fears and aspirations, emerge very clearly from a consideration of the overall arrangement, either of the individual story, or of the collection of stories. "

In a paper delivered before the English Goethe Society in 1963 J. M. Ellis makes the claim that Kleist's "Das Erdbeben in Chili" must have different and contradictory interpretations. He later qualifies this assertion:

I may have been cheating a little in claiming that the story must have different and contradictory interpretations; the truth is that it invites them and knocks them down, one after the other. We are indeed led to interpret the story in a number of ways...