EMANCIPATING AMAZONS: SCHILLER'S

JUNGFRAU, KLEIST'S PENTHESILEA,

WAGNER'S BRUNNHILDE
THERE IS A FAMOUS picture postcard depicting Hitler as a modern Joan
of Arc emancipating Germany (one supposes) from her encircling enemies,
perhaps also from "the enemy within". That is not the sort of emancipation
I have in mind. On the contrary, each of the virgin warriors of my title
1
emancipates herselfTrom her unnatural calling. She does so through experi-
encing human love, and in consequence betrays her divinely-ordained
martial role. It is true that in Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans - that
"witches' cauldron of raging romance" (Shaw, Preface to St Joan), which
is the likely source of the legend in modern German memory Johanna's
betrayal might seem to be only momentary. She goes on to break out of
her prison and die heroically on the battlefield rather than as a victim
burnt at the stake a most spectacular departure from history which may
have lent itself to postcard propaganda for that very reason.
2
But her
(literally) fleeting glimpse of love nevertheless effects a lasting change, and
Schiller's humanising purpose (a response to the mockery of Voltaire's
Pucelle d'Orleans) appears to be achieved. More unambiguously, though also
more tragically, Kleist's Penthesilea and Wagner's Brilnnhilde are
humanised - in the case of Wotan's daughter, literally made human -
through their acts of disobedience inspired by love.
Johanna
"How ill-beseeming it is in thy sex/To triumph like an Amazonian trull
[strumpet]," says Richard Plantagenet to Queen Margaret shortly before
she stabs him; "Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;/Thou stern,
obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless."
3
There is another woman in man's
clothing in Die Jungfrau von Orleans who accurately meets the second part
of this description, and that is the monstrous, treacherous, amoral Queen
Isabeau, just as Agnes Sorel, the King's loving mistress, meets the first. It
would be too simplistic to say Johanna shifts from one pole to the other,
but these Shakespearean parameters at least offer stereotypes by which to
measure her metamorphosis.
Before her "fall" from grace, no one could be more pitiless and remorse-
less: "Nenne mich nicht Weib," she tells Montgomery, "dieser Panzer deckt
kein Herz." His appeals to her womanhood and to la douceur de vivre fall on
deaf ears: "Den Tod verbreiten" is her task, "und sein Opfer sein zuletzt!"
her own fate - no happy homecoming.
4
But unlike Achilles, whose merciless
killing of Lykaon in Book XXI of The Iliad (Schiller's model for the scene)
is to avenge his great friend Patroclus, unlike even Margaret, the "she-wolf
Forum for Modem Ijinguagt Studies 2000 Vol. xxxvi JVo. I

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AMAZONS IN SCHILLER, K.LEIST AND WAGNER 65
of France" (I.iv. 111) whose "tiger's heart [is] wrapp'd in a woman's hide"
(I.iv. 137), and whose motivation is specifically revenge, there is, as it were,
nothing personal in Johanna' s quarrel with Montgomery. She is merely
obeying divine orders when she dispatches him through the "unerring
agency of her emancipated sword".
5
She can do so only because her own
humanity, her femininity to which all men respond and (as in battle)
succumb, is so totally repressed - though not by her, for she has yet to feel
its claims. True, she acts willingly, in virtual self-identification with the
Virgin herself (Graham 177-8), but under the iron compulsion of duty:
"ich mufi - mich treibt die Gotterstimme, nicht/Eignes Gelusten" (11.
1661-2), she tells Montgomery, and on being urged by the Dauphin to
choose one of her suitors: "Weh mir, wenn ich das Rachschwert meines
Gottes/In Handen fiihrte, und im eiteln Herzen/Die Neigung triige zu
dem irdschen Mann!/Mir ware besser, ich war nie geboren!" (11. 225760).
6
This is precisely the human-all-too-human conflict between duty and
inclination which Schiller then creates for Johanna in her encounter with
Lionel, the (entirely fictitious) commander of the English army, in order to
prise apart the dramatically uninteresting fusion of "freedom" and necessity
she has embodied up to this point. "Warum mu(3t ich ihm in die Augen
sehn!" she demands, "Ein blindes Werkzeug fodert Gott" (11. 2575, 2578).
She was blind, now she can see; where her hatred for her country's enemies
was impersonal, her love for their leader is shatteringly human and singular,
the transition instantaneous.
7
"Dieses Stuck floss aus dem Herzen", Schiller
wrote, "und zu dem Herzen sollte es auch sprechen,"
8
and this is the moment
in the play where the heart of his favourite heroine opens, however fleet-
ingly. She sees her failure to kill Lionel as a lapse into subjectivity, but
acknowledges she would die herself if he were killed (1. 2502). Then she
seems to put her transgression behind her, even resisting the temptation to
open her heart to Sorel, who nevertheless recognises in Johanna' s new-
born empathy an inner transformation from Pallas Athene (1. 2639) to
kindred spirit - ' Ja ich verkannte dich, du kennst die Liebe" (1. 2698).
9
At
the very moment Johanna crowns her king in Reims Cathedral, normality
reasserts its hold and the wondrous crusade which her visions had foretold
seems to her like a mere dream, dreamt under the oak tree near her village
of Domremy (11. 2905-17). Of course, by the rules of Schillerian tragedy
(even this, his experiment in "Romantic" tragedy), she must now be
tormented by a sense of her inadequacy. Whether we should talk of her
tragic moral flaw (is falling in love on sight, rather than killing on sight, a
sin?)
10
or, as Hebbel thought more appropriate, of metaphysical guilt,"
her psychological awakening is accompanied by a process of "atonement"
- silent submission to her own father's accusation of witchcraft, unjust
banishment, capture by the enemy, rejection of Lionel as the enemy of her
people, humiliation. In due course, in answer to her prayer and in rebuttal
of her lament that "Die Wunder ruhn, der Himmel ist verschlossen"

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66 FRED BRIDGHAM
(1. 3246), she will break her bonds like Samson and fulfil her mission on
the battlefield in death and transfiguration.
12
Johanna seems to combine something like the reflective "sublimity of
composure" with which Maria Stuart accepts her unjust death sentence to
atone for the sins of her sexual past, with naive "sublimity of action" as
an avenging angel both before she meets Lionel and again in her final
triumph. The difference is the liberating effect of that eye-opening encoun-
ter and the personal sacrifice it will entail, without which her final triumph
of the spirit might well seem to be no more than that of a "woman
struggling to play an active role free from sexual connotation".
13
Penthesilea
It was very possibly with Schiller's play in mind that Kleist set out to explore
these psychological depths, characteristically projecting the problem of
empowerment into diametrically, or dialectically, opposing characters who
nevertheless represent the two sides of the same coin, the plus and the
minus: Penthesilea and Kathchen von Heilbronn, "ein Wesen, das ebenso
machtig ist durch ganzliche Hingabe, als jene durch Handeln."
14
Where
Kathchen's dog-like devotion idealises in popular fairy-tale fashion, or
perhaps parodies, the subservient female role about which Kleist had once
enjoyed cross-questioning his own long-suffering fiancee, it is the magnifi-
cently uncompromising and uniquely tragic figure of the Amazon queen
into whom he pours his very soul: "mein innerstes Wesen liegt darin [...]
der ganze Schmutz zugleich und Glanz meiner Seele."
15
In doing so, he
follows a notably different path from the treatment of the Amazon theme
in Spanish Golden Age drama currently in vogue in Germany, and from
the Christian allegorising of the theme in several early Romantic dramas,
including A. W. Schlegel's fragmentary Die Amazonen (none of which would
have escaped Schiller's notice, either).
16
But if Johanna' s lapse, unknown to all except Lionel, is "mercilessly
magnified only to her imagination and is made good before it can erode
her moral integrity" (Graham, p. 172), it seems even less appropriate to
speak of Penthesilea's "guilt", unless it is the hubris of aiming too high.
According to the Amazon code, the God Mars (Ares) dictates through his
High Priestess whom an Amazon must defeat in battle to win as a mate,
but Penthesilea has already chosen Achilles. This in turn was (illicitly)
prophesied for her by her dying mother Otrere, and is enthusiastically
rationalised in Penthesilea's own imagination as fitting for the Queen she
has now become. Personal guilt is neither something acknowledged by her
nor at issue in the play,
17
nor indeed does she ever blame herself for
indulging her single-minded pursuit of Achilles even when others see that
it conflicts with the interests of the Amazon state. Rather, tragedy ensues
because of the unnatural basis of the Amazon state itself.

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AMAZONS IN SCHILLER, KLEIST AND WAGNER 67
But the battle of the sexes now enshrined in its ethos is itself a reaction
to the barbaric outrage once inflicted on the Scythians, whose women were
raped after their menfolk had been slaughtered. Consequently, the Amazon
state was founded with the entirely laudable purpose of ensuring the
women's future survival and autonomy, but now, many generations later,
its unnatural belligerency towards all men simply baffles Greeks and Trojans
alike, who naturally assume their enemy's enemy is their friend. As
Odysseus puts it: "Soviel ich weiB, gibt es in der Natur/Kraft bloB und
ihren Widerstand, nichts Drittes" (11. 125-6).
At Penthesilea's first glimpse of Achilles, her stony, expressionless face
becomes suddenly flushed ("Und Glut ihr plotzlich, bis zum Hals
hinab,/Das Anditz farbt" - this is also Kathchen's reaction on seeing Graf
von Strahl), she looks again ("mit trunknem Blick"), and in her confusion
("verwirrt") declares war on the Greeks, just as she had a moment before
attacked the Trojans (11. 64-71, 93-4). The cause is unambiguously Achilles
- "Solch einem Mann, o Prothoe, ist/Otrere, meine Mutter, nie begegnet!"
(11. 8990). He in turn is sure that he knows what she wants when she
sends her deadly arrows whistling around his ears "on wooing missions"
(11. 595615), and is determined to provide it, to haul her through his
home streets by her silky hair, crowned with deadly wounds, but as his
bride - even the metaphor shows he has got the nature of their encounter
instinctively right (11. 595615) before he learns why. Penthesilea wants the
same thing, "Ich will zu meiner FiiBe Staub ihn sehen", but she admits
her "kriegerisches Hochgefiihl" is "verwirrt", his glance paralyses her and
she feels herself "die Uberwundene, Besiegte" - an intolerable condition
for an Amazon, so she must vanquish him in battle or die (11. 638, 641,
650, 655). The unnatural paradox of making war in order to make love has
thrown her off balance. But when he has her at his mercy, it is her glance
that paralyses him " 'Ihr Gotter!' ruft er, 'Was ftir ein Blick der Sterbenden
traf mich!' " (11. 11323). In fact, each spares the other when they alternately
get the upper hand (11. 159-170, 1139-42), Achilles gaily acknowledging
that sexual conquest of so glorious a creature is the whole point, Penthesilea
that while she must first embrace him with iron-tipped arrows, it is not in
order to hurl him down to Orkus but to draw him gently to her breast (11.
859, 1187-92). This is the High Priestess's cue - the terrible sacrifice made
by all Amazon women so that they can draw their bows freely - for "Die
Tochter Mars, der selbst der Busen fehlt" should be immune even to the
most poisonous of Amor's shafts (11. 1084, 1075). Accordingly, "Nicht dem
Gegner, wenn sie auf ihn triflt,/dem Feind in ihrem Busen wird sie sinken"
- she will fall victim, the High Priestess accurately predicts, not to Achilles,
but to love (11. 110710).
In a parodic echo of noble Schillerian renunciation, Penthesilea seems
to come to her senses ("Dies Herz, weil es sein muB, bezwingen will
ich' s/Und tun mit Grazie, was die Not erheischt" [11. 11978]); she vows

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68 FRED BRIDGHAM
not to break with her gods because a childish whim has been withheld, not
to storm the heavens because happiness has not fallen into her lap, but the
mere sight of preparations for the post-battle Rosenfest is enough to break
her resolution, and she instinctively cries out to her true deity: "O
Aphrodite!" (1. 1231).
18
Her obsession might seem at first merely selfish: for instance, she pet-
ulantly dismisses Prothoe's impending happiness, under the lilac serenaded
by the nightingale, when her closest friend vanquishes Lykaon and advoc-
ates calling a halt to hostilities - a glancing allusion, perhaps, to the scene
where Johanna kills Montgomery (Lykaon) and the later prophetic warning
of the "Schwarzer Ritter" to her to call a halt, just before she vanquishes
Lionel and immediately falls in love with him (11. 819-37). If Penthesilea
suffers, all must suffer, if she rejoices, all must rejoice - no Classical,
Schillerian "sublimity of composure" this, but an extreme "sublimity of
action"
19
aspiring to divine bliss (in her case, equality with Achilles, her
"sun-god"): "Der Mensch kann groB, ein Held, im Leiden sein,/Doch
gottlich ist er, wenn er selig ist!" (11. 16967).
20
Prothoe recognises where
such lack of moderation must lead, "Freud ist und Schmerz dir, seh ich,
gleich verderblich,/und gleich zum Wahnsinn reiBt dich beides hin" (11.
1665-6).
But Kleist repeatedly shows all confusion arising from the basic flawed
premise of the Amazon state, and a consequently ever-growing need for
delusion and self-delusion, as when Prothoe persuades Achilles to save
Penthesilea's very sanity by pretending he has been vanquished when he
has in fact defeated her. Since all is fair in love and war, and in the
metaphorical language they share, Achilles can the more readily comply
with this charade, "Gewillt, mein ganzes Leben furderhin/In deiner Blicke
Fesseln zu verflattern" (11. 161213). However, the ensuing scene exposes
a further flaw in Tanai's' original ruling that all male captives, much to the
distress of their captors, must be sent home after they have fulfilled their
procreative function: "Auch mich denkst du also zu entlassen?" he asks
Penthesilea, and she replies: "Ich weiB nicht, Lieber. Frag mich nicht." (11.
2090-1). When the Amazons interrupt this idyllic interlude to liberate their
Queen, Achilles is obliged, before escaping, to reveal the truth that he has
been the victor and that she must consequently follow him home to Phtia.
The tragic knot is tied when, nevertheless, he chivalrously attempts to
satisfy the demands of her culture too ("eine Grille, die ihr heilig" [1.
2460]) by challenging her to individual combat,
21
which, against his every
normal instinct, he intends to let her win, whereas all conspires with her
own Amazon ethos to convince her he is in deadly earnest. It is a notoriously
gruesome ending, Penthesilea joining her war hounds in tearing at Achilles'
flesh, though perhaps no more gruesome than in Eustathius' commentary
on Homer, where Achilles "at last ran her through, fell in love with her
dead body, and committed necrophily upon it there and then".
22
In Kleist's

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AMAZONS IN SCHILLER, KLEIST AND WAGNER 69
play, it is the dynamic of emotional confusion which finally spills over into
the full barbarity latent in Amazon culture: "Kiisse, Bisse,/Das reimt sich,
und wer von Herzen liebt,/Kann schon das eine fur das andere greifen"
(11. 2981-3)
23
- a premise which Kleist was being unduly sanguine to hope
that Goethe would accept, "und nachher nicht erschrecken, wenn die
Folgerung gezogen wird" (to Goethe, 24 January 1808; SW 2, p. 805).
What, then, is Penthesilea's emancipation? Above all, it is emancipation
from the Amazon state itself: "Der Tanais Asche" she had once recognised
as "die Urne alles Heiligen" (1. 1905); now she whispers to Prothoe: "streut
sie in die Luft!" (1. 3009). The body of Achilles she lays at the feet of the
High Priestess in silent accusation. Then it is emancipation from all military
panoply, symbolised by the great golden bow of Tanais. It clatters to the
ground (11. 2769-72) in as eloquent a signal of the rejection of inhumanity
as it had once been a signal of initiation - when Tanais had dropped it
after tearing off her breast to enable her to draw it (11. 1983-9).
24
Then
emancipation from the perversion of love, its unnatural expression. Finally,
emancipation from any further shift in the sexual roles Kleist thought
"natural" against a background of emergent female intellectuals in
Romantic circles, and even more intriguingly, of his own elusive sexual
nature. Penthesilea puts an end to the question, insistently repeated, of
who should follow whom: "Ich sage vom Gesetz der Fraun mich los/Und
folge dicsem Jilngling hier" (11. 3012-13).
25
At last she is instinctively at
one with herself in full self-knowledge, the crucial Kleistian premise for all
action. (It is the stage eventually reached by Schiller's Johanna, too: "Da
war der Streit in meiner Brust [...]/Jetzt bin ich/Geheilt [...]/In mir ist
Friede Komme, was da will,/Ich bin mir keiner Schwachheit mehr
bewuBt!" (Jungfmu, 11. 3172-9). Nor does she inflict death upon herself
through the arrow which brought down Achilles (however fitting this seems
to her at first, the arrow is rejected along with all the rest of her war gear),
but through a feeling, "ein vernichtendes Gefilhl" (1. 3027), forged in the
white heat of misery, dipped in the poison of remorse, but sharpened on
the anvil of hope - for it will unite her with Achilles.
Brunnhilde
Perhaps the most familiar re-enactment of Penthesilea's self-induced death
from love and grief is Isolde's Liebeslod, and Isolde is likewise resolved to
follow Tristan to the house of death: "wo Tristans Haus und Heim, da
kehr Isolde ein" (Tristan und Isolde, end of Act II). At the start of Wagner's
music-drama there are also echoes of Johanna' s encounter with Lionel
("warum muBt ich ihm in die Augen sehn!" [1. 2575]) when the defenceless
Tristan's glance paralyses Isolde as she raises the sword to kill him ("er sah
mir in die Augen" [I.iii]). But of course it is Brunnhilde, not Isolde, who
stands in the Amazon tradition. Where Penthesilea and her fellow Amazons
are descended, directly or through the "substitutes" they conquer, from

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70 FRED BRI DGHAM
Ares, Greek God of War, whose will they carry out, Briinnhilde is the
daughter of Wotan, his Nordic counterpart. Her identity with Wotan's will,
like that of her sister Valkyries, is also total, though these warrior maidens
are not required to kill, but merely to gather in dead heroes to Valhalla in
preparation for the final battle against Alberich, who has forged the Ring
of power from the Rhinemaiden's gold by forswearing love. But it is her
glimpse of love which emancipates Briinnhilde from blind obedience to the
divine will the human love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, Wotan's own
adulterous progeny and his hope for the future. Inspired by Siegmund's
refusal to follow her to Valhalla after death if Sieglinde will not be there
too, indeed to choose Hell instead, she impulsively decides to intercede on
his behalf in the combat which Wotan, embodiment of the rule of law and
hence of the quasi-contractual claims of marriage, has reluctantly decreed
that Hunding, Sieglinde's wronged husband, must be allowed to win.
26
For
this act of disobedience, Briinnhilde's punishment is to be deprived of her
divinity, but Wotan concedes that only a worthy hero shall claim her as
his mortal bride.
It was originally Wagner's intention to tell the story of Siegfried as "the
man of the future" ("Siegfried the Protestant", Shaw called him, an icono-
clastic, anarchistic "Bakhoonin"),
27
with Wotan's role in the pre-history of
the saga the subordinate one of "the man of the present" caught in his
own fetters ("In eig'ner Fessel fing ich mich"), a slave to the very treaties
he had imposed on others ("der durch Vertrage ich Herr, den Vertragen
bin ich nun Knecht" [Die Walkilre, Il.ii]).
28
Gradually, through psychological
growth towards self-knowledge and consequent renunciation, Wotan
developed into the central figure, but the hero is ultimately Briinnhilde (it
seems inappropriate to speak of her as a heroine). It is Briinnhilde who, a
generation later, is awakened as a human being by the orphaned child of
Wotan's incestuous twins, and who now herself learns the rapture of love
before sending her dragon-slaying husband off to do further heroic deeds.
At this point, in Act I of Gotterdammerung, the Gods themselves passively
await deliverance in Valhalla. Waltraute, one of Briinnhilde's unemancip-
ated Valkyrie sisters, has overheard Wotan say that if the Ring were returned
to the Rhinemaidens, "von des Fluches Last/erlost war' Gott und Welt!"
(I.iii). But how can Briinnhilde comply when Waltraute begs her to throw
the accursed thing in the water, for on her finger is the Ring which Siegfried
has given her as a pledge of his love:
Wie kannst du's fassen, fiihllose Maid!
Mehr als Walhalls Wonne,
mehr als der Ewigen Ruhm
ist mir der Ring:
[ ]
Denn selig aus ihm leuchtet mir Siegfrieds Liebe!

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AMAZONS IN SCHILLER, KLEIST AND WAGNER 71
Die Liebe lafi ich nie,
mir nahmen sie nie die Liebe,
stiirzt' auch in Trummern
Wallhalls strahlende Pracht! (I.iii)
Nor does she ever put the glory of the Immortals before her love for her
husband. Like Penthesilea, she has won through to a (modern, nineteenth-
century) understanding of men as Gods (Achilles, Siegfried), but in a
"fragile" Kleistian world on which the old Gods now look down from a
distance.
29
And like Penthesilea, Briinnhilde is brutally betrayed by the
way of the world into complicity in the death of the man she loves. When
the deception is uncovered, and before she, too, freely follows her dead
hero, Wagner gives us a final (though fittingly elusive
30
) insight into the
self-knowledge she has gained. All this happened, she sings in her own
great Liebestod, "daB wissend wiirde ein Weib". And what is it that she has
learnt? Her own "redemption through love" (as the musical motif is usually
called when it first appears in Act III of Die Walkiire) is inevitably as much
a rejection of the world as is the ecstatic egotism of Tristan and Isolde, but
she does return the Ring to the elements, thereby removing the curse, we
suppose, and her final act is to send Wotan's ravens to Valhalla with brands
from her own and Siegfried's funeral pyre. The God who had learnt to
make way for the eternally youthful - "dem ewig Jungen weicht in Wonne
der Gott" {Siegfried, Ill.i) - and who had told Erda of his hopes for the
child she had borne him - "wachend wirkt dein wissendes Kind/erlosende
Weltentat" {Siegfried, Ill.i) now himself awaits redemption, emancipation,
at her hands.
If we follow Nietzsche in Der Fall Wagner, Siegfried's whole raison d'etre
was "das Weib ZM emanzipieren - 'Briinnhilde zu erlosen' [...] Siegfried und
Briinnhilde; das Sakrament der freien Liebe; der Aufgang des goldnen
Zeitalters," and all proceeded along this path until Wagner ran on to the
reef of Schopenhauer's philosophy, after which he made a virtue of
necessity, "iibersetzte den Ring ins Schopenhauerische" and ended with
Briinnhilde translating Book IV of The World as Will and Representation into
verse.
31
Some such scepticism is permissible towards so vast a project which
spanned a period from before the 1848 revolution, which saw Wagner on
the barricades in Dresden, to the cultural pessimism which, despite the rift
between them, he shared with Nietzsche after German unification. But
mention of Nietzsche in this context - the Nietzsche who thought it was
not only Wagner's intention, but also Kleist's in Penthesilea, to depict "das
hysterisch-heroische Weib", an intention in which Kleist had been bril-
liantly successful
32
- leads us, in conclusion, to touch on the vexed question
of how such a German tradition is, or might be, perceived from the outside.
It has been my contention that however extreme, not to say pathological,
the symptoms attributed to these three heroines, their singular experience
of love is in each case a salutary and humanising one for them, and one

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72 FRED BRI DGHAM
which emancipates both themselves and others. Each may justly share the
epitaph which Prothoe pronounces on Penthesilea, borrowing an image
which Sophocles had already used of his Antigone:
Sie sank, weil sie zu stolz und kraftig bliihte!
Die abgestorbne Eiche steht im Sturm,
Doch die gesunde stiirzt er schmetternd nieder,
Weil er in ihre Krone greifen kann. (11. 3040-3)
FRED BRIDGHAM
German Department
University 0/ Leeds
Leeds
LSn 9JT
United Kingdom
NOTES
1
Donald H. Crosby traces the same connections, though with the emphasis on Schiller and
from a slightly different perspective, in "Freedom through Disobedience: Die Jungjrau von Orleans,
Heinrich von Klcist, and Richard Wagner", in: Friedrich von Schiller and the Drama of Human Existence,
ed. Alexej Ugrinsky (Westport, Connecticut, 1988). See also Helmut Krcuzer's more broad-based
survey, "Die Jungfrau in Waffen. Hebbels Judith und ihrc Geschwister von Schiller bis Sartre",
in: Untersuchungen zur IJteratur als Geschichte. Festschrift fiir lienno von Wiese, cd. Vincent J. Giinther
ct al. (Berlin, 1973).
2
Schiller's Johanna knows from the start that she will die. The historical Jeanne d'Arc's inner
voices always told her God would protect her, but she was condemned to death for witchcraft.
She recanted, however, and had her sentence commuted, but then withdrew her recantation,
saying her inner voices had told her she had only denied them because she was afraid of the
flames. This was recorded as her "responsio mortifera" and sealed her fate - death at the stake.
Sec Werner Koch, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Dichtung und Wirklichkeit (Frankfurt, 1963), pp. 5-22.
3
Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III, I.iv. 1 1314 and 1412.
4
Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801), 11. 1608, 1611, 1663-4.
5
I. Graham, Schiller's Drama, Talent and Integrity (London, 1974), p. 184. Cf. Johanna: "Doch
wenn cs not tut, alsbald ist die Kraft mir da,/Und nimmcr irrend in dcr zittcrnden Hand
rcgicrt/Das Schwert sich selbst, als war cs cin lebend'ger Geist" (11. 16846).
6
Cf. Klcist's Michael Kohlhaas, who sets himself up as an instrument of "divine vengeance"
only after his wife's death has removed all "Ncigung", and who, like Johanna ("In mir ist Fricdc",
1. 3178), embarks on his crusade only after achieving peace with himself ("die innerlichc
Zufriedcnhcit [...], seine eigne Brust nunmchr in Ordnung zu sehen"), Heinrich von Klcist,
Samlliche Werke und Briefe, cd. Scmbdncr (Munich, 1984), Vol. 2, p. 24. (Further references will take
the form SW 2 followed by the page number.)
7
As it were inverting Maria's emancipation: "Mit etnem Mai, schnell augcnblicklich muB/Dcr
Tausch geschehen zwischen Zeitlichcm/Und Ewigem", Maria Stuart, 11. 3403-5.
8
To Goschen, 10 February 1802, in Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe (Weimar, 1985), p. 101.
9
Her words to Sorcl are no longer "monotonous prophesying and preaching" or "hysterical
stridency" (Graham, pp. 182-3).
10
T. J. Reed, Schiller (Oxford, 1991), p. 92.
" For Hebbel (1848), see N. Oellers (ed.), Schiller - ^eitgenosse alter Fpochen. Dokumente zur
Wirkungsgeschichte Schillers in Deutschland, 2 vols (Frankfurt, 1970), Vol. I, pp. 395ff
12
Graham's avowedly "commonsense psychological approach" (p. 374) to the play, which takes
Johanna's meeting with Lionel as marking "the outbreak of her moral health" (p. 184) rather than
the reverse, seems finally to go just too far in naturalising or humanising the sublimity of "Johanna's
heroic liberation - of herself, her King and her country" (pp. 190-1): "she needs a rest from

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AMAZONS IN SCHILLER, KLEIST AND WAGNER 73
miracles as they need a rest from her. [...] Sanctity has gone out of her, and simple sober sanity
has taken its pl ace" (p. 189).
13
Thus Reed concl udes his persuasive account of these strikingly "compl ement ar y figures in
the intricate sub-categories of Schiller' s tragic t heor y" and their application to moder n sexual
politics (p. 93). For a critical survey of at t empt s to appl y the categories devel oped in " Ober naive
und sentimentalische Di cht ung" to the play, see Hel mut Koopmann, Friedrich Schiller (Realien zur
Literatur), Vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1977), esp. pp. 67- 9.
14
To Mari e von Kleist, late August 1807. Th e sentence begins: "[ Kat hchen] ist die Kehrsei t e
der Penthesilea, ihr ander er Pol". Kleist writes in similar vein to Jos. v. Collin (8 December 1808),
"Wer das Kat hchen liebt, dem kann die Penthesilea ni cht ganz unbegreiflich sein, sie gehor en j a
wie das + und - der Al gebra zusammen und sind ein und dasselbe Wesen, nur unt er ent gegenge-
setzten Bezi ehungen gedacht " (SW 2, pp. 797, 818). In everyday life at least, Kleist' s di sapprovi ng
at t i t ude to masculinity and i ndependence in women is reflected in comment s about his half-sister
Ulrike bei ng one of nat ur e' s mistakes, "weder Mann noch VVeib", "ei ne weibiiche Hel denseel e,
die von i hrem Geschl echt e nichts hat als die Hiiften, [...] ein Wesen, das keinen Fehler hat, als
diesen, zu groB zu sein fur ihr Geschl echt " (ibid., pp. 676, 664).
15
The reference to " Schmut z" possibly reflects a "cl eani ng-out process" akin to Kafka' s
description of what went into the wri t i ng of Das Urteil and Die Verwandlung as " Kot " . The i magery
of " Sc hmut z " / " Gl a nz " is a recurrent one in Kleist' s works, for instance when Gr af F. . . in Die
Marquise von 0. . . sullies t he swan with mud and it subsequent l y emerges radi ant from t he wat er
- an i mage also applied to Penthesilea (11. 28312).
16
See H. M. Brown, Kleist and the Tragic Ideal (Bern, 1977), pp. 37iT., esp. pp. 51- 5. Part of
Schlegel' s pl ay is reproduced on pp. 13940.
17
In sharp cont rast to Prinz Friednch von Homburg, whose openi ng scene echoes Ot r er e' s prophesy
to Penthesilea: "Mar s ruft di ch! / Du wirst den Peleiden dir bekr anzen" (11. 2137- 8) . Penthesilea
only once feels a flicker of guilt, at t he t hought of havi ng lost t he Greek captives t hrough her
personal obsession (11. 23468). Though t he sleep-walking Prince of Hombur g is led to think his
victory in battle and love pre-ordai ned, t he relation of guilt to at onement , individual to state, is
cent ral to t he non-t ragi c out come of Kleist' s later play.
18
When t he Priestess' s mockery ("Da nichts von auBen sie, kein Schicksal, hal t , / Ni cht s als ihr
toricht Her z") elicits Prot hoe' s response t hat Penthesilea mi ght break iron fetters, but not her own
"Gefi i hl " (11. 1280-5), Kleist may have had in mi nd a mor e truly human "mi r acl e" t han J oha nna ' s
mi racul ous escape: Isabeau: "Wi e brach sie diese zent nerschweren Bande?" (Jungfrau, 1. 3480).
19
See T. J. Reed, Schiller, p. 93; also not e 13 above.
20
The Achilles we know from The Iliad is from the start his own man, t he outsider who has not
so much "moved away from the ambi t i ons of his fellow Gr eeks" and allowed Penthesilea to effect
a remarkabl e t ransformat i on "whi ch cuts across the stereotype image of the war r i er " (Brown,
p. 83), but who is al ready a god-like model to her of someone who creates his own rules.
21
His chivalry is an unwi t t i ng parallel to her own previous reaction on bei ng unwillingly
liberated: "War ich nach j eder wur d' gen Ri t t ersi t t e/ Ni cht dur ch das Gliick der Schlacht i hm
zugefallen?" (11. 2301- 2) .
22
Sec Rober t Graves, The Greek Myths ( Har mondswor t h, i960), Vol. 2, p. 313.
23
Cf. Achilles, "Ich ward ent waffnet ; / Man fiihrte mich zu dei nen FiiBen her " (11. r 617- 18) .
24
It is no coi nci dence t hat the bow, when fully dr awn, describes the outline of a heart : " Un d
spannt mit Kraft der Rasenden sogl ei ch/ Den Bogen an, dafl sich die Enden kiisscn" (11. 2646- 7) .
25
Cf. 11. 2281- 2, 2295, 2474- 82.
26
A situation modelled on Zeus' s di l emma in Book XXI I of The Iliad when his great -grandson,
Achilles, chases his equally beloved Hect or r ound the walls of Troy. Pallas At hene tells him the
Gods woul d not respect hi m if he i nt erceded against what t he Fates had l ong ordai ned, and Zeus
tells her: " Do as your inclination bids you", knowi ng this means t he deat h of Hect or.
27
See t he c ha pt e r "Si egf r i ed as Pr ot e s t a nt " in The Perfect Wagneriie ( London & Ne w York, 1898).
28
See al so Mi chael Fanner , Wagner ( London, 1996), pp. 1245,
!
33-
29
Prothoe: "Es ist die Welt noch, die gebrcchlichc,/Auf die nur fern die Gotter niederschaun",
Penthesilea, 11. 2 8 5 4 - 5 .
30
In line with t he rej ect i on of "Deut l i chmachungs ei f er " and "ei n zu offenes Aufdecken der
Abs i cht " in his famous letter of 2 5 / 6 J a n u a r y 1854 to Rockel on The Ring: "I believe it was a t r ue
instinct t hat led me to guar d agai nst an excessive eagerness to make t hi ngs pl ai n. " See Richard
Wagner Briefe ( Mi i nchen, 1983), pp. 2 8 3 - 4 ,
a n
d Ta nne r , op. cit., pp. 172- 3.
31
Ni et zsche, Werke, ed. Schl echt a (Frankfurt , 1969), Vol. 2, p. 357.
32
Fr om Aus dem jVachlaji; see Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea. Dokumente und^eugnisse, e d. H. S e mb d n c r
(Frankfurt, 1967), p. 47.

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