ANIMAL PASSIONS: HOMERIC TEMPER AND TRAGIC PARADOX IN KLEIST’S PENTHESILEA

ANIMAL PASSIONS: HOMERIC TEMPER AND TRAGIC PARADOX
IN KLEIST'S PENTHESILEA

In this paper I will focus on the depiction of Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea, by analysing the animal imagery associated with the heroine, with the aim of outlining how Homeric narrative and tragic paradox are bound together to express male anxiety for gender instability and transgression of identity.
"The Amazons of the land of Colchis, virgins fearless in battle, the Schythian hordes who live at the world's end" (Aesch. Pr. 410f.) are widely represented in Greek art and literature as a reversal of Athenian male-dominated society. As warriors, outsiders and women, they show their 'otherness', not only by rejecting Greek norms of female behaviour and social structure, but also by invading male spaces. The mythological tradition (Hygin. Fab. 112, Dict. Cret. III 15, Quint. Smnyrn. I 40, Procl. Chr. II) sees Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, joining the Trojan War to avenge the death of Hector and eventually killed by her enemy Achilles, who expresses deep regret.
The queen of the Amazons provides an example of extraordinary female characterisation in Penthesilea (1808) by von Kleist. Considered unperformable and disturbing, because of Goethe's disapproval, the tragedy puts on stage gender conflicts, female agency and failure in an aesthetic and social debate that challenges Enlightenment's values. Penthesilea is depicted in her unnatural identity and perverse rage, through comparison with wild animals (such as the wolf and the dog), which reveal her heroic temper and psychological contradictions. By focusing her desire on Achilles, the heroine is involved in a dramatic chase that confuses war and love. She is tragically embedded in the Amazon society, whose internal laws represent the constraint of her irrational passion. The mutual love of the two enemies, the slaughter of Achilles and the suicide of Penthesilea thus enhance the contradictory and disruptive status of the tragic heroine.