Reading Groups

In Short: Heinrich von Kleist's "The Earthquake in Chile" with Mike Levine

$45

Includes a Complimentary Drink from Our Café & Bar

Out of stock

Thursday, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT December 12, 2024

The Center for Fiction

Study for 'Calypso's Grotto'More: Original public domain image from <a href="https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:709" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Yale Center for British Art</a>

This single-session group is held in person at The Center for Fiction. Registration includes a complimentary drink from our Café & Bar.

The stories of Heinrich von Kleist, who took his life in a suicide pact with his beloved in 1811, at the age of thirty-four, focused obsessively on the possibility that, no matter the powers of the human mind unleashed by the Enlightenment, reality was unfathomable. “The Earthquake in Chile” was inspired by both the earthquake that destroyed Santiago in 1647 and another in 1755 that leveled Lisbon and resonated for decades through European intellectual history. In Kleist’s telling, the earthquake is intertwined with the fates of Jerónimo and his lover, Josefa, who is pregnant and living in a convent when the story opens. Does pure chance govern our lives, the notions of free will, justice, and meaning nothing but useful illusions? Though Goethe was among Kleist’s admirers, his work more closely resembles that of Kafka, another admirer, and perhaps speaks more clearly to our own time than to Kleist’s.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: “The Earthquake in Chile” by Heinrich von Kleist. A copy of the story will be emailed to participants upon registration.

What to expect from this reading group: The group leader will facilitate a discussion about the story, offering questions and observations that direct the group’s attention to especially rich passages. Participants will be encouraged to form and share their own interpretations of the story.

Capacity: 25

Led by

Mike Levine

Mike Levine

Mike Levine is an independent editor. He was previously an acquisitions editor at Northwestern University Press. Among the authors he published were Jen Beagin (Whiting Award winner), A. E. Stallings (National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, finalist), and Stephen Karam (Pulitzer Prize in Drama, finalist). He has also been a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation. Since 2000, he has taught literature and film seminars in several continuing education programs. He has a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in English from Rice University.

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