Compared with Most German blank-verse dramas of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the plays of Heinrich von Kleist generate an extreme degree of rhythmic tension between the underlying metrical pattern and its linguistic realization. In this essay I shall discuss how rhythmic tension in some of Kleist’s plays affectively underscores or anticipates moments of heightened dramatic tension on the conceptual level. To emphasize the uniqueness of Kleist’s prosodic and rhythmic style, I shall also briefly compare the rhythmic structure of five of Kleist’s dramas with that of Goethe’s blank-verse dramas Iphigenie and Tasso.

One of the most significant features distinguishing lyric and dramatic verse is the increased tension that characterizes the latter. On the semantic level, this tension is generated in the dialog by violent arguments as well as other types of verbal exchanges among the characters, and in the action by sudden unexpected events, and suspense that is built up by keeping the audience in a state of uncertainty as to how events will unfold. In blankverse drama such emotional tension is underscored by conflicts between the metrical abstraction and its linguistic realization. In most cases the resulting prosodic tension is significantly greater than in the various types of non-dramatic verse. New developments in the study of metrics enable us to make more precise and explicit statements about the differences between lyric and dramatic styles, and to establish a hierarchy of periods, poets, and individual works on the basis of rhythmic dramaticality.

Like other traditional verse forms, blank verse is based on an underlying metrical abstraction that is clearly distinguished from its linguistic actualization. It is therefore important to choose a notational system for the abstract meter that clearly reflects this distinction. To emphasize the abstract nature of the metrical abstraction, I use the symbols “x” and “o” for prominent and non-prominent positions of the meter respectively. In the language itself the metrical abstraction is potentially realizable not only by word and phrase accent (stress), but also by other features of the language. The abstract pattern for the iambic pentameter line, the meter underlying blank verse as well as various types of lyric poetry including the traditional sonnet, is given in (1):