Perhaps the creepiest and strangest story ever written: The Marquise of O...

Heinrich von Kleist, a hero of German Romantic literature (mostly short fiction and drama, I think) lived from about 1770 - 1810, died in a suicide pact w/ his beloved, which weirdly led to a cult of suicide, which Goethe wrote about based I think in part on Kleist's life (and death) in Sorrows of the Young Werther. But who reads Kleist today? I did find a nice volume of his selected prose, mostly fiction, from Arcade Press (known for its square-shaped books and printed pages), and yesterday read probably his best-known short fiction, "The Marquise of  O...," which may be the strangest and creepiest story ever written. In short: The eponymous Marquise is a young widow w/ two children, living in a citadel or fortress in Italy of which her father is the "commandant." Russian soldiers attack the fortress (K says nothing about the background of this military attack - perhaps it's completely fictional?), and some of the soldiers grab the Marquise and threaten to rape her. A Russian officer intervenes and saves the M. In fighting the next day, the Russian officer is reported killed. Some time later the officer shows up at the doorstep of the Marquise and her family - reports of his death have been somewhat exaggerated, to paraphrase Twain - and asks for her hand in marriage. Everyone is more or less freaked out by the audacity of this request (he doesn't know the M at all, nor does she know him). Sometime later it turns out the the M is pregnant; she insists that she has had sexual relationships w/ no one. She actually places a newspaper ad asking for the unknown father of her child-to-be to come forward. Then, in the creepiest scene in the story, we see through her mother's eyes the father "consoling" the distraught daughter, who is sitting on his lap as they kiss each other passionately. Ultimately, the child is born, the M marries the Russian, and they have a brook of children and all ends well. Well, Kleist was clearly a century ahead of his time in writing about Oedipal issues and incest, about guilt and shame, and about repression, as the whole family ignores what they know and what the see. His cobbled-together happy ending only suggests something darker and more mysterious: a cover-up of the sexual passion and broken taboos, the possibility that, if "all happy families are alike," as in Tolstoy's much-quoted phrase, there may be dark secrets in every happy family. And what about the apparent death and sudden resurrection of the Russian officer? And his determination to marry a woman w/ whom he has not exchanged a single word? I'm sure some have found him to be a Christ figure who "saves" the countess, but I see him more as a zombie who destroys her, giving her father "cover" behind which to continue a lifetime of abuse.