Kleist Heinrich von - Figures of simplicity: sensation and thinking in Kleist and Melville

As it is the case with any work, this book could not have been written without the support, help, and positive energy of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank Anselm Haverkamp, who accompanied this project from the start. Without his confidence in its first outlines, and his encouragement throughout, which always came at the right moments, this book would not have been possible. He taught me a perspective on literature that continues to be an inspiration far beyond the narrow scopes of this project, and for which I am deeply grateful. I am also indebted to the members of my dissertation committee Cyrus R. K. Patell, Mikhail Iampolski, Nancy Ruttenberg, and Paul Fleming for their criticisms on a first draft of this book, as well as for the inspiring courses I took with them at NYU and the stimulating discussions, both personal and intellectual, that resulted from them. I would especially like to thank Nancy Ruttenberg for her enthusiasm for my project and for her professional support when it was most needed. I am also grateful to Avital Ronell for the inspiration of her teaching, which was one of the most energizing parts of my graduate studies at NYU.

I would like to thank the DFG Graduate Program RepresentationRhetoricKnowledge at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany for granting me the opportunity to finish my dissertation on a DFG-scholarship. The lively intellectual context of this remarkable circle of scholars was perfectly suited to my writing, and provided the right mixture of critique, correction, and inspiration.

It is an incredible honor to be part of a publication series that has established such long-standing and high standards in theoretical debates as Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory, and I am thus very grateful to its editor, Rodolphe Gasch, for his interest in my project and the opportunity to be included in his series. In this context, I would also like to thank James Peltz, Kelli WilliamsLeRoux and Andrew Kenyon at SUNY Press for their professional support, openness, and patience throughout the process of publication.

This book could not have come to fruition without the help of many friends who were, and continue to be, an intellectual and personal inspiration. They offered balanced, insightful, thought-provoking input for this book, and among them, I would especially like to thank Thomas Khurana, Dirk Setton, and Katrin Trstedt for their careful readings of early versions of the chapters, Leonard Lawlor for his critique and encouragement, Monika Lanz for her incredible effort to polish what is not my mother-tongue, and Barbara Thiele and Cornelia Thiele for their meticulous and joyful way of going again and again through the written manuscript in search for yet another tidbit to correct. I would also like to thank Emy Koopman for her help with the index.

And last but not least, I would like to thank my parents and my brother for their loving support, and for their confidence in what I was doing, without which it would have been much harder to finish this project in good spirit. My most heartfelt gratitude, however, goes to Kathrin Thiele, for her love, the sharpness of her mind and her challenges to my thinking. Without her, work and life would not by far be as rich. I am grateful that she shares both with me.