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GERMAN MASQUERADE Part 4 Beyond Alexanderplatz ALFRED DÖBLIN GERMAN MASQUERADE WRITINGS ON POLITICS, LIFE, AND LITERATURE IN CHAOTIC TIMES Part 4: Literature Edited and translated by C.D. Godwin https://beyond-alexanderplatz.com Alfred Döblin (10 August 1878 – 26 June 1957) has only slowly become recognised as one of the greatest 20th century writers in German. His works encompass epic fictions, novels, short stories, political essays and journalism, natural philosophy, the theory and practice of literary creation, and autobiographical excursions. His many-sided, controversial and even contradictory ideas made him a lightning-conductor for the philosophical and political confusions that permeated 20th century Europe. Smart new editions of Döblin’s works appear every decade or two in German, and a stream of dissertations and major overviews reveal his achievements in more nuanced ways than earlier critiques polarised between hagiography and ignorant dismissal. In the Anglosphere Döblin remains known, if at all, for only one work: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Those few of his other works that have been translated into English are not easily found. Hence publishers, editors and critics have no easy basis to evaluate his merits, and “because Döblin is unknown, he shall remain unknown.” Döblin’s non-fiction writings provide indispensable glimpses into his mind and character as he grapples with catastrophes, confusions and controversies in his own life and in the wider world of the chaotic 20th century. C. D. Godwin translated Döblin’s first great epic novel, The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, some 30 years ago (2nd ed. NY Review Books 2015). Since retiring in 2012 he has translated four more Döblin epics (Wallenstein, Mountains Oceans Giants, Manas, and The Amazonas Trilogy) as well as numerous essays. His website https://beyond-alexanderplatz.com offers translations and commentaries on Döblin and his contemporaries. These translations © C. D. Godwin 2020 under Creative Commons. The PDF is made available free of charge, and may be copied free of charge for personal, educational and critical use. Fair-use excerpts are permitted, provided that they credit author and translator. I hereby declare that I have made these translations as a labour of love, dedicated to making the works of Alfred Döblin better known to English-speaking readers. Almost none of Döblin’s non- fiction writings have appeared in English in the 63 years since his death. I have not received a penny for the translations included here. CONTENTS Part 1 PRE-WAR Fabulations (1905) 3 Futuristic Word-technique: Open letter to F T Marinetti (1913) 8 To Novelists and their Critics (1913) 10 AFTERMATH Revolutionary Days in Alsace (1919) 15 Exorcising the Ghosts (1919) 23 Cannibals (1919) by ‘Linke Poot’ 31 Dionysos (1919) by ‘Linke Poot’ 41 The Bear, Reluctant (1919) by ‘Linke Poot’ 48 The German Masquerade (1920) by ‘Linke Poot’ 54 Addendum: General Strike in Berlin (1922) 62 Part 2 POLITICS AND SOCIETY The Thirty Years War (1921) 65 Addendum: Origin and meaning of my book Wallenstein (1930) 73 The spirit of a naturalistic age (1924) 75 German conditions, Jewish response (1924) 88 Addendum: from Linke Poot: ‘Revue’ (1919) 91 Catastrophe on a Left Turn (1930) 92 Prometheus and the Primitive (1938) 97 The German Utopia of 1933 110 Part 3 LIFE Doctor Döblin (1917-18) 119 Doctor and Writer (1927) 125 Two Souls in a Single Breast (1928) 129 A First Look Back (1928) 131 All kinds of people (1933) 175 A Year in Hollywood (1941) 179 Addendum: ‘Embarrassing Incident’ by B. Brecht 194 Part 4 LITERATURE Remarks on the Novel (1917) 197 The Epicist, his Material, and the Critics (1921) 200 Remarks on Mountains Oceans Giants (1924) 206 Construction of the Epic Work (1928) 213 The Historical Novel and Us (1936) 231 German Literature [abroad since 1933] (1938) 245 Epilogue (1948) 260 Goethe and Dostoevsky (1949) 271 Addendum: The experience of two forces (1922) 277 Writing means sitting in judgement on oneself (1949) 281 Sources 283 LITERATURE REMARKS ON THE NOVEL Die neue Rundschau (March 1917) THE EPIC, both the lower and the better, has been beset for some time by wreckers. I’ll jump right in. They don’t keep their room tidy; excitement ruins the novel, writers give in and sit on a dry branch. Writers forget more and more that they should be producing epics, they crowd more and more around the Drama, around the tying and untying of conflicts in this or that direction, plays, tragedies, comedies. A wedge has been driven into the novel; for sure it doesn’t come from the German, rather from the French: the obsession with condensing things together, point-blank problem-setting, an abstract rigour, reinforced beams, decisive downhill run to the conclusion. It appears to be a novelistic form – which does not exist and should not exist – let alone with blueprint, scaffolding, architecture. Appearance, false pretence. They present plot, people and actions straight from the egg, better as few people as possible, and other people as shadows in the background, decorations, fillers, and then a little setting, scenery so far as necessary; it’s all just accoutrements, everything is simplified to a slick, narrow, onrushing plot. The game is revealed at the start: we are to be deceived, we have a closet dramatist before us, we have a drama, narrated on paper. No new art form, no art form at all – what a proud word – but an incapacity and a plagiarism. The novel has nothing to do with plot. We know that at the beginning even the drama had nothing to do with plot, and it is doubtful if the drama did well to tie itself down like that. Simplifying, battering and trimming into shape is not the business of the epicist. In the novel it’s a case of piling, heaping, turning, shoving; in the drama, today’s drama, impoverished with its one- track plot: ‘Onward!’ Forward is never the watchword of the novel. The simplification of the novel to that forward-moving single plot is connected with the growing incapacity of the public, so carefully nurtured. Time there is a-plenty, but they’ve been totally ruined by the newspaper. Impatience is the measure of all their affairs, excitement the A to Z of the book. An hour and a half of torture, they spit, the book has done its duty. What does not excite is boring; here is the unconcealed naïve shamelessness: show defects as advantages, and add demands to it. The film is stuck in the same groove as the newspaper. That’s the whole debacle of the novel. The better authors should not let themselves be deceived. The public are insolent, and the publisher is of the public. In the drama the great pathetic scene was once the centre and the main object. All the rest a to-and-fro, something like a plot through prologue, epilogue and all the “logues” in between. Then they must sniff around this and that hero, and in particular this and that heroine, bring them “closer to the human”. Soon the centre of gravity shifted to the intellect, cosy understanding, neighbourly interests, the progress of the 197 hero’s life. Psychology battered down pathos. The broth is diluted with “development” to make it tasty. The concept of plot has swallowed up everything that, by the grace of art, billows on the stage and in the novel. And it’s not enough for them to have shock, joy, laughter, inner balance. Let’s see what happens: the poor public disappears from view. Now the second mask has fallen. You don’t let yourself come too close, you hate the crude familiarity, you won’t be operated on, you won’t let them dig into your own defenceless entrails, whoever they might be, you have your gas mask, people want excitement. That’s enough. Instead of prayers, words, instead of shock, spiritual preoccupations, instead of poetry, plot. All the rest is conceded, given away, is redundant. It’s already back to front to accept, and under this acceptance to work and read that Man is the object of the drama or the novel. Both have nothing to do with Man, or with the importance of an individual hero and his problems. Leave all that to the pedagogues, parsons, psychologists, psychiatrists: poeticised psychology is a nonsense. All we have, in colour or black and white, are happy, sad, deep, superficial events in a life: make of that what you will. But Man and his things are easily found, you just stay at home, problems and conflicts lie around on the floor, you only need a bit of construction: wham, you’ve slipped right around Poetry. Better models are Homer and Cervantes, and Dante as well. Dostoevsky should not go unmentioned. They show how one moment is justified by another moment, how every second of our life is a complete reality, round, fulfilled. Every page says: “Here I stand, here I die.” If a novel can’t be cut like an earthworm into ten pieces, and every piece moves by itself, then it’s worth nothing. * The hunchbacks in the chapel of Saint Remacle in de Coster’s Tyl Ulenspiegel are epic writing. Ulenspiegel’s japes and adventures were created at source. Of Dante’s monstrous Hell we cannot speak, in detail or in general, only remain silent. Rogoshin in The Idiot of Dostoevsky, the scene with the banknotes in the oven, the statements of the maid and the young lady, the scoundrelly general’s attempted theft: rooted firmly in the soil. What should be said of Don Quixote, the fight with the windmills, his fat companion? Odysseus fighting the suitors, his encounter with the swineherd, conversations among the gods of Olympus, the so-called descriptions of Ilium – whoever could make such descriptions – the armaments, ships, orders of battle, clashes.
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