ADVENTUROUS READERS GUIDE

ADVENTUROUS READERS’ GUIDE
TO THE EPIC WORLDS OF ALFRED DÖBLIN

In October 2024, Galileo will publish the first ever selection in English from the enormous treasure house of Döblin’s nine epic novels. Seventy-six passages grouped under 17 thematic headings, perfect for dipping into when you have a spare fifteen minutes!

 

INTRODUCTION

If you have navigated your way to this page, then you are, by definition, an Adventurous Reader!

Of the three great German word-artists of the first half of the 20^th century, Alfred Döblin remains the least known. (The other two are Thomas Mann, whose attitude towards Döblin ranged from cautious admiration to outrage; and Berthold Brecht, who learned much from the ideas of his friend Döblin. We’re not concerned here with their great Austrian contemporaries.) Anglophone readers have almost no source of information about Döblin, or about the few works of his already translated into English (Berlin Alexanderplatz perhaps excepted).

In Germany, reliable editions of Döblin trickled out between the 1980s (decades after his death in 1957!) and the 2010s. Academic lit. crit. scholars enjoy tackling aspects of his life and output in ways attractive to other scholars. But little has been done to promote Döblin to a wider pool of readers. Instead he is acknowledged, with a sigh, to be “difficult”, of interest only to a select minority.

Since 2018 my website https://beyond-alexanderplatz.com has sought to remedy this neglect; and more recently our podcast “The Epic Worlds of Alfred Döblin” explores his work in the context of his life and the social and political background. Also, Döblin’s Wikipedia page in English has expanded usefully in recent years; there you can find basic biographic information.

The “official” view of Döblin is grievously misconceived. Yes, his major works fill weighty tomes – but so do Thomas Mann’s! Yes, he tackles profound questions about the world and human existence, but so do Mann and Brecht! The issue with Döblin, I believe, is summed up in an acute observation by an old school friend, Moritz Goldstein, in his review of Wallenstein:

A severely short-sighted writer, who has to bring objects really close to his eyes, has created a colossal wall-painting for short-sighted people.

Goldstein’s remark offers a way into Döblin’s epic worlds: provide Adventurous Readers with map and compass and rations to sustain them as they proceed through vividly imagined exotic landscapes.

Here for good measure are two more insightful comments, the first from Rudolf Keyser in Das Kunstblatt, 1925:

In Döblin’s novels, Nature is no describable reality, but a locus of forces, a magnetic field, electricity. Only from this standpoint can the essence of this writer be discerned: he is the Energiser, whose noisy, colourful, tough energies overleap every life form and sweep in a wild flood over cosily descriptive narrative art. His language does not follow the contours of inner and outward reality, but blooms like an organism.

The second from the philosopher Günther Anders, in Mensch ohne Welt, 1984:

… As a writer outstripped himself, he created characters whose fullness of experience, powers of thought, sceptical acumen were endlessly bigger than his “own”; in philosophical terms: his creations outshone the creator; in psychological terms: in a post-hypnotic amnesia he betrayed no sign of his actual depths, and to some extent had no notion of those depths, had no understanding of them at all. A schizo-condition, as must be the rule with musicians who converse in trivialities but compose profoundly; but I have never encountered it among writers.

All nine of Döblin’s epic works are now available in English: seven titles (one severely shortened) as books, plus two on my website, which attracted attention not only from readers hungry for more Döblin sustenance, but also from Galileo Publishers  who brought out two titles in 2021 (Mountains Oceans Giants and Manas), a third in 2022 (The Land without Death); and a fourth in 2024 (Citizens & Soldiers, the missing first volume of November 1918.)

Since Döblin is still so little known in English, these publications have so far attracted only a handful of notices (but all quite enthusiastic). Journal editors seem reluctant to find space for reviews; competent reviewers may be few and far between; hence the wider literate public remains unaware of Döblin’s work. Because Döblin is so little known, he shall remain unknown.

Döblin famously declared: If a novel can’t be cut up into ten pieces like a worm, and each piece lives by itself, it is worthless. The six dozen excerpts presented here show how he put this maxim into practice. Each deserves close reading, for each brings to life its own vivid world.

At the start of his writing career, Döblin was already reflecting on a new kind of fiction as a way out of the moribund 19^th century German novel. He sharpened his views over the next three decades, alongside his practice as a writer. Critics have noted how the first five epics from Wang Lun to Berlin Alexanderplatz show a clear line of development, in particular an increasing intensity and economy of language: maximum meaning from precisely targeted words, phrases, sentences, and scenes. In his most neglected work, Manas, immediately preceding the much-dissected Berlin Alexanderplatz, the intensity required a breakout from normal prose to a kind of free verse. Critics responded positively – and really the format of Manas should present the open-minded reader with little difficulty – but most German readers were baffled, and scholars are still reluctant to engage with this remarkable work.

The epics after Berlin Alexanderplatz were produced under difficult conditions of exile. Döblin had lost his medical career, most of his German-reading public, and the lively sardonic vernacular of working-class Berlin (a veritable treasure, he believed, absurdly despised by the educated classes). The major works of exile should not lightly be dismissed as below the standard set by Berlin Alexanderplatz, but considered respectfully on their own merits.

THE EPICS

The Three Leaps of Wang Lun – Döblin’s first venture into long-form fiction astonished reviewers with its vivid recreation of an 18^th century China untouched by the West. The theme: individual fates against the implacable force of the world / the State. Language and structure show Modernist/ Expressionist features, alongside extensive narrative sequences.

Wallenstein – a 900-page tapestry of the Thirty Years War in central Europe, covering almost every main personality and event. The total absence of dates disoriented German readers. The theme: power. It springs seemingly from nowhere in the case of the war-entrepreneur Wallenstein; and evaporates into ever more tawdry pretending in the case of Emperor Ferdinand. Passages just as intense as the opening scene are scattered throughout, amid vivid narratives of war, popular suffering, and characters presented with Dickensian gusto.

Mountains Oceans Giants – from trying to understand the past, Döblin now seeks to understand the future that awaits if current trends of technological hubris continue. The intensity of his imaginative effort almost led to a nervous breakdown. The first half, said one critic reads like “a demented 27^th century edition of The Economist.” The Greenland-Iceland venture in the second half, and its horrific aftermath, are unparalleled anywhere in Science Fiction.

Manas – The first three epics featured humans en masse (religious sects, armies, crowds). In Manas the focus is on one man (a war hero) and his beloved wife, who rescues him from Shiva’s Field of the Dead. The theme: how to reconcile the human Ego with the world of Nature. Imaginative intensity demanded an unconventional style of presentation: “a kind of primal verse, raw and passionate, conjured as if for the first time from the fabric of prose”. (R. Musil)

Berlin Alexanderplatz – The only Döblin epic known to any sizeable number of Anglophone readers. Ex-con Biberkopf finds it hard to live decently amid economic challenges and dangerous acquaintances in the unforgiving world of Weimar Berlin. The sights and sounds of the city and unfolding events are presented with relentless vigour and linguistic skill.

The Babylonian Exile – Amid the hysterical angst and turmoil of the dying Weimar Republic, Döblin envisioned a Babylonian god, cursed by Jeremiah, who descends to Earth to atone for his sins. (The first chapters accompanied Döblin across the Swiss border in February 1933; he completed the text in Zurich’s Central Library.) But Conrad will not atone. Shocked to find Ancient Babylon a forsaken ruin, he takes a Grand Tour through 1920s Europe, and life as a human. The many comical scenes are interspersed with historical vignettes of war and massacre; the loose structure and many digressions invite comparison with Tristram Shandy.

The Land without Death – In the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, Döblin constructed a convincing tapestry of yet another alien time and place. The first volume lands the reader straight in the world of The Other (Amazonian Indians and Inca refugees); follows three bands of European marauders up into the Andean highlands; and shows the priest Las Casas hopelessly trying to persuade an Indian tribe that Christianity means more than enslavement and plunder. Volume 2 covers two centuries of Jesuit activity culminating in sanctuaries where Guarani Indians develop their own blend of native and European religion. Volume 3 is set largely in 1930s Europe, where a reckoning is sought between the promises of the Enlightenment and the reality of human misery in a mechanical age.

November 1918: a German Revolution – a 2200-page, five year effort to understand the calamity of the First World War and its aftermath, focusing on the two months between the Kaiser’s abdication and the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Volume 1 is a deftly fictionalised narrative based on Döblin’s own experience of the war’s end in and around Strasbourg. Seemingly disparate characters and scenes gradually reveal a fascinating picture of players negotiating a game without rules. The French Occupation Authority in 1946 vetoed republication of vol. 1 (Citizens & Soldiers), fearing it would stir up Franco-German resentments; it was left out of the 1980s English translation.

THE THEMES

1. Overtures – These four opening passages, written between 1918 and 1933, show great mastery of language and musical architecture. Each sets the reader down in media res, without the authorial scene-setting usual in conventional fiction. Try reading “A Feast” or the opening of Manas out loud a few times, to savour the vigour, the rhythms, the brutally accurate adjectives and verbs, the musical structure. (The Conrad excerpt, bursting with comedy, is a bit closer to standard narrative style.)

The 30 opening lines of Manas present the epic theme with admirable concision and clarity. The first 15 lines are set in our physical world: weather, mountains, vegetation, cliffs, rivers, plains. But in the second half, this natural environment turns out to be an alien, sentient reality: Shiva’s realm, where benign shrubbery becomes grasping thorns, dying souls bob like boats in the wind of Shiva’s breath, the iceheads are Shiva’s crystal palace. The language is, without doubt, poetry; such dense meaning would be hard to package so neatly as prose. As the story proceeds, every transition between the mundane world and Shiva’s realm is signalled by echoes from these opening lines.

The first pages of Berlin Alexanderplatz largely present Franz’s stream of consciousness, with occasional interjections by an observing Narrator. Surreal imagery (“lifeless” crowds surging; roofs about to topple) renders the city doubly present.

2. Spirits – Here we see Döblin’s urge to dig beneath surface reality, to the unconscious and demonic layers beneath. It may resonate with readers of Nietzsche (“Do not stare too long into the abyss, lest the abyss stare back at you”) and Carl Jung (the Collective Unconscious, and the Shadow). You will spot relevant passages under some other Themes.
3. Nature – By the early 1920s Döblin was increasingly occupied with Nature, and the perceived inadequacy of scientific explanations of the world and the place of human beings in it. This interest, as well as his training as a neurologist and psychiatrist, informs the excerpts here and in some other Themes. Be alert for allegories: e.g. invisible microbes lurking to undermine apparently healthy organisms.

The other headings are fairly self-explanatory, though in a few cases you may wonder: how does this excerpt fit here? Some excerpts under other Themes highlight the Promethean hubris of people striving to surmount the limits of their humanity, just like our lovely 21^st century trans- and post-humanists. (The ghastly conclusion of such efforts was graphically portrayed in a notable but neglected 1935 novel by Döblin’s contemporary Paul Gurk: ToZoB-37: The Myth of Grey Humanity, or of the Number 1which unaccountably slipped past Nazi censors. You can find it in English on my website. So far even publishers of historical Science Fiction have shown no interest!)

The excerpts were chosen (from many possible candidates) for their power to entertain, provoke, amuse, cause shudders, and showcase Döblin’s mastery of styles, moods, and expressive possibilities. After reading through the selection, or even just dipping in, you should be well prepared to tackle a whole epic novel.

Please find time to listen to the podcast “The Epic Worlds of Alfred Döblin”, and spread word of this great writer, who is still to be properly discovered by the wider public!

CONTENTS

THEME 1. OVERTURES
A Feast   Wallenstein Part 1
No more rain   Manas Part 1
Tram 41 into town   Berlin Alexanderplatz Ch. 1
Conrad wakes up   The Babylonian Exile Part 1

THEME 2. SPIRITS
Madam Pei   Wang Lun Part 3
A Circus   Wallenstein Part 4
Demons   Manas Part 1
The Spider’s Web   The Land without Death Part 2
Tauler   Citizens & Soldiers Part 1

THEME 3. NATURE
Mosquitoes   Wallenstein Part 1
Desert   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 1
The Mountains Boomed   Manas Part 2
Turtles   The Land without Death Part 2
Hops   Citizens & Soldiers Part 1

THEME 4. MAJESTIES
Tortoise   Wang Lun Part 3
Beer King of Merseburg   Wallenstein Part 1
Mansu   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 5
I the King   The Land without Death Part 6

THEME 5. SERMONS
Recruiting Sermon   Wallenstein Part 3
Court Sermon   Wallenstein Part 4
Priest of Shiva   Manas Part 3
Sermon in the Forest   The Land without Death Part 3

THEME 6. TRICKSTERS
The Music God’s Temple   Wang Lun Part 1
Decoy   Manas Part 2
Nadji the Tippler   The Babylonian Exile Part 3
Sao Paolo   The Land Without Death Part 4

THEME 7. AILMENTS
Shaman   Wang Lun Part 1
In the Grotto   Wallenstein Part 5
Degenerating   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 5
Oyampi Cure   The Land without Death Part 10
Chief Medical Officer   Citizens & Soldiers Part 1

THEME 8. LOVERS
Eleonore   Wallenstein Part 1
Servadak   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 9
How Savitri found Manas   Manas Part 1
Sweetshop Mamselle   The Babylonian Exile Part 4
Deserter meets Housemaid   Citizens & Soldiers Part 1

THEME 9.  METAMORPHOSES
Incident at Bodenstadt   Wallenstein Part 4
Tower Humans   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 8
Kalongs   Manas Part 3
Melusine   The Babylonian Exile Part 4

THEME 10. WORK
Mushrooms   Wang Lun Part 4
Coining   Wallenstein Part 2
Oil Clouds   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 7
In the South   The Babylonian Exile Part 7
Cataldino   The Land without Death Part 6

THEME 11. BODIES
Paldan Ishe   Wang Lun Part 3
Tilly   Wallenstein Part 3
Time of True Humanity   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 8
Ambrosius Alfinger   The Land without Death Part 2
The Airman   Citizens & Soldiers Part 1

THEME 12. PERFORMANCES
Musicians   Wallenstein Part 6
Ribbons   Manas Part 3
Parade in Moscow   The Babylonian Exile Part 7
Dances on the Amazon   The Land without Death Part 1
The People’s Tribune   Citizens & Soldiers Part 1

THEME 13. TROGLODYTES
Burrows   Wallenstein part 4
Underground   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 8
Busy Mole   Manas Part 3
Strays   Citizens & Soldiers Part 2

THEME 14. EXILE
Exodus to Saxony   Wallenstein Part 2
Mother of Pestilence   Manas Part 2
Cuzumarra   The Land without Death Part 1
The Forester   Citizens & Soldiers Part 2

THEME 15. STATE VISITS
Lama trek to Peking   Wang Lun Part 3
The Count of Pfalz-Neuburg   Wallenstein Part 1
State Visit to Yapeyu  The Land without Death Part 7
Floored   Citizens & Soldiers Part 2

THEME 16. HOSTILITIES
Viennese welcome   Wallenstein Part 2
Set to! Set to!   Manas Part 3
Franz steps into a bar   Berlin Alexanderplatz Ch. 2
Beauty Contest   The Babylonian Exile Part 4
Room for the night   Citizens & Soldiers Part 1

THEME 17.  SWANSONGS
Hai Tang’s Pilgrimage   Wang Lun Part 4
After the Monsters   Mountains Oceans Giants Part 9
From the dream he never returned   The Babylonian Exile Part 7
Into the eddy   The Land without Death Part 10