German Masquerade
Döblin’s writings on politics, life and literature are completely unknown to English speaking readers. Yet his non-fiction output was enormous: over 7000 pages collected so far, compared to around 10,000 pages of fiction and drama. A complex character with an ever-searching mind, Döblin channels many of the conflicts and contradictions of the chaotic early 20th century, as well as reflecting on his own creative craft. A selection of his non-fiction writings in English is long overdue.
GERMAN MASQUERADE: Alfred Döblin’s Writings on Politics, Life and Literature in chaotic times
Over the past eight years, while I’ve been translating four of Döblin’s major novels, I’ve also been exploring his non-fiction work. The first translation to see the light of day was his essay Prometheus and the Primitive, highly relevant to his South American Amazonas Trilogy, published on The Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation website in 2014. The Rail also published the very first English translation of a ‘Linke Poot’ essay: On Cannibalism, in its March 2019 print edition (unfortunately in the ‘Fiction’ section!)
With the proper book publication of my translations of Manas and Mountains Oceans Giants scheduled for September 2020 (by UK independent publisher Galileo, which a few years ago brought out the utterly extraordinary and forgotten 1953 novel/’applied recollections’ The Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen), I thought it timely to pull together my dribs and drabs of non-fiction translations, sort them into a sensible order, and add other notable items to make a book-length ‘selected writings’ covering the range of Döblin’s interests in politics, life and literature from 1905 to the early 1950s.
The result is German Masquerade: Writings on Politics Life and Literature in chaotic times. It contains some three dozen items culled from ten volumes published since 1960, which represent dedicated effort by a series of editors: in the 1960s the Swiss professor Walter Muschg (who made some awful editorial decisions, rightly castigated by later commentators), in the 1970s to early 80s, the British professor Anthony W Riley, and more recently the editors of the Fischer Klassik series (a work still in progress, e.g. the four volumes of Kleine Schriften published between 1985 and 2005 have not yet been re-issued; the original editions are offered on Abebooks at absurdly high prices).
I still need to write a general Introduction to the selection, as well as a Timeline and short snappy introductions to the various items. Meanwhile, here are the Contents list, and links to PDF downloads of all the texts.
I hope readers will dip into the selections, and learn much about Döblin’s life and times that they did not know before!
CONTENTS
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
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
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
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 (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
GERMAN MASQUERADE Part 1 – PRE-WAR AND AFTERMATH
GERMAN MASQUERADE Part 2 – POLITICS AND SOCIETY
GERMAN MASQUERADE Part 3 – LIFE
GERMAN MASQUERADE Part 4 – LITERATURE
