Alfred Döblin Book order

Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) composed his epic trilogy of South America under difficult circumstances of exile. It was accessible on first publication in 1937-38 only outside Germany, and for only a couple of years before war broke out. The first postwar edition, like others of Döblin's works apart from Berlin Alexanderplatz, was little noticed in a Germany traumatised by Nazism and defeat. Neither the pre-war not the first post-war edition explicitly linked the separate volumes as parts of a unitary work. In the 1960s the separate novels were first brought together by Walter Muschg, editor of the first series of Döblin's 'selected works', under the overall title Amazonas. Muschg, however, decided to cut Volume 3 entirely. Not until 1973 did the trilogy first appear in full, in East Germany. Another 15 years passed before the first complete edition in West Germany. So only in the past three or four decades has this work begun to receive the critical attention it richly deserves. The epic is set mainly in South America, but its true focus is Europe. The urgent guiding proposition is: The Nazis did not emerge from nowhere.

In einer eindrucksvollen Szenerie in der Münchener Residenz entfaltet sich eine tiefgründige Auseinandersetzung mit der Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Gott. Ein glutäugiger Priester, gekleidet in einem schwarzen Jesuitenrock, vermittelt eine provokante Botschaft: Die Liebe zu Gott ist eine Sünde, da sie ihn erniedrigt. Stattdessen betont er die Notwendigkeit, Gott mit Ehrfurcht und Grauen zu begegnen, und stellt die Vorstellung von einer persönlichen Beziehung in Frage. Diese düstere Perspektive auf das Göttliche regt zur Reflexion über Glauben und die menschliche Existenz an.

Döblins großer Exilroman Seit den Psalmen und Ovids ›Tristia‹ wird vom Exil in der Regel im traurig-elegischen Ton erzählt. Döblins ›Babylonische Wandrung‹ ist eines der herausragenden Beispiele dafür, dass vom Exil auch mit Witz und Humor erzählt werden kann. Es ist die turbulent-pikareske Geschichte von Konrad, dem hochmütigen babylonischen Gott, der seinen Thron verlassen und sich auf der Erde durchschlagen muss, weil er »Konkurs« gegangen ist. Mit einem Nachwort von Moritz Wagner

A questão de ordem filosófica que envolve os processos da apreensão do "real" sempre esteve presente, de um modo ou de outro, no horizonte da crítica literária. Em tempos idos, essa questão foi identificada pelo terminus "verossimilhança", depois pela discussão sobre as fronteiras entre literatura e história, continuando até os dias de hoje sob diversas denominações, Alfred Döblin (1878-1957), o famoso autor de Berlin Alexanderplatz, também foi um ensaísta e importante teórico do "como" o "real " é apreendido em um texto literário.

"Alfred Doblin was a titan of modern German literature. This collection of stories--astonishingly, the first collection of his stories ever published in English--shows him to have been equally adept in shorter forms. Included in its entirety is Doblin's first book, The Murder of a Buttercup, a work of savage brilliance and a landmark of literary expressionism. Mortality roams the streets of nineteenth-century Manhattan, with a white borzoi and a quiet smile. A ballerina duels to the death with the stupid childish body she is bound to. We experience, in the celebrated title story, a dizzying descent into a shattered mind. The collection is then rounded off with two longer stories written when Doblin was in exile from Nazi Germany in Southern California, including the delightful "Materialism: A Fable," in which news of humanity's soulless doctrines spreads to the animals, elements, and molecules of nature"--

La revolución de 1918, un episodio decisivo en la historia de Alemania, precipitó el cambio desde la monarquía del Reich alemán a la República de Weimar. Alfred Döblin, testigo de primera mano, logró convertirlos en una monumental obra literaria: "Noviembre de 1918", en la que, a partir de diferentes recursos, muestra todas las facetas y aspectos de unos meses que cambiaron el curso de la historia de su país. En esta primera entrega, "Burgueses y soldados", buena parte de la tensión narrativa que genera Döblin reside en el acusado contraste entre los esfuerzos del líder espartaquista Karl Liebknecht por movilizar al proletariado y los pactos que el dirigente de la asamblea de los representantes del pueblo intenta establecer con los altos mandos militares. Una de las novelas más importantes de la literatura del siglo XX traducida por primera vez al castellano.

In 1915, fourteen years before Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Doblin published his first novel, an extensively researched Chinese historical extravaganza: The Three Leaps of Wang Lun. Even more remarkably, given its subject matter, the book was written in Expressionist style and is now considered the first modern German novel, as well as the first Western novel to depict a China untouched by the West. It is virtually unknown in English. Based on actual accounts of a doomed rebellion during the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the late 18th century, the novel tells the story of Wang Lun, a historical martial arts master and charismatic leader of the White Lotus sect, who leads a futile revolt of the "Truly Powerless." Densely packed cities and Tibetan wastes, political intrigue and religious yearning, imperial court life and the fate of wandering outcasts are depicted in a language of enormous vigor and matchless imagination, unfolding the theme of timidity against force, and a mystical sense of the world against the realities of power.