Comments on the novel

Comments on the novel is a poetic novel by the German author Alfred Döblin from 1917. The article was published in the Neue Rundschau . Döblin takes up concepts he represents from his Berlin program such as depersonation, depersonalization as antipsychologism and the primacy of facts, but also takes a stand against contemporary romantic tendencies.

content

The reduction of the narrative to a conflict-laden fact is referred to by Döblin as a dramatic element from the epic . The plot was not supposed to be driven by tension, but rather the story had to justify itself as a perpetuating event. The task of a style as a surface phenomenon has to be replaced by polyphony as an expression of a fragmented, but omnipresent reality.

reception

Josef Quack sees Döblin's demand for an objective representation as a postulate of indirectness for the purpose of "epic [r] transformation of philosophical, metaphysical thoughts". In the rejection of psychology, Matthias Prangel recognizes a “criticism of reductionist rationalism”. Birgit Hoock believes that Döblin pursues a parallelism of objectivity and epiphany.

literature

Text output

Alfred Döblin: Comments on the novel , in: Die neue Rundschau , 1917.
Alfred Döblin: Comments on the novel , in: Theory and Technology of the Roman in the 20th Century , ed. by Hartmut Steinecke , 2nd edition, Tübingen 1979, pp. 20-22.
Alfred Döblin: Comments on the novel , in: Writings on aesthetics, poetics and literature (= selected works in individual volumes , vol. 26), ed. by Erich Kleinschmidt , Freiburg 1989, pp. 123-127.

Individual evidence

^ Josef Quack historical novel and historical criticism. To Alfred Döblin's Wallenstein . Würzburg 2004, p. 268.

↑ Matthias Prangel: Alfred Doblin novel considerations , in: The frontier worker Alfred Doblin 1940-1957. Biography and work (= International Alfred Döblin Collogquium 2003 ), ed. by Christine Maillard and Monique Mombert. Bern u. a. 2006, p. 15.

↑ Birgit Hoock: Modernity as a paradox. The concept of modernity and its application to the work of Alfred Döblins (until 1933) , (= Investigations on German literary history, vol. 93). Tübingen 1997, pp. 219-220.

[1] Josef Quack historical novel and historical criticism. To Alfred Döblin's Wallenstein . Würzburg 2004, p. 268.

[2] Matthias Prangel: Alfred Doblin novel considerations , in: The frontier worker Alfred Doblin 1940-1957. Biography and work (= International Alfred Döblin Collogquium 2003 ), ed. by Christine Maillard and Monique Mombert. Bern u. a. 2006, p. 15.

[3] Birgit Hoock: Modernity as a paradox. The concept of modernity and its application to the work of Alfred Döblins (until 1933) , (= Investigations on German literary history, vol. 93). Tübingen 1997, pp. 219-220.