Futuristic word technique

Futuristic word technique. Open letter to FT Marinetti is an open letter from the German narrator Alfred Döblin to his fellow Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , the founder of futurism and its most powerful spokesman. The novel poetological essay appeared as an article in the expressionist newspaper Der Sturm in March 1913. In the paper, the supplement to the technical manifesto of futuristic literature , Marinetti's answer to his critics, precedes Döblin's writing.

In terms of literary history, the article makes an important contribution to the reception of futurism in Germany. As a document of a critical appropriation of avant-garde writing experiments, Döblin's first novel poetological main writing, An novelists and their critics, anticipates . Berlin program .

background

On February 20, 1909, Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto in the French newspaper Le Figaro . The Sturm publisher Herwarth Walden published a translation from French in 1912. In the same year he organized the second futuristic art exhibition in Berlin. In addition to Umberto Boccioni , Döblin also met Marinetti there. In his article Images of the Futurists of March 1912, like a large number of his avant-garde colleagues, he was enthusiastic about the new movement.

Döblin has received numerous works by Marinetti, including the novel Mafarka the Futurist. African novel , the article Technical Manifesto of Futuristic Literature published in October 1912, and the poem La battaglia di Tripoli with its associations consisting of nouns and sometimes compounds. Bataille: Poids + Odeu , an excerpt from the description of the battle in French, was preceded by Doblin's reply at the end of the supplement.

content

Döblin welcomes the renewal of the futurists and their attack on decadence literature. The futurists as well as the author have in common the tendency to objectivity, but he rejects the attempt to reproduce reality through the accumulation of facts. The author criticizes the concentration on nouns, according to which adjectives and adverbs are only unnecessary accessories, such as the task of syntax as a linguistic instance of meaning with the introduction of chains of associations, as a limitation of the art of representation. The result of Marinetti's writing technique is therefore less of a literary mastery of reality following the naturalists than a relapse into premodern literature and thus a farewell to futuristic renewal. Finally, Döblin recommends Expressionism to his colleagues and says goodbye with “Maintain your futurism. I cultivate my Doblinism ”.

reception

There was no answer from Marinetti. Guillaume Apollinaire congratulated the author on the attack.

The polemics were evaluated differently. Armin Arnold called the text “a shameful document of German lack of humor”. Volker Pirsich rated it as a pamphlet. Döblin was hardly concerned with a dispute with futurism, rather he settled with Marinetti, although content-related disputes are addressed.

According to Luca Renzi, Döblin's writing opposes the bourgeois novel of the previous century.

Text output

Alfred Döblin: Futuristic Word Technique [1913] . In: Writings on Aesthetics, Poetics and Literature , ed. by Erich Kleinschmidt. Olten / Freiburg in Breisgau 1989, pp. 113-119.

literature

Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann: The beginnings of the literary avant-garde in Germany about Anverwandlung , especially Chapter IV. Part 1, Stuttgart 1991, pp. 154-178.
Giovanni Scimonello: The departure of the European avant-garde after 1900 , in: The European project of romanticism and modernity , ed. by Silvio Vietta u. a. Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-484-67017-7 , pp. 159-172.

Web links

Döblin, Alfred: Futuristic word technique. Open letter to FT Marinetti, March 1913

Individual evidence

^ Armin Arnold: The literature of expressionism. Linguistic and thematic sources . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1966, p. 82.
↑ Volker Pirsich: The storm. A monograph . (= Dissertation, 1984), Traugott Bautz, Herzberg 1985, ISBN 978-3-88309-020-7 , p. 201.
↑ Volker Pirsich: The storm. A monograph . (= Dissertation, 1984), Traugott Bautz, Herzberg 1985, ISBN 978-3-88309-020-7 , p. 199.
↑ Luca Renzi: Alfred Döblin - the image of modernity in his epic theory , in: literary modernity. Concept and Phenomenon, ed. by Sabina Becker and Helmuth Kiesel. Berlin / New York, 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019114-1 , p. 181.

[1] Armin Arnold: The literature of expressionism. Linguistic and thematic sources . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1966, p. 82.

[2] Volker Pirsich: The storm. A monograph . (= Dissertation, 1984), Traugott Bautz, Herzberg 1985, ISBN 978-3-88309-020-7 , p. 201.

[3] Volker Pirsich: The storm. A monograph . (= Dissertation, 1984), Traugott Bautz, Herzberg 1985, ISBN 978-3-88309-020-7 , p. 199.

[4] Luca Renzi: Alfred Döblin - the image of modernity in his epic theory , in: literary modernity. Concept and Phenomenon, ed. by Sabina Becker and Helmuth Kiesel. Berlin / New York, 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019114-1 , p. 181.