Alfred Döblin

Alfer Döblin tunnetaan maineikkaasta klassikkoteoksestaan Berlin Alexanderplatz - erityisesti Reiner Werner Fassbinderin siitä tekemästä tv-sarjasta. Döblinin muita teoksia ei kuitenkaan ole suomennettu, vaikka Döblin tyyliä on ylistetty ja hän on kiistatta saksalaisen modernismin keskeisimpiä kirjailijoita. Rentukka ja muita novelleja on ensimmäinen Döblin-suomennos 30 vuotta sitten julkaistun Berlin Alexanderplatzin suomennoksen jälkeen. Kokoelman 11 novellia ovat taattua Döbliniä. Döblinin kerrontatyyli on tuttua, vapaata ajatuksen virtaa. Novellien synkkiä aiheita ja inhimillistä kärsimystä, ryydittää äkkiväärä ja groteski kerronta, joka ei taatusti jätä ketään kylmäksi. Ja kaiken lisäksi Döblin on pohjattoman hauska!

Lviv en stad som nämns i krigsrapporter och nyhetsinslag. Men Lviv är lika mycket en stad mitt i Europa och dess historia. Och mitt i Europas kulturarv. I Lviv en resa till Europa möter vi resenärer, skönlitterära författare, vetenskapsmän, modernister och småborgare, lyriker och offer för omänsklig förföljelse. De vittnar om det habsburgska Lemberg, om det polska Lwów, om det judiska Lemberik, om det ryska Lvov och det ukrainska Lviv. Och om staden med många namn under nazistisk ockupation. I Lvivs intellektuella liv uppstod banbrytande matematiska resonemang, modernism på jiddisch och livräddande tyfusforskning. Från mångnationella Lviv kommer nydanande europeiska författarskap. Matematikern Stanislav Ulam och författarna Alfred Döblin och Joseph Roth är bara några av många. Lviv är inte en stad i periferin. Den som förbigår staden förbigår också delar av Europas gemensamma historia, vetenskapsarv och kultur.

Megacities, abschmelzendes Grönland-Eis, biotechnische Menschenzüchtung - viele Themen von Döblins apokalyptischem, bildgewaltigem Zukunftsroman sind längst zu Themen unserer Gegenwart geworden. Döblins beunruhigende Frage "Was wird aus dem Menschen, wenn er so weiterlebt?" ist aber nicht nur von großer politischer Aktualität. Sie ist auch der Antrieb eines phantastischen Erzählens zwischen Science & Fiction, das :Berge Meere und Giganten9 mit Filmen wie :Blade Runner9 oder Frank Schätzings :Der Schwarm9 verbindet.

Alfred Döblins fortellinger omtales som ekspresjonistiske miniatyrmesterverk og moderne eventyr, noen ganger urovekkende, men alltid uhyggelig vakre. I den mest kjente fortellingen, «Mordet på en løvetann», møter vi den middelaldrende kjøpmannen Michael Fischer, som i et anfall av raseri en dag dreper en løvetann. Han angrer senere på ugjerningen, og et elsk–hat-forhold oppstår mellom mannen og blomsten. Det som i begynnelsen fremstår som en triviell hendelse, utvikler seg til en manisk besettelse hos herr Fischer.

Of the three great German word-artists of the first half of the 20th century, Alfred D blin remains the least known. The other two are Thomas Mann, whose attitude towards D blin ranged from cautious admiration to violent rage; and Berthold Brecht, who learned much from the ideas of his friend D blin. Anglophone readers have almost no source of information about D blin, or about the few works already translated into English (Berlin Alexanderplatz perhaps excepted). In Germany, reliable editions of D blin 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 D blin to a wider pool of readers. For the first time, Adventurous Readers provides the inquisitive reader with a map, compass and rations to sustain them as they proceed through the vividly imagined exotic landscapes of his epic novels. D blin 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 seventy-two excerpts presented in this book show how he put this maxim into practice. Each deserves close reading, for each brings to life its own vivid world. The excerpts were chosen (from many possible candidates) for their power to entertain, provoke, amuse, cause shudders, and showcase D blin'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.

Towards the end of 1937, having just completed his South American Amazonas trilogy (The Land without Death), D blin embarked on a new project much closer to home. As a military doctor in Alsace he had experienced firsthand the chaotic scenes in Haguenau and Strasbourg that followed the Kaiser's abdication and the Armistice. His skill at depicting historical events in vivid epic prose would now be applied to seminal events still within living memory, and still highly controversial. He and his family (now with three small children) left Alsace on 14 November 1918 with the hospital staff and patients, reaching Berlin several days later. In March 1919 he witnessed the savage repression of the uprising in Lichtenberg, the eastern Berlin district where he had settled; his sister Meta was killed by grenade shrapnel as she fetched milk for her children. His essay On Cannibalism reveals his anger at both the ineptitude of the insurgents and the callousness of the Social Democrat Minister of War, Noske. Citizens and Soldiers, the self-contained first volume of November 1918: A German Revolution, presents a vivid panorama of fictional and real individuals, scenes and events over a chaotic two weeks. It was published in Amsterdam and Stockholm in October 1939, shortly after Britain and France declared war on Germany. Unsurprisingly it had little chance to circulate. During his exile years in California (1940-45), D blin completed the remaining parts of what became the longest of his nine epic novels. When in 1947 the question arose of publishing the entire work in Germany, the French Occupation Authority (in which D blin was serving as Public Education Officer) vetoed Citizens & Soldiers because of sensitivities about the status of Alsace-Lorraine, main location of the novel's action. November 1918 A German Revolution therefore appeared as three volumes successively in autumn 1948, spring 1949 and spring 1950. This truncated edition was the basis for an incomplete English translation in the 1980s. In Germany, a complete edition appeared only in 1978, two decades after D blin's death, enabling for the first time a proper evaluation of what is now seen as one of D blin's most impressive achievements. It is high time that English readers too should have access to the missing first volume: Citizens & Soldiers.

I denne gripende, livlige og tidvis surrealistiske reiseskildringen beskriver forfatteren Alfred Döblin møtet med den jødiske befolkningen i Polen høsten 1924 - hjemmet til tre millioner jøder før andre verdenskrig. Med varme og beundring, sylskarp iakttagelsesevne og kritiske skråblikk, skildrer han hverdagsliv, religion og politikk i den unge staten merket av århundrer med konflikt mellom nasjoner og folk - konflikter som fortsatt preger dagens verdensbegivenheter. Alfred Döblins reiseskildring er en unik, litterær fortelling og regnes som en klassiker innenfor sjangeren. Med etterord av Benjamin Yazdan.

Alfred D blin (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 D blin'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 D blin'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.

The 27th century: beleaguered elites decide to melt the Greenland icecap. Why? €" to open up a new continent, for colonisation by the unruly masses. How? €" by harvesting the primordial heat of the Earth from Iceland €(TM)s volcanoes. Nature fights back, and it all goes horribly wrong... In the early 1920s confirmed city-dweller Alfred D blin €" he was 15 before he saw his first cherry tree €" became puzzled by a nagging sense of Nature: €œI experienced Nature as a secret. Physics as the surface, begging for explanations. Textbooks... knew nothing of the secret. Every day I experienced Nature as the World Being, meaning: weight, colour, light, dark, its countless materials, as a cornucopia of processes that quietly mingle and criss-cross. € Readers accustomed to following a story via Plot and Character may at first be disoriented by this epic of the future. Its structure is more symphonic than novelistic, driven by themes and motifs that emerge, fade back, emerge again in new orchestral voicings and new tempi. The prose €" supple, rhythmic, harsh, elegiac, tender, unsparing €" propels the reader on through scene after vivid scene. Mountains Oceans Giants is a literary counterpart to the painted dreams and nightmares of Hieronymus Bosch, in The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Last Judgement. Alfred D blin, born in Szczecin in 1878, initially worked as a medical assistant and opened his own practice in Berlin in 1911. D blin's first novel appeared in 1915/16. His greatest success was the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz published in 1929. In 1933 D blin emigrated to France and finally to the USA. After the end of the 2nd World War he moved back to Germany, but then moved in 1953 with his family to Paris. He died on June 26, 1957. Berlin Alexanderplatz (translated by Michael Hofman) is published by Penguin in the UK and New York Review Books in the USA.

What would it take for a woman to poison her husband? Young couple Elli and Link have been married for a year when Elli meets Gretchen, and the two soon become friends. When Elli confides in her friend about the abuse she suffers at her husbands hands, they hatch a plan for Elli to escape. But when their efforts prove unsuccessful, the pair begin to discuss a more permanent solution to Ellis problem poison. Based on a famous murder trial which took place in Berlin in 1923, this short novel by the master of German modernism, Alfred Doblin, explores questions of moral culpability and societal

År 1924 gav sig den tyske författaren Alfred Döblin ut på resa i Polen. Orsaken var pogromerna året innan. Följden blev en litterär skildring av judiskt gatuliv i en mängd städer, med sidor befolkade av rabbiner, gatuhandlare, skolpojkar, barberare, musiker. Döblins resa är berättelsen om en idag försvunnen värld, om en helt ofattbar mänsklig och kulturell förlust för Europa. Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) var tyskspråkig författare av judisk börd. Mest känd för sin roman Berlin Alexanderplatz som också filmatiserades av Werner Fassbinder. Hans böcker brändes av nazisterna och efter deras maktövertagande flydde han via Frankrike vidare till USA. Efter kriget återvände han till Tyskland. Resa i Polen är den andra bok av Alfred Döblin som översatts till svenska.

»Om du är nöjd med dig själv - akta dig för Döblin.« Günther Grass Franz Biberkopf, hallick och dråpare, släpps ut från fängelset där han suttit i fyra år efter att ha dödat sin flickvän Ida. Livrädd inför utsikten att möta tillvaron utanför fängelsemurarna, och inför att återse kretsen av fattiga och kriminella kring »Alex«, torget Alexanderplatz i östra centrala Berlin, svär Biberkopf på att försöka bli en anständig människa. Vad han har att bekämpa liknar ett öde. Berlin Alexanderplatz [1929] av Alfred Döblin räknas till den tyskspråkiga modernismens främsta verk och brukar kallas Weimar-republikens litterära mästerverk. Döblin blandar arbetar-argot i tjugotalets Berlin med lekfull poesi, inre monolog med en ström av dröm, rädsla, hopp, förvirring och illusion hos huvudpersonen, jämte neutralt tidningsreportage och experimentell montageteknik. Alltsammans blir till ett svindlande rikt verk, som på pricken sägs fånga Weimar-Berlins dekadens och storslagenhet just före fascismens intåg. Här i svensk översättning av Torsten Nordström. ALFRED DÖBLIN [1878 - 1957] var en tysk författare och läkare. Döblin, som kom från en judisk familj, flydde nazismens Tyskland 1933. Då var han en litterär stjärna, efter att romanen Berlin Alexanderplatz [1929] blivit en bestseller. Boken hann tryckas i femtio upplagor innan nazisternas bokbål tändes. I dag hör den till modernismens viktigaste texter. Rainer Werner Fassbinders filmatisering är världshistoriens längsta spelfilm, över femton timmar lång.» Jag har lärt mig mer om epikens väsen av Döblin än av någon annan.« Bertolt Brecht »En rasande katarakt till roman, som hotar att helt och hållet uppsluka läsaren i känslor. Vidundret i tysk litterär modernism, den tyska motsvarigheten till James Joyces Ulysses.« The New Yorker

The great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a superb new translation by Michael HofmannFranz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison, he finds himself thwarted by an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again - until one day he is struck a monstrous blow which might just prove his final downfall. A dazzling collage of newspaper reports, Biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang, Berlin Alexanderplatz is the great novel of Berlin life: inventing, styling and recreating the city as reality and dream; mimicking its movements and rhythms; immortalizing its pubs, abattoirs, apartments and chaotic streets. From the gutter to the stars, this is the whole picture of the city. Berlin Alexanderplatz brought fame in 1929 to its author Alfred Döblin, until then an impecunious writer and doctor in a working-class neighbourhood in the east of Berlin. Success at home was short-lived, however; Doblin, a Jew, left Germany the day after the Reichstag Fire in 1933, and did not return until 1945. This landmark translation by Michael Hofmann is the first to do justice to Berlin Alexanderplatz in English, brilliantly capturing the energy, prodigality and inventiveness of Döblin's masterpiece.