1. Louis Huguet calls this "Döblin's fundamental experience." See his Jungian interpretation of Döblin's early writings in "L'Oeuvre d'Alfred Döblin ou la Dialectique de l'Exode, 1878-1918," Diss. Paris-Nanterre, 1970, p. iii.

2. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 102-18.

3. Heidi Thomann Tewarson writes that in Döblin's early works, "Interpersonal relations are almost exclusively based on physical attraction, while psychic--i.e., intellectual or emotional--sympathy is as far as possible eliminated. Thus all relationships take on erotic characteristics, not just those be- soft

tween a man and a woman, but also those between two men or two women." Tewarson, Alfred Döblin, pp. 69-70.

4. He could have written this sketch, in which he is "approaching forty" ( SLW 14), between January and his birthday in August.

5. See the excellent "Döblin-Chronik" in Jochen Meyer, ed., Alfred Döblin 1878-1978, catalogue of the exhibit at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar, June 10-December 31, 1978 (Marbach: Deutsche Schiller-gesellschaft, 1978), pp. 15-21.

6. On the characterization of Döblin's marriage, see Robert Minder, "Begegnungen mit Alfred Döblin in Frankreich," Text + Kritik 13/14 (June 1966), p. 59. Bertolt Brecht writes of Döblin's "life with an uncommonly stupid and philistine woman"; Brecht, Arbeitsjournal, ed. Werner Hecht, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973), p. 605.

7. Armin Arnold, "Les styles, voilà l'homme! Döblins sprachliche Entwicklung bis zu 'Berlin Alexanderplatz,'" in Zu Alfred Döblin, ed. Ingrid Schuster (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1980), pp. 41-56, disagrees. He finds "Modern" an exercise in schoolboy rhetoric; only the theme is unusual (pp. 41-42).

8. August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Die Frau in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft) , 10th ed. (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1891).

9. Die literarische Welt 2 (May 21, 1926), p. 6, quoted by Klaus Müller-Salget in Alfred Döblin: Werk und Entwicklung (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1972), p. 95.

10. See Heidi Thomann Tewarson, "Von der Frauenfrage zum Geschlech-terkampf: Der Wandel der Prioritäten im Frühwerk Alfred Döblins," The German Quarterly 58 (Spring 1985), pp. 208-22.

11. See Anthony Riley, "Nachwort des Herausgebers," JR 293-94.

12. Döblin mentions this setting explicitly along with the youth of the hero (and implicitly also of the author) in the essay of 1927, "Stille Bewohner des Rollschrankes" (Silent Inhabitants of My Desk Drawer): "At the beginning, the hero is in youthful, rural narrowness" ( AzL 357).

13. See Monique Weyembergh-Boussart, Alfred Döblin: Seine Religiosität in Persönlichkeit und Werk (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1970), pp. 88-89.

14. Tewarson, Alfred Döblin, pp. 21-22, contrasts the progressive position of Bebel to the antifeminist position of a writer like Strindberg, whom Döblin admired. Döblin, she writes, is basically antifeminist in his imaginative writings, though he occasionally espouses a progressive position in his journalism.

15. The influence of Italian Futurism on the Sturm circle and other Expressionists confirms Walter Laqueur's insistence that a good deal of what we consider "Weimar culture" was already fully developed before the First World War. Laqueur, pp. 110-13.

16. Der Sturm 104 (March 1912), p. 829; also quoted in Christa Baum-garth, Geschichte des Futurismus (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1966), p. 28.

17. See Marianne W. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory 1909-1915 (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1978), p. 40: "Marinetti originally wavered between Dynamism and Futurism as names for his incipient movement."

18. Der Sturm 103 (March 1912), p. 823; also in Baumgarth, p. 182.

19. "Die Bilder der Futuristen," Der Sturm 110 (May 1912), pp. 41-42. Republished in Zeitlupe 7-11. break

20. See Baumgarth, pp. 166-71 for the "Technical Manifesto"; pp. 171-73 for the "Supplement"; and pp. 250-51 for "Battle: Weight + Smell," the French version of which was appended to the "Supplement" in Sturm 150/151 (March 1913), p. 280.

21. See Tewarson, Alfred Döblin, p. 54, who shows that Döblin's 1910 essay on the aesthetics of music, "Gespräche mit Kalypso. Über die Musik," already had established many of the aesthetic positions attributed in the secondary literature to the influence of Futurism.

22. Der Sturm 133 (October 1912), p. 195; Baumgarth, p. 168.

23. Der Sturm 133, p. 194; Baumgarth, p. 166.

24. Der Sturm 133, p. 194.

25. This point is also made by Winfried Georg Sebald, Der Mythus der Zerstörung im Werk Döblins (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1980), pp. 129-30.

26. On the importance of Sachlichkeit, see Tewarson, Alfred Döblin, pp. 47ff.

27. Compare the similar remarks of the Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo apropos the Futurists: "Ask any Futurist how he imagines speed, and on the scene will appear a whole arsenal of raging automobiles, rumbling stations, tangled wire, the clang, bang, noise and ring of the whirling streets. . . . This is not at all required for speed and its rhythms. . . . Look at a ray of sun--the quietest of the silent strengths--it runs three thousand kilometers in a second. Our starry sky--does anyone hear it?" Quoted by Linda Shearer, "Beyond Futurism: The Winston/Malbin Collection," in Futurism: A Modern Focus (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1973), p. 14, from Gabo-Pevsner (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1948), pp. 18-19.

28. Der Sturm 150/151 (March 1913), p. 280. Cf. Baumgarth, p. 251: "general-little island" and "bodies-watering cans heads-football scattering."

29. Tewarson, Alfred Döblin, p. 53, and Judith Ryan, "From Futurism to 'Döblinism,'" German Quarterly 54 (1981), p. 415, suggest that it was Mafarka that Döblin was criticizing in the "Open Letter." A close reading shows, however, that "Bataille" rather than the earlier novel was the object of his attack.

30. See Baumgarth, p. 63.

31. Der Sturm 104 (March 1912), p. 828; Baumgarth, p. 26.

32. Armin Arnold, Die Literatur des Expressionismus: Sprachliche und thematische Quellen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966), pp. 62-69.

33. The connections between Futurism and fascism have been perhaps most convincingly argued by James Joll, Intellectuals in Politics: Three Biographical Essays (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960), pp. 133-78. See Giovanni Lista, Futurisme: Manifestes--Proclamations--Documents (Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme, 1973), pp. 22-33, for an informed apologia for the protofascist elements in Futurism. The resurgence of interest in Futurist painting and sculpture during the past twenty-five years, particularly at major exhibits in America (the Museum of Modern Art in 1961, the Guggenheim in 1973, the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1980, the Yale University Art Gallery in 1983), and most recently at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 1986, has been accompanied by a tendency to minimize fascist or protofascist elements. There is some justification for this tendency in the case of the Futurist painters, since the original group--Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Severini, Balla--did not often glorify war or violence in their works. This phase of Futurism, called il primo futurismo, was in any event over by 1916, the artists having either died in the continue

war or left the movement (see Martin, Futurist Art, pp. xxx-xxxi). The tendency is to blame the younger postwar Futurists ( il secondo futurismo ), still led by Marinetti, for succumbing to fascism, as in this statement by Anne Coffin Hanson: "For many years full consideration of the movement has not been encouraged because of its late historical links to Italian Fascism. While early Futurist writings include elements which are not universally acceptable today, it is manifestly unsound to read history backwards and to invest the optimistic aspirations and energies of the first Futurists with the sinister overtones of events which had not yet occurred"; The Futurist Imagination: Word + Image in Italian Futurist Painting, Drawing, Collage and Free-Word Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1983), p. iii. (Why "manifestly unsound," by the way, unless one rejects historical causality and the ability of ideas to influence subsequent events?)

34. Der Sturm 104 (March 1912), p. 828; Baumgarth, p. 26.

35. Der Sturm 104, p. 829; Baumgarth, p. 28.

36. Der Sturm 104, p. 829; Baumgarth, p. 26.

37. Marinetti, "Tod dem Mondenschein! Zweites Manifest des Futurismus," in Baumgarth, p. 240.

38. F. T. Marinetti, Mafarka le Futuriste: Roman Africain (Paris: E. Sansot, 1909), pp. viii-ix. This and all subsequent translations from Mafarka are mine.

39. This manifesto also mitigates the absolutism of the stylistic prescriptions in the "Technical Manifesto" and the "Supplement" and may have been meant as a reply to Döblin's "Open Letter," which appeared in Der Sturm in the same March issue that contained the "Supplement."

40. Umbro Apollonio, ed., Der Futurismus: Manifeste und Dokumente einer künstlerischen Revolution 1909-1918 (Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1972), p. 120. The German text has "fünfzigprozentige Gleichberechtigung" for "full equality."

41. See Lista, Futurisme, p. 327.

42. French original reprinted in Lista, pp. 329-32. For more information on Valentine de Saint-Point, a grandniece of Lamartine, see Lista, pp. 51-57.

43. Baumgarth, pp. 237-39, emphasis in original.

44. Mafarka le Futuriste, pp. 30-31.

45. Ibid., p. 31.

46. Ibid., p. 147.

47. Ibid., pp. x, xi.

48. Ibid., pp. 281-82.

44. Mafarka le Futuriste, pp. 30-31.

45. Ibid., p. 31.

46. Ibid., p. 147.

47. Ibid., pp. x, xi.

48. Ibid., pp. 281-82.

44. Mafarka le Futuriste, pp. 30-31.

45. Ibid., p. 31.

46. Ibid., p. 147.

47. Ibid., pp. x, xi.

48. Ibid., pp. 281-82.

44. Mafarka le Futuriste, pp. 30-31.

45. Ibid., p. 31.

46. Ibid., p. 147.

47. Ibid., pp. x, xi.

48. Ibid., pp. 281-82.

44. Mafarka le Futuriste, pp. 30-31.

45. Ibid., p. 31.

46. Ibid., p. 147.

47. Ibid., pp. x, xi.

48. Ibid., pp. 281-82.

49. Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in zwei Bänden, vol. 1 (Munich: Hanser, 1967), p. 588.

50. Mafarka le Futuriste, p. 302.

51. Cf. Müller-Salget, pp. 29-31.

52. Leo Kreutzer, Alfred Döblin: Sein Werk bis 1933 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1970), p. 21. It is Kreutzer who first drew attention to the suppressed first chapter of Wang-lun (now to be found in E 96-113, with the title "Der Überfall auf Chao-Lao-Sü"), which is much more overtly political than the alternate version that Döblin eventually chose. See Kreutzer, pp. 47-48.

53. Die Kultur der Weimarer Republik, p. 81. They go on to show how the popular culture of the Weimar Republic exploited the cliché in the variation of vamp and boyish femme enfant . Walter Laqueur, in his more narrative ac- soft

count of Weimar culture, seems to accept this stereotype as reality when he generalizes about Weimar women, "half vamp and half Gretchen," in Weimar, p. 32.

54. "Grün ist der Mai. Mit mancherlei schönen Blümelein gezieret sind Berg und Tal. Viele kalte Brünnlein rauschen, darauf wir Waldvögelein lauschen."

55. "Des Menschen Gemüt, hoch aufgeblüht, soll sich nun auch ergötzen zu dieser Zeit, mit Lust und Freud sich an dem Maien letzen. Und bitten Gott gar eben, er wolle weiter Gnade geben."

56. Ernst Ribbat, Die Wahrheit des Lebens im frühen Werk Alfred Döblins (Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1970), p. 24.

57. Klaus Theweleit's study of the literature of the prefascist Freikorps movement following the First World War sheds much light on this phenomenon. Theweleit shows how proletarian women are automatically regarded as prostitutes, and that violence toward them is violence toward female sexuality in general. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History, trans. Stephen Conway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 63-70, 171-204.