Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Poetics, edited by Szilvia Csabi. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018, p. 181-202. Please refer to the
published version (© OUP) to cite this chapter. URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/expressive-
minds-and-artistic-creations-9780190457747?lang=en&cc=us
Abstract
This chapter examines the interrelation of cognitive-linguistic principles, specific textual and
narrative strategies and – as a third domain – of contemporary poetological positions by means of an
analysis of two novels of the German movement ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ (‘New Objectivity’). It thereby
aims to shed light on the strategies of perspectival embedding and points out its relevance for the
characterization of modern literary aesthetics. After a first historical outline regarding the key status
of perception and perspective in modernist aesthetics, the chapter discusses the cognitive-linguistic
principle of perspectivization and the inherent potential of multiperspectivity in narrative that results
from the constitutive double-layered structure of narrative discourse. This provides the basis to
analyze the specific strategies of foregrounding multiperspectivity by means of viewpoint splitting
and deictic shift, polyphony and multimodality in two modernist novels by Alfred Döblin and
Irmgard Keun that can be understood as strategies of perspectival embedding and addressed as
‘aesthetics of observation’.
Keywords
Perspectivization, multiperspectivity, viewpoint split, deictic shift, perspectival embedding, Neue
Sachlichkeit, New Objectivity, polyphony, literary modernism
In the beginning of Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye to Berlin (1939) the main character
states: “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” (Isherwood
1980 [1939], 1) This famous quote puts in a nutshell one of the programmatic aspects of modern
literary aesthetics that defines, inter alia, the German avant-garde movement ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’
(‘New Objectivity’) in the late 1920s and early 1930s (cf. Becker 2002) – that is, the claim to
present an ‘objective’ and ‘immediate’ view onto the narrated story world. The ‘subjectivity’ of the
1
Although Keun’s novel is still rated as popular fiction rather than ‘avant-garde’ in the narrower sense and was in
deed a bestseller in the 1920s and 1930s, more recent studies affirm its metareflexive quality in terms of its narrative
reflection and ironizing of contemporary popular culture (cf. for example Helduser 2005). From this point of view it
is valid to decline both the narrow and highly evaluative label of ‘popular fiction’ as well as ‘avant-garde’ in favor
of a wider concept of the latter that foregrounds the poetological and narrative complexity and innovation of a text
rather than its alleged positioning on the literary market.
2
Nuyts (2012, 53) “compares a few notions of ‘subjectivity’ (vs. ‘objectivity’ or ‘intersubjectivity’) circulating in the
current functional and cognitive linguistic literature” and addresses the problematic vagueness in terminology. His
discussion does not conclude with a normative restriction of applicable terms but convincingly emphasizes the need
for terminological reflection.
3
Cf. exemplary Schmitz 2001 with regards to film, Becker 2002 and 2008 with regards to literature.
4
For an overview of early film theory cf. for example Elsaesser and Hagener 2010; see also Turvey 2015 who
provides a short bibliography of further media historical anthologies.
5
See also the basic explication of ‘perspectivity’ given by Graumann 2002, 25f.
Perspectivation [sic] is recognized as a necessary prerequisite of human communication […]. The notion rests
on the basic experience of multiperspectivity, basically on the insight that, with respect to one and the same
object or state-of-affairs, other views than one’s own are possible.
The basic sense of distance assumes (at least) two spatial locations which are separated from each other with
additional space, and an observer who can view both locations and perceive the space between them. That
“space in-between” is what is referred to as distance. (Dancygier and Vandelanotte 2009, 326)
‘Distance’ thus implies not only a spatial relation, but also the occurrence of an observing instance,
of a space of reference with more than one perceived ‘locatum’ and at once a meta-reflective
awareness of the process of perceiving.
6
For an exemplary overview cf. Innis (1982, 3-41), which is not of recent date but still not outdated in its clarity.
Consequently, two different levels emerge: the space of the ‘speaker’ and that of the narrator – the latter
already being a mental extension of the ‘speaker’. Embedded in a third layer is the object in focus, i.e. the story
as the emerging result of perspectivization[.] (Zeman 2016, 30)
Zeman’s modeling of the recursive layering of narrative discourse factors in the dynamic unfolding
of the narrator and character level. The relation of these levels can be presented as highly dynamic
as well in the course of a narration (cf. Igl 2016). What Zeman’s exposition also emphasizes with
respect to the perspectival layers and the according levels of narrative discourse is the similarity of
their respective features – this is what the notion of the ‘recursive embedding’ refers to.
This is also one key factor that accentuates the potential of the narrator to function as a
focalizer, that is, not only as the instance that mediates the story world but that also perceives it.
Based on a cognitive-linguistic understanding, a speaker always is an observer as well, thus
performing an act of perspectivization and in the process foregrounding or backgrounding aspects
of the perceived scenario, no matter if it is a factual or fictional one (cf. Casad 1995, 24f.). While
the functions of ‘speaker’ and ‘observer’ ordinarily – i.e. in non-narrative discourse – coincide in
one agent or instance, in narrative discourse the two functional roles can seemingly split up. I
underline seemingly, because there is more to it than a clear-cut split of one entity into two
distinguishable parts or role aspects as for example Gérard Genette’s classic distinction between
‘vision’ and ‘voice’ seems to imply. Though Genette’s dichotomy, represented by the two distinct
questions “Who perceives?” and “Who speaks?”, has proven to be heuristically productive and does
not claim a rigid correlation of ‘voice vs. vision’ with the respective instances ‘narrator vs.
character’ (cf. Genette 1983, 43; see also Igl 2015, 244) it has one crucial flaw with respect to a
cognitive-linguistic approach to narrative: The ideal-typical distinction between the perceiving
instance and the narrating instance does not cover the potential overlapping of viewpoints that
The level of illocutive force in Zeman’s illustration refers to the author as the originator of the
narrative text; we can denominate this instance (which is extra-textual in nature) as ‘origo1’. The
7
Or rather: it only covers it as the special case of auto- or homodiegetic narration, where ‘vision’ and ‘voice’ coincide
in one single ‘narrator-character’ figure.
8
Zeman (2016) takes up Phelan’s line of argument and his exemplary analysis and exposes in detail how the
multiperspectival embedding works on the novel’s micro-level of narrative discourse.
Because I have given my own name to the “I” of this narrative, readers are certainly not entitled to assume that
its pages are purely autobiographical, or that its characters are libellously exact portraits of living persons.
“Christopher Isherwood” is a convenient ventriloquist’s dummy, nothing more. (Isherwood 1980 [1939],
introductory note, Sept. 1935)
Against the theoretical background of the present chapter, this “ventriloquist’s dummy” can be
understood not only as a body to a voice, but as a manifestation of a “double-voicing” and “dual-
vision or dual-focalization” (Phelan 2001, 60), as a polyvalent perceiving and reporting instance
that comprises different origos in one persona. Thus the quoted phrase demonstrates the
perspectival embedding on a linguistic micro-level. As I claim, the perspectival polyvalence and
embedding can be seen as crucial to the modernist literary aesthetics of the ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’.
The narrator/character-“I” emphasizes his role as a distant observer of the story world and at the
same time evaluates his own stance based upon self-observance – he is thus at once observer and
observed. In accordance with Brandt (2013, 488) the conjunction of those two perspectives can be
explained as an elaborate effect of a viewpoint split: “it is the difference between immediate self-
awareness and meta-conscious reflection, internal versus external awareness.”
The perspectival tension evoked in narrative discourse may on the one hand be pointed out by
means of analysis, but moreover, it may even be exposed or foregrounded intentionally in the
course of the narration. This is the case in Keun’s modernist novel Das kunstseidene Mädchen
And I think it will be a good thing if I write everything down, because I’m an unusual person, I don’t mean a
diary – that’s ridiculous for a trendy girl like me. […] And I bought myself a thick black notebook and cut
some doves out of white paper and stuck them on the cover, and now I’m looking for a beginning. My name is
Doris, and I’m baptized and Christian, and born too. (ASG, 3f.)
In the German original the performative quality of the ongoing subject-split is emphasized even
more. There the last sentence of the quoted passage is: “Ich heiße somit Doris und bin getauft und
christlich und geboren.” (KM, 10) The adverb “somit” translates as ‘hence’ or ‘with that said’ and
indicates a performative speech act – right here and now she christens and creates herself. In the
following sequence the characteristic camera metaphor (see Section 1.2) is deployed as well and
comes along with an explicit foregrounding of an external, distant perspective of observation: “But
I want to write like a movie, because my life is like that and it’s going to become even more so. […]
And when I read it later on, everything will be like at the movies – I’m looking at myself in
pictures.” (ASG, 3)
The camera metaphor foregrounds the focalizing role of the ‘narrator Doris’, who perceives the
‘character Doris’ not only from a spatial but also temporal distance. The preceding introduction of
the narrator/character Doris in her black notebook functions as an orientation towards a fictive
addressee or even audience, thus evoking an intersubjective, shared space of attention and
observance.10 Both can be understood as a process of creating distance and proximity at once in
9
The novel, which has first been translated to English in 1933, is in the following quoted in the English translation by
Kathie von Ankum (2002) under the abbreviation ‘ASG’.
10
Cf. the emphasis of Tobin (2011, 186) regarding ‘shared attention’ as prerequisite of intersubjectivity. For a recent
overview on cognitive-linguistic approaches on intersubjectivity cf. Zlatev et al. 2008; for the constitutive studies on
This signature piece from the Weimar years represents the apex of Salter’s ability to find visual correlatives for
the written word. […] Salter’s innovation is a collage of text and image that superficially resembles a child’s
rebus but is actually a very sophisticated recapitulation of Döblin’s own literary technique. The concept is
completely harmonious with the text. Its jarring, multicolor raggedness conveys the conflict that the novel
portrays through the voice of the naïve narrator.
As I will show in the following though, the voice (and character) of the narrator in Berlin
Alexanderplatz is polyphonic and multifaceted. The said foregrounding of multiperspectivity takes
places by means of polyphony on the discourse as well as on the story level. In addition and beyond
the multimodal cover art, there is a strong to multimodality in the novel as a whole, which manifests
for example by means of integrated mathematical formulae and pictographs. Both polyphony and
integration of non-linguistic signs engender a structure of framing and embedding of perspectives.
‘joint/shared attention’ from a perspective of cognitive and developmental psychology see exemplary Tomasello
1999.
11
In the following quoted in the English translation by Eugene Jolas (1931) under the abbreviation ‘BA’.
Fig. 2: Pictographs at the beginning of the Second Book of Berlin Alexanderplatz (BA, 41f.)
The iconicity of the pictographs directs the reader’s attention to an intersubjective frame of
reference that stands for generic shared knowledge of the ‘components’ that constitute urban space.
This observation is in accordance with Bauer 2007 who refers to Berlin Alexanderplatz as a
‘semiological adventure’ and emphasizes the iconic relation between the multimodal narrative
strategies that characterize the novel and the multimodality and the semiotic overstimulation of
modern urban reality at the beginning of the 20th century.12
12
Cf. also Stockhorst 2009 on the intermedial narrative strategies that characterize the urban novel of the German
avant-garde – at the latest since Rilkes Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), as Becker 2008 points out.
ONCE upon a time there lived in Paradise two human beings, Adam and Eve. They had been put there by the
Lord, who had also created the beasts and plants and heaven and earth. And Paradise was the wonderful garden
of Eden. Flowers and trees were growing there, animals were playing about, and none oppressed the other. The
sun rose and set, the moon did the same, there was abiding joy the whole day long in Paradise.
Thus let us start off merrily. We want to sing and move about: with our little hands going clap, clap, clap, our
little feet going tap, tap, tap, moving to, moving fro, roundabout, and away we go. (BA, 41)
As we can observe in this sequence, the polyphony of the novel (which I will elucidate further in
the following) not only materializes as dialogism on the character level but also splits up the
narrator level in multiple layers.
The evocation of the character’s perception of the story world (“Franz Biberkopf enters
Berlin”) can be seen as a second perspectival layer at the beginning of the Second Book. The
pictographs, finally, add a further and in itself again polyvalent perspectival layer: on the one side
they too signal the ongoing focalization through the character’s eyes, on the other side they are as
iconic signs at once derived from an intersubjective process of abstraction and schematisation.13
This perspectival tension characterizes the whole course of narration in Berlin Alexanderplatz. The
mentioned narrator-commentaries that precede the individual chapters are one of the concrete
strategies of foregrounding multiperspectivity by means of framing and recursive embedding and
splitting of narrative levels. This narrative strategy has to be seen in the context of Döblin’s
poetological program. In his essay Bemerkungen zum Roman (1917, ‘Remarks on the novel’) he
claims the ideal structure of a novel to be that of an epos in the fashion of Homer’s Iliad and
13
With regards to Cognitive Grammar and the notion of the formation of grammar in language use, Evans and Green
(2006, 115) explicate ‘abstraction’ as “the process whereby structure emerges as the result of the generalisation of
patterns” and ‘schematisation’ as “a special kind of abstraction, which results in representations that are much less
detailed than the actual utterances [or, more abstract: the perceivable tokens; N.I.] that give rise to them.”
This Franz Biberkopf, formerly a cement-worker, then a furniture mover, and so on, and now a newsvendor,
weights about two hundred pounds. He is strong as a cobra and has again joined an athletic club. He wears
green puttees, hobnail boots, and a leather jacket. As far as money is concerned, you won’t find a great deal on
him, his current income arrives always in small quantities, but just let anyone try to get near him. (BA, 83)
The narrator’s comparison of Franz Biberkopf with the ‘old heroes’ functions as a multi-layered
narrative strategy. One the one hand, the intertextual reference evaluates both the depicted character
and the novel as a whole which is presented as a match for an antique epos. On the other hand, the
protagonist’s characterization via comparison also evokes an ironic view on the former “cement-
worker, then a furniture mover, and so on” Franz Biberkopf who is rather not a ‘heroic’ figure. The
intertextuality comes along with another strategic foregrounding of multiperspectivity by means of
polyphony, which manifests as already stated both on the character and narrator level.14 The
polyphony on the level of narrative discourse is the materialization of a multiperspectivity of the
narration as a whole. It is a recursive principle that manifests itself by means of a general
intertwinement of narrator and character level as well as in the buzz of voices which are not
distinctly assignable to certain speakers on the character level – as Mikhail Bakhtin conceptualized
in his by now classic notion of ‘dialogism’. The concept of ‘dual-vision’ or ‘dual-focalization’,
which Phelan (2001, 60) formulates as counterpart to Bakhtin’s ‘double-voicing’ can refer to a
14
An example for the more classic case of polyphony on the character level is the passage surtitled “The Rosenthaler
Platz is busily active.” In this passage, no clear-cut focalization can be identified – the city itself seems to speak in
multiple voices. And here as well – as with the Keun-example in Section 2.1 – the German original emphasizes the
point somewhat more. The first sentence in the German version reads “Der Rosenthaler Platz unterhält sich” (Döblin
2011 [1929], 51) – ‘The Rosenthaler Platz is chatting’.
Franz killed his fiancée, Ida, the family name does not matter, in the flower of her youth. This happened during
an altercation between Franz and Ida, in the home of her sister Minna, where, first of all, the following organs
of the woman were slightly damaged: the skin on the end of her nose and in the middle, the bone and the
cartilage underneath, a fact, however, which was noticed only after her arrival at the hospital and later played a
certain rôle in the court records, furthermore, the right and left shoulder sustained slight bruises, with loss of
blood. (BA, 84)
In this sequence the narrator not so much gives a description of the event of Franz assaulting and
ultimately killing his fiancée but rather presents the event blended with what can be perceived as a
forensic report, giving a detailed and – by zooming in on the affected body parts and thus
backgrounding the person as a whole – rather depersonalized visualization of the bodily effects of
the assault. After a short sequence in which the narrator zooms in on the character level and the
“altercation between Franz and Ida” (BA, 84), the narrative instance distances itself once more from
the characters and events and goes on in his description of Franz’ assault on Ida – with “a small
wooden cream-whipper” (BA, 84) – in an even higher degree of abstraction than in the preceding
passages, which I quote here in full length to display the narrator’s strategy best possible:
What happened to the woman’s diaphragm […], involves the laws of statics, elasticity, shock, and resistance.
The thing is wholly incomprehensible without a knowledge of those laws. We shall therefore have recourse to
The narrator’s chosen perspective and use of a symbolic code in terms of an artificial language that
discards the polysemy (and perspectivity) inherent to every natural language is crucial with regards
to the ‘aesthetics of observation’ and programmatic claim of ‘objectivity’: The quoted sequence
presents Ida’s fatal injury and eventual death not as an effect of Franz’ assault – that is, as a result
of the specific act of violence of one specific individual on another individual – but as a causal
relation of two interacting objects, based on the laws of physics. This implies a relevant change in
function regarding the narrative instance and the narrative logic. It seems that it is not first and
foremost the narrator’s role to motivate the action for example by unfolding a character’s psyche
and disposition, but rather to unfold the general laws all living beings and inanimate object are in
equal measure subjected to. As the narrator states: “There is no unknown quantity in the equation.”
(BA, 85)
Nonetheless, the alleged linearity and certainty of events – and thus the alleged ‘objective’
reality – becomes blurry and questionable in the further course of the narration. The narrator’s
presentation of the narrative events as a simple equation without any unknown quantities at the
same time exposes the character’s psyche and subjectivity as a ‘black box’ which is in the end
inaccessible to us as readers. The seemingly ‘objective’ narration turns out to be multiperspectival
and inherently inconsistent and leaves the narratee somewhat baffled with regards to a possible
evaluation of the story world’s inhabitants as well as the trustability of the mediating narrative
instance.
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