SOURCE: Weisstein, Ulrich. “German Literary Expressionism: An Anatomy.” German Quarterly 54, no. 3 (May 1981): 262-83.

[In the following essay, Weisstein describes some of the significant differences and dichotomies inherent in the various strands of German Expressionism.]

I

Any attempt to analyze the most striking and characteristic features of a complex entity like Expressionism, which some regard as a typisch deutscher Gegenstand,¹ must be prefaced by some methodological observations. As I have come to realize after ploughing through the vast amount of scholarship on the subject, the crux of the matter is the use, or abuse, of criteria of selection and evaluation. The complexity and diffuseness of the phenomenon under consideration compel us to conduct our investigation with special rigor. Unfortunately, Expressionism in some important ways resembles international Symbolism more closely than it does, say, Naturalism or Futurism²—movements that can be rather narrowly circumscribed and reduced to a relatively small body of common denominators. Hence the need for pondering several approaches and strategies capable of enlightening us about its true nature.

The easiest but surely most superficial line of attack would proceed from the methodologically questionable assumption that only those features should be dealt with under a given heading which were consciously developed at the time and to which the appropriate label was attached by the proponents of a given doctrine. This is an example of what may be called the nominalist fallacy. In actual practice, any attempt to write an authoritative history of German literary Expressionism based on this premise would fail rather abysmally, if only because a list of writers, works and techniques compiled in this mechanical way would be marred by doubtful inclusions and flagrant exclusions from the canon. What is more, a survey of Expressionism executed in that manner would be truly meaningful only if it were possible to extract a system of norms or a Poetik, binding for most of the adherents, from manifestoes, programs or similar declarations of intention. However, as Max Krell and other early critics have pointed out, the Expressionists qua Expressionists generally preferred Lösung (liberation, emancipation) to Bindung (obligation).³ And while it was widely—and perhaps justly—believed that these artists shared a common world view (Weltgefühl), they can hardly be said to have uniformly subscribed to a distinct ideology (Weltanschauung), such as that evidenced by their brothers-in-arms, the more highly organized Activists. The Expressionists also lacked a leader comparable to Franz Pfemfert (Die Aktion) or Kurt Hiller (Das Ziel). For even though Herwarth Walden, the founder/editor of Der Sturm, gradually emerged as a feared and respected kingmaker, his circle, no matter how tightly knit, represented only one aspect of the total complex.⁴

Since, as Kasimir Edschmid explained to Scandinavian audiences in the spring of 1918, the artists of the new generation engaged in producing what was then frequently called die jüngste Dichtung were rather indifferent toward the formal aspects of their art and generally spurned the theoretic approach,⁵ even a comprehensive anthology like Paul Pörtner's two-volume Literatur-Revolution 1910-1925: Dokumente, Manifeste, Programme offers relatively few documents—among them the pronouncements of the Zenitists, the Aeternists and some scattered individual utterances of a normative kind—comparable to Marinetti's Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista.⁶ A notable exception to the rule is, once again, constituted by the Sturm group and its evolving theories of Wortkunst and Lautkunst, which were taken to have paradigmatic value.⁷ Much more symptomatic of loosely constituted Expressionism are the statements, partly emotive and partly meditative, gathered in the volume Schöpferische Konfession, one of a handful of sources, contemporary or near-contemporary, which the student ought to consult.⁸ A minimal list, by the way, should also include Edschmid's lecture “Über den dichterischen Expressionismus” (perhaps the single most important text), Max Krell's pamphlet Über moderne Prosa, Theodor Däubler's volume of essays Der neue Standpunkt,⁹ Otto Flake's essay “Von der jüngsten Literatur,”¹⁰ the preface to Pinthus' anthology Menschheitsdämmerung, a number of polemical pieces by Carl Sternheim,¹¹ Bernhard Diebold's book Anarchie im Drama¹² and, naturally, the most crucial theoretical disquisitions by the members of the Sturm group, such as Herwarth Walden's Expressionismus—Die Kunstwende,¹³ Rudolf Blümner's Der Geist des Kubismus und die Künste¹⁴ and certain essays by Lothar Schreyer¹⁵ and William Wauer.¹⁶ (The student of Expressionism as an interdisciplinary subject must also read Wilhelm Worringer's Abstraktion und Einfühlung,¹⁷ Kandinsky's Über das Geistige in der Kunst¹⁸ and Der Blaue Reiter, the almanac published in 1912 under the joint editorship of Franz Marc and Kandinsky.)¹⁹

Turning now to the Selbstverständnis of German literary Expressionism as evinced by its champions and sympathetic contemporaries, I should like to demonstrate what difficulties the scholar is likely to encounter by briefly dissecting a famous pièce de résistance. An “innocent” wishing to inform himself about poetic Expressionism would most likely turn to Menschheitsdämmerung, a collection widely, and perhaps justly, reputed to be the locus classicus and chief storehouse of relevant texts. If such an uninitiated reader were to start out by reading Kurt Pinthus' preface, he would undoubtedly be struck by the editor's refusal to use the label Expressionism in his preface.²⁰ Moreover, the observer untainted by a little knowledge of literary historiography, which is a dangerous thing, may well regard this sheaf of poems as neither more nor less than a florilegium of pieces written by twenty-three different individuals whose birthdates are separated by a whole generation (Else Lasker-Schüler was born in 1869 and Johannes R. Becher, Iwan Goll and Kurt Heynicke as late as 1891). Will he find them to be stylistically or thematically unified? I don't think so. What, then, is the underlying pattern discerned by Pinthus?

Slightly embarrassed by his own preferences, Pinthus admits that in making his selection he was largely guided by intuition—bolstered, to be sure, by his vast experience as a reader (Lektor) for the Rowohlt-Verlag in Leipzig. The editor is equally candid in acknowledging that, in the final analysis, the poems he selected have little in common except their intensity.²¹ As it turns out, things are not quite so bad, however, insofar as several other hallmarks are mentioned in the course of the prefatory argument. Thus Pinthus notes an overriding concern with the human condition (universally rather than existentially conceived)²² and is struck by the steadfast rejection of realism, as of all mimetic modes.²³ But even if we take into account his somewhat halfhearted grouping of the poems according to motifs linked with soul states (“Sturz und Schrei,” “Erweckung des Herzens,” “Aufruf und Empörung,” “Liebe den Menschen”), the gap, both stylistic and thematic, which sunders Georg Trakl and Else Lasker-Schüler from August Stramm and Johannes R. Becher is formidable. Actually, when viewing Menschheitsdämmerung in the context of the European avant-garde (as Hugo Friedrich has done, albeit in a rather limited way²⁴), one might well incline toward regarding certain aspects of Trakl's poetry, for example, as exemplifying, rather, a kind of Surrealism avant la lettre.²⁵ The same shift of emphasis might seem warranted with regard to the writings of Kubin, Kafka and the so-called “Prague Expressionists,” Gustav Meyrink and Hanns Heinz Ewers, none of whom has a stake in Expressionism.²⁶

In the historically oriented Expressionismus-Forschung of recent vintage, the nominalist fallacy that concerns us presently has produced a number of hardy variants. An especially resistant strain is that represented by the “Preliminary Inventory” at the end of Armin Arnold's monograph Prosa des Expressionismus: Herkunft, Analyse, Inventar.²⁷ Believing, as he does, that it would be futile to try to characterize a novel, a novella, etc., as Expressionist on stylistic grounds, Arnold cuts the Gordian knot by simply listing the prose writings of all writers known as, or presumed to be, Expressionists.²⁸ His lengthy catalogue (pp. 167-88), accordingly, includes such items as Heinrich Mann's Im Schlaraffenland (1900), Robert Walser's Der Gehülfe (1908) and Kafka's “Die Verwandlung” (1912). Needless to say, there is no justification for this practice. Compounding the dilemma he has created for himself, Arnold, caught in a logical short circuit of his own making, tacitly assumes that all writings produced at any time by the reputedly Expressionist authors are, ipso facto, Expressionistic. Hence the appearance in his catalogue of works like Werfel's Verdi: Roman der Oper (1924) and Georg Kaiser's late novel Villa Aurea (1940).²⁹ Conversely, by the same token, Arnold had to refrain from listing Expressionist works created by “non-Expressionists.” For instance, Rilke's “Marienlieder,” Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus (which, in the opinion of at least one perceptive scholar, might well deserve a place in this constellation³⁰) would have had to be discarded.

The lesson to be learned from these blunders is simple enough: that, while it is possible (and customary) to write literary history according to authors stereotyped as paragons of a movement or period style, this approach is extremely risky and methodologically unsound. In my view, the history of Expressionism, like that of any artistic movement, can, for better or worse, only be the history of those works which, partly or wholly, embody a set of norms and display features which, on the basis of his acquaintance with the material and his own preconceived notions (note the inevitable and embarrassing hermeneutic circle involved in the delicate operation!), the scholar finds to be symptomatic.

Given my own knowledge and bias, for example, I would—somewhat reluctantly—exclude proto-Expressionistic pieces such as Wedekind's Der Marquis von Keith,³¹ certain poems by Heym and Stadler and most of the prose works on which the label “Expressionist” is so often generously bestowed.³² I would propose a canon comprising, in addition to the most striking examples of Sturm art (August Stramm, Rudolf Blümner and Lothar Schreyer), specific plays by Oskar Kokoschka (Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen), Ernst Barlach (Die Sündflut and Der arme Vetter),³³ Georg Kaiser (Von morgens bis mitternachts), Reinhold Goering (Seeschlacht) and Hans Henny Jahnn (Medea),³⁴ poems by Becher (“Vorbereitung”), Benn (“Karyatide”), Paul Zech and possibly Werfel (“Veni Creator Spiritus”), and a number of stories by Sternheim,³⁵ Edschmid, Benn and perhaps Schickele.³⁶ If I were charged with compiling it, this rock-bottom list would not include a single fullblown novel, at least not in its entirety.³⁷

Changing my line of attack, I note with considerable apprehension, that the historian of literature, wishing to delimit and circumscribe a period or movement style must, willy-nilly, aim at creating a spatio-temporal framework within which to contrast and compare the particular body of works which strike his fancy with those products of the imagination which do not fit into the picture. The first step in this direction, accordingly, would be to make it clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that, if it is to be properly understood and savored, Expressionism must be seen as something belonging fairly and squarely to the twentieth century, rather than being a recurrent and thus ultimately timeless phenomenon. This note of caution must be sounded if only because some propagators of Expressionism—whether or not they used that label—were in the habit of speaking precisely in the latter terms. Such is certainly true of Abstraktion und Einfühlung, Worringer's immensely influential dissertation, which leaves no room for doubt that as far as its author is concerned, the immediate future belongs to an art prolonging a rhythmic sequence of anti-classical and anti-realistic styles or Abstraktionsstile extending from the art of the primitives by way of Egyptian art through the Middle Ages (Gothic art) to the Baroque and Romanticism,³⁸ whose literary equivalent would be the chain linking Medieval mysticism with the Baroque, the Storm and Stress and, again, Romanticism. The alternate sequence, historically enmeshed with it, would comprise the Greco-Roman period in its classical phases, the Renaissance, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Classicism/Neo-Classicism and nineteenth-century Realism/Naturalism. Today, this view of Expressionism as part of a Viconian cycle is of little more than historical interest, except insofar as it provides us with a set of precursors whom the Expressionists found to be congenial to their way of thinking and feeling: Jakob Boehme, Angelus Silesius, Gryphius, Lenz, Novalis, Kleist (Penthesilea), Grabbe and Büchner among them.

Much more meaningful, because temporally circumscribed, is that perspective on literary Expressionism which regards it as a distinct period style and, in light of this assumption, operates with such chronological units as expressionistisches Jahrzehnt (1910-1920 plus).³⁹ Such a view, if held dogmatically, rests on the conviction that Expressionism dominated the decade to the point of overshadowing all other trends or tendencies. But no matter how long or short we take the specific time segment to be, what we inevitably overlook is the circumstance that while literary Expressionism was clearly in the ascendant by 1910 and was ideologically and aesthetically the leading trend during World War I, other, more conservative modes continued to be practiced by writers refusing to “join the chorus.” After all, the teens of our century witnessed the creation and publication of such traditional, or downright conservative, works as Thomas Mann's “Der Tod in Venedig,” Hofmannsthal's Der Rosenkavalier, Stefan George's Der Stern des Bundes and Gerhart Hauptmann's play Der Bogen des Odysseus. That Expressionism was not merely en vogue but something to be very seriously coped with (though not necessarily to be absorbed) by the literary institutions is demonstrated by the fact that an establishment journal like Die Neue Rundschau saw fit to publish Edschmid's lecture “Expressionismus in der Dichtung,” but not without supplying a cautionary editorial note:

Wir bringen den Aufsatz Edschmids aus keinem andern Grunde, als um dem Leser eine Probe zu geben, wie ein Dichter der jüngeren Generation sich seine Auffassung expressionistischer Ziele definiert und seine historischen und zeitgenössischen Urteile bildet. Wir brauchen nicht zu betonen, daß eine programmatische Bindung in dieser Zeitschrift damit nicht nur nicht gegeben ist, sondern daß wir die ästhetische und literarhistorische Rangordnung der Werte, soweit sie sich auf die Produktion der letzten dreißig Jahre bezieht, durchaus ablehnen.⁴⁰

When Edschmid wrote his lecture in December 1917, he was already convinced that Expressionism had spent much of its force and had passed into the hands of popularizers and imitators.⁴¹ By 1919, the year in which Worringer published his essay “Kritische Gedanken zur neuen Kunst,”⁴² only the most stubborn proponents of the Expressionistic creed could still maintain that it had vitality. Thus, in the preface to the second edition of Menschheitsdämmerung (redacted in April 1922), Pinthus confessed: “Klar herausgesagt: es ist, nach Abschluß dieser lyrischen Symphonie, nichts gedichtet worden, was zwingenderweise noch in sie hätte eingefügt werden müssen.”⁴³ We have every reason, then, for refusing to extend the era of Expressionism too far into the twenties, the timespan often loosely labelled das neusachliche Jahrzehnt.

Having dispelled the deeply rooted myth of an Expressionistic period, the scholarly anatomist must address himself next to the even more explosive issue pertaining to the status of German literary Expressionism as a movement. To be sure, the German noun Bewegung, although equivalent to the English “movement,” is more flexible in its meaning and could easily be stretched to accommodate an entire Zeit- and Kunstwende—two terms popular with those champions of Expressionism who wished to prove its all-encompassing nature. (In this regard, the favored use of apocalyptic, messianic and utopian titles such as Menschheitsdämmerung, Der jüngste Tag, Verkündigung, Der Anbruch speaks for itself.)

But this general mood of Aufbruch, implying a burning of all bridges and the projection into a future fashioned and dominated by the proverbial New Man, is not what concerns me here. What matters to me as a literary critic and historian is, rather, the much more narrowly conceived meaning of movement in the strictly literary sense. René Wellek has noted that, if it is to serve as a useful vocable in scholarly discourse, movement as a terminus technicus must be limited in its application to those self-conscious and, for the most part, theoretically based attempts on the part of a certain number of like-minded contemporaries (usually flocking around one or several leaders) to broadcast a new conception of art, usually implying a wholesale repudiation of accepted values. Marinetti's Futurism and Breton's Surrealism offer splendid examples of this kind of crystallization. By contrast, Expressionism lacks a solid core and single point of reference: “Wir sind Einzelne, die sich hier in gleichem Streben zusammentun, um doch Einzelne zu bleiben.”⁴⁴

Emulating A. O. Lovejoy's treatment of Romanticism, we might do well, in fact, to posit the existence of diverse Expressionisms loosely linked by a common Weltgefühl, a fluctuating pattern of individuals and groups with shifting—and even conflicting—loyalties, and with preoccupations ranging from the almost strictly esthetic⁴⁵ to the almost purely socio-political.⁴⁶ In addition to such centers of gravity as were constituted by specific individuals, periodicals or publishers (Kurt Wolff,⁴⁷ Ernst Rowohlt, Erich Reiss), there were artists like Kokoschka and Ernst Barlach who got quickly tired of cenacle-dom or refused, from the very beginning, to be drawn into the maelstrom. Thus, seen with the requisite historical detachment, no one group or confraternity can typify Expressionism as a whole.⁴⁸

Since we are bent on demolishing a convenient but ill-conceived myth, we might as well add some remarks concerning the allegedly monolithic stance of certain key journals usually cited in general surveys of Expressionism. Thus, after reading all of Der Sturm or Die Aktion, one will conclude that it would be foolish to seek to reduce their varied contents to a common denominator. Initially, Der Sturm, for example, was a publication bathing in the glow of Karl Kraus's satirical spirit. For several years it offered no coherent aesthetic program of its own and acted primarily as a mediator of Cubism and Futurism in Germany.⁴⁹ And although a strong interest in das neue Pathos evolved as early as 1910 (i.e., in the very first volume) in connection with the matinees of the Neopathetisches Kabarett,⁵⁰ literature did not come into its own until the discovery of August Stramm, the poeta dolorosus of lyrical Sturmkunst. As for Die Aktion, it had, at least in its burgeoning years, no set literary program but was well satisfied with being “ein Organ des ehrlichen Radikalismus.”⁵¹

Even on the personal level, the fiction of an Expressionist confraternity can be unmasked, almost in a trice. The fierce infighting which went on among individuals and groups is usually glossed over by the literary historians, who are inclined to smoothe out wrinkles and ignore conflicts that would force them to break up the “even flow” of their narratives. Thus, as a perusal of the editorial matter of Der Sturm reveals, Herwarth Walden displayed an extremely partisan, and often hostile, attitude toward many writers and critics now generally considered to be representative of Expressionism or Activism—among them Pfemfert, Becher, Werfel and Arnold Schönberg.⁵² In several cases, he ended up by casting aspersions on individuals whose views and convictions he had originally shared, thus acting like a true autocrat in the editor's chair.⁵³

II

So far I have concerned myself mostly with issues related to the historiography of German literary Expressionism. Now I move on to explore its generic dimension and, subsequently, its philosophical and psychological bases. The question I ask myself, at the outset, concerns the major literary types (poetry, drama, prose) and genres, it being my aim to ascertain whether these forms were basically retained by those writers a substantial portion of whose oeuvre would seem to merit the designation “Expressionistic,” or whether—and to what extent—they were discarded, modified or supplanted. Since, as we have had occasion to note, it would be futile to look for a generally applicable, descriptive or prescriptive Poetik of Expressionism, I will proceed inductively by screening the vast body of works and cautiously evaluating the scattered—at times parochial or blatantly eccentric—theoretical utterances collected by Pörtner or buried in contemporary periodicals, almanacs and anthologies (prefatory matter).

What strikes me immediately is not so much an implied indifference toward generic problems as a strong distaste for dealing with the issue of poetic form. Put differently, it was felt that, art being an expression of soul states, the outward appearance of the end product mattered little, as long as a perfect correlation existed between the underlying feelings and their concrete manifestation. Like Surrealism (and, for that matter, Naturalism), Expressionism was decidedly content-oriented—so much so, in fact, that, paradoxically, content was even seen to be the overriding concern in Kandinsky's “abstract” Impressions, Improvisations and Compositions.⁵⁴ As Kandinsky himself observes in Der Blaue Reiter: “Da die Form nur ein Ausdruck des Inhaltes ist und der Inhalt bei verschiedenen Künstlern verschieden ist, so ist es klar, daß es zu derselben Zeit viel verschiedene Formen geben kann, die gleich gut sind.”⁵⁵ Thus Abstract Expressionism—to use a familiar term which, though puzzling and seemingly paradoxical, makes perfect sense in this particular context—is invariably characterized by an underlying intention (more often unconscious than conscious) whose true nature may not be apparent in the finished product. Unlike Walden and the members of his inner circle,⁵⁶ Kandinsky was very much concerned with problems of communication and would have resented the allegation that the “purposive vibration of the human soul” which he aimed at was little more than a wild goose chase. Nevertheless, as far as intention is concerned, his brand of Expressionism must not be confused with Matisse's purely decorative variant or Benn's formal Ausdruckskunst as rooted in Flaubert's Poetik.⁵⁷

On the whole, the Expressionist, the elusive creature I am stalking, made no concerted effort to destroy the prevailing forms: “Die drei Grundarten dichterischen Schaffens, das lyrische, das dramatische und das epische Schaffen, sind von der Kunstwende nicht zerstört worden.”⁵⁸ But neither was he specifically interested in preserving them. Rather, he tended to bend and reshape them in order to make them more perfect vehicles of expression. In the case of the Sturm poets and playwrights, this meant a reduction of each type to its bare essentials, resulting in the creation of the pure Wortkunstwerk, Lautkunstwerk, Farbkunstwerk, Tonkunstwerk, etc.⁵⁹ In the case of non-Sturm Expressionism, on the other hand, we may discern a general loosening of metrical form in poetry (Stadler's “Form und Riegel mußten erst zerspringen, / Welt durch aufgeschlossne Röhren dringen”⁶⁰) and of coherence or structual unity in the drama (the Stationendrama of Strindbergian provenience).

Generalizing, as we must, we can say without too many qualms that lyrical poetry⁶¹ and the drama were by far the most prominent types, the former because it is, traditionally, a direct channel for the expression of feelings, moods and emotions, and the latter because it objectifies and humanizes spiritual conflicts within the Self (Aufsplitterungen des Ich), and between the Self and society, by projecting them onto a three-dimensional stage.⁶² As for narrative prose, its role was clearly subordinate, although it, too, had its champions among the self-styled Expressionists. The reasons for this neglect are easy to grasp. After all, the novel, being firmly entrenched in the realistic nineteenth century, is much more closely tied to convention, at least in the linguistic sphere. Thus it takes exceptional courage for the romancier to undertake radical experiments with form and language and to dispense altogether with psychology. Hence the numerous paradoxes and ambiguities encountered to this day in the scholarly treatment of the subject.⁶³ One way in which prose can partake in the spirit of Expressionism would seem to be that chosen by writers of satire and the grotesque—techniques which lend themselves more readily to experimentation and a breaking up of the familiar mold. Yet it would be wrong to use Expressionism and Grotesksatire as synonyms, as Thomas Mann, debunking his brother's satirical novel Der Untertan, did in a remarkable passage of his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen.⁶⁴

A word need also be said, in this connection, about the inclusion of extra-literary components in the works exemplifying German literary Expressionism. Let us not forget, for instance, that Expressionism had its roots in the visual arts (from Grünewald and El Greco to Van Gogh and Munch) and that, its chief goal being expressiveness, it displayed a marked affinity with music. It is no accident that the age produced such a disproportionately large number of Doppelbegabungen (Kokoschka being a writing painter, Barlach a writing sculptor and Schönberg a painting composer) and that there was a constant crossing of artistic borderlines. Quite a few of the Expressionist writers, in fact, thought of language as a barrier and did their level best to transcend it.⁶⁵ Thus Kokoschka's Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen is not so much a piece of dramatic literature in the ordinary sense as a congeries of movements, gestures, colors and sounds fused in a turbulent unity of emotion; and Rudolf Blümner, going beyond August Stramm, experimented with “abstract” poetry of sound.

It is thus in keeping with this spirit that the Expressionists in various quarters tended to regard the Gesamtkunstwerk as the fulfillment of their artistic dream. Thus Lothar Schreyer, founder and director of the Sturmbühne, registered the claim: “Das Bühnenkunstwerk ist eine künstlerische Einheit. Es ist durch Intuition empfangen, in Konzentration gereift, als Organismus geboren. Es ist gebildet aus den künstlerischen Ausdrucksmitteln Form, Farbe, Bewegung und Ton. Es ist ein selbständiges Kunstwerk, wirkend in Raum und Zeit.”⁶⁶ And Kandinsky, in his essay “Über Bühnenkomposition,” affirmed with equal conviction that the drama of his choice was a “Komplex der inneren Erlebnisse (Seelenvibrationen) des Zuschauers” as mirrored in the three contributing elements, “musikalischer Ton,” “körperlich-seelischer Klang und seine Bewegung durch Menschen und Gegenstände ausgedrückt” and “farbiger Ton und seine Bewegung.”⁶⁷ Also in Der Blaue Reiter, L. Sabanjew, analyzing Scriabin's tone poem Prometheus, proclaimed: “Es ist die Zeit der Wiedervereinigung dieser sämtlichen zerstreuten Künste gekommen.”⁶⁸

As we lay bare the skeleton of German literary Expressionism, we are likely to be faced, sooner or later, with the strategic question whether that phenomenon should be preferably approached from the angle of world view, style or thematics. As I have stated in my essay “Expressionism: Style or Weltanschauung?”, proceeding along thematic lines without first settling the issue on philosophical/poetological grounds would be like putting the cart before the horse. Themes, after all, are concrete reflections or embodiments of a general outlook on life. Moreover, even though the Expressionist considered his art to be thoroughly content-oriented, he was not, in principle, interested in matters of plot and characterization. Thus, while there is no harm in speaking of favorite Expressionist motifs (Aufbruch, the New Man, etc.), it is hazardous to dwell on specific preferential themes. While one is still on relatively safe ground, for example, when calling the generational conflict a characteristic motif,⁶⁹ the Impotence of the Heart “theme” singled out by Sokel as being an overriding concern leads us (and him) rather far afield and aground.⁷⁰

As for the Expressionist “world view,” it was perhaps best epitomized by Edschmid when he stated: “Der Blick geht auf die Ewigkeit.”⁷¹ In other words, the Expressionists, more or less ignoring historical truth, wished to pierce the outer shell of ordinary reality and to descend from surface to depth, from appearance to essence (Wesen,⁷²Kern⁷³), with the intention of subsequently projecting that core, in a highly condensed and concentrated form (Ballung, Spitzen⁷⁴) and with the utmost intensity, back into external reality, causing the latter to be—or at least to appear—distorted. (Thus beauty and all other aesthetic criteria based on objectively verifiable standards of judgment fell victim to the principle of inner necessity asserted by Kandinsky.) In the case of what, for lack of a better term, we might call the spiritualized (not intellectualized⁷⁵) variant, represented by Marc and his fellow Blaue Reiter, violent projection is replaced by a visionary experience and its translation into the language of art.⁷⁶ This substitution of Gesichte (visions) for Gesichter (faces) lies also at the heart of Walden's more secularized aesthetics.

In all instances, immediacy is called for and intuition is exalted over ratiocination. In glaring contrast with the passive dream art of the Surrealists, who, initially at least, thought of themselves as mere appareils enregistreurs,⁷⁷ Expressionist art is decidedly volitional. This does not and, in fact, cannot mean that its practitioners wished to exert conscious control over their material but, rather, that they were driven by a dynamic force welling up from the unconscious.⁷⁸ What we have, in fact, is not so much the Kunstwollen Worringer substituted for Kunstkönnen as what might be designated as Kunstmüssen. Like the Dadaists and Surrealists, but for entirely different reasons, the Expressionists rejected any form of intervention between feeling and expression⁷⁹ and wanted altogether to dispense with logic⁸⁰ and causality⁸¹ on the giving, and with meaning⁸² on the receiving, end. This does not mean, however, that they indulged in the cult of unintelligibility; they merely wished to stress the inadequacy of interpretation and analysis.

III

What makes it so difficult to give Expressionism its due is the fact that, as its very heart, it was beset by problems arising out of a series of dichotomies, and that, consequently, it was caught in the vise of a dialectic from which it could not properly extricate itself. Inevitably—or so it seems—the Expressionist work of art is suspended between two poles, the realistic and the idealistic. Thus while, on the one hand, it is rabidly anti-mimetic, on the other it shies away from pure abstraction. Depending on the talent or inclination of the individual writer, painter, composer, etc., it moves in one or the other direction, neither succumbing to the extremes nor reconciling the opposites. In the following pages I shall briefly seek to identify the most glaring paradoxes of which the student of Expressionism must be cognizant.

One of the accusations most frequently hurled at the Expressionists is that their art is unabashedly and unashamedly subjective. A typical expression of this sentiment is Julius Bab's attack on Fritz von Unruh: “Jener ‘Expressionismus’ aber, der das wüste Herausschreien einer von keiner Welthingabe geklärten subjektiven Erregung bedeutet, ist das Ende aller Kunst.’⁸³ Similarly Herbert Read, in his influential book The Philosophy of Modern Art, one-sidedly defines Expressionism as that art which seeks to reproduce “not the objective reality of the world, but the subjective reality of the feelings which objects and events arouse in us.”⁸⁴ This notion would seem to be corroborated by the following paragraph from a letter by Van Gogh which may be regarded as one of the most significant documents anent the Expressionist theory of art:

Because instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcefully. … I should like to paint the portrait of an artist friend. … He'll be a fair man. I want to put into the picture my appreciation, the love that I have for him. I paint him as he is, faithfully as I can, to begin with. But the picture is not finished yet. To finish it I am now going to be the arbitrary colorist. I exaggerate the fairness of the hair, I get to orange tones, chromes and pale lemon yellow.⁸⁵

So far, so good. But this shift from the objective to the subjective is, contrary to Read's belief, only the beginning of a process that leads to a second change of direction. For Van Gogh's letter continues in the true, universalizing spirit of Expressionism that leads to a higher, transcendent reality:

Beyond the head, instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint infinity, a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination the bright head illuminated against a rich blue background acquires a mysterious effect, like the star in the depths of an azure sky.

The very gist of the matter is contained in a statement by Edward Wadsworth which forms part of that Vorticist painter's contribution to the first issue of Blast: “In short, the effect of inner necessity on the development of art is a progressive expression of the eternally objective within the temporarily subjective. Or otherwise the subjugation of the subjective by the objective.”⁸⁶

In literature, the same desire to overcome the limitations of contingent individuality finds expression in two different but, from a higher perspective, complementary ways: in the breaking up of linguistic patterns and in the substitution of types for individuals. This mode of presentation, which involves a deliberate suppression of all idiosyncrasies, i.e., those features which make each person distinctly sui generis, presupposes a casting out of psychology. In fact, Edschmid and many of his confrères took this uprooting of an established analytical science to be the veritable secret of Expressionism.⁸⁷ In order to stave off confusion, it should be pointed out, however, that the type figures (which are often quasi-allegorical Aufsplitterungen des Ich⁸⁸) of Expressionist drama have little in common with the social types encountered in Balzac's Comédie humaine, where each character, meant to represent a profession, sex, age group, “race” or social class, is partly or wholly dependent on the Tainian triad of race, moment and milieu. In Balzac, as in the entire Realistic tradition, which the Expressionists so heartily despised, the individual is firmly anchored in a socio-historical context, whereas in Germany's jüngster Dichtung “das Sekundäre verschwindet, der Apparat, das Milieu […] nur angedeutet und mit kurzem Umriss der glühenden Masse des Seelischen einverschmolzen [bleibt].”⁸⁹

To our expanding list of inherently Expressionistic dichotomies, we must add the dialectic constituted by the interrelation and interpenetration of representational and non-representational (concrete and abstract) elements in art and literature. As I have indicated, outright mimesis is taboo in Expressionism and almost automatically disqualifies a work from fitting into that context. In the words of Paul Klee: “Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.”⁹⁰ On the other hand, pure abstraction—what used to be ambiguously called non-objective art—was shunned, at least outside of the Sturm circle, because, in spite of Kandinsky's protestations, it sacrifices content to form, ignores the human element and undercuts the productive tensions on which truly Expressionist art must thrive. Thus Edschmid, in an implied critique of Kandinsky's theories, postulates: “Das abstrakte Wollen aber sieht keine Grenze mehr. Erkennt nicht mehr, welch ausbalanciertes Vermögen besteht zwischen dem Gegenstand und der schaffenden Form. Die Grenzen des Sinnlichen durchbrechend schafft sie lauter Theorie. Da ist kein Ding mehr, das gestaltet, umgeformt, aufgesucht wird, da ist, den Kampfplatz verlassend, nur öde Abstraktion.”⁹¹

I asserted that pure abstraction was generally shunned except in the Sturm circle. For Walden and his group, the word was, indeed, “das Material der Dichtung”⁹² which could be used both for its own sake and as a vehicle for meaning. Thus, whereas Stramm dispensed with syntax but stuck to the lexicon (not without juggling the vocabulary),⁹³ Blümner abandoned the lexicon with a vengeance: “Aber selbst diese expressionistische Dichtung (Stramm, Walden, Schreyer, Behrens, Allwohn, Liebmann, Heynicke) setzte meiner künstlerischen Freiheit die Grenzen der gegebenen Wörter, ihrer Konsonanten und Vokale.”⁹⁴

The fifth dichotomy arises from the dialectic of body and spirit, or Stoff and Geist. Once again we are faced with two contrasting but collateral tendencies, the urge for spiritualizing matter and the wish to embody soul states. Thus, clearly, the aesthetic of the Blaue Reiter was based on the yearning for Entstofflichung (dematerialization), as reflected in the following passage from Marc's “creative confession”: “Der uralte Glaube an die Farbe wird durch die Entsinnlichung und Überwindung des Stoffes an extatischer [sic!] Glut zunehmen, wie einst der Gottesglaube durch die Verneinung der Götzenbilder. Die Farbe wird, vom Stoff erlöst, ein immanentes Leben führen nach unserem Willen.”⁹⁵ In literature, a similar position was taken by several critics and theoreticians who denigrated that “stofflichste und daher unkünstlerischste aller Künste.”⁹⁶ But except for Blümner's Lautkunst, what was upheld in theory was never realized in practice. More typical, on the whole, is the compromise struck by Edschmid in his essay “Döblin und die Futuristen”: “Wir wollen das Fleisch, aber in gehobeneren Übersinnslüsten. Döblin macht es nun so, daß er das Fleisch mit Geistinjektionen so fabelhaft durchwühlt und durchschimmert, daß nur das Gespenst (was eine andere Geschichte ist als das Skelett) entsteht.”⁹⁷ The complementary tendency—that of embodying soul states—seems to have prevailed among the Expressionists. It certainly was the one that many contemporary critics singled out. Thus Walther von Hollander, reviewing Kornfeld's Die Verführung, defined Expressionism as “Seele, die sich ohne Scham im Körperlichen entschleiert” and spoke of the drama itself as “rein expressionistisch auf Körperlichkeit gestellte Seele, die sich im Körper zur Schau stellt.”⁹⁸

If, as we have reason to believe, the style characteristic of German Expressionist literature is an outgrowth of the world view which I have tried to anatomize in the preceding pages, the linguistic habits developed and cultivated by the Expressionists must be a logical extension to technique (in grammar, syntax and vocabulary) of a philosophy at whose center lies the desire to substitute Wesen for Schein or even Sein.⁹⁹ Indeed, the theoretical statements available to us agree in demanding that language, too, must reflect the Wirklichkeitszertrümmerung without which all efforts to reach the core are vain. The means suited to that end were inevitably verfremdend, causing a more or less radical deviation from normal usage through distortion, omission, reduction and condensation (the famous Telegrammstil¹⁰⁰). Sternheim, who was exceptionally language-conscious, presents the whole issue in a nutshell:

[Es] ist selbstverständlich für den heute—nicht von uns sondern unseren Kritikern—Expressionismus genannten Sprachstil charakteristisch, daß er nur Hauptsachen und durchaus keine Nebensachen mehr gibt, das heißt überall da, wo Wort an sich ohne Artikel, Adjektiv und Attribut der schärfer definierende Begriff wird, aus monumentaler Kahlheit sein verloren gegangenes Essentielles für Welt wieder gerettet und überflüssige, klischierte und teils schon blödsinnige Zutat, die nur allmählich für kapierendes, bequemes Verständnis des Durchschnittslesers mitgeschleppt wurde, entfernt wird.¹⁰¹

The application of this dogma to the specifics of syntax was made, properly enough, by our star witness Kasimir Edschmid, who pontificates:

Die Sätze liegen im Rhythmus anders gefaltet als gewohnt. Sie unterstehen der gleichen Absicht, demselben Strom des Geistes, der nur das Eigentliche gibt. … Sie binden Spitze an Spitze, sie schnellen ineinander, nicht mehr verbunden durch Puffer logischer Überleitung, nicht mehr durch den federnden äußerlichen Kitt der Psychologie.¹⁰²

Gottfried Benn, writing about his “Vermessungsdirigent” Pameelen, declared with rhetorical pomp: “Einstürzt jede Fragestellung, die mit Erkenntnis rechnet, denn die Syntax läuft über in das Du, und der Kausalsatz herrscht in der Holunderlaube, in der sich abends was begibt.”¹⁰³ And J. R. Becher defended “die neue Syntax” in a letter addressed to a critic of the Frankfurter Zeitung:

Alogische Bomben unterminieren den traditionellen akademischen Satzbau der bürgerlichen Spracharchitektur. Rhythmik, Melodie, Metaphorik schwankt; die Sprache selbst produziert, unabhängig von ihrem Schöpfer, scheinbar unlösbare, eigengesetzlich gegeneinander sich bewegende, anarchisch gegenseitig explosivartig sich pressende Verknotungen.¹⁰⁴

As for the poets gathered around Herwarth Walden, they, too, did away with all the Nebensachen and replaced the wonted syntactical structure by various kinds of Wortreihen (word sequences) fashioned according to rhythmic, tonal or visual requirements.¹⁰⁵

Vocabulary, like syntax, underwent rough treatment at the hands of the Expressionists, partly under the influence of Marinetti's theories. Says Edschmid:

Auch das Wort erhält andere Gewalt. Das beschreibende, das umschürfende hört auf. Dafür ist kein Platz mehr. Es wird Pfeil. Trifft in das Innere des Gegenstands und wird von ihm beseelt. Es wird kristallisch, das eigentliche Bild des Dinges. Dann fallen die Füllwörter.¹⁰⁶

Up to this point, I surmise, his fellow Expressionists would have gone along with Edschmid. However, opinions differed with regard to the word class or classes to be preferentially used. Most writers clearly exalted the noun (in the case of Marinetti's disciple Becher even the Hauptwortkette [noun string or chain] cherished by the poets of the German Baroque); but Franz Werfel steadfastly maintained: “In der Poesie ist der Träger der Betonung das Verbum.”¹⁰⁷ In the light of the Sturm poets' indifference toward such matters, Werner Rittich was probably right in declaring that it is “verlockend, aber gefährlich, den Expressionismus auf Verwendung bestimmter Wortarten abzustempeln.”¹⁰⁸

Finally, in accordance with their suspicion of the ratio and its interpretative, analytical and reductive urges, the Expressionists, both in theory and practice, disbarred those rhetorical devices and figures of speech which “by indirection seek direction out.” While the hyperbole may well be regarded as a hallmark of their style (except, of course, in the chaster products of Sturm art), allegory,¹⁰⁹ symbol, metaphor,¹¹⁰ and even the harmless simile¹¹¹ were all found to be wanting.

Anatomizing my anatomy, I should like to reaffirm, by way of conclusion, that, in spite of the many difficulties presenting themselves to the scholar bent upon finding some degree of unity in the diversity of phenomena subsumed under the label “German literary Expressionism,” there is no reason for despair. As long as one remembers that Expressionism is no organic whole but that, like moons or satellites circling around a planet, its varied, paradoxical and sometimes contradictory elements are ultimately centered in a common core of Weltgefühl, one is fairly safe in treating it as a cluster, provided that in the matter of ascription one casts aside all chronological and biographical misconceptions. And while there is plenty of room for individual preferences on the part of the researcher, it is by no means impossible to agree on a list of works (and parts of works) that deserve to be labelled Expressionistic, not because the contemporaries or posterity called them so, but because they display features one has come to regard as symptomatic. Forbidding at first sight, the burden is greatly alleviated by the fact that within the vast Milky Way of Expressionism there are identifiable constellations, such as the Sturm group, Activism and Der Blaue Reiter, which can be arranged in a meaningful pattern on the celestial map.

Notes

1. This is hardly the place to review the vast, and qualitatively uneven, literature on Expressionism in general and German literary Expressionism in particular. Great profit is, naturally, to be derived from the two Forschungsberichte which Richard Brinkmann prepared for the Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1961 and 1980). To the best of my knowledge, there still is no first-rate book-length scholarly survey in English. Walter Sokel's well-known The Writer in Extremis (Stanford, 1959) has done its duty, that of stimulating discussion; given the present state of research, it can hardly be regarded as authoritative. The book I personally would recommend is John Willett's Expressionism (New York, 1970), which is primarily gauged to the visual arts. Much can be learned from the rather specialized study of Geoffrey Perkins, Contemporary Theory of Expressionism (Bern, 1974). The best essay on the subject, in my opinion, is Adolf Klarmann's “Expressionism in German Literature: A Retrospect” (Modern Language Quarterly, 26 [1965], pp. 62-92, to which Stefan H. Schultz's article “German Expressionism 1910-1925” (Chicago Review, 13 [1959], pp. 8-24) and the chapter entitled “1912” in Michael Hamburger's Reason and Energy (New York, 1961) might be added.

2. The interrelation and cross-fertilization of the various European avant-gardes of the period 1910-1925 have only recently begun to be seriously studied. An early attempt in English at placing Expressionism in a truly international context was made in my essay “Expressionism: Style or Weltanschauung?” (Criticism, 9 [1967], pp. 42-62). A more concerted and collaborative effort, undertaken a few years later, resulted in the publication of the volume Expressionism as an International Literary Phenomenon (Budapest/Paris, 1973) which I edited on behalf of the ICLA for its Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. Expressionism will be assigned its proper place in the two-volume set on the European avant-gardes, now ready in manuscript, which Jean Weisgerber from the Free University of Brussels is preparing for the same series. Given the breadth of its scope, the lucidity of the presentation and the sophistication of its structure, this venture is likely to complement, and in numerous ways supercede, such earlier attempts as Guillermo de Torre's Historia de las literaturas de vanguardia (1925; earlier version 1925). Hugo Friedrich's Struktur der modernen Lyrik (Hamburg, 1956) and Renato Poggioli's Theory of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass., 1968; original Italian version, 1962) which, no matter how valuable in themselves, tend, by and large, to underrate or misrepresent the Germanic contribution to twentieth-century experimental literature.

3. In the introduction to his pamphlet Über moderne Prosa (Berlin: Reiss, 1919), Max Krell calls Expressionism a “Sammelwort eines Gefühls- und Anschauungskomplexes.”

4. An advertisement circulated by Walden in 1918 proudly spoke of Der Sturm as “das führende Organ der Expressionisten.” That this view was rather enviously shared by some Expressionists who did not belong to his circle is shown by an autobiographical observation of Rudolf Leonhard: “Manche Kritiker, soweit sie sich der Mühe unterzogen, halten mich für einen Expressionisten; ich vermute, daß Herwarth Walden, der doch ein Monopol darauf hat, mich nicht dafür hält …” Both references are culled from the invaluable catalogue of the Marbach exhibition, Expressionismus: Literatur und Kunst 1910-1923, eds. Paul Raabe and H. L. Greve (Munich: Langen/Müller, 1960), pp. 144 and 216 respectively.

5. “Nicht Kampf gegen schon Stürzendes verbindet, wo wir doch, toleranter, duldsamer als Vorangegangene, auf Formales geringsten Wert legen, wo künstlerische Fragen, im Äußeren nur ruhend, uns gleichgültig abgewendet sehen, vielmehr bedacht auf die Gesinnung.” From the lecture “Über die dichterische deutsche Jugend” in Über den Expressionismus …, p. 11. Similarly, Arnold Schönberg, writing in Schöpferische Konfession, ed. K. Edschmid (Berlin: Reiss, 1920), confesses: “Mehr kann ich von meinem Schaffen nicht sagen, weniger eher; auch ich könnte ein expressionistisches Programm aufstellen. Besser aber noch eines bloß für andere” (p. 75).

6. The Aeternist manifesto appears in II, 190-92, the Zenitist manifesto, redacted by Iwan Goll, ibid., pp. 580f. Among the “technical” manifestoes included in the anthology we find Werfel's treatise “Substantiv und Verbum” (II, 182-88) and J. R. Becher's programmatic poem “Die neue Syntax” (II, 247-48).

7. See Werner Rittich's important monograph Kunsttheorie, Wortkunsttheorie und lyrische Wortkunst im “Sturm” (Greifswald, 1933).

8. The book contains autobiographical and/or programmatic statements by thirteen painters and writers, among them Benn, Unruh, Toller, Becher, Kaiser, Schickele, Beckmann, Klee, Marc, but also Schönberg.

9. Dresden-Hellerau: Hellerauer Verlag, 1916. Some of the essays here collected were originally published in Die Neue Rundschau.

10. Die Neue Rundschau, 25 (1915), pt. 2, pp. 1276-87.

11. See especially “Kampf der Metapher,” “Expressionismus und Sprachgewissen” and “Brief an Kasimir Edschmid” in Sternheim's Gesamtwerk, ed. Wilhelm Emrich (Neuwied: Luchterhand), VI (1966).

12. Frankfurt: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1921.

13. Berlin: Verlag Der Sturm, n.d. This is a collection of essays originally published in Der Sturm. Most of the pieces were authored by Walden and the members of his inner circle, but Marc and Kandinsky are also represented.

14. Berlin: Verlag Der Sturm, 1921.

15. One of the best sources for an understanding of Schreyer's doctrine is his book Expressionistisches Theater: Aus meinen Erinnerungen (Hamburg: Toth, 1948).

16. As early as 1911 (#74 of Der Sturm), Wauer published his essay “Die Inscenierung,” which contains the characteristic sentence: “Worte können nur bedeutungsvoll sein, ausdrucksvoll ist nur der Tonfall, der Klang, das Mienenspiel, die Gebärde—kurz alles, was als Form und Inhalt identisch ist, wenn es vollendet erscheint.”

17. Originally published by Piper in Munich (1908). An English version by Michael Bullock appeared in 1953 under the title Abstraction and Empathy.

18. Originally published by Piper in Munich (1912). Several English versions were made, the latest one bearing the title Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

19. A reprint edition with scholarly apparatus was edited by Klaus Lankheit (Munich: Piper, 1965).

20. On p. 29 of the new edition of Menschheitsdämmerung (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), Pinthus rather coyly refers to “Dichtung, die man die ‘jüngste’ oder ‘expressionistische’ nennt.”

21. “Diese Gemeinsamkeit ist die Intensität und der Radikalismus des Gefühls, der Gesinnung, des Ausdrucks, der Form.” Ibid., p. 23. This sentiment was echoed by many contemporaries, including Ludwig Rubiner, who stated: “Ich weiß, daß es nur ein sittliches Lebensziel gibt: Intensität, Feuerschweife der Intensität, ihr Bersten, Aufsplittern, ihre Sprengungen.” From Der Mensch in der Mitte (Berlin, 1917) as quoted in Pörtner I, 71.

22. “Die ganze Welt und Gott bekommen Menschenangesicht” (Menschheitsdämmerung, p. 28), and “Die Landschaft wird niemals hingemalt, geschildert, besungen; sondern sie ist ganz vermenscht” (ibid., p. 27).

23. “Man begann, die Um-Wirklichkeit zur Un-Wirklichkeit aufzulösen” (ibid., p. 26) and “Der wirkliche Kampf gegen die Wirklichkeit hatte begonnen” (ibid., p. 27).

24. Die Strukter der modernen Lyrik (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956). As a specialist in Romance literature, Friedrich slights the German contribution to the European avant-garde.

25. Klarmann (op. cit., p. 76) also notes the Surrealist elements in the works of certain “Expressionists.”

26. Except for some very early pieces, Kafka's works show no stylistic affinity with Expressionism. Kafka himself disliked the mannerisms displayed by writers like Else Lasker-Schüler, whose poetry he found repulsive.

27. “Die folgende Liste ist keineswegs als Kanon der expressionistischen Prosa gemeint. Wie wir gesehen haben, ist es unmöglich, expressionistische Prosa (stilistisch) als solche zu charakterisieren. Deshalb ist das Verzeichnis nicht ‘Inventar expressionistischer Prosa,’ sondern ‘Prosa der Expressionisten’ überschrieben. Wer nämlich als ‘Expressionist’ bezeichnet werden kann—das läßt sich leichter feststellen, als wer expressionistische Prosa geschrieben hat.” Prosa des Expressionismus (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1972), p. 166.

28. This is more or less common practice among bibliographers. Thus The Drama of German Expressionism: A German-English Bibliography by Claude Hill and Ralph Ley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960) has sections devoted to Bertolt Brecht and Sternheim.

29. Anthologists, too, are fond of this facile solution, which saves them a lot of headaches. Thus Fritz Martini's collection Prosa des Expressionismus (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1970) contains a number of works which could not stand the stylistic test. Similarly, Werfel's drama Spiegelmensch, which is, at times, a parody of Expressionism, is frequently listed as Expressionistic.

30. See Christa Saas's Indiana University dissertation “Rilkes Expressionismus” (1967).

31. In Wedekind as well as in Sternheim, the proto-Expressionistic Aufbruch is typically presented as a breaking into—rather than out of—society.

32. Among these, I should like to single out Alfred Döblin's story “Die Ermordung einer Butterblume,” which is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of Expressionism but which, upon close scrutiny, reveals few, if any, of the traits delineated in my essay. A parallel case is constituted by Heinrich Mann's novella “Kobes,” which, Expressionistic in certain stylistic peculiarities, should definitely be read as a spoof of Expressionism.

33. Barlach himself rejected the label, even when applied to a work like Die Sündflut. Discussing the first production of that drama at the Landestheater Stuttgart, he wrote to his cousin: “da stehen denn zwischen expressionistischen Stilisierungen ganz natürliche Menschen und ahnen offenbar nicht, wie schlecht sie dahin gehören … aber nun frage ich, was sollen so spezialisierte Individuen zwischen expressionistischen Einseitigkeiten.” Briefe, ed. Friedrich Dross (Munich: Piper, 1968), I, 737.

34. Such lists are, naturally, selective and, for that reason, somewhat arbitrary. The present one, for instance, might well include Kornfeld's Die Verführung and dramas by Toller. On the other hand, I purposely exclude Sorge and Hasenclever, whose “Expressionist” plays—Der Bettler and Der Sohn respectively—are experimental in a structural, Strindbergian sense but are not stylistically prototypical. I hasten to add that many of Kaiser's widely anthologized plays (from Die Bürger von Calais to Die Koralle and Gas, Part Two) are much too intellectualized to qualify for inclusion in the Expressionistic pantheon I am presently erecting.

35. The case of Sternheim is a particularly touchy one, since that author's intentions have often been misunderstood—at least until Wilhelm Emrich made it plausible that his plays Aus dem bürgerlichen Heldenleben were actually meant as glorifications of the entfesselte Bürger. And while there can be no doubt that works like Die Hose and Bürger Schippel are to a certain extent stylistic tours de force, their underlying Weltanschauung is “conservative.”

36. Schickele's Benkal, der Frauentöter, which was enthusiastically received by many contemporaneous critics and is often cited as a paradigm, fails to strike me as being in any way Expressionistic.

37. Nevertheless, the serious student of German literary Expressionism would be foolish not to take note of Döblin's Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun, Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine (if only to measure Marinetti's impact) and, naturally, Berlin Alexanderplatz.

38. Since Abstraktion und Einfühlung was written in 1906, the term “Expressionism” does not figure there. It was not applied to literature until, roughly, 1914. For a list of various discussions of the history of that term in its artistic and literary application, see pp. 331f. of Expressionism … (see note 2).

39. Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts is the title of an anthology compiled by Max Niedermayer (Wiesbaden: Limes-Verlag, 1955) for which Benn provided a preface.

40. Die Neue Rundschau, 29 (1918), p. 359. As is well known, in the years following its foundation by Otto Brahm, the journal fervently embraced the cause of Naturalism.

41. “Nur innere Gerechtigkeit bringt bei so hohem Ziel das Radikale. Schon wird das, was Ausbruch war, Mode. Schon schleicht übler Geist herein. Nachläuferisches aufzudecken, Fehler bloßzulegen, Ungenügendes zu betonen bleibt die Aufgabe des Ehrlichen, soweit es klarliegt und schon erkennbar ist.” Über den Expressionismus …, p. 71. In his essay “Stand des Expressionismus” (originally published in the Frankfurter Zeitung of June 10, 1920), Edschmid calls the Expressionist generation ausgekernt. See p. 207 of his Frühe Schriften, ed. Ernst Johann (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1970).

42. Reprinted in Fragen und Gegenfragen: Schriften zum Kunstproblem (Munich: Piper, 1956).

43. P. 33 of the reprint edition referred to in note 20.

44. From Rudolf Leonhard's essay “Über Gruppenbildung in der Literatur,” Das neue Pathos, 1 (1913), No. 1, S. 31, as reprinted in Pörtner, II, 159-63.

45. “Im Sturm enthielt der Begriff Expressionismus keine weltanschaulichen, sondern rein stilistische Forderungen. Man vertrat im Sturm selten einen weltanschaulichen Standpunkt.” Werner Rittich on p. 92 of his book (see note 7 above).

46. Thus Franz Pfemfert's declaration in the first issue of Die Aktion (February 20, 1911) opens with the sentence: “Die Aktion tritt, ohne sich auf den Boden einer bestimmten politischen Partei zu stellen, für die Idee der Großen Deutschen Linken ein.”

47. In later years, Wolff consistently denied having been the champion of Expressionism or, for that matter, of any particular clique or movement. See the quotation from a radio address quoted on p. xxvi of Briefwechsel eines Verlegers 1911-1963, eds. B. Zeller and E. Otten (Frankfurt: Scheffler, 1966).

48. Thus Otto Flake commits a pardonable perspectivist error when prognosticating: “Die Historiker werden einst Die Aktion durchforschen, um die Geschichte der Stammelnden zu schreiben.” Die Neue Rundschau, 25 (1915), pt. 2, p. 1282.

49. Thus, as late as 1920, Friedrich Markus Huebner, an influential critic, wrote: “Der Sturm neigt hauptsächlich dem Kubismus und Futurismus zu.” From Europas neue Kunst und Dichtung (Berlin, 1920), as quoted in Pörtner II, 366.

50. Number 44 of Der Sturm contains Kurt Hiller's “Rede zur Eröffnung des neopathetischen Kabaretts” and, as part thereof, the characteristic sentence, “Das Geistige [ist] eine Flamme, von der die Seele ständig geheizt ist.”

51. “In den Dingen der Kunst und der Literatur sucht Die Aktion ein Gegengewicht zu bilden zu der traurigen Gewohnheit der pseudoliberalen Presse, neue Regungen lediglich vom Geschäftsstandpunkt aus zu bewerten, also sie totzuschweigen. Bei vollkommener Unabhängigkeit von Rechts und von Links ist Die Aktion eine Tribüne, von der aus jede Persönlichkeit, die Sagenswertes zu sagen hat, ungehindert sprechen kann. Die Aktion hat den Ehrgeiz, ein Organ des ehrlichen Radikalismus zu sein.” From the manifesto referred to in note 46.

52. See also the footnote on p. 67 of Rudolf Blümner's Der Geist des Kubismus und die Künste, where Hasenclever, Werfel, Becher, Georg Kaiser, Sternheim, Edschmid “und die ganze dazu gehörige Gefolgschaft” are scorned as “impressionistische Dichter, die Ahnungslose für Expressionisten halten.” And Kurt Hiller, responding to Sternheim's essay “Kampf der Metapher” in the Berlinger Tageblatt of July 25, 1917, refers to Der Sturm as a “Bilderböglein.” The article is quoted in Sternheim's Gesamtwerk (see note 11), VI, 501ff.

53. A good case in point is that of Adolf Behne.

54. In Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art (New York: Wittenborn & Schultz, 1947), p. 77, these three types of “symphonic composition” are said to “represent three different sources of inspiration.”

55. From the essay “Über die Formfrage” in Der Blaue Reiter (p. 139 of the reprint edition referred to in note 19). The same point is made, more paradoxically—and even absurdly—by Lothar Schreyer, who boldly declares “daß das Wesen der abstrakten Malerei der abstrakte Inhalt ist.” From his essay “Herwarth Waldens Werk” in Der Sturm: Ein Erinnerungsbuch an Herwarth Walden und die Künstler aus dem Sturmkreis, eds. Nell Walden and Lothar Schreyer (Baden-Baden: Klein, 1954), p. 138.

56. Thus Lothar Schreyer says of the poet: “Ihn zwingt eine innere Notwendigkeit zu sprechen, und es ist ihm gleichgültig, ob er gehört wird.” From Schreyer's essay “Die neue Kunst,” as quoted by Rittich, p. 33.

57. “What I am after, above all, is expression. … Expression to my way of thinking does not consist of the passion mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive.” From Matisse's “Notes of a Painter” (1908) as translated by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and reprinted in Herschel B. Chipp, ed., Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 131f. Benn's notions about Ausdruckskunst are most cogently presented in his “Rede auf Heinrich Mann” (1931) in Werke, ed. Dieter Wellershoff (Wiesbaden: Limes-Verlag, 1961), IV, 974ff. In his contribution to the volume Schöpferische Konfession (see note 5), Benn confesses: “Mich sensationiert eben das Wort ohne jede Rücksicht auf seinen beschreibenden Charakter rein als assoziatives Motiv.”

58. Quoted from Schreyer's essay “Herwarth Waldens Werk” (see note 55), p. 148.

59. There is a strong—and hardly accidental—resemblance between this view and the Imagist/Vorticist emphasis on the “primary pigment” as found in the writings of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis around 1913/14.

60. These are the opening lines of Stadler's poem “From ist Wollust,” which Pinthus included in Menschheitsdämmerung.

61. Vide the exceptionally large number of lyrical anthologies listed and described in Paul Raabe, Die Zeitschriften und Sammlungen des literarischen Expressionismus 1910-1921 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1964).

62. In his Anarchie im Drama (see note 23), Diebold distinguishes Ich-Dramen from Schrei-Dramen and Pflichtdramen and discusses at length Strindberg's role as a precursor of Expressionist drama.

63. See, for instance, Walter Sokel's contribution to the volume Expressionismus als Literatur, ed. Wolfgang Rothe (Berne: Francke, 1969), where Döblin's theory of the novel with its objectivizing tendency, “die sich von Flaubert, Spielhagen und Henry James herleitet” (p. 155), is regarded as Expressionistic. By contrast, Erich von Kahler's presentation in the essay “Die Prosa des Expressionismus” (Der deutsche Expressionismus: Formen und Gestalten, ed. H. Steffen [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965] is much more balanced.

64. Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 1956, p. 556.

65. Carl Einstein, for instance, finds “daß die sprachliche Darstellung eben nur unreine Kunst sei, gemessen an der Musik” (from Bebuquin oder die Dilettanten des Wunders [Berlin, 1912], as quoted in Pörtner I, 281). Martin Buber (quoted ibid., pp. 167f.) bemoans the fact that “auch das innerlichste Erlebnis … vor dem Triebe zur Veräußerung nicht bewahrt bleibt” and, in a truly mystical spirit, observes: “Ich glaube an die Ekstasen, die nie ein Laut berührte, an ein unsichtbares Heiligtum der Menschheit. Die Dokumente derer, die in Worten mündeten, liegen vor mir. … Sobald sie [the ecstatic individuals] sprachen, waren sie schon in den Grenzen.”

66. From the essay “Das Drama” in the August 1916 issue of Der Sturm, partly reprinted in Expressionistisches Theater: Aus meinen Erinnerungen (see note 15).

67. Der Blaue Reiter, pp. 206f.

68. Ibid., p. 110.

69. The conflict is equally prominent in the drama of the Storm and Stress, which explains, in part, the Expressionists' admiration for these plays.

70. See especially the arguments offered on pp. 118ff. of The Writer in Extremis, where both Heinrich Mann's novella “Pippo Spano” and Hofmansthal's lyrical playlet Der Tor und der Tod are considered in that context, as is Franz Kafka.

71. Die doppelköpfige Nymphe, p. 17.

72. Wesen is so crucial a word in the jargon of Expressionism that it is impossible to list even the most poignant examples of its use. Ernst Stadler's reference to Angelus Silesius's famous motto “Mensch, werde wesentlich!” in the concluding line of his poem “Der Spruch” (Menschheitsdämmerung, p. 196) is only one case in point. Speaking in the same vein, Klee calls for a “Verwesentlichung des Zufälligen” (Schöpferische Konfession, p. 35) and Walden aims at the “geistige Quintessenz eines Erlebnisses.”

73. Max Krell (Über moderne Prosa, p. 14) speaks of the desired “Entschälung der Dinge”; and Georg Kaiser's drama Von morgens bis mitternachts offers the sentence, “Aus siedender Auflösung des einzelnen geballt: der Kern: Leidenschaft.”

74. Thus in Von morgens bis mitternachts reference is made to the “letzte Ballung des Tatsächlichen”; at one crucial point, the protagonist asks for “Spitzen, Spitzen. … Von Anfang bis zu Ende nur Spitzen. … Spitzen sind die letzten Ballungen in allen Dingen.”

75. The terms most frequently used are Seele and Geist. Marc's contribution to the almanac Der Blaue Reiter is appropriately entitled “Geistige Güter,” and Kandinsky's treatise is called Über das Geistige in der Kunst. Geist was preferred because it lacks religious overtones.

76. Theodor Däubler (Der neue Standpunkt, p. 179) argues: “Eine Vision will sich in letzter Knappheit im Bezirk verstiegener Vereinfachung kundgeben: das ist Expressionismus in jedem Stil.” And Franz Marc refers to the “mystisch-innerliche Konstruktion, die das große Problem der heutigen Generation ist” (Der Blaue Reiter, p. 23).

77. Thus Frank Thiess's assertion that “der Traum … das expressionistische Kunstwerk par excellence [ist]” (from his essay “Der Traum als Kunstwerk,” as reprinted in Pörtner I, 298) must be categorically rejected.

78. The dynamism was so strong that, pan-anthropomorphically, it tended to spill over into the non-human realms, both organic and inorganic (Marc's animals and Delaunay's Eiffel Tower, according to Däubler). In this light, Worringer's predilection for Gothic art becomes sensible: “Diese Unruhe, dieses Suchen hat kein organisches Leben … aber Leben ist da. … Also auf anorganischer Grundlage eine gesteigerte Bewegung, ein gesteigerter Ausdruck. … Das Einfühlungsbedürfnis dieser disharmonischen Völker nimmt nicht den nächstliegenden Weg zum Organischen … sondern braucht jenes unheimliche Pathos, das der Verlebendigung des Anorganischen anhaftet.” Abstraktion und Einfühlung, reprint (Munich: Piper, 1948), pp. 87f.

79. Hence the Expressionists' fascination with primitive art (not to be confused with the Cubists' analogous preoccupation, although the two are jointly expressed in a hybrid painting like Picasso's “Demoiselles d'Avignon”). F. M. Huebner, in an essay entitled “Krieg und Expressionismus,” states that “die neue Bewegung entstand, weil das Gemälde, das Gedicht, das Drama nicht der Dinge Letztes brachte, sondern weil stets zwischen den Eindruck und die Wiedergabe zurechtstutzend das Denken … trat. Hier [in the art of the primitives], so schien es, war nichts, das die seelische Erregung abschnitt von ihrem Ergebnis, dem bildnerischen Können.” See Pörtner II, 178f.

80. Carl Einstein voices the characteristic complaint: “Der Fehler des Logischen ist, daß es noch nicht einmal symbolisch gelten kann. Man muß einsehen, ihr Dummköpfe, daß Logik nur Stil werden darf, ohne je eine Wirklichkeit zu berühren. … Wir müssen einsehen, daß das Phantastischste die Logik ist.” From Bebuquin oder die Dilettanten des Wunders (Pörtner I, 280). And Sternheim, addressing Kasimir Edschmid, states: “Ich weiß, Sie zerschlagen mit mir … die bornierte Rinde des Begriffs und bringen ihn von innen zu einer zweiten Explosion.” Gesamtwerk IV, 103.

81. The destruction of causality leads to a destruction of chronology as an orderly sequence as well. Thus, as Däubler asserted repeatedly, Expressionist art is characterized by a kaleidoscopic blending of successive states, a kind of dynamic simultaneity which more closely resembles the Futurist simultaneità than its Cubist counterpart, the static collage. In a passage of his essay “An Romanautoren und ihre Kritiker,” Alfred Döblin offers his own solution to the problem: “Die Darstellung erfordert bei der ungeheuren Menge des Geformten einen Kinostil. In höchster Gedrängtheit und Präzision hat die Fülle der Gesichte vorbeizuziehen.” See Pörtner I, 285.

82. Kandinsky (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, p. 70) resented the fact that “spectators are too accustomed to look for a ‘meaning’ in a picture, i.e., some external relation in its various elements.” He, accordingly, opted for the viewer who places himself “in front of a picture and lets it speak for itself.” And in his essay “Über die Formfrage” (Der Blaue Reiter, p. 164) he observed: “Die Theoretiker, die, von der Analyse der schon dagewesenen Formen ausgehend, ein Werk tadeln oder loben, sind die schädlichsten Irreführer, die zwischen dem Werk und dem naiven Beschauer eine Mauer bilden. Von diesem Standpunkte aus … ist die Kunstkritik der schlimmste Feind der Kunst. Der ideale Kunstkritiker wäre also … der Kritiker …, welcher zu fühlen suchen würde, wie diese oder jene Form innerlich wirkt, und dann sein Gesamterlebnis dem Publikum ausdrucksvoll mitteilen würde.”

83. From Part IV of Bab's Die Chronik des deutschen Dramas, as quoted in the catalogue of the Marbach exhibition (see note 5), p. 309.

84. New York: Meridian Books, 1955, p. 51.

85. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, ed. Mark Roskill (New York: Atheneum, 1963), p. 276ff. The letter is quoted by Read.

86. Blast, Volume I (1914), p. 120. This is a comment by Wadsworth on extracts from Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

87. “Diese Menschen sind unverbildet. Sie reflektieren nicht. Sie erleben nicht in Kreisen, nicht durch Echos. Sie erleben direkt. Das ist das größte Geheimnis dieser Kunst: sie ist ohne gewohnte Psychologie.” Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur …, p. 60. The Expressionists clearly were closer to Jung than to Freud.

88. As Kurt Pinthus puts it in his review of Hasenclever's Der Sohn, “Der Sohn ist im Stück ganz und gar das Wesentliche; zu ihm, nur zu ihm strahlt alles; alles, was andre tun und sprechen, geschieht mit Rücksicht auf ihn allein” (from Die Schaubühne, 10 [1914], as quoted in Pörtner I, 345). Hasenclever himself, writing in the Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung, observes: “Der Versuch, das Gegenspiel der Figuren in demselben Darsteller zu verkörpern, würde die Einheit des Ganzen erläutern; ein Zuschauer, der dem Parkett und der Bühne entsagend, außerhalb stände, würde erkennen, daß alles, was hier geschieht, nur verschieden ist als Ausdruck des einen gleichen Gedankens.” Quoted ibid., p. 358.

89. Edschmid, Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur …, pp. 62f.

90. Similarly, Edschmid declares, “Die Welt ist da. Es wäre sinnlos, sie zu wiederholen” (ibid., p. 56); and Walden proclaims, “Kunst ist Gabe und nicht Wiedergabe” (from his “Vorrede zum Ersten Deutschen Herbstsalon 1913,” as quoted in Pörtner II, 158).

91. Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur …, pp. 73f.

92. From Walden's essay “Das Begriffliche in der Dichtung,” originally published in Der Sturm, 9 (1918), pp. 66f. and reprinted in the book Expressionismus: Die Kunstwende, pp. 30-38.

93. “Wir haben keine Worte für unsere Begriffe. Wir Werdenden! Oder besser: wir Werder. Der Ister ist ein Lügner, nur der Werder weht, wahr in wahrem.” From a letter to Herwarth and Nell Walden dated March 21, 1915, and quoted in Pörtner I, 54.

94. Blümner, “Die absolute Dichtung,” originally published in Der Sturm, 12 (1921), and reprinted in Pörtner I, 446ff.

95. Schöpferische Konfession, p. 94.

96. Hugo Kersten, “Über Kunst, Künstler und Idioten,” a series of excerpts from Die Aktion, 4 (1914), reproduced in Pörtner I, 131ff.

97. Die doppelköpfige Nymphe, p. 134.

98. From the essay “Expressionismus des Schauspielers” in Die Neue Rundschau, 28 (1917), pt. 1, p. 575.

99. Strangely enough, the stylistics of Expressionist literature (especially poetry) has not received its due in the secondary literature. Heinz Peter Dürsteler's book Sprachliche Neuschöpfungen im Expressionismus (Bern: “Wir jungen Schweizer,” 1954) is a notable exception. The poetic technique of the Sturm poets has been studied by Werner Rittich (see note 7), and Karl-Ludwig Schneider's monograph Der bildhafte Ausdruck in den Dichtungen Georg Heyms, Georg Trakls und Ernst Stadlers (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1954) is a mine of information about the style not only of these three proto-Expressionists but of Expressionist poetry in general.

100. The term occurs in Döblin's essay “Futuristische Worttechnik: Offener Brief an F. T. Marinetti,” originally published in Der Sturm (number 150/151) and reprinted in Pörtner II, 63ff. It is used derogatorily.

101. “Expressionismus und Sprachgewissen” in Gesamtwerk, IV, 108.

102. Über den dichterischen Expressionismus …, p. 65f.

103. Der Vermessungsdirigent: Erkenntnistheoretisches Drama (Berlin, 1919), p. 3, an excerpt reprinted in Pörtner I, 104. The concluding phrase refers to the overwhelming power of the life force which sweeps away rationality and, with it, causality.

104. “Brief an die Feuilletonredaktion der Frankfurter Zeitung,” as reprinted in Theorie der modernen Lyrik, ed. Walter Höllerer (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1965), pp. 283ff.

105. In his book Kunsttheorie, Wortkunsttheorie und lyrische Wortkunst im “Sturm” (see note 7), Rittich, summarizing the theory of Wortkunst, states: “Das Material des Wortkunstwerkes ist das Wort. Die Gestaltung erfolgt direkt mit sinnlichen Mitteln. Die sinnlichen Mittel sind klanglich, rhythmisch und bildlich. Sie vereinen die Wörter zu Wortreihen” (p. 54).

106. Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur …, p. 66.

107. Werfel's essay “Substantiv und Verbum” appeared in Die Aktion, 6 (1917), pp. 4-8. It is reprinted in Pörtner I, 182-88. The quoted phrase occurs on p. 183.

108. Op. cit., p. 107 (footnote 153).

109. The similarity between a morality play like Everyman and Hasenclever's Der Sohn (or, for that matter, Strindberg's Road to Damascus) is superficial, though real.

110. Sternheim uses the phrase “Kampf der Metapher” in his programmatic review of Benn's Fleisch and Gehirne. See his Gesamtwerk, VI, 32.

111. Rittich's observation that “die Verwerfung des Vergleichs … der wesentliche Punkt [ist], in dem die Sturmtheorie mit dem Dichtungsprogramm des lit. Futurismus im Einklang steht” (Kunsttheorie …, p. 105, footnote 126) can be extended to cover the whole of literary Expressionism.