Pre-print version; chapter published in: Expressive Minds and Artistic Creations: Studies in Cognitive

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

Poetics of perception. The cognitive-linguistic foundation of narrativity and the

‘aesthetics of observation’ in German avant-garde literature

Natalia Igl (University of Bayreuth)

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

1. A cognitive poetics approach to modernist aesthetics

It is clear that we are dealing here with a dialectical relation
between linguistic functions and imaginative powers. (Innis 1982, 24)

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

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 1

narrator as a mediating instance is – at least seemingly – rather faded into the background. I
emphasize seemingly, because although the camera metaphor suggests a notion of the speaker as a
detached observer with an ‘objective’ point of view, the quoted phrase in itself has a meta-reflective
quality, that indeed highlights the ‘subjective’ perspective of the observer. I will elucidate this
perspectival tension in the course of my following analysis. Moreover, the quoted sentence
illustrates another key aspect the present chapter focuses on – that is, the phenomenon of
perspectival embedding which will be outlined in Section 1.3 with respect to the specific double-
layered nature of narrative discourse.

1.1 Aims, structure and methodological basis

Since the focus of the present volume lies on the mutual benefit of literary studies and cognitive
scientific research, the chapter aims at bringing together a new approach to phenomena of narrative
discourse based on a cognitive-linguistic concept of narrativity (cf. Igl and Zeman 2016) and a
specific poetological constellation that is characterized by a highly reflective view on processes of
perception and cognition and the possibilities of their literary representation. Due to its explicit
programmatic claim of ‘objectivity’ in expression the movement of ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ is suitable
as an object of study (via representative literary artifacts) with regards to the concrete and – as I will
show – somewhat opposing aesthetic strategies to evoke the alleged ‘objective’ perspective. The
novels analyzed in this chapter – Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) and Irmgard Keun’s
Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932, The Artificial Silk Girl) – reflect the programmatic turn in
contemporary avant-garde1 literature to an ‘aesthetics of observation’ and serve as a first test corpus
in the present chapter, bearing in mind that an expansion of the corpus is necessary in order to
generalize the findings.
As I will show in an exemplary analysis of Döblin’s and Keun’s novels in Section 3, they are
both characterized by a highly elaborate use of multiperspectival effects. But other than the term
‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ denotes – and even more recent studies on “this predominantly aesthetically
oriented movement and [...] independent literary aesthetic [sic]” (Becker 2002, 73) seem to indicate

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.

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 2

–, this ‘aesthetics of observation’ is characterized rather by an intertwinement of perspectives that
differ in their degree of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ or rather ‘intersubjectivity’. For a more
clear-cut differentiation between cognitive-linguistic phenomena and aesthetic notions, ‘objectivity’
is in the following used to refer to a feature of modernist aesthetics within the ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’
and a possible intended effect of the narrative presentation and does not denote a predicative or
even epistemic quality.2 From a cognitive point of view, ‘intersubjectivity’ can be seen as the
linguistically evoked notion contrasting with ‘subjectivity’ (cf. Zlatev et al. 2008).
A cognitive poetics approach provides the basis to explain the seemingly paradox conjunction
of ‘distance’ and ‘proximity’ as an intertwinement of perspectives in the narrative discourse, which
I claim to be characteristic for the modernist aesthetics of the ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’. The present
chapter aims at shedding new light on the relevance of this perspectival embedding and the
phenomenon of viewpoint splitting regarding the modern literary aesthetics.
In the following and after a first outline of some crucial literary-historical aspects (i.e. the
relevance of perception and perspective in modernist aesthetics), I will discuss the cognitive-
linguistic principle of perspectivization in general and specifically of perspectivization in narrative
and the constitutive double-layered structure of narrative discourse. This provides the basis to
analyze the specific narrative and semiotic strategies of multiperspectivity and complex
representations of discourse and perception in modernist narratives that can be addressed as
‘aesthetics of observation’.

1.2 Poetological context: Perception in/and modernist aesthetics

Kaes (2006, 44) notes a “battle cry” amongst artists and authors in the 1920s, claiming “a new
objectivity instead of the old subjectivity of Expressionism”. This programmatic rejection of
“aesthetic subjectivity” is one of the central premises of the German literary movement ‘Neue
Sachlichkeit’ – and this premise is in turn closely linked to a key concept of modernist aesthetics in
general; that is, to the emphasis on the observer or more precisely the notion of a ‘photographic’ or
‘cinematic’ mode of observing modern urban reality.3 In her article fittingly titled “Towards the
semiotics of the observer” Grišhakova 2002 points out the narrow intertwinement of arts, science,

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.

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and new technology and underlines the modernist focus on perception and on „what and how we
see“ (Grišhakova 2002, 531). The contemporary theoretical meditations on film (and of course also
on photography) as new and influential medium are of remarkably great extend.4 As Strathausen
(2000, 127) emphasizes in his comparison of Ernst Jünger’s and Walter Benjamin’s aesthetics, the
camera is very pervasive “as a major leitmotif not only for the production of literature […], but also
for the theoretical discussions regarding the aesthetics of cultural modernity”. In the ‘Neue
Sachlichkeit’, the camera metaphor is highly frequent and evokes the notion of an ‘external’ and
‘objective’ perspective of observation. As I want to argue though, the programmatic turn in
contemporary avant-garde literature to an ‘aesthetics of observation’ does not imply a mere display
of an ‘objective’ observer in form of an ‘emotionally detached’, distanced narrator. The ‘aesthetics
of observation’ can instead be described as an intertwinement of differing viewpoints that vary in
distance towards the object of observation – and towards the narratee as a text-external but
nonetheless textually evoked instance (cf. Igl 2016). Based on this notion of perspectival
intertwinement in modernist aesthetics, the quote from Isherwood’s Berlin-novel is in its
programmatic stance comparable to Ernst Jünger’s concept of the ‘stereoscopic gaze’, where he
claims that the (artist as) observer has to be at the same time distanced from the object of
observation as well as ‘emotionally involved’ (cf. Igl Submitted; Morat 2003). Jünger’s at first view
paradox aesthetics and the ‘aesthetics of observation’ within the ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ share one
crucial feature that is reflected in the notion of ‘distance’. This key concept of my analytical
approach will be explicated in the following section which gives an outline of the underlying
theoretical framework.

1.3 (Multi)Perspectivity as basic cognitive-linguistic principle and key aspect of narrative

discourse
In an abstract way, ‘perspective’ can be defined as a directed relation between an observer’s
evaluating eye, bound to a certain deictic center or origo – constituted by the coordinate system
“speaker (‘I’), place (‘here’) and time of utterance (‘now’)” (Stockwell 2002, 43) – and an (aspect
of an) object in focus or ‘locatum’, which inherently involves the possibility of different points of
view (cf. Zeman 2013, Zeman 2016).5 This is consistent with the basic explication of ‘perspectivity’
by Graumann (2002, 25f.), which also highlights the possibility of different viewpoints on the one

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.

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hand and the awareness of the possibility of different viewpoints on the other. The phenomenon of
perspectivity or perspectivization is of course not restricted to language, let alone to narration, but
constitutes a basic cognitive-linguistic principle. Kotthoff (2002, 217) puts this in a nutshell:

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.

Perspectivity is thus always potential multiperspectivity, as the knowledge of other possible

viewpoints constitutes the prerequisite for realizing the relativity of one’s own viewpoint (cf.
Zeman 2016). This holds true for narrative discourse as well, as I will elucidate below. But first, we
have to take into account another key phenomenon that constitutes a basic principle of language in
general and a crucial feature of narrative discourse in particular: the potential for viewpoint shift
and deictic projection. The concept of viewpoint or deictic shift (cf. exemplary Segal 1995,
Dancygier and Vandelanotte 2009) traces back, inter alia, to Karl Bühler’s seminal two-field theory
of language (Sprachtheorie, 1934).6 Based on Bühler, viewpoint shift is not necessarily a shift to
imagination but requires imagination in terms of what is described as “our capacity for deictic
projection” (Stockwell 2002, 43; emphasis in the original) within the theory of cognitive deixis.
Viewpoint shift thus can be understood as a mode of pointing that “takes place in the field
constituted by memory (or remembrance) and constructive imagination (or fantasy)” (Innis 1982,
23), not only when it comes to narrative and fiction. Be it in narrative or non-narrative discourse,
the capacity for deictic projection and viewpoint shift always implies the possibility to distance
oneself from one’s own perspective. The notion of ‘distance’ is crucial here, for it refers to the
inherent (multi)perspectivity of language as well as to a constitutive aspect of deictic projection:

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.

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As Meermann and Sonnenhauser (2015, 38) argue, “‘distance’ serves as a link between situation-
bound deixis and textual perspectivisation [sic] phenomena.” Based on this observation and
following Zeman (2016) and Stockwell (2002), we can understand the phenomenon of viewpoint
shift and deictic projection as a prerequisite of ‘narrativity’. Narrative discourse mode is by default
based on a split between the ‘speaker’ – i.e. the author as producer of the text – and a narrative
instance who mediates the narration. And this split requires the potential of distance, which
materializes itself in the recursive unfolding of perspectival layers:

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

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proves to be characteristic for narrative discourse,7 as I will outline in the following. Phelan (2001,
57) narratologically challenges the heuristic value of Genette’s distinction by emphasizing that “the
distinction between reporting and perceiving is impossible to maintain”, since a narrator is “doing
something parallel in discourse space to what focalizing characters do in story space”. By means of
an exemplary analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) Phelan (2001, 60) stresses the point of
the perspectival embeddedness regarding the respectively at once perceiving and reporting instances
‘character Humbert’ and ‘narrator Humbert’: “the narrator’s focalization contains the character’s.”8
From a cognitive-linguistic perspective, Dancygier (2004, 363) conceptualizes the complex
perspectival splitting and the recursive perspectival embedding – the other side of the coin – based
on blending and mental space theory as ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde-Effect’: “The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde creates a character who is physically and psychologically split into two, and yet somehow
remains one person.” With reference to Dancygier’s emphasis “that the ‘new’ character is some
kind of an extension of the character already established in the story” (Dancygier 2004: 365),
Zeman (2016, 22) points out that we have to understand perspectivization in narrative based on
“both shifting viewpoints and a structure of embedding”. The perspectival split which forms the
basis of the recursive embedded structure of narrative discourse also leads to a surplus in structural
complexity as illustrated in Figure 1:

Fig. 1: The double-layered structure of narrative discourse (Zeman 2016, 30)

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.

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level of narrative force refers to the narrative instance that communicates and mediates the narrative
events and evokes the story world; we can denominate this instance as ‘origo2’ – and at the same
time as ‘locatum1’ in terms of the object in focus regarding the vantage point of ‘origo1’. The level
of emerging story (which is also the level of characters) thus can be denominated as ‘locatum2’ in
relation to the vantage point of ‘origo2’.
The epigraph given at the beginning of the present chapter – “It is clear that we are dealing here
with a dialectical relation between linguistic functions and imaginative powers.” – is a quote from
Innis’ (1982, 24) outline of Bühler’s notion of Demonstratio am Phantasma, the mode of deixis
where the deictic center is transposed – and hence doubled, to be exact, since the initial origo and
corresponding field of reference are not discarded by means of the transposition but rather
constitute a layer in which the transposed origo and field of reference are embedded. The mentioned
relation is exactly the one which Cognitive Poetics lays focus on; and the doubling and recursive
embedding of viewpoints in the course of viewpoint shift is exactly what happens in the event of
narration.
The basic principle of narrative perspectivization now lies in the double-layered perspectival
structure that implies the potential of different viewpoints. Due to the constitutive relation and the
associated distance between the narrator and the character level, narratives by default display a
potential for multiperspectival effects (cf. Zeman 2016, Igl 2016). So in narrative, there is always
the potential for perspectival ‘friction’. This tension between differing points of view can rather
fade to the background or be foregrounded by certain strategies. The latter is the case regarding the
two modernist novels analyzed in the following section.

2. Multiperspectival strategies in modernist literary aesthetics

It has been established as a narratological consensus that “the beginnings of modern narration in the
18th century” (Schmid 2010, 120) are characterized by a significant increase of multiperspective
forms of narration (cf. also Klepper 2011, Hartner 2014). Though multiperspectivity is, as discussed
above, an inherent potential of narrative discourse and the use of multiperspectival effects “not a
recent phenomenon” (Hartner 2014, 7) in literature, the aesthetic reflection on “the conditions of
perception and narration” (ibid.) since early literary modernism spurs the development of complex
forms of narrative perspectivization. Modern forms of narrative multiperspectivity thus manifest
themselves e.g. in the increasing intertwinement of narrator’s and character’s point of view in the
narrative discourse (cf. Schmid 2010, 120). The following two exemplary analyses shed light on the
strategies and functions of multiperspectival narration with respect to the modernist programmatic
outlined in Section 1.2.

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 8

2.1 Observing the viewpoint split: Irmgard Keun’s The Artificial Silk Girl (1932)
One mode of narration that plays with the tension resulting from the simultaneous display of
different viewpoints is the mode of first-person narration – which is no ‘modern’ literary invention
in the narrower sense –, where narrator and character coincide on the textual surface. At first glance
there seems to be no intertwinement of narrator’s and character’s text or perspective in a first-
person narration – but simply a character who tells his or her story without the assistance of (or
obstruction by) a mediating narrative instance. On closer inspection though the multi-layered
perspectival structure becomes obvious, as with the quote from Isherwood’s Berlin-novel at the
beginning of this chapter. There, the main character not only functions as narrator, but is also
named ‘Christopher Isherwood’. The instances of author, narrator and character overlap – but “The
author’s introductory note” warns the reader not to mistake the story world of Goodbye to Berlin for
a mere depiction of the ‘real world’ but instead to distinguish between the overlapping deictical
centers:

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

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(1932)9 which provides an illuminating display of how the perspectival splitting of narrator and
character’s vantage points is literally performed in the narrative discourse. In Keun’s novel, the
first-person narration of a young woman called Doris, the alleged mono-perspective resulting from
this overlapping of layers or roles is artfully revealed as an illusion. The novel begins with this
paragraph: “It must have been around twelve midnight last night that I felt something wonderful
happening inside of me.“ (ASG, 1)
As with the Isherwood-example from the beginning, the speaker is here at once observer and
self-observing. What happens in the following sequence is a performative splitting of the speaker
into two different roles. Doris is at once narrator and protagonist of the novel – and here we see
how she enacts the moment in which she becomes a character in her self-created story world:

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

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 10

terms of a multiperspectival overlapping of stances: The ‘narrator Doris’ is distancing herself from
the story world and its inhabitants in the sense of treating them as ‘locatum’ that can be inspected
from many different angles and thus seemingly without being restricted by a subjective point of
view. At the same time, the detailed mise-en-scène provided by the camera-like observer directs the
addressee’s (or audience’s) attention towards the character level – that is, in particular, to the self-
presentation of the ‘character Doris’. All in all, the layered relation of ‘observing eyes’ (or, for that
matter, observing “I”s) in Keun’s novel displays the reciprocity of viewpoint split and perspectival
embedding. Döblin’s Berlin-novel, which will be examined with regard to its narrative strategies of
foregrounding (polyvalent) perception in the following, confronts the reader with a radical
multiplication of this dynamic overlapping of voices and perspectives.

2.2 Multiperspectival embeddings and unsettled ‘objectivity’: Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz.

The Story of Franz Biberkopf (1929)11
The German first edition of Alfred Döblin’s modernist novel came with a book cover that became
almost equally famous. The cover designed by the graphic artist Georg Salter is not simply
‘decorative’ in function but congenially accomplishes an illustration of some of the novel’s key
strategies of foregrounding multiperspectivity. Hansen (2005, 22) gives a trenchant evaluation of
Salter’s cover art and its promise of “a completely new modernist aesthetic”:

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’.

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 11

 The observable narrative strategy – exemplarily illustrated by the added pictographs in the
beginning of the Second Book (see Figure 2) – is characteristic for the aesthetics of the ‘Neue
Sachlichkeit’ and emphasizes its decidedly multimodal tendency. It is the technique of montage,
which defines the style of the modern urban novel or ‘Großstadtroman’ (cf. Becker 2002) as well as
the contemporary film of Weimar Cinema (cf. Kappelhoff 1994, 16-34). The montage of the
pictographs or icons in Berlin Alexanderplatz adds a further semiotic layer to the narration as a
complex semiotic artifact and thus also a further narrative perspective which cannot simply be
equated with the narrator level. Prefaced by the phrase “FRANZ BIBERKOPF ENTERS BERLIN” (BA,
41) the icons evoke at the same time an internal focalization – we seem to see what the protagonist
sees – and an alleged ‘objective’ vantage point.

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.

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 12

 Moreover, the textual embedding of iconic signs in the narrative discourse of Berlin
Alexanderplatz functions as a perspectival embedding, as already noted above. This takes place in
(at least) three complex steps – which in a way echo the basic unfolding of perspectival layers of
narrative discourse (see Section 1.3). As a first perspectival layer, the beginning of the Second
Book presents an allusive prelude declaimed by the narrator’s polyphonous voice. The framing of
the narrated story world by means of this prelude is indeed highly charged with irony and thus in
itself multiperspectival since irony can be understood as a form of double perspectivization (cf.
Kotthoff 2002; Igl 2016):

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.”

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 13

Odyssey which may be characterized as sequence of coherent and discrete stories embedded in an
epic frame narrative. Döblin illustrates his claim by the pointed metaphor of an earthworm cut into
ten pieces, which are expected to be alive and well (cf. Döblin 2013 [1917], 124f.). As much as this
metaphor openly plays with a known misbelief and exaggerates the topos of the bisected and thus
not killed but duplicated worm, it puts emphasis on Döblin’s narrative aesthetics according to which
a novel must not consist of a ‘head’ and ‘body’ of the story told but of an embedded structure of
stories. This matches with the recurring comparison of the protagonist of Berlin Alexanderplatz to
‘old heroes’, as for example in one subheading in the Second Book (BA, 83): “DIMENSIONS OF THIS
FRANZ BIBERKOPF. HE IS A MATCH FOR OLD HEROES” followed by a description of Franz’ imposing
appearance:

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’.

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 14

polyvalent perceiving and reporting instance that comprises different origos in one persona, as I
pointed out in Section 2.1 with reference to the protagonists in both Isherwood’s and Keun’s novels.
It can also refer, though, to the more abstract form of perspectival embedding by means of
polyphonic narration. All in all, polyphony as a phenomenon is interlinked with relativity of
viewpoint – and hence can be understood as a manifestation of a simultaneous multiplicity of
subject-related perspectives. As a narrative strategy is it also closely linked to questions of
‘subjectivity’ and ‘identity’ which constitute a defining discourse of literary modernism.
Before I conclude my exemplary analysis and give a summarizing outline of the interplay of
basic cognitive-linguistic principles and historically specific narrative strategies regarding the
modernist ‘aesthetic of observation’, I want to give a last example of the strategic foregrounding of
perspectival tension in Döblin’s novel. The sequence I chose visualizes the consequences of the
programmatic claim of ‘objectivity’ quite impressively on the textual surface – and at the same time
demonstrates that the claimed ‘objectivity’ is intentionally unsettled in the narrative discourse. The
sequence in question is also from the novel’s Second Book and deals with the events that preceded
the narration and lead to the protagonist’s imprisonment in the first place:

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

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 15

 the following formulæ: Newton’s first law which says: Every body continues in its state of rest or of moving
uniformly in a straight line, except in so far as it is made to change the state by external force (this applies to
Ida’s ribs). Newton’s second law of motion: Change of motion is proportional to the impressed force, and takes
place in the direction in which the force is impressed (the impressed force is Franz, or his arm, and his fist,
together with the contents thereof). The magnitude of the force is expressed by the following formula:
Δ𝑣
𝑓 = 𝑐𝑙𝑖 𝑚 = 𝑐𝑤.
Δ𝑡
The acceleration effected by the force, that is, the degree of the disturbance of rest thus effected, is expressed
by the following formula:
I
Δ𝑣 = 𝑓Δ𝑡.
𝑐
The natural and actual result is as follows: the spiral of the cream-whipper is pressed together ant the wooden
part encounters something. On the other side, the side of inertia and resistance: fracture of the 7th and 8th ribs in
line with the left shoulder-blade. (BA, 85)

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.

© Natalia Igl / Poetics of perception, pre-print 16

3. Conclusion: The dubious observer of the ‘New Objectivity’
As the present chapter aimed to show, a cognitive poetics approach can reveal the specific narrative
and discoursive strategies and their cognitive-linguistic foundation and thus shed light on the
tension between poetological program and the nature and workings of the actual aesthetic artifacts.
The notion of the ‘aesthetics of observation’ that I advocate in my study contrasts in a relevant
aspect with present research on the literary movement ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’. As Becker (2002, 83)
rightly states, the crucial factor of the journalistic, reporting style promoted by the ‘Neue
Sachlichkeit’ or ‘New Objectivity’ is the re-evaluation of ‘observation’ as an aesthetic category.
Based on the outlined theoretical framework, this re-evaluation yet goes hand in hand with a
specific functional foregrounding of multiperspectivity and perspectival tension, be it by means of
multimodal and polyphonous strategies of perspectival framing and embedding as in Döblin’s
Berlin Alexanderplatz or be it by the performative mise-en-scène of viewpoint splitting as in Keun’s
The Artificial Silk Girl.
In both exemplary cases, ‘the observer’ is somewhat dubious, split, and as observing instance
shown as at once distant and involved. The ‘aesthetics of observation’ involves the reader and the
mediating narrative instance equipped with an “external awareness” (Brandt 2013, 488; cf. Section
2.2) in a shared process of observing or, to speak with Tobin (2010, 186), in a state of “joint
attention” (see also Tomasello 1999) – just to then suddenly take the ground from under them again
as the narrative instance turns out to be volatile and unsettled in location and evaluative stance. As
Tobin (2010, 185) argues, “literary modernism can be productively understood as a reflection on
what happens when joint attention is frustrated in its operation.” This supports my line of
interpretation illustrated by the two exemplary analyses of the multiperspectival tensions in the
modernist novels by Irmgard Keun and Alfred Döblin; namely that ‘objectivity’ in the aesthetics of
the ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ or ‘New Objectivity’ not so much simply installed as a mode of observation
as rather observed and unsettled. With an eye toward the recursive embedding of viewpoints one
could coin the term of the ‘modernist aesthetics of observation of observation of observation of
observation …’.

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