THE RENAISSANCE OF ALFRED DOBLIN Review

• Published in: New York Times
• Main Authors: Ernst, Pawel, Ernst Pawel recently completed a biography of Franz Kafka
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 17.04.1983
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: BOOKS AND LITERATURE; Doblin, Alfred; Liebknecht, Karl; Luxemburg, Rosa; REVIEWS; Woods, John E
• ISSN: 0362-4331

It was the bleak despair of exile and defeat that made him look back to November 1918, that fleeting moment of hope when Germany's fate - and, as it turned out, that of the world - hung in the balance. What was it that tipped the scales? That question he set out to explore in the epic trilogy ''November 1918,'' of which this volume contains the first two parts (called here ''A People Betrayed'' and ''The Troops Return''). A novelist's view of history, it deals not with issues and forces but with human beings forced to make choices. And while the stress on individual guilt and responsibility may seem simplistic, it results in one of the most graphic accounts ever written of what led from Weimar to Auschwitz. In fact, what he implies - and what his rather wayward caricature of Karl Radek, who was sent by the Soviet Communist Central Committee to lead the German Communist movement, spells out in so many words - is that the German revolution failed because there was no Lenin to guide it. This debatable proposition foreshadows [Alfred Doblin]'s own yearning for authority, for a fixed point of reference in the midst of mounting chaos. And since in the end even Lenin proved mortal, the need for less fallible guidance must have suggested itself with an inner logic, though Doblin resisted it for some time. ''The Troops Return'' seethes with the soul struggles of the agnostic Jewish radical reluctantly yielding to the appeal of Christian socialism. Doblin's skill at conveying the drama of mass action remains unimpaired, but the focus increasingly shifts to the fictional protagonist, a hallucinating and suicidally depressed war veteran. Torn by doubt and self-hatred, haunted by Satan's argumentative emissaries, he is ultimately saved by the apparition of Johannes Tauber, a saintly 14th-century mystic whose spirit leads the veteran to Christ. The present English version, handsomely produced and splendidly translated, does not include ''Karl and [Rosa Luxemburg],'' which lacks the rich and evocative vitality of the earlier sections. Literary judgment may justify the decision to delete it; moral judgment must take issue, since the omission significantly distorts the author's final intent. Even in this truncated version, however, ''A People Betrayed'' is a brilliant work by a major writer who grappled with the roots of darkness in our time.