{"id":10852,"date":"2026-04-21T08:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T12:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/?p=10852"},"modified":"2026-05-01T08:47:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:47:47","slug":"max-kade-professor-caroline-torra-mattenklott-delivered-lecture-on-doblin-and-futurist-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/2026\/04\/21\/max-kade-professor-caroline-torra-mattenklott-delivered-lecture-on-doblin-and-futurist-painting\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Kade Professor Caroline Torra-Mattenklott delivers lecture on D\u00f6blin and Futurist Painting\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“‘Mut zur kinetischen Phantasie’: Studies of Body and Motion in Alfred D\u00f6blin\u2019s\u00a0Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine<\/em><\/strong>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early twentieth-century literature\u2014in the works of Marcel Proust or Franz Kafka, among others\u2014the fascination by the technical innovations of modernity is often accompanied with a particular attention to what seems to be obliterated by the mechanization and acceleration of everyday life: the relative slowness, frailty, and dysfunctionality of the human body. Alfred D\u00f6blin\u2019s novel\u00a0Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine<\/em>\u00a0(Wadzek\u2019s Fight against the Steam Turbine<\/em>), written in 1914 and published in 1918, is permeated by this ambivalence in a way that has left many of its readers perplexed. Drawing on D\u00f6blin\u2019s theory of the novel and his writings on Futurist painting from the early 1910s, this lecture attempts to reconstruct the specific poetics of the concrete that D\u00f6blin develops in his exuberantly detailed, technically inspired descriptions of human bodies and their movements in space. Rather than being overtly displayed in the narrative, I argue, the steam turbine as the Futurist \u2018thing symbol\u2019 of the novel functions as a background metaphor that informs the way D\u00f6blin stages the energetic states and the mobility of his protagonists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Poster<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“‘Mut zur kinetischen Phantasie’: Studies of Body and Motion in Alfred D\u00f6blin\u2019s\u00a0Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine“. In early twentieth-century literature\u2014in the works of Marcel Proust or Franz Kafka, among others\u2014the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":786,"featured_media":10854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"program":[10445],"class_list":["post-10852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","program-german"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/786"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10852"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10862,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions\/10862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10852"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=10852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}