Berlin Alexanderplatz - Closing

And get on step, and right and left and right and left, marching: marching on, we tramp to war, a hundred minstrels march before, with fife and drum, drrum, brrum, for one the road goes straight, for another it goes to the side, one stands fast, another's killed, one rushes past, another's voice is stilled, drrum, brrumm, drrumm!

THE END

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 598

Death has begun his slow, slow song, and he sings it like a stammerer, repeating each word; when he has finished singing a verse, he repeats the first before he starts anew. His song is like the hiss of a saw. Quite slowly the saw ascends and then plunges down into the flesh, shriling louder, clearer and higher, till it comes to the end of a note, and rests. Then it withdraws, slowly, slowly, hissing, higher and clearer grows the note, it shrills, and then it plunges into the flesh once more.
Slowly Death is singing.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 549

Two angels walk beside him, Sarug and Terah are their names, and they talk together, Franz stands in the crowd, walks in the crowd. He is silent, but they hear him, the wild outcry within him. Bulls walk past on raiding parties, but don't recognize Franz. Two angels walk beside him.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 532

He lay beneath the auto, that was like it is now, there's a mill there, a quarry, it goes on pouring over me, but I'll hold fast, no matter how I hold on, it's no use, it wants to smash me to pieces, even if I am an iron girder, it wants to break me to pieces.
Franz murmurs though his teeth: " Something's coming." "What's coming?" What mill is this, revolving wheels, a windmill, a watermill? "Watch out, Franz, they are looking for you." So they say I killed her, me, he trembles again, his face is laughing again,...

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 502

Some women and girls are walking across Alexanderstrasse and the square, each carrying a fetus in her belly, protected by law. It is hot, annd the women and girls are sweating outside, but the fetus within sits quietly in his corner, the temperature iss just right or him as he walks across the Alexanderplatz, but many a fetus will fare badly later on: he'd better not laugh too soon.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 426

I kiss your little hand, madame, he mastered life, won his life by risking it outright, a funny August we're having this year, just look, it's raining cats and dogs.

Berlin Alexandeplatz - pg. 384

Smart boy Willy has not much cash; but he has a sharp bright mind, even though he is only a beginner in the pickpocket business, and that's why he exploits Franz. He was once an inmate in a house of correction where somebody had told him all about communism, to the effect that it's nothing at all; and that a reasonable man believes only in Nietzsche and Stirner, and does what he pleases; all the rest is bunk. So the sharp, ironical lad gets a lot of fun out of going to political meetings, and heckling the speakers. At the meetings he fishes up people with whom he wants to do busines, or whose legs he simply wants to pull.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 359

In front of Aschinger's, on the side facing a photographer's place, he sees little Mieze standing there on the Alex. Franz takes his stand on the other side, in front of the fence around the construction work, and watches her a long while from behind. She walks to the corner, Franz follows her with his eyes. It's a decisive moment, it's a turning point. His feet start to move. He sees her in profile, at the corner. How small she is! She is wearing saucy brown shoes. Watch out, now somebody's going to pick her up soon. That little blunt nose o' hers! She's looking around. Yes, I came from over there, from Tietz's, but she didn't see me. One of Aschinger's breadwagons is standing in the way. Franz walks along the fence as far as the corner, where the sand-heaps are; they're mixing cement. Now she'll be able to see him, but she doesn't look his way. An elderly gentleman keeps on ogling her, she looks past him and wanders towards Loesser & Wolff's. Franz crosses over to the other side. He keeps ten steps behind her, lingering in the offing. It is a sunny July day, a woman offers him a nosegay for sale, he gives her 20 pfennings and holds the flowers in his hand, but still doesn't come any nearer. Not yet. But the flowers have a nice smell; she put some in the room today, and a canary cage, and some drinks, as well.

[Notes: The way the narrative anchor moves in this passage from global to personal to global to the last line to personal again]

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 322

And now come thou, come hither and I will show thee something. The great whore, the whore of Babylon, that sitteth upon many waters. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed inpurple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand. And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATION OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 303

Eva is sitting by Franz's bed, Wischow comes back to it again and again: Who was it, man alive, how did it happen? Franz isn't spilling anything. He has built an iron coffer around himself and there he sits and he'll let nobody in.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 253

Furthermore, the investigation into the question of responsibility for the street-car disaster in Heerstrasse is not yet completed. The examination of the victims and of Redlich, the conductor, is still proceeding. The opinions of the technical experts have not yet been received. Only aafter their receipt will it be possible to enter upon an examination of the question whether there is any culpability on the part of the conductor, because he applied the brakes too late, or whether it was a concatenation of unfortunate circumstances that caused the disaster.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 217

People hurry over the ground like bees. They hustle and bustle around here day and night, by the hundreds.
The street-cars roll past with a screech and a scrunch, yellow ones with trailers, away they go across the planked-over Alxanderplatz, it's dangerous to jump off. The station is laid out on a broad plan, Einbahnstrasse to Konigstrasse. The trains rumble from the railroad station towards Jannowitz Bruck, the locomotive puffs out a plume of steam, just now it is standing above the Pralat, Schlossbrau entrance a block further down.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 109

He says: "If on this earth you want to be, a creature, male and full of glee, be careful and weigh everything, before you let the midwife fling you towards the daylight, there to grow: Earth is a nest of grief and woe. Believe the poet of these verses, who often pines and often curses, while chewing on this iron crust -- quotation pinched from Goethe's Faust: Man only relishes life's glow, in general, as an embryo! ... There is the good old father State, he rags and irks you soon and late. He pricks and pesters you -- you're bled with laws and codes: 'Prohibited!' His first commandment: Man, shell out. His second: Hold your dirty snout. And thus you live in adumbration, your state is that of offuscation. And if you seek to drown your queer, rough anger at some pub with beer, or with some win, respectively, a headache promptly trails the spree. Meanwhile the years knock at the gate, the months erode the hair, elate. Suspiciously the rafters creak, the limbs grow flabby, blighted, weak: gray matter sours in the brain, and thinner grows the good old strain. In short, you see fall coming nigh, you put the spoon down and you die. And now I ask you, friend, a-quiver: just what is man, what is life's river? Did not our great poet Schiller confess: 'It's not the highest men possess'. But I say it's a chicken-ladder at best, up and down and all the rest."

Berlin Alexanderplatz - pg. 47

Thus Fraanz Biberkopf, the concrete-worker, and later furniture-mover, that rough, uncouth man of repulsive aspect, returned to Berlin and to the street, the man at whose head a pretty girl from a locksmith's family had thrown herself, a girl whom he then made into a whore, and at last mortally injured in a scuffle. He has sworn to all the world and to himself to remain respectable. Later, however, his money gave out: and that was the moment he had been waiting for, to show everybody, once and for all, what a real fellow is like.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - Opening

On Car 41 into Town

He stood infront of the Tegel Prison gate and was free now.

THE STORY OF FRANZ BIBERKOPF

ALFRED DOBLIN

TRANSLATED INTO THE AMERICAN BY EUGENE JOLAS

COPyRIGHT 1929 BY S. FISCHER VERLAG, A.G., BERLIN

COPYRIGHT 1931 BY THE VIKING PRESS, INC.

REPUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT
WITH THE VIKING PRESS, INC.

Third Printing, 1968
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 58-8957