Distorsioni percettive in «Die Ermordung einer Butterblume» di Alfred Döblin

The paper investigates Alfred Döblin’s medical studies with respect to his first writings belonging to the so-called Frühexpressionsmus. By analyzing Döblin’s theoretical reflections proposed in his Berliner Programm (1913), the paper focuses on its relapses on the short-prose Die Ermordung einer Butterblume (completed in 1905, but published in 1910 in the Journal «Der Sturm» and in 1913 in a collection of short-stories named after it). In the attempt to demonstrate that in this narration Döblin exploited his medical and psychoanalytical studies on neurosis and the Korsakoff’s syndrome, the paper explores the role played by the gaze in Die Ermordung einer Butterblume and the meaning of the hallucinations experienced by its protagonist within the «Döblinismus», i.e. an epistemological, critical and literary method peculiar to the author.