“Blood must flow, blood must flow in torrents thick and fast”

“Blood must flow, blood must flow in torrents thick and fast” is a recurring refrain in the argument between Franz Biberkopf and Georg. It condenses the forceful language of revolutionary action into a line that keeps returning after Franz has rejected the cause, linking political dispute to the separation of former comrades.

The refrain in the political argument

Georg places the phrase within an account of defeat and betrayal. Recalling the failure to take Arras and the collapse of collective discipline, he argues that people failed to stand together both at the front and during the upheavals of 1918 and 1919. He invokes the killing of Rosa and Karl Liebknecht, points to Russia and Lenin as examples of solidarity, and calls for people to unite and act. The refrain follows this appeal, turning the argument’s demand for action into a blunt, insistent declaration.

Franz refuses Georg’s conclusion. He says that the world will eventually fall apart regardless and that he will not be drawn into the same struggle again; the failure of the earlier movement is enough to convince him. He does not claim that the group represented by the armband will succeed either. Instead, he invokes peace and says that people who want to work should be allowed to work. The refrain therefore stands against Franz’s stated withdrawal: its certainty and momentum contrast with his refusal to invest in another collective political effort.

Repetition and a broken friendship

The phrase returns as Franz leaves the argument behind. He puts his armband into his jacket and goes back to his table, while Georg wishes him luck with his new life and notes that Franz will not join the usual January march to Friedrichsfelde, to Karl and Rosa. Franz continues selling papers rather than marching. Their exchange gives the refrain a personal consequence: political disagreement becomes a parting between men who had shared experience and, at least in Georg’s account, had once left the trenches together.

At Henschke’s, the refrain sounds again after Franz questions why people are leaving and suggests that they are fetching reinforcements. The narration repeats it as he insists on his view, shortly before he apologizes to Georg for their separation. Georg does not take the hand Franz offers. The refrain’s return does not resolve the dispute; instead, it shadows a failed gesture of reconciliation and leaves the break between them in place.

Political noise beside ordinary life

The scene also sets the refrain against the ordinary business of the pub. After the political exchange, Franz helps Henschke move a goldfinch’s cage nearer the window, saying that no one will get near the bird there. The men fall quiet and smile at one another. This small act of care sits beside the repeated language of bloodshed without cancelling it: the scene holds the threat of political violence and the modest possibility of protecting a vulnerable creature in the same everyday space.

As a repeated expression, the refrain marks how political rhetoric persists in the novel’s soundscape even when Franz claims to have left its cause behind. Its recurrence belongs both to the public language of solidarity and to the intimate cost of refusing that language: the argument ends not in agreement, but in departure and an unaccepted hand.