The Institute of Social Research 141of an ontology of the senses, arguing instead that the senses are histor-
ical in nature. According to the notes, the chief point of the eighth
seminar was ‘our feelings on recalling odours, the emotion we feel when
eating – these things contain the promise of a true art that art has
hitherto failed to make good, and that will perhaps only be made good
at the price of its own demise. However, this route cannot be taken by
reverting to the past, but only dialectically, by taking the art of the
refined senses to the point where it is transformed.’^37
The last seminar of the course was devoted to an interpretation of
Goethe’s poem ‘So laß mich scheinen, bis ich werde’, which deals with
the life of Mignon, the mysterious beggar-maid in Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre. Adorno interprets the character of Mignon as ‘a historical
model from prehistory, like every great literary artefact, and the idea
of artistic illusion adheres only to her historical aspect.... Every en-
counter with Mignon is a rediscovery because only in this and other
historical characters do we rediscover the prehistorical dimension that
is usually hidden from us.’^38 With this assertion Adorno adroitly estab-
lishes a bridge to the aesthetics seminar for the following semester. His
intention was to examine Walter Benjamin’s The Origin of German
Tragic Drama, and especially its ‘Epistemo-Critical Prologue’, which had
already figured both in his inaugural lecture and his book on Kierkegaard.
Although Adorno carefully prepared his classes, it seems that this
was not enough to forestall spectacular misunderstandings on the part
of his audience, something that strengthened his belief that ‘philosophy
irresistibly attracts the mentally ill’. Thus von Haselberg remembers ‘a
man who had taken early retirement who appeared to take down every
word in shorthand and whom he asked for a copy of his lecture-notes.
There amidst a lot of incomprehensible twaddle was the sentence: Volkelt
tends quickly to go to extremes. In reality, Volkelt’s book was a standard
work at the time and Adorno had been at pains to unmask its psycholo-
gizing approach in order to show that it could not lead to objective
judgements.’^39 No doubt, the pensioner’s reaction to Adorno was not
the norm. Another student, Kurt Mautz, later incorporated his personal
impressions in a novel, The Old Friend (Der Urfreund). The novel con-
tains a semi-fictional, semi-authentic portrait of Adorno, who plays a
leading role under the name of Amorelli:
Amorelli had only just turned up this semester. In the Senior
Seminar he sat beside Paulus [i.e., Tillich], with whom he had
obtained his Habilitation. As a Privatdozent he gave classes on
problems of aesthetics. Kreifeld and I, together with a handful of
other students, had discovered this unknown new star. To our
minds, his thinking was more logical, more critical and more rad-
ical than that of Paulus. His style of speaking was highly polished.
Every sentence seemed to say: this is exactly how it is.... He gave
his aesthetics classes outside the university, in a students’ library.