162 Part II: A Change of Sceneweeks: radio discussions and talks, the next instalment of the aphorisms
and music reviews, etc. Always curious and restless, he tried to cope
with all these obligations, and was soon able to go back to composition
and satisfy the standards he had set himself. He now proposed nothing
less than to write an opera. Taking his inspiration from Mark Twain’s
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he soon had the framework for a
Singspiel which he entitled The Treasure of Indian Joe (Der Schatz des
Indianer-Joe). He wrote the libretto between November 1932 and
August 1933. At the same time, he started to set passages of the text to
music. However, he only ever completed ‘Two Songs for Voice and
Orchestra’.^101
The reason why this project remained fragmentary was not just a
consequence of Adorno’s existential insecurity, which arose from the
difficulties with which a left-wing, so-called half-Jew had to contend
in National Socialist Germany. A further factor was the reaction to
the libretto of a single person whose judgement he particularly valued.
Immediately after completing the text he seized the opportunity for a
reading in a small, private circle. He then sent a copy to Walter Benjamin
in summer 1933. As an oppositional thinker, Benjamin was among the
first Jewish victims of the Nazi seizure of power. He fled initially to
Ibiza, and from there went on to Paris.^102 Doubtless because of his
extremely difficult circumstances, he took an unusually long time to
respond to Indian Joe. He had to be reminded frequently by Gretel
Karplus that he should write to Teddie, who was impatiently waiting for
his opinion.^103 Despite her urgings, Benjamin, whom Adorno regarded
as the ideal reader for his libretto, took his time and did not respond
until February 1934. When he did so, he wrote very diplomatically,
but his negative reaction was unambiguous. He complained in general
about the choice of subject matter: the story of the friendship between
two boys in rural America in the middle of the nineteenth century. He
went on to criticize the ‘reduction to the idyllic’, which in his view was
incompatible with the author’s intentions.^104
Was this global rejection of Adorno’s libretto justified? Adorno had,
after all, undertaken the task of coming to grips with a very relevant
contemporary experience, that of fear. Both the actions and, implicitly,
the dialogue of the two young protagonists are marked by fear. They
witness a murder committed by Indian Joe, who kills from a wish for
revenge and then tries to put the blame on another tramp. Fearing that
they may expose themselves to retribution in their turn, the boys re-
main silent, a misdemeanour that frightens them all the more as they
know their silence is the product of cowardice.
The central importance of the murder motif emerges clearly in the
very first scene. Tom Sawyer mourns the death of his tom-cat, which he
has on his conscience because he had fed the animal some medicine that
was intended for him. Scene 2 is a midnight meeting in the graveyard.
While Tom and his friend Huck lie in hiding, they witness a quarrel