198 Part III: Emigration Years
Adorno was convinced that in the long run the offer of a firm position
at the institute would be made without the need for ‘ruthless dismissals
from the institute’. By the time he arrived in New York, he would speak
‘perfect English’, and his ‘book on logic would be available to the insti-
tute’. With such prospects he could fulfil his intention of ‘marrying Gretel,
if only to bring her out of that Hell’. He was ‘under an obligation to do
this’. The cardinal point for Adorno, however, was the ability to work
with Horkheimer once again, the only man with whom he was ‘in such
broad agreement’.^45 Horkheimer confirmed that Adorno could join the
institute, but that this could only be done meaningfully once Adorno
had completed his study of English.^46 Even before that, however, he
was increasingly drawn into the ambit of the institute. After a vacation
spent in Berlin and Frankfurt, he travelled to Paris for a week in autumn
1936 on behalf of the institute. There he busied himself with a proposed
publication by Gallimard of a French-language volume of Horkheimer’s
essays, with the title Essais de philosophie matérialiste. He also had
conversations with various French intellectuals, as well as intensive dis-
cussions with Benjamin about work the latter hoped would appear in
the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Finally, he met Kracauer, reporting
back to Horkheimer that Kracauer was ‘a hopelessly difficult case’,^47 a
comment that was exactly the wrong thing to say to Horkheimer in view
of Kracauer’s desperate circumstances, but clearly shows how he treated
his old friend in such a stressful time, namely maliciously. Back in Oxford
after his stay in Paris, he finally felt that he had been initiated into the
affairs of the institute and that his opinion carried weight. His following
letters to Horkheimer were full of proposals for future prospects. These
included an analysis of the concept of decadence as well as a larger
study of the ‘philosophy of National Socialism’. Its aim was to show that
‘the Nazis were incapable of producing an ideology and that a theory
disguising the truth had been replaced by the most blatant lies.’^48
An abiding distaste: jazz as a tolerated excessAdorno took advantage of the tranquillity of life in an English university
not just for his Husserl studies, but for other things too. He produced a
series of articles on music theory which he published in the Viennese
music journal 23 , which was edited by the musicologist Willi Reich.^49
Reich was in contact with Berg, who had designed the title page of
the journal. Reich was very eager to recruit Adorno as a regular con-
tributor since the journal was very committed to the promotion of the
avant-garde. For the December issue he contributed a brief essay on
‘The Form of the Phonograph Record’. His attitude to this technical
innovation was not characterized by elitist, culture-critical reservations.
On the contrary, he maintained that the phonograph had opened up
novel dimensions of music that were not to be obscured by aesthetic