314 Part III: Emigration Years
been used. These would have been especially appropriate in an advanced
aesthetics of film because of modern music’s use of condensed musical
form, sharp contrasts and a ‘wealth of dissonances’. Adorno’s reflec-
tions went well beyond this question of an adequate musical language:
following Walter Benjamin’s thesis from his essay of 1936, ‘The Work
of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility’, Adorno rejected
all forms of production that achieved an auraticization of the medium in
order to endow it with the false magic of uniqueness. The visual and
acoustic techniques were supposed instead to provide a specific material
that called for works of art based on the principle of montage. The
music was to be one independent element among others. Its gestural
power would have the function of bringing movement into the rigidity
of the speaking images. ‘In its aesthetic effect, therefore, it simulates
movement rather than duplicating it.’^192
The book was written in 1944 and bore the unmistakable signature
of the author of the chapter on the culture industry. However, when it
was published by Oxford University Press in 1947 Adorno chose that
his name should not appear as author on the title page with Eisler’s.
The reason for this was less the fact of any disagreements with Eisler
on matters of substance than the fact that Adorno was afraid to publish
a book together with an orthodox supporter of Soviet Marxism who, in
that same year, had been summoned to appear before the Committee
on Un-American Activities set up by the House of Representatives.
Adorno explained his caution by saying that he saw no reason ‘to be a
martyr to a cause which was and is not my own. In view of the scandal,
I withdrew my claims to authorship.’^193 In a letter to his mother, how-
ever, Adorno did express his regret that he was mentioned only in the
preface to the book and not as official co-author, since he had not
only written 90 per cent of the text, but had also put in the intellectual
work. It would actually have been more appropriate for Eisler to have
renounced his authorship.^194
Adorno was destined to be the victim of a far more serious case in
which use was made of his ideas and writings without acknowledging
that he was the author as clearly as he might have expected and had
every right to wish for. We are speaking of Adorno’s role as music
adviser to Thomas Mann when the latter began work early in 1943 on
his great novel Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian
Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend. This novel described the pact the musical
genius had made with the Devil, but in reality it was an intellectual
archaeology of German fascism. When it appeared in October 1947,
Adorno received a personal copy from Mann with the dedication ‘To
the real Privy Councillor’.
Ever since his youth, Adorno had felt great admiration for a writer
with such a profound understanding of music and culture in general.
Many years before, when Adorno was only eighteen, he had seen Mann,
who was already a famous novelist, during a vacation in Kampen on the