Change of Scene: Surveying the Ruins 345the coloured pictures from the song book illustrated by Ludwig von
Zumbusch that had accompanied him through childhood.^77
As long as I have been able to think, I have derived happiness
from the song: ‘between the mountain and the deep, deep vale’:
about two rabbits who, regaling themselves on the grass, were
shot down by the hunter, and, on realizing they were still alive,
made off in haste. But only later did I understand the moral of
this: sense can only endure in despair and extremity; it needs ab-
surdity in order not to fall victim to objective madness. One ought
to follow the example of the two rabbits; when the shot comes, fall
down giddily, half-dead with fright, collect one’s wits and then, if
one still has breath, show a clean pair of heels.... He alone could
pause to think on the illusoriness of disaster, the ‘unreality of
despair’, and realize not merely that he is still alive but that there
is still life. The ruse of the dazed rabbits redeems, with them, even
the hunter, whose guilt they purloin.^78These aphorisms and brief texts, with their peculiar combination
of philosophical reflection and literary form, constituted an unusual
commentary on contemporary issues. Autobiographical experience went
hand in hand with subtle observation, the interpretation of everyday
phenomena and, not least, philosophical aperçus. Perhaps this can help
to explain the book’s success. Fifty years after its first appearance, the
German edition had sold over 100,000 copies. Deservedly so, since a
critique of ‘damaged life’ that avoided ‘arbitrary sententiousness’ was
one of the factors enabling Adorno, so Albrecht Wellmer believed, to
speak to a postwar generation that was unsure of its own identity and
insecure in its sense of values. Amidst a German culture poisoned by
reactionary values and beliefs, he liberated something of an authentic
tradition.^79 By making the horrors explicit, Adorno made it possible
to formulate questions about the preconditions of a true life: ‘as the
mirror-image’ of the false one.^80 ‘Perhaps the true society will grow
tired of development and, out of freedom, leave possibilities unused,
instead of storming under a confused compulsion to the conquest of
strange stars.’^81 In the light of this utopian hope even disasters in every-
day life of which one does not become aware acquire their contours, as
in the case of the careless slamming of doors or running down the
street: ‘The victim’s fall is already mimed in his attempt to escape it.
The position of the head, trying to hold itself up, is that of a drowning
man, and the straining face grimaces as if under torture.’^82
The success of Adorno’s books and his growing reputation in
Suhrkamp was such that he felt able to intervene publicly in a seem-
ingly trivial matter. The publisher Rowohlt had issued Heinrich Mann’s
novel Professor Unrat with the title of the film version of the book, The
Blue Angel. Adorno objected to this at the end of January 1952 in