Adorno

Change of Scene: Surveying the Ruins 357

Beckett’s major works had already appeared – Molloy (1951), Malone
Dies (1951), The Unnameable (1953). Suhrkamp Verlag had wished early
on to publish German translations of Beckett’s works, so that Adorno
was undoubtedly familiar with them before Beckett’s great theatrical
successes with Waiting for Godot (1953), Endgame (1958) and Krapp’s
Last Tape (1958). Adorno evidently first saw a performance ofEndgame
in April 1958 when spending a week in Vienna shortly after Easter.^156 In
a letter to Horkheimer, he told him about the magnificent production
of Endgame, observing that the author had certain intentions that
‘coincide with our own’.^157 Horkheimer seems not to have shared
Adorno’s enthusiasm wholeheartedly. In conversation with Fritz Pollock,
he expressed his reservations about Beckett and linked them with
criticism of Adorno: ‘Beckett is concerned with the same phenomenon
as critical theory: to depict the meaninglessness of our society and to
protest about it, while preserving the idea of better things in that pro-
test. For each one of his analyses, Adorno also says the opposite. But
despite a dialectics carried to extremes, what he says remains untrue.
For the truth cannot be spoken. And personally he remains detached.
But what has to be done is to make real whatever truth one happens to
possess.’^158
At the end of the year, Adorno flew from Frankfurt to Paris in order
to give some lectures on philosophical topics at the invitation of the
Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines. He stayed at the Hotel Lutétia,
which is where the first meeting between him and Beckett took place, on
28 November.^159 It appears from Adorno’s diary^160 that their conversa-
tions lasted well into the night in the Coupole, and were continued in
Les Isles Marquises, the restaurant in the rue de la Gaité that Beckett
favoured.^161 After this first meeting, Adorno began to make notes for an
essay on Endgame. His intention was to finish it between the summer of
1960 and early in 1961. He spent the holiday week in the Waldhaus, the
hotel in Sils Maria in the Upper Engadine, reading the play thoroughly
and writing down what seemed important for his own interpretation.^162
The completed essay, together with essays on Proust, Balzac and Valéry,
formed the central text in volume 2 of the Notes to Literature (1961).^163
He dedicated ‘Trying to understand Endgame’ to Beckett in memory of
their first meeting in Paris.
On 27 February, Adorno read large extracts from the essay to an
audience in Frankfurt at a party given by Suhrkamp Verlag in honour
of Beckett. The party took place in the Cantate Hall, next to the Goethe
House. This ‘Hommage à Samuel Beckett’ event aroused great interest,
though there was little on offer except for the somewhat hermetic
lecture given by Adorno, who was of course already a familiar figure in
intellectual circles in Frankfurt. Adorno stood on the podium and read
his talk out with immense concentration, giving a little bow at the end
as if he had been giving a piano recital rather than a lecture. Before
the event, Siegfried Unseld, who had taken Suhrkamp’s place after the