360 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
which everything has become a function, and he depicts it from its
shabby side since he shows what happens to these people in this
functional world.^179Adorno had great reservations about television and what he saw as
its infantilizing effects, but in this case he wrote to Hans-Geert
Falkenberg, the moderator of the programme, on 5 April 1968, saying:
‘On Wednesday evening, I saw our Beckett discussion on the Third
Programme of Hessen Television, and would like to tell you that I was
extraordinarily impressed by it, even though I am perhaps not the right
person to say so. The atmosphere was human and, above all, the com-
pletely informal nature of the discussion and the fact that there were no
time constraints made possible a kind of spontaneity, an alternation of
demanding and undemanding moments that is normally not available
on television. I have also heard very favourable reactions from other
viewers.’^180
If in Adorno’s view Kafka was emblematic of the approaching age
of barbarism, then Beckett’s plays were the definitive expression of the
epoch’s experience of catastrophe. Whereas Kafka destroys the appar-
ently meaningful by its plurality of meanings, Beckett even more radic-
ally destroys meaning to the point of meaninglessness. ‘Just as after an
intensive reading of Kafka alert experience thinks it sees situations from
his novels everywhere, so Beckett’s language effects a healing disease in
the sick person; the person who listens to himself talk starts to worry
that he sounds the same way.’^181
These two major essays demonstrate that Adorno could feel suffi-
ciently confident to take part in literary discourse. He even ventured
into the illustrious circle of the Hölderlin Society in June 1963 in order
to give a talk on the poet at its annual conference in Berlin. Kracauer
expressed his admiration for the fact that Adorno intended to deal with
this difficult material in the presence of an audience of specialists, and
inquired what the secret was of Adorno’s amazing productivity – a
question that went unanswered. Adorno’s lecture was given to an exclus-
ive circle of literary scholars and Germanists – as speaker he followed
lectures by Emil Staiger and the classical philologist Uvo Hölscher. His
talk unleashed vehement responses, and during it one woman left the
hall in agitation. She wished to protest against his criticism of Heidegger.
Adorno later gave a report on this incident to Marcuse: ‘The only reac-
tion to the Hölderlin in Berlin was that of a Heideggerian megaera. She
reproached me with having formerly been called Wiesengrund, and
backed up this reproof by pointing out that she was half-Jewish and that
her father had been gassed in Auschwitz.’^182 The lecture was followed
by an animated discussion in the foyer of the Academy of Arts in which
Adorno was unable to participate, since he had to leave early.^183
This essay, which appeared in the Neue Rundschau early in 1964,
opens with an account of Adorno’s particular approach to literary