410 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional(1960). For his part, Enzensberger was evidently attracted to some
of Adorno’s ideas. As he said, they ‘belonged to the hand luggage of
every intellectual at the time’.^232 His reading of Adorno had an impact
on the essays he wrote on culture and the media in 1962. The concept
of the ‘consciousness industry’ was clearly influenced by the criticism of
the media in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. In the winter semester of
1964, when Enzensberger gave the poetics lectures in Frankfurt Univer-
sity, they took place in the largest lecture hall, which was full to burst-
ing. He was introduced by Adorno as a friend whose thinking was close
to his own. This referred both to Enzensberger’s criticism of Der Spiegel,
the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Wochenschau (the weekly
newsreel), and to his poetry. A new volume, Blindenschrift (Braille),
had appeared in time for the poetics lectures. The social criticism in the
collection was very striking:
massacre for a handful of rice
I can hear it, for everyone every day
a handful of rice. a barrage of bullets
beating down on flimsy huts,
I can hear it
at dinner.When Enzensberger wrote in his poem ‘doubt’, ‘Are we allowed
to doubt?’, this was very much in tune with Adorno’s self-reflexive
dialectical way of thinking. Enzensberger’s contribution to the Festschrift
volume Zeugnisse, which Horkheimer organized for Adorno’s sixtieth
birthday, was one of the most sensitive portraits to have appeared on
Adorno and his impact as a critic and champion of enlightenment.
hard labour for theodor w. adornoin the name of the others
patiently
in the name of the others who know nothing about it
patiently
in the name of the others who wish to know nothing about it
patiently
holding fast to the pain of negationmindful of the drowned in the suburban trains at 5 am
patiently
unfolding the sudarium of theoryin the face of those running amok in the shopping malls at 5 pm
patiently
turning over every idea that conceals its backside