468 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
make Luiche ask questions in Hessen dialect to which Maman always
finds witty replies:
luiche: Maman, when I have been crucified and am all bent over
double – do you think I shall look like a genuine
Riemenschneider?
maman: Not really, my love, – but you will certainly make an excellent
copy.^91
In another fantastic scene Luiche had swallowed a miniature time-
bomb: ‘One minute before it was due to explode, he says: “Yes –
Nietzsche is quite right. You have to have chaos inside you if you wish
to give birth to a dancing star”.’^92 As far as Luiche’s career prospects
were concerned, Adorno thought of making him a bullfighter so as to
give the bulls a chance.
These jeux d’esprit may have been diversions for Adorno from his
intensive labours. He would even indulge in them on occasion during
faculty meetings, a standing horror punctuating the semesters. Hedecor-
ated the notifications of the meetings with their accompanying agendas
with funny drawings, teddy bears with a dummy or a dancer called
Marlene. He would also play around with the text of the agenda, for
example changing ‘the establishment’ (Einrichtung) of an office called
dean of studies into ‘the execution’ (Hinrichtung) of the dean of studies.
This foible for playful irony is also in evidence in the loving letters
Adorno wrote with great regularity to his parents. He rightly sought to
conceal this side of himself from the gaze of a public whose cynicism
he was frequently made to feel during this year. But many people whom
he thought of as his intimate friends became aware of his personal
difficulties, if only because he took no trouble to conceal them.
Anyone who heard his radio talk ‘Resignation’, which was broadcastin
February 1969 by the Sender Freies Berlin, and who has read the little
essay ‘Critique’, which had appeared in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit
a few weeks before his death, would obtain a fairly accurate picture of
Adorno’s state of mind at the time. He felt himself to have beenpilloried
by the public attacks and expressions of hostility from both right and
left. He was particularly hurt by the fact that these reproofs came not
just from conservatives, but also from the New Left. Nevertheless, he
was determined not to be deflected from a life of contemplation, since
meditation was in his eyes a chief goal of living. ‘The happiness that
dawns in the eye of the thinking person is the happiness of humanity.’^93
He admired the cunning of the two rabbits who, when the hunter’s shot
came, fell down half-dead with fright, but then, having realized they
were still alive, jumped up again and made their escape.^94
Among the things that saved him and gave him pleasure was the
publication of a collection of poems by Rudolf Borchardt. The plan for
this edition went back to 1967 when Adorno exchanged letters with