Notes to pp. 404– 406 589the Evening Studio on Frankfurt Radio and until 1958 he was the chair-
man of ‘Radio Essay’ on South-West German Radio. His most important
literary works include Die Kirschen der Freiheit (1952), Sansibar oder Der
letzte Grund (1957), and Die Rote (1960). See also Stephan Reinhardt,
Alfred Andersch: Eine Biographie; W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History
of Destruction, p. 109ff.
199 Petra Kiedaisch, Lyrik nach Auschwitz?, p. 76ff.
200 In his illuminating essay on Adorno’s verdict on poetry after Auschwitz,
Peter Stein points out that Andersch to all intents and purposes white-
washes the period of Nazi rule in Germany by describing it as an ‘experi-
ment’ about ‘how to live in a society from which literature is completely
absent.’ He goes on to interpret the period after 1945 as the ‘attempt to
create a literature after the end of literature’. Adorno’s own statement is
said to be a fitting comment on such efforts. In effect, Andersch turns
everything on its head: ‘“Auschwitz” as a metaphor for uncultured
fascism (without the genocide of the Jews), and Adorno’s aphorism as
critique of anti-fascist literature! With this argument Andersch helped to
establish a trend in which an ignorant argument was turned against Adorno
on the following pattern: the great philosopher A. has indeed stated
that after Auschwitz... no poetry should be written; but the writers have
refuted him’ (Peter Stein, ‘Darum mag falsch gewesen sein.. .’). See also
Burkhardt Lindner, ‘Was heißt: Nach Auschwitz?’
201 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Einzelheiten, p. 491. (In the dwellings of death
is the title of a collection of poems by Nelly Sachs, the winner of the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1966 [trans.].)
202 Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, p. 57.
203 Adorno, ‘Commitment’, Ernst Bloch et al., Aesthetics and Politics, p. 188.
See also Notes to Literature, vol. 2, p. 87. Rolf Tiedemann has pointed
out that Adorno’s statement was misunderstood not just by those poets
who feared that their vocation was being called into question. He was
misunderstood also by the likes of Günther Anders, who read into it
the prohibition on writing more poetry. Adorno, ‘Can One Live After
Auschwitz?’, p. xv.
204 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 365.
205 See Adorno to Steuermann, 29 October 1961 and 2 January 1962, Rolf
Tiedemann (ed.), Adorno-Noten, pp. 64 and 68. Adorno had suggested
to Eduard Steuermann that he should persuade Bachmann to write a
libretto based on Balzac’s Peau de chagrin, but she had refused. ‘You
write with such love and respect for your friend that I find it truly difficult
to explain why it is quite impossible for me to write a libretto for
Steuermann. But let me try to do so: for months now I have been unable
to do or write anything, and without wishing to impress you or myself with
talk of a “crisis”, I feel that this not being able and not wanting is not
something that will go away tomorrow or even the day after.’ Quoted in
Sigrid Weigel, Ingeborg Bachmann: Hinterlassenschaften unter Wahrung
des Briefgeheimnisses, p. 473.
206 The allusion is to Hölderlin’s question in Bread and Wine: ‘And why poets
in desolate times?’ [trans.].
207 Adorno, ‘Valéry’s Deviations’, Notes to Literature, vol. 1, p. 143.
208 Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Steht noch dahin: Neue Prosa, p. 7.