Notes to pp. 407– 412 591222 In his essay ‘Valéry’s Deviations’ (1960), which Adorno wrote in response
to the publication of a selection of Valéry’s works in German translation
by Bernhard Böschenstein, Hans Staub and Peter Szondi, he pointed to
Valéry’s insight into the adventitious, the irregular, and his understanding
of ‘the tension in art between contingency and the law of construction’.
(See ‘Valéry’s Deviations’, Notes to Literature, vol. 1, p. 143.) Later, in
Aesthetic Theory, in his discussion of the trend to aleatory music, he pointed
to John Cage’s Piano Concerto as one of the ‘key events’ that ‘impose on
themselves a law of inexorable aleatoriness and thereby achieve a sort of
meaning: the expression of horror’ (Aesthetic Theory, p. 154).
223 Adorno, ‘Presuppositions’, Notes to Literature, pp. 101 and 104.
224 Ibid., p. 103f.
225 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 205 (translation altered).
226 Adorno, ‘Transparencies on Film’, The Culture Industry, p. 156.
227 Adorno, ‘Fantasia sopra Carmen’, Quasi una fantasia, p. 54.
228 Alexander Kluge, ‘Ein imaginärer Opernführer’.
229 Alexander Kluge and Gertrud Koch, ‘Die Funktion des Zerrwinkels in
zertrümmernder Absicht’, p. 109.
230 Adorno to Enzensberger, 6 September 1956, Theodor W. Adorno Archive,
Frankfurt am Main (Br 361/3).
231 Alexander Kluge and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Deutscher sein ist
kein Beruf’, p. 2. Of course, Adorno did in fact think well of a number
of writers in the Gruppe 47 – Ingeborg Bachmann, Max Frisch, Alfred
Andersch, among others. To that extent, this statement was a conscious
exaggeration, designed to emphasize his high opinion of Enzensberger, as
Kluge confirmed in a conversation with the present writer.
232 This emerged in the course of a conversation with the present author in
Enzensberger’s home in Munich in December 2001.
233 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Blindenschrift, p. 58f.
Chapter 18 A Theory Devoured by Thought1 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 48.
2 In a letter to Horkheimer, 27 February 1957, he talks of an inquiry from
the American consulate about his citizenship. He wrote: ‘I myself would
say simply that I have become a German once again, but would of course
be only too pleased if some way could be found of allowing me to retain
my American citizenship.’ Horkheimer–Pollock Archive, Stadt- und
Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
3 According to Adorno, ‘crypto-anti-Semitism’ was ‘a function of authority
that stands behind the prohibition on open manifestations of anti-Semitism.
This concealed anti-Semitism contains a dangerous potential; the whisper-
ing, the rumours (I once remarked that anti-Semitism consists of rumours
about the Jews), opinions that are not quite exposed to public view have
always been the medium in which are to be found social disaffections of
the most varied kind which do not quite trust themselves to face up to the
light of day in society.... This is one of the essential tricks that modern
anti-Semites rely on. They present themselves as the persecuted, they
behave as if public opinion rendered it impossible to express one’s