Adorno

Éducation sentimentale 57

she kept this up both during the years of emigration in the United
States and subsequently, after his return to the University of Frankfurt.
Only in this way did it become possible for him to create works that
belong among the most important achievements of the century. Gretel
was, for the most part, the first to hear of his ideas and to support him
in his projects, but also to prevent him from going astray from time
to time. It was not unusual for her to write ‘Be careful, TWA’ in the
margins of his manuscripts. This might refer to flawed verbal expres-
sions or to assertions that did not seem persuasive in a given context.
Adorno had formed the habit, above all in his most productive writing
phases, of dictating his ideas and preliminary arguments to her on the
basis of a few written notes. For ‘dictating’, he comments at a later date,
‘is not only more comfortable, more conducive to concentration; it has
an additional substantive benefit. Dictation makes it possible for the
writer, in the earliest phases of production, to manoeuvre himself into
the position of critic.’^15 Whatever is tentatively arrived at by spontane-
ously following his own line of thought during the process of dictation
is intended from the outset for complete revision. As soon as the text
is fixed in typed form, the author can look at it and revise it from
a distance, as if it were someone else’s text. This process of revision,
which may end up with every sentence having been changed, was a
process Adorno called ‘carrion-eating’ (lämmergeiern). Why this word?
Adorno, a keen visitor to Frankfurt Zoo, presumably saw lammergeiers
or bearded vultures there (Gypaëtus barbatus). They feed mainly on
carrion, but also on small mammals and birds. They are particularly
partial to bones. Very large bones are dropped from a height onto
rocks to break them; the marrow can then be devoured. This method of
arriving at the kernel of a problem which at first appears too difficult or
inaccessible, of ‘cracking’ it in order to extract its essence, may well
have been the reason for choosing this word. This seems more plausible
than the alternative idea that lammergeiers are fastidious in their choice
of partner, to whom they then remain faithful for up to forty years.
For the ‘lammergeier’ Adorno, dictation was a ‘technical aid to the
dialectical procedure that makes statements in order to withdraw them
and yet to hold them fast. But thanks are due to the person taking
down the dictation, if at the right moment he jolts the writer out of
his complacency by contradiction, irony, nervousness, impatience and
disrespect.’^16 This aphorism from Adorno’s dialogue intérieur is in the
first instance an act of homage to his wife, who was not only directly
involved in the majority of his writings, but was the first to say what she
thought of them.^17
Needless to say, Gretel Adorno was not just his closest confidante in
the obsessive processes of what Heinrich von Kleist called ‘the gradual
production of ideas through talking’. There was a bond of love between
the two that was based on complete trust, although of course a marriage
of forty years is necessarily subject to a ‘test of feeling’.^18 We do not