62 Part I: Origins
Robert on 3 January 1948: ‘The few of us who are different have seen
the question of marriage in quite a different light. If we rebel against
the convention of marriage and go in search of an unregimented happi-
ness, it is only to discover that because of the emphasis on externals
marriage itself has fallen apart. Hence nowadays resistance to the despic-
able way of the world is to be achieved rather by freely choosing
marriage, and committing oneself to it, instead of denying its worth in
a spirit of “realism” and practicality.’^36 But in a letter to another close
friend, Hermann Grab, he writes very differently. He talks there of his
love for Charlotte: ‘We have enjoyed six months of the most unclouded
happiness imaginable – mainly when she came here at weekends.’^37
And in a letter written shortly after this, in May 1946, he describes the
feeling of pleasure he experienced: ‘The term “fornication”, which by
the way refers to something the reverse of contemptible, is a far from
adequate description of what has taken place – terms such as “aura” or
“magic” would be more apt. It was as if the long-forgotten childhood
promise of happiness had been unexpectedly, belatedly fulfilled.’^38
Hermann Grab was born in Prague, in the same year as Adorno,
and he grew up there. He was ultimately forced to emigrate to the
United States, but had been friendly with Adorno since the mid-1920s.
He was a pupil of Alexander von Zemlinsky, a member of the
Schoenberg circle. His first published story appeared in 1935. This
was Der Stadtpark, which describes the unspoken love of a schoolboy
for a girl of the same age in upper-middle-class Prague at the time of
the demise of the Habsburg Empire. A volume of his collected stories
did not appear until after his death in 1949. In his obituary for Grab,
Adorno wrote that the guiding-light for his literary production had been
Marcel Proust’s ‘picture-world of a child’s wide-eyed astonishment’.
When Adorno made his indiscreet confession, to use his own word, and
told Grab of his innermost feelings, and even of the name of the woman
with whom he was in love, he was engaged in writing down reflections
with the title Zum neunzackigen Krönchen (The Nine-Pointed Crown),
some of which appeared in revised form in the Minima Moralia, but
which survived unpublished in their original state: ‘Love is nothing but
the momentary flash of a dream in the midst of the real, actually a déjà
vu in a person’s appearance. It becomes visible for only a fraction of
a second.’^39
Gretel Adorno’s unstinting loyalty to her husband extended to her
acceptance of his flirtations and affairs during the Frankfurt years, when
he was at the high point of his career. This included an affair with a
lawyer called Eva, a friend of the family, and with Arlette, who accom-
panied the couple on one of their trips to Switzerland.^40 Perhaps such
affairs had the same importance for Adorno as he believed the numer-
ous affairs of his Viennese teacher Alban Berg had for him, that is to
say, they were ‘part of the productive apparatus’ and were ‘desperate’,
but not ‘serious’.^41