Éducation sentimentale 63In Adorno’s eyes love was not simply the passionate conjuring up of
an image from the past, but also a matter of immediate feeling which
gives rise to ‘tenderness between human beings’. It is sustained by the
desire for a different life, for a life that differs from the life of bourgeois
society with its means–ends rationality.
Adorno did not trouble to make a secret even of his dream fantasies
with their frequently erotic overtones. For the personal notes that he
recorded were typed up by Gretel. ‘A. came to my bed in the depths of
the night. I asked her whether she loved me, and she replied “Madly”,
in a voice that sounded so natural that it might have been true.’ In
another dream, he had ‘an indescribably beautiful and elegant lover;
she reminded him of Arlette, but had the air of a lady from high society.
I felt very proud of her.’^42
In a subsequent account of a dream, he records a different picture,
one that had a particular importance for Gretel Adorno even after his
death. ‘I dreamt that I was unwilling to abandon my metaphysical hopes,
not because I clung to life, but because I should like to awaken together
with G.’^43 Gretel must have known about her husband’s wish. Is this
perhaps why she kept on loving him all her life with a love in which she
could show herself weak ‘without provoking strength’?^44