122 Part II: A Change of Scene
Viennese publisher did agree to a number of concessions to Adorno –
they were obviously well aware of his outstanding qualities as a writer
on music. Nevertheless, the dispute between the two parties dragged
on through the whole of 1930, until November, when Adorno finally
gave up all editorial responsibility. The first number of 1931 officially
informed the readers of his departure. As before, what hurt him was
not the formal end of his collaboration with Anbruch, but this new
evidence of Schoenberg’s reaction, which he interpreted as a betrayal
of the common cause. This disappointment continued to weigh heavily
on the relationship between the two men, even during the years in exile
in the United States, where they were neighbours and often met.
It is typical of Adorno that despite his injured feelings he did not
succumb to self-pity. As early as the October letter to Berg in which he
gave his own view of the scandal, he finished up talking about the
burden of work that kept him from composing new pieces. The work
he was referring to was his second attempt at the Habilitation, which
he talked about henceforth as his ‘Kierkegaard book’.
Needless to say, philosophy was never reduced to a shadowy existence
in Adorno’s mind. He was merely continuing to do in an institutional
framework what he had been doing anyway during recent years. The
end of his editorial activities in Berlin and the fact that the Viennese
had decided to dispense with his assistance – with scarcely a word of
thanks – probably gave a timely fillip to the Kierkegaard book.
Another factor that was of benefit to the book, or, rather, was truly
inspirational, was provided by Walter Benjamin in the autumn of 1929.
Benjamin had just launched into a new, unique project: a major cultural
and historical study of the Paris arcades. After a number of lengthy
sojourns in Paris between 1927 and 1929, he had started to take notes
together with the Berlin writer Franz Hessel, who like him had been
strongly influenced by the French surrealists. Benjamin read extracts
from his notes to a small group of people in Königstein, including
Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as Gretel Karplus and Asja Lacis.^7
Adorno was fascinated by Benjamin’s plan to write a primeval history
of the nineteenth century based on an examination of the Paris arcades.
It is scarcely hindsight if I say that from the very first moment
I felt that Benjamin was one of the most impressive men I have
ever encountered.... It was as if his philosophy revealed to me
what philosophy would have to be if it were to fulfil its promise.^8One particular postulate of Benjamin’s stood out from the draft that he
had read out in Königstein: ‘No historical category without its natural
substance, no natural category without its historical filtration.’^9
In the middle of 1929, stimulated by Benjamin’s ideas, Adorno finally
felt able to bring himself to accept Tillich’s offer to produce a disserta-
tion on Kierkegaard for the Habilitation. Scarcely had he started to