Adorno

Notes to pp. 217–220 537

opposite directions, have served to reveal the outline and character of
contemporary art in a more thoroughly original and much more significant
manner than anything hitherto attempted.’ Benjamin and Adorno, The
Complete Correspondence 1928–1940, p. 144.
19 Benjamin to Gretel Adorno, 9 October 1935, in Benjamin, Das Passagen-
Werk, GS, vol. V.2, p. 1148.
20 Benjamin defined aura as ‘the unique phenomenon of a distance, however
close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with
your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its
shadow over you, you experience the aura of these mountains, of that
branch’ (Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 224f.).
21 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, p. 104.
22 Ibid., pp. 223 and 226.
23 Ibid., p. 244.
24 See Benjamin’s letter of 9 November 1935 to Horkheimer, cited in
Rolf Tiedemann, ‘Zeugnisse zur Entstehungsgeschichte’, Benjamin, Das
Passagen-Werk, GS, vol. V.2, p. 1151.
25 Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940, p. 128.
26 Ibid., p. 129.
27 Ibid., p. 130.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., p. 131. It should be noted that Brecht, too, reacted sceptically to
Benjamin’s essay on ‘The Work of Art’. He bluntly rejected the concept
of aura entirely. In the Journals, he observes that ‘the aura... is supposed
to be in decline of late, along with the cult element in life. b[enjamin]
has discovered this while analysing films, where the aura is decomposed
by the reproducibility of the art-work. a load of mysticism, although his
attitude is against mysticism. this is the way the materialist understanding
of history is adapted. it is abominable’ (Brecht, Journals 1934–1955,
p. 10). Benjamin was friendly with Brecht, whom he knew from Berlin,
just as he knew Adorno. Benjamin spent several weeks in Brecht’s house
in Svendborg in the summer of both 1936 and 1938. See Gershom Scholem,
Walter Benjamin: Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft, p. 198ff.
30 Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940, p. 146f.
31 Ibid., pp. 194 and 331.
32 Adorno, ‘Im Jeu de Paume gekritzelt’, GS, vol. 10, p. 321ff.
33 This was a collection of letters by German scholars between the years
1783 and 1883. See Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, pp. 167–235.
34 See Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940, p. 146.
35 Ibid., p. 193. See also Adorno’s ‘Einleitung zu Benjamins “Schriften”’,
GS, vol. 11, p. 574ff.
36 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 131f. [A Wandervogel
was a hiker or rambler. It referred to the youth movement of the early
twentieth century. Benjamin was an enthusiastic member before the First
World War; trans.]
37 See Michael Pauen, ‘Der Protest ist Schweigen’, p. 1428ff.
38 See Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Warenform und Denkform: Aufsätze.
39 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 225.
40 Ibid., p. 187. In 1970 Sohn-Rethel recollected that Adorno had asked
Horkheimer to give this task to Benjamin. That was not so easy, according