552 Notes to pp. 271–275
152 Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 17, p. 211.
153 The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis de Sade, London, 1934.
154 Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 17, p. 211.
155 Ibid., p. 57.
156 Adorno to Horkheimer, 17 August 1941, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive,
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main. [For ‘lammer-
geiering’, see p. 57, above.]
Chapter 15 Adorno’s Years in California1 Adorno to Horkheimer, 11 August 1941, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive,
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
2 On the situation of the German emigrants in Hollywood and Los Angeles,
see Joachim Radkau, Die deutsche Emigration in die USA: Ihr Einfluß auf
die amerikanische Europapolitik 1933–1945, p. 107ff.
3 Adorno wrote these notes in August–September 1941. See Theodor
W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt am Main (Ts 51864). In them Adorno
developed a theory of the basic elements of the decline of the individual:
a theory of the subject without a self. He notes the reification of human
beings who place themselves on the same level as things. At the psycho-
logical level, the unconscious is on the point of dissolving, just as repres-
sion and the censor are being replaced by defiance and universal hostility.
In the absence of an ego, the concept of egoism is just as obsolete as the
psychoanalytical theory of the Oedipus complex. The image of the body
is essentially desexualized, ‘either by the cult of functioning... as such, or
by the particular way in which sexuality is released.’ Theodor W. Adorno
Archive, Frankfurt am Main (Ts 51873).
4 See Adorno, ‘Spengler Today’ and ‘Veblen’s Attack on Culture’, in Prisms,
pp. 51–94. These essays appeared originally in English in the ZfS; whether
these are Adorno’s original texts or unattributed translations is unclear;
the versions in Prisms seem to be retranslations from the German transla-
tions, although they are inevitably influenced by the English originals in
the ZfS [trans.].
5 Adorno, ‘Veblen’s Attack on Culture’, in Prisms, p. 84. This statement on
appearance [Schein] highlights the central importance of the salvaging of
appearance in Adorno’s aesthetic theory. Cf. Peter Bürger, Zur Kritik der
idealistischen Ästhetik.
6 Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 17, p. 146f.
7 Ibid., p. 163.
8 Adorno to Horkheimer, 23 September 1941, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive,
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
9 Adorno, The Philosophy of Modern Music, p. 64f. This study did not
appear in book form in Germany until 1949, when it was published
in an expanded version in which Adorno added the chapter ‘Stravinsky
and Restoration’ as a contrast to the original chapter, ‘Schoenberg
and Progress’. In his controversy with Stravinsky, Adorno assumed the
existence of two musical cultures. He attempted to show that Stravinsky’s
neo-classicism was incompatible with the idea of the complete rational
organization of the work. His music was music about music. It took up