602 Notes to pp. 435– 437133 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 127.
134 Ibid., p. 10 (translation altered).
135 Jürgen Ritsert is the latest commentator to try and clarify the concept
of the non-identical. He notes that non-identity ‘includes the idea of a
“reconciled society” even though this idea can only ever be experienced
indirectly, through the criticism of social negativity’. His conclusion is
that ‘the non-identical is not a mysterious substance, but shorthand for a
variety of problems with which Adorno’s critical theory is concerned and
which it partly makes visible’ (Ritsert, ‘Das Nichtidentische bei Adorno:
Substanz- oder Problembegriff?’ pp. 45 and 48); cf. also Anke Thyen,
Negative Dialektik und Erfahrung, p. 198ff.
136 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 12.
137 Ibid., p. 175.
138 Ibid., p. 219.
139 Ibid., p. xx.
140 Ibid., p. 366.
141 Adorno told Kaschnitz about his own encounter with a child and
suggested that she should use this as the basis for a second story about a
child in her volume Tage, Tage, Jahre. This told the story of ‘the visit from
a “seemingly demonic” child who had come to him with the demand that
he rescue his ball from the roof guttering, an episode that almost ended in
death’ (Kaschnitz, Tage, Tage, Jahre: Aufzeichnungen, p. 68ff.). The short
story The Fat Child appears in the volume Lange Schatten (1960). It deals
with a very pushy girl who is always hungry and who, without admitting
it, feels neglected in favour of her older sister. This unhappy child longs
to shine like her sister and be generally admired. There are at least two
letters in which Adorno refers to the fat child. See Horkheimer,
Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 633f.; see also Adorno to Dreyfus, 31 January
1967, Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt am Main (Br 331/47).
142 Adorno to Dreyfus, 6 September 1966, Theodor W. Adorno Archive,
Frankfurt am Main (Br 331/41, 42).
143 Adorno and Lenk, Briefwechsel, p. 95ff.
144 Adorno to Horkheimer, 5 December 1966, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive,
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
145 See Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 634.
146 Adorno to Scholem, 14 March 1967, quoted by Rolf Tiedemann,
‘Editorisches Nachwort’, Ontologie und Dialektik, NaS, vol. 7, p. 422.
147 Adorno to Scholem, 14 March 1967, Scholem, Briefe, vol. II, p. 302.
148 Ibid., p. 177.
149 Adorno to Scholem, 14 March 1967, ibid., p. 302.
150 Ibid., p. 178.
151 Ibid., p. 179.
152 Ibid., p. 302. The great respect in which Adorno held Scholem can be seen
from the two little essays he wrote about the Jewish scholar. See Adorno,
‘Gershom G. Scholem’, GS, vol. 20.2, p. 477f., and also ‘Gruß an Gershom
Scholem’, ibid., p. 478ff. At the end of the article Adorno wrote for the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung for Scholem’s seventieth birthday, he said: ‘A while
ago I had a dream that seems to me to be quite an apt parable for
Scholem... He was said to have told me this story: “There is an old
Nordic saga in which a knight makes off with a maiden with the aid of a