adorno 333not simply the realisation of the analytical result’, because it must con-
tain the spontaneous ‘idiomatic element’ (ibid.: 91 ). In consequence,
true interpretation ‘is neither irrational-idiomatic... nor analytically
pure, but [is] the restoration of the mimetic element through analysis’
(ibid.: 107 ). The key to Adorno’s approach to music and truth becomes
apparent here, namely in the relationship between the ‘mimetic’ and
the ‘analytical’, a relationship which has close affinities to that between
the expressive and the semantic.
InDoE‘mimesis’ is used to characterise ways of behaving that precede
the repressions attached to socialisation: ‘“Recognition in the concept”,
the grasping of the different under the same, takes the place of somatic
alignment [‘Angleichung’, which is apparent in ritual practices that imi-
tate in gesture and symbol what a culture is afraid of] with nature’ ( 3 :
205 ). The impulse to imitative behaviour has to be controlled for civil-
isation to be established, but it can never be eradicated. The mimetic
is therefore associated with what is both an archaic threat, because it
is pre-rational and not fully controllable, and yet crucial to a tolerable
human existence, because it is part of being able to live in the world. The
most obvious everyday case of ‘mimesis’ in the latter sense is the kind of
mutual imitation of gestures and sounds that takes place between a pre-
linguistic infant and its carers, which establishes bonds and gives the
child its sense of a stable place in the world. This behaviour precedes
language and is necessary for language-acquisition. In later life such
behaviour can easily become a form of regression, but if other forms
do not fulfil the need which gave rise to it, something essential will be
repressed. Another way to approach what Adorno intends with the idea
is to think of everyday use of language as follows, which connects to
Putnam’s ideas about ‘moral perception’. Telling someone the truth
can be done in a tone or via a formulation which is damaging to that
person, even if they would have to concur on at least some aspect of
the truth of what is said. The ‘same’ truth could be conveyed in an apt
manner by the right tone of voice, or by a gesture that is right in the
context, and such means echo what one does in communicating with
an infant before they learn to speak.
What is at issue here are a whole series of background understandings
- particularly of the affective nature suggested in Wittgenstein’s remark
that ‘the feeling gives the words “meaning”’ – of the kind that Wellmer
insists belong to an adequate understanding of truth. The affective ele-
ment is here not a contingent addition. There are times when we can-
not understand thetruthof an affectively inflected utterance without