Adorno, Theodor - Letters to Walter Benjamin.pdf - Adorno - MKTK

Theodor Adorno

Correspondence with Benjamin

I From Adorno to Benjamin

Hornberg, Black Forest, 2 August 1935

Dear Herr Benjamin:

Today let me try to say something to you at long last about your draft essay,

which I have studied very thoroughly and discussed with Felizitas 1 again; she

fully shares my response. It seems to me to be in keeping with the importance

of the subject—which, as you know, I rate so highly—if I speak with complete

candour and proceed without preliminaries to the questions which I may con-

sider equally central for both of us. But I shall preface my critical discussion by

saying that even though your method of work means that a sketch and a ‘line of

thought’ cannot convey an adequate representation, your draft seems to me full

of the most important ideas. Of these I should like to emphasize only the magni-

ficent passage about living as a leaving of traces, the conclusive sentences about

the collector, and the liberation of things from the curse of being useful. The

outline of the chapter on Baudelaire as an interpretation of the poet and the in-

troduction of the category of nouveauté on p. 172 also seem to me entirely success-

ful . 2

You will therefore guess what you hardly expected to be otherwise:

that I am still concerned with the complex which may be designated by

the rubrics—prehistory of the 19th century, dialectical image, and con-

figuration of myth and modernism. If I refrain from making a distinc-

tion between the ‘material’ and the ‘epistemological’ questions, this

should be in keeping—if not with the external organization of your

draft—at all events with its philosophical core, whose movement is to

make the antithesis between the two disappear (as in both the more

recent traditional sketches of the dialectic). Let me take as my point of

departure the motto on p. 159, Chaque époque rêve la suivante [Every

epoch dreams its successor]. This seems to me an important key in so

far as all those motifs of the theory of the dialectical image, which

basically underly my criticism, crystallize about it as an undialectical

sentence: such that its elimination could lead to a clarification of the

theory itself. For the sentence implies three things: a conception of the

dialectical image as a content of consciousness, albeit a collective one;

its direct—I would almost say: developmental—relatedness to the

future as Utopia; and a notion of the ‘epoch’ as the pertinent and self-

contained subject of this context of consciousness. It seems extremely

significant to me that this version of the dialectical image, which can be

called an immanent one, not only threatens the original force of the

concept, which was theological in nature, introducing a simplification

which attacks not so much its subjective nuance as its truth content

itself; it also misses that social movement of contradiction, for the sake

of which you sacrifice theology.

Dialectical Images and Dreams

If you transpose the dialectical image into consciousness as a ‘dream’

you not only disenchant the concept and render it sociable, but you

also deprive it of that objective unlocking power which could legiti-

mate it materialistically. The fetish character of the commodity is not a

fact of consciousness; rather, it is dialectical in the eminent sense that it

produces consciousness. This means, however, that consciousness or

unconsciousness cannot simply depict it as a dream, but respond to it

in equal measure with desire and fear. But it is precisely this dialectical

power of the fetish character that is lost in the replica realism ( sit venia

verbo) of your present immanent version of the dialectical image. To

return to the language of the glorious first draft of your Arcades

project: if the dialectical image is nothing but the way in which the

fetish character is perceived in a collective consciousness, the Saint

Simonian conception of the commodity world may indeed reveal

itself as Utopia, but not as its reverse—namely, a dialectical image of

the 19th century as Hell. But only the latter could put the idea of a

Golden Age into the right perspective, and precisely this dual sense

could turn out to be highly appropriate for an interpretation of Offen-

bach—that is, the dual sense of Underworld and Arcadia; both are

explicit categories of Offenbach and could be pursued down to details

of his instrumentation. Thus the abandonment of the category of Hell

in your draft, and particularly the elimination of the brilliant passage

1 Felizitas was Gretel Adorno, the writer’s wife.

2 All page references are to the English translation, Charles Baudelaire—A Lyric Poet

in the Era of High Capitalism ( NLB , 1973).

about the gambler (for which the passage about speculation and games of

chance is no substitute), seems to me to be not only a loss of lustre but

also of dialectical consistency. Now I am the last to be unaware of the

relevance of the immanence of consciousness for the 19th century.

But the concept of the dialectical image cannot be derived from it;

rather, the immanence of consciousness itself is, as Intérieur , the dialec-

tical image for the nineteenth century as alienation. There I shall have

to leave the stake of the second chapter of my Kierkegaard book in the

new game as well 3 . Accordingly, the dialectical image should not be

transferred into consciousness as a dream, but in its dialectical construc-

tion the dream should be externalized and the immanence of conscious-

ness itself be understood as a constellation of reality—the astronomical

phase, as it were, in which Hell wanders through mankind. It seems to

me that only the star-map of such a migration could offer a clear view of

history as prehistory.

Collective Consciousness and Myths

Let me try to formulate the same objection again from the diametrically

opposite standpoint. In keeping with an immanent version of the

dialectical image (with which, to use a positive term, I would contrast

your earlier conception of a model ) you construe the relationship be-

tween the oldest and the newest, which was already central to your first

draft, as one of Utopian reference to a ‘classless society’. Thus the archaic

becomes a complementary addition to the new, instead of being the

‘newest’ itself; it is dedialecticized. However, at the same time, and

equally undialectically, the image of classlessness in question is dated

back into mythology instead of becoming truly transparent as a

phantasmagoria of Hell. Therefore the category in which the archaic

coalesces into the modern seems to me far less a golden age than a

catastrophe. I once noted that the recent past always presents itself as

though it has been destroyed by catastrophes. Hic et nunc I would say

that it thereby presents itself as prehistory. And at this point I know I

am in agreement with the boldest passage in your book on tragedy

[ Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels ] . 4

If the disenchantment of the dialectical image as a ‘dream’ psychologizes

it, by the same token it falls under the spell of bourgeois psychology.

For who is the subject of the dream? In the 19th century it was surely

only the individual; but in the individual’s dream no direct depiction of

either the fetish character or its monuments may be found. Hence the

collective consciousness is invoked, but I fear that in its present form it

cannot be distinguished from Jung’s conception. It is open to criticism

on both sides: from the vantage point of the social process in that it

hypostasizes archaic images where dialectical images are in fact gener-

ated by the commodity character, not in an archaic collective ego, but

in alienated bourgeois individuals; from the vantage point of psycho-

logy in that, as Horkheimer puts it, a mass ego exists only in earth-

quakes and catastrophes, while otherwise objective surplus value pre-

3 Adorno’s reference is t0 his first major work, Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Aesthetis-

chen , Tübingen 1933. Written in 1929–30, it was a critique of Kierkegaard’s subjec-

tive interiority and spiritualist immediacy.

4 Benjamin had published Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels in 1928.

vails precisely through individual subjects and against them. The notion

of collective consciousness was invented only to divert attention from

true objectivity and its correlate, alienated subjectivity. It is up to us to

polarize and dissolve this ‘consciousness’ dialectically between society

and singularities, and not to galvanize it as an imagistic correlate of the

commodity character. It should be a clear and sufficient warning that in

a dreaming collective no differences remain between classes.

Lastly, moreover, the mythic-archaic category of the ‘Golden Age’—

and this precisely seems socially decisive to me—has had fateful con-

sequences for the commodity category itself. If the crucial ‘ambiguity’

[ Zweideutigkeit ] of the Golden Age is suppressed (a concept which is

itself greatly in need of a theory and should by no means be left un-

touched), that is, its relationship to Hell, the commodity as the substance

of the age becomes Hell pure and simple, yet negated in a way which

would actually make the immediacy of the primal state appear as truth.

Thus disenchantment of the dialectical image leads directly to purely

mythical thinking, and here Klages appears as a danger, 5 as Jung did

earlier. But nowhere does your draft contain more remedies than at

this point. Here would be the central place for the doctrine of the

collector who liberates things from the curse of being useful. If I

understand you correctly, this is also where Haussmann belongs; his

class consciousness, precisely by a perfection of the commodity charac-

ter into a Hegelian self-consciousness, inaugurates the explosion of its

phantasmagoria. To understand the commodity as a dialectical image

is also to see the latter as a motif of the decline and ‘supersession’ of

the commodity, rather than as its mere regression to an older stage. The

commodity is, on the one hand, an alienated object in which use-value

perishes, and on the other, an alien survivor that outlives its own im-

mediacy. We receive the promise of immortality in commodities and

not for people. To develop the relationship between the Arcades

project and the book on the Baroque, which you have rightly estab-

lished, the fetish is a faithless final image, comparable only to a death’s-

head. It seems to me that this is where the decisive cognitive character

of Kafka lies, particularly that of Odradek as a commodity that has

uselessly survived. 6 In this fairy tale by Kafka surrealism may come to

an end, as baroque drama did in Hamlet . But within society this means

that the mere concept of use-value by no means suffices for a critique

of the commodity character, but only leads back to a stage prior to the

division of labour. This has always been my real reservation toward

Brecht; 7 his ‘collective’ and his unmediated concept of function have

always been suspect to me, as themselves a ‘regression’. Perhaps you

will see from these reflections, whose substance concerns precisely

those categories in your draft which may conform to those of Brecht,

that my opposition to them is not an insular attempt to rescue autono-

mous art or anything similar, but most profoundly addresses those

motifs of our philosophical friendship which I regard as original to us.

If I were to close the circle of my critique with one bold grip, it would

5 Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) was a conservative and neo-romantic cultural philo-

sopher and historian.

6 See The Cares of a Family Man.

7 Brecht is referred to as ‘Berta’ in the original, for reasons of censorship, since

Adorno was writing from Germany.

be bound to grasp the extremes. A restoration of theology, or better

yet, a radicalization of the dialectic into the glowing centre of theology,

would at the same time have to mean the utmost intensification of the

social-dialectical, indeed economic, motifs. These must also, and above

all, be viewed historically. The specific commodity character of the

19th century, in other words the industrial production of commodities,

would have to be worked out much more clearly and materially. After

all, commodities and alienation have existed since the beginning of

capitalism—i.e. the age of manufactures, which is also that of baroque

art; while the ‘unity’ of the modern age has since then lain precisely in

the commodity character. But the complete ‘prehistory’ and ontology

of the 19th century could be established only by an exact definition of

the industrial form of the commodity as one clearly distinguished

historically from the older form. All references to the commodity

form ‘as such’ lend that prehistory a certain metaphorical character

which cannot be tolerated in this serious case. I would surmise that the

greatest interpretative results will be achieved here if you fully follow

your method of operation, the blind processing of material. If, by con-

trast, my critique moves in a certain theoretical sphere of abstraction,

that surely is a difficulty, but I know that you will not regard it as a

mere problem of ‘outlook’ and thereby dismiss my reservations.

However, permit me to add a few specific remarks of a more concrete

character, which will naturally be meaningful only against this theoreti-

cal background. As a title I should like to propose Paris, Capital of the

Nineteenth Century , not The Capital —unless the Arcades title is revived

along with Hell. The division into chapters according to men does not

strike me as quite felicitous; it makes for a certain compulsion toward a

systematic external construction which leaves one a little uneasy. Were

there not once sections according to materials like ‘plush’, ‘dust’, etc?

Precisely the relationship between Fourier and the arcades is not very

satisfactory. Here I could imagine as a suitable pattern a constellation

of the various urban and commodity materials, an arrangement later to

be deciphered as both dialectical image and its theory.

Fourier or the Arcades

In the motto on p. 157 the word portique very nicely supplies the motif

of ‘antiquity’; in connection with the newest as the oldest, perhaps an

accidence of the Empire should be given an elementary treatment here

(such as melancholy receives in the Baroque book). On p. 158, at any

rate, the conception of the State in the Empire as an end in itself should

be clearly shown to have been a mere ideology, which your subsequent

remarks indicate that you presumably had in mind. You have left the

concept of construction completely unilluminated; as both alienation

and mastery of material it is already eminently dialectical and should, in

my opinion, forthwith be expounded dialectically (with a clear differ-

entiation from the present concept of construction; the term ingénieur ,

which is very characteristic of the 19th century, probably provides a

handle!) Incidentally, the introduction and exposition of the concept of

the collective unconscious, on which I have already made some basic

remarks, are not quite clear here. Regarding p. 158, I should like to ask

whether cast iron really was the first artificial building material (bricks!);

Adorno, Theodor - Letters to Walter Benjamin.pdf

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