Search the Community

Passage from Theodor Adorno’s just discovered early 1940s attempt to render into English a key passage from his “The Philosophy of Modern Music”: ‘The shocks of being ununderstandable dealt by artistic technique during the age of their senselessness tilt over. They enlighten the senseless world. Advanced music sacrifices itself for this purpose. It has all its happiness in gaining the cognition of unhappiness. It has all its beauty in renouncing the illusion of beauty. It is liked by nobody, by individualists as little as by collectivists. It resounds [dies away, lingers] (verhallt) unheard, without an echo. If time gleamingly (strahlend) crystallizes around music that has been heard, unheard music falls into the empty time like a pernicious ball (globe) (Kugel). Advanced music aims spontaneously though unconsciously at this last experience which is made hour by hour by mechanical music, the experience of being totally forgotten. Its hope lies with the doom of the world. It is the true manuscript in the bottle.’ Batshit in some semi-comic respects, but one gets (at least I do) what Adorno is trying to say much better than later translations from English-speakers manage to convey. More on this discovery: https://persistentenlightenment.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/adornoms/