ADORNO, BLAKE, KIERKEGAARD (for MSalter)

[Ralph Dumain]

At 02:48 PM 7/31/97 -0400, MSalter1@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 30/07/97 23:03:24 GMT, Ralph writes:
>
><< Against my own earlier prejudices, I have learned a great deal of respect
>>> for Adorno as a thinker, as an intellectual not afraid to be an
>>> intellectual, in spite of his own anti-political stance.   >>
>
>I would like Ralph to tell us some more about this particular piece of his
>posting, and how it fits in with or (fruitfully contradicts? ) his other
>criticisms. A related question for me is how Adorno (of all the CTs), escapes
>the force of criticism which Ralph directs towards others on this lists whose
>relationship to political struggles, everyday life etc., is no less distant.
>I ask this partly because I myself am not sure why I prefer Adorno's writings
>to those of Marcuse.

I felt for a long time like I should not forget to answer this question,
though I had other priorities.  Then I thought, why bother, as my answer
would not say anything new or useful to people.  Might be interesting, but
would not necessarily be deep, perhaps nothing more than reportage.  Maybe I
could say something about Adorno's depth, ruthless honesty--including
concerning his own social location--his exactitude, his forthrightness to be
who he was without apology, a writer. I don't want to do this now.

Why I've decided to post at last, but with a different sort of response:
something popped into my head this afternoon as I was walking down the
street en route to the market, at a moment when mental comparisons came to
mind--not planned, they just flowed.  I think it happened while mentally
rubbing off William Blake against Adorno and Kierkegaard, and suddenly
something snapped. 

Don't you find it fascinating, that the ascetic inwardness of a fellow like
Adorno should have the intellectual depth and sensitivity to produce such a
profound criticism of the inwardness of a Kierkegaard?  That Adorno should
be so mercilessly materialistic a critic of idealism not to allow either
party a final refuge in inwardness?

Is it possible that by removing himself from instrumental politics he could
get closer to the unity of life and thought?  (If not every one else's, at
least his own?)  But then what is the life one is at a unity with?  What is
one other than a writer?  How good a reporter can one be if one's only life
is to report?

The principle of hope: Keep critique alive!  Why ascetic grouchiness?  Why
no hope for escape from the hegemony of the culture industry?  Why solely
the analysis of how life down to its roots is corrupted by social structure?
The '30s and '40s were a dark time ... but were there no other pairs of
alert eyes outside of Adorno and his pals?  Nowhere to be found?

Only possibility?--resistance against the bleak?  Where the seeds of
regeneration?  In contrast, Blake brightens my day.  Blake could be a Negro
spiritual brought to self-consciousness at last.  Blake could be Coltrane's
last scorching tender lyric--Stellar Regions--full of too much passion
tension-timbred straining to burst out of mere music trapped in time.  Now
I'm engorged with the unspeakable unspeakable unbearable ecstasy of being
alive.  My faith is not belief, it is physical energy rushing swirling into
infinity accompanied by its ghost in my thoughts.  My excess of sorrow
laughs, and my excess of joy weeps.

Blake's inwardness.... how could Jack Lindsay lose time fretting over
whether Blake could not find some political outlet?  And Jerome McGann's
liberal guilt and fussing?  What labor bureaucrat cares what a man feels and
thinks and the quality of either?  How socially responsible Blake's own turn
inwards into the worlds of thought, how keyed to realities that cannot be
wished away rejoicing in the tents of prosperity.

And to complete the triangle, how different the both of them from the petty
bourgeois inwardness of a Kierkegaard, creating allegorical riches.

There's something beyond the seems-to-be.  I troubled the waters, and set it
free.