I would only add that your reaction appears to me as less a reaction to Adorno than to his acolytes. Adorno's aesthetic theory is genuinely penetrating and insightful, but the primary reason it is so is precisely the one you complain about. He often presents what is obvious to many artists (though proceeds to envelope it in the rest of his thought) but unfortunately not as many others. The vast majority of his comments come straight out of his experience as a composer, and were he to share those thoughts with many other composers, on some level there was agreement. Though in actuality in many cases not so many did.
Still, think of how many stories you have encountered that fall tragically short of becoming anything worthwhile. Often times this is not exclusively a fault of a writer's ability, linguistically, but instead is a deeper fault of not understanding at all what writing such a story involves. The same applies to the musical examples I cite, the world is replete with mediocre music modeled on Beethoven, the problems arise when the form does not quite "gain its substance", even if the facade seems adequate. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 10:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: a suggestion Brian writes: "Perhaps not in defense of Ranciere as I have not read much of him yet, I quickly open Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. One of the fragments from the Paralipomena serves almost as a thesis regarding Beethoven: > "The concept of tension frees itself from the suspicion of being > formalistic > in that, by pointing up dissonant experiences or antinomical relations in > the work, it names the element of "form" in which form gains its substance > by virtue of its relation to its other. Through its inner tension, the work > is defined as a force field even in the arrested moment of its > objectivation. The work is at once the quintessence of relations of tension > and the attempt to dissolve them...." > I wish I could convey how agonizingly obvious this seems to anyone who writes a novel, or stageplay, or screenplay. My greatest gripe about the worst -- but still "famous" -- critic/philosophers is the way they strain to hide behind a brocaded veil of polysyllabic, portentous, "profound" adjectives and adverbs the banal observations that any storyteller from Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Dostoievsky et al down to the merest hack has always known. That's why it's agonizing. ************** Create a Home Theater Like the Pros. Watch the video on AOL Home. (http://home.aol.com/diy/home-improvement-eric-stromer?video=15?ncid=aolhom0 0 030000000001)
