The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940 (Adorno and Benjamin)

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by Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin

Harvard University Press

Due/Published October 2001, 400 pages, paper

ISBN 0674006895

New in paper (F01)

"The extraordinary and unique qualities of this correspondence stem from the confrontation, in stages, between two of the most intense and energetic minds of the century."--Fredric R. Jameson

The correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, which appears here for the first time in its entirety in English translation, must rank among the most significant of the twentieth century. Benjamin and Adorno formed a uniquely powerful pair. Benjamin, riddle-like in his personality and given to tactical evasion, and Adorno, full of his own importance, alternately support and compete with each other throughout the correspondence, until its imminent tragic end becomes apparent to both writers. Each had met his match, and happily, in the other. This book is the story of an elective affinity. Adorno was the only person who managed to sustain an intimate intellectual relationship with Benjamin for nearly twenty years. No one else, not even Gershom Scholem, coaxed so much out of Benjamin.

The more than one hundred letters in this book will allow readers to trace the developing character of Benjamin's and Adorno's attitudes toward each other and toward their many friends. When this book appeared in German, it caused a sensation because it includes passages previously excised from other German editions of the letters--passages in which the two friends celebrate their own intimacy with frank remarks about other people. Ideas presented elliptically in the theoretical writings are set forth here with much greater clarity. Not least, the letters provide material crucial for understanding the genesis of Benjamin's Arcades Project.

"These letters deal with some of the most important issues in twentieth-century aesthetics, but they are also worls of art in heir own right. They tell the story of the way in whichAdorno tried to take conrol of Benjamin and his project, and of Benjamin's initially successful but increasingly feeble and demoralized attempts to use language itself as a means of resistance to this."--Raymond Geuss

"[In this volume] the reader witnesses the hesitant, tension-filled process by which two individuals come together--individuals who could scarcely have approached each other in any other way than through the mediation of this literary form. True, they both repeatedly affirm their desire for personal meetings and face-to-face conversation. But the continued series of postponed and prevented visits (Adorno came to Paris, briefly, only twice) does not simply reflect adverse circumstances; it also bespeaks an unavowed preference for the obliqueness of letter writing. One gets the impression that the constraints of this medium protect the withdrawn Benjamin from the uncertainties and importunities of direct contact, and at the same time grant the austere Adorno greater freedom of critical expression."--Jurgen Habermans, Die Zeit

Review

This is the first edition to ever present the entire existing correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin on a range of intellectual, politcal, and social issues. It is a rare glimpse into the thought and personality of two of the centuries most prominent thinkers. In the letters the two extol and critique one another’s work -- alternately competing with one another and viewing each other's work as a joint project in the examination of contemporary society. This extraordinary correspondence is also colored by their exile (Benjamin in Paris and Adorno in Oxford) and the political situation of the time that puts into question what role and meaning, if any, their work has. Aside from the intense discussion of one another’s work, the correspondence also discusses the ideas and works of other prominent thinkers such as Kracauer, Meyer Schapiro, and others. The letters also reveal aspects of their personalities, the normally austere Adorno encourages the relationship and with great enthusiasm tries to engage and encourage Benjamin. Conversely, Benjamin tends to be more sphinx-like, hesitant to reveal too much and increasingly worried about the prospects for his work.

In a review of the book Fredric Jameson writes, “There are very few examples of an exchange of this intensity and intellectual quality in other languages; and if one adds to the interest of the conceptual topics broached here the historical urgencies of this beleaguered period of history about which the correspondents speak guardedly (from the dangers of the Hitlerian revolution to the show trials in the Soviet Union), the larger background is also of the greatest documentary and anecdotal interest. Many readers may well come to the work of Adorno and Benjamin through these letters, which are, although often dense and enigmatically suggestive, nonetheless more open than some of the formal writings themselves.”