tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2882545159039548424..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Theodor Adorno: Behind the MirrorUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-20111638561504815422014-06-09T06:38:45.558-07:002014-06-09T06:38:45.558-07:00Tom,
Very honored to have the FREE photo included ...Tom,<br />Very honored to have the FREE photo included here behind the mirror of time. "One should never stint on deletions." Yes, but there is a time for additions. At least there is no extra cost...<br />-DavidBe the BQEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11621320435990191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16743161197264711112010-11-17T20:02:20.368-08:002010-11-17T20:02:20.368-08:00I refuse to eat in restaurants where all the walls...I refuse to eat in restaurants where all the walls are covered with mirrors.<br /><br />Am I superstitious?<br /><br />I also dislike mirrors on walls in houses. Watching myself has always made me extremely uncomfortable.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-61921598271792284772010-11-17T07:57:56.508-08:002010-11-17T07:57:56.508-08:00yes, home isn't even where the art is, althoug...yes, home isn't even where the art is, although that'll have to do, in the end there is No place like homefilehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03997205467931413978noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-46279000349722912502010-11-17T06:22:29.330-08:002010-11-17T06:22:29.330-08:00Curtis,
That final graph about the writer, though...Curtis,<br /><br />That final graph about the writer, though surrounded by and encased within the webs of the text he has composed, ending up without a home... certainly that seems the most poignant and affecting bit of the essay, especially when one considers that it was written in the problematic circumstances of enforced exile.<br /><br />Adorno was well-employed and reasonably well-fed in America, but the culture, or lack of it, pretty much drove him batty. He was homesick throughout the time he was here, I think, and greatly relieved when the Frankfurt position gave him the opportunity to return to Europe.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-57238060468546554392010-11-17T06:05:53.726-08:002010-11-17T06:05:53.726-08:00I love the translation you've used precisely b...I love the translation you've used precisely because it presents itself (in dense thicket form, obviously) as a kind of tool-kit or manual. There are too many examples of things I like in Behind The Mirror to select even a few to highlight, but I will say that the final paragraph (beginning with "Authors settle into their texts like home-dwellers") is so very accurate.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-51463162687487280882010-11-17T05:40:28.942-08:002010-11-17T05:40:28.942-08:00Curtis,
Adorno wrote the aphoristic essays in Min...Curtis,<br /><br />Adorno wrote the aphoristic essays in Minima Moralia (the title a play upon a work on ethics by Aristotle, Magna Moralia) during the war, in Los Angeles, where he and his collaborator and close friend Max Horkheimer had installed their Insititute for Social Research at UCLA. Adorno stayed on there until returning to Germany in 1949 (when Horkheimer arranged for him to take up a professorship at Frankfurt).<br /><br />Twenty-five years or so ago, I found this essay useful in teaching writing classes to night-school students, as a kind of basic tool-kit or manual.<br /><br />Of course the severity of the piece was a bit off-putting to those who subscribed to the "first-thought, best-thought" method. But then I suppose that's why I had the (misguided??) idea they ought to consider it.<br /><br />It is perhaps Adorno's most "accessible" text, but even here, the complications of his German syntax are a factor; in order to honestly represent those complexities, I have chosen to put up a very literal translation, which may perhaps come across as a bit crabbed, but is quite faithful to the original, for better or worse.<br /><br />There is a better-known translation by E.F.N. Jephcott, in the version of the text that is commonly available from Verso Books.<br /><br />About the photo at the top, I couldn't help hearing in my mind the old saw as to how people who live in glass houses ought not throw stones.<br /><br />The Gonzalez drawing is copied straight-off from a fairly familiar photo of Adorno. He had that one "funny eye", which the drawing exaggerates. I kind of like the exaggerated effect, just ever so slightly over the top.<br /><br />(The shoestore-mirror photography, by the way, kept me intrigued for several nights; it was only the intervention of a Higher Power that finally succeeded in sweeping all those other Forties N.Y.C. shoestore images out of the post.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-76388658588642255062010-11-16T05:39:10.874-08:002010-11-16T05:39:10.874-08:00This is so good that I would like to explore more ...This is so good that I would like to explore more fully the history of the piece and circumstances that led Adorno to write it. I would particularly like to share this with Jane, who is just learning to write effectively and read carefully, and with her teachers, who could also benefit by reading Behind The Mirror. The "around the world" selection of photos you've selected to sort of crack open and lighten the essay are all remarkable and I react to all of them differently, but with wonder. It's probably silly to say (photographs hit everyone in this intimate way if you're familiar with the setting), but I know that scene in Florsheim's on 5th Avenue. It reminds me of my own black and white, slightly later, childhood partly spent looking at and into floor-set shoe mirrors. I wonder also how Adorno would re-edit the piece, following his own admonitions, if he could. The preserved Adorno office-monument (complete with metronome) is sort of mind-blowing (I've never seen anything like this preserved in a publicly exhibited vitrine anywhere) and the Leandro Gonzales de Leon portrait is charming. Do you know how he came to draw it? Is it a book jacket illustration?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com