Book SynopsisNotes to Literature is a collection of the great social theorist Theodor W. Adorno’s essays on such writers as Mann, Bloch, Goethe, and Benjamin, as well as his reflections on a variety of subjects. This edition presents this classic work in full in a single volume, with a new introduction by Paul Kottman.Trade ReviewAdorno’s Notes to Literature . . . sets an inimitable, always exhilarating standard. A volume of Adorno’s essays is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature. -- Susan SontagEccentric, brilliant, unreadably readable, aphoristic and gnomic in the extreme, Adorno’s Notes to Literature stand by themselves as essays of genius. They are not simply criticism, they are literature. -- Edward SaidThe most accessible works in Adorno’s canon, these short essays on literary and cultural subjects in reality touch on most of the major philosophical preoccupations of his life's work: ranging from figures like Beckett or Thomas Mann, Balzac or Dickens, Bloch or Lukacs to movements like surrealism and existentialism, they show what a dialectical analysis of poetic texts can yield as well as making some fundamental statements about the status of the intellectual and the political, social and historical function of art. In what must be the acid test for any translator, Shierry Weber Nicholsen expertly and reliably navigates the syntactical reefs. -- Fredric JamesonNotes to Literature is not only an important document of Adorno's interest in art and aesthetics, but it is also a groundbreaking examination of literature in general. -- Alexander García Düttmann, author of Philosophy of ExaggerationAnyone who wants to understand Adorno’s philosophy must return to the judgments rendered about literature within these pages. -- Paul Kottman, author of Love as Human FreedomTable of ContentsIntroduction to the Combined Edition, by Paul A. KottmanVolume 1Translator’s Preface, by Shierry Weber NicholsenEditorial Remarks from the German Edition, by Rolf TiedemannPart I1. The Essay as Form2. On Epic Naiveté3. The Position of the Narrator in the Contemporary Novel4. On Lyric Poetry and Society5. In Memory of Eichendorff6. Heine the Wound7. Looking Back on Surrealism8. Punctuation Marks9. The Artist as DeputyPart II10. On the Final Scene of Faust11. Reading Balzac12. Valéry’s Deviations13. Short Commentaries on Proust14. Words from Abroad15. Ernst Bloch’s Spuren16. Extorted Reconciliation: On Georg Lukács’ Realism in Our Time17. Trying to Understand EndgameVolume 2Translator’s Preface, by Shierry Weber NicholsenEditorial Remarks from the German Edition, by Rolf TiedemannPart III18. Titles: Paraphrases on Lessing19. Toward a Portrait of Thomas Mann20. Bibliographical Musings21. On an Imaginary Feuilleton22. Morals and Criminality: On the Eleventh Volume of the Works of Karl Kraus23. The Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauer24. Commitment25. Presuppositions: On the Occasion of a Reading by Hans G. Helms26. Parataxis: On Hölderlin’s Late PoetryPart IV27. On the Classicism of Goethe’s Iphigenie28. On Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop: A Lecture29. Stefan George30. Charmed Language: On the Poetry of Rudolf Borchardt31. The Handle, the Pot, and Early Experience: Ui, haww’ ich gesacht32. Introduction to Benjamin’s Schriften33. Benjamin the Letter Writer34. An Open Letter to Rolf Hochhuth35. Is Art Lighthearted?NotesIndex
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