The Production of Lateness. Rahel Rivera Godoy-Benesch

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СКАЧАТЬ phrase thus reveals an entire philosophyphilosophy of musicmusic. Just like in Mann’s passage, Adorno’s readers in “Late Style in Beethoven” are guided from a (supposedly wrong) biographical understandingbiographical approach of late style towards the (supposedly correct) formal, abstract notion of lateness. In the former, the artist’s struggle with death is real, whereas, in the latter, the deathly struggle is an allegory for a historical development. In this sense, the reference to “counterpoint” represents quite literally a counter-point: it contains the structured sense of harmony of the classical period, which the late Beethoven supposedly strives against. Just as Mann connects the musical figure of counterpoint with the devilish “opposing hosts,” moreover, late style’s struggle against these forces is also assigned a notion of heavenly truthtruth. This recalls the passage where Adorno states that the subjectivitysubjectivity of the late artist “in the name of death, disappears from the work of art into truth” (“Late Style” 566). The English translation takes some interpretive license here. The original German version reads: “[Die Subjektivität], sterblich und im Namen des Todes, verschwindet in Wahrheit aus dem Kunstwerk” (Adorno, “Beethovens Spätstil” 17). Its last part could thus also be translated as subjectivity “truly” disappearing from the work of art (rather than disappearing “into truth”).12 The difference in meaning becomes apparent when Beethoven’s struggle with the “opposing hosts of counterpoint” is considered (Mann, Doctor Faustus 58): in line with Adorno’s original German essay, the “life-and-death struggle” (Mann, Doctor Faustus 58) of the late artist should not be aimed, as one could wrongly gather from Doctor Faustus, at mastering counterpoint, which would result in the inscription of the composer’s subjectivity into the conventional classical tradition. Rather, it is a struggle against being mastered by the tradition of counterpoint; that is, the struggle is aimed at making the sense-gathering subjectivity truly disappear from such art, thus leaving it fractured and broken. In this sense, the “landscape” of the classical tradition in music, represented by counterpoint, is left “deserted now, and alienated” (Adorno, “Late Style” 567), an image that extends to modernitymodernity in general.

      When reading Mann’s passage alongside Adorno’s “Late Style” essay, what stands out clearly is that Adorno’s late-style project was in fact a way to legitimize his prioritization of a type of art that is enigmatic, fractured, and contradictory,13 and Adorno extended his focus to the artistic attitude attached to it. Obviously, the musical avant-gardeavant-garde of modernism with Alban BergBerg, Alban and Arnold SchoenbergSchoenberg, Arnold would provide such art, and it is equally obvious that Adorno was elitist in his assumption that no easily understood musical piece was truly artistic.14 Keeping this in mind, and trying to understand the intrusive appearance of the late artist in Adorno’s professedly non-biographic approach, one will find an explanation in Said’sSaid, Edward comments:

      I think it is right […] to see Adorno’s extremely intense lifelong fixation on third-period Beethoven as the carefully maintained choice of a critical model, a construction made for the benefit of his own actuality as a philosopher and cultural critic in an enforced exile from the society that made him possible in the first place. To be late meant therefore to be late for (and refuse) many of the rewards offered up by being comfortable inside society, not the least of which was to be read and understood easily by a large group of people. (21–22)

      According to Said, Adorno thus used the late Beethoven to justify his own difficult, non-compliant philosophicalphilosophy attitude: by way of his admiration of the ageing composer, he himself turned into a ‘late artist’ though he was still young.15 In this context, one of Ben Hutchinson’sHutchinson, Ben comments is illuminating, although it is made in a slightly different context: he writes that Adorno “wants to preserve the particularity of Spätstil [i.e. late stylelate style] […] from its creeping association with Altersstil [i.e. old-age styleold-age style]” (Lateness 258). In order to make his late-style theory compatible with his own, ‘young’ lateness, he must rid late works of “the proximity of deathdeath that is traditionally ascribed to [them] – and that is generally held to lend them their pathos” (Lateness 258–259).

      The way in which Adorno fashioned his writerly stance after what he believed to be Beethoven’s own attitude has remained a model for subsequent authors and artists who strive for the enticing characteristics that the late artist figure encompasses: eccentricity, agency, liberty and fame. More than the theoretical essence of Adorno’s famous 1937 essay, it was the vivid imagery of its language that encouraged this trend. Moreover, Thomas Mann’sMann, Thomas novel played an important role. As Hinrichsen explains, it was the publication of Doctor Faustus in 1947 that caused the reprinting of “Late Style in Beethoven” and made Adorno’s essay popular again (226). It thus seems plausible that readers who were familiar with Doctor Faustus would perceive Adorno’s references to the late artist in “Late Style” with even more clarity and thus favor an artist-centered reading over one that considered merely the formal aspects of Beethoven’s late work. The contemporary late artist had been born.

      2.4 Expanding Latenesslateness in Literature: Late Stylelate style as a Code of Production

      Among the authors who have fashioned themselves as late artists are, most prominently, ageing postmodernistpostmodernism writers: those who have always worked within the metafictionalmetafiction terrain, exploring and pushing the boundaries of literature. Mark CurrieCurrie, Mark describes metafiction as “a kind of writing which places itself on the border between fiction and criticism, and which takes that border as its subject” (Introduction 2). Hence, metafictional writers have evidently not remained oblivious to the scholarly discussion on late style. In Late Style and Its Discontents, McMullanMcMullan, Gordon and SmilesSmiles, Sam declare that their collection of essays is “designed as a provocation, as encouragement to art historiansart history, literary critics, and musicologists alike to reflect on received ideas about creativity at the end of life” (Introduction 2). Looking at the current literary landscape, one can confidently state that postmodernpostmodernism authors have been addressing precisely this challenge for some decades now. They have not only been enacting aspects of late style and thus provided critics with new material to analyze, but also reflected on the late-style debate, pushing it further. Patricia WaughWaugh, Patricia calls metafictional writers the “contemporary avant-gardeavant-garde” (10), and Sandro ZanettiZanetti, Sandro titles his extensive late-style study Avantgardismus der Greise (“avant-gardism of the aged”), hinting that late art displays just such an avant-garde spirit. In doing so, late works have created a site of discourse that runs parallel to the scholarly late-style debate. Considering such literary late-style treatments in conjunction with theoretical texts should therefore produce intriguing results. In the same way as Thomas Mann’sMann, Thomas passage from Doctor Faustus communicates with Theodor W. Adorno’sAdorno, Theodor W. essay “Late Style in Beethoven,” one could argue, fictional and theoretical contemporary treatments of late style interact in a mutually prolific manner.1 Although Mann’s text was, strictly speaking, fashioned after Adorno’s essay – in both its temporal and conceptual sense – its literary means act independently, producing meanings of their own. These meanings, when projected back onto the theoretical source text by Adorno, further illuminate the theoretical content of Adorno’s essay. In a similar manner, literary works that circle around late style may enlighten the scholarly late-style debate, from which they originally arose.

      This is not the only manner, however, in which contemporary works that exhibit late style may be approached. McMullanMcMullan, Gordon and SmilesSmiles, Sam have raised the question as to how one can counteract the “discontents” of the late-style debate, assess late style in a more satisfactory manner and thus “find new, more reflexive, more critically and theoretically nuanced and rigorous ways to account for the creative possibilities associated with the end of the artistic life” (Introduction 12). This question will be addressed and three different ways will be proposed in which the reading of late-style narrativeslate-style narrative can be made productive for the late-style debate without the need to resort to simplifying binary oppositions or to lapse into otherwise СКАЧАТЬ