FROM DIALECTICS TO THE DIABOLICAL

Abstract

In “Ars Nova,” a short essay written in 1963, Blanchot defends the “new music” of Arnold Schönberg and his school against its critics and hails it as an exemplary contestation of culture conceived as an attempt to conceal the groundlessness of human existence. The fragmentary and dissonant nature of the “new music” has the power to unmask culture’s pretence of order, meaning and harmony. It embodies the potential of modernist art to unsettle all established conventions standing in the way of an authentic, radical interrogation. Blanchot develops his argument by way of a discussion of Adorno’s theory of modernist music. The affinities and divergences revealed in Blanchot’s reading of Adorno’s work shed light on their respective understanding of the disruption enacted by the “new music.” A close analysis of Blanchot’s essay discloses the role of this confrontation with Adorno’s dialectical theory and points to the political and poetic ramifications of a complex and hitherto largely neglected category in Blanchot’s thinking about art: the diabolical.

Keywords:

• new music; Adorno
• Blanchot
• diabolical

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Translation mine. “[Q]ue cet artiste, plutôt qu’un écrivain, soit un homme livré à l’art par excellence, la musique” in Blanchot, “Le Docteur Faustus” 17, reprinted in Blanchot, La Condition critique 170. In the case of quotations for which no official translation exists, the original appears in a footnote. Some official translations have been modified, which is indicated in the in-text references by “trans. mod.”

2 Translation mine.

Toute œuvre le renvoie à lui-même, toute pensée différente de la sienne l’oblige à poursuivre cette différence au fond de lui. Chaque étude critique de Blanchot commence effectivement par être critique mais le devient de moins en moins. Elle est l’acte par lequel la critique passe du monde mental d’autrui à un autre monde, tout intime de lui-même, qu’il est seul à concevoir et à explorer. Or, qu’est-ce que ce monde nouveau, sinon une pensée proprement créatrice? (In Poulet 489)

In a similar vein, Leslie Hill (109) writes: “Blanchot’s strategy is [ … ] to accompany the text along a certain trajectory in order to propel it into an aporia of its own making.” See also Bürger 87; and, most elaborately, the introductory chapters of Hoppenot, particularly the section “De la copie au texte: la paraphrase comme acte critique” 86–90.

3 Blanchot, “Ars Nova,” first published in La Nouvelle Revue française 125 (May 1963): 879–87, and reprinted in L’Entretien infini 506–14. References in the text, indicated as (AN page number), refer to the original in L’Entretien infini. The English translation of this text is taken from Blanchot, “Ars Nova,” trans. Donald Schier 76–84. References to this translation are indicated as (ANE page number). Wherever the translation has been modified, indicated as (ANE page number; trans. mod.), the alternative translation refers to Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation 345–50.

4 Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik. Unless otherwise indicated the English translations are taken from Adorno, Philosophy of New Music. References to this text are from the English translation and are indicated as (PhNM page number).

5 This remarkable study is the only book devoted entirely to a discussion of the relationship between Blanchot and Adorno.

6 This discussion prefigures in many ways the proximity and differences between two of the foremost paradigms in Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School and French deconstruction.

7 Cf. Blanchot’s use of the expression “contestation de ce qui est” in Blanchot, L’Amitié 80.

8 Cf. Hartman; Kofman; Rothberg 25–106; Liska 80–100.

9 A brief review of the French translation of Thomas Mann’s novel Joseph und seine Brüder was already published in L’Insurgé 14 (14 Apr. 1937): 5.

10 Allen calls Blanchot’s description of the “new music” a “summary” and a “paraphrase” of Adorno’s argument. He overlooks, however, the highly significant, though mostly subtle or even hidden differences Blanchot introduces in his rephrasing of Adorno’s text.

11 Adorno, in a footnote describing the atonality of the “new music,” points both to the liberation from traditional constraints of the twelve-tone system as well as to its “constraining” methodological construction, thus invoking both Schönberg’s early and his later oeuvre. Unlike the notion of a “new music,” “Ars nova,” which refers to early polyphony, emphasizes only the moment of breaking conventions characterizing the composer’s early work rather than his new system of composition. Blanchot thereby highlights the transgressive aspect of Schönberg’s music.

12 Translation mine. The reference is to the German original: Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik 46. Further references to the German original are indicated in the text as (PhNMG page number). The translation of these passages is always mine.

13 The prevalence of the notion of “absence” in Blanchot’s writings and in poststructuralist thought in general is linked to its “negative” ontological rather than historical orientation.

14 Adorno discusses the “difficulties following from this freedom” (PhNM 81–82), but he talks about the composers’ task in technical and “unheroic” terms.

15 On the difference between these two interpretations of Blanchot’s “exigence fragmentaire,” see Cools 362–69.

16 “[La musique nouvelle] est rigide, dure, austère, sans esprit de jeu, sans nuance, et elle ne veut rien concéder à cet ‘humain’ dont la société est toujours prête à se réclamer comme d’un alibi à sa propre humanité” (AN 511; ANE 81; trans. mod.). A similar sentence appears earlier in the essay “Le Docteur Faustus” from 1950: “Pour rester humain et pour exprimer l’humain, l’art doit prendre appui sur l’inhumain, c’est à dire sur le néant” (La Condition critique 171; trans. mine).

17 This thought is intensified in the final lines of Adorno’s book: “For the sake of the human, the inhumanity of art must overtop that of the world” (Die Unmenschlichkeit der Kunst muß die der Welt überbieten um des Menschlichen willen (PhNM 102)).

18 Adorno, Essays on Music 394 quoted in Allen 79.

19 Blanchot uses the terms demon and devil/diabolic interchangeably.

20 Blanchot, “La Rencontre avec le démon” 83–102. Reprinted in Blanchot, La Condition critique 205–25. References to “La Rencontre avec le démon” are to La Condition critique and are indicated as (RD page number).

21 These passages might, however, be derived from Mann’s novel, which contains long excerpts directly inspired by Adorno’s book.

22 In another passage in “La Rencontre avec le démon,” Blanchot admits that the aesthetic fascination with the devil is difficult to uphold “in the contemporary world, where dark forces are becoming reality and turn into the madness and excess that led, in Germany, to the catastrophe of 1945” (RD 217).

23 Translation and emphasis mine.

Serait-ce donc là le sens du récit, son dernier mot? Il ne semble pas. Car, comme il a été dit, autant le biographe et, de toute évidence, le romancier lui-même condamne et juge vaine, stérile et effroyablement malheureuse l’ivresse démoniaque quand elle est celle d’un régime et d’un état, autant il nous invite à penser que, sur le plan des œuvres, dans le destin de l’art, la collaboration avec le démon est individuellement tragique, mais, du point de vue de la culture et de l’esprit, étonnamment féconde, heureuse et digne d’admiration [ … ] Mais, en tant qu’œuvres d’art, elles ne participent nullement à la faute d’où elles sont nées et encore moins à la condamnation de la société politique dont elles semblent illustrer la démesure. (RD 222)

24 Translation mine.

Que doit l’artiste au démon? Ceci, qui est étrange: il lui doit d’avoir une âme, d’avoir donné à un art froid la chaleur et l’humanité. Le lien avec le démon peut bien n’être que le lien secret avec la maladie [of the composer Leverkühn in Doktor Faustus], n’est sans doute pas responsable de tous les moments créateurs, mais, en les libérant, en effaçant les doutes et les scrupules, en supprimant la critique désagrégeant, c’est elle qui autorise la vieille inspiration primordiale, l’enthousiasme divin. (RD 213)

25 For an overview and some salient examples such as Jean-François Lyotard’s essay “Adorno as the Devil,” see Leslie’s illuminating study Adorno as the Devil in Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus.”

26 Translation mine. Adorno, “Anweisungen zum Hören neuer Musik” 190.