AESTHETICS AND POLITICS
AESTHETICS AND POLITICS
Theodor AdornoWalter BenjaminErnst BlochBertolt BrechtGeorg Lukács
with an afterword by
Fredric Jameson
Ernst Bloch ‘Discussing Expressionism’ first published in Das Wort 1938, then in Erbshaft dieser Zeit, Frankfurt 1962 © Suhrkamp Verlag; Georg Lukács ‘Realism in the Balance’ first published in Das Wort 1938, then in Probleme des Realismus, Neuwied 1971 © Artsijus; Bertolt Brecht texts of ‘Against Georg Lukács’ first published in Schriften zer Kunst und Literatur, Frankfurt 1967 © Stefan Brecht 1967, All rights reserved through Suhrkamp Verlag. Walter Benjamin ‘Conversations with Brecht’ first published in Versuche über Brecht, Frankfurt 1966 © Suhrkamp Verlag – this translation first published in Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, London 1973 © NLB; Theodor Adorno ‘Letters to Walter Benjamin’ first published in Uber Walter Benjamin, Frankfurt 1970 © Suhrkamp Verlag, and Walter Benjamin ‘Reply’ published in Briefe II, Frankfurt 1966 © Suhrkamp – these translations first published in New Left Review, September-October 1973 © New Left Review; Theodor Adorno ‘Reconciliation under Duress’ and ‘Engagement’ published in Noten zur Literatur II and III, Frankfurt 1961 and 1965 © Suhrkamp Verlag; Fredric Jameson ‘Reflections in Conclusion’ © NLB 1977
This paperback edition published by Verso 2020
© Verso 2010
First published by New Left Books 1977
© NLB 1977
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
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ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-858-3
eISBN-13 (US): 978-1-78873-528-5
eISBN-13 (UK): 978-1-78873-529-2
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Contents
Ernst Bloch Discussing Expressionism
Georg Lukács Realism in the Balance
Bertolt Brecht Against Georg Lukács
Walter Benjamin Conversations with Brecht
Theodor Adorno Letters to Walter Benjamin
Theodor Adorno Reconciliation under Duress
Fredric Jameson Reflections in Conclusion
Publisher’s Note
The texts assembled in this volume have been selected for the coherence of their inter-relationships. Brief presentations are designed to provide the Anglo-Saxon reader with biographical and cultural background to the successive exchanges contained in them. They were prepared by Rodney Livingstone, Perry Anderson and Francis Mulhern. The translators of the texts – Anya Bostock, Stuart Hood, Rodney Livingstone, Francis McDonagh and Harry Zohn – are credited at the end of them. Ronald Taylor edited the translations for the volume. Fredric Jameson’s essay forms a contemporary conclusion.
NLB
The conflict between Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukács over expressionism in 1938 forms one of the most revealing episodes in modern German letters. Its resonance is in part due to the criss-crossing of intellectual evolution and political destiny between its two protagonists. The main outlines of the career of Lukács are now well-known in the Anglo-Saxon world; those of his intimate friend and exact contemporary Bloch less so. Born in Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland in 1885, the son of a railway official, Bloch was educated in Bavaria at Wurzburg and Munich. He soon displayed polymathic gifts, studying philosophy, physics and music. He first met Lukács when in his early twenties, at a soirée of Georg Simmel’s in Berlin, and later during a visit to Budapest. However, it was in the period of their common residence in Heidelberg, from 1912 to 1914, that the two men were drawn together into an intense philosophical partnership. Paradoxically, in view of their later development, it was Bloch who essentially influenced Lukács towards serious study of Hegel, while it was Lukács who directed Bloch towards Christian mysticism, especially the work of Kierkegaard and Dostoievsky.1 Russia on the eve of the revolution held a magnetic interest for the two men, together with others in Max Weber’s circle at Heidelberg at the time. The onset of the First World War marked their first divergence: Lukács answered the call-up in