Michael KlebanovTHE PROBLEMS OF NARRATIVE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SYNAESTHETIC: T.W.ADORNO, ASCESIS, AND THE KHARMSIAN LITERARY CIRCLE.Burger wishes art were lush and life were ascetic; it I have thought my life and have lived my thoughts
Our initial assumption holds that it would be an adequate tribute to negative dialectics to try and emphasize the dissension between two subjects of thought, different as they may be (and superficially different above anything else), namely by means of clarifying and analysis of the moments of sudden affinity showing through the worn-out background of tokens of visible difference. Anyhow, it might be reasonable to suppose that Theodor Adorno himself, especially in the mature days of compiling his "main work"3, would regard appealing to the subject as dear to his heart as the New Viennese School of atonal music and dodecaphony, as an occasion good enough even for comparing his quite eminent person of long-term propagandist and analyst of the New Music with the mysterious philosopher from far Leningrad, completely unknown not only to the humanitarian community of the free West but also to academic majority in the country of his own esoteric abode; with a person of radically different biography, yet also of principally different state of mind. Being able to appreciate, on the basis of quite a wide range of works, the significance imparted by Adorno (who, according to the precise formula by such authoritative Russian adept as A. Mikhailov, tested "not art by philosophy but philosophy by art"4) to the most important of arts interpreted by "the school of Schoenberg – Berg – Webern"5, it might be not so absurd to imagine him being intrigued by the person who placed the music of this school in the very center of his philosophy. Nevertheless, even in the terms of curriculum vitae comparing Yakov Semenovich Druskin with Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno might make the mentioned moments of affinity apparent even on the most basic level. Being almost coevals, they almost simultaneously finished their philosophical education (Druskin did it a year earlier 6): hence, both of them were to enter more or less the same actual scene of the Western thought. Each one, in his own fashion, experienced the passion for Marxism. Druskin completed his piano studies in Leningrad Conservatory, having earned no less compliments than he previously had for his humanitarian studies, three years later than Adorno, by then already a qualified pianist, ceased studying composition under Berg. Music and philosophy interlaced amid works and days of these learned men in a manner evoking, it seems, not so many reminiscences in the history of (especially European) culture. Of course, it must be easier to emphasize the obvious opposition of Adorno's course of life: a promising scientist and a gifted critic at the beginning, then co-founder and the prominent member of the Frankfurt school, university professor and along with all that, a bright and controversial public figure, - to Druskin's imperceptible existence in the disguise of a school teacher whose secret spiritual life and philosophical investigations were known only to relatively limited circle of acquaintances. It's necessary to remember, however, about the degree of freedom Adorno could enjoy in the conditions of the Weimar Republic as well as in emigration (not to mention post-Hitler Germany): whereas the modest, almost ‘anonymous’ modus existendi chosen by Druskin in view of his own locus of being allowed him, as his sister Lydia hints, not only "to preserve an inner freedom: to write down what he really thinks" but also, probably, just to survive physically7. At any rate, it may be easily admitted with regard, say, to such subject as criticizing Marxism that Adorno could afford rather blunt attacks against the orthodox Marxists-of-politics like those featuring in "Negative Dialectics" (for instance, in the chapters "On the Crisis of Causality" and "The Universal and Individual in Moral Philosophy") practically at every stage of his tireless activity; whereas Druskin could confide his opinion that "Marxism, like a scarlet fever, is best to experience in infancy"8, or even that "it's impossible to build up complete and non-discrepant system of Marxism"9, at best to his own brother or to his own diary. However, truly dialectical intersection of similarities and differences, as well as the most substantial point of contiguity between Adorno and Druskin, is concerned, in our opinion, namely with a problem of representation of the New Viennese School and its integration within their philosophical and critical constructions. On one hand, a complete absence of mutual reflection (there admittedly may be no doubt that Adorno had no slightest notion of Druskin's existence, but as far as it's known Druskin also left no written evidence of his awareness of Adorno10) allows comparing these characters in a most unprejudiced manner. In this connection, most remarkable is a metamorphosis occurring within the scope of action of Druskin's thought with Adorno's statements and observations concerning Viennese atonal music and especially its most ultimate representative, Anton Webern. Within the margins of completely alien system of ideas, Adorno's thought acquires a new tinge and faces the possibility of a new configuration, admittedly better arrayed: and in this process the special role is assigned, first, to the topic of rejection, abstention and restriction: otherwise, an ascesis; and second, though it seems to be concerned with all this only by implication, to the problem of musical representation and interrelations between music and word. This thesis, of course, needs to be clarified. * * * In his regard to the New Viennese School Yakov Druskin was, in comparison to his Western colleague, in a situation as asymmetric as in the case of many other biographical parallels between them. Apart from the fact that Adorno, during his apprenticeship under Alban Berg in Vienna, enjoyed a luxury of personal contact with the composers he most appreciated then as well as afterwards 11 (which Druskin missed for reasons quite understandable), Leningrad philosopher happened to learn about music of Schoenberg and his disciples only in 50's, that is, about three decades after the memorable meeting of Adorno and Berg after the premiere of "Wozzeck". However, it's due to this fact of relatively late, "in the middle of the road", collision with creative ideas of the New Viennese that the way these ideas integrated into the structure of Druskin's quite mature philosophy seems so impressive. And whereas the same A. Mikhailov while characterizing Adorno as, above all, a musical critic but less as a philosopher, asserts that "philosophy and its language served [him] as a kind of props for... musical ear"12, it seems no less remarkable that Yakov Druskin's brother, Mikhail (a renowned musicologist who himself wrote of Schoenberg and his disciples)13, identified his brother as a philosopher-musician who "could feel music better than many professional musicologists and interpreted it otherwise, in accordance with his own system of ideas"14. It might be assumed that exactly these, opposite directions of thought captured by this couple of definitions could constitute the moment of really essential dissension between Adorno and Druskin. And besides, this leads us directly to the point of comparing their philosophical views. Although detailed analysis of these views has no place here, their brief review is undoubtedly necessary, inasmuch as they're inseparable from the musicological concepts of their bearers. First of all, even minding the opinion of A. Mikhailov, it ought to be said that Adorno's philosophical and ideological views were quite definite and consistent and he held to them rather faithfully through his life, which had been actually reflected in "Negative Dialectics": taking into account, of course, that due to the peculiar approach to dialectics as a chosen discursive strategy presuming destruction of any "positive" formation in terms of the notorious "logic of disintegration", identifying Adorno with any historically outlined ideological current appeared to be rather a difficult task. Thus, in the annotation to the Russian edition of "Negative Dialectics" he is named "a philosopher and a sociologist of radical left orientation" with reference to "neo-hegelianism" as an attempt to represent the essence of his "philosophical views"15; whereas, say, "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" recommends him, first of all, as "the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existence"16. Many sources content themselves with convenient, though not so obliging reference to the "Frankfurt School". Anyhow, it seems that A. Mikhailov was not so wrong asserting that Adorno was mainly interested in philosophy as a method or a tool used for sociological or critical needs. In this, yet not only in this sense Druskin appears to be, to some extent, a philosophical antipode of Adorno. Let's begin with an observation that people who surrounded him didn't encounter, as it may seem, any difficulties with relating him to a certain category. In the foreword to the first edition of the Diaries Druskin is unambiguously characterized as "one of the most interesting philosophers-existentialists of our time"17. Text of the Diaries periodically confirms the adequacy, be it even relative, of this statement, and in one of the 1966 entries their author clearly defines his philosophy, quite consistent by then, as "existential-idealistic"18. Contrary to Adorno who stubbornly kept "dialectically criticizing" Marxism right up to the "Negative Dialectics" inclusive, Druskin abandoned it finally as well as decisively while being yet a scholar: he had, however, enough reasons, both speculative and existential, to do it. Among the last, it seems, the expatriation of N. O. Lossky in 1922 wasn't the least one: it was at his seminar, just a year erlier, that the "recreancy" of the young philosopher had been finally revealed: "Lossky told me: it's not Marxism, your system is closer to the philosophy of the Marburg school… Now [in 1965 – M.K.] I understand: my system was the same sublimation of yearning for the Absolute: to derive from one principle a system of all life, all culture"19. "Yearning for the Absolute", after long wanderings, brings Druskin to a certain variety of religious existentialism resting chiefly upon the personal interpretation of Kierkegaard whose works he studied since 195420; this "turn" of the state of mind was accompanied also by gradually deepening religiosity: a sort of early Christian belief bearing, once more, features of a "personal project". And whereas Adorno criticizing existentialism started with Kierkegaard, used him to overthrow Heidegger and finished with attacks towards "Sartre and his friends" owing to whom existentialism "remained idealistically biased" and "the idealistic component of existentialism is for its part a function of politics"21, – Druskin, in his turn, defending Kierkegaard for quite opposite reasons, attacked existentialists, both religious and atheistic, for the same reasons asserting that: "Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers, Bultmann, all the philosophers philosophizing about nothing don't understand Kierkegaard" since "Kierkegaard sought a reader who would understand him and then reject, because a human is just a reason but the teacher is one: God", whereas they (mentioned philosophers) "partly accept, partly reject, partly supplement with others…"22. At that, Druskin not only allowed himself to attack Sartre and Heidegger (the last was even granted by him with a title of "untalented eclectic and dilettante"23), but also insisted on the responsibility (in the face of God, of course) of Kierkegaard himself "for Sartre's silliness and nihilism, for Bultmann's immanentism and for Heidegger's Sein zum Tode"24... Here we can see, actually, another series of superficial similarities revealing profound difference; however, in regard to our special interest to the subject of Viennese atonal music the utmost importance should be imparted to one of the most explicit, obvious features distinguishing Yakov Druskin from Adorno, and namely his religiosity. * * * "Except from speculations of mathematical or mathematical-cosmological type... it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that, by and large, nothing remarkable occurred between philosophy and music for more than two thousand years, and that the history of their relations eventually appears to be rather dull"25, - it might be possible to think that, proceeding with these words to the "Heidegger's scene" of his 'Musica Ficta' Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, in particular, strived to display his own devotion to the dialectical way of thinking: since, having given its due to the indispensable "suspicion that we deal here with an object exceptionally elusive from the philosophical point of view, probably for this reason proceeding to be a mute [here we'll remind that we deal here with music – M.K.] evidence to the limit of philosophy"26, he immediately starts talking of two remarkable, for all that, incidents concerning music and philosophy alike, one of them having occurred as late as in 20th century (which by then (1986) wasn't yet over)27. Nonetheless, Theodor Adorno, whose labors, as "his own scene" in the 'Figures of Wagner' witnesses, also didn't deserve the status of "anything remarkable" according to Lacoue-Labarthes' verdict (a propos, not too much burdened with arguments), - undoubtedly had his own notions of ways of applying dialectics to musicology. Moreover, notorious historic bankruptcy of philosophy in regard to its relations with music, that Lacoue-Labarthe hints at, also obviously doesn't hinder Adorno: "from the philosophical point of view", says he in the foreword to 'Philosophy of New Music', "an idea of oeuvres [musical, in this case – M.K.] and their interrelations should be constructed even if it sometimes exceeds the limits of the realized in the work of art"28. Wilde's idea of critic-as-artist is complemented, as it seems, with more comprehensive function of philosopher-as-artist who ought to accomplish not only construction but also theoretical substantiation of the oeuvre whose author didn't get around to doing it himself; yet above all one can find here an evidence to Adorno's optimism in regard to both an ability and a high duty of philosophy "to take care" of the art of music. The prevailing significance of philosophy as critical tool becomes thus quite obvious, and dialectics as a prevailing tool of this "practical philosophy" in its regard to the "new music" wins a commanding position: The problem of form is distinctly accentuated: the logic of disintegration, of course, extends to it as well. Moreover the very problem of generating forms in art is directly concerned with Adorno's attempts to substantiate the immanency of dialectical character of art in general30. However, dialectics of art, according to Adorno, presumes also that the problem of form is concerned with the problem of cognition: which leads to the opposition of "secluded" and "disintegrating" work of art: "Secluded work of art cognized nothing but promoted vanishing of cognition-in-itself… It's simulation of closing the gap between subject and object that presumes the necessity of visual art, whereas cognition actually consists in separating them: visuality of art as such is its visibility. Only disintegrating artwork renounces visuality along with seclusion, and consequently renounces visibility as well… The new music through its own consciousness and its own images perceives its discord with reality. Having taken this position it sharpens and becomes cognition"31. The footnote to the above cited sums up: "inasmuch as work of art becomes cognizing, it becomes critical and fragmentary"32. Thus, already these passages allow to conclude that the aesthetical product of the "new music" is supposed to be "cognizing" and for this purpose it should be "disintegrating" and "fragmentary" and also it ought to "renounce visibility": however, let's notice that in addition the "fragmentary work of art" is expected to do nothing else than "renounce (or reject) itself". Prevalence of dialectics in Adorno's aesthetic theory allows, in particular, to comprehend that Arnold Schoenberg was placed in the compositional centre of the "Philosophy of New Music" not only owing to his indisputable being a founder, inspirer and leader, and besides, the most prominent figure of Viennese School of atonal music and dodecaphony. "Cognition revolves Schoenberg's music since the very beginning"33, - unambiguously states Adorno. However, as 'Schoenberg and Progress' shows, it's the tendency of systematic deviation from the principles he himself developed that appears to be the clearest sign of dialectical character of Schoenberg's ideological and creative strategy. "Great moments of Schoenberg's late period were reached as much against the twelve-tone technique as owing to it"34, - incidentally notices Adorno, and then concludes: "there are reasons to assume that through all his life Schoenberg used to rejoice at the heresies aimed at the "style" whose implacability he forged all by himself"35. One of the reasons, and admittedly the gravest one, of such "inconsistency", as the author of the "Philosophy of New Music" points out, were natural limitations resulting from rigorous following the twelve-tone technique (as well as, it might be added, any other rigid system): limitations that Schoenberg's indomitable nature, of course, couldn't reconcile with; not to mention that they, above all, contradict the dialectics of art evolution as such: although dodecaphony "emerged from truly dialectical principle of variation", nonetheless "when twelve-tone technique carried the principle of variation to the extent of totality, of the absolute, in the last movement of notion it cancelled this principle"36. It must have been due to the comprehension of the imminence of such developments that Schoenberg, as Adorno asserted later, "almost mechanically differentiated between the dodecaphonic system and the art of composition, and didn't rejoice at all at this rupture that appeared in consequence of using refined technique"37. Besides, it becomes apparent, by the way, that even such inseparably dialectical, according to Adorno, quality of the "new art" as fragmentarity is able, in its turn, be it on the structural level only, to contradict the abovementioned dialectical character of a creative process: "The twelve-tone technique replaces the "mediation", the "transition", the instinctive character of the leading tone with consciousness of construction. However, the last is acquired at the expense of atomization of consonances… Now there is no anarchic mutual attraction of consonances but only their monadic incoherence and the planned domination over them all… If once totality was gained secretly, with no reference to individual events, now it became conscious"38. Nevertheless, Schoenberg's dialectics of creativity reaches maximal tension at the point of collision between such accentuated by Adorno qualities of the "new art" as rejection of visibility and rejection of one's self: correlating, in our opinion, directly with the problems of representation and ascesis, very essential for the New Music as we see it. Analyzing the dynamics of the artistic career of the New Viennese School's founder, Adorno notices: "…all his oeuvres on the way from overthrow to overthrow and from one extreme to another may be understood as a dialectical process occurring between two moments: the expressive and the constructive"39. What do these moments refer to? First of all, their dialectical opposition as such reflects the incompatibility of the rigorous laws of "twelve-tone technique" threatening to result, as above cited sentences show, in the finality of the total – with artist's aspiration characteristic, in particular, for Schoenberg, for expressivity without limits: the very aspiration that forced Schoenberg in his early, "expressionist" period "to exceed the limits" of traditional expressivity40, and towards an end, to return to "the question how construction can become an expression without pitiful concessions to the suffering subjectivity" 41. We will yet return to the representative overtones of the aftermath of this recursion, but apart from this, Schoenberg's attempt to restore the alloy of expression and technique against the laws of dodecaphony emphasizes yet another contradiction: between the expansion of the means of expression and such initially inherent quality of the New Viennese School as asceticism. The notion of ascesis as such even taken in its secularized sense directly refers to the most often used terms of Adorno's lexicon: rejection, abstention, removing excesses, bereaving, brevity, conciseness. "Thorough construction"42 provides, by means of scrupulous organization, compactness and coherence of musical structure: "in no other sort of works density and coherence of the image of form could be achieved in a better way than in very short parts of the oeuvres by Schoenberg and Berg. Their brevity derives exactly from the demand for maximal coherence. And the last removes the excesses"43. It's namely "ascetic exiguity" as K. Chukhrov justly states in the Introduction to the Russian edition of "Philosophy of New Music"44 that became a visiting card of the New Viennese in their opposition to the eclecticism of French impressionists. "All the power of the new music is in refusal", asserts Adorno explaining the eventual eclecticism of his teacher Berg's operatic language by his "inability to renounce anything"45. On the formal level this ascetic consistency is emphasized by the actual affirmation of a small form as immanent to the "twelve-tone technique": "reconstruction of a big form in the twelve-tone technique is dubious not only as an ideal. The very possibility to carry out such reconstruction is dubious… The fact that this music doesn't reach big forms by virtue of its very essence isn't a fortuity but an immanent vengeance of the forgotten critical phase"46. And even discussing socio-cultural aspects of taedium musicae Adorno notices a particular sensitivity of the New Viennese in this regard: "abstention from music may be a true form of its being. The continuous inclination of Schoenberg's school to prevent performing their own oeuvres or to sabotage them at the last moment was neither an exaggeration nor an oddity"47. However, it's precisely because surpassing the "twelve-tone technique" in the gesture of unlimited expression was to be welcomed by Adorno as an evidence to the dialectic consistency of Schoenberg's artistic career48, - that an asceticism, whose obviousness in the eventual "seclusion" of this technique was only growing, had to become more and more suspicious in Adorno's eyes: which had been actually reflected in the complicacy and ambiguity of his attitude to the composer who until the end displayed his consistent loyalty to dodecaphony: Anton Webern. * * * Perhaps, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that considering Webern within any global context, be it dialectical evolvement of art, socio-cultural aspects of the "new music" or even internal dynamics of the New Viennese School, Adorno rather persistently suggests to understand that Webern's excessive adherence to the methods upon which he grew as a composer, eventually results in creative self-limitation. As it's pointed out in the "Philosophy of the New Music", striving to "realize" dodecaphony reduces Webern's actions to a purely technical procedure: Schoenberg "composes dodecaphonic music as if no twelve-tone existed at all. Webern, however, "realizes" the twelve-tone technique as if he composed no music at all: his skill results in silence"49. Even the profundity of the last words that don't seem occasional can't suppress doubts apparent in this sentence in regard to this alleged "overwriting the music": too much ultimate, one should think. The cited fragment is undoubtedly not the only example of opposing Schoenberg to Webern not in favor of the last; thus, Adorno unambiguously regards Schoenberg's ability of "throwing away" certain technical methods for the sake of new ones as a "superiority": and, in particular, over his own disciple: "Only this power of oblivion [of used methods – M.K.] counterbalances willfulness in the use of technique and saves the tradition for the sake of technique. Because the tradition is what today is forgotten, whereas Schoenberg's mobility is so great that it forms his own special technique of oblivion… In order to comprehend Schoenberg's superiority it would suffice to compare the oeuvres so close to each other as Schoenberg's Piano Pieces Op.19 and Webern's themes from Quartet Op.5. Whereas Webern binds expressionist miniatures by most delicately elaborated motives, Schoenberg who was busy with development of various arts of motives lets them go free and drifts with his eyes closed where a train of sounds takes him to" 50. This passage, it may be noticed, also obviously points at the preference of the spontaneous method of work to scrupulous one: yet the main case here is an economy not so much of gesture as of space. Adorno, as it seems, regards limitation of dodecaphony by a small form as its serious drawback no less than Schoenberg and Berg did: not for nothing he speaks of "an immanent vengeance of the forgotten critical phase"; as a result, the very sense of improving the technique is liable to be discredited: "His [Webern's – M.K.] last oeuvres are actually systems of rows translated to the language of notes. Sorting out rows with particular skill he tries to achieve the similarity between row and composition… As a result, an unprecedented density of ties is achieved… However, Berg rather early criticized this technique since it casts doubt on the programmatically requested possibility of big forms. Owing to the division of a row all relations are placed within the limits so narrow that all the possibilities of development are getting immediately exhausted. Most of Webern's dodecaphonic oeuvres are limited by the size of expressionist miniatures, so that a question arises: what's the use of excessive organization where there's almost nothing to organize"51. Thus, it looks like asceticism is brought here "almost to perfection", that is, to the nearly complete disappearance of medium's "flesh"; "the very possibility of music is put in doubt"52: a conclusion far exceeding the anxiety caused by purely technical matters. Once such sentence is uttered, identifying ascetic stringency and reduction not only with "limitedness" but also with primitiveness doesn't seem so blunt in comparison: "mysteries of musical rows can't compensate the primitivization of music: grandiose intentions… remain impotent even if construction is realized, as long as they constrain themselves with mathematical relations within the limits of material and aren't realized in actual musical images"53. It seems that the redemption from the perilous aspects of asceticism presumes returning to visibility, be it even minimal. However, the friction of ascesis with dialectics appears to be still more crucial: it bears the character of insoluble contradiction: "Webern's row fetishism doesn't derive from the mere sectarianism. Dialectical necessity acts there as well. It's an obliging critical experience that led this prominent composer to the cult of pure proportions"54. Dialectical "rejection of one's self" as a necessity collides with the very essence of ascesis as a principal feature of dodecaphony represented by its most loyal representative: they cross each other out like "is" of Derrida that isn't, - at least as long as determination to learn the essence of Webern's creative method with the assistance of dialectics didn't fade away. Nevertheless it should be admitted that Adorno was aware of the necessity of surveying Webern's music otherwise than through the cumbersome lenses of socio-cultural and aesthetical theories. The diminutive, elegantly made in the likeness of a notorious "small form," monograph "Anton von Webern" written a decade after the "Philosophy of New Music," compels to assume that the limitation of subject along with reducing the circle of examined problems leaves an imprint of larger adequacy on the rhetoric of the text itself. It would be enough to indicate at least that the author chooses somewhat different tone when he speaks of Schoenberg and Webern's music in regard to the virtues of the last: "Webern's statements… leave no slightest doubt what had been his central impression from his teacher: expressivity, ability of music to express such movements that lay beyond the limit of expression of any other art. Such expansion of expressivity can by no means be reduced to extremes, either unbridled rush or nearly inaudible silence: it's also a mysterious layer of endless sinking deep into questioning depths, and that's where Webern's music found itself…"55 As far as Adorno's voice grows quieter and his tone more restrained, it seems that his sight grows keener as well: "…The law of form should be emphasized when speaking of Webern: the centre of gravity of his elusive music is about the fact that it doesn't follow solitarily the idea of a pure expression but brings it into the very musical structure, thoroughly organizes and articulately conceives it so that in consequence it gains an ability of pure expression"56. If a structure of this music is such that its inherent asceticism doesn't contradict its "ability of pure expression", it may also appear that refined technique creating the "totality" of its construction isn't shorn of sense a priori: "What should be done to make the sound issuing from heart acquire objective necessity and cogency in the total thorough construction; what, on the contrary, should be done to make the construction thoroughly animated and simultaneously reconciled with a subject: these were the goals of Webern's tireless labor"57. However, Adorno remains faithful to the essence of his criticism, be it even expressed otherwise, in a softened way: speaking of what he considers drawbacks of Webern's late work he comes back to the same reasons: "An ideal of nonviolent composing… leads in the late creative period to the processes that encouraged his [Webern's – M.K.] followers in their attempts to master the musical material totally… From this moment music has to put itself entirely in the disposal of musical material: now, it isn't composed by means of twelve-tone series a la Schoenberg: on the contrary, these series are compelled to create music virtually on their own… This provides such multitude of inner correlations as couldn't be found in the twelve-tone technique before… However… one can't get rid of the impression of creative recession… Now almost nothing happens in music in a strict sense of the word; author's intentions don't pave their own way anymore, but the author puts his hands together in prayer in the face of tones and their basic correlations… Music never knew anything more complicate than such simplicity; it's hard to judge whether this is a last word or a fatal return to archaic pre-artistic element. Maybe, for all that, Webern was right and our comprehension hopelessly fails to keep pace with his creations. Yet it would be unworthy to keep silence in regard to suspicion that in his last oeuvres material is alienated and made a fetish…"58. And, as a noematic result: "Primitivism is a name of revenge that befell the spirituality that's been making its body thinner until it reached the endlessly little, that rejected and put aside too much so as to try and manage to affirm itself against the pressure of the world around it"59. It might seem clear that quite distinct and final sentence is pronounced here to asceticism as a most radical feature of the "processes" that lead, in Adorno's opinion, Webern's music into a dead end. However, that's not what the oeuvre of Adorno himself is concluded with: actually, it finishes in a rather unexpected way: "When you start speaking of Webern, it's not by chance that the name of Paul Klee comes to your mind… Klee and Webern beget a brittle, weird, non-existing kind of art that cannot be localized in space… Already in Webern's Orchestral Pieces op.6 relations between timbre complexes extend to the sphere of the constructive: for all their clear and keen openness to sensual contemplation these relations give birth to something supernatural, bereft not only of flesh but of nearly all physical sonority as well. Besides, Webern resembles Klee also by that fact that he opposes in a similar fashion the idea of the abstract. An expressive artist is by no means what's meant when abstract painting is mentioned, nor what seems abstract in music; an artist in a quite sensual manner realizes an idea of non-sensual: bereaving, withdrawing all the sensual"60 [emphasized by the author – Ì.Ê.]. And further on: "Webern's musical minimalism is prepared by the necessity of expression that can't allow the self-sufficient phenomenon that only augments an expressivity aggravating an impression of lull and muteness, to take the place of a bearer of expressivity. That's what eventually determines the comprehension of such music. An absolute sound of a soul disclosing it as a simple nature is, for Webern's music, an image and a likeness of a moment of death… That's an essence of expressivity of Webern's creativity: he is entirely absorbed in his attempts to imitate the rustle of movements of the ethereal, the non-material"61. This finale, suddenly poetical at the end of predominantly analytical article, somehow evokes the thought that Adorno's attitude to the moment of ascesis as a component eventually harmful and maybe even perilous to the New Music, wasn't so monolithic but concealed, at least in regard to the most ascetic of the authors of this music, Anton Webern, a kind of fracture: or, as it could be said otherwise, a slight flaw. Let's allow another quote from "Anton von Webern": a phrase that might seem incidental amid the final lines of Adorno's monograph: "…His [Webern's – M.K.] creativity is more religious than most composers after Bach could boast, yet at the same time it's implacable in its refusal of all the ready-made forms of spiritual communion that, as he instinctively feels, destroys precisely what's truly important to him"62. * * * "It seemed to me – this is all my philosophy – that I comprehended the good news of the Kingdom of God more or better than the others, but it's precisely this comprehension that expelled me from the Kingdom of God"63, - wrote Yakov Semenovich Druskin in 1964. One might detect in this sentence a focus of the very essence of Druskin's asceticism: yet his philosophy in all its aspects and details, especially in regard to his rather non-banal interpretation of ontology of the music of the New Viennese School, deserves more intent contemplation. By the moment Druskin learned about the music of the New Viennese he already had a certain musicological experience, mainly on the basis of researching the works of J. S. Bach. Continuing the Pythagorean tradition of welding music, mathematics and philosophy together, and having accomplished special mathematical education64 (unlike, say, Wittgenstein who also showed special interest to all the mentioned disciplines), Druskin successfully blended in his researches musicology with mathematical methods while paying, however, similar attention to the religious motives of Bach's creativity as well65 (which couldn't be revealed explicitly, of course, in the works intended for publication at the actual moment). And finally, one more very important aspect of his many-sided, though hidden from idle eyes, activity was, as ist's well known today, the study of the heritage of the chinar circle: referring predominantly to the poets Alexandr Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms. Within the margins of perception and comprehension of the music of Schoenberg and Webern all these "layers of noosphere" attended by Druskin merged together. Commenting his brother's addiction to the New Viennese School Mikhail Druskin asserts frankly: "he came to believe in dodecaphony, I can't give it other name… This belief should be contemplated in the context of his comprehensive philosophical and theological views"66. In concrete terms this "context" may be reduced to the combination of two theologically-musicological – precisely so – twin categories: tonal/atonal and extensive/intensive. Apparently the very idea of atonality impressed Yakov Druskin so much that rather soon after he came about it he began looking for its theological meaning: and not fruitlessly. One of his first written sentences concerning this subject says: "God created the world out of nothing. Demiurge creates the world out of matter, that is, out of what's given. Here is the meaning of atonality"67. This, rather vague analogy represents tonality as matter and atonality, correspondingly, as absence of matter: obviously, in accordance with the principle of presence/absence of "random" internal organization. Further on, however, inasmuch as Druskin develops this idea, its clarity and consistency gradually grow; thus, atonality is elevated to the feature of the divine itself: as a consequence, for instance, the quality of atonality is attributed to belief as a sign of the divine illuminating the human life: "belief is an atonal state, atonality of life: between earth and heaven"68. This "between earth and heaven presumes that the most natural position of a believer is between deed and non-deed (as humans understand it): "At last the chief work comes: and this work means to be not at work. This isn't idleness, and I don't say: not to be at work but: to be not at work. This is an atonal state, atonality of life, but not indifference, apathy, or impassivity… but on the contrary, infinite interest, passion… Maybe that's what creates or is a dodecaphonic row of atonal life [emphasized by the author– Ì.Ê.]"69. Here one can already hear the motive that afterwards will be transformed into the fundamental notion of the Divine seriesused by Druskin, in particular, for the purpose of expounding his personal exegesis of the New Testament: "Atonality of life is innocence… In the Fall this atonality is lost. Then with my sin I introduce my human tonality into the atonality of God made life. Tonality I introduce into the atonality of my life, that is, an order by whose means I organize the atonality of my life, is that high thing of humans that is meanness in the face of God… God made the atonality of life so that I could see its Divine series. A human cannot do it on his own, all his deeds, intentions and thoughts are tonal. That's why God became a human: to reveal the Divine series for us in our atonal life as a human. Not by His own example, that would be homoiousion and Arianism, but really, ontologically, by partaking of His flesh and blood"70. Let's notice this reservation in regard to "homoiousion" and "reality" since it directly concerns the abovementioned, crucially important to Druskin's philosophy twin categories of intensive and extensive: or more precisely, as the philosopher himself defined it, a unilateral synthetic identity71 of these notions. In their essence they, according to Druskin, refer to the basic classification of "mental conditions" and, in particular, which is most important, permanent conditions or personal characteristics determining the character of mental and creative activity and regarding the inclination, in simplified terms, to synthesis and analysis respectively72. However, it's in terms of theology that the intensive and the extensive are entrusted with their most important functions: "A unilateral synthetic identity (both i and e [Druskin designates by these symbols the intensive and the extensive respectively – Ì.Ê.]) is only an image or a scheme of the spiritual, the prototype is a Godmanhood of Christ. And also the good news: my Kingdom is not of this world… His Kingdom until the Second advent will always be a rejection of the Earthly kingdom"73; it's peculiar that by means of the idea of "unilateral synthetic identity" Druskin opposed his concept of theology to the dialectical theology: which becomes apparent, for instance, in his critical attitude to Karl Barth whom he reproached for "absolute transcendence of God" and even for "Nestorianism"74. The same principle extends to the "dependent spheres" as well: "This is also the way objectlessness relates to objectness and spirit to flesh in general, that is, to non-spiritual. And in art: atonality is always a rejection of tonality, but regardless of it atonality may become a new tonality"75. Being defined as universal, the categories of intensive and extensive may thus be applied directly to the art: thus, inasmuch as Druskin proceeded studying the heritage of his late friends Vvedensky and Kharms, each of them appears to be related to one of these categories: for instance, through the notion of the "fullness of times": "…Of two ways to the fullness of times: Vvedensky and Kharms. Vvedensky: there's only now. This now is actually the fullness of times… It may be called an intensive fullness of times. Kharms: now is an extensive identity of the past, the present and the future. Then everything he wrote… bears witness to his life. Since his life always had primacy over his art, Kharms kept everything he wrote… Nicolas of Cusa said long ago that absolute fullness and absolute emptiness coincide… Vvedensky lived in absolute emptiness: no place to lay his head, to be not at work, "the real time is an hour before death". Kharms… had an extensive fullness of life… And both ways are one way: identity of the different, that is, the same in the different, coincidentia oppositorum: eschatological "now" in both intensive and extensive form, in getting empty of everything and in preserving everything" [emphasized by the author – Ì.Ê.]76. Deviation towards either extensivity or intensivity is interpreted by Druskin as infringement of "synthetic identity": or, in theological terms, as heresy. In the specific terms of Christian theology it's a christological heresy: "...ee is a tendency to suppress the spiritual by the carnal: this is nestorianism; ei is a tendency to suppress the carnal by the spiritual: this is monophysitism… Unity or synthesis itself is i-function of thought, whereas plurality or separation is e-function. Therefore heresy as such is e-function, that is, miscomprehension of the identity of the different: the same in the different: and its two forms are ee è ei"77. This analogy is complemented with projecting its theological aspect on the same persons: thus, "pure nestorianism" is attributed to Kharms and "deviation towards monophysitism" to Vvedensky, whereas the author defines himself as a pure monophysitist78. Combining the motive of "atonality" with the motive of "synthesis of two principles" and drawing parallels between atonal composers and chinar poets, Druskin finds an affinity between Vvedensky and Webern on one hand and between Kharms and Schoenberg on the other. The aspect of relations between life and art appears to be most significant in this regard: "Oppositions: Webern – Schoenberg, Vvedensky – Kharms. Let the first be A and the second B. A is a certain seclusion of form, life doesn't intrude into art. B is a certain openness of form since life intrudes into art and a human life is unclosed prior to death. Both A and B is chinar or atonal art: it's determined not by the categories of beautiful or ugly but by the categories of correct (a) and incorrect (b)"79. The degree of seclusion of art and its interlacing with "life" becomes thus a prevalent parameter of the comparative characteristics of creativity of Schoenberg and Webern: "The art A is entirely determined by the notion of correct: a. However, life involves correct and incorrect, perfect and imperfect, good and bad alike: to the very extent of tastelessness and platitude. Then the art B is also not entirely determined by the notion of correct (a) but involves the incorrect (b) in its collision with the correct as well… Webern is more radical than Schoenberg, Schoenberg is more daring… The daring is usually a discoverer; the radical is one who adopted a new discovery to a full extent and realized it… The daring discovered a but he isn't afraid to put a in some relation with b, that is, with the incorrect, even banal and trivial… Both Schoenberg and Webern were affected with a certain confusion of heart, but Webern, even while letting it into his art, kept it within the certain limits whereas Schoenberg didn't: hence all his failures and breakdowns, bad taste in his texts and sometimes, return to tonality. Yet even in his lack of taste and his failures something exalted and wise became apparent…"80. All the above said of composers appears to be true for the poets associated with them as well: "The same is true for Kharms and Vvedensky. Vvedensky made a distinction between art and life, Kharms didn't… This isn't better or worse: just two modes of life and art"81. Thus, in terms of Yakov Druskin, the difference between the "two modes of art" to which the comparison of Schoenberg and Webern "through the chinar prism" refers, is in its most essential aspect the difference between the art that admits "life" into itself, admits the primacy of life over art and therefore, being similar to life by its mechanism, is fraught with mistakes but endowed with a greater degree of freedom, - and the art detaching itself from life, "secluded", ascetic, striving for emptiness, "homeless"82, choosing the primacy of the spiritual over the carnal. Along with that, equal rights of both are affirmed: the point of view, as it seems, different from the obvious preference given by Adorno to Schoenberg's "inconsistent" line. The question is, however, why was it namely Vvedensky with all the mysteries of his creativity that absorbed Druskin so much: which may be confirmed both by special researches83 and by the tendency of appealing first to Vvedensky when the matter concerned both atonality, in every sense that Druskin attributes to it, and a notion so important to him as that of nonsense. * * * As it may be concluded from "Schoenberg and Progress", Adorno believes that "nonsense" is one of the principal features of atonal music. The "sense" of this music, says he, is concentrated within its structure and its internal equilibrium, whereas the sense of the artwork in general presumes relating its elements to something external84. As for nonsense, it appears to be the consequence of the abovementioned "total construction", and consequently also the companion of an "immanent seclusion": "If technical analysis shows that the striking moment of nonsense is fundamental for the twelve-tone music, then the criticism of dodecaphony can't be reduced to the fact that the artwork total and totally constructed, that is, crammed with interrelations collides with its own idea. The point is also that in consequence of the emerging nonsense an oeuvre becomes immanently secluded. Immanent seclusion consists in precisely those interrelations sense is extracted from"85 However, in spite of Adorno's criticism of "secluded art" and "total construction" it becomes apparent that the quality of nonsense that seems to be inseparable from them is endowed with a sort of a high virtue: and namely, it accompanies emancipation of the New Music from the traditional necessity of being built "in the image and likeness of language": "emancipation of music today is equal to its emancipation from verbal language, and it's in destruction of sense that its lights sparkle"86. Why is it important? An immediate answer is: "first of all, this emancipation concerns expressivity. Newfangled theoreticians believed that restoring an "absolute" music and dismissing its subjectively-romantic expressive element is essential. In fact it's dissociation of sense and expression that took place"87. It appears that the New Music owes one of its most important achievements to the quality that was best embodied namely due to Anton Webern's efforts! However, on the other hand, it isn't his method of treating "dodecaphonic technique" that Adorno doubts, asserting that "Webern strove to make language of it"88 after having pictured the "perilous difficulties" awaiting the composer facing the necessity of constructing his own, "autonomous" language89? If so, how can persistent criticism towards Webern come along with this "praise of nonsense"? First, let's answer another question: how much actual in this context are musings on "nonsense" often found in Druskin's texts? Is it just another coincidence? It seems that the answer may be found at least in the following entry: By means of nonsense as category Druskin binds together in a single movement all the cardinal currents of his thought, and at the same time comments on his basic philosophical and theological concept; a true absurd, according to Druskin, is absolute and therefore is a sign and a quality of the Divine: whereas any attempt to "make sense" of absurd relativizes it and hands it over to speculation within the limits of human mind91. It's remarkable that even in general terms development of the motive of "ontological nonsense" involves appealing to Vvedensky: "Vvedensky was engaged with nonsense since the early 20's. He used to say then: I'm interested in three things: time, death, God. In regard to time neither philosophers nor physicists could hitherto boast a satisfactory theory. Insoluble paradoxes, that is, nonsenses arise in the theory of relativity and in microphysics. Biologically death is comprehensible but death of rational creature is unclear and absurd… As for the third theme, that is, God: its incomprehensibility by human mind is quite obvious. All these are superrational nonsenses"92. The fact that time, death and God as chief aspects of the ontology of nonsense appear in the focus of namely Vvedensky's attention is obviously as non-accidental as concentration of Druskin's most extensive work dedicated to this subject, "The Star of Nonsense", namely on the creative heritage of this poet who, as we remember, is associated with Webern. As for the question whether parallel though proportionally incomparable attention of the two philosophers to the topic of "nonsense" is, in its turn, accidental, - let's compare Druskin's reasoning about the "fullness of times" with the following passages out of "Anton von Webern" referring to the problem of time and duration in the oeuvres of this composer: "Music… didn't wish to renounce the articulate arrangement of time, didn't dare to shorten it and sacrifice for the sake of intensivity what yielded to it easily as an extensive magnitude. That's why music could never realize the idea of lyrics unconditionally though this idea is present in it and is inseparable from it. Webern managed it; maybe it should be said: only Webern did [emphasis is mine – Ì.Ê.]"93. And further on: "Since tonal system was renounced… music's duration had, at least at first, to be shortened. Intensification of expression coincided with restriction of temporal extensivity. The necessity of overcoming and overriding time was inseparable from the fear of losing the purity of a moment crammed with expression in temporally more extensive, large-scaled and well-developed musical forms"94. As we can see, the problem of time and the moment of nonsense eventually cross here: at least within the limits of the problem of expression ("first of all, this emancipation concerns expressivity"!); and apart from the fact that this crossing directly concerns the peculiarities of Webern's creative method, it's easy to notice what sort of temporal characteristics are used here. Let's recall now Vvedensky's words in regard to the "intensive fullness of time": "the real time is an hour before death". Does Adorno consider broaching the subject of death necessary while speaking of Webern? As we could see, he does: though rather suddenly and almost furtively; let's return to what we've already cited: "Webern's musical minimalism is prepared by the necessity of expression that can't allow the self-sufficient phenomenon to take the place of a bearer of expressivity… An absolute sound of a soul disclosing it as a simple nature is, for Webern's music, an image and a likeness of a moment of death. Music embodies this moment following the legend of a soul, ephemeral and weightless, issuing out of body like a butterfly. This music is an epitaph. That's an essence of expressivity of Webern's creativity: he is entirely absorbed in attempts to imitate the rustle of movements of the ethereal, the non-material…"95. Thus, in the last lines of his epitaph to Webern Adorno not just broaches the subject of death but ties it very fast to the same problem of expression. Therefore, even proceeding from the assumption that Druskin, while ontologizing nonsense at the sign of atonality and deducing from it both time and death, treads other roads and pursues other goals, it's hard not to notice that in Adorno's discourse the same motives of nonsense, time and death are scattered but nonetheless obviously united by the topic of musical expressivity whose most perfect form Anton Webern strove to achieve. However, the matter is that Adorno doesn't want to ontologize anything, and this scattering is quite after his fashion. As a result, he reduces "nonsense" – once again, as is his wont – to its socio-cultural overtones, to the problems of public perception and rejection of the "advanced music". The "nonsensical world" 96 mentioned in the last, moving lines of "Schoenberg and Progress" refers rather to the problems of socio-humanistic than of gnoseological kind: the immediate context bears witness to it. And when Webern is mentioned in regard to the "resistance" his music met due to its radical sharpness, such words as "absurdity" and "nonsense" sound as no more than an echo of symptoms of listeners' or performers' unpreparedness<97. No matter whether Adorno isn't ready or isn't able to consider "nonsense" as something more ontologically essential, and especially taking account of Druskin's remark that "the star of nonsense is a flaw of life itself" 98, it's hard to get rid of the feeling that there is a sort of equilibrium with a slight flaw between these two philosophers. Considering that Druskin didn't put much interest in the problem of expression: maybe it's through this problem that the nature of this flaw might be comprehended? However, the problem of expression inevitably leads us to the notions of image and language. * * * Let's return to Lacoue-Labarthe's "Musica ficta". "Since the end of Renaissance, or even since the times of Petrarch and Ars Nova, at least since the modern in the modern sense of word appeared", writes he in the Foreword, "Western music in the course of at least three centuries will be defined mainly as musica ficta. And even the Viennese School, maybe with the exception of Webern, wouldn't put this definition in doubt"99. In the centre of the author's attention here is Richard Wagner or, more precisely, the "scenes" "made" to him by the four persons: the last but, it seems, not the least among them is Theodor Adorno. Since the sequence of these scenes isn't occasional but, as Lacoue-Labarthe confesses, corresponds to the history of his own attitude to Wagner100, - it would be pertinent to assume that Adorno's "closing scene" refers to Lacoue-Labarthe's actual position formulated as "hope on deliverance": meaning, in terms of both thinkers, the liberation of music from the tendencies that took their roots in subjugating music to the figurative principle, then were further promoted, through opera, as a claim to "representation of the sublime" in accordance with synthetic version of Kant's recipe, and eventually reached a sort of extreme in Wagner's construction of myth used afterwards for building up the notorious "political fiction" of Nazism. Which might presume that Adorno shares with the author of the "Figures of Wagner" not only dislike and distrust in regard to myth as both aesthetical and philosophical (and therefore fraught with political) argument, - but also, in particular, the hope that Anton Webern's music might point at one of the possible ways to the mentioned liberation. The first of these assumptions seems to be true: Adorno indeed demonstrates aversion in regard to myth under rather various circumstances. For instance, "Mythology of Being" might be mentioned: the chapter of "Negative Dialectics" where Heidegger is criticized, this time, for his alleged inclination to admit myth into philosophical discourse, and where the following sentence may be incidentally found: "the celebration of what is meaningless as meaningful is mythical"101. Similar attitude to myth may be found in Adorno's musicological studies as well: speaking, say, of Bach and Beethoven he declares: "The question which one of them is of "higher rank" is pointless; another thing to understand is that the voice of a subject that "came of age" sounds in Beethoven's music more distinctly than in Bach's, and the process of emancipation from myth and reconciliation with it, that is, the content of truth, attained far more remarkable results" 102. Let's notice that the notion of truth isn't alien to Adorno and moreover is directly concerned with "emancipation from myth": as, it might seem, emancipation of a subject itself is, since "the classicist oeuvres aren't convincing" due to their inherent imitation and stylization, Beethoven's late creativity represents the rebellion of one of the greatest artists of classicism against the deceit inherent in its own principle". However, the aversion of classicist stylization of myth appears to be a natural consequence of the aversion of any reconstruction of myth as such: "a rhytm of periodical returning of romanticist and classicist trends… betrays an antinomian character of art as such that appears to be most obvious in relation to its metaphysical claim to rising beyond time, to its frailty as just a human-made thing"103. And if "any ["proper"] art opposes mythology"104, and that's one of its most important tasks, it does inasmuch as it's dialectical: "by virtue of being dialectical works of art break with myth while breaking loose from the blind and abstractly dominant context of nature"105. Since music that shuns myth-creating and, as a consequence, "figuration" as a creative method, is supposed to be equipped with some alternative to the figurative expressivity, the "emancipation of expressivity" must have been in Adorno's eyes not the least of the virtues of the New Viennese School. "Dramatic music as true musica ficta", writes he in "Schoenberg and Progress", "during the period between Monteverdi and Verdi represented expressivity as something stylistically-mediated, as a semblance of passions… Schoenberg is quite different… His decisively radical feature is a change of the function of musical expressivity. His music doesn’t simulate passions anymore but registers within itself the inherent impulses of the unconscious, shocks and traumas without distortion"106. And it's namely to this quality of Schoenberg's school, to this manifestation of the rejection of visibility that Adorno's words cited in the "Figures of Wagner" refer to: "ban on images extents much farther then Schoenberg himself could imagine though he observed it more than anybody else"107. Hinting by implication at the content of Adorno's "scene" arranged by Lacoue-Labarthe, these words reflect also the fact that this scene was "made" not only, and maybe not so much to Wagner as to Schoenberg himself; and indeed, its core in fact consists of Adorno's reproaches aimed at the father of dodecaphony on account of Wagnerian methods he allegedly used in his operas: and in particular, which categorically emphasizes the motive of "ban on images", in "Moses and Aaron" where by virtue of the topic itself, the language of figuration – or, according to the formula of the author of "Figures of Wagner", "mythical drama with anti-mythological aim – must have been particularly out of place. Adorno, however, managed to see "sliding down to Wagnerian tendency" already in "The Hand of Fate", adding to his observation rather characteristic comment: "Schoenberg's own practice suffers from blending the unequal. It's burdened with poetical experiments he adds to his highly specific musical knowledge"108. Nonetheless, this obvious negligence towards "poetical experiments" isn't accidental. According to Lacoue-Labarthe whose book is actually built around the confrontation between music and poetry, nothing else but this negligence "fails" Adorno when he reproaches Schoenberg for "Wagnerian" belief in the unity of (musical) language109: since "cesura" that Adorno demands to introduce into the language of music has been in fact, as Lacoue-Labarth asserts, introduced by Schoenberg as a gap between music and word110, that is, the language of poetry. Regardless of whether this thesis is true it might be reckoned quite plausible: and not only because of Adorno's belief that "the musical language belongs to the kind quite different from that of the meaningful language"111. Noticed by the author of "Figures of Wagner", Adorno's "indifference" to text, marking his judgment of opera seems inseparable from his belief in some immanent imperfection of poetry in comparison to music, to which, it seems, at least the following sentence may testify: "Lyrical poetry that formulated it [expressionism – M.K.] ahead of music faced an obstacle at the very beginning: these were limits of an objective word that language is inseparably linked with: it's impossible to convert the word to the pure expressivity without oddments. Once poetry eliminates the notion, striving to become a sound and an image, it turns into the music that's but more meager and monotonous"112. It seems that for Adorno the principal difference between the musical and the verbal language can be more or less reduced to the thesis that the verbal is imminently constrained by meaning (or "sense") that can be, however, overcome in music: and that's what the "emancipation of music from the verbal language" actually aims at. The question is then: how much true is the assumption that this possibility of "overcoming the sense" is a unique quality of the musical language, and wouldn't it be pertinent to test it, at least in general terms, by means of the linguistic science per se? Appealing with this question to Claude Levy-Strauss' "The Raw and the Cooked" might seem reasonable at least inasmuch as he scrutinizes there both music and myth though the prism of linguistics: but our major interest is his quite structuralist reasoning in regard to the two "levels of articulation" (or codes) inherent in music as in any other language113. There's no doubt that Levy-Strauss occupies position quite unlike that of Adorno. It's obvious that his attitude to myth is completely different, as well as his views on the interrelations of music and myth; it would suffice to notice that Wagner, though associated with myth no less tightly, is nonetheless regarded in quite different words: apart from the fact that Levy-Strauss obviously doesn't regret "serving the altar of the god of Richard Wagner", "Wagner is undoubtedly the father of a structural analysis of myths"114. And while Adorno asserts that "works of art break with myth while breaking loose from the blind and abstractly dominant context of nature" the author of "The Raw and the Cooked" opposes both music and myth "in their symbolic intimacy" to the "natural and profane"115. However, this opposition of the cultural to the natural presumes also an intercommunication and a dialogue between them: and therefore it's precisely at that point, since language serves as a "tool of mutual articulation of nature and culture"116, that we come upon Levy-Strauss' criticism of atonal (in his terms usually "serial") music as a language. "In the hierarchical structure of scale", says Levy-Strauss, "music finds its first level of articulation"117. However, he is convinced in the "fundamentality" of tonal scale as a hierarchic basis of this first, basic level, as well as in the assumption that tonal scale owes its structure to the very "physiology, that is, nature": hence his irony towards "polytonal and atonal systems" that "confused but didn't finally destroy the ratio expressed by the difference between a tonic and a dominant"118. However, his main reproach concerning the "serial music" is that it, in his opinion, renounces in fact the "first level of articulation", "the defined structures", the basic elements organized into a system of "generally adopted code": while trying to get along with actions only slightly regulated by free organization of tones on the second, operative level119. An imminent conclusion is that even if we associate the New Viennese with their followers, serialists (Levy-Strauss refers mainly to Boulez) not without reservations (even Webern's creativity was more versatile, as Adorno himself notices120), direct relation is nonetheless obvious between the constructive efforts to autonomize the "second level" and the destruction of traditional structures of the first one. And Levy-Strauss confirms it in his own manner: creating music consonant to myth is incompatible with such methods. However, if the mechanics of interaction of levels, as he describes it, is relevant for any language, – then there are no clear reasons why this process of destroying the traditional meaning and sense couldn't take place within the verbal language as well as within the musical. In other words: in the face of ‘nonsensification’ as emancipation from the fettering tradition of sense both musical and verbal languages are actually equal. It seems to be the very thing to elude Adorno's comprehension: but if Schoeberg's alleged gesture of expression of religiosity by means of substituting music with text might be attributed to Lacoue-Labarthe's speculation, it ought to be admitted that Adorno seems to be quite certain that the alleged ability of musical language to express the sublime in a monotheistic-nonfigurative way should be explained by its fundamental difference from verbal language. In fact, if "religious aspect"121 Adorno speaks of really refers to some special quality of musical language – and special language, for all that – this must be a quality determined by nonsense. And, of course, this isn't nonsense comprehended as an absence of sense. Giving preference to Schoenberg's "dialectic recreancy" in the face of Webern's reductive consistency Adorno faces the obvious problem: it's hard to deny that Schoenberg's deviation from strict dodecaphony is inevitably fraught with "constructing types of expression and figurative rows" (joined with "callousness" of advanced music) as well as other symptoms of "sliding down into Wagnerianism", like those that Adorno criticizes Schoenberg's operas for. And although Webern, with his pure and "incorruptible" radicalism and his undoubted accordance to the "ban on images", not only avoids Schoenberg's faults but also manages to abstain from verbal expression that disturbs Adorno so much, - the last one doesn't seem satisfied: "hope of deliverance" is obviously vain. For all the possibility to explain Adorno's claims against "Wagnerianism" by purely political motivation it's necessary to admit that his distrust of word and moreover, his belief in truth, not just combined but directly linked to the dialectically-antithetical state of mind 122, appear to be quite genuine. Inasmuch as constructing autonomous language above the traditional structures is being denied in spite of the high goals of emancipation of expressitivity and expression of the sublime, dialectical "rejection of one's self" turns out to be an actual rejection of ascesis. * * * "Ascesis by whose means prose detaches itself from poetry, serves as a call for a song"123: these words of Adorno open the epigraph to the respective scene of the "Figures of Wagner": the epigraph containing, among other things, the first reference to the notion of the "author" the scene had about those special moments that allegedly differ music from other arts. However, an attempt to delve into the details of his comprehension of these special moments suggests that the problem here is exactly in the shortage of ascesis: of the same fundamental ascesis to which Adorno at some instant was ready to attribute "all the power of the new music". Comparing philosophically-musicological analysis of the New Viennese School performed by Theodor Adorno and Yakov Druskin regardless of each other, it's possible to notice many moments of proximity, including rather essential ones. Besides those mentioned above we could point at Druskin's solidarity with his colleague concerning the "secluded" character of Webern's (Vvedensky's) creativity opposed to the more open and flexible character of Schoenberg (Kharms); at Adorno's remark that "Webern once more multiplied the possibilities that Schoenberg uncovered for music, having surpassed him in his consistency"124 reflected in Druskin's reasoning about radicalism and courage; or even at such detail as distrust for Stravinsky shared by both philosophers alike125. The impression is that at least in regard to this specific subject there exists a sort of equilibrium between the two thinkers, in spite of the striking difference between their philosophical platforms. As for the slight flaw nastily disturbing this equilibrium - "the only definite thing that philosophy produced in 2000 years is a single question: how a slight flaw in a sort of equilibrium should be understood?"126 - it undoubtedly has something to do with Adorno's abovementioned reluctance to arrange the categories he uses, including the "nonsensical", within any ontology: contrary to Druskin synthesizing everything at the sign of the ontology of nonsensical. Let's remember, however, that in Druskin's terms an ontology of nonsensical (or, as he puts it, "arational"127) is actually an ontology of the Divine. From this point of view, when Adorno underestimates the key function of the nonsensical in the "self-emancipating" music, he misses its inherent moment of the divine, which means also the sublime that this music is supposed to be able to express: which is its alleged privilege in the face of other arts. What seems to be the most important premise of this dereliction is dialectical rejection of Anton Webern's creative credo, that is, rejection of ascesis embodied in music. Let's recall the words seeming to be incidentally dropped by Adorno in regard to Webern: "his creativity is religious… yet at the same time it's implacable in its refusal of all the ready-made forms of spiritual communion that, as he instinctively feels, destroys precisely what's truly important to him", and compare them with the following Druskin's observation: "ecclesiasticism and tradition materialize spirit too much…; anti-ecclesiasticism and non-traditionalism make spirit too abstract, bereaving it of its body"128. What could then explain the annoying fissure between the declared and the real ascesis? Maybe, dialectical approach to art is really inapplicable to the ascetic art: at any rate, inasmuch as it's expected to express the inseparable (it's another question whether it's also inexpressible), and it's possible that Drusking hints not for nothing that "the very opposition of i-function to e-function is e-function". However, the matter is also that the presence of a real notion of ascesis as a precondition to any reasoning about it demands real existential experience. Starting from the certain (and rather early) stage of his biography, Yakov Druskin, let's say it again, was notable for his extreme religiosity, not only in his philosophy but in his private life as well; individually predetermined, deeply ascetic variant of Christian faith that he strictly observed, strongly affected both his life and his thoughts, to which his Diaries often bear witness129. Yet his appearance also bore the similar imprint that grew more distinct with years: "in his old years he was ascetically lean"130, the brother Mikhail confirms; however, it would suffice to look at Yakov's photo-portraits of the last 20-30 years of his life: we'll take liberty to notice that mere comparing them to Theodor's portraits of the same age would make a primary demonstration of the difference between a speculative and a practical ascesis. In this sense, of course, the question whether Adorno minded the problem of ascesis as such while speculating on the "critical self-reflection"131 is no less speculative. "There are invented terms and experienced terms", asserts Yakov Druskin. "An absolute subjectivity is a term… it's my life that is no more mine"132. Remembering Adorno's critic of Hegel, remembering the "logic of disintegration", let's proceed quoting: "System shouldn't be entirely solid, that is, quite rationalized and consequent. This refers to life as well: there must be empty spaces, caverns, fissures. Then comes God and fills them in: then the system and system of life is alive and fruitful. Hegel left no fissure for God: that's why his system is dead. Absolute idea, its self-alienation, Meditierung, dialectics etc. are just surrogates of God, of the creation of the world, of the fall, of the redemption. He spoke of God but he spoke so much that nothing was left to God to say. That's why his system is dead: the fruit of human hands"133. Let there be no doubt: a "slight flaw", a "fissure" is not a logical flaw: it has nothing to do with logic at all: "Yearning for the absolute: hence a slight flaw"134. And that's what, it seems, helps to shed light on the entry made by Druskin in the last year of his life: "I wrote long ago that consistent logical transition of a certain thought or system to its end will arrive at tautology and contradiction to what was said in the beginning. Webern is lower than Schoenberg since he too logically ("with compasses and a ruler") brought Schoenberg's theory to its logical end… Vvedensky only outwardly resembles Webern: he avoided the mistakes of "compasses and a ruler" and logical completion of system"135. ***
REFERENCES 1 Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie. Aesthetic Theory, Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, editors, newly translated, edited, and with a translator’s introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor, London, Athlone Press, 1997. (Russian edition: Òåîäîð Â. Àäîðíî, Ýñòåòè÷åñêàÿ òåîðèÿ, Ì.: Ðåñ¬ïóáëèêà, 2001. p.22). |
