03.25.21
"It would not be adequate even to say that the sterility of literary production is responsible for the sterility of criticism. The real reason for that sterility is the neutralization of culture, which points ahead like houses accidentally spared by the bombs and in whose substantiality no one really believes anymore. In this culture the critic who does not call the culture by its name necessarily becomes its accomplice and falls prey to the irrelevance of his objects, in which the historical forces of the age may appear in the material but hardly ever form the basis of the artistic substance."
"It would not be adequate even to say that the sterility of literary production is responsible for the sterility of criticism. The real reason for that sterility is the neutralization of culture, which points ahead like houses accidentally spared by the bombs and in whose substantiality no one really believes anymore. In this culture the critic who does not call the culture by its name necessarily becomes its accomplice and falls prey to the irrelevance of his objects, in which the historical forces of the age may appear in the material but hardly ever form the basis of the artistic substance."
—Theodor W. Adorno
from the appendix of Notes to Literature, Volume 2
from the appendix of Notes to Literature, Volume 2
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