Timeliness and Lateness The relationship berween bodily condition and seshetic syle seems at first to be a subject so irelevant and perhaps even trivial by comparison with the momentousness of life, moral ity, medical science, and health, a8 to be quickly dismised "Nevertheles, my contention isa follows: ll of us, by virtue of the simple fact of being conscious, ae involved in constantly thinking about and making something of or lives, ellmaking being one of the bases of history, which according to Ibn Kha dun and Vico, the great founders ofthe scence of history, is «sentially the product of human labo ‘The important distinction therefore is that between the ‘alm of nature on the one hand and secular human history on the other. The body, its health, its care, composition, funeton ing, and flourishing, its illnesses and demise, belong to the ‘order of nature; what we understand ofthat nature, howeve, how we see and live it in our consciousness how we create a ‘ease of our life individually and collectively, subjectively a, Wella socially, how we divide it ito periods, belongs roughly ‘speaking to the order of history chat when we reflect on it we an really analyze, and meditate on, constantly changing its ‘Pape in the process. There are all sorts of connections between ‘He two realms, between history and nature, but for now Lfi ON LATE STYLE em apart and focus only on one wan to Keep them ap 7 O08 oF tag, isto eingmysel a profoundly secular person, Ihave fy been studying this self-making process through th; prblanaty eget human esodes common wf sand wdins, and itis the third ofthese pot that wane specifically to discuss inthis book. But for puns? clr etme quel summarize one and two. The nt the whol notion of pinning, the moment of bh si fin which nthe context of history ial the material shag tho thinking about how a given process, its establishments institution ie projet, and 000, gets started. Thiry years ana [published a book called Begioings: Intention and Metheg tout how the mind finds it necessary at certain tines tetospecvely locate a point of origin for itself as w how things bein in the mos elementary sense with bith In ls Hk hinny and the sudy of colere, memory and rege. tion raw sto the onset ofimportant hings—for example he begining of industalzaton, of scientific medicine, of he romani period, and oon Individually the chronology of di covery ine inpoctnt foe vito a it. Soe obec te Immanuel Kant who reads David Hume forthe frst time ad, ‘he says memorably, is briskly awakened from his dogmatic slumber tn Wenn literature, the form ofthe novels coin dencal with he emergence ofthe bourgeoisie in the late ¥- teeth century, and this why, for its first century, the novels all about bith, possible orphanhood, the discovery of roo sndithe cretion of anew world careeand society. Robins Crusoe. Ta ones. Tristram Shandy. ‘To locate a beginning in retrospective time is to ground * oj achas an experimen, o a governmental commis ‘€Dickene’ beginning to write Bleak House) in that moms hich aways subject eo revision. Beginnings ofthis et 96° EE res, Timelines and Latanese < i honns ta ie at aos Sa or oc all led neces hese rar at problematic i about the continu that crs “arta enn sc tno ec lectsgaseie tk ear al lasaiad eKhaya oe, ee sesllink WGA cass fod ae ieee nei a nando Shoes Sere ecified at oe GROUSE Se ete edo ot scurried Err sean istayereennny ieaeary ey kramer axl ommualy fa Guage lars os much whch the Enlace Clan Borat hows eee ibaash ty wha ga cate Dorduga e See cgeengin Se eoemen n pacar ot Acormnerrty Be soc) Other sete orm, ‘aa eal alrng/lw dr yori, cite hi us Nip) Sala of deco om ove aued per to human Il On thnks of Gal Joel naa rie ond Prices end The rel ke ‘that seem to break away from the amazingly persistent under- lying compact between the notion of the successive ages of man (rt Sakepene and sate relia of sad onthe, Torkbets sping epic at both nar alin our gee ln abot he page of humane thera ob tz abiding snes, by which mean hat what appr Pre aye mot tgeopa one sagen, ane versa, You will recall, for example, the stern biblical observa- tn two everthing thre ex ered tne ey ppm unde tc hevrenatinetobbomn ted soa, a “wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, aman could sien is wn woke ft ot‘ ON LATE STYLE tis portion: for who shall bring him to see what sha rieheous, and fo the wicked 0 the good and othe gg tothe unclean.” ie] In other word, we assume that the essential hea ‘human life has a great deal to do with its correspondence ey, time, the iting together of one to the other, and thei’ its appropriateness or timeliness. Comedy, for instance, ax, its material in untimely behavior, an old man falling in ing with a young woman (May in December), a8 in Moliée ang CChauce, a philosopher acting ikea child, a well person feign. ing ills. Bu itis also comedy a a form that brings abou te restoration of timeliness through the Kommos with which the ‘work usually concludes, the marriage of young lovers. 1 come finaly tothe lst great problematic, which for obvi cous personal reasons is my subject here—the lator late period ofl, the decay ofthe body, the onset of ill health or other fa- ‘ors that even in a younger person bring on the possibilty ofa untimely end. I shall focus on great artists and how near the «au of ther lives their work and thought acquires a new idiom, ‘what shall be calling alate style. Does one grow wiser with age, and are there unique qual ties of perception and form that artists acquire as ares of ‘ge in the late phase of their career? We meet the accepted ‘notion of age and wisdom in some last works that reflect 259 cial maturity, «new spirit of reconciliation and serenity ofea ‘pressed in terms of a miraculous tansfiguration of commot reality In ate plays such as The Tempest or The Winter? Tale, Shakespeare returns tothe forms of romance and parablé timilary, in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colomus, the aged be ® saa having Sally etained a remarkable hoot and sense of resolution. Or there isthe wellknown case Verdi who, in his final yeas, produced Othello and Falstfh ‘Timeliness and Latenss 5 ni as calbiepih cite tian woth Uh almeet youl energy that sts oan apothons fantstic creativity and power. a comnsaaler editions: ee cmabemmanubeaiaedae ns Se senanl spec ne aeatwnaioes Ssty wok snalatea hc wr aes Reaper at camaadeien Wa egrent stoi tno Satay aimee no") Dan's taste oa then whos fal works, expcily Whore Dead hun, Srecinainatant nnarke’ obese: cues Sevabensiing task std paren tobe eset perdi suppose mone beyond Fr rom oda, en Seto gia smebet ws py met alana Sti ig iiatbibed Cones ponte apa ure Esse sper inertia gealiy ste sean evs he th ti rp nema bare Td ep of act ye surfed dey asetng, Din ser eps fh po emerneetoreint annie meiner! toe al 4 vet of derayunprdecve pods pave ‘ay cad sa“ ce ey in ancy fagment ented “Spl Beethoven ted 1937 tndincladed in 1964 clacton of mail es Moments ‘maint, then gin in Eee on Mae peta pu lithe (555) bok on Bethoven! For Adome, far mre tha fc anyone ho has spoken of Berhovens It woes chow 4m Adornian sytem or method, In an age of specialization DE Timeliness and Lateness ES catholic, weing on virtually everything thar came before ws ois eur—music, philosophy, socal tendencies, history, one mia Aben ws sec ma seca anpyonceesie Ueoeied: siemeilin, nT 2 ado conene tingling. sa ever any kind of solace or false optimism, One of the oe sssions you get as you read Adorno is that he is a sort of impeetvichine decomposing itself ito smaller and smaller ane 1d the miniaturist’s penchant for pitiless detail: he parts. He hac Pfs out and hangs out the las blemish, o be looked at witha pedantic ile chuckle sens ahe Zeitgeist that Adorno really loathed and that all tis writing struggles mightily ro insule. Everything about him, I Taders who came of age inthe 19508 and 19605, was re- wo and therefore unfashionable, perhaps even embareass Te his opinions on jazz and on otherwise universally recog ized composers like Stravinsky and Wagner. Lateness for him uaed regression, from now to back then, when people dis sed Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Kafka with dre knowledge oftheir work, not with plot summaries or handbooks. The things he wrote about he sems to have known since childhood and were not learned at university or by fequentng fashion- able parties. What is particu he sa special ewentieth-century typ, the our-ofhisime lace- sineceth-cenrry disappointed or dullusioned romantic who exits almost eestaially detached from, yet in a kind ofcom- nlcy with, new and monstrous moder forms—fascsm, ant- Senitsm, totalitarianism, and bureaucracy, oF what Adorno called the administered society and the consciousness indus. He was very secular, Like the Leibnician monad he often discussed with reference to the artwork, Adorno—and with ‘im rough contemporaries like Richard Strauss, Lampedusa, interesting to me about Adorno is thatON LATE STYLE 4 ingly Eurocentric, unfashioy and Visconti—is unwaveri gly mnable, ap ve any assimilative scheme, yet he oddly ref, ve cament of ending without illusory hope OF manufac predi eae dit is Adoono's unmatched techy haps in the en sae significant. His analyses of Schoenberg's methay in The Philosophy of New Music give words and concepts yy the inner workings of a formidably complex new outlook in ‘another medium, and he does so with a prodigiously exact technical awareness of both mediums, word and tones. A bet. ter way of saying itis that Adorno never lets technical issues getin the way, never lets them awe him by their abstruseness or by the evident mastery they require. He can be more technical by elucidating technique from the perspective of lateness, seeing Stravinskian primitivism in the light of later fascist collectivization. Late style is in, but oddly apart from the present. Only cer- tain artists and thinkers care enough about their métier to believe that it too ages and must face death with failing senses and memory. As Adorno said about Beethoven, late style does not admit the definitive cadences of death; instead, death appears in a refracted mode, as irony. But with the kind of opu- ‘ent, fractured, and somehow inconsistent solemnity of a work such as the Missa Solemnis, or in Adorno’s own essays, the ae 2 oo lateness as theme and as style keeps remind-