Theodor W. Adorno, Elias Canetti. The correspondence
On 20 November 1961, Elias Canetti wrote to Theodor W. Adorno, who had invited him to Frankfurt University, “I cannot walk even the shortest distance but by myself”. The radio conversation held during his stay is legendary. The connections between Canetti’s Mass and Power and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, expulsion and exile are also the subject of the private meetings.
The tensions in the air are politely covered up in the respectful correspondence published for the first time in SINN UND FORM. The “volcano of resentment” that Canetti diagnoses in himself only erupts when he is talking to third persons. The writer Gisela von Wysocki, who studied with Adorno, and Sven Hanuschek, Canetti’s biographer, trace this irritating encounter. Manuscripts of the correspondence will be shown.
A co-operation between Literarisches Colloquium Berlin and SINN UND FORM