Theodor Adorno Quotes about Writing

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For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

Theodor Adorno

Writing, Men, Emigration

Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.61, Univ of California Press

Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

Theodor Adorno

Writing, Poetry, Auschwitz

Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.15, Stanford University Press

Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.

Theodor Adorno

Writing, Self, Long

"Cultural Criticism and Society". Essay by Theodor Adorno (1949), reprinted in his book "Prisms", 1967.

Suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. So it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible.

Theodor Adorno

Art, Writing, Suffering