Adorno’s grouping of Beckett and Helms with serial composers rests on an imprecise claim

Evidence

The Hölderlin of ideals inaugurates the process which leads to Beckett’s meaningless protocol sentences [Protokollsätze]. It was misleading to speak of Beckett’s meaningless protocol sentences. Adorno was treating Helms and Beckett as equivalent to the composers of serial music, but was paying the penalty for this by not stating precisely what it meant to elevate to canonical status whatever was no longer possible. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 556

Categorization

• QUESTION: What exactly does ‘no longer possible’ mean when used to canonize a work — a blocked technique or a moral prohibition?
• XREF: connects to: Beckett pursued the same artistic absolutism as serial composers, beyond individual expression. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 553; Adorno ranked Beckett and Helms as serial successors to Kafka and Joyce — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2238; Adorno saw Young Music and serialism as complementary objectivisms crushing the subject — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2192 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Beckett pursued the same artistic absolutism as serial composers, beyond individual expression. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 553; Adorno ranked Beckett and Helms as serial successors to Kafka and Joyce — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2238; Adorno saw Young Music and serialism as complementary objectivisms crushing the subject — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2192 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno regarded Beckett and Celan as heirs of heroic modernism, not contemporaries of it. #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2727