Adorno held that Endgame’s dialogue advances by a musical, non-discursive logic.
Evidence
There could hardly be better confirmation of what Adorno had written in 1961 in his analysis of the play: The course of the dialogues … sounds as if the law of their progression was not the logic of statement and response, not even the psychological linkage of statement and response, but rather a form of listening to the end similar to that of music, a form of listening which has emancipated itself from prescribed types of discourse. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 553
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a play’s dialogue obeys a musical law of progression rather than conversational or psychological logic is a paradigm for reading modernist form as social critique.
- XREF: Directly extends the book’s earlier account of Adorno reading modernist music’s technical conflicts as symptoms of social disorder. — connects to: Adorno heard Endgame’s dialogues as governed by musical listening, not logic — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2241; Beckett builds Endgame’s minimal structure by parodying dramatic categories with musical-form principles. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 553; Beckett’s Endgame structures drama through parodic categories and musical form. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2240
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno heard Endgame’s dialogues as governed by musical listening, not logic — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2241; Beckett builds Endgame’s minimal structure by parodying dramatic categories with musical-form principles. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 553; Beckett’s Endgame structures drama through parodic categories and musical form. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2240
Broader Connections
- Adorno heard Endgame’s dialogues as governed by musical listening, not logic
#corroborates(0.97) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2241