Adorno read Beckett’s darkness as collapsing hell and messianic condition together

Evidence

As if in haste, Adorno developed for literature as well the idea of a form of art that promised to achieve what seemed unattainable: the objectification of what was irrepressibly subjective, an anticipation of a way of socializing the invididual that would remain free of compulsion. There was no question of there being any pessimism in Adorno’s interpretations. He used Hölderlin to defend utopia against Heidegger. He read Beckett’s dark writings as representing the construction of a point of indifference at which the distinction between hell, where there is no longer any possibility of change, and the messianic condition, in which everything is already in its correct place, disappeared. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2254

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the earlier claim that Adorno wanted hope to emerge only in darkness (ch40), and anticipates later Negative Dialectics themes.
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘point of indifference’ where hell and the messianic condition coincide is one of Adorno’s most radical — and most contested — utopian claims.