Adorno recruited Beckett’s Endgame as an artistic ally of Critical Theory in 1958.

Evidence

In the spring of 1958, on returning from a trip to Vienna, he wrote to Horkheimer, `My most significant artistic impression was of a literally magnificent production of Beckett’s Endgame. This is really a significant text which you absolutely must readif only because some of its intentions are closely connected with ours. And it’s correspondingly uncomfortable, so much so that there was booing.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 552

Categorization

• XREF: The letter’s ‘intentions closely connected with ours’ ties Beckett directly to the Horkheimer-Adorno program, later formalized in Adorno’s Endgame essay. — connects to: Adorno regarded Beckett and Celan as heirs of heroic modernism, not contemporaries of it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2727
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno regarded Beckett and Celan as heirs of heroic modernism, not contemporaries of it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2727