Conservative critics treated modern poetry as exotic abnormality rather than historical expression.

Evidence

The only explanation Friedrich could see for the fact that this revulsion manifested itself in the abnormal' way he described was that, with outstanding representatives of modernism, such as Mallarmé, it was a formmodern only in the tension it possessesof that dissatisfaction with the world which has always tended to arise in superior minds’. For the rest, he held that `a stylistic and structural compulsion characteristic of the era’ was operating. With its attempt at neutrality, this was the view of someone unable to see modern poetry as an expression of the experiences besetting him, unable to see it as the sundial of the philosophy of history, who saw it instead as an exotic phenomenon alongside which the established tradition remained undiminished in its validity. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2230

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the distinctive Adornian notion of modern poetry as ‘the sundial of the philosophy of history’ — art as a calibrated index of the historical moment.