Adorno once called his writings Flaschenpost, messages in bottles tossed into the 'flood of barbarism bursting on Europe' for the benefit of unknown future readers. The floodwaters have now mercifully receded, and the bottles sporadically wash up on foreign shores, thanks to intrepid translators taking on the challenge of Adorno's idiosyncratic prose. The first to make him accessible to an English-speaking audience was Shierry Weber, who, along with Samuel Weber, translated Prisms in 1967. A quarter of a century later, she has applied her considerable skills to Notes to Literature, which first appeared in German in three volumes (1958, 1961 and 1965) and, along with the material for a planned fourth volume, is now available in English.

LRB 10 June 1993 | PDF Download