Someone who has been offended, slighted, has an illumination as vivid as when agonizing pain lights up one’s body. He becomes aware that in the innermost blindness of love, that must remain oblivious, lives a demand not to be blinded. He was wronged; from this he deduces a claim to right and must at the same time reject it, for what he desires can only be given in freedom. In such distress he who is rebuffed becomes human. Just as love uncompromisingly betrays the general to the particular in which alone justice is done to the former, so now the general, as the autonomy of others, turns fatally against it. The very rebuttal through which the general has exerted its influence appears to the individual as exclusion from the general; he who has lost love knows himself deserted by all, and this is why he scorns consolation. In the senselessness of his deprivation he is made to feel the untruth of all merely individual fulfillment. But he thereby awakens to the paradoxical consciousness of generality: of the inalienable and unindictable human right to be loved by the beloved. With this plea, founded on no titles or claims, he appeals to an unknown court, which accords to him as grace what is his own and yet not his own. The secret of justice in love is the annulment of all rights, to which love mutely points. “So forever / cheated and foolish must love be.”

From Theodor W. Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, London: NLB, 1974 (first published in 1951), pp. 164-165.

Addendum (January 16, 1988)

If I remember correctly, this was written after the last contact with Ejti Štih, an old flame of mine from Ljubljana. She called me early in the morning, telling me that she would come to New York for a couple of weeks. She also needed some help concerning her tourist visa for the United States—a letter of invitation, I think. My wife brought the phone to the bedroom, where I was still lounging in bed and idly contemplating the muffled sounds of a Sunday morning. I was quite cold on the phone, both because my knowing wife was around and because the old wound had already healed leaving a bitter scar behind. Ejti said that she hoped to see me in New York, and I replied in kind. We were both lying.

When I met Ejti in the summer of 1978, she was only twenty-one. She was from a well-known Slovene artistic family. Her mother was a painter and a libertine of sorts. Her father was the director of a major theater in Slovenia. Ejti studied painting at the Art Academy in Ljubljana, and she also occasionally designed costumes for the National Theater there. Everything about her indicated that she was an up-and-coming artist to be reckoned with. That was how she was presented to me by my girlfriend, Vesna, who was no doubt impressed by Ejti’s pedigree.

I fell in love with Ejti practically instantaneously, and she knew it. This infatuation lasted for at least six months, but some of its manifestations trailed along for years. At first I tried to get her by hook or by crook, but to no avail. Then I just pined for her with surprising intensity, although I was already resigned to the fact that I would never get the better of her. I kept repeating her name every waking hour. The energy I invested into this lame love-affair was unprecedented in my experience.

We met several times in this horrible period. I went to her place twice or thrice, and she once visited me in the rented garret I inhabited at the time. We even went out for dinner once in the Ljubljana Pen Club—the focal point of Slovene intellectual circles. This was my attempt to show her to all my friends and enemies assembled there every evening, hoping for a fait accompli of sorts. Of course, this was meaningful only in the provincial atmosphere of the Slovene capital. Most often I would bump into her “by chance” in one of the small bars frequented by artists-to-be, where I slavishly waited for her day and night. On all these occasions she just played with me, feeding the crazy fire with a couple of amorous morsels at a time. Gradually she became bored with all this, too. Had I not returned to the United States in the summer of 1979, most likely I would have remained in her clutches.

It was hard to put one’s finger on what made Ejti so attractive. She was barely pretty, let alone beautiful. There was something boyish about her—her lanky body, her gait, her small breasts and tight buttocks. But she exuded girlish self-confidence; she appeared to be free from petty concerns of any kind, especially those that had to do with sensuality or sexuality; she acted as though the entire world was at her disposal forever. Although I had never been physically attracted to her, I nevertheless found her irresistible in her resistance.

Strangely enough, these recollections are somewhat pleasing now. It is all over, as the expression goes. I think I would not mind bumping into Ejti again and reminiscing with her about all this. Perhaps we would have a good laugh over a bottle of wine. After a full decade, I think that I would be able to talk to her without any ulterior motives. But that is something that may never come to pass, because it is unlikely that our paths will ever cross again. If I am not mistaken, she lives in Bolivia now. She comes to Ljubljana quite rarely, as both of her parents are already dead. When I visited Ljubljana two years ago I knew that she was there, but I simply did not feel like calling her. I wonder whether I would even recognize her after so many years. This year she will turn thirty-one.