A rare and uplifting event: a point of contact with another man through his text. As I was absentmindedly leafing through Max Frisch’s Sketchbook: 1946-1949,[1] and ruminating about my so far unsuccessful attempts to construct a single book from self-sufficient and unintegrable fragments that keep piling up with each significant turn of events but without any sign of convergence, one page, suddenly, attracted my attention. I read one of his fragments twice, and then rediscovered, with joy and something akin to comfort, the answer to the puzzle. But first Frisch’s words:

Every thought, at the moment we first have it, is completely true, valid, right for the conditions that gave rise to it; but then, when we express only the conclusion, without being able at the same time to define the extent of its relevance, it is suddenly hanging in the air, meaningless; and this is where falsehood begins, when we look around and start searching for analogues… (For words, even those left unsaid, are never able, at the time the thought arose, to capture in a moment all we know, let alone what we do not know…) So there we stand with nothing but a conclusion, remind ourselves that this conclusion was once completely valid, apply it to matters that themselves would never have given rise to this particular thought, overstep or at any rate shift the bounds of its validity—since we no longer know the extent of its relevance—and at once we have let in error, distortion, prejudice.[2]

And he concludes: “Or, put more shortly: it is easy to utter a truth, a so-called aperçu, of an unrelated kind; it is difficult, virtually impossible, to apply this truth, to recognize how far its validity extends.”[3]

Virtually impossible, indeed. We were thinking about the same thing at the same time, as it were. A miracle, all things considered. The point, however, is that his clear formulation of the problem led me immediately and painlessly to another truth, another aperçu, that for a moment appeared new and unprecedented: the “conclusion,” once recorded and thus fixed, immobilized, must be addressed again and again, perhaps for ever, through addenda, for example, until its validity is extended to our satisfaction, or, conversely, until it is discarded as irrelevant. The edges will no doubt remain rough, but the immediacy will hopefully be preserved throughout the journey.

And as I continued leafing through the Sketchbook, Frisch offered support once again, although less directly and less decisively this time:

We look forward to a journey, maybe for years, and once we are there the main part of our pleasure consists in knowing that we are a memory the richer. A certain sense of disappointment, not in the landscape, but in the human heart. The vision is there, but not yet the experience. We are like a film at the moment of exposure; it is memory that will develop it. At times one wonders to what extent we experience the present at all.[4]

Yes, and our task is to harness our memory, to employ it in developing the original vision. We can capture the immediacy of recollection, too. At this point I became aware of some of our differences, that is, of the emphasis in the procedure. On the one hand, his reference system extends in space, geographically, as he often returns to the same places. Cafe Odeon, for instance, is one such reference point, scattered through the Sketchbook. Lezigraben is another. My reference system, on the other hand, extends in time, or it at least places an emphasis on calendric time, as I return to the old notes with new hopes and fresh energies.

Of course, no sooner than I had a chance to clearly state my answer to Frisch’s criticism of my method, that is, to his self-criticism, it became obvious that I have succeeded merely in repeating myself, or in reasserting my previous commitments. What nevertheless survived this sobering moment was a deep affection for this man, of whose existence I had become aware only recently. A new friendship has been forged rather unexpectedly, as most friendships tend to be forged.

Addendum I (November 3, 1983)

The indissoluble “somewhere” is not to be radically segregated from the entity “I.”[5] Without specific recollections of places, including those that appear to be imaginary, the concept of place indeed becomes imaginary.

Addendum II (December 14, 1983)

Nor is the indissoluble “somewhere” to be radically subsumed into the entity “I,” however. The entire spatial order is at stake, as the underlying coordinate system threatens to collapse into a point. As Adorno writes:

Hegel, in the first Note to the first Triad of his Logic, refuses to begin with Something instead of with Being (cf. Hegel, Works 4, especially p. 89, also p. 80). The entire work, which seeks to expound the primacy of the subject, is thus in a subjective sense idealistically prejudiced. Hegel’s dialectics would scarcely take another course if—in line with the work’s basic Aristotelianism—he were beginning with an abstract Something. The idea of such Something pure and simple may denote more tolerance toward the nonidentical than the idea of Being, but it is hardly less indirect. The concept of Something would not be the end either; the analysis of this concept would have to go on in the direction of Hegel’s thought, the direction of nonconceptuality. Yet even the minimal trace of nonidentity in the approach to logic, of which the word “something” reminds us, is unbearable to Hegel.[6]

The idealistic prejudice, just like the materialistic prejudice implied in the radical segregation of the “I” from the provisional “somewhere,” can be circumvented only by means of a permanent balancing act. The residual edge provides the only desirable, albeit hardly comfortable, region for thoughtful action. What Hegel apparently abhorred, promises to be a point of departure.

Footnotes

1. Frisch, M., Sketchbook: 1946-1949, San Diego, New York, and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, 1983 (first published in 1950).

2. Op. cit., p. 156.

3. Loc. cit.

4. Op. cit., p. 85.

5. Cf. T.W. Adorno, “The Indissoluble ‘Something’,” pp. 135-136 in Negative Dialectics, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973 (first published in 1966).

6. Op. cit., p. 135, fn.