I love archives

by Yule Heibel on October 21, 2004

This is the sort of thing that makes my heart beat faster: Adorno’s personal archive — library holdings, papers, letters, even his piano — is moving to its own space in the Institut f

{ 2 comments }

maria October 23, 2004 at 9:22 pm

Holy s*! A letter a day would have taken him nearly 150 years of composing….

With all our web writing, what will become of our archives — should we become relevant in some odd, academic way some day….

How will our “letters” be amassed and counted in the future? Are we still writing as much as Adorno & company did?

Yule Heibel October 25, 2004 at 2:08 am

I know, the volume is daunting. Although I guess “50,000” also includes letters he received. Unless he typed and kept carbon copies (actually, Gretel his wife was obliged to act as his secretary, so typed letters are a distinct possibility), the letters he sent wouldn’t be in the archive (if handwritten) unless recipients returned them after his death in ’69 (which is a possibility, though).

Since you and I don’t have wives (especially not of the legendarily super-pliant and accomodating Gretel variety), our output is “naturally” (kof kof) curtailed…

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