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Adorno – A Sketch by M.E. Stroughton
Roberto Wagemann was a magnificent elder man and his former young love Sandra hosted him from time to time in her west-end apartment in Frankfurt. Earlier there were better times, when they had shared this flat generously and more frequently. However, for now Sandra’s invitation came as a surprise and Wagemann happily agreed to come. He always loved this fourth floor flat which gave him a superb view over the balcony and through top-branches of some chestnut-trees to the bright sky over the shining cupola of the Frankfurt Synagogue. How often he had sat on this balcony in nostalgia, reflecting his earlier lonely days as a student. These were his old meager student days in Frankfurt, long before having befriended Sandra. He remembered these old Frankfurt times being quite a sour pass in his early student career.
Sandra received him in habitual form and perfect restraint; though it was quite clear to him that she would not mean to open a new chapter in their protracted relation.
“Frankly, I myself had lost all faith since long that you ever would have wished to come back to me!” he exclaimed with a smile after she had advised him to drop his small bag on the flour beside the bed in her sleeping room. She had opened the glass-door to the balcony, telling him that she would sleep in the library. So, what remained was a marvelously normal dinner with her favorite meat balls, matched potatoes, green salads and a bottle of great Bordeaux. As always Wagemann would start talking about the old times, movement, theatre, people they had met, and about Ruth their former mutual relation who now lived in Berlin and had come to great renown in the female section of admirers and critics among the broad circle of former students of Theodor W. Adorno, the Frankfurt philosopher of their time. The only reason why Sandra might have wished to see him would be, if he was still in crisis of having lost her and Frankfurt, and at the same time it became clear that he was not. But he always enjoyed these related themes of his student times in the early 1960s, the old views and nostalgic talks being never avoided at an occasion like this.
However, this time Wagemann irritatingly had put a strong hinge at their conversation about Adorno himself. “Sandra,” he said, as if he had never before touched this subject, “Adorno was so kind to me, imagine, since he knew that I was inscribed in the program of Oriental Studies, it attracted him. Adorno never divulged a sociologist interest in Orientalism. However, Wagemann had become to know of some dark stories about his faculty competition with the Chair there, which was practically established by Horkheimer, Adorno’s life-friend after his return from exile and the then Dean of Arts. However, the strange signature of the Arab teacher testifying my attendance in Arabic script, took on Adornos attention and he looked up at me as with admiration. “I loved him and I owe him a lot”, Wagemann said, as if Sandra would not have already known. Adorno’s sociology students, however, grew more and more into competing fights about knowledge and theory-background and his relation to Walter Benjamin. Wagemann seemed proud in never having become complicit with Adorno’s closest students who engaged in a fury of public debates. Sandra was hardly listening to Roberto Wagemann, these male games in Seminar-rooms, lecture-halls or even in the faculty councils were never of her like. Wagemann continued unperturbable: “Adorno was very disturbed about his student’s interventions questioning his stance toward “practice”, “revolutionary practice” of course. He, however, the professor being questioned, on “practice”, he understood this as a sort of intrusion into his private life, philosophically, he defended the field of substantial autonomy of the subject, and he felt attacked on his freedom and personal integrity.” Here, suddenly, Sandra got interested and raised her voice: “What could it be for this elderly man? Practice?” she asked, “didn’t he publish book after book, article after article? Never missing to deliver his lectures?” “I remember very well“, said Wagemann, “66 years he was, when these barbarians had given him enough, he dropped out, leaving Frankfurt lonesome and petrified for a discharging mission to Switzerland, the heavenly Matterhorn in mind: true beauty of nature!” “Yes, that was the only ‘practice’ and ‘agency’ they had left to him!” Sandra exclaimed, “They had turned him into a complete bag of nerves. I have read it in one of the more understanding biographies, wasn’t it there at the Matterhorn where he got a heart attack while moving up in a sedan-chair lifter. Where were you then”? Sandra asked, quickly she added, “Oh! I remember you had already left the scene, for the first of your most profitable exotic oriental jobs abroad!” Sandra tried to smile frivolously while Wagemann could not really follow the subtlety of her remark. “How often had I told you that I had nothing to do with Adornos terrible defeat in Frankfurt?”
They had finished the bottle of wine, and Sandra after offering a small coffee asked him whether he would like to read something before sleeping as it was his habit in past times. “Yes, perhaps! Perhaps, I will find something really diverting me, something unread, exotic, fantastic and great.”They passed over to the library and Wagemann wandered a few minutes about the long line of the shelves and it was not long that he found a German edition of Cervantes’ “The Exemplary Novellas”. “Well done!” they both agreed. Suddenly, in turning off the pages, Wagemann stopped and opening the story of The Two Girls, he exclaimed, “that should do for finding a calm sleep!” Sandra throwing a short look at the page, now left the room in sheer calm. Wagemann was not fond of wicked things; however, he found an uncompromisingly irritating love story between two girls and two young man travelling, meeting and hiding in a wilderness of families and towns between Salamanca and Seville in Spain. The story was so entangling from the start; Wagemann was confused and soon tired when suddenly the exotic “Adorno” appeared by name Marco Antonio. There were also two young women to whom he had promised marriage and they knew that Marco Antonio, here then appearing in his full name as Marco Antonio Adorno, with an aristocratic family background in Italy, was running off to Naples, and they were following him.
---
At this stage Wagemann stopped tired and aroused, he could not continue his reading of the story. The hero of Cervantes’ Novella reminded him of his teacher Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt. He remembered, and it was often rumored at times by the Adorno-students in Frankfurt, that he had changed his real name during the time of his exile in the United States. He had left as Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund; he had come back from exile as Theodor W. Adorno. There was a pause in Wagemann’s reading of Cervantes when he started to reflect about any possible connection between Cervantes’ Marco Antonio Adorno with his love affairs and the philosopher’s name change in American exile? No, he said to himself, it is a rather foolish idea. But still, before falling asleep Wagemann decided to get up early in order to follow up the case in more detail on next morning.
Roberto Wagemann was a magnificent elder man and his former young love Sandra hosted him from time to time in her west-end apartment in Frankfurt. Earlier there were better times, when they had shared this flat generously and more frequently. However, for now Sandra’s invitation came as a surprise and Wagemann happily agreed to come. He always loved this fourth floor flat which gave him a superb view over the balcony and through top-branches of some chestnut-trees to the bright sky over the shining cupola of the Frankfurt Synagogue. How often he had sat on this balcony in nostalgia, reflecting his earlier lonely days as a student. These were his old meager student days in Frankfurt, long before having befriended Sandra. He remembered these old Frankfurt times being quite a sour pass in his early student career.
Sandra received him in habitual form and perfect restraint; though it was quite clear to him that she would not mean to open a new chapter in their protracted relation.
“Frankly, I myself had lost all faith since long that you ever would have wished to come back to me!” he exclaimed with a smile after she had advised him to drop his small bag on the flour beside the bed in her sleeping room. She had opened the glass-door to the balcony, telling him that she would sleep in the library. So, what remained was a marvelously normal dinner with her favorite meat balls, matched potatoes, green salads and a bottle of great Bordeaux. As always Wagemann would start talking about the old times, movement, theatre, people they had met, and about Ruth their former mutual relation who now lived in Berlin and had come to great renown in the female section of admirers and critics among the broad circle of former students of Theodor W. Adorno, the Frankfurt philosopher of their time. The only reason why Sandra might have wished to see him would be, if he was still in crisis of having lost her and Frankfurt, and at the same time it became clear that he was not. But he always enjoyed these related themes of his student times in the early 1960s, the old views and nostalgic talks being never avoided at an occasion like this.
However, this time Wagemann irritatingly had put a strong hinge at their conversation about Adorno himself. “Sandra,” he said, as if he had never before touched this subject, “Adorno was so kind to me, imagine, since he knew that I was inscribed in the program of Oriental Studies, it attracted him. Adorno never divulged a sociologist interest in Orientalism. However, Wagemann had become to know of some dark stories about his faculty competition with the Chair there, which was practically established by Horkheimer, Adorno’s life-friend after his return from exile and the then Dean of Arts. However, the strange signature of the Arab teacher testifying my attendance in Arabic script, took on Adornos attention and he looked up at me as with admiration. “I loved him and I owe him a lot”, Wagemann said, as if Sandra would not have already known. Adorno’s sociology students, however, grew more and more into competing fights about knowledge and theory-background and his relation to Walter Benjamin. Wagemann seemed proud in never having become complicit with Adorno’s closest students who engaged in a fury of public debates. Sandra was hardly listening to Roberto Wagemann, these male games in Seminar-rooms, lecture-halls or even in the faculty councils were never of her like. Wagemann continued unperturbable: “Adorno was very disturbed about his student’s interventions questioning his stance toward “practice”, “revolutionary practice” of course. He, however, the professor being questioned, on “practice”, he understood this as a sort of intrusion into his private life, philosophically, he defended the field of substantial autonomy of the subject, and he felt attacked on his freedom and personal integrity.” Here, suddenly, Sandra got interested and raised her voice: “What could it be for this elderly man? Practice?” she asked, “didn’t he publish book after book, article after article? Never missing to deliver his lectures?” “I remember very well“, said Wagemann, “66 years he was, when these barbarians had given him enough, he dropped out, leaving Frankfurt lonesome and petrified for a discharging mission to Switzerland, the heavenly Matterhorn in mind: true beauty of nature!” “Yes, that was the only ‘practice’ and ‘agency’ they had left to him!” Sandra exclaimed, “They had turned him into a complete bag of nerves. I have read it in one of the more understanding biographies, wasn’t it there at the Matterhorn where he got a heart attack while moving up in a sedan-chair lifter. Where were you then”? Sandra asked, quickly she added, “Oh! I remember you had already left the scene, for the first of your most profitable exotic oriental jobs abroad!” Sandra tried to smile frivolously while Wagemann could not really follow the subtlety of her remark. “How often had I told you that I had nothing to do with Adornos terrible defeat in Frankfurt?”
They had finished the bottle of wine, and Sandra after offering a small coffee asked him whether he would like to read something before sleeping as it was his habit in past times. “Yes, perhaps! Perhaps, I will find something really diverting me, something unread, exotic, fantastic and great.”They passed over to the library and Wagemann wandered a few minutes about the long line of the shelves and it was not long that he found a German edition of Cervantes’ “The Exemplary Novellas”. “Well done!” they both agreed. Suddenly, in turning off the pages, Wagemann stopped and opening the story of The Two Girls, he exclaimed, “that should do for finding a calm sleep!” Sandra throwing a short look at the page, now left the room in sheer calm. Wagemann was not fond of wicked things; however, he found an uncompromisingly irritating love story between two girls and two young man travelling, meeting and hiding in a wilderness of families and towns between Salamanca and Seville in Spain. The story was so entangling from the start; Wagemann was confused and soon tired when suddenly the exotic “Adorno” appeared by name Marco Antonio. There were also two young women to whom he had promised marriage and they knew that Marco Antonio, here then appearing in his full name as Marco Antonio Adorno, with an aristocratic family background in Italy, was running off to Naples, and they were following him.
---
At this stage Wagemann stopped tired and aroused, he could not continue his reading of the story. The hero of Cervantes’ Novella reminded him of his teacher Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt. He remembered, and it was often rumored at times by the Adorno-students in Frankfurt, that he had changed his real name during the time of his exile in the United States. He had left as Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund; he had come back from exile as Theodor W. Adorno. There was a pause in Wagemann’s reading of Cervantes when he started to reflect about any possible connection between Cervantes’ Marco Antonio Adorno with his love affairs and the philosopher’s name change in American exile? No, he said to himself, it is a rather foolish idea. But still, before falling asleep Wagemann decided to get up early in order to follow up the case in more detail on next morning.
---
Came a quiet Sunday morning, Wagemann now allowed himself, with the support of Sandra, the lady of the house, to make use of her electronic devices and also took from the library; nothing more could be more suitable for now: Hartmut Scheible's rororo-monograph “Adorno”. Weichman was familiar with the text and had known the author from their old days together at the student-theatre. Against all the grudging suspicions, Scheible believed that it was the circumstances of the time and the mysterious way in which Adorno had become so active that provided perfectly acceptable reasons for his name change. For in addition to the sonorous, foreign sound of the word Adorno, the genealogical research had experienced a rapid upswing in the 1930s, when the young Adorno tried to approach the new times of the European spirit in Vienna, Paris and London, and it certainly became clear, even if not always preserved as a family tradition, that “Adorno” was the change of name, which was made due to the adverse circumstances of the time; more reasonably, he was able to inherit not only the musical, instinctive heritage of his mother and the spiritual care of his aunt, but also the real heritage of his mother's maiden name descending from the Italian aristocracy when he became an American citizen.
----
Came a quiet Sunday morning, Wagemann now allowed himself, with the support of Sandra, the lady of the house, to make use of her electronic devices and also took from the library; nothing more could be more suitable for now: Hartmut Scheible's rororo-monograph “Adorno”. Weichman was familiar with the text and had known the author from their old days together at the student-theatre. Against all the grudging suspicions, Scheible believed that it was the circumstances of the time and the mysterious way in which Adorno had become so active that provided perfectly acceptable reasons for his name change. For in addition to the sonorous, foreign sound of the word Adorno, the genealogical research had experienced a rapid upswing in the 1930s, when the young Adorno tried to approach the new times of the European spirit in Vienna, Paris and London, and it certainly became clear, even if not always preserved as a family tradition, that “Adorno” was the change of name, which was made due to the adverse circumstances of the time; more reasonably, he was able to inherit not only the musical, instinctive heritage of his mother and the spiritual care of his aunt, but also the real heritage of his mother's maiden name descending from the Italian aristocracy when he became an American citizen.
----
But one would certainly have misunderstood Adorno, both as a person and as a philosopher, if one had been completely convinced, as Wagemann was at first, that his thoughts and actions were dominated solely by this incomprehensible juggernaut of holistically intentional needles of rationalism. No, one would not have seen the change of name as having been carried out in the pure, planned act of rationally cushioned interest in something higher. Adorno was, as was well known, also able to deal more easily with questions of life order. If one believes his own account, he did not have the slightest intention of changing his name, there Wagemanns was completely wrong. For as he now had to find out, Adorno had come to the change of name, like the Virgin to the Child in the Bath, "through the stupid pedantry of the authorities' replacing his initials in America; they had simply left out the 'Wiesengrund', and thus Theodor Adorno was born, he let it happen and was pleased with his new name. Wagemann found this out in a letter quoted in the Scheible-biography - what was the principle, here the rational coherence or there a quasi-technical life casualness? Wagemann had known this, as he once proudly said, his teacher was an exemplar of a principled fighter. But he again remembered how casual, open, relaxed and funny he could have been specifically with women, and Scheible documented this quite clearly. This in fact, was Adorno’s nature, and Wagemann’s admiration was not in the least diminished on this point. Looking into the Scheible-biography, Wagemann remembered, there was this blonde woman with short, intelligently straight haircut who appeared in many picture-documents. Again Wagemann followed Adorno's affection with sympathy. Wasn't it so, he remembered, that when the young woman, usually arriving a little late with the gentle clatter of her high heels, walked carefree from the very back of the lecture hall and took a seat in one of the first rows, the famous philosopher's scholarly lecture almost seemed to take a new turn, at least if one was to believe the glowing eyes of Adorno now spilling out of his face now from over his catheter? But no, the flow of speech continued uninfluenced, even if at one point or another, in the flash of the white of his eyes, it made an effort to strike a new expressive tenor before a brief break. It was at the time, when Valèry's metaphor of a naked woman's shoulder appearing between two great ideas in the mind and seemed to bring light into the sad darkness of rationalism, was making its tour de frappe among students. No, one has to forgive Wagemann for linking this to the Cervantes story; he was feeling very moved by the thought of Adorno's potential instincts in seeing him connected with these The Two Girls of Cervantes. Wagemann, with the biography in his hands, identified this blonde woman. He had himself kept her image since a carnival ball in the early 1960's, oh, such a light, beautiful sight, she was, what a hopeful time, here now she can be seen in some of the Adorno photos in close relation to him. You have to subject these pictures to a comparative analysis, Wagemann said for himself. Times were changing and much later, oh, so sad, at a rally in May 1968 she can be seen sitting behind between Heinrich Böll and Adorno, strongly peering out, but otherwise it was almost in the same famous lecture hall of Adorno’s Di/Do 12-1 lectures which Wagemann remembered so well. Here, now she looked so sad that a certain tragedy of her relation to Adorno came to be apparent. (Could it be, reflected Wagemann, that it was buried in his concept of ‘Critique of Immediacy’?) This is how Wagemann saw it. And yet, that Adorno could be so light, so open, and Wagemann himself had noticed it so early in his first semester, with encouragement, because of that exotic Arabic entry in the study-book. So for Wagemann the image of that woman and Adorno’s reaction to ‘Orient’ remained so positive points onward with which Wagemann sustained always a very sympathetic attitude towards Adorno.
In any case, in this casual way of name changing, as in his dealings with women, Adorno must have lost the heavy German name "Wiesengrund". On closer inspection, so Wagemann was instructed, surely, what had happened had to be accepted. The change of name, Adorno wrote to his parents, was "always repugnant" to him, but also, he thought, "it is practical". For Adorno could be as self-critical in intellectual, almost judicial modesty as he could be hard and daring in the fight for principled positions (after all, they were the real, objectifying "concepts") and the tool for sustaining respect, one should not forget, hard and daring he was often enough.
Wagemann had followed these threads in Adorno’s biography the next morning, and cheered on by Sandra, the landlady after a blissful breakfast, he returned to the story about "The Two Girls" by Cervantes. There are quite a few names in it that are difficult to note, and name changes the top gamer of the time. Cervantes story amazingly starts with the outward transformation of the woman into man, especially, and of course Wagemann could not escape that, Theodosia the irrefutable great first love of the free-spirited hero Marc Antonio (Adorno) makes her first appearance as man named Theodoro. Oh, miracles there are however, and now also there appears a real woman as another great lover, who had once held a marriage vow on the part of Marco Antonio (Adorno) in her hands. Despite, however, she could not have ever felt the execution of that same vow. To anticipate the end of the story, she approaches the person, wounded to death, and demands the holy execution of the marriage on herself. Leocadia, the second woman in love with M. A. Adorno, when she urged him as a sick as he was, close to dying, and imagine, she called him jealously and wrongly: Marco Antonio Cadorno.
Really, Wagemann remembered, the Italians and Spaniards always make such slight flattering name changes, yes, and it's a constant game in many Comedia dell’ Arte pieces and comedy operas, he remembered how quickly one could be found turning from a Vittorio into a Vittorino, but turning an Adorno into a Cadorno? Was it a fallen Adorno, perhaps? What would it mean?
The narrator Cervantes leaves it at this mere naming and does not interpret the mistake any further; Wagemann, however, when reading on, secretly got the feeling that with this falsification, unspoken, the woman who had messed it up with the name had to lose all claims of love and accordingly the vow of a Marco Antonio Adorno.
And yet Leocadia, as she was called, the second woman in Cervantes' story - though almost a fallen woman herself - was saved without any further tragedy. Marco Antonio (Adorno), Cervantes' hero, the hero of happiness, the exceedingly beautiful man, stands up sovereignly in splendour and laid down all the signs of falsehood with which he had courted her. As he was laid down with a fatal battle wound, he had uttered this vow. And now, he slowly was saved, in fact, only by unspeakable circumstances. Then the truth broke out of him, and redeemed his true promise of first love to Theodosia. Oh! Adorno, what a fate, true love, it already came to mind now like a moral impulse.
Leocadia, the second one, even before she can slowly decipher the circumstances to the decisive point, was caught up in her love, so to speak, in such a favorable way, not without intensions, also because Marco Antonio, the son of a rich and noble gentleman, "who derives his descent from the ancient lineage of the Adornos from Genoa". Correctly, as Wagemann learned in "Meyer's Conversations-Lexicon for the educated classes", concerning the family history of the Adornos, they themselves had risen to a Doge-status in Genoa in the course of the 14th and 15th century, coming from a rich, middle-class merchant strata, smartly depending on the change of the political situations. After reading that family history, Wagemann said that we may well assume that the two Adorno sisters in Frankfurt, his mother and her sister, were so proud of their maiden name that they did not discard it, but rather attached themselves to the great son and nephew and gave him a hand in their lives. Certainly the two Frankfurt ladies also knew the corresponding lines in Meyer's Lexicon. Had they also known "The Two Girls" by Cervantes? Cervantes, at any rate, reported first of all, and Wagemann read it immediately, about the planned escape of Marco Antonio Adorno, son of Leonardo Adorno, on one of the galleys anchored near Seville, which were supposed to slip away, off to Naples.
As much as he had loved the progress of the Cervantes story with its surprising fateful twists and turns, Wagemann had remembered little of the details when he finished his reading and, after a Sunday lunch, resumed his reflections. Apart from the fact that we young people of high social standing, wealth and good clothing, in spite of moral misconduct and other blows of fate, make it to come to great happiness and the maintenance of marital bond, flourishing under the protection of family and church, there is only one new idea in the plot: the fallen ones, the real lovers, thus were happily accommodated. For Wagemann, however there was nothing new in the story. Do we not know that behind the scene, the noble ones are from this marker, that the absent state forms an idea 'state' even on the pure person? And yet from somewhere a free spirit still blew, a spirit, which could deal pragmatically with the misdemeanors of Marco Antonio Adorno and that of the two women as salvaging them from the casual sins of women? Not to forget here, of course, the help of a human being Calvete, who was always prepared to practice in practical reason: the muleteer Calvete, who followed the nobles through all their adventures.
Marco Theodoro Adorno, we already know this, after a stupid fight for the honor of men, townspeople and the people as such, he barely escaped death and won Theodosia, the sister of his friend Raffaele, as his wife. He generously left the love-bestowed Leocadia to Raffaele, his friend. But at the top of the rank of beauty, happiness and honor there remained Marco Antonio Adorno and his new wife Theodosia.
----
Is it really possible to have it bigger, more educated in thought, as a human, all too human solution? Wagemann reasoned. One cannot – at least not in times of Cervantes – renounce to cultivate the inner destinations of descent? But what happened with Adorno in America: Can one renounce such a real reference to ancestry when it becomes so casually to fly to reality, so "practically" to oneself? Wagemann murmured to himself lying on the sofa in the lunch-room covered with a spread, that Sandra had just been handed over to him, when the thought occurred to him that even such famous contemporaries of Adorno, such as the Romanists and the bearers of post-war European ideas, like the intellectually influential Ernst Robert Curtius and Erich Auerbach, had introduced Cervantes to the literary Germany as the European poet par excellence. Adorno would not be Adorno if he had not consciously and secretly set out on this opening path of deeply inward charisma and irrational self-reinforcement. Precisely because, yes, because it was so practical. Yes, "but it is practical" this change of name, as Adorno had said it in his letter to his parents, the Wiesengrunds and Adornos! Wagemann was now dreaming of Italy, the Genoese Adorno's, images of the beauty that was awakening out of itself in the nature at the Golf of Liguria!
Now already an early evening of a Sunday, Wagemann had reached this point in his dreams and told his solid and worthy hostess everything he thought he knew on this case.
"Yes, make something out of it," Sandra said, "and maybe we should know more about these two women!" "Oh!" Did he say, "Those two women? Yes, and the light, yet, the triumphing power of beauty? That would be a new, alonger story, if not it had ended before."
And so, Wagemann was exhausted, and yet remained full of hope at the same time he bid farewell from Sandra and Frankfurt.
In any case, in this casual way of name changing, as in his dealings with women, Adorno must have lost the heavy German name "Wiesengrund". On closer inspection, so Wagemann was instructed, surely, what had happened had to be accepted. The change of name, Adorno wrote to his parents, was "always repugnant" to him, but also, he thought, "it is practical". For Adorno could be as self-critical in intellectual, almost judicial modesty as he could be hard and daring in the fight for principled positions (after all, they were the real, objectifying "concepts") and the tool for sustaining respect, one should not forget, hard and daring he was often enough.
Wagemann had followed these threads in Adorno’s biography the next morning, and cheered on by Sandra, the landlady after a blissful breakfast, he returned to the story about "The Two Girls" by Cervantes. There are quite a few names in it that are difficult to note, and name changes the top gamer of the time. Cervantes story amazingly starts with the outward transformation of the woman into man, especially, and of course Wagemann could not escape that, Theodosia the irrefutable great first love of the free-spirited hero Marc Antonio (Adorno) makes her first appearance as man named Theodoro. Oh, miracles there are however, and now also there appears a real woman as another great lover, who had once held a marriage vow on the part of Marco Antonio (Adorno) in her hands. Despite, however, she could not have ever felt the execution of that same vow. To anticipate the end of the story, she approaches the person, wounded to death, and demands the holy execution of the marriage on herself. Leocadia, the second woman in love with M. A. Adorno, when she urged him as a sick as he was, close to dying, and imagine, she called him jealously and wrongly: Marco Antonio Cadorno.
Really, Wagemann remembered, the Italians and Spaniards always make such slight flattering name changes, yes, and it's a constant game in many Comedia dell’ Arte pieces and comedy operas, he remembered how quickly one could be found turning from a Vittorio into a Vittorino, but turning an Adorno into a Cadorno? Was it a fallen Adorno, perhaps? What would it mean?
The narrator Cervantes leaves it at this mere naming and does not interpret the mistake any further; Wagemann, however, when reading on, secretly got the feeling that with this falsification, unspoken, the woman who had messed it up with the name had to lose all claims of love and accordingly the vow of a Marco Antonio Adorno.
And yet Leocadia, as she was called, the second woman in Cervantes' story - though almost a fallen woman herself - was saved without any further tragedy. Marco Antonio (Adorno), Cervantes' hero, the hero of happiness, the exceedingly beautiful man, stands up sovereignly in splendour and laid down all the signs of falsehood with which he had courted her. As he was laid down with a fatal battle wound, he had uttered this vow. And now, he slowly was saved, in fact, only by unspeakable circumstances. Then the truth broke out of him, and redeemed his true promise of first love to Theodosia. Oh! Adorno, what a fate, true love, it already came to mind now like a moral impulse.
Leocadia, the second one, even before she can slowly decipher the circumstances to the decisive point, was caught up in her love, so to speak, in such a favorable way, not without intensions, also because Marco Antonio, the son of a rich and noble gentleman, "who derives his descent from the ancient lineage of the Adornos from Genoa". Correctly, as Wagemann learned in "Meyer's Conversations-Lexicon for the educated classes", concerning the family history of the Adornos, they themselves had risen to a Doge-status in Genoa in the course of the 14th and 15th century, coming from a rich, middle-class merchant strata, smartly depending on the change of the political situations. After reading that family history, Wagemann said that we may well assume that the two Adorno sisters in Frankfurt, his mother and her sister, were so proud of their maiden name that they did not discard it, but rather attached themselves to the great son and nephew and gave him a hand in their lives. Certainly the two Frankfurt ladies also knew the corresponding lines in Meyer's Lexicon. Had they also known "The Two Girls" by Cervantes? Cervantes, at any rate, reported first of all, and Wagemann read it immediately, about the planned escape of Marco Antonio Adorno, son of Leonardo Adorno, on one of the galleys anchored near Seville, which were supposed to slip away, off to Naples.
As much as he had loved the progress of the Cervantes story with its surprising fateful twists and turns, Wagemann had remembered little of the details when he finished his reading and, after a Sunday lunch, resumed his reflections. Apart from the fact that we young people of high social standing, wealth and good clothing, in spite of moral misconduct and other blows of fate, make it to come to great happiness and the maintenance of marital bond, flourishing under the protection of family and church, there is only one new idea in the plot: the fallen ones, the real lovers, thus were happily accommodated. For Wagemann, however there was nothing new in the story. Do we not know that behind the scene, the noble ones are from this marker, that the absent state forms an idea 'state' even on the pure person? And yet from somewhere a free spirit still blew, a spirit, which could deal pragmatically with the misdemeanors of Marco Antonio Adorno and that of the two women as salvaging them from the casual sins of women? Not to forget here, of course, the help of a human being Calvete, who was always prepared to practice in practical reason: the muleteer Calvete, who followed the nobles through all their adventures.
Marco Theodoro Adorno, we already know this, after a stupid fight for the honor of men, townspeople and the people as such, he barely escaped death and won Theodosia, the sister of his friend Raffaele, as his wife. He generously left the love-bestowed Leocadia to Raffaele, his friend. But at the top of the rank of beauty, happiness and honor there remained Marco Antonio Adorno and his new wife Theodosia.
----
Is it really possible to have it bigger, more educated in thought, as a human, all too human solution? Wagemann reasoned. One cannot – at least not in times of Cervantes – renounce to cultivate the inner destinations of descent? But what happened with Adorno in America: Can one renounce such a real reference to ancestry when it becomes so casually to fly to reality, so "practically" to oneself? Wagemann murmured to himself lying on the sofa in the lunch-room covered with a spread, that Sandra had just been handed over to him, when the thought occurred to him that even such famous contemporaries of Adorno, such as the Romanists and the bearers of post-war European ideas, like the intellectually influential Ernst Robert Curtius and Erich Auerbach, had introduced Cervantes to the literary Germany as the European poet par excellence. Adorno would not be Adorno if he had not consciously and secretly set out on this opening path of deeply inward charisma and irrational self-reinforcement. Precisely because, yes, because it was so practical. Yes, "but it is practical" this change of name, as Adorno had said it in his letter to his parents, the Wiesengrunds and Adornos! Wagemann was now dreaming of Italy, the Genoese Adorno's, images of the beauty that was awakening out of itself in the nature at the Golf of Liguria!
Now already an early evening of a Sunday, Wagemann had reached this point in his dreams and told his solid and worthy hostess everything he thought he knew on this case.
"Yes, make something out of it," Sandra said, "and maybe we should know more about these two women!" "Oh!" Did he say, "Those two women? Yes, and the light, yet, the triumphing power of beauty? That would be a new, alonger story, if not it had ended before."
And so, Wagemann was exhausted, and yet remained full of hope at the same time he bid farewell from Sandra and Frankfurt.
Nierstein
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Im Rhein, Mainz lag noch in Schutt und Asche
Da haben wir‘s gelernt,
Nicht gegen den Strudel zu schwimmen,
Aber auch nicht mit ihm zu versinken,
Sondern langsam, langsam seitwärts zu rudern
Und aufzutauchen
