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Punctuation Marks Author(): Theodor . Adorno and Shierry Weber Nicholsen Source: The Antioch Review, Vol. 48, No. 3, Poetry Today (Summer, 1990), pp. 300-305 Published by: Antioch Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4612221 . Accessed: 01/01/2015 11:29

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 1 Jan 2015 11:29:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BY THEODORW. ADORNO TRANSLATEDBY SHIERRYWEBER NICHOLSEN

he less punctuationmarks, taken in isolation, convey meaningor expressionand the more they constitutethe opposite pole in language to names, the more each of them acquiresa definitive physiognomic statusof its own, an expressionof its own, which cannotbe separated from its syntacticfunction but is by no means exhaustedby it. When the hero of Gottfried Keller's novel Der grune Heinrich was asked about the German capital letter P, he exclaimed, "That's Pumper- nickel!" Thatexperience is certainlytrue of the figuresof punctuation. An exclamationpoint looks like an finger raised in warning;a looks like a flashing light or the blink of an eye. A , says Karl Kraus, opens its mouth wide: woe to the writer who does not fill it with something nourishing. Visually, the looks like a droopingmoustache; am even more aware of its gamey taste. With self-satisfied peasant cunning, German quotation marks (<<>>) lick their lips. All of them are traffic signals; in the last analysis, traffic signals were modeled on them. Exclamationpoints are red, colons green, call a halt. But the [Stefan] George Circle was wrong in mis- takingthem for marksof communicationbecause of this. On the con- trary,they are marksof oral delivery;instead of diligentlyserving the interplaybetween language and the reader, they serve, hieroglyphi- cally, an interplaythat takes place in the interiorof language, along its own pathways. Hence it is superfluousto omit them as being su- perfluous:then they simply hide. Every text, even the most densely woven, cites them of its own accord-friendly spirits whose bodiless presence nourishes the body of language. There is no elementin which languageresembles music morethan in the punctuationmarks. The and the period correspondto the half-cadence and the authenticcadence. Exclamationpoints are

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 1 Jan 2015 11:29:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions punctuationmarks 301 like silentcymbal clashes, questionmarks like musicalupbeats, colons dominant seventh chords; and only a person who can perceive the different weights of strong and weak phrasingsin musical form can really feel the distinctionbetween the comma and the semicolon. But perhapsthe idiosyncraticopposition to punctuationmarks that arose in the earlypart of this century,an oppositionfrom which no observant person can completely dissociate himself, is not so much a revolt against an ornamentalelement as it is the expressionof how sharply music and language diverge from one another. But it can hardly be consideredan accidentthat music's contact with the punctuationmarks in languagewas boundup with the schemaof tonality,which has since disintegrated, and that the efforts of modern music could easily be described as an attemptto create punctuationmarks without tonality. But if music is forced to preserve the image of its resemblance to language in punctuationmarks, then language may give in to its re- semblance to music by distrustingthem. The distinction between the Greek semicolon [*], a raised whose aim is to keep the voice from being lowered, and the German one, which accomplishesthe lowering with its period and its hanging lower part and yet keeps the voice suspended by incorporatingthe comma-truly a dialectical image- seems to reproducethe distinc- tion between classical antiquity and the Christian era, finitude re- fractedthrough the infinite, althoughit may be the case thatthe Greek sign currentlyin use was inventedby the sixteenth-centuryhumanists. Historyhas left its residue in punctuationmarks, and it is history, far more than meaning or grammaticalfunction, that looks out at us, rigidifiedand tremblingslightly, from every markof punctuation.One is almost, therefore,tempted to considerauthentic only the punctuation marksin GermanGothic type, or , where the graphic images retainallegorical features, and to regardthose of Romantype as mere secularized imitations. The historical characterof punctuationmarks can be seen in the fact that what becomes outdatedin them is precisely what was once modernin them. Exclamationpoints, gesturesof authoritywith which the writer tries to impose an external to the matteritself, have become intolerable,while the sforzato, the musical counterpart of the exclamationpoint, is as indispensabletoday as it was in Beet- hoven's time, when it markedthe incursionof the subjectivewill into the musical fabric. Exclamationpoints, however, have degenerated into usurpers of authority, assertions of importance. It was excla-

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 1 Jan 2015 11:29:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 302 the antioch review mation points, incidentally, that gave German Expressionism its graphicform. Theirproliferation was both a protestagainst convention and a symptomof the inabilityto alterthe structureof languagefrom within; language was attackedfrom the outside instead. Exclamation points survive as tokensof the disjunctionbetween idea andrealization in thatperiod, and their impotentevocation redeemsthem in memory: a desperatewritten gesture that yearns in vain to transcendlanguage. Expressionismwas consumed in the flames of that gesture; it used exclamationpoints to vouch for its effect, and it went up in smoke along with them. Seen in GermanExpressionist texts today, they look like the multiple zeros on the banknotesprinted during the German inflation. Literarydilettantes can be recognized by their desire to connect everything. Their productshook sentences togetherwith logical con- nectives even though the logical relationshipasserted by those con- nectives does not hold. To the person who cannot truly conceive anything as a unit, anythingthat suggests disintegrationor disconti- nuity is unbearable;only a person who can grasp totality can under- standcaesuras. But the providesinstruction in them. In the dash, thoughtbecomes aware of its fragmentarycharacter. It is no accident that in the era of the progressivedegeneration of language, this mark of punctuationis neglected precisely insofar as it fulfills its function: when it separatesthings that feign a connection. All the dash claims to do now is to prepareus in a foolish way for surprisesthat by that very token are no longer surprising. The serious dash: its unsurpassedmaster in nineteenth-century Germanliterature was TheodorStorm. Rarelyhave punctuationmarks been so deeply allied with contentas the dashes in his novellas, mute lines into the past, wrinkles on the brow of his text. With them the narrator'svoice falls into an uneasy silence: the span of time they insert between two sentences is that of a burdensomeheritage; set bald and naked between the events they draw together, they have something of the fatefulness of the naturalcontext and somethingof a prudishhesitancy to make referenceto it. So discreetly does myth conceal itself in the nineteenthcentury, it seeks refuge in typography. Among the losses that are punctuation'sshare in the decay of language is the mark as used, for instance, to separatelines of a stanza of verse quoted in a piece of prose. Set as a stanza, the lines would rip the fabric of the language apart;printed simply as prose, the effect of verse is ridiculous,because the meterand the rhymeseem

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 1 Jan 2015 11:29:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions punctuationmarks 303 like unintendedwordplay. The moderndash, however,is too crude to accomplishwhat it shouldin suchcases. Butthe capacity to perceive suchdifferences physiognomically is a prerequisitefor the properuse of punctuationmarks. Theellipsis, a favoriteway of leavingsentences meaningfully open duringthe period when Impressionismbecame a commercialized mood,suggests an infinitudeof thoughtsand associations, something the hackjournalist does not have;he mustdepend on typographyto simulatethem. But to reducethe threedots borrowedfrom the re- peatingdecimal fractions of arithmeticto two, as the GeorgeCircle did, is to imaginethat one cancontinue with impunity to lay claimto thatfictive infinitude by costumingas exactsomething whose inherent intentionis to be inexact.The punctuationof the brazenhack is no betterthan that of the modesthack. Quotationmarks should be used only whensomething is quoted and if need be whenthe text wantsto distanceitself froma wordit is referringto. Theyare to be rejectedas an ironicdevice. Forthey exemptthe writer from the spiritwhose claim is inherentin irony,and theyviolate the very concept of ironyby separatingit fromthe matter at handand presenting a predeterminedjudgment on the subject.The abundantironic quotation marks in Marxand Engels are the shadows thattotalitarian methods cast in advanceupon their writings, whose intentionwas theopposite: the seed from which eventually came what KarlKraus called Moskauderwelsch [Moscow double-talk, from Mos- kau, Moscow,and Kauderwelsch, gibberish or double-talk].The in- differenceto linguisticexpression shown in themechanical delegation of intentionto a typographiccliche arouses the suspicionthat the very dialecticthat constitutes the theory'scontent has been broughtto a standstilland the objectassimilated to it fromabove, without nego- tiation.Where there is somethingthat needs to be said, indifference to literaryform alwaysindicates dogmatization of the content.The blindverdict of ironicquotation marks is its graphicgesture. TheodorHaecker was rightfully alarmed by thefact that the semi- colonis dyingout; this told him that no one can write a period[sentence containingseveral balanced clauses] any more. Part of thisincapacity is the fearof -longparagraphs, a fearcreated by the marketplace -by the consumerwho does not wantto tax himselfand to whom firsteditors and then writers accommodated for the sakeof theirin- comes, until finallythey inventedideologies for theirown accom- modationlike lucidity,objectivity, and conciseprecision. Language

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 1 Jan 2015 11:29:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 304 the antioch review and subject mattercannot be kept separate in this process. The sac- rifice of the period leaves the idea short of breath. Prose is reduced to the "protocol sentence," the darlingof the logical positivists, to a mere recordingof facts, and when and punctuationrelinquish the right to articulateand shape the facts, to critiquethem, language is gettingready to capitulateto whatmerely exists, even beforethought has time to performthis capitulationeagerly on its own for the second time. It startswith the loss of the semicolon;it ends with the ratification of imbecility by a reasonablenesspurged of all admixtures. The test of a writer's sensitivity in punctuatingis the way he handles parentheticalmaterial. The cautious writer will tend to place that materialbetween dashes and not in roundbrackets [i.., what is commonly called parentheses,( )], for bracketstake the parenthesis completely out of the sentence, creatingenclaves, as it were, whereas nothingin good prose should be unnecessaryto the overall structure. By admittingsuch superfluousness, implicitly renouncethe claim to the integrityof the linguisticform and capitulateto pedantic philistinism. Dashes, in contrast, which block off the parenthetical materialfrom the flow of the sentencewithout shutting it up in a prison, captureboth connectionand detachment.But just as blindtrust in their power to do so would be illusory, in that it would expect of a mere device something that only language and subject mattercan accom- plish, so the choice between dashes and bracketshelps us to see how inadequateabstract norms of punctuationare. Proust, whom no one can lightly call a philistine and whose pedantryis but one aspect of his wonderful micrological power, did not hesitate to use brackets, presumablybecause in the extendedperiods of his sentences the par- enthetical material became so long that its sheer length would have nullifiedthe dashes. The parenthesesneed more solid dams if they are not to flood the whole period and promotethe chaos from which each of these periods was wrested, breathlessly.But the justificationfor Proust's use of punctuationmarks lies solely in the approachof his whole novelistic oeuvre: the illusion of the continuityof the narrative is disruptedand the asocial narratoris ready to climb in throughall the openings in order to illuminatethe obscure tempsduree with the bull's eye lanternof a memory that is by no means all so involuntary. Proust'sbracketed parentheses, which interruptboth the graphicimage and the narrative, are memorials to the moments when the author, weary of aestheticillusion and distrustfulof the self-containedquality of events which he is after all only makingup, openly takes the reins.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 1 Jan 2015 11:29:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions punctuationmarks 305

The writer is in a permanentpredicament when it comes to punc- tuationmarks; if one were fully awarewhile writing, one would sense the impossibility of ever using a mark of punctuationcorrectly and would give up writing altogether.For the requirementsof the rules of punctuationand those of the subjective need for logic and expression are not compatible:in punctuationmarks the check the writer draws on language is refused payment. The writercannot trust in the rules, which are often rigid and crude; nor can he ignore them without in- dulging in a kind of eccentricity and doing harm to their natureby calling attentionto what is inconspicuous-and inconspicuousnessis what punctuationlives by. But if, on the otherhand, he is serious, he may not sacrifice any part of his aim to the universal, for no writer today can completely identifywith anythinguniversal; he does so only at the price of affectingthe archaic.The conflict must be enduredeach time, and one needs either a lot of strengthor a lot of stupiditynot to lose heart. At best one can advise that punctuationmarks be handled the way musicianshandle forbiddenchord progressionsand incorrect voice-. In every act of punctuation,as in every such musical cadence, one can tell whetherthere is an intentionor whetherit is pure sloppiness. To put it more subtly,one can sense the differencebetween a subjective will that brutallydemolishes the rules and a tactful sen- sitivity that allows the rules to echo in the backgroundeven where it suspendsthem. This is especially evidentwith the most inconspicuous marks, the , whose mobility readily adapts to the will to expression,only, however, to develop the perfidiousnessof the object, die Tuickedes Objekts, in such close proximity to the subject and become especially touchy, makingclaims one would hardlyexpect of them. Today, certainly, one will do best to adhereto the rule "better too few thantoo many." For throughtheir logical-semantic autonomy punctuationmarks, which articulatelanguage and therebybring writ- ing closer to the voice, have become separate from both voice and writing, and they come into conflict with their own mimetic nature. An ascetic use of punctuationmarks attempts to compensatefor some of that. In every punctuationmark thoughtfully avoided, writingpays homage to the sound it suppresses.

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