ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Theodor W. Adorno's relationship to Samuel Beckett through parallels between their respective collected writings and the influence of Beckett on Adorno, broadly construed. It focuses on the specific role that Beckett played in the Aesthetic Theory. In a fragment on music and language from Quasi Una Fantasia, Adorno offers the following analysis: Music resembles a language. Adorno references Beckett on the "decay of material" in poetry in the modern era. One of the central literary influences on Adorno's theory of aesthetic mimesis is Beckett. The chapter elaborates Adorno's theory of aesthetic mimesis in Aesthetic Theory and then demonstrates his philosophy of language through the example of music, as the latter illuminates Adorno's striving for a language of "the new" aesthetically. It concludes with Adorno's analyses of Beckett in Aesthetic Theory in order to show the intricate relationship between Adorno's reading of mimesis in Beckett and his notion of a language of the new in his magnum opus.
