ABSTRACT
This chapter describes "Late Style" in reference to Edward Said's posthumous collection of essays On Late Style, Music and Literature Against the Grain. It explores the notion of "lateness" in the works of an eclectic selection of composers, musicians, and writers, showing "how near the end of their lives their work and thought acquires a new idiom". Inspired by Theodor Adorno's reflections on Beethoven's final period, Said identified an "experience of late style that involves a non-harmonious, non-serene tension, and above all, a sort of deliberately unproductive productiveness going against. The artistic lateness described by Said is not about maturity and serenity, but quite the opposite: "intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction. A sense of lateness definitely characterizes Viollet-le-Duc after 1870. The most outward sign of Viollet-le-Duc's new disposition is his flight into nature. In his introduction to On Late Style, Michael Wood quotes from Said's lecture notes: Conversion of time into space.
