August 2, 2006
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In memory of Wallace Stevens,
Presbyterian saint,
whose feast is today
The following are extracts from recent reviews of On Late Style, a book by Edward Said.John Updike on Adorno and Said:
“‘The Tempest,’ like Beethoven’s late compositions, refuses, in Adorno’s
phrase, to ‘reconcile in a single image what is not reconciled.’ Said
wrote, ‘What I find valuable in Adorno is this notion of tension, of
highlighting and dramatizing what I call irreconcilabilities.’”Edward Rothstein on late style:
“Late style, Said suggests, expresses a sense of being out of place and
time: it is a rejection of what is being offered. But listen to
Beethoven or Strauss or Gould: the music is more like a discovery of
place. That place is different from where one started; it may not even
be what was once expected or desired. But it is there, in resignation
and fulfillment, that late works take their stand, where even exile
meets its end.”The Jew wins.
