Adorno and Valéry: The origins of an inseparable nexus

Abstract

This essay explores the theoretical nexus between Adorno and Valéry, arguing that their relationship is not one of derivation or borrowing but rather an inseparable consonance rooted in shared conceptual moves. The analysis traces the origins of this nexus, examining how Adorno immediately recognized in Valéry's interweaving of poetry and theory (Dichtung und Theorie) a dialectic of spiritualization that becomes central to his own aesthetic thought. Also, through the catalytic force generated by Adorno's confrontation with Benjamin around 1936, Adorno discovered in Valéry a "second degree materialism" that locates material contradiction within pure form itself, making spirit a kind of material consumed by the very process of aesthetic configuration. Valéry emerges as the Artist – not merely the Künstler but the acrobat of form who, through rigorous submission to the Sache, reveals how absolute spiritualization exposes its own material constraints. This ambivalent figure, politically conservative yet dialectically revolutionary, becomes for Adorno the deputy (Statthalter) of a humanity redeemed through aesthetic wholeness, pointing toward art's transcendence of itself into the true life of human beings.