He Who Has Laughter On His Side

The Human Is Indissolubly Linked With Imitation: A Human Being Only Becomes Human At All By Imitating Other Human Beings.

Tact Is The Discrimination Of Differences. It Consists In Conscious Deviations.

Culture Is Only True When Implicitly Critical, And The Mind Which Forgets This Revenges Itself In The Critics It Breeds. Criticism Is An Indispensable Element Of Culture.

What The Philosophers Once Knew As Life Has Become The Sphere Of Private Existence And Now Of Mere Consumption, Dragged Along As An Appendage Of The Process Of Material Production, Without Autonomy Or Substance Of Its Own.

Cultural Criticism Finds Itself Faced With The Final Stage Of The Dialectic Of Culture And Barbarism. To Write Poetry After Auschwitz Is Barbaric. And This Corrodes Even The Knowledge Of Why It Has Become Impossible To Write Poetry Today. Absolute Reification, Which Presupposed Intellectual Progress As One Of Its Elements, Is Now Preparing To Absorb The Mind Entirely. Critical Intelligence Cannot Be Equal To This Challenge As Long As It Confines Itself To Self-satisfied Contemplation.