Foreplay Hannah Arendt, the Two Adornos, and Walter Benjamin: A Play

90 Pages·0.42 MB·English

by  Djerassi, Carl

carl djerassi
was born in Vienna and immigrated to
the United States in 1938. He is the author of many literary
works—including Four Jews on Parnassus, Cantor’s Dilemma, The
Bourbaki Gambit, This Man’s Pill, and the plays An Immaculate
Misconception, Sex in an Age of Technological Reproduction: ICSI
and Taboos, Ego, Calculus, Phallacy, and Oxygen (coauthored
with Roald Hoffmann)—that have been translated into sixteen
languages. He is emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford
University and recipient of many awards and honors, including
the Serono Prize in Literature, the National Medal of Science
(for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive), the National
Medal of Technology, the Great Merit Cross of Germany, an Austrian
postage stamp issued in 2005, and the American Chemical Society’s
highest award, the Priestley Medal. Djerassi lives in San Francisco,
London, and Vienna.

Foreplay
by the same author
Fiction
The Futurist and Other Stories
Cantor’s Dilemma
The Bourbaki Gambit
Marx, Deceased
Menachem’s Seed
NO
Poetry
The Clock Runs Backward
Plays
An Immaculate Misconception
Oxygen (with Roald Hoffmann)
Calculus
Ego (Three on a Couch)
Phallacy
Sex in an Age of Technological Reproduction: ICSI and Taboos
Nonfiction
The Politics of Contraception
Steroids Made It Possible
The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas’ Horse
From the Lab into the World: A Pill for People, Pets, and Bugs
This Man’s Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill
Four Jews on Parnassus—A Conversation: Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem, Schönberg
Scientific Monographs
Optical Rotatory Dispersion: Applications to Organic Chemistry
Steroid Reactions: An Outline for Organic Chemists (editor)
Interpretation of Mass Spectra of Organic Compounds
(with H. Budzikiewicz and D. H. Williams)
Structure Elucidation of Natural Products by Mass Spectrometry
(with H. Budzikiewicz and D. H. Williams)
Mass Spectrometry of Organic Compounds
(with H. Budzikiewicz and D. H. Williams)
Foreplay
Hannah Arendt,
the Two Adornos, and
Walter Benjamin
Carl Djerassi
The University of Wisconsin Press
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Copyright © 2011
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the internet or a website without
written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief
quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Djerassi, Carl.
Foreplay : Hannah Arendt, the two Adornos, and Walter Benjamin:
a play / by Carl Djerassi.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-299-28334-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-299-28333-9 (e-book)
1. Arendt, Hannah, 1906–1975—Drama.
2. Adorno, Theodor W., 1903–1969—Drama.
3. Adorno, Gretel—Drama.
4. Benjamin, Walter, 1892–1940—Drama.
5. Interpersonal relations—Drama.
I. Title.
PS3554.J47F67 2011
812´.54—dc22 2010046467
These plays are fully protected by the author’s copyright and any filming, reading,
or performance of any kind whatsoever must be cleared beforehand with the author
([email protected]).
Cover photographs: Hannah Arendt, courtesy Peter Rüdel, Heinrich Böll Stiftung,
Bremen; Walter Benjamin, Foto Studio Joël Heinzelmann, courtesy Walter Benjamin
Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Gretel Adorno, courtesy Theodor W. Adorno
Archive, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft
und Kultur; Theodor W. Adorno, courtesy Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt am
Main and Suhrkamp Verlag.
Preface
Hannah Arendt (1906–75), Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69),
and Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) justifiably are considered
towering giants of the twentieth-century German intellectual
scene. Arendt, a famous political theorist, and Adorno, one
of the founders of the Frankfurt School of Social Theory and
internationally recognized sociologist, philosopher, and musi-
cologist, disliked each other intensely, but both admired, even
worshipped, Benjamin. Adorno’s life-long womanizing (openly
admitted to his wife Gretel, who even typed some of his love
letters) and his intense preoccupation with his dreams are well
documented, as is the range of the deeply personal and exten-
sive correspondence between Benjamin and Gretel Adorno. It
has also been claimed that Benjamin carried a briefcase with
him on his flight from France to Spain where he committed
suicide in September 1940. The briefcase and its contents
(though frequently speculated upon) were never found. Those
are facts, as is the relationship between Hannah Arendt and the
philosopher Martin Heidegger.
And why do I start with these facts in an introduction to
my eighth play? Because in preparation for my last book, Four
Jews on Parnassus—A Conversation: Benjamin, Adorno, Scholem,
Schönberg, I spent over three years on biographical research in
the archives and published literature of the protagonists. Prior
to that time, most of my literary writing dealt with the behavior
v
of scientists and their cultural tribal practices based on my own
knowledge as a working scientist for over half a century, which
I illustrated for a general readership in the guise of fiction. This
is why I coined the descriptive term “science-in-fiction” in order
to differentiate it from science fiction.
Four Jews on Parnassusneither dealt with scientists nor with
fiction, but rather constituted carefully researched biography,
which I chose to write in the rarely used dialogic literary format.
Why dialog? Because my life as a scientist has imprinted me with
certain tribal characteristics from which I wished to depart, one
of which is that dialog is not allowed nor used in scientific
written discourse. Yet from the time of the classic Greeks until
the seventeenth century, dialogic writing was a respected Euro-
pean literary format used by scientists (e.g., Galileo) as well
as humanists (e.g., Erasmus). Nowadays, it is virtually limited
to plays, which was the original reason why I turned to play-
writing some thirteen years ago.
The book, Four Jews on Parnassus, represented an interreg-
num in my literary writing in that I embarked on a historically
accurate biography in dialogic format in order to represent a
humanizing view of my protagonists. Once finished with that
book, I started to speculate about aspects of their personal lives
and actions, which I could only do if I discarded the shackles of
a biographer and assumed the freedom of a fiction author.
Accordingly, I chose the role of a playwright, focusing on the
theme of jealousy—professional and personal—that I had
encountered in my biographical research.
Hence, the nature and the depth of jealousy displayed by
some of the persons, the putative contents of Benjamin’s lost
grip, and the blackmail of my fictitious Fräulein X are pure
invention on the part of a playwright, who also happens to be
the author of a nonfictional, biographic account of my heroes.
vi Preface
Foreplay