Mahagonny

Author(s): Theodor W. Adorno and Jamie Owen Daniel

Source: Discourse, Vol. 12, No. 1, A Special Issue on Music (Fall-Winter 1989-90), pp. 70-77
Published by: Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389141
Accessed: 23-02-2016 22:05 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Wayne State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Discourse.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Mahagonny*

Theodor W. Adorno

The Rise and Fall of the Cityof

Mahagonny undFallderStadt
(Aufstieg
Mahagonny) is an "epic opera"
writtenby KurtWeill and Bertolt
Brechtwhichwas premieredat the
LeipzigOpera on March4, 1930.A
riot broke out during the first
performance,instigatedbyNazisor
Nazi sympathizersin the audience
angeredby the opera's profoundly
anti-bourgeoisand anti-capitalist
message.It was also performedin
in Octoberthatsameyear
Frankfurt
andinBerlininDecember1931,with
thesametumultuous result.

TranslatedbyJamieOwen Daniel

The cityof Mahagonny is a representationof the social world in

which we live, projected from the bird's eye perspective of an
already ( real) liberated society.Not a symbolof demonic greed
or a dream of desperate fantasy,absolutelynothing that might
signifyanythingother than itself:it is instead the precise projec-
tion of present-daycircumstances onto the untouched white
surface of thingsas theyshould be in the image of transluscent
banners. Mahagonnydoes not present a classless society as a
positive standard against which to compare the depraved
present;instead,fromtimeto timethissocietyshimmersthrough
just barely- as unclear as a movie projectionoverwhichanother
has been superimposed - in accordance with a recognition

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 1989-90
Fall-Winter 71

whichis capable, withthe forceexerted bythe future,of splitting

the darkness of the present withbeams of light,but which has
not been authorized to paint out a picture of that future.The
power of the futureis revealed, on the contrary,in the constel-
lation of the present.Justas in Kafka's novels the commonplace
bourgeois world appears absurd and displaced in thatitis viewed
fromthe hidden perspectiveof redemption,the bourgeois world
is unmasked in Mahagonnyas absurd when measured against a
socialist world which itselfremains concealed. Its absurdityis
actual and not symbolic. The present system,with its order,
rights,and mores, is exposed as anarchy; we ourselves live in
Mahagonny, where everythingis permitted save one thing:
having no money. In order to represent this convincingly,it is
necessaryto transcend the closed world of bourgeois conscious-
ness which considers bourgeois social realityto be immutable.
Outside of thisframework,however,there is no position to take
- at least for the German consciousness, there is no site which
is non-capitalist.Paradoxically,therefore,transcendence must
take place withinthe frameworkof thatwhichis. What the steady
gaze cannot achieve can perhaps be achieved through the obli-
que gaze of the child, to whom the trousersof the adult he is
looking up at seem like mountains, with the face as its distant
peak. The oblique infantile perspective, which feeds on
American Indian tales and stories of adventure on the sea,
becomes a means forthe disenchantmentof the capitalistorder,
whose courtyardsare transformedinto the plains of Colorado,
whose crises have turned into hurricanes,whose apparatuses of
power have assumed the formof cocked revolvers.In Mahagon-
ny,the Wild West (as children understand it in the context of
theirplay) is revealed as the immanent fable of capitalism.The
projection of realitythroughthe medium of the child's perspec-
tivealters it to such an extent that its basis ( Grund) is revealed;
it does not, however,transfigurethis realityinto metaphor but
grasps it simultaneouslyin its unmediated historicaltangibility.
The anarchy of commodity production which Marxism has
analyzed is projected as the anarchyofconsumption,abbreviated
to the point of a crass horrorwhich could not be rendered byan
economic analysis.The reificationof interpersonalrelationships
is evidenced in the image of prostitution,and whateverlove may
exist here can only burst forth from the smoking rubble of
adolescent fantasies of sexual power. The absurdity of class
privilegeis demonstrated (verymuch as it is in Kafka) through
the plot structureof a trial,at which the districtattorneysells the
ticketsas his own doorman. Everythinghas been subjected to an

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
72 Discourse12.1

evenly displaced optical perspectivewhich distortsthe surface

forms of bourgeois life into the grimaces of a realitywhich is
otherwisehidden by ideologies.
But the mechanism of displacementwhich is at workhere is
not the same as the blind displacement that occurs in dreams;
rather,it proceeds preciselyin accordance with the knowledge
which forces the comparison of the Wild West and the world of
exchange value. It is the knowledgeofviolence as the foundation
of the presentorder and of the ambiguityin which thisorder and
power confronteach other.The representativesymbols(Wesen)
of mythicpower and mythicjustice are frightenedup out of the
stone masses of the metropoli. Brecht names theirparadoxical
simultaneity{Zugleich).During the powerfulparody of the na-
tional constitution when the city is founded, the procuress
Leokadja Begbick bestowsher infernalblessingupon it:"But this
entirecityof Mahagonny existsonlybecause everythingis so bad,
because there is no peace and no harmony,and because there is
nothinganyone can believe in." JimmyMahonney,who urges on
the latent anarchywhich devours him along withthe city,later is
angry with her, and his anger is expressed through the same
curse in opposite terms: "Ah, no one will ever be happy
throughoutyour Mahagonny because there is too much peace
and too much harmony,and because thereis too much in which
one can believe." Both of them are saying the same thing -
because there is nothing to really believe in, because blind
instinct (Natur) is dominant, there is therefore too much to
believe in: justice and moral codes, theyshare the same origin;
therefore,Mahagonny (or the metropoli) must collapse. This is
expressed at one crystal-clearmoment: "We are stillinside it,we
haven't enjoyed anything.We vanish all of a sudden, and they
slowlydisappear as well."
The representationof capitalismis more preciselythatof its
surrenderto the dialecticsof the anarchythatis inherentwithin
it.This dialectic does not unfoldsmoothlyin accordance withan
idealistic schema; rather,it has intermittentelements which
cannot be dissolved in the process,just as the opera as a whole
evades a rational solution - the images of the dominant horror
which it projects are brought forthin accordance with its own
logic only to be collapsed again at the end into the social reality
whose origins theycontain.
These intermittentelements are of two types.On the one
hand, nature, the amorphous entitywhich underlies society,
plays its role. It intersectswith the social process and pushes it
forward.There is a hurricane,a naturalphenomenon, indicated

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 1989-90
Fall-Winter 73

on the map as a kind of bogeyman,and in the face of his fearof

death, the hero - this "Jim" - discovers "the laws of human
happiness" whose victimhe becomes. The turningpoint,which
grotesquely tears the historical dialectic from the context of
nature which until then had exerted an effect,is magnificent:
the hurricanecurvesaround the cityand continues on itscourse,
just as historycontinues on itscourse once it has found it.What
occurs during the night of the hurricane, however - what
explodes and, in the bewildered entanglementof anarchy,refers
beyond it - is spontaneous improvisation:the boisterous songs
in which human freedom is announced ("We don't need a
hurricane, we don't need a typhoon") and the antinomical
"
theology of Wie man sich bettet, so liegtman ' ["You make your
-
bed and you lie in it" trans.]. Thus, intentions( Intentionen ) of
freedom rise up, oblique and concealed, withincapitalism and
especially during its periods of crisis, and it is within these
intentionsalone thata possible futureis announced.
The form this announcement takes is that of intoxication.
The central positivescene in Mahagonnyis the scene of drunken
revelryin whichJim and his friendsconstructa sailboat froma
pool table and a curtain rod and sail the South Sea during a
stormynighttowardsan Alaska which borders on the South Sea;
"
for this, they sing the " Seemannslos ["song of the mariner's
lot"] , the immortalcatastropheof kitschwhich serves as a polar
starfortheirwobbling sea-sickness,and theyset the sails of their
dream journey fora sunnypolar-bearparadise. Quite correctly,
the mechanism which brings about the ending is brought into
the vision of thisscene; anarchyruns aground on the improvisa-
tion it engenders and which exceeds it.Jim can be forgivenfor
murder,bloodshed, and seduction, all of which can be paid off
in terms of law,justice, and money,but he cannot escape the
curtainrod and the threeglasses of whiskeyforwhich he cannot
pay and which,withinthis context,can never be paid forat all,
because the dream functionwhich theyhave assumed through
him can no longer be expressed in termsof any exchange value.
This JimmyMahonney is a subject withoutsubjectivity, a dialec-
tical Chaplin. Justas Chaplin eats his shoes, Jimmywants to eat
his hat because he is so bored once anarchyhas been regulated;
he followsto the letterthe law of human happiness which allows
anythinguntil he straysinto the net which has been intricately
wovenbya mixtureof anarchyand order and to whichMahagon-
nyactuallyowes its name as the "cityof nets" (Netzestadt) . He is
afraid before his death and would like to preventthe day from
breakingso thathe would not have to die, but when he finallyis

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
74 Discourse12.1

confrontedwiththe electricchair (which,more than anyimages

of the Wild West called up fromchildhood, is a naked emblem
of its culture) he sings " Laßt euch nichtverfüehren "
("don't let
yourself be seduced") as an open protest on the part of the
oppressed class to which he belongs because of the fact that he
cannot pay his debt. He had bought himself a woman and, to
make thingseasier forhimself,had requested thatshe not wear
anyunderwear.He asks her forgivenessbefore he dies - "don't
thinkbadly of me," he begs - and her contemptuous reply-
"What for?" - contains a greaterdegree of radiant reconcilia-
tion than all the novelistsof noble resignationput togethercould
ever come up with. He is no hero to the same extent that
Mahagonnyis no tragedy:he is a bundle of impulses and mean-
ings that intersect,a human being in all the scattereddiffusion
of his drives.He is byno means a revolutionary, but he is also not
a proper bourgeois or man of the Wild West. Rather, he is a
fragmentof productivepowerwho recognizes and exposes anar-
chyand mustthereforedie; a person,perhaps,who doesn't enter
into social relations, but shakes them all up. With his death,
Mahagonny mustdie, and littlehope remains: the hurricane has
been eluded, but salvationcomes too late.
The aesthetic form of the opera is that of its construction,
and nothing would be more incorrect than to read into it an
opposition between its political intention, which is directed
towards reality,and a procedural method in which that same
realityis not mirrored naturalistically, for the transformation
process to which is
reality therebysubjected is demanded by the
political desire to decipher what exists.Simplyreferringto epic
theatre doesn't tell us much about Mahagonny.It takes the
position of replacing a closed bourgeois totalitywith the frag-
mented conglomerate of itsdebris in order to take possession of
the fable which is immanent in the hollow spaces between the
debris,and to destroyit at close range bydint of itsown infantile
gold-digging passion. The form within which a disintegrated
realityis captured withouta betterone having been realized is
itselfnot permittedto take on the appearance of a totality.
Moreover, the instance of intermittencewhich profoundly
determines the dialectic of Mahagonnycan only be achieved
throughinterruptions.It appears, forexample, in the Moralität
of the second act where, after having been saved from the
hurricane,the darkblissofanarchyis referredto in fourallegori-
cal images (those of eating, sex, boxing, and alcohol), repre-
sentations of happiness which eventuallymust be paid forwith
an unreconciled death. But the intermittentformat work here

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 1989-90
Fall-Winter 75

is not thatof reportage,as is the case in the mania forparagraphs

which can be found in the playsof the new naturalism;rather,it
is more thatof montage. The debris of the disintegratingorganic
realityis constructivelycontextualized. The beginning and end
-
points of thisconstructlie in empirical reality between them,
it is autonomous, stretchedaround the prototypicalimages of
capitalism.Ultimately,itshowsus thatthese prototypesare totally
contemporaryand thus definitelyforce open the aesthetic con-
tinuum. I am reminded of the moment in Wagner in which the
Dutchman emerges beneath and, as it were, out of his portrait
- thissame logic is at workin Mahagonnys finale. When in the
same "Benares Song" the earth trembles for the newspaper
readers, it comes to a halt afterJimmy'sdeath, and God appears
in Mahagonny,an equivocal demiurge,whom theyobey down to
the last "no" which resounds from the hell into which he has
brought them, and against which the demiurgical power meets
itslimits.The woman who has been banished to the lowestlevel
ofthishell of "instinctualrelations" ( Naturzusammenhänge ) final-
ly expresses this "no," and the demonstrations moving away
fromthe burning Mahagonny,which erase the scene, begin.
More fundamentallythan through all of the montage and
any intermittently interspersedsongs, bourgeois immanence is
threatened by the forms of language and phantasy which, in-
dividually,recreate the oblique and frighteningperspective of
the child. Mahagonnyis the firstsurrealisticopera. The bourgeois
world is presented as being already necrotic through the mo-
ment of its horror,and it is demolished in the scandal in which
itspast is manifested.One instancewhich representsthiskind of
shock is the hurricane, a natural phenomenon which develops
and then disappears forno reason; another is the blurred exag-
geration of the eating scene of Mr. Schmidt,whose real name is
JackO'Brien [and Captain Marryat]and who eats twocalves and
consequently dies, whereupon a veterans' association sings the
dirge. The chalkyphotographic color of thisscene is thatof the
wedding photographs of Henri Rousseau; in their magnesium
light,the astral bodies of their previous underworld existence
visiblyattach themselvesto the bourgeoisie. Or thereis the scene
in the "Here You Are Allowed To" tavern "under a big sky"
which hangs above it like a glass roof, on which the cloud of a
gentle madness moves back and forth. The wild men of
Mahagonny dreamily follow this image which rises with the
anxious certaintyof memory.If nature alone, in the formof the
hurricaneor the newspaperearthquake,appears as catastrophic,
it is because the instinct-bound,blind bourgeois world,to which

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
76 Discourse12.1

the typhoon belongs in the same uncanny wayas the crises,can

only be illuminated and rendered alterable through the shock
of catastrophe. The surrealisticintentions of Mahagonnyare
borne (out) by the music,which,fromthe firstnote to the last,
is dedicated to the shock whichthe sudden representationof the
disintegratedbourgeois world engenders. Firstof all, it clarifies
the gloriouslymisunderstood Threepenny Opera, which existsas a
paragon between the firstversionof Mahagonnyand itsdefinitive
form,and shows how littlethe easily comprehended melodies
ultimatelyhave to do withsuccessfulentertainmentand rousing
vitality- these qualities, certainlypresent in Weill's music, are
only a means forcarryingthroughin the consciousness of man
the horror of the acknowledged demonology. Except for a few
polyphonic moments such as the introduction and a couple
ensemble phrases,the music economizes withthe mostprimitive
means; more correctly,it drags the worn out, shabby furniture
of the bourgeois drawingroom to a children's playgroundwhere
the undersides of these old commodities disseminate horror as
totem figures.This music, pieced togetherfromtriads and off-
notes withthe good beat of old music hall songs whichwe hardly
recognize anymorebut are nonetheless remembered as an heir-
loom, is hammered and glued togetherwiththe fetidmucilage
of a soggypotpourriof operas. This music,made up of the debris
of past music, is completely contemporary. Its surrealism is
radicallydifferentfromany NeueSachlichkeit ("new objectivity")
or new classicism. Its intentionis not to restore a ruined bour-
geois music, to "bring it back to life," as people love to put it
nowadays, or to freshen up the preteritwith recourse to the
pluperfect. Rather, its construction,its montage of the dead
renders it evident as dead and illusoryand extractsfrom the
horror which emanates from it the power of a manifesto. Its
improvisational, rambling, homeless élan originates in this
power.This conglomeration of broken shards (which have been
revealed as such), like only the most advanced music of a
material-specificdialectic - thatof Schönberg - deviates from
the space of bourgeois music, and whoevermightbe seeking in
it a collective experience like that to be found in the youth
movement will certainlytake offenseat it, even if all the songs
fromit run throughhis head over and over.
Therefore,the music is allowed to make use of triadsbecause
it doesn't believe in them; rather,it destroysthem through the
verymanner in which theyare used. This becomes apparent on
the level of the music itselfin the metrics,which distortsand
obliterates symmetricalrelationships as they are fixed in the

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Fall-Winter
1989-90 77

tonal chords, since the triads have lost their power and are no
longer able to constructa form- the formis, to a much greater
extent, assembled from them fromwithout.The form of the
harmonics itself corresponds to this principle, a harmonics
which hardlyrecognizes the principle of progression anymore,
or the tension of a leading tone, or the functionof cadence, but
instead lets go of the last trace of communication between the
chords which were the hallmarkof the later chromatics,so that
the resultsof the chromatic interactionnow are released from
anyfunction.In all of this,Mahagonnyizvexceeds the stage music
forTheThreepenny Opera: the music no longer serves [a function],
but itself is dominant, continuously set ( durchkomponiert )
throughoutthe opera, and evolvesin accordance withitsinfernal
measure. It has itsmodulations in both the insignificantand the
substantialat once. This is evidentabove all in the expressionless,
puzzling music of the duets betweenJimmyand Jenny,captured
in a song; it is present in the billiards ensemble, and at the
grandly conceived finale when the "Alabama Song," with its
"We've lost our dear old mama," appears as a gentle Cantus
firmusand, with the greatest scenic effect,is revealed as the
lament of the creature in the face of itsisolation. The "Alabama
Song" is certainlyone of the strangestpieces in Mahagonny , and
never has music been bettersuited to the archaic power of the
memory of the singingwhich once existed, was forgotten,and
then recognized in wretched bars of melody as in this song,
whose stupid repetitionsin the introductionalso redeem it from
the realm of dementia. If the satanic kitschof the nineteenth
century,the "lot of the mariner" and "a prayerto the virgin,"
are intentionallycited and paraphrased, this is not done as a
literaryjoke;rather,itdelineates the borderline of a music which
makes its way through a region, even without naming it, and
which only in caesurae speaks the name of thatwhich no longer
has any power over it.
Mahler is strangelypresentthroughoutthe opera, in itsfairy
, its gloomy major-minorkeys.As in Mahler, it
tales, its ostinato
makes use of the explosive forceof the lowerelements to destroy
those of the middle range in order to participate in the higher
ones. It tears down the images which are present in it, not to
proceed into emptiness,but to redeem the spoils forthe banners
of its own undertaking.
- 1930
*FromTheodorW.Adorno,Moments © SuhrkampVerlag
Musicaux,
am Main 1964,1982.
Frankfurt

This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:05:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions