Poetry after Auschwitz – Adorno's Dictum

Referring to Adorno's ‘dictum’ is a diplomatic way of avoiding the discussion of what Adorno actually wrote. Two phrases, cut out from a compound sentence, are alternately, sometimes concurrently, put forward as his ‘dictum’: ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’; and: ‘It is impossible to write poetry after Auschwitz’. Out of context, both phrases, the latter one in particular, lose the problematic quality conferred on them by the argument put forward in the original text and, beyond that, in the author's writing as a whole. This article endeavours to establish this argumentative context and restore Adorno's verdict to its dialectic matrix.