the late stylelate style detected in the works themselves and the physical or mental ageing process of their author. The division of an author’s oeuvre into an early, middle, and late phaselate phase is based on such a connection, and even though a critical study may focus on an individual author, composer, or painter, if it makes use of this universalist division, the results are predetermined. According to Amir Cohen-ShalevCohen-Shalev, Amir, psychological life-spanlife span creativity research has shown that creative expression develops over the life course due to “psychological maturation” (“Self and Style” 298), and the differences between earlier and later phases are marked by the way in which the self positions itself in reference to its outer reality. Works by young artists typically show a “correspondence of self and style,” an “emotional lyricism” and “extreme subjectivitysubjectivity” in which “‘objective’ reality does not have an independent existence; it can be rejected, transformed by the author’s imagination, ignored or magnified, but it is always perceived and responded to from within” (295–296). In middle agemiddle age, in turn, “the need of individuals […] to carve a niche in their community” shows in a concern “with effectiveness in the broader social world [that] often leads to a search for objective information on the external environment” (296). In old age, finally, self and reality “come to maintain an uneasy coexistence” in which “[f]ragmentation by design, incompleteness, internal contradictioncontradiction and emotional ambivalenceambivalence loosen the boundaries between inner and outer realities and enable a two-way flow,” resulting in a “lack of distinction between fact and fantasy, autobiographyautobiography and invention, [and] prose and poetry” (297).
Cohen-ShalevCohen-Shalev, Amir uses these findings in his study on IbsenIbsen, Henrik rather convincingly (cf. “Self and Style”), providing in-depth insight into Ibsen’s works. Whether these three stylistic phases materialize in all artists’ oeuvres is questionable, however, and even if they do, determining their precise form will still pose problems to the critic. Mark TwainTwain, Mark, in his autobiographyautobiography, writes that when he “was younger [he] could remember anything, whether it had happened or not,” but as his “faculties are decaying” in his old age, he shall soon not “remember any but the things that never happened” (113). One could now easily match his statement with the “lack of distinction between fact and fantasy, autobiography, and invention” that Cohen-ShalevCohen-Shalev, Amir assigns to old age (“Self and Style” 297). Yet, the fact that Twain is able to comment on his alleged inability explicitly – and probably somewhat tongue-in-cheek – makes such a direct correlation problematic. Actually, Twain does distinguish between fact and fantasy here, even though he claims that he does not. Indeed, he seems to take up prevailing ideas of latenesslateness in literature or cultural notions of life-spanlife span development and twist them in his idiosyncratic manner, purposefully drawing attention to them rather than enacting them in a ‘natural’ way. Whether his statement can be considered an instance of late style is therefore questionable, unless late style is declared as consisting of a metaliterary reflection on existing concepts of lateness, as I have suggested above. Late style thus becomes a “‘see-through’ art where the tricks of the trade – the techniques of ‘make believe’ – are dropped and make way for an art of dis-illusion and de-sublimation,” as Cohen-Shalev suggests in the slightly different context of old-age styleold-age style in cinemacinema (Visions of Aging 15). It follows that one can indeed use insights from psychological life-span research to support the analysis of late style in literature but such inquiries must go beyond a simple matching of the theories with certain aspects of the literary texts under scrutiny.
As the above discussion shows, no matter whether one approaches late style from a universalist or an individualist point of view, the enterprise is fraught with difficulties. Hence, at this stage, one must ask why the concept of late style continues to flourish in literature. A possible answer is that the idea of late style caters to our need for an artist figure, and it does so for both parties: the authors who produce writing in late style and their public who reads late style into the texts. The authors, on their part, define themselves as worthy of esteem when producing a late work marked by stylistic extravagance. Their audience, in turn, can affirm their belief in personal agencyagency, as the works they read are testimony to a strong authorial figure who takes the liberty to pursue an individual stylistic approach in old age and thus proves to be in controlcontrol of his/her actions. The universality of late style, believed to be detected in many artists’ freedom to disregard conventionsconvention, is thus inextricably linked to individuality, as these artists decide to ‘have it their way.’ As will be outlined below, this artist figure is not connected to old age or late style in a natural way; rather, it is the result of the establishment of late-style theories. This movement began in the 19th century, but it experienced its most important development with Theodor W. Adorno’s lifelong project of describing Beethoven’s late work.
2.3 AdornoAdorno, Theodor W. and His Legacylegacy: Shaping the Late Artist
Much has been written about Theodor W. Adorno’s extensive, yet fragmentary treatment of Beethoven’sBeethoven, Ludwig van late style. This comes as no surprise, given the lasting impact it has achieved.1 Adorno began his project in 1937 with the publication of the short, four-page essay “Late Style in Beethoven,” which is still the most often-quoted and most widely discussed text in connection with late style, and, “although an early text, it contains in nuce nearly all the motifs that will preoccupy Adorno for the rest of his life” (Spitzer 58). Not only were Adorno’s essays and fragments on Beethoven’s late style extensively reviewed in the fields of musicologymusic, art historyart history, and literary criticism, but they also became (and were, for Adorno himself), a way of describing modernitymodernity, and, more specifically, modernismmodernism, which he saw as “a sharpening and intensifying of modernity, or a response to it” (Hamilton 391).2 Adorno held the view that Beethoven’s late work, which is commonly believed to comprise the works composed in his last decade (1817–1827), was a precursor of modernism, and its fragmentedfragmentation, non-compliant character showed the “exhaustion of artistic forms,” that is, “the character of all artistic activity in modernity, which thus begins its trajectory towards volatilization, abstractionabstraction” (Bewes 83).
Some of Adorno’s thoughts may nowadays seem outdated or merely ‘historicalhistory,’ especially since he wrote in a time in which the Great War (and later also Nazi Germany) had taken a toll on philosophyphilosophy.3 “It is undeniable,” Timothy BewesBewes, Timothy states, “that Adorno’s lateness is in some sense a temporal hypothesis” (84). However, while one must historicize Adorno’s thought and consider it at a distance from the current situation, critics should also identify those parts of his philosophyphilosophy that are “open to future transformation,” that is, the parts that contain a more general, non-historical truthtruth claim (Klein, Einleitung 10–11).4 In view of the breadth of Adorno’s own approach to late style (he combined musicology with Marxist philosophy, aesthetic theory and art historyart history) and the variety of academic fields in which his late-style theories have been received, this short section cannot possibly do justice to Adorno’s work on Beethoven. Therefore, rather than attempting to provide an overview,5 I shall single out a particular aspect of Adorno’s view on late style and the way it has been taken up by Edward Said’sSaid, Edward recent contribution: the figure of the late artist, which has indeed proven to be ‘open to future transformation’ (to use Klein’s phrase), as it is reproduced again and again and each time given a slightly different shape.
McMullanMcMullan, Gordon rightly states that “[i]f there is one inevitable outcome of work on late style, it would seem, that outcome is complicity with authorial self-fashioning” (16). It may seem odd that Adorno’s writing has resulted in such a strong image of the artist, since his aesthetic theory is based on the principle of an art that is autonomousautonomous art and his “conception of lateness was developed in fierce opposition to biographical criticismbiographical approach” (Bewes 84). He believed in the principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ and the idea that “music lost its direct social function with the ascendancy of bourgeois culture from the late eighteenth century,” when “aristocratic and church patronage declined, and non-functional ‘art music’ developed” (Hamilton 394). However, with this development, artists also became more independent