Auerbach's command of languages have often made him seem inimitable. But they did not always come easily to him, and they were not exactly a result of training. They were a result of his temperament: his urge to learn what he needed to learn in order to write what he wanted to write.
Old-fashioned literary appreciation tends to look—well, old-fashioned. But I begin to wonder whether it is perhaps actually “retro” and thus due for a comeback.
My approach to the set of fields known as the Humanities is rather different from that of most people I know. I hesitate to assert the universal validity of my approach because it is, basically, a desire for everyone else to become more like me.
With the help of Bonnie Tyler's 1983 #1 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” I'm still trying to figure out what differentiates Adorno from what he calls cultural critics in "Cultural Criticism and Society."