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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2021
This chapter expands on Theodor Adorno’s account of the enigma in Aesthetic Theory in order to scrutinise further his paradox between the critical impulse and literature that does not ‘extinguish [its] enigmaticalness’. I explore the implications of this tension in relation to J. H. Prynne’s collection Acrylic Tips (2002), and its resistances towards signification. The difficulty of interpretation, I emphasise, is not coterminous with incomprehensibility. Subsequently, I analyse enigmatical poetics in examples of both mainstream and ‘innovative’ writing. Don Paterson’s ‘The Sea at Brighton’ from Landing Light (2003) contains moments of lyrical sublimity, but then pulls back from the ‘remainder’, distrusting any notion of ‘difficult’ poetry. In contrast, Geraldine Monk’s collection Ghosts & Other Sonnets(2008) emphasises the linguistic ‘clowning’ that Adorno laments will appear to some uninitiated readers of modern art as merely ridiculous verbiage.
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