O Freunde, nicht diese Töne

Adorno concluded his Minima Moralia with an essay contemplating the role of eschatology for critical thought:

The only philosophy that can be responsibly practised in the face of despair, would be the attempt to observe all things as they appear from the standpoint of redemption. Cognizance has no light but that which shines on the world from redemption: all else is exhausted in repetition and remains mere technique.

And even if we agree that: "Compared to the demand thereby laid upon [thinking] the question of the reality of redemption itself is nearly irrelevant," the question of what redemption looks like remains immensely important. From the standpoint of a redemption that is itself repetition of the existing the faults of the world are concealed, affirmed and reinforced, not brought into the light. But what are the predominating visions of redemption but repetitions of the existing? We are forced to ask as Schiller did in Shakespeare's shadows: "Why do you flee from yourself, when it is yourself you seek?" Even great works of art - or perhaps those especially - are not immune, the promesse du bonheur they utter tends to be as far from redemption as the world it is trying to flee. What is most noticeable about the great finale of Beethoven's ninth is that there is not one spark of tenderness to be found in the pompous fireworks of joy. Fleeing from the misery of the world one is struck over the head with it thousandfold. What Adorno wrote about Strauss in part holds for Beethoven:

The misery of the sunrise in Richards Strauss' Alpensymphonie is not caused merely by banal sequences, but by splendour itself. No sunrise namely, not even that in high mountains, is pompous, triumphant, majestic, but appears weak and hesitating like the hope that all might turn out well in the end, and in such inconspicuousness of the mightiest light lies its moving magnificence.

True redemption, whenever it appears, is hard to discern, not because it is hidden, but because it is fragile and tender, not to be perceived in the overpowering racket of trumpets and timpani, but at the border between sound and silence:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:20-21)

True redemption was captured by Mozart in Zauberflöte. Not in Die Strahlen der Sonne though, but in Papagena, Papagena, Papagena. There we can feel true grace, awarded to the weak not because of their merits but in spite of their flaws. Stubbornly adhering to a vision of redemption that is not and can never be earned Zauberflöte opposes the world in the name of a better, a world whose strenght lies in its frailty.