Said's Unfinished Meditation on Late Style Published Posthumously

Edward W. Said's unfinished book "Du style tardif" (On Late Style) has been published by Actes Sud, completed by editor Michael Wood. The Palestinian-American scholar, founder of postcolonial studies and author of "Orientalism," died in 2003. The work explores Theodor Adorno's concept of Spätstil (late style), originally applied to Beethoven, as a new idiom characterized by tension without harmony or serenity—a deliberately unproductive productivity. Said controversially calls Richard Strauss's final works "provocative" against scholarly consensus. He interprets Mozart's "Così fan tutte" not as 18th-century flirtation but as a representation of a world stripped of redemptive schemes, governed by incessant movement and instability, with death as the only conclusion. Said draws a bold parallel between Jean Genet and Adorno, arguing both sought to dissolve identity, though the Frankfurt School philosopher lacked the French writer's scatological humor. The translation by Michelle-Viviane Tran Van Khai preserves both lightness and depth. Said viewed late works as a form of exile.