Mats Morrman wrote:

>What influences do you find in the Ring for example?
>
>To me there are many influences, of those I would regard Bakunin, Hegel,
>Schopenhauer, and Wischer the most important.  The latter a reknowned
>brilliant Tuebingen writer, who usually brings much pleasure to read.  His
>main contribution is the have brought Wagners notice upon the Niebelunga
>Saga, and drafted the scenario of its cyclic form.  I recommend reading his
>1844 "Suggestion for an opera", which sheds light on the underlaying
>["proto-Schopenhauerian" is implied] ideas to the Ring very clearly.

You might want to go more into Wischer's background here - most people have
not heard of him.  You are right to point out that his outline for the ring
is extremely important, and it might well be worth going into a few of the
details.

>Other fuel for discussion might be Wagners relation to the other great
>writer of modern time; Goethe.  I would be very interested to hear about
>others opinions of Goehtes influence on the ideas in the Ring.  As far as
>I am concerned, Wagner, although he fell a little on short according to
>some eyewithnesses on topics of this kind, had read much Goethe.  I draw
>this conclusion in regard to the several similar elements in Wagners and
>Goethes works.  Probably, for example, Wagner might have known Goethes
>"Clavico" at the time for "Die Hochzeit" as the funeral scene in "Die
>Hochzeit" is a little bit too much of that in "Clavigo".

Goethe's influence was pervasive - he certainly knew Faust, which has a
tremendous similarity to Siegfried - only in reverse.  Faust is saved
because of his will, Siegfried killed because of it.

>"Rienzi" has paralells to as well "Goetz" as "Egmont"...

Good observation, one that Wagner himself admitted to obliquely in his
discussion of it.

>Tannhaeusers similar situation ...  brought him salvation", but somehow I
>don't think Wagner had wanted to hear that.
>
>So I will reply to some others contributions to this Wagnerthread as well:

A very German styled paragraph for readers of English!  but very well
argued.  And it lies at the difference between the two strains of the
romantic movement, present from its inception.  on the one had a classicist
strain, positive, reasonable, with an affinity for the sunlit antiquity
and purity of form, on the other hand gothicist - feudal, dark, with an
affinity for the folk and the forest.  the two were unified by the belief
that time naturalises, thus antiquity was naturalised by time into being
a ruin, and the folk art was a naturalisation by time of habit.

which again leads us back around to the question of blood and race in the
Victorian.  because, you see, in any organicist context there are two poles
which vie for supremacy.  one is a teleological view - that which things
strive twoards.  this view is allied with classicism and is found in
Aristotle and in its idealistic form Plato.  the other is the idea of
paternity or patrinomy - that all is where it comes from.

in Wagner's writing he collides head on with this problem - how to
reconcile these two irreconcilable poles.  alas he, like millions of
others, would vere towards the idea of patrinomy being determinant of
identity, and hence create the artificial problem of purifying the blood.
because, after all, if the blood is impure then destiny cannot be reached.
his obsession has a personal and autobiographical angle, and its expression
in art dramas is hard to deny, the entire plot of the ring hinges on the
question of purification of the taint of blood *and the impossibility of
doing so*.

but this is the virtue of art - it gives us breath and space, and the
ability to abstract a form from its nominal content.  Wagner might have
meant to, among many other things, address a racial issue, but because he
uses artistic terms in his musical dramas, as opposed to his essays, we are
free to substitute other definite ideas in the specific framework.

and who has not felt that their past damns their future? who has not
made a wrong decision out of guilt and sense of unworthiness? and what
is the answer within the ring's context? love and abnegation of desire for
physical objects - a message which is troubling if we feel we are bound by
Wagner's intentions, but untroubling if we are only bound by the art.

stirling s newberry
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