Mats Norman wrote in response to me:

>I just don't agree with him that "the whole meaning of the Ring cycle was
>Schopenhauerian".

I fear I have given you the wrong impression.  I argued that the
Schopenahauerian influence is critical in understanding Wagner but I fully
acknowledge that other philosophical elements co-exist in the work.  I
should have made it clear that I argued it was Wagner who came to feel that
the meaning of the Ring had been completely Schopenpenhauerian all along -
even before he had ever read Schopenhauer.

In a private e-mail I wrote to Mats:

>You have raised the question of just how Schopenhauerian Wagner's thinking
>really is and you mention the "Wahn" monologue from Die Meistersinger but
>this is a bit complex.  I think there is as much Hegel in the Ring for
>example as Schopenhauer.  That's a discussion point for another time I'd
>say.

I could write just as extensively if not more so about the Hegelian aspects
of the Ring.  I also accept that GB Shaw is absolutely right in that a
Marxist influence also exists, and that Alberich is also a scheming evil
capitalist.  However I agree with Wagner that the Schopenhauerian element
remains critical, even though it is not quite so all-dominant as Wagner
will have us believe.  If you only follow the Marxist strand then you will
find that the Ring does not make sense, which is what happens to Shaw.
The same thing will happen if you follow a purely Hegelian path.  But it
is still possible to understand the Ring from a solely Schopenhauerian
perspective (albeit one tainted by Wagner's ideas about Love and Death),
even if you appreciate it more fully if you take a pluralistic approach.
That's why I talked about the multiple philosophical dimensions of the Ring
(in a private e-mail to Mats).

I used to find the idea of redemption through Love hopelessly
un-Schopenhauerian, and strange.  Then it suddenly occurred to me that
this pure Platonic Love was something unattainable in life, and could only
be realised through Death.  Love and Death then come to coincide both in
the Ring as much as in Tristan.  Redemption through Love, and redemption
through Death become one and the same thing!

That is why Wagner wrote:

   We must learn to die, in fact to die in the most absolute sense of
   the word; the fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness and
   it arises only where love itself has already faded.  How did it come
   about that mankind so lost touch with the bringer of the highest
   happiness to everything living that in the end everything they did,
   everything they undertook and established, was done solely out of
   fear for the end? My poem [the Ring] shows how.

Wagner came so totally under Schopenhauer's spell, that he felt that
had expressed everything that he had intuitively known but had not fully
realised.  I just don't think it's possible to down play this too much at
all, no matter how unorthodox Wagner's interpretation of Schopenhauer might
seem.

>Wagner goes one step longer than Schopenhauer and claims that LOVE can be
>the healing for human, not the rejection of will to live.

Wagner makes it clear that acceptance of Love and that of Death are really
one and the same.  It is the burning power of an all consuming Love, a
Love in whose burning intensity the stale old world order is consumed that
redeems the world.  This redemption, is also a setting free, a granting to
Wotan of the Death which deep in himself was his last and deepest longing:
a longing granted to him by his wish-maiden, Bruennhilde.  THAT is why she
is his wish-maiden.

   WOTAN:
   Goetternot! Goetternot!
   Endloser Grimm! Ewiger Gram!
   Der Traurigste bin ich von allen!

   (The torment of the Gods!
   Endless rage! Eternal grief!
   The most sorrowful of all am I)

   BRUENNHILDE:
   ...Vertraue mir! Ich bin dir true:
   sieh, Brunnhilde bittet!

   (...Trust me! To thou am I true:
   behold, Bruennhilde pleads!)

   ...Zu Wotan's Willen sprichts du,
   Sagst du mir, was du willtst;
   wer bin ich, waer' ich dein Wille nicht?

   (To Wotan's Will speaketh thou,
   Tell me what thy will is;
   who am I, were I not thy Will?)

   WOTAN:
   Was keinem in Wort ich kunde,
   unausgesprochen bleib es denn ewig:
   mit mir nur rat ich, red ich zu dir.

   (What to none as word I utter,
   unspoken then shall it thus be eternally:
   with only myself I do I hold council,
   as I speak with thee.)

Thus Wotan says in Act II of Die Walkuere:

   The curse from which I fled still has not left me:
   I must forsake what I love,
   Murder whom I love,
   Deceive and betray he who in me trusts.
   Away then all the lordly splendour,
   Divine pride and shameful vaunting!
   Let it all to pieces crumble, all that I have built.
   My work I give up. Only one thing do I now will:
   The end ... The end!

That is why Bruennhilde IS his Will.  Wotan wills his own downfall and
Bruennhilde grants him the fullest possible fullfillment of this deepest
wish: consumption in the flames of Love.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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