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Date: | Fri, 14 Jul 2000 18:36:09 -0500 |
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Larry Sherwood:
>John Cambre claims that although Wagner was "petty, vituperative and
>occasionally anti-Semetic", his art "show[ed] none of that". I don't
>believe that is true. True, perhaps his pettiness did not come through
>in his music. But Wagner endowed the nasty Nibelung in the Ring with a
>stereotypic Jewish physiognomy and features, and I suspect he intended his
>description to reflect his estimation of the Jewish people. FWIW I don't
>see Wagner as "occasionally" anti-Semitic: I think he was a thoroughgoing
>anti-Semite.
I also believe Wagner a complete, rather stupid anti-Semite. However, I
really don't see it in the Ring, or in any of his operas, for that matter.
Your *interpretation* of Mime may be that of the stereotypic nasty Jew and
I doubt Wagner himself would have disagreed with you.
However, there's nothing specifically Jewish about Mime, unless you think
all Jews are nasty, cowardly hypocrites. There's no scene in the opera,
for example, where Mime lights the Shabbas candles. Mime is a dramatic
character in a specific context. You can interpret him any way that makes
sense to you. As for me, I prefer to treat him in strict dramatic context.
I don't particularly care for the overlay of Hegelian or Marxist or even
Wagnerian interpretations on the action.
Steve Schwartz
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