Wagner and Thomas Mann
   - Ambivalence and Contradiction -

Even amongst German authors, with the notable exception of Carl Dahlhaus,
there exists as amongst English language commentators a similar tendency
to bring out the cudgels against Wagner, even though here the arguments
levelled against him are often infinitely more subtle they have much the
same effect.

Thomas Mann writes in a letter written in English to the editor of 'Common
Sense' (January,1940):

   Essentially the German spirit lacks social and political interest.
   ...
   National Socialism means: I do not care for the social issue at all.
   What I want is the folk-tale.<<This formulation, to be sure, is the
   mildest, the most intellectual. The fact that in reality National
   Socialism is also filthy barbarism springs from that other fact that
   in the realm of politics fairy tales become lies.
   ...
   National Socialism, in all its ineffable empirical vileness, is the
   tragic consequence of the mythical political innocence of the German
   spirit. I find an element of Nazism not only in Wagner's questionable
   literature; I find it also in his music<, in his work, similarly
   questionable, though in a loftier sense - albeit I have so loved
   that work that even today I am deeply stirred whenever a few bars
   of music from this world impinge my ear. The enthusiasm it engenders,
   the sense of grandeur that so often seizes us in its presence, can
   be compared only to the feelings excited in us by Nature at her
   noblest, by evening sunshine on mountain peaks, by the turmoil of
   the sea. Yet this must not make us forget that this work, created
   and directed against civilisation<<, against the entire culture
   and society dominant since the Renaissance, emerges from the
   bourgeois-humanist epoch in the same manner as does Hitlerism. With
   its Wagalaweia and its alliteration, its mixture of roots-in-the
   soil and eyes-towards-the-future, it appeal for a classless society,
   its mythical-reactionary revolutionism - with all these, it is the
   exact spiritual forerunner of the metapolitical< movement today
   terrorizing the world.

   (From p153 Wagner und unsere Zeit:
   Aufsaetze, Betrachtungen, Briefe; ISBN3-596-22534-5).

Quite irrespective of attempts by the likes of Toscanini to stage Wagner in
the middle of the war to specifically protest against his exploitation by
the National Socialists, Mann writes in a combative propagandist mood.  It
is at least refreshing in that it at least does not harp on as is commonly
the case amongst English language commentators about some sort of tedious
Rassentheorie as the basis of Wagnerian art.  It can only be a condemnation
now of Wagner because of an alleged German Romantic escapism from the true
socio-political issues of the world.  That the whole Spirit of German
Romanticism essentially falls afoul of National Socialist is what he is
effectively saying.  "The German Spirit is essentially socially and
politically disinterested and profoundly to alien to these spheres".  It is
the sort of argument that would lead one to the conclusion that Schumann's
'Kreisleriana', or Mahler's Wunderhorn works were National Socialist
through and through.

Mann's fundamental claim is that Wagner is the German equivalent of the
monumentalism of the likes of Dickens, Tolstoy and Dovstoyevski, but bereft
of the accompanying social conscience.  He accuses Wagner of substituting
socio-political and moral conscience with mythology and folk legends.
Mann's writing makes it clear that he feels both Wagner and National
Socialism shared the same Romantic escapism from the genuine social issues
of the world:  "I do not care for the social issue, for what I want is the
folks tale." That is the alleged ideology of both Wagner's aesthetics as
well as of National Socialist politics.

Mann seeks of Wagner a solution to all immediate political woes of the
world.  He fails to find it and damns him for it.  How strange, would one
ask this of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or for that matter a Shakespeare or a
Goethe? No, but Wagner just has to be made into some sort of Prophet, and
where he fails as his Messiah to instantly save the world he is declared a
miserable failure and instead blamed for all the woes of the world.  That
was something admittedly all the easier to do with Hitler ranting "to
understand Wagner one must first understand Wagner," but propagandist
counterargument ends up replacing one distortion with another.

Yet only a few years before Mann had written:

   Then of these two both are us - Goethe and Wagner, both are Germany.
   ('Richard Wagner und Der Ring des Nibelungen< ').

If so then Goethe too is National Socialist through and through.  His is
the same Romantic escapism from socio-political reality.  Mann will not say
this so explicitly but that is the inevitable conclusion.  Yet this is the
same Thomas Mann who had not only said:

   To cast doubt on Wagner's ability as a poet has always struck me as
   absurd. What could be poetically more beautiful and profound than
   Wotan's relation to Siegfried...
   ('Richard Wagner und Der Ring des Nibelungen< ').

But also:

   One can say that the tremendous worldwide success within what is
   nonetheless the bourgeois world, that the international bourgeoisie
   should have received this work thanks to  a certain sensual nervous
   and intellectual appeal that it offer them, is a tragicomic paradox.
   It should not be forgotten that [the Ring] is conceived for an
   entirely different public and its socio-moralistically targets all
   capitalistic-bourgeois order in a brotherly humane world based on
   justice and love, freed of the madness of power [note that the German
   word used here is 'Machtwahn'] and the rule of money.
   ('Richard Wagner und Der Ring des Nibelungen< ').

Although bitterly critical of him, again Nietzsche hits the nail on the
head in "The Case of Wagner":

    Half his life Wagner believed in the Revolution as much as ever a
    Frenchman believed in it. He searched for it in the runic writing
    of myth, he believed that in Siegfried he had found the typical
    revolutionary.

    "Whence comes all the misfortunes of the world?" Wagner asked himself.
    From "old contracts," he answered, like all revolutionary ideologists.
    In plain: from customs, laws, moralities, institutions, from everything
    on which the old world, the old society rest. "How can one rid the
    world of misfortune? How can one abolish the old society?"   Only
    by declaring war against "contracts" (tradition, morality). THAT IS
    WHAT SIEGFRIED DOES.

These quotes make it clear that at bottom there is still a dream of
'liberte, egalite, fraternite' which lies at the basis of the Ring, a
utopian dream of freedom for humanity as in the Beethoven 9th with which
he chose to open his Bayreuth theatre.  Yet despite this Nietzsche is
equally right in that that is only half the story:

   For a long time, Wagner's ship followed this [optimistic
   revolutionary] course gaily. No doubt, this was where Wagner sought
   his highest goal.  - What happened? A misfortune. The ship struck a
   reef; Wagner was struck.  The reef was Schopenhauer's philosophy;
   Wagner was stranded on a contrary world view. What had he transposed
   into his music? Optimism.  Wagner was ashamed.  ...So he translated
   the Ring into Schopenhauer's terms.  Everything goes wrong, everything
   perishes, the new world is as bad as the old: the Nothing, the Indian
   Circe beckons.

That the Gods who had rule over man perish in flames to leave humanity
to fend for itself does not free man.  That is why Siegfried dies a tragic
death.  He, the Free Man, who had shattered the spear which symbolised the
god's rule over man, still dies as the mere plaything of Destiny, as Hagen
plunges his spear into his back.  Humanism does not guarantee freedom.
That was what Wagner got from Schopenhauer.  Man was still slave to the
Blind Will, with which man tortured and tormented one another.  "Wahn,
Wahn ueberall Wahn", ("madness, madness everywhere madness") exclaims Hans
Sachs.  Man still has to learn that which Wotan had to learn:  to awaken to
the madness of blind wilful avarice.  That also meant freedom from that
Machtwahn, the madness of power.

This ultimate message is, it is true, not that of a pragmatic politician.
Yet such philosophical reflections on the nature of humanity do not
necessarily make Wagner a National Socialist.  What it does makes him is
an artist worthy of comparison to the likes of Dostoyevsky for his probing
into the very nature and essence of humanity.  It makes him a great artist
if not a Messiah.  And that is the way it should be.  Only then does his
genius shine through.

Yet in those darkest final hour in the doomed Berlin bunker, Hitler
enacted a suicide staged like the death in the closing scene out of
'Goetterdaemmerung', with his new bride next to him.  The allied bombing
would have encroached like Wotan's wrath.  Indeed I believe there was a
gramophone present in that bunker.  I can imagine no more fitting music
than the closing scene of 'Goetterdaemmerung' for that historical
Schlusszene, closing curtain.  It is no surprise however that he should
follow this up with an order than his body be burnt, akin to a funeral
pyre.  That was the beginning of the end of an old world, the final
destruction of the absolute reign of the God of war, storms, oaths,
vengeance, and wrath that Wotan was.  For that is what the ending of
Goetterdaemmerung is all about.  It is about the collapse of this absolute
dictatorial reign of the conservative old world and it's regimented order.
It is about the start of a world where man was responsible for his own
destiny and the birth of a new world.

Lastly all translations of Mann are my own from 'Thomas Mann:  Wagner und
unsere Zeit' Ed.  Erika Mann; ISBN 3596225345.  The Nietzsche quotation
comes from Walter Kaufman's translation of 'The Case of Wagner' ISBN
0394703693.  Both are highly recommended reading.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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