Laughing About Wagner
  - Wagner, Nietzsche and Heidegger -

Well I certainly imagine that Don Satz is speaking on behalf of the
majority of the list members when he writes [It's always spectaularly
dangerous to presume that anyone is speaking for the majority of
listmembers.  -Dave]:

>I keep noticing a tendency for a couple of list members to continue
>saluting Wagner, and in more than just musical terms.  Is it not good
>enough to acknowledge Wagner's supreme musical gifts and leave it at that?
>Does Satoshi really think that he can raise Wagner to "deity" level and
>have all the troops rally around the cause? My personal opinion is that
>Satoshi's view of Wagner only results in a more negative view on the part
>of others, most of whom would normally never be thinking of the man at all
>except for his music.  When it comes to Wagner, the less said the better
>(non-musical areas).

Those 'couple of people' are clearly Mats and I.  I think I have gone on
enough about Wagner (if I don't say so myself!) to deserve such accolades.
I am sure that the fact that most list members remain silent on this
subject is because they think: "O God!  Here he goes again, that one-eyed
fanatical Wagnerite.  Now where's that delete button...".

Still I will gleefully indulge in my final 'passionate blast' (to quote
Christopher Webber) on this!:)

Robert Peters wrote:

>Wagner was a poor poet.  (Satoshi, the educated Germans laugh about
>Wagner's poetry not because it is dated.  They do it because it is obscure,
>full of bathos, unintentionally funny, eccentric and full of weird words.

In my experience this is not a universally accepted view of Wagner's
literary style in German academic and literary circles.  The term 'obscure'
in particular raises my suspicions that most people don't really understand
the philosophical complexities that can be found in the late works and so
respond with ignorant laughter.  Having said that I myself find his earlier
works 'full of bathos, unintentionally funny' and couldn't help but burst
out laughing at certain points the last time I listened to Lohengrin.
I just can't believe that it was written by the same person who wrote
the 'Ring' and 'Tristan'.  Also I certainly am unaware of Thomas Mann
dismissing Wagner's literary style in this fashion - and Mann knew a lot
about Wagner.  His work Der Zauberberg shows the really obvious influence
of Die Walkuere.  In this regard read "Leben mit Wagner" by Joachim Kaiser
ISBN: 3442755638 (sorry no English translation available to my knowledge
for those of you who don't read German) who also fails to mentions the
hilarity of Wagner's allegedly comically bad verse.

In fact not even Martin Heidegger mentions a single thing about Wagner's
literary style.  Even in Heidegger's most uncharacteristically vociferous
attacks on Wagner in the section "Six Basic Developments in the History
of Aesthetics" from Volume I ("The Will to Power as Art") of his book
"Nietzsche" where he attacks Schopenhauer and Wagner together, Heidegger
criticises just about everything except Wagner's style of literary writing.
Heidegger writes:

   What is wanted [by Wagner] is the domination of art as music, and
   thereby the domination of the pure state of feeling - the tumult and
   delirium of the senses, ... the felicitous distress that swoons in
   enjoyment, absorption "the bottomless sea of harmonies", the plunge
   into frenzy and the disintegration into sheer feeling as pleasure.

Writing on Wagner's ideals of Gesamptkunstwerk Heidegger goes on:

   That Richard Wagner's attempt had to fail does not result merely from
   the predominance of music with respect to the other arts in his work.
   Rather, that the music could assume such pre-eminence at all has its
   grounds in the increasing aesthetic posture taken toward art as a
   whole - its is the conception and estimation of art in terms of the
   unalloyed state of feeling and the growing barbarisation of the very
   state to the point where it becomes the sheer bubbling and boiling
   of feeling abandoned to itself.

(All translations by David Farrell Krell; HarperCollins)

What's more not EVEN Nietzsche (who in my opinion really is one of the
greatest masters of the German language, and a pitiless critic of any
mediocrity) goes on about this alleged ridiculousness of Wagner's literary
writing style.  And if HE thought so he would have jumped at the
opportunity of mercilessly satirising Wagner for it!

You see I don't mind Wagner being criticised.  I enjoy it.  That's why
I love to read Nietzsche and Heidegger on Wagner.  I think any composer
should be open to criticism.  I have myself written lengthy criticisms of
Mozart on this list.  Having said that I always believe that to criticise
one must first understand.  Most of the 'criticisms' of Wagner's late works
I have so far read in the discussions in this list have drawn my criticism,
NOT because I believe Wagner to be beyond criticism, but because to
criticise one must first understand.  And I cannot help but feel nobody
really understands Wagner any more these days.  They strike me like a
dismissal of Bach on that the basis that he sounds dry, academic and
boring.  I welcome criticism - of JS Bach as well - but this would not
count as criticism.  It is just a tedious off hand dismissal based on
superficial misunderstanding.  Would it make me a blindly fanatical Bachian
if I were to defend him against such misunderstandings? I think not.  Yet
somehow Wagner is taken to be some sort of exception to be as equally
hysterically attacked as adored.

So, yes, let us laugh about Wagner.  Let us laugh about ALL composers.  But
let us first make sure we understand what we are laughing about, so that
our laughter is an expression of the depth of our understanding - not just
facile ridicule and thoughtless off-hand dismissal.

So for those of you don't think I am capable of laughing about Wagner here
are some of my favourite Nietzsche quotations about Wagner.  From 'Notes on
Wagner' (Jan 1874;VII 341):

   If Goethe is a transposed painter, and Schiller a
   transposed orator then Wagner is a transposed actor.

 From the 'Case of Wagner'.

   Assume a case in which Wagner requires a female voice.  An entire
   act without a female voice - impossible!  But none of the "heroines"
   are available at the moment.  What does Wagner do? He emancipates
   the oldest woman in the world, Erda: "Come up, old grandmother!
   You have to sing.: Erda sings.  Wagner's purpose is realised.
   Immediately he abolishes the old lady again.  "Why ever did you come?
   Beat it.  Go on sleeping."


   Wagner is admirable and gracious only in the invention of what is
   smallest, in spinning out the details.  Here one is entirely justified
   in proclaiming him a master of the first rank, as out GREATEST
   miniaturist in music who crowds into the smallest space an infinity
   of sense and sweetness.  His wealth of colours, of half shadows, of
   the secrecies of dying light spoils one to such an extent that
   afterwards almost all other musicians seem too austere.

The best I leave till last:

   I did not trust my eyes, and looked and looked again, and said at
   last, 'An ear!  An ear as big as a man!' I looked more closely and
   indeed, underneath the ear something was moving, something pitifully
   small and wretched and slender.  And, no doubt about it, the tremendous
   ear was attached to a small thin stalk - but this stalk was a human
   being!  If one used a magnifying glass one could even recognise a
   tiny envious face; also, that a bloated little soul was dangling from
   the stalk.  The people however, told me that this great ear was not
   only a human being, but a great one, a genius.  But I never believed
   the people when they spoke of great men; and maintained my belief
   that it was an inverse cripple who had too little of everything and
   too much of one thing.

Of course Nietzsche could only be talking about Wagner!  Taken from "Thus
Spoke Zarathustra" from the section "On Redemption" (the same book Strauss
based his tone poem on).  All Nietzsche quotations are taken from
translations by Walter Kaufmann (with minor modifications).

However do not forget that Wagner once said that the barren tree of life
bore him only two fruits.  One was his love for Cosima and the other his
friendship with Nietzsche.  We all know about his subsequent affair with
Mathilde Wesendonk and it isn't hard to see from the last quotation that
his relationship to Nietzsche ended bitterly.  How fascinating it is that
Isolde dies embracing the dead Tristan, with Kurwenal, also in death,
clutching his hand.  It is as though to say that the barren tree of life
had borne Tristan, even in the oblivion of death, only two fruits: the
love of Isolde and the friendship of Kurwenal.  Perhaps it was that Wagner
demanded from those around him unconditional love and friendship unto
death.

Such are the dimensions of Wagner - no sactified Deity - but endless
fascination of the nebulous catacombs of his text and, yes - his subtexts.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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