Many thanks to Robert Peters for his post on this topic.

>Wagner's music is music of genius.  But at the same time the music is
>pure Romanticism, pure GERMAN Romanticism.

I am not so sure.  Nietzsche pointed out - and I think utterly rightly
- that Wagner's music is very French in character especially in the
sensuousness of the orchestral texture.  It took me a long time before
I could see any German influences at all in Wagner's music.  Nietzsche
is correct in identifying Berlioz as perhaps the most glaringly obvious
influence in his music.  True understanding of Wagner's greatness only
begins when one can see through the irrelevant superficially nationalistic
elements.

>If you've ever listened to the whole Ring (and I did and I consider it
>great music though I do not buy the whole thing and the whole idea)...

All I can say is that it takes years before you can understand the Ring.
At first I found it incomprehensible.  Any years after having in the
meanwhile read Hegel, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer amongst others did
the meaning the work suddenly apparent to me.  I cannot but help think
just how incredibly complex the work really is.  It boggles my mind.  With
Hoelderlin it is possible to appreciate him without having a thorough grasp
of (his friend) Hegel's philosophy just as it is possible to appreciate
Goethe without having read Schelling, but the problem with Wagner is that
a lot of more is assumed.  Few if any writers on Wagner with the exception
of Adorno have the equipment to really to handle Wagner: even he is
inadequate.  That is where Bernard Shaw goes so horribly wrong in his
"the Perfect Wagnerite" where he is unable to make full sense of the
Ring because he tries to interpret it a purely Marxist fashion.  He
blames Wagner, when really it is Shaw that has missed so many dimensions
of his art.

>But there is not one composer with followers who tend so much to idolize
>their favourite musician.  Why is that so? I think this idolization is an
>echo of Wagner's self-idolization.

I am definitely one of those whom you identify as belonging in the
Wagnerian camp.  However I must say I am also a Brahmsian, a Brucknerian,
a Schoenbergian etc etc.  My musical cosmology is too polytheistic to be
branded a one-eye devotee of Wagner.  I fight for the Wagnerian cause for
the same reason I recently fought for the Schoenbergian cause: because
there is too much that is neglected and misunderstood.

>as a native German and a lover and teacher of German poetry, I can tell
>you: Wagner's poetry is very poor and often pathetic (all the ridiculous
>Stabreime) compared with even some of the lesser German poets of his
>time),

While I wouldn't pretend Wagner was the greatest German writer of all time
I think it is hasty to dismiss him so lightly.  Even Bernard Shaw, who read
German, acknowledged the quality of his poetry.  I find Isoldes Verklaerung
(the so called "Liebestod") to be raptuously beautiful.  But you see, you
must appreciate the metaphysical connotations suggested by the idea of "des
Welt-Atems wehendem All" (in actual fact untranslatable for those who
read no German!), which really reflects partly the breath of a Hegelian
Weltgeist, but in a remarkably Schopenhauerian context.  If you cannot see
it then it will all seem very riduculous indeed.  This is what I mean when
I say that there are vast dimensions of Wagner which we have not even begun
to appreciate.  To dismiss Wagner as nonsense because these dimensions are
too difficult to access is in my mind equally premature as the dismissal of
Schoenberg on the basis that his music is too difficult.

>Yes, maybe there is the rub: the Wagnerites are very fast to believe that
>all people who try to see Wagner "only" as a good and gifted composer and
>not as a genius and demigod with great and important messages (I for one do
>not like most of Wagner's messages) are their enemies.

I have never said Wagner was some sort of a god or saint.  That was
Christopher Webber's caricature of me.  My fundamental line is this: that
the whole main meaning of Wagner has been hitherto completely misuderstood.
It has been missed because in the history of Wagner interpretation so far
he has been falsely misappropriated by the dubious prophets of extremest
political ideologies.  I will no longer stand to see Wagner being misused
or interpreted as being ideological propaganda.  The whole profundity and
subtly philosophical dimension of his art has been hitherto completely
ignored.  Yet it is precisely that dimension that makes Wagner's art so
fulfilling and beautiful.  We need to put the darkest chapters of Wagner
interpretation behind us and to start anew.  That is why I insist on
turning back to the texts themselves.  Then and only then does the true
genius of his art begin to shine through.  Why will people not allow this
to happen?

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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