Satoshi writes about Thomas Mann's condemnation of Wagner:

>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.

You are polemic, Satoshi, and you know it.  What Mann is saying is that
Romanticism (in contrary to Goethe and Schiller, who are - Mats, attention!
- have nothing to do with Romanticism) always has a tendency towards the
TOTAL and ABSOLUTE and so leave the social and human limits.  Goethe said:
"If you want to reach the unlimited you have to fully explore the limited."
The Romanticists do not buy that.  They deliberately leave the human
limits, they even, what Nietzsche so clarsightedly criticized, prefer death
to life - and fall prey to totalitarian movements who also do not tolerate
any limits.  There are similarities between Wagner's priestly pose and
Hitler's priestly pose and Mann was so astute to see that.

>If so then Goethe too is National Socialist through and through.  His is
>the same Romantic escapism from socio-political reality.

That is simply not true, Satoshi.  Goethe was minister in Weimar,
his duty was to care for socio-political reality.  His whole life he
distinguished carefully between art and reality.  Goethe has nothing,
NOTHING to do with the Romanticist movement.  In fact he did everything
to get the Romanticists (who admired Goethe) off his back.  Every literary
history of German literature will tell you that.

Robert Peters
robertpeters@t-online