It is time we really brought this topic to a heads by dedicating a thread
exclusively to this rather than as an aside to other threads.

Christopher Webber wrote in reply to me:

>> Any insinuation that Wagner considered the Nibelungs to be in
>> any way Jewish must therefore be considered entirely subordinate
>> to the Schopenhauerian meaning of the Ring.
>
>At the risk of bringing my head once more into contact with the
>brick wall - it's not an "insinuation", it's a fact.

If it is so completely and utterly unambiguous - why is it not stated
more explicitly? If one accepts that the figure of Alberich in the Ring
cycle is an unambiguously concrete representation of a greedy capitalist
Jew plotting to take over the world, this sets profound limitations in
how the Ring can be interpreted.  It immediately leads to an entrapment
in an interpretation of the work as a conflict between the Jews plotting
to overtake the world (evil) and the Aryan Gods (good).  It leads
utterly inescapably to an interpretation of Wagner based exclusively on
Rassentheorie ('race theory').  This is the official National Socialist
interpretation of Wagner.  We find National Socialism at the heart and core
of Wagnerian aesthetics.  This is why Hitler said 'to understand National
Socialism one must first understand Wagner'.  There is NO escaping this
conclusion.  Christopher Webber wrote:

>it's significant that the idea of Alberich as Capitalist Jew was one
>interpretation clearly revolving in Wagner's mind when he wrote "Das
>Rheingold".

I have attempted to demonstrate that Alberich (or for that matter Mime) is
above and beyond all else a mythico-symbolic figure who represents someone
driven by the Blind Will.  This leads to totally different conclusions.
It leads to a Schopenhauerian interpretation of the Ring.  It is an
interpretation of the Ring which Wagner himself advocated.  Wagner wrote:

   Apart from my - slow - progress with my music I have now devoted my
   time exclusively to a man who...has been a gift from heaven to me in
   my loneliness. This is Arthur Schopenhauer, the greatest philosopher
   since Kant...His central thought, the denial of the will to live, is
   of frightful seriousness, but the only salvation. Of course it was
   not an idea new to me and no one can think it all in whom it did not
   already exist. But it was this philosopher who first showed it to me
   with such clarity.If I think back to the storms of my heart and the
   terrible cramp with which it is clutched - against my will - at the
   hope of living, indeed when these storms even now still rise in
   tempestuous strength - now at last I have found a palliative which
   alone helps me sleep in sleepless nights; it is the deep and innermost
   yearning for death: total unconscious, absolute non-being, the
   extinction of all dreams - unique and final salvation.....I have
   sketched a Tristan und Isolde...the most full-blooded musical
   conception; with the 'black pennant' with flutters in the end I
   shall then cover myself up - to die.

Of course the Schopenhauerian influence pervades not just Tristan but
especially so the Ring, where the final redemption comes from denial of
the Blind Will, even that of the Will to Live.  Wotan thus says:

   I must forsake what I love,
   Murder whom I love,
   Deceive and betray he who in me trusts.
   Away then all the lordly splendour,
   Divine pride and shameful vaunting!
   Let it all to pieces crumble, all that I have built.
   My work I give up. Only one thing do I now will:
   The end ... The end!

   (Act II Die Walkuere)

The Ring is thus about Wotan's (and through it also our own) willing
acceptance of his own downfall and death.  It thus takes the form
of a 'Bildungsroman', an epic process of coming to the final grand
realisation-awakening.  It gives the Ring a universality of meaning,
as befits any great work of art.  Wagner wrote:

   We must learn to die, in fact to die in the most absolute sense of
   the word; the fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness and
   it arises only where love itself has already faded.  How did it come
   about that mankind so lost touch with the bringer of the highest
   happiness to everything living that in the end everything they did,
   everything they undertook and established, was done solely out of
   fear for the end? My poem [the Ring] shows how.

'Frightful seriousness' indeed.  But this is just what Wagner is all about.
However Christopher Webber will have none of this and wrote in reply to me:

>>I however seek something deeper, although darker and profounder
>>from music.  That is what makes me a committed Wagnerian.  That
>>is why Christopher Webber is not a true Wagnerian.
>
>"Deeper... darker ... profounder." This is precisely the kind of thing
>that is most troubling about this sort of dogma.  Would Satoshi Akima
>really disallow profound experience to anyone who doesn't go along
>with hisown pecking order?

So is it just MY own imposition? I think not.  To which all Christopher
Webber has to say for himself is:

>However satisfying such meditations may be to the worshipper, they tend to
>numb rather than illuminate the works themselves.  And, with great respect,
>there's much more to Wagner's delightful operas than such solemn dunciads
>allow.

Any interpretation which displaces Schopenhauerian Idealism in favour of
Rassentheorie requires the prerequisite acceptance that Jewish people look
like ugly Nibelungen dwarves, are deaf, money/power hungry, are hatching
evil plots to take over the world etc.  Whereas Wagner might have had this
partly in mind when creating the figure of Alberich, to interpret Alberich
predominantly from this point of view still demands of the interpreter the
a priori acceptance of such prejudices.  ONLY once these prejudices are
accepted is the door to this line of interpretation fully opened.  It is a
door Christopher Webber seems all too keen to want to open for us - and as
widely as possible.

Thus Mats wrote:

>There used to be a warpo named Marc Weiner who in his great opus
>"Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination" had the divine gift to
>see much racism in Wagner's music.  He offers the most ridiculous examples,
>everything overinterpreted.  For example he argues that there was a saying
>in the 19th century that Jews had bad hearing, and therefore, when Loke
>insults Alberich in "Das Rheingold", he don't hear it and says; "Was sagt
>er?" ("What is he saying?"), and therefore Weiner draws the conclusion
>that he is a Jew.  However this example bear in itself its own weakness;
>Weiner has obviously not remembered, or taken notice to, that in "Die
>Meistersinger von Nuernberg" Hans Sachs also at one occasion doesn't hear,
>and says "What?" Strange nobody has claimed he is a Jew too...

Now what concerns me most about Christopher Webber is that in
my attempts to demolish the stature of the National Socialists as
respectable authorities on Wagner interpretation I have come up against
stern resistance from him.  He continues to reject my Schopenhauerian
interpretation and instead morbidly seeks to secure Rassentheorie as the
central ideological foundation of Wagnerian aesthetics.  Moreover, like
Weiner, he morbidly seeks affirmation of Rassentheorie in the most obscure
nooks and crannies of Wagner's works.  For example:

>A note on Alberich to add to Mats Norrman's on the Nibelung brothers.
>First, read the text out loud - trying hard not to think of Schopenhauer -
>and pick up on Alberich's Jewish-German diction.

And this from someone who does not even read German.  He can apparently
hear a Jewish accent in the translation.  He seems to be obsessed with
this and this alone as the central meaning of Wagner's works.  I find this
deeply objectionable.  This has nothing to do with my being partial to
Wagner.  There are deeper ethical and humanitarian concerns at stake here
which go beyond just Wagner.  It seems there is a motive for his repeated
unprovoked attacks on me:

>I'll leave aside the fundamental theme of racial superiority, which is all
>too apparent both within and without the operas (Parsifal especially) to
>need further tedious space-wasting.

And:

>As far as "race" itself goes, it lies obstinately at the simple heart
>of the Parsifal matter, and cannot be wished away.

It seems it is all too clear that he correctly sees me as the pitiless
enemy of any attempt to return Rassentheorie to the status of the central
meaning of Wagner's art.  I simply will not allow Wagner's music to be
appropriated for the purpose of National Socialist propaganda.

The issue comes to heads with the close of Act I of Siegfried.  If Mime is
again a scheming capitalist Jew, then Siegfried becomes the Aryan hero.
The following words take on a very sinister meaning indeed:

   Siegfried [forging scene]:

   Your blue blade once ran red
   and blushed with the trickling gore;
   coldly you laughed
   and licked the hot blood cool.

Given the fact that Siegfried eventually kills Mime with the same sword,
it seems that Christopher Webber would have us cold bloodedly 'delight'
in the prospect of the spilling of Jewish blood.  This is clearly how
Hitler interpreted Wagner and with the acceptance of Christopher Webber's
insistence that the Nibelungs are unambiguously Jewish then the conclusion
becomes utterly inescapable.  He writes:

>There's nothing perverse in facing the plain truth that Hitler had no need
>to twist Wagner's writings to serve his own ends.

Is it perhaps the thought of Jewish blood being shed that makes
Siegfried so 'delightful' to Christopher Webber? Would he have us laugh as
hysterically as Alberich at the 'delightful' death of Mime at Siegfried's
hands? After all that is said and done Mime is still his foster-father.

Christopher Webber wrote in response to me:

>>I fail to see anything delightful in Mime's evil and Hitlerian plans
>>to murder Siegfried and to gain absolute power over the world.
>
>Oh, spare us.  How can anyone fail to see that Mime provides the comic
>relief, amongst other things? If we've not been amused and delighted by
>his gleeful cauldron-capers with the wholesome soup I fear we've missed
>at least half the point.  It's great panto-mime (sorry!).

I find this sickeningly perverse.  I will insist that Mime and Alberich
are first and foremost symbolise the evil nature of the Blind Will.  This
provides structure to the central Schopenhauerian meaning of the Ring.  Of
course they are also conceivable as capitalists blindly striving for money
and imparting on the work a partly Marxist flavour - but not necessarily
capitalists of any ethnic background; they could just as well be anybody.
Therefore Mime or Alberich could really be anyone mindlessly driven by
their Blind Will whether that be money, power or any object of desire.
They could represent a Stalin, a Hilter, or a Pinochet.  It could even
be Christopher Webber.  Thus Mime exclaims:

   I shall go down there as lord of the Nibelungs;
   the whole host shall be my slaves!
   The despised dwarf - how he will be revered!
   To my hoard will flock Gods and heroes:
   at my nod the world will kneel,
   at my wrath it will tremble!
   Mime the bold, Mime is king,
   prince of the elves, ruler over everything!

What more could be a better depiction of Hitler - or anyone blinded by
a lust for absolute power.  It shows that at heart Wagner's deepest most
universal message in the late works as being profoundly anti-Hitlerian.
Hitler looked in the mirror and saw a Siegfried when in reality it was a
Mime who gleefully stared back at him.  This permits us full access to the
nobility and beauty of Siegfried moving words:

   Notung, Notung trusty sword!
   You lay there dead in fragments,
   now you gleam glorious and defiant.
   Now show felons how you shine!
   Smite the false, fell all knaves!
   See Mime you smith,
   how sharp is Siegfried's sword!

However too those advocates of Rassentheorie as the central ideology of
Wagner's works that same Rassentheorie will only lead them inevitably to
an entrapment into the endorsement of genocide at the hands of the Aryan
Siegfried's bloody anti-Semitic sword.  After all the only thing one then
requires to move on to this conclusion is that the a priori premise that
Jews are the source of all evil: the fundamental doctrine of 'Mein Kampf'.
NOTHING is said to that effect in the Ring but according to Christopher
Webber this is not necessary - one can assume that as part of an already
granted, 'obstinately' omnipresent subtext lying at the "heart of the
matter".  'Fell all knaves' thus can only mean 'kill all Jews'.  That is
why Christopher Webber has written:

>There's nothing perverse in facing the plain truth that Hitler had no need
>to twist Wagner's writings o serve his own ends.

And again:

>As far as "race" itself goes, it lies obstinately at the simple heart
>of the Parsifal matter, and cannot be wished away.

I am horrified by this line of Wagner interpretation, the conclusions
of which follow with complete inevitability from their perverse premises.
Not only is it a ratification of the National Socialist perversion of
Wagner for their own ends, but a ratification of National Socialism itself.
However for Christopher Webber such thorough perversity is fully justified
on artistic grounds:

>Good art is always disruptive, even of the most deeply held beliefs and
>moral codes.  Wagner is good art, not perfect morality.  Surely we can
>agree on this?

Is this to suggest to say that it is justified to advocate Rassentheorie or
perhaps even genocide just for the sake of the disturbing dramatic artistic
'effect' it creates? Is the continued performance of Wagner's art in the
new millennium justified by such "powerful effect" of "its disturbing web
and woof"? I would think not.  Nor would Schopenhauer have approved, and to
ignore his profound and central influence on Wagner's art is drag Wagner
interpretation back to the level of the National Socialists.  I happen to
agree with Schopenhauer that art must first of all be an ethical force in
itself, not the perverse expression of some destructive Freudian 'id'
(never mind that Freud later in life admitted to borrowing the concept of
the subconscious from Schopenhauer).  The insistence on the centrality of
Schopenhauerian thought amongst the great heterogeneity of ideology in the
Ring (and late Wagner in general) has nothing to do with uncritical worship
of Wagner so much as an insistence on interpreting his TEXTS at face value
rather than based on twisted innuendo and overinterpreted shadowy SUBtext.
As such there are no grounds for a claim to the effect that I am
conveniently sanitising Wagner for the petty sake of naive hero worship.
We have at stake the justification of the perpetuation of Wagner's art into
the new millenium.  Indeed I have insisted Wagner is not even my favourite
composer by any means although Christopher Webber continues to write
bizarre things to the effect that I blindly hero worship Wagner and that:

>As usual, Dr Akima must have his Hero [ie Wagner] all or nothing.

Going on to further examine Christopher Webber's methodology for
interpreting Wagner one finds him arguing:

>Innuendo was all that was open to Wagner...

There is such a vast amount of material in the text to deal with without
having to resort of innuendo or subtext to interpret Wagner.  Wagner
interpretation based on subtexual innuendo is nothing but a free ticket
to distort him in whatever perverse fashion should capture one's fancy.
Wagner interpretation has been however traditionally rife with this sort
of nonesense.  I am bitterly critical of this tradition, which I believe
to be the product of the widespread acceptance of the National Socialist
perversion of Wagner which can only be achieved by such subtextual
expansion.  This methodology seems to have gained widespread acceptance.
'If the National Socialist do it why shouldn't I' is how the thought
process runs, only to end up sinking to their base level.  This is not to
deny that there is a subtext in Wagner - as with ANY writer.  Rather it is
an insistence that such overblown interpretation of subtext at the expense
of the TEXT will no longer be tolerated as the dominant mode of Wagner
interpretation.  Let us read the TEXT first in order to properly understand
any subtext.  We have not even begun to do this.  We have, after all this
time, scarely even begun to understand Wagner.

Mats Norrman writes that he wishes that I "could see more of the man
Richard Wagner" in his works - including the anti-Semite in Wagner.  The
fact is I can see plenty of fleeting shadowy subtextual autobiographic
glimpses in Wagner's works.  Wagner's unfaithfulness either to friend or
to lover is something that for example appears in stylised form in the
characters of Siegfried and Tristan.  I can imagine Richard saying to
Cosima that it was not his fault for being unfaithful and falling for
Mathilde Wiesendonk - it was all due to a magic spell cast on him.  That
was part of Wagner's egocentric nature.  Alberich as a Jew is also part of
that ghostly, fleeting, and shadowy subtext.  However in the light of day,
and when read as they are written this is neither essential nor even in the
SLIGHTEST bit relevant to understanding the final texts of Wagner's late
musico-dramatic works.  I strongly question the motivation of anyone who
tries to endorse subtextual expansion so monstrous that it comes to first
dominate and then totally obliterate the main text.

Thus I agree entirely with Steve Schwarz's reply to Christopher Webber:

>>As far as "race" itself goes, it lies obstinately at the simple heart
>>of the Parsifal matter, and cannot be wished away.  The Grail Knights are,
>>at root, an exclusive set of brethren who have been sullied by sexual
>>intercourse with a female Jewess (Kundry) and can only be brought salvation
>>by a pure man of noble birth.
>
>Kundry?  Jewish?  I must have missed something.  How do we know?

Exactly.  It is only when text is allowed to be overshadowed by an expanded
subtext that this sort of distortion becomes permissible.  And if we accept
the claim that Kundry is Jewish on the basis of link to the figure of the
Wandering Jew, we would also to say that Wotan who takes the role of the
Wanderer, must also be Jewish!  That is the end result of Wagner
interpretation based on freely expanded innuendo.

I suspect the obvious sexual themes in Parsifal are also being manipulated
to introduce a Freudian style of freely 'reading between lines' in order
to allow expanded (allegedly subconsciously included) subtext to dictate
over text to the point of completely dominating it - yet another attempt
to ground Wagner interpretation at the level of textual obliteration by
the 'obstinate' intrusion of a monstrously expanded subtext.  The fact
of the matter is that once this sort of thing becomes rampant you can
read whatever you wish between the lines.  That is the real reason why
Christopher Webber so conveniently dismisses Wagner's literary texts:

>Wagner's libretti, judged as pseudo-philosophical poesy, are the laughing
>stock of the German literary world.

Only by dismissing the main text, does this finally open the door to
rampant subtexual expansion.  Why even bother with the text when you can
expand freely on the subtext to open up a short cut which allows one to
almost completely skip the text in order to get straight to the alleged
"heart of the matter".  The end result is the trampling asunder and then
obliteration of the main text in favour of a perversely expanded subtext.
And all this from someone who cannot even read Wagner in German.  What a
crying shame that one of the masters of German literature remains forever
closed to him!

But it is to Pablo Massa who I must allow the last laugh on the matter:

>>"Parsifal" is not an 'expression' of anything.The question of racial
>>superiority is undeniably part of its disturbing web and woof.  In the
>>reality of the theatre - the most potent way to experience the opera -
>>the Grail Knights are often currently portrayed that way, so the image
>>must carry resonance for many.  (The recent production at ENO
>>in London portrayed them as broken down First World War German
>>soldiers, to extremely powerful effect.)
>
>May this extremely powerful effect be laughter, perhaps?.  I didn't see
>that production, but honestly, I can't think of anything more bizarre.
>That sort of neo-pagans looking for the Holy Grail with their gas masks,
>fumigating half Europe...?

I am glad to see that the ridiculousness of Christopher Webber's
subtextually based perversions are blatantly obvious to others.  It was
Nietzsche who said it was better to kill with laughter than with violence.
And I found Pablo's comments just hilarious!

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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