Achim Breiling writes:

>It might be that Wagner addresses fundamental questions about life in
>the Ring, but is that not true for most operas (if not theatre pieces
>or movies, or art?).  As most of these draw their plot from life its
>only natural that they raise questions about humanity, of human love and
>passion, of life and death.  I do not think Wagners Ring is a special case
>here!  I also think its nothing wrong with artist challenging us with such
>fundamental matters, but I rather think that most artists do that with most
>of their works!

I can think of so many operas, movies, novels which fail to have the
profundity and depth that the Ring conveys.  For example Gluck's Orpheus
and Euridice does not contain this sort of depth, and nor does anything by
Mozart.  On the other hand, Alban Berg's Wozzeck is even more powerful than
the Buechner it is based upon.  I think the true successor of Wotan is
however Schoenberg's Moses from Moses und Aaron, and also to some extent
Bartok's Bluebeard.

Achim also wrote:

>I appreciate Satoshi Akimas high regard of the German language, but
>as a German I can tell him that the short piece above (even if it is by
>Schiller) and most that has been cited in the various variations of this
>Wagner thread sounds very dated, exaggerated and overdone in these days.

Yes it is true that the Romantic Idealism, the aesthetics, the style
of diction is very late 19th century.  But why condemn Wagner for that?
We cannot expect a late 19th century writer to write like Mallarme, any
more than we can expect Brahms to write 12-tone music.  That would be like
condemning Bach for his 'old fashioned' musical aesthetics.  You could make
derisive comments of anyone on that sort of basis whether that be Wagner,
Goethe, Schiller, Hoelderlin, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Dante.  It is
important to appreciate their aesthetics as an necessary expression of its
time.  I happen to like late 19th century Romantic Idealism and identify
with its aesthetics (in much the same way I feel a personal affinity to
the aesthetics of the Second Viennese School) and I don't just mean Wagner
either but also the painters, philosophers, and writers of the time.
I certainly wouldn't expect a contemporary author to write in Wagner's
style any more than I would expect a contemporary composer to write like
Mozart did - that would deserve derision.  But it is important to always
understand works of the past in the correct historical context..  Yes
Wagner is wildly passionate, yes it is emotionally explosive to the point
of being right over the top.  But I love it all the more for that!  That's
what late 19th century music is all about not matter how unfashionable it
may currently be.  Of course this is not to say that Wagner is the ONLY
composer.  I did not ever say he is the ONLY composer of musical drama -
although I did make a strong distinction between pre- and post-Wagnerian
'opera'.

Of course I also fully appreciate that literary Wagner's style of writing
is out of fashion.  Those who don't read German will not readily appreciate
that Wagner's writing is a very complicated style of florid archaic
literary German, especially given that he tends to be translated into very
plain modern English.  To many modern readers it may seem overdone although
I must confess to feeling that same way about Byron!  Having acknowledged
that I feel it is dreadfully unfair to fail to recognise the remarkable
psychological depth Wagner imparts to his characters.  Of this Die Walkuere
is a superb example.  The psychological study of Wotan in Act II and at the
close of Act III is by any writer's standards utterly remarkable.

Wotan's fundamental dilemma is that he is rendered powerless by his own
might.  He rules as the almighty god of oaths and would render his own
reason d'etre to nought if he were to violate his own oath by taking the
Ring from Fafner.  His only hope of salvation is to create a man capable
of freeing himself from the will of the gods.  But any beings he creates
are but petty slaves of Wotan's almighty Will.  His hero must be capable
of opposing Wotan's Will - and so it turns out of ultimately destroying the
gods.  Prometheus merely steals the secret of fire but to Wagner's hero is
given the task of the realisation of the possibility of the freedom of man.

Siegmund is a character who is all too easy to identify with because he is
so human and so vulnerable.  He fails because he is too human.  He too is
but a humble slave and blind plaything of the dark forces of destiny - a
mere pawn in a game played by the gods.  Gloucester in Shakespeare's King
Lear (an obvious precedent for Wagner's Ring) says:

   Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods they kill us for their
   sport.

All this heroism in his lonely struggle against all the odds to fight for
love and freedom are crushed cruelly by them.  What hero I wonders in all
of literature dies a more miserable death than Siegmund?The miracle of Die
Walkuere is that Wagner somehow snatches the work from the clutches of
total despair.

Wotan annihilates Siegmund in a fit of rage but is at heart deeply torn
within himself as he is his last hope of the realisation of the here freer
than he the god.  It is here that Bruennhilde is so moved by Siegmund's
cause that she vainly shields him in battle.  Her action is at once
blatantly in opposition to Wotan's Will but the deep paradox which is so
central to Die Walkuere (and indeed the whole Ring cycle) is that in acting
against his Will she fulfils Wotan's heart's deepest longings.  In killing
Siegmund, Wotan had been untrue to himself and in the close of Act III of
Die Walkuere Bruennhilde grants Wotan the resolution of his own painful
inner self-contradictions.  That is why she is his wish maiden.  That
is why she had to disobey him - in order to grant him his deepest wish.
"Who am I were I not thy Will" says Bruennhilde to Wotan in Act II.

What an extraordinary ending to the work Wotan's Farewell is!  Moments
before Wotan's rage had threatened to destroy the world when suddenly
Wagner shows us a glimpse into his heart's deepest and most tender sorrow
as he farewells his favourite daughter.  Out of all the hopelessness of Die
Walkuere the faintest glimmer of hope is rekindled.  It is moving precisely
because we can empathise completely with Wotan's inner conflict's, his
hope, and his despair.  And we see Wotan as a father giving away his
favourite daughter - forever.

Seen more philosophically there is a very Hegelian aspect to this.
There is a very dialectical synthesis of conflicting opposites.  For Hegel
the conflict of contradictory opposites (so called thesis and antithesis)
is necessary to progress by a generation of a resolution (synthesis)
containing both opposite "moments".  That is why Wotan's hero is his
"friendly foe" and why Bruennhilde's act of flagrant disobedience is an
act of the most supreme faithfulness to him.  Wotan say in Act II:

   How can I make that Other,
   no longer part of me [der nicht mehr ich ie no longer I/Self],
   who of his own accord will do what I alone desire.
   That Other for whom I long
   that I can never find
   for the Free Hero must create himself;
   I create only slaves.

   Wie macht ich den andren, der nicht mehr ich,
   und aus sich wirkte, was ich nur will?
   O goettliche Not! Graessliche Schmach!
   Zum Ekel find ich ewig nur mich
   in allem, was ich erwirke!
   Das andre, das ich ersehne,
   das andre erseh ich nie;
   denn selbst muss der Freie sich schaffen;
   Knechte erknet ich mir nur.

The very term 'das Andre' (the Other) comes straight out Hegel's
"Phenomenology of Spirit".  Opposites and contradictions belong together
such that Wagner's way of thinking proves to be supremely dialectical.
He is very much a child of the Spirit of Hegel.

>I guess the only thing he would get from an average group of Germans (lets
>say educated ones) if he would read some Wagner to them would be some
>hearty laughter, and not admiration for apparent deep insight in the
>problems of our world the poet seems to show.

Quite true, in that Hegel is a thinker so difficult to read most (even,
or perhaps especially the average "educated") Germans would find it almost
impossible to read beyond the first paragraph of his Phenomenology of
Spirit.  I find English translations tend to struggle with translating
Hegel's complex late 19th century academic German and are often even more
difficult to read.  Having said that Hegel is (I think rightly) considered
by many to be the greatest of all German thinkers.  The fact that Hegelian
thought (and perhaps by that virtue any writer such as Wagner in whom his
thought is reflected) is so complex that the average 'educated' person
(German or otherwise) who tries to read him would respond with bewilderment
and even laughter really detracts not one bit from the fact that he is a
visionary thinker of genius.  The premier performances of some of the
finest works of Schoenberg and Webern similarly evoked a response of
derisory laughter.  I imagine the average "educated" person on the street
would still respond similarly today.

Satoshi Akima
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