Satoshi Akima writes:
>Wagner and Subtext
>- Wagner, Marx and Schopenhauer -
Wagner, with respect, sometimes seems less problematic than the Wagnerites.
Dr Akima conflates "Subtext" with "Interpretation", and both with
Explication, as he slides balletically from one to the next in grand
and truly Wagnerian self-contradiction. He presents several possible
interpretations of the Wotan/Siegfried conflict, including his own pet
theory (again), as well as a little one of the composer's own. This latter
is interesting - a very convincing piece of character analysis, in Wagner's
best practical-theatrical vein. I'm glad the Doctor has brought it to my
attention.
Subtext has been defined (Oxford Dictionary) as an underlying often
distinct theme in a piece of writing or conversation. It's as simple as
that. Of course there is no subtext in The Ring in that sense - unless you
happen to believe in one interpretation so religiously that you insist on
it to the exclusion or at best diminution of everything else.
>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.
Overblown interpretation "will no longer be tolerated"? Well, given that
this is precisely what the Doctor himself spends so space and time lovingly
indulging, I hope he doesn't have the Schopenhauer Stormtroopers battering
on his own doors already!
In fact, it should be put completely the other way round. Just because
there is a subtext to some writing, it doesn't follow that there has to
be one to all. There is, in fact, no coherent subtext in Wagner's Ring -
just as there isn't one in the equally wonderful theatre version of the
"Nibelungen" story which Hebbel was writing at the same time. My German
is good enough to understand his version, though! The most one can say
is that the old stories were obviously resonant at a time of reawakening
German nationalism.
These things are not simple allegories, of course, and leave plenty of
matter ripe for interpretation - which is quite a different thing. The
range of possible interpretations will naturally shift from age to age,
which is where theatre comes in handy.
You couldn't put a Schopenhauerian Ring - or a Fifth-Day-Adventist one for
that matter - on the stage, simply because nobody could understand what one
earth you were trying to do. Wagner's explanation of the Wotan/Siegfried
moment is marvellous because it illuminates situation and character in
action, which is all that finally matters. Jungian/Marxist/Schopenhauerian
explications of The Ring are stimulating fun as parlour games, but they
don't get to the heart of the matter. As John G. Deacon pithily put it
in his posting, character not symbol is the name of the opera game.
Of course, synthetic myth - like Wagner's "Ring", Lucas's "Star Wars" or
Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" - are dangerous playthings in the hands of
the unwary. Like the Jack the Ripper murders, they've spawned legions of
interpreters, all convinced that they and they alone hold the key to the
whole mystery.
Original myth does not allow of this. Its ambiguities and contradictions
are so obvious and unavoidable that this kind of search is patently
fruitless. For instance, there are two, contradictory creation stories
in the Old Testament - as there are in the Finnish Kalevala. The Northern
Myths boast even greater variations on the births and deaths of Gods.
Wagner of course has to limit himself to one, which makes him seductive
meat for the solipsistic interpreter. But that is not to say that as an
avid (if not particularly deep) reader, he didn't carry over some sense of
those discarded possibilities with him. That is why no one explication of
his work can fully satisfy in the way that the theatre, home of
contradictions and half-lights, so surely can.
I'm sorry to add another ten years to my purgatorial Wagnerite fires by
mentioning Great Siegfried in the same breath as Luke Skywalker and Frodo
Baggins, but in essence I think all three of these cult artworks work for
the same reason, and in essentially the same way.
Their creators, rather marvellously, filled their shopping trolleys with a
pile of diverse goodies which carry all sorts of resonances for all sorts
of people - including, in the case of the later works, Wagnerian ones.
Which of us, watching Luke battling away with Daddy Darth Vader, hasn't
thought at some point of Wotan and Siegfried?
Ultimately, I have to say, all-revealing learned exegesis of "The Ring"
misses the point. It is as fundamentally flawed as the similar work that
will doubtless be done on "The Empire Strikes Back" in time to come - I
look forward particularly to the Schopenhauerian interpretation of "The
Empire Strikes Back".
>Buechner's Wozzeck on the other hand really does limit itself to much
>simpler Marxist socio-political commentary, and thus lacks the richness
>of all the multiple dimensions that the Ring has.
The Doctor's chronology, as well as his critical sense, is baffling here.
Buchner was working on the unfinished "Woyzeck" (sic.) at the time of his
death in 1837. Forward-thinking the great dramatist may have been, but
backward-living like Merlin? I think not. His incomplete text allows of
many interpretations, Marxist and other, of which Berg's "Wozzeck" was
only one. To measure it up against "The Ring" is not illuminating.
Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"
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