Klarinet Archive - Posting 000105.txt from 1998/10

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Re: Wagner (and the Ring)
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 15:44:46 -0400

Roger is not convinced that what appears today to be a subtle reference
to the Jewish stink in Wagner's use of odors as metaphors in The Ring
would have been particularly discernable to the 19th century audience.
But I suggest that not one person in 10 would have misunderstood him.

I am still a prisoner of the 1940s racist movies that depicted Afro-
Americans is subtle (and often overt) racist ways. It was not necessary
to actually show that Stepin Fetchit was lazy and shiftless on movie
screens of the 1940s. It was assumed to be the case because all blacks
were seen in that fashion. It was understood by EVERYBODY without
explicit reference to the assertion. Even blacks who were energetic
and hard working were presumed to really be lazy and shiftless because
that was a cultural understanding.

The metaphor of smell would have been particularly noticeable to the
discerning 19th century audience because not a year went by between
1850 and 1910 when there was not a blood libel in Europe, sometimes
two and three a year, and in which some unluckly Jew was accused of
having killed a Christian child by cutting his throat in order to
capture the blood in a bowl, the purpose of which was to eliminate
the Jewish stink.

Now we haven't had a serious blood libel in the US since 1928 when
one occurred in upstate New York, but there are such libels raised
almost every year right now. In Wagner's time, the accusation was
presumed to be true because of the continual raising of the question,
particularly in Poland (cheek by jowl with Germany and Austria),
Romania, Italy (where several children were made saints as a result
of their suggested martyrdom), Russia, and the Baltic countries. And
the most famous such accusation occurred in England which Chaucer
wrote about in "The Prioress' Tale." So it was common wisdom in
Europe from about the year 1200 until around 1915 when the Russian
government disgraced itself with a blood libel against a man named
Mendel Beilis.

But everyone in the Wagner audience knew about the accusation, many
of them believed it to be true, and they reacted to Wagner's use
of the odor metaphor with descernment. It is not only the dwarf
Mime who smells badly (and who was described as "the Jewish dwarf"
by Cosima Wagner in several letters), but Alberich and even Hunding.
It flies in the face of reality to think that these metaphors were
ill understood.

But even if Roger were correct, there are the additional metaphors of
which I have not spoken, having to do with feet, speech, race mixing,
artistic contribution, castration/circumcision confusion, use of
high pitched voices and melismatic song (per Sixtus Beckmesser in
Mesitersinger) that piles evidence on evidence on evidence.

It is easy to say, "I don't believe it" for a person from the
20th century, but the audiences in Wagner's day were as familiar
with this aspect of theater as silent film fans are with pie throwing
comedy. It was part and parcel of the business of mounting stage
productions.

One can simply say, "I don't really believe it" and to that there is
nothing I can do. The presentation of evidence, mountains of it,
is simply not enough for some. It is too unbelievable to the late
20th century intellect so it gets dismissed as being beyond belief.
"People would not act that way" really means "I don't understand how
people did act that way."

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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
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