Klarinet Archive - Posting 000061.txt from 1998/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Wagner's Ring again
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 18:27:57 -0500

Claudia asked about books on the Ring, and I recommended, among others,
Deryck Cooke's volume called, "I saw the World End", though I said that
I had never read it myself, but that I understood it was well thought
of. I recently bought and have read parts of this book, and what I
primarily have to say is that it is a very worthwhile purchase. It
discusses the other books about the Ring that have been mentioned here
by myself and others.

Oxford University Press.

However, I remembered the unsettling controversy here a couple of months
back, with Dan Leeson, Steven Goldman and Lelia Loban saying that they
couldn't listen to the Ring because of its 'built-in' anti-Semitism. As
a lover of the Ring in my youth, I was therefore particularly eager to
see what Cooke had to say about this when I finally got hold of the
book.

What Cooke says may make a small contribution to our understanding of
this highly emotive issue (he devotes only 3 pages to it, an abridged
version of which I shall reproduce below). On the other hand it may
give rise to renewed anger and disgust in some.

If I have a personal slant on this, it is that evidence that tends to
make it more possible to listen to the Ring with what I might call a
clear conscience is, in general, welcome evidence to me. This is not to
say that I want to view that evidence with prejudiced eyes, just in case
anyone feels outraged by what I shall quote. Because I have not read,
for example, Robert Gutman's book 'Wagner: the Man, his Mind and his
Music', which apparently contains the strongest statements of the notion
that Wagner's music is infected with racialist theories, I am not in a
position to assess the matter with any detachment. All I report is that
Cooke dismisses the book as containing 'loaded arguments'. I shall read
it.

The question of Wagner's racialism itself is of course not in doubt.
Cooke position is, "We should bewail the fact that Wagner one of the
greates minds the world has ever known, came eventually to be afflicted
by the psychological disease of racialism; but we can surely be more
charitable to the creator of those profoundly human dramas 'The Ring',
'Tristan', 'The Mastersingers' and 'Parsifal', who was responsible for
no one's death, than to the man who produced those wretched daubs and
who had six million Jews murdered. And we should be eternally grateful
that Wagner, with the supreme artist's infallible intuition, never
intruded his racialist theories into his works of art. If we knew as
little of Wagner's personal opinions as we know of Bach's or
Shakespeare's -- which is nothing -- we should never guess he was a
racialist at all. The best of the man -- and what a best! -- went into
his art, which is all that matters to us today."

This, Cooke's view of Wagner's art (pp 263 - 266 in the paperback
version) and his repudiation of Gutman, rests partly on an analysis of
Wotan's character that I cannot do justice to here.

Secondly, he quotes Wagner in four works of the period 1849 - 1851, 'Art
and Revolution', 'The Art-Work of the Future', 'Art and Climate', and
'Opera and Drama'. Here are the four quotes.

"If the Greek art-work embraced the spirit of a fine nation, the
art-work of the future must embrace the spirit of free mankind, beyond
all the confines of nationality; the national essence in it must be only
an ornament, the charm of an individual case amidst a multiplicity, and
not a limiting barrier." (Art and Revolution, 1849)

"Two main stages in the development of mankind lie clearly before us in
history -- the racial-national and the unnational-universal. If we are
at present looking to the future for the completion of this second
stage, we have in the past the closure of the first stage clearly
discernible before our eyes." (The Art-Work of the Future, 1849)

"If we now estimate...what is the instinctive impulse of humanity at
this present moment of history -- if we realise that it can find its
redemption only through the recognition of God as the physical actuality
of the human race, that its fervent need can only be satisfied by
universal human love, and that it must, of infallible necessity, attain
this satifaction -- we can rely, with complete certainty, on a future
element in life, in which love, extending its need even to the widest
circles of all humanity, must create completely undreamt-of works...."
(Art and Climate, 1850)

"We shall have...states and religions until we have only *one* religion
and *no state* at *all*. But if this religion must of necessity be a
universal one, it can be nothing else but the true [instinctive,
unconscious] nature of mankind vindicated by consciousness, and every
human being must be capable of felling this unconsciously and of
instinctively putting it into practice." (Opera and Drama, 1850-51)

Of these, Cooke says, "This 1849-51 internationalism of Wagner's
precludes any idea of 'The Ring' being written in the spirit of Nazism."

The third thing is something that it is quite difficult for me to
reproduce here, particularly as an non-Jew; partly because, as Cooke
says, it is "an anecdote that shows the unbridgeable gap between
pre-Hitler and post-Hitler times." It is quite shocking to
present-day ears.

Cooke says in a footnote that he considers that

"[Gutman's book] uses the most loaded arguments to discover [racialism]
in [Wagner's works of art]. The one possible exception -- the allegedly
'Jewish' nature of the squeaky-voice utterances given to Mime -- is not
proven; though Mahler, who was extremely critical of the Jews and of
himself as one, accepted Mime as an anti-Semitic caricature, and a
legitimate one. 'No doubt with Mime,' he wrote, 'Wagner intended to
ridicule the Jews (with all their characteristic traits -- petty
intelligence and greed -- the jargon is textually and musically so
cleverly suggested)...I know of only one Mime, and that is myself...you
wouldn't believe what there is in that part, nor what I could make of
it.' (Henri-Louis de la Grange, 'Mahler', Vol. 1, 1974, p.482.)

"This anecdote shows the unbridgeable gap between pre-Hitler and
post-Hitler times."

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339

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