Klarinet Archive - Posting 000098.txt from 1998/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Re: Wagner's Ring again
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:56:34 -0500

I read Tony Pay's thoughtful contribution to the list on Wagner and
spent several days trying to decide in what way I could contribute
further to the discussion about how much of the Wagner music dramas
are infected with racisim and antisemitism. That it is the case is
quite incontrovertible, but, as Tony points out, articulate people
deny this, saying that the arguments which assert Wagner's operatic
racisms are loaded.

In only one case, and it is said only to be a possible exception,
do the nay-sayers back off. That is the case of the character
"Mime," an ugly and hateful dwarf in The Ring. It is suggested
that this character might possibly be a caricature, and the reason
that this admission is made is because, here, Wagner is caught with
his pants down. He, himself, describes Mime in great detail in an
early depiction of the character and then, when he realized what he
had done, he withdrew it. But it still exists, and here is the
character Mime in his own words:

"[Mime] is small and bent, somewhat deformed and hobbling.
His head is abnormally large, his face a dark ashen color and
wrinkled, his eyes small and piercing, with red rims, his grey
beard long and scrubby, his head bald..."

This description, which later depicts him as having an excitable
nature, is a traditional antisemitic stereotype. But an even more
important reason than the fact that he had inadvertently created a
sterotype caused Wagner to withdraw the description. He realized
that he had described himself. Wagner was known to be extremely
excitable, his head abnormally large, his face was a dark ashen
color. His eyes were small and said to be very piercing. And he
was getting balder by the minute. In effect the main reason for
the withdrawing of the description was that Wagner saw himself in
his depiction of the prototypical subhuman.

The rejection of the hypotheses that Wagner depicts negative
qualities about Jews in his use of the metaphors of smell, speech,
singing, walking, sight, and the dangers of race mixing is not in
the least surprising. It is terrible for Wagner's image to have
these subtleties dumped on the music loving public. And the
easiest way around the problem is simply to poo poo it. So what is
new?

The fact that Wagner was known to be a pathological antisemite
was always bad for his image, but, the argument went, his personal
opinions never invaded his music. Now that this is shown to be
false, he stands there naked, bony kneed, and disgusting. So some
of assert that the facts are incontrovertible. Some of Wagner's music
dramas are, from first note to last, infected with racist disease.

"The people who assert this must be paranoid" goes the counterargument.
And they can and will continue to deny it, because to accept it as
true shows that the music dramas themselves perpetuate the kind of
hatred that caused such tragedy only 50 odd years ago. Of course,
Wagner himself did not create those many tragedies for Poles,
Russians, Slavs, Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, Seventh Day
Adventists, etc. Others did. Wagner cannot be blamed either
directly for those events, though he perpetuated the beliefs that
ultimately caused them to happen. But the message contained in
his operas is so painful to see once one realizes what it is that
is happening on stage that, for some of us, myself included, we
simply cannot see it, hear it, or play it any longer. Whenever it
comes on my radio, I turn it off. The other night, the SF opera
did a collection of scenes from their current season and I turned
it off rather than be subjected to a performance of "Dich
ture halle" from Tannhauser. I did not want to hear a single note
of that man's utterances, no matter how musically magnificent they
are. I add that before I studied the matter and was playing
Wagner, he always thrilled me musically. My most enoyable gigs
were in the Wagner operas. So it is not that I did not value his
music. My goodness, that man could write music!

Those who deny the truth will continue to do so, and those who
think that the message in Wagner's music is so unspeakable that
they will not listen to it will also continue to think this way.

Here we have a case of art as a divider of people rather than as a
unifer. It's a tough problem.

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

-------------------------------------------------------------------------