Klarinet Archive - Posting 000096.txt from 2007/05

From: "MPWord -- Vann Turner" <vjoet@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Re: Wagner
Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 08:22:11 -0400

Dan, thanks for taking the time to write out a precis for the arguments that
Wagner wanted to disseminate hate in his operas.

It was interesting reading, but far from convincing.

1. The mythologies transpire in a remote past, pre-Christian and pre-Moses,
and we have no Jewish characters. (I believe only Meistersinger, his one
comedy, contains Jewish characters, but my recollection on this may be
wrong.)

2. To appropriate to exclusively a Jewish target sub-human attributes seems
to be ascribing to a group where Wagner didn't specify a group.

3. Any artist wishes to communicate. I think we need to look at contemporary
reviews of his operas to see if any perceptive reviewer picked up and wrote
about a Jewish attribution. If contemporaries (holding the same world-view)
didn't get it, the precis collapses and collapses utterly.

4. That Hitler admired Wagner's work is immaterial. Reagan liked Sinatra.
Can we therefore say Sinatra's mafia connection and attitudes influenced
Reagan's politics?

5. I'll get the books I spoke about, but at this point it seems you are
seeing persecution where persecution doesn't exist (= paranoid), and in the
process are besmearching a great artist.

Vann Joe
(amateur)

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