Pynchon & Wagner

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Alex Ross:

+ ... In recent decades, scholars have reconstructed a school of 
Wagnerian leftism, which gained purchase in Europe and America at the 
end of the 19th century. Socialists, communists, social democrats, and 
anarchists all found sustenance in Wagner’s work. After the Bolshevik 
revolution, Wagner had a brief vogue as a figurehead of proletarian 
culture. / The starting point for the Wagner left was the composer’s own 
revolutionary activity in 1848 and 1849, which forced him into exile for 
many years. His writingsArt and Revolution 
<http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/11/97.pdf>andThe Art 
<http://users.skynet.be/johndeere/wlpdf/wlpr0062.pdf>-Work of the Future 
<http://users.skynet.be/johndeere/wlpdf/wlpr0062.pdf>were classic, if 
eccentric, articulations of the idea that art could play a leading role 
in the struggle for social equality. His own work became a kind of dream 
theatre for the imagination of a future state. Of course, other 
ideologies exploited the composer in the same way. It would be a mistake 
to say that Shaw and his fellow leftists found the “true” Wagner. But it 
would also be a mistake to say they misunderstood him... Wagner’s tale 
of the corrupting power of the golden Ring matches Marx’s musings on the 
“perverting power” of money. When, in Das Kapital, Marx speaks of the 
hoarding of commodities, he notes that the hoarder “sacrifices the lusts 
of the flesh to his gold fetish” and adopts “the gospel of 
renunciation”. The word Marx uses here, “/Entsagung/”, is the same that 
Wagner applies to the dwarf Alberich’s renunciation of love – the 
gesture that wins him access to the Rhinegold. For Marx and Wagner 
alike, love and power are irreconcilable ... Peter Kropotkin was an 
admirer ...Patrice Chéreau 
<http://www.wagneroperas.com/index1976ring.html>’s epochal Bayreuth 
production of the Ring 
<http://www.wagneroperas.com/index1976ring.html>(1976-80), took 
inspiration from The Perfect Wagnerite, realising Shaw’s vision of “tall 
hats for Tarnhelms, factories for Nibelheims, villas for Valhallas”. / 
In 1943, the great theatre criticEric Bentley 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/theater/eric-bentley-dead.html>– who 
recently died at the age of 103 – asked a charged question: “Is Hitler 
always right about Wagner?” The question hangs in the air as the 
controversy rolls ever on ...+

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/17/why-did-lefties-love-wagner-alex-ross-wagnerism-revolution-hitler

In "Versuch über Wagner", Adorno writes:

"In der Liebe sterben: das heißt auch, der Grenze gewahr werden, die der 
Eigentumsordnung am Menschen selbst gesetzt ist: erfahren, daß der 
Anspruch der Lust, wäre er jemals zu Ende gedacht, eben jene autonome, 
sich zugehörende und ihr eigenes Leben zum Ding erniedrigende Person 
sprengen würde, die verblendet glaubt, im Besitz ihrer selbst Lust zu 
finden, und der dieser Besitz Lust gerade entzieht. Wohl verweigert 
Siegfried geizig den Rheintöchtern den Ring; aber indem er den Kreis der 
Verblendung schließt, findet er die Geste, die Erdscholle hinter sich zu 
werfen als das individuelle Leben, das der nicht mehr halten muß, dem es 
einmal hielt, was es versprach. Daher ist Wagners Werk nicht nur der 
willige Prophet und beflissene Büttel von Imperialismus und 
spätbürgerlichem Terror: es verfügt zugleich über die Kraft der Neurose, 
dem eigenen Verfall ins Auge zu sehen und ihn zu transzendieren im 
Bilde, das dem saugenden Blick standhält."


Am 28.08.20 um 12:41 schrieb Kai Frederik Lorentzen:
>
> Did you know (cf. Christian Hänggi: Pynchon's Sound of Music, Zürich 
> 2020: Diaphanes, p. 215) that Richard Wagner is the most frequently 
> referenced composer & musician in Pynchon's books?
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVprS--bLks
>
> Jessye Norman - Liebestod (Tristan und Isolde)
>
> -- 
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> .