Pynchon & Wagner

[rich]

of course, Wagner's family had much to do with the reactionary beliefs even
before Adolf came around--Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Winifred Wagner
(both British-born), eg. Syberberg's long interview/documentary about
Winifred gives some insight into the family dynamics following Wagner's
death and legacy.

rich

On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 6:26 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
wrote:

>
> 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
> > .
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>