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Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association
Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner's RingAuthor(s): George G. WindellReviewed work(s):Source: Central European History, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 27-57Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central European History of
the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4545760 .
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Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner's Ring
GEORGE G. WINDELL
AFE
W months ago the musical world observed the centennial of
the first complete performance of Richard Wagner's Der Ring
^ des Nibelungen, which took place in the then barely completed
Bayreuth Festspielhaus, August 13-17,1876. Few works of art have had
so long a gestation period; more than a quarter century separates Wag?
ner's original sketches, which date from the fall of 1848, and the realiza-
tion ofthe tetrology on the stage. The dramatic structure ofthe enor-
mous music-drama became definitive by February 1853, when Wagner
allowed to be printed privately the texts ofthe four operas. The music
for Das Rheingold, Die Walkiire, and the first two acts of Siegfried was
complete by the end of July 1857. There followed, however, an interval
of almost twelve years before Wagner again took up work on the Ring
in March 1869. He composed the music for the final act of Siegfried and
for all of Gotterdammerung between then and November 1874.1
Because the Ring was completed and first produced in the early years
of the Bismarckian Reich, it became easily identified with German
pretensions to cultural superiority. Audiences and scholars alike have
found it difficult to keep in mind that Wagner's masterpiece was al?
ready an anachronism when it was first performed. It has little in com?
mon with the Hohenzollern Empire; it is rather the greatest and possi?
bly the only artistic monument to the 1848 revolution and to its failure.
Thomas Mann described the Ring as an attack upon "all of bourgeois
culture and civilization which had been dominant since the Renais?
sance," adding that "in its mixture ofthe archaic and the anticipatory it
points to a nonexistent world of a classless commonwealth."2 The
sociologist and musicologist T. W. Adorno argues that ". . . the Ring
celebrates the renunciation ofthe revolution that was no revolution,"
and that "Wotan is the ghostly image ofthe dead and buried revolu-
1. Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (New York, 1933-46), 2:
28-30, 363-74, 395^96",512-13; 4: 282-83.2. Thomas Mann, "Richard Wagner und der 'Ring des Nibelungen,'
"in Gesammelte
Werke in zwolfBdnden (Frankfurt am Main, 1960), 9: 510.
27
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28Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner s Ring
tion."3 However judged, its apocalyptic vision runs parallel to that of
the other great revolutionary tractof
1848, theCommunist
Manifestoof
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Moreover, when we identify the Ring
with the Wagner of 1848 rather than with the Bayreuth Wagner ofthe
1870s the other characteristic which the drama shares with the Com?
munist Manifesto comes immediately into sharp focus. The Ring too
owes a profound debt to the thought of G. W. F. Hegel and a some-
what smaller obligation to his sometime student and vehement critic,
Ludwig Feuerbach.
11
The extensive literature dealing with Wagner's relationship to specu-
lative thinkers of his age has concentrated largely upon the philosopher
with whom he had close personal ties, Friedrich Nietzsche, and those
whose influence he acknowledged, Arthur Schopenhauer and Feuer?
bach.4 The first two are only peripherally relevant to this study. Wag-
3. T. W. Adorno, Versuch iber Wagner (Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1952), pp.
169, 171.
4. It has been said that no modern figure has stimulated a literature so large as that on
Wagner except Napoleon. The two indispensable recent studies of the composer are
Newman, Life, and Adorno, both cited above. Newman,by profession a music critic, not
a historian, accomplished a task of historical research which the professionalhistorian can
view only with unqualified admiration. Because of his work we know with a high de?
gree of accuracy whathappened in Wagner's life, if not always why. Adorno is the first to
have attempted a true synthesis of Wagner's life, politics, literary and musical achieve?
ments. Also useful is Robert W. Gutman, RichardWagner:The Man, His Mind andHis
Music (New York, 1968). The work is based largely on Newman, and attempts, with
indifferent success,to explain Wagner's life and work in terms of psychoanalytic criteria.Other works, new and old, relevant to this study are:Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx,
Wagner,26.rev. ed. (Garden City, N.Y., 1958); Maurice Boucher, Les Ideespolitiquesde
RichardWagner:ExempledeNationalismemythique Paris, 1948); Houston Stewart Cham?
berlain, RichardWagner,4th ed. (Munich, 1907); Hugo Dinger, RichardWagners eistige
Entwicklung:Versuch inerDarstellungder Weltanschauung ichardWagners,mit Riicksicht-
nahmeaufderen Verhdltnis u denphilosophischenRichtungenderfunghegelianerundArthur
SchopenhauerLeipzig, 1892); Arthur Drews, Der Ideengehalt on RichardWagnersdrama-
tischenDichtungen in Zusammenhangmit seinem Leben und seiner Weltanschauung, ebst
einemAnhang:Nietzsche undWagner, Leipzig, 1931);William Ashton EUis,Life ofRichard
Wagner, 6 vols. (London, 1900-1908); Othmar Fries, RichardWagner und die deutsche
Romantik:Versuch inerEinordnung Zurich, 1952); Carl Friedrich Glasenapp, Das LebenRichardWagners,6 vols. (3d ed., Leipzig, 1896); Henri Lichtenberger, RichardWagner,Poete et Penseur (26. ed., Paris, 1898); Paul A. Loos, RichardWagner: Vollendungund
TragikderdeutschenRomantik(Munich, 1952); Rudolf Louis, Die Weltanschauung ichard
Wagners Leipzig,1898); Frederick C. Love, YoungNietzsche andtheWagnerian xperience,
University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures,no.
39 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1963); Jack M. Stein, RichardWagnerand the Synthesisofthe Arts
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GeorgeG. Windell 29
ner first met Nietzsche in November 1868 and their friendship really
begana
yearlater when the
young philosopher,who had
justbeen
ap?pointed to the faculty ofthe University of Basel, called upon the com-
poser at Triebschen, his home outside Lucerne.5 Their acquaintance
came much too late for Nietzsche to have exerted any meaningful in?
fluence upon the Ring. Schopenhauer, although his most important
work, Die Welt als Wille und Vor stellung, was published in 1818, also
became known to Wagner late. The composer was introduced to
Schopenhauer's masterpiece in the fall of 1854, almost two years after
the essential lines of theRing
drama had beenfirmly
established.6 Al?
though Wagner wrote later that only after reading Schopenhauer had
he come to understand his own Wotan, understanding clearly followed
creation.7
Feuerbach presents a different and more serious problem. Except for
Marx he is the best known ofthe Young Hegelians, and in the 1840s he
was more important than Marx. He was one ofa triumvirate of young
scholars?the others were David Friedrich Strauss and Bruno Bauer?
whoapplied
theHegelian
dialectic toChristianity
andthereby
reduced
it to a purely human, historical phenomenon. Feuerbach went a step
farther than the others by replacing Hegel's Weltgeist with the material
world as primal reality. He continued, however, like Hegel, to view
man as the agency through which reality is manifest historically.8
Scholars have been unable to agree upon an assessment of Feuerbach's
influence upon Wagner. He was certainly the first philosopher whose
(Detroit, 1960); Thomas Mann, "Leiden und Grosse Richard Wagners," GesammelteWerke, 9: 363-426; Hans Mayer, "Richard Wagners geistige Entwicklung," in Hans
Mayer, Studienzur deutschenLiteraturgeschichte,eue Beitrage zur Literaturwissenschaft,ed. Werner Krauss and Hans Mayer, vol. 2 (2d ed., Berlin, 1955) pp. 171-212; Carl E.
Schorske, "The Quest for the Grail: Wagner and Morris," in The CriticalSpirit: Essaysin Honorof HerbertMarcuse,ed. Kurt H. Wolff and Barrington Moore, Jr. (Boston, 1967)
pp. 216-32; Curt von Westernhagen, Wagner (Zurich, 1968).
5. Westernhagen, Wagner, p. 373; Gutman, pp. 353-54.6. Westernhagen, Wagner,pp. 190-92; Gutman, p. 159; Richard Wagner, Mein Leben,
ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin, 2 vols. (Munich, 1969), 2: 521. This critical edition is much to
be preferred over the somewhat carelessly edited version which has long been standard
2 vols., (Munich, 1911), although the differences are fewer and less consequential thanone might have expected. The authorized anonymous translation, My Life, 2 vols.
(London, 1911), is undependable.
7. Wagner, Mein Leben, 2: 523.8. See William J. Brazill, The Young Hegelians (New Haven and London, 1970), pp.
111-14; Eugene Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach(New York, 1970), pp.15-16; and Henri Arvon, Ludwig Feuerbach,ou la Transformation u Sacre (Paris, 1957).
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30 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner
sRing
works brought an enthusiastic public response firom the composer.
Wagnerdedicated to him The Art Work
ofthe Future,the first of his
book-length treatises, written at Zurich in October and November
1849 following his flight firom Dresden in May of that year. The work,
he wrote, "owed its existence to the impressions your writings have
made upon me."9 Many years later he reminisced that he had then con?
sidered Feuerbach "the true and only philosopher of modern times."10
In that monograph, published in 1850, and the two books which fol?
lowed it, Opera and Drama and A Communication to My Friends, both
publishedin
1851,the
composerworked out for himself and
soughtto
communicate to others a new aesthetic designed to explain and justify
philosophically the single music-drama he then planned on the Nibe-
lung myth, Siegfrieds Death. All three employ a vocabulary which sug?
gests Feuerbach; all reflect that philosopher's rejection of God as any?
thing more than the idealization of human aspirations. To Feuerbach,
and to Wagner in the early 1850s, ". . . the quality or the precise char?
acter of God is nothing other than the essential quality ofthe individual
humanbeing."11
During the first wave of Wagnerian scholarship at the turn of the
century the question aroused much interest. Some students, such as
early Wagnerian enthusiasts like Carl Friedrich Glasenapp and Houston
Stewart Chamberlain, sought to minimize or deny altogether Feuer-
bach's importance for Wagner's ideas. Glasenapp saw The Art Work of
the Future as "the positive announcement of [Wagner's] artistic creed,
having [nothing] more than a few unimportant terminological usages
in common with thephilosophy
of Feuerbach."12 Chamberlainargued
similarly that Wagner took simply "individual words, individual con?
cepts, from Feuerbach," but in no sense derived his own philosophical
9- Richard Wagner, GesammelteSchriftenundDichtungen n zehn Banden,ed. WolfgangGolther (Berlin, 1913), 10: Anmerkungen, p. 44. Simon Rawidowicz, LudwigFeuerbachs
Philosophie: Ursprungund Schicksal(26.ed., Berlin, 1964), p. 392, suggests that Wagner's
title, Das KunstwerkderZukunft,was intended as a deliberate reference to Feuerbach's
GrundsdtzederPhilosophiederZukunft,published in Zurich in 1843.10. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 442.11. Ludwig Feuerbach,Das Wesen desChristenthums,n SdmtlicheWerke,ed. Wilhelm
Bohn and FriedrichJodl (2d ed., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt,1960), 16:24. See also Wagnerto FerdinandHeine, Zurich, Nov. 19,1849, John N. Burk, ed., LettersofRichardWagner:The BurrellCollection(New York, 1950), pp. 270-72.
12. Glasenapp, 2: 348.
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GeorgeG. Windell 31
position from him.13 Henri Lichtenberger expressed much the same
view. "Wagner was able to borrow from the writers of 1848 and, in
particular, from Feuerbach, some formulas which appeared to him
suitable for explaining his thought. But that thought itself is original,
autonomous."14 With almost twenty years of hindsight Wagner himself
seemed to confirm this view in the preface to volumes three and four of
his Gesammelte Schriften, first published in 1872.15
At roughly the same time, however, scholars like Hugo Dinger and
Rudolf Louis concluded that Feuerbach's influence went much deeper.16
Granting that the composer had developed on his own an amorphous,
emotionally based atheism, a vague feeling for the "purely human," it
was Feuerbach, they argued, who enabled him to articulate those feel?
ings rationally. As Louis put it, "Feuerbach was the very first to make
Richard Wagner into a philosophical thinker, in so far as he, as an
artist, could become one."17 Dinger went even further, saying that
"Wagner took from Feuerbach the basis of his Weltanschauung."18 A
generation later Simon Rawidowicz and Arthur Drews echoed that
judgment. Recent students of Wagner such as Ernest Newman and
Robert Gutman have also adopted positions similar to that of Louis,
without, however, treating the question as one of major importance.
T. W. Adorno does not deal with the problem at all.19
Although a wholly satisfactory resolution of the matter is not pos?
sible, it seems reasonable to assume that, despite the 1872 statement,
Wagner did mean what he wrote in the dedication to his Art Work of
the Future, particularly since he reaffirmed it in the late 1860s when he
dictated Mein Leben to Cosima.20 Wagner's theoretical treatises ofthe
13. Chamberlain, p. 189. Chamberlain, however, seems earlier to have regardedFeuerbach as considerably more important to Wagner's thought. In a letter dated March
26, 1899, addressed to him, Cosima Wagner sharply criticized a lecture he had given in
Vienna entitled "Richard Wagner's Philosophy." She chided him for having drawn
false conclusions, as, "for example, when you decide from a letter that possibly shows
Feuerbachian terminology that Feuerbach up to the year 1854 dominated the mind [ofRichard Wagner], which is not the case." Paul Pretzsch, ed., Cosima Wagnerund Houston
Stewart Chamberlain m Briefwechsel, 888-igo8 (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 559-60.
14. Lichtenberger, p. 185.
15. GesammelteSchriften,3: 3-5; Rawidowicz, p. 404.
16. Dinger, pp. xiii, 22; Louis, pp. 64-78.
17. Louis, p. 69.18. Dinger, p. 22.
19. Rawidowicz, pp. 388-410; Drews, pp. 82-140; Newman, Life, 2: 431, n. 8; Gut?
man, pp. 140,143, 158: Adorno, passim.20. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 443-44; Newman, Life, 3: 517-18; 4: 179, 188-89, 259,
259, n. 16.
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32 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s
Ring
early 1850s all owe much to Feuerbach, but that fact provides little help
ininvestigating
Feuerbach's influence on theRing, something
that all
the authors cited ignore. For Wagner conceived the idea for his master-
piece more than a year before he wrote The Art Work ofthe Future, and
he completed the text o?Siegfried's Death, which, except for the changed
ending, which will be treated in detaii later, differs in no material way
from that of Gotterdammerung, at least seven months before he began
that essay.21
The earliest version of what became the tetrology appears in the
thirty-five-hundred-worddraft entitled Der
Nibelungen-Mythusals Ent?
wurf zu einem Drama, which Wagner dated October 4, 1848. This was
followed over the next several months by successive versions of Sieg?
fried9 s Death. Two narrative renderings in prose led to a draft of the
complete poem, which Wagner finished on November 28. This he
subjected to a major revision during the first two months of 1849. All
these versions follow closely the Entwurf.22 Moreover, except for the
changed ending mentioned earlier, none of the extensive alterations
whichWagner
made as the drama evolvedduring
thefollowing years
shows any substantial shift in his philosophical point of view toward his
material. Thus, unless it can be shown that Wagner became acquainted
with Feuerbach's writings before he penned the Entwurf, or, at the very
latest, before he completed the revision of Siegfried1 s Death, Feuerbach
could have had no influence upon the original conception of the Ring
drama or its basic structure. At most some aspects of its later evolution
may be attributed to him. Careful reading ofthe evidence suggests that
this is indeed the case.
Direct information provided by Wagner himself is meager and has
been used to support contradictory conclusions. Contemporary mate?
rial by others bearing on the problem scarcely exists at all. The com?
poser tells us that he first became aware of Feuerbach through "a Ger-
man-Catholic preacher and political agitator with a Calabrian hat,
Metzdorf by name," with whom he became "profitably" acquainted in
21. Newman, Life, 2: 23-24, 28, 30-31; Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 442.22. For a detailed account of the changes during the evolution of the JRiTig,ee Otto
Strobel, RichardWagner,Skizzen undEntwurfezur Ring-Dichtung,mit derDichtung,Der
Junge Siegfried(Munich, 1930), pp. 25-69; Ernest Newman, The WagnerOperas (New
York, 1949), pp. 393-450, and his Life, 2: 23-24, 28, 241, 325-62. Newman's accounts
are based on Strobel.
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GeorgeG. Windell 33
Dresden.23 In what Wagner called an "important conversation," the
preacher,
described as "a serious
youngman," referred him to Feuer?
bach's books.24 From the context it is clear that this conversation took
place sometime between the outbreak of the German revolution in
March 1848 and the collapse ofthe Dresden uprising in May 1849.
Wagner's only account was written approximately twenty years later,
and it unfortunately gives no indication of either the date of the con?
versation or when Wagner acted upon the suggestion. Most important,
it is not clear whether he did so before his escape to Switzerland. How?
ever,Wagner
described in the next sentence ofthe same
paragraph
how
his "new Zurich friend," Wilhelm Baumgartner, brought to his house
a copy of Feuerbach's Gedanken uber Tod und Unsterblichkeit25 It is ap-
parent that at the time he wrote, these two events, Metzdorf's recom-
mendation and Baumgartner's delivery of the book, were intimately
associated in his mind. His treatment suggests that he remembered the
second as having occurred shortly after the first. The most likely recon?
struction is that Wagner's conversation with the preacher took place
justbefore, or even
during
the DresdenAuf
stand, whichbegan
onMay
1, and that he took the first opportunity after he became settled in
Zurich in early July to follow his advice. It is probable that he asked
Baumgartner to acquire the book for him shortly before August 4,
1849, for on that date he wrote to Feuerbach's publisher, Otto Wigand,
requesting the philosopher's Werke. "Unfortunately," he wrote, "it
has not yet been possible here to track down [zur Kenntnis zu erhalten]
more than the third volume . . . with the Gedanken iiber Tod und
Unsterblichkeit."26
The recent publication of a complete catalog of the library which
Wagner collected during his Dresden residence provides new evidence
that materially increases the probability ofthe above reconstruction of
events.27 Although his library contained approximately a thousand
23. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 420, 442. In the 1911 edition ofMein Leben the name ap-
pears initially as "Menzdorff," later as "Metzdorf."
24. Ibid., p. 420.
25. Ibid., p. 442.
26. Letter quoted by Chamberlain, p. 188.
27. Curt von Westernhagen, Richard WagnersDresdenerBibliothek, 1842-1849: Neue
Dokumentezur Geschichte einesSchaffens(Wiesbaden, 1966). In 1846 Wagner put up the
library as collateral for a loan of five hundred Thalerfrom Heinrich Brockhaus, a partnerin the well-known publishing firm F. A. Brockhaus. Two of Wagner's sisters were
married to brothers of Heinrich Brockhaus. Heinrich acquired the library when Wagnerfled Saxony and declined to return it except upon repayment of the loan with accumu-
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34 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner
s Ring
volumes, almost all of them acquired after Wagner returned to Dresden
in 1842, there was not among its roughly two hundred titles a single
work by Feuerbach.28 Wigand's publishing house, which had begun
issuing Feuerbach's Samtliche Werke in 1846, was located in Leipzig,
only about sixty miles firom Dresden. Six volumes had already ap?
peared by the end of 1848. His library did contain three works pub?
lished by that house, and Wagner may even have been acquainted with
Wigand.29 Since he is known to have been an avid reader as well as
collector, it is difficult to imagine that, had he had anything beyond the
most minimal introduction to Feuerbach before he left Dresden, Wag?
ner would not have found a way to acquire some of his works for his
library.
Nonetheless, despite the unlikelihood that Feuerbach significantly
influenced Wagner's original conception of his Nibelung drama, much
of the text of the Ring was written and much of its music composed
during the period of his maximum interest in Feuerbach. It would be
surprising if that fascination did not produce some effect upon his work.
The
Ring
as we know it does show a number of shifts from
Wagner'soriginal design, and at least three of the major ones can be traced, at
least in part, to Wagner's study of Feuerbach. It was the philosopher's
elevation of human nature to the level of the divine rather than his
materialism that impressed Wagner, his doctrine that "... the antith?
esis ofthe divine and human is an illusory one, i.e., it is nothing else
than the antithesis between human nature [in general] and the human
individual."30 As Wagner pondered the implications of this dictum of
lated interest. This Wagner for a long time could or would not make. In 1873 the matter
was amicably settled, since the composer had long since lost interest in the collection. It
survived the destruction of the company's Leipzig headquarters during the Second
World War. See Westernhagen, pp. 75-82, and an undated draft in Wagner's hand-
writing for a letter of Minna Wagner to Heinrich Brockhaus, BurrellCollection,Appen-dix A, no. 185, pp. 484-85.
28. Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,pp. 12-16, 52, 84-113. On p. 52 Western?
hagen states flatly that this fact conclusively refutes the contention of those who have
detected the influence of Feuerbach on Wagner's sketch for his never completed drama,
Jesus von Nazareth, written early in 1849. Westernhagen presumably refers to HenriLichtenberger, pp. 182-84, and Simon Rawidowicz. The latter, p. 399, n. 1, described
Jesus vonNazareth as "possibly the first Wagnerian work influenced by Feuerbach."
29. Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,pp. 84-113; Kamenka, pp. 178-79. Wigand, a
political radical,published several of Wagner's essays, including the important Art Work
ofthe Future. See Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 438, 455, and Newman, Life, 2: 121-22.
30. Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums, dmtlicheWerke,16: 17.
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GeorgeG. Windell 35
Feuerbach, he found that the ending he had first devised for Siegfried9s
Death no longer satisfied him. In it the shades of Siegfried and Briinn-
hilde arise from the ashes ofthe funeral pyre which has consumed their
bodies as the latter leads the slain hero to Valhalla, where the gods, their
crime expiated by the self-sacrifice ofthe former warrior-goddess, con-
tinue to reign over a world purged of evil.31 The revised ending was
implied in the earliest sketch for Young Siegfried of May 1851 and be?
came definitive with the conversion of Siegfried9s Death into Gotter-
dammerung in November and early December of 1852. Now the gods
are to be consumed in a holocaust which, Wagner suggested in his
stage directions, originates from Siegfried's funeral pyre. The dominion
ofthe gods comes to an end, a denouement accepted and even willed by
Wotan, the most powerful ofthe gods, yet brought about in the final
analysis not by him, but through the stronger will of Briinnhilde. Her
love for Siegfried leads inexorably to her own destruction, but at the
same time it confers upon her the power to bring to an end the corrupt
world order which has outlived its time. At the end the fate ofthe hu?
man race is for the first time totally under human control.32
Wagner's second major alteration followed logically from the first.
If love is the greatest power for good in the world, its absence is the
ultimate source of evil. Thus Wagner arrived at the theme of renun-
ciation of love. Of this there is no hint in either the Entwurf or Siegfried's
Death; the first reference comes in the earliest sketch for Das Rheingold,
which the composer drafted in early November 1851. Only he who
renounces love can forge the ring which will confer mastery of the
world.33 This idea is derivable from Feuerbach's
equation
of divine and
human, but it is closely related to another Feuerbachian concept which
had extraordinary appeal to one with the strong sexuality of Wagner:
the equivalence of reality and sensuality. "The real in its reality, or
taken as real, is the real as the object ofthe senses. Truth, reality, sen?
suality are identical. Only a sensual being is a true, a real being."34 In
31. SiegfriedsTod, Act III, scene 4, GesammelteSchriften,2: 228.
32. Gotterddmmerung,omplete vocal score... by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904),
Act III, scene 3, pp. 329-31; Newman, Life, 2: 28.33. Wagner to Theodor Uhlig, Albisbrunn, Nov. 12, 1851, RichardWagnersBriefean
TheodorUhlig, WilhelmFischer,FerdinandHeine in RichardWagnersBriefein Originalaus-
gaben, erste Folge (Leipzig, 1912), 4: 119-20; Wagner to Franz Liszt, Albisbrunn, Nov.
20, 1851, Briefwechselzwischen WagnerundLiszt, 3d ed. in WagnersBriefe, zweite Folge,9: 138-39; Newman, Wagner Operas, pp. 436-37.
34. Feuerbach, Grundsatze derPhilosophieder Zukunft, Samtliche Werke,2 (1959): 296.
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36 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner
sRing
the first scene ofthe completed Das Rheingold, the prologue to the Ring,
Wagner
established the dialectic of love, the creative force, and limit-
less power, its corrupting and destructive counterpart. The Nibelung
dwarf, Alberich, frustrated in his sexual pursuit of the Rhinemaidens,
resolves that, if love is denied him, he will take revenge upon all who
love. He renounces and curses love in order to acquire the means to
subdue the world to his will.35
Intimately bound up with both these modifications which altered
the focus ofthe work was Wagner's decision to expand it from the single
opera, Siegfried'sDeath, to the
gigantic, four-part Ring ofthe Nibelung.The fate of Siegfried had become secondary to the portrayal of the
overthrow of an outworn world order. The drama had turned into a
manifesto proclaiming the liberation of humanity from the burden of
superstition. Practical considerations had first led Wagner to consider
enlarging his plan; the material was too vast to be compressed ade-
quately into a single opera, or even two. The compulsion now became
irresistible. Produced at a festival created solely for that purpose, the
Ringwould offer a
"purely human,"Feuerbachian alternative to the
moribund faiths ofthe past. Its message: human love can redeem the
world.36
Although the probability is high that these aspects of the Ring did
originate firom Wagner's reading of Feuerbach, considerable caution is
still in order.37 It would, for example, not be entirely unreasonable to
treat the ending of Gotterdammerung as based directly upon Snorri
Sturluson's description of Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, in the
ProseEdda,
or evenupon
the final stanzas oftheVoluspd (The Prophecy
of the Seeress) in the earlier Poetic Edda?% Moreover, Wagner had al-
35- Das Rheingold,complete vocal score ... by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904),scene 1, pp. 1-51.
36. Wagner to Uhlig, Nov. 3, 1851, WagnersBriefe,4:117; Wagner to Uhlig, Albis?
brunn, Nov. 12, 1851, ibid., pp. 118-20; Wagner to Liszt, Nov. 20, 1851, ibid., 9:
136-40; Wagner, Eine Mitteilungan meineFreunde,GesammelteSchriften,4: 341-44.
37. One other significant addition to the plot, the theme of the young Siegfried's
inability to experience fear, Wagner took, possibly unconsciously, from an old folktale.See Wagner to Uhlig, May 10, 1851, WagnersBriefe,4: 91; Newman, WagnerOperas,
p. 428.
38. See Jean I. Young, ed. and trans., The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson:TalesfromNorseMythology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 86-92, and "Voluspd,the Proph-
ecy ofthe Seeress," stanzas45-65, in Lee M. Hollander, ed. and trans., The PoeticEdda,
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GeorgeG. Windell 37
ready employed the theme of redemption by love in the Fliegende
Hollander and Tannhauser.39 Hisconception
ofreality
as dialecticalmay
have reached him from Hegel via Feuerbach, but, as will appear below,
it is more likely to have come directly. The most reasonable conclusion
is that Wagner's study of Feuerbach focused for him what was already
present in his mind in an inchoate form. It certainly gave him the as?
surance which, as an autodidact without adequate formal academic
training, he otherwise lacked.
ni
Since Feuerbach appears to have been responsible at most for modify-
ing, however significantly, a design whose basic outlines had been de?
termined earlier, it is necessary to search elsewhere for the philosophical
sources ofthe project itself. The most likely candidate is Hegel, despite
the disparaging comments that occur in Wagner's writings after he
moved to Bayreuth in 1872. Then, for example, he complained that
the Hegelian system had "succeeded in making the minds of Germans
incapableeven of
graspingthe
problemof
philosophyto such a
degreethat since then, to have no philosophy at all has been considered the
correct philosophy."40 Such remarks owe much to the influence of
Schopenhauer and possibly to that of Nietzsche, neither of whom ad-
mired Hegel. Moreover, the self-educated Wagner frequently dis-
played in his later years an arrogance toward academic thinkers which
sought to mask his diffidence.41 Significantly, however, the only work
(2d rev. ed., Austin, Texas, 1962), pp. 9-13. In Voluspdthe gods arereborn after Ragnarok:
I see a hall than the sun more fair
thatched with red gold which is Gimle*hight.There will the gods all guiltless throne
and Hve forever in ease and bliss.
Voluspd,stanza 63, The PoeticEdda,p. 12. Wagner's original ending for Siegfried'sDeath
may reflect this idyllic picture.
39. See Newman, WagnerOperas, pp. 19-20, 43, 49, 83, n. 1, 94~95-
40. "Deutscher Kunst und deutsche Politik," GesammelteSchriften,8: 45. Cf. Wagner
to August Rockel, Zurich, Feb. 5, 1855: "Schopenhauer's philosophy . . . completelydemolishes the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel nonsense and charlatanism." Wagner an AugustRockel in WagnersBriefe,zweite Folge, 11: 51, and Wagner to Liszt, Zurich, Dec. 16 (?),
1854: "What charlatans are all the Hegels beside him [Schopenhauer]!" Ibid., 9: 42.
41. This is almost certainly the reason he found the adulation ofthe young Nietzsche
so flattering; an authentic university professor had sought him out and asked his advice.
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38 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s Ring
ofa modern philosopher which found its way into his Dresden library
wasHegel's Vorlesungen
iiber diePhilosophie
derWeltgeschichte.42
Neither the composer's autobiographical works nor his correspon?
dence provide much direct evidence. For a short time when he was
fourteen Wagner had developed an attachment to his uncle, Adolf
Wagner, a minor literary scholar, whom the composer later eulogized
for "the many-sidedness of his knowledge, which extended from phi-
lology to the areas of philosophy and poetic literature with equal
warmth. . . ,"43 The youngster had access to his uncle's extensive li?
brary,and he
reportsthat he was allowed to
accompanythe middle-
aged bachelor on his daily walks, during which the conversations "had
as their subject everything serious and lofty in the realm of knowl?
edge."44 The comment is a characteristic Wagnerian exaggeration, but
it is quite possible that he did make his first contact with formal phi?
losophy during these promenades. It is likewise by no means unlikely
that Adolf Wagner's library contained works by Hegel.
During Wagner's single term as a special student at the University of
Leipzigin
1831,he attended a few lectures on
philosophywithout as-
certainable effect. The only member ofthe faculty who impressed him
was a young aesthetician named Weiss, who had just dedicated his
translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics to Hegel, possibly, Wagner says,
as an academic joke.45 He did meet Weiss at his uncle's home. Some-
time later he "racked his brain in vain . . . trying to make some sense
out ofthe first pages" of Schelling's Transcendental Idealism.46
Although he and his first wife, Minna, endured extreme poverty
duringtheir Paris
sojourn between 1839 and 1842, Wagner did havethe time to renew his interest in philosophy. A young German Jewish
scholar, Samuel Lehrs, whom he met there, rekindled his enthusiasm,
and the two spent many hours discussing metaphysical questions.47 It is
likely that Hegel, then dead only a decade, figured in those conversa?
tions. Wagner's appointment, in 1842, as second conductor at the Royal
Saxon Opera in Dresden plunged him into the daily routine of theat-
rical production and composition. The painter Friedrich Pecht, another
42. Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,pp. 51, 93.
43. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 29.
44. Ibid., pp. 29-30.
45. Ibid., p. 62.
46. Ibid., pp. 62, 442.
47. Ibid., pp. 181-82, 220-21; Newman, Life, 1: 271-72.
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GeorgeG. Windell 39
friend ofthe Paris days, described in his memoirs, published more than
forty years later, how he once visited the composer in Dresden and
found him immersed in Hegel's Phanomenologie des Geistes, "which ...
he praised as the finest of all books." It soon became apparent, however,
that Wagner could not explain the meaning of a passage he had read
aloud. After repeating it four times, Wagner concluded that he did not
understand it either. Both dissolved in laughter, "and that was the end
ofthe Phanomenologie ."48
As 1848 approached, Wagner once more inaugurated a consistent
effort to broaden his knowledge and understanding. This time he chose
Hegel's Philosophy of History as the vehicle for his "introduction to
philosophy."
A good deal of it made an impression on me, and it seemed to me that I should cer?
tainly reach the inner sanctum by this route. The more incomprehensible appeared
many of the speculative conclusions of the tremendously distinguished mind, which
had been extolled to me as the capstone of all philosophical knowledge,49 the more I
felt impelled to get to the bottom ofthe matter ofthe "absolute" and everything that
was associated with it.50
Unfortunately Wagner does not tell us whether or not he ever
fmished reading the Vorlesungen. In any event, the outbreak of the
revolution soon interrupted his studies. During the following months
he became deeply involved in radical politics. He discussed revolution?
ary tactics with the Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin, who had cer?
tainly studied Hegel, and was on familiar terms with Marx and Proud-
hon.51 It is reasonable to suppose, although there is no documentary
evidence, that he was introduced to Marx's ideas by the Russian. It is
less likely, but possible, that he had access through Bakunin to some of
Marx's early writings. Neither Marx nor Proudhon, however, was
represented in his Dresden library.52 Bakunin, too, became deeply im-
48. Friedrich Pecht, Aus meinerZeit, 1: 294, quoted by Glasenapp, 2: 349.
49. Probably by Lehrs.
50. Mein Leben, 1: 442.
51. Ibid., pp. 398-402; Newman, Life, 2: 50-51; E. H. Carr, MichaelBakunin (26.ed.,
New York, 1961), pp. 135-37, 153-55, i95-9<5.52. Newman, Life, 2: 50-51; Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,p. 53. The conjecture
of Robert Craft in "Parsifal, the Worship of Wagnerism," New York Review of Books,Oct. 31,1974, p. 12, n. 4, that "it is unlikely that the composer had not read Marx ..." is
supported by no documentary evidence. Wagner ignores Marx in his own writing, and
is more likely to have read Proudhon, to whom he refers frequently. See Mayer, "Wag-ners geistige Entwicklung,,, Studien zur deutschenLiteraturgeschichte.pp. 186, 198.
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40 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner
sRing
plicated in the May 1849 Dresden insurrection; less fortunate than
Wagner, he was arrested and convicted.53
Taking the composer at his own word, the scholars cited earlier al?
most totally ignored the possibility of a direct Hegelian influence on
Wagner. Arthur Drews did conclude that *'certain thoughts of this
philosopher, especially his conception of great historical individuals,
remained not without influence upon him."54 Adorno conceded in his
study that there are some points of correspondence between the Ring
and Hegel's philosophy of history, without, however, suggesting that
Wagner derived those features of his drama from Hegel.55 Yet less
than five years after Wagner's death Nietzsche, his most brilliant crit-
ic,56 described him unequivocally as a Hegelian. "He became," Nietz?
sche wrote, "Hegel's heir. Music as 'idea.' "57 But Nietzsche failed to
develop the theme, and his aphorism does not in any case come to
terms with the crucial point: that Hegel's contribution to Wagner was,
like his contribution to Marx, less specific doctrine than an organizing
principle, the dialectic.
Dialectical thought had a profound appeal to the generation which
matured between 1820 and 1840, the last generation ofthe romantic
age. The classical Greek philosophers who had developed the dialectic
saw in it a method by which the human intellect could achieve under?
standing. Repeated collision between affirmation and negation, state-
53- Rolf Weber, Die Revolution in Sachsen, 1848/49: Entwicklungund Analyse ihrer
Triebkrdfte[East] Berlin, 1970), p. 261; Carr, pp. 204-8.
54. P. 84. The French Wagnerian scholar Edouard Rod also noted in 1885 that
"Wagner's aesthetic, very self-conscious and very deliberate, is the logical result of theGerman aesthetic, notably of that of Lessing, of Herder,... of Goethe and Schiller, and,
above all, of Hegel in the chapter of his Aestheticswhere he treats 'the relationship ofthe
means of musical expression with the subject dealt with.'"
RevueContemporaine,uly 25,
1885, quoted by L6on Guichard, La Musiqueau Tempsdu Wagnerisme Paris,1963), pp.
63-64.
55. Adorno, p. 166.
56. Cf. "There was a German Wagner criticism only once: with Nietzsche. The rest is
nonsense." Thomas Mann to Andre Gide, Munich, Jan. 21, 1922. Erika Mann, ed.,ThomasMann Briefe, 1889-1936 (Frankfurtam Main, 1961), p. 195.
57. Der Fall Wagner n Karl Schlechta, ed., FriedrichNietzsche: Werkein drei Bdnden(Munich, 1954-56), 2: 924. See also Die FrbhlicheWissenschaft,where Nietzsche wrote:
"Until the middle of his life Richard Wagner let himself be led astrayby Hegel." Ibid.,
p. 105, and Nietzsche to Georg Brandes, Nice, Feb. 19, 1888: ". . . all Wagnerians are
followers of Schopenhauer. This was different when I was young. Then it was the last
Hegelians who held on to Wagner, and 'Wagner and Hegel' was still the watchword of
the fifties." Ibid., 3: 1279.
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GeorgeG. Windell 41
ment and contradiction, could make error apparent, separate truth from
falsehood, and open the way to certain knowledge. To Hegel, the dia?
lectic was all this, but more. It was at once the technique by which the
mind apprehends reality and reality itself. Reality ceased to be some?
thing given and therefore unchanging, as in the Christian tradition; it
became dynamic, always evolving. At any moment it is the product of
what was potential in the past, the logically necessary outcome of what
has gone before. It is the absolute, the spirit, the single substance which
transforms itself into ever higher forms in an unending rational process,
a process which is therefore self-determined.58
We cannot ascertain how far Wagner read in either of Hegel's
works which he at least sampled. The problem is not critical, however,
because each of them contains a succinct and nontechnical treatment of
the dialectic in its early pages, those which the academically untrained
Wagner is most likely to have read and understood. The first of these,'
which comes at the beginning ofthe long preface to the Phanomenologie,
describes a key element in the dialectic: the concept of reality as an
"organicunity" which embraces
negation
as well as aflirmation.
For opinion [in general], the contrast between the true and the false becomes so rigidthat it also tends to expect either agreement with, or contradiction of an existing philo?
sophical system, and in a statement about such [a system] to see only the one or the
other. It comprehends the difference of philosophical systems not so much as the pro?
gressive development of truth as it sees in the difference only contradiction. The bud
disappears in the bursting forth ofthe blossom, and one could say that the former is
refuted by the latter; likewise the blossom is declared a false existence by the fruit, and,
as truth, the latter takes the place of the former. These forms are not only different
from oneanother,
butthey
alsosupplant
one another, since each isincompatible [withwhat follows]. But their fluid nature makes them at the same time elements of an or?
ganic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but [in which] one is as necessary
as the other, and this equal necessity fills out the life ofthe whole.59
58. Recent useful works on Hegel include: Schlomo Avineri, HegeVs Theory of the
Modern State (London, 1972); J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-Examination (London, 1958);Ivan Soll, An Introduction o HegeVsMetaphysics(Chicago and London, 1969); Raymond
Plant, Hegel (Bloomington, Ind., 1973); and Walter A. Kaufmann, Hegel, A Reinterpre-
tation (Garden City, N.Y., 1966).59. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Die Phanomenologiedes Geistes (6th ed., ed.
Johannes Hoffmeister), in Samtliche Werke:Neue kritischeAusgabe (Hamburg, 1952), 5-10. Anyone must pale at the prospect of attempting to render even short passages from
Hegel in English. In the translations used here the author has sought to remain as close as
possible to the structure ofthe original as well as to convey the meaning, since so much of
Wagner's prose ofthe period reflects that structure.
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42 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s Ring
The introduction to the Vorlesungen likewise contains a reasonably
concise statement of Hegel's conception of history. This is found chiefly
in the chapter entitled "The Realization ofthe Spirit in History," be?
ginning on the twenty-eighth page of the text proper.60 In this Hegel
expands the idea contained in the quotation given above, now with
specific application to history. Here Wagner probably first encountered
the Hegelian concept of "spirit," which, despite the mystical overtones
often ascribed to it, is clearly and unconditionally linked to human will
and activity.
The realm ofthe spirit is that which is produced by man. One may create any kind ofan idea ofthe realm of God, but it is always a realm ofthe spirit which is realized in
man and is to be brought into existence by him.61
It need not be assumed that Wagner was overly concerned with the
subtleties of Hegel's lengthy characterization of world history as "the
progress of the consciousness of freedom" which followed.62 What
must have appealed to him was the idea that the historical process be?
comes manifest through "external, phenomenal" means, i.e., human
will and action.63 Although, Hegel argued, "reason rules the world,
and, therefore,... rules world history," "nothing great is achieved ...
without passion."64 Individuals act selfishly to attain their own ends,
but "... through the actions of men something results which is quite
different from what they intend and accomplish, from what they di?
rectly know and will. They achieve their interest, but something be?
yond that is brought about which is immanent in the action, but which
was not in their consciousness or intent."65 Some few individuals, how?
ever, "have the good fortune to be the instruments ofa purpose which
represents a stage in the progress ofthe universal spirit."66 These "world-
historical individuals are those who have willed and brought about not
something imagined, supposed, but that which is right and necessary,
who know it, in whose inner being has been revealed what is timely,
60. Die Vernunft n derGeschichte Introduction to Vorlesungeniber die Philosophieder
Weltgeschichte]5th ed., ed. Johannes Hoffmeister), in SdmtlicheWerke, 18a, Teilband 1:
50-110.61. Ibid., p. 50.62. Ibid., pp. 63-78.
63. Ibid., pp. 78-79.
64. Ibid., pp. 85, 87.
65. Ibid., p. 88.
66. Ibid., pp. 99-100.
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GeorgeG. Windell 43
what is necessary."67 "The special interest of passion," Hegel continues,
"is inseparable from the actualization ofthe universal." What he calls
"the cunning of reason" makes individuals serve reason's higher purpose.
The particular is for the most part too insignificant compared with the universal; indi?
viduals are sacrificed and abandoned. The idea pays the tribute of existence and of
transience, not out of itself, but with the passions of individuals.68
Wagner's own account of his philosophical studies, written many
years later, suggests that his interest in Hegel reached its peak during
the early months ofthe 1848 revolution. Reexamined in that light, his
famous Vaterlandsverein speech of June 15, 1848, however impoliticit may have been, no longer appears irrational nonsense.69 When he
urged the king to declare Saxony a republic and to place himself at its
head in order to become "what according to his noblest conception of
himself he should be: the first ofthe people, the fireest ofthe free,"70
he was only paraphrasing Hegel. The king, no Hegelian, declined the
role of world-historical figure.
iv
Wagner made his first attempt to reduce the Nibelung material to
usable form during that same revolutionary summer of 1848. It took
the shape of a historical essay, Die Wibelungen: Weltgeschichte aus der
Sage.71 His use of Weltgeschichte, a term closely identified with Hegel,
in the subtitle of this ludicrous, amateurish effort at historical interpre?
tation on a grand scale was probably deliberate. The structure, style,
and vocabulary of the essay show unmistakably the influence of the
Vorlesungen.12
67. Ibid., p. 97-68. Ibid., p. 105. Cf. "The Ring agrees in one specific theme with the Hegelian phi?
losophy of history. That is the cunning of reason." Adorno, p. 166.
69. See Gutman, pp. 130,135; Westernhagen, Wagner,^.132, and Newman, Life,2:11.The address was published in a special supplement ofthe DresdenerAnzeiger on June 16,
the following day, under the title "Wie verhalten sich republikanische Bestrebungendem Konigtum gegeniiber?" It appears in Wagner, GesammelteSchriften,1: 108-17.
70. "Wie verhalten sich . . . ?" GesammelteSchriften,1: 116.
71. Ibid., 2: 115-55. See also, Newman, Life, 2: 18.72. It is always possible that one finds what he is looking for because he is looking,
not because it is there. It is nonetheless difficult to imagine anyone having written the
following passage without having been familiar with the introduction to Hegel's
Vorlesungen:"In Charlemagne the oft cited primeval myth reached its most real actualiza-
tion in a harmonically interconnected splendid set of historical relationships. From then
on the growth of its essentially ideal substance would increase exactly to the degree to
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44 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner
sRing
In this piece of historical fantasy Wagner argued that the name
"Wibelung"
or
"Wibeling,"
one ofthe termsapplied
to the
imperialparty during the medieval struggle between popes and German em?
perors, had evolved firom "Nibelung."73 Moreover, a pre-Merovingian
Frankish royal family, he wrote, had also borne the name "Nibelung";
thus the Frankish monarchy itself had become identified with the
Nibelungs of the saga.74 The myth of the Nibelung smiths, the hoard
they piled up in the bowels ofthe earth, and its appropriation by Sieg?
fried was a "hereditary possession" ofthe Franks. It became for them,
and later for Germansgenerally,
thesymbol
of the eternalquest
for
power.75 Wagner traced this hypothetical relationship ofthe myth and
the events of medieval German history through the death of Barbarossa,
then more or less neatly tied together the Nibelung hoard and the
quest for the Holy Grail.76
The essay cannot today be read without acute embarrassment. It
does, however, provide the best evidence we have of this early stage in
the composer's effort to refashion the primitive materials into a present-
day myth depictingthe "human race itself, which
proceedson and on
from life to death, firom victory to defeat, from joy to sorrow, and so,
in constant rejuvenation, brings the eternal reality of man and nature,
in themselves and through themselves, actively to consciousness."77
Two years earlier he had begun with a sketch for a spoken drama on
Barbarossa, but abandoned it when he discovered what he viewed as
the resemblance of its subject matter to that ofthe Nibelung and Sieg?
fried myths.78 His subsequent venture into Hegelian Weltgeschichte was
transitional.Siegfried, Wotan,
andJesus
allappear
in theessay,
but
Wagner's world-historical figure is still Barbarossa.79 A few months
which its embodiment as reality dissolved and evaporated, up to the point that after
complete alienation of the real, pure idea enters into history, [but] finally withdraws
from it in order, in accord with external circumstances, to become again completely ab-
sorbed in the saga." Die Wibelungen,GesammelteSchriften,2: 142.
73. It was generally held, even then, that the term was a corruption ofthe name ofthe
town Waiblingen, the Hohenstaufen family seat in Wurttemberg.
74. Die Wibelungen,GesammelteSchriften,2: 128-30.75. Ibid., pp. 119-24.
76. Ibid., pp. 130-55.
77. Ibid., p. 132.
78. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 389-90; Gutman, pp. 120-21.
79. Die Wibelungen,GesammelteSchriften,2: 115-55, esp. 119, 144-50.
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GeorgeG. Windell 45
later came the Nibelungen-Mythus als Entwurf zu einem Drama, men?
tioned earlier.80
The change in Wagner's point of view between Die Wibelungen and
the Entwurf is striking. Barbarossa and Jesus have both disappeared, and
the hero has become ostensibly Siegfried, but Wagner is noticeably
ambivalent toward him. In the early paragraphs of the Entwurf he de?
scribed the hero who is to redeem the world as one ". . . in whom
autonomous strength has come to full consciousness, so that he is able
through his own free will to comprehend atonement by death [and]
to will the brave deed himself."81 This characterization includes the
idea of Christ as redeemer, and is obviously related as well to Hegel's
definition of the world-historical individual. Wagner later elaborated
this description ofthe hero to come in the second act of Die Walkure,
when Wotan reveals to Briinnhilde his desperate longing for someone
independent of his will. In these lines Wagner was close indeed to Hegel:
Only one may do
what I may not:
A hero to whom I never
offered a helping hand;
One who, a stranger to the god,free of his favor,
unknowing,without bidding,out of his own need,
with his own weaponwould perform the deed
which I must avoid,
one to which my advice never urged him,
although it was my sole desire.
He, who against the godwould fight for me,
the friendly enemy,how could I find him?
How was I to create the free one,
whom I never protected,one who in his own defiance
was dearest to me?
80. Newman, Life, 2: 28; text, GesammelteSchriften,2: 155-66.81. Nibelungen-Mythus,GesammelteSchriften,2: 158.
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46 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner
s Ring
How do I create the other
who is no more myself,
and would do on his ownwhat I alone desire?82
Significantly, both passages deal only with expectation or hope;
Wagner's Siegfried never really becomes capable of such responsible,
self-sacrificing behavior. Since he never attains comprehension of the
meaning of his own life, his mission, or his death, Siegfried is not a
truly tragic figure. During the slightly more than two weeks Wagner
worked on the Entwurf, he became dimly conscious that Siegfried was
scarcely a redeemer or a Hegelian hero. He was still uncertain how to
proceed, as the final pages of his draft reveal clearly. He had taken,
however, perhaps without knowing it, a fateful step. His world-his-
torical figure had become: Briinnhilde! It is she, not Siegfried, to
whom both sets of lines quoted above really apply. Her final words in
the Entwurf reveal Wagner trying, not wholly successfully, to cope
with the problem.
Youhaughty
hero, howyou
held me in thrall! Ibetrayed
allmy knowledge
toyou,mortal one, so that my wisdom had to become of no avail; it was of no use to you,
you relied upon yourself alone; now you must free it [wisdom] again through your
death; my knowledge returns to me, and I understand the runes of this ring. The runes
ofthe primal law I also comprehend, the old prophecy ofthe Norns! Hear them, you
glorious gods, your crime is expiated: thank him, the hero, who took your guilt uponhimself. He gave it now into my hands to complete the work. Ended is the slavery of
the Nibelungs, the ring shall bind them no more. Alberich shall not receive it; it shall
no longer be your master; instead, let him also be free as you are. For I give this ringto you, wise sisters ofthe watery depths; the flame which burns me shall cleanse the
evil jewel; dissolve it and keep it harmless, the Rhinegold that was stolen from you inorder to forge slavery and evil from it. Only one rules, father of all, you! So that your
power will be eternal I bring this man to you; receive him, he is worthy of you.83
Although Siegfried here still has something of Jesus Who took upon
Himself the sins of all men, it is not he, but Briinnhilde who acquires
understanding and thereby the capacity to lift Alberich's curse firom
the world.
In the roughly six weeks which separate the Entwurf firom the com?
pleted text of Siegfried's Death, some of Wagner's ambivalence disap?
peared. In the latter there are no references to Siegfried as Christ. Al-
82. Die Walkure,complete vocal score . . . by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904),Act II, scene 2, pp. 120-22.
83. Nibelungen-Mythus,GesammelteSchriften,2: 165-66.
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GeorgeG. Windell 47
though Briinnhilde's apostrophe runs along lines similar to those ofthe
sketch, it issubstantially
briefer. Mostsignificantly, Wagner
eliminated
the final lines quoted above referring to Siegfried's worthiness. She
says only:I bring you Siegfried:
give a loving greeting to him,
the guarantor of eternal power.84
Her final words are directed not to Wotan, but to her great charger:
"Rejoice, Grane, soon we shall be free!"85 In the closing moments of
Gotterdammerung Wagneronce more alters
significantlythis
conception,as Briinnhilde, majestically and with irresistible authority, wills and
thereby brings about the destruction ofthe gods and the birth ofa new
world order.86
The shift in viewpoint described here has the utmost significance for
a proper understanding both ofthe Ring and Wagner's place in the in?
tellectual history of the nineteenth century. In making Briinnhilde
rather than Siegfried the instrument of the revolutionary cataclysm he
envisioned, Wagner parted companywith orthodox nineteenth-cen-
tury attitudes which made women, in Simone de Beauvoir's expressive
phrase, "the second sex." In that sense he went beyond his intellectual
antecedents, Hegel, Feuerbach, and even Schopenhauer, his contem?
poraries, such as Marx and Engels, and successors such as Freud.87 It was
not only his music that pointed to the future. It would be inaccurate to
describe Wagner as a conscious feminist in the twentieth-century sense
of the word, or perhaps even in the sense of his contemporary Ibsen.
Hisdifficulty
intreating
theSiegfried-Brunnhilde relationship
is re-
84. Siegfrieds Tod, Act III, scene 3, GesammelteSchriften,2: 227.
85. Ibid.
86. Gotterddmmerung, ct III, scene 3, pp. 329-31.
87. Nowhere, however, does Hegel specifically exclude the possibility that a world-
historical figure might be female. He does distinguish between the natures of men and
women in a fashion which clearly regards the male as primary and probably superior."In relation to externality the former [man] is powerful and active, the latter [woman]
passive and subjective." See Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (4th ed., ed.
Johannes Hoffmeister), in SdmtlicheWerke, 12: Par. 166, pp. 154-55. Marx and Engels
were interested in women only as proletarians, as exploited members of an exploitedclass.See, e.g., "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts," in KarlMarx: Early Writings,trans. and ed. T. B. Bottomore (New York, 1963), pp. 151-55. Cf. Freud to Martha
Bernays, Vienna, Nov. 15, 1883. ". . . legislation and custom have to grant to women
many rights kept firomthem, but the position of woman cannot be other than what it is:
to be an adored sweetheart in youth, and a beloved wife in maturity." Lettersof SigmundFreud,ed. Ernst L. Freud (New York, 1960), p. 76.
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48 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s
Ring
vealing. But in the Ring he certainly abandoned the romantic stereotype
ofthepassive
woman who redeems sinful manby
herconstancy alone,
which had been characteristic of his earlier operas.88 It needs to be
recognized that in this sense too the Ring significantly contributes to
the revolution against nineteenth-century bourgeois values to which
Thomas Mann referred.
As he expanded Siegfried7s Death into the Ring, Wagner converted into
dramatic form the material that had beenonly briefly
narrated in his
earlier versions. What resulted from this revamping is, however, hardly
a drama at all according to classical canons. It is rather, as Mann pointed
out, an epic portrayal through mythical symbols of the collapse of a
civilization which closely resembled that of nineteenth-century Europe.
Through its sheer length, the grandeur of its conception, the intricacy
of its plot, the Ring became an analog for a world-historical process. It
is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Wagner consciously used the
patternof historical
developmentdescribed
by Hegelin the introduc?
tion to the Vorlesungen as the structure for his plot. Again and again the
actions depicted exemplify basic Hegelian premises, such as the dia-
lectical relationship between reason and passion, the certainty that ra?
tional actions will produce consequences which are unforeseen, but
part ofa larger design, thus, the correspondence between rational, self-
serving acts of individuals and historical necessity. In Wagner's words:
... the course ofthe whole poem shows the necessity of recognizing change, diversity,
plurality, the eternal novelty of reality and of life and of yielding to it. ... This is all
88. Senta in the FliegendeHolldnderdreams only of saving the tormented captain by
proving loyal unto death; Elisabeth savesTannhauserfrom the arms of Venus?by dyingat the appropriatemoment! In LohengrinElsa has a vision ofa pure knight who will de?
fend her. Of these early heroines Elsa alone proves unworthy. Wagner's later female
characters are of sterner stuff. In Die WalkureSieglinde drugs her husband and incites
Siegmund to seize for himself Wotan's sword. The Irishprincess completely dominates
the action of Tristanund Isolde. Tristan, like Siegmund, Siegfried, and even Wotan, is
basically passive, more victim than hero. In Parsifal,Kundry is far more forceful than
Amfortas or Parsifal.The composer's life does not bear out the myth that he was a "malechauvinist." (Cf. Robert Craft, New York Review of Books, Oct. 31, 1974, p. 14.) He
seemed to be attracted to women who were what today would be called "liberated."
Among the better known were the famous soprano Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient, the
novelist Judith Gautder,the first woman to be elected to the AcademieGoncourt,and,
above all, Cosima. The author is currently studying the question of why Wagner's ideas
appealed to such an extraordinary number of self-conscious and self-confident women.
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GeorgeG. Windell 49
we have to learn firom the history of humanity; to will what is necessary and to ac-
complish it ourselves.89
It is not possible here to recapitulate the complex plot. One illustra-
tion from each ofthe Ring operas must suffice. Only the example from
Siegfried can be traced even indirectly to the myths from which Wagner
worked. The already considered opening scene of Das Rheingold, al?
though it owes much to Feuerbach, illustrates all the above points.
Alberich's decision to seize the Rhinegold is obviously motivated by
calculated self-interest, but it is certainly coupled with extreme passion:
sexual lust suddenly transformed into consuming hatred for all wholove.90 In a sense all later events in the Ring are logically inevitable, but
unforeseen consequences of Alberich's act.
In the final act of Die Walkiire Wotan has resolved to punish his
daughter, the Valkyrie Briinnhilde, for disobeying his command. He
will deprive her of her godhood and leave her asleep on a mountaintop,
to become, as a mortal woman, the prize of whatever man awakens
her.91 At last, however, he accedes to her impassioned plea that her
sleeping form be surrounded by a wall of fire penetrable only by afearless hero. Both are aware that Sieglinde's unborn child will be such
a hero.92 Wotan desperately hopes that she and the fearless hero, Sieg?
fried, together, without his aid, will return the ring to the Rhine and
lift Alberich's curse. Neither anticipates that Briinnhilde, the woman,
will think and act as a woman, not as a Valkyrie. The consequences of
her transformation are thus wholly different from what either can
conceive.
The climax of the first act of Siegfried comes when the young hero
reforges the fragments of the sword, Nothung. His conscious motive is
simple: to provide himself with a dependable weapon so that he may
leave forever the Nibelung, Mime, who has raised him, but whom he
nonetheless loathes. Mime, however, intends to use Siegfried to kill the
dragon, Fafner, and then treacherously to slay the youth in order to
acquire for himself the hoard and the ring which Fafner guards.93
Neither can foresee that Siegfried, after killing Fafner and inadver-
89. Wagner to August Rockel, Zurich, Jan. 25, 1854, WagnersBriefe, 11: 36.
90. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 1-51.
91. Die Walkiire,Act III, scene 2, pp. 249-53.
92. Ibid., scene 3, pp. 280-94.
93. Siegfried,complete vocal score .. . by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904), Act I,
scene 3, pp. 107-35.
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50 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner
sRing
tently tasting his blood, will become able to understand the speech of
birds and to read the meaning hidden in Mime's flattering words. Thus
warned, Siegfried dispatches Mime, learns from the forest bird of the
beauty asleep on the rock, and departs to find her and to accomplish a
destiny he is fated never to comprehend.94
In the first act of Gotterdammerung, Briinnhilde awaits on her fire-
encircled mountaintop the return of Siegfried, whom she had sent into
the world of men. Her Valkyrie sister, Waltraute, comes to her and
describes how Wotan and the gods silently await the end. Movingly
she relates how Wotan had learned from his raven messengers of Sieg-
fried's union with Briinnhilde, at which news he "smiled for the last
time." He whispered that were Briinnhilde to return the ring to the
Rhinemaidens, gods and men would yet be freed from the curse.
Waltraute begs her sister to give up the ring. But to her it is now a love
token from Siegfried and nothing more. She therefore refuses to part
with her treasure. Her action, motivated by passion, is, however, wholly
rational, given the state of her knowledge. Its consequences, once again,
are altogether unimagined.95
The ensuing catastrophe is in no way predestined, however, as this
scene is designed to make clear. It depicts the penultimate occasion upon
which a decision of one character or another to relinquish the ring
would drastically change the outcome of the drama. Yet in each case,
calculation, emotional attachment, or a combination of the two make
that decision impossible.96 At last, in the third act of Gotterdammerung,
Siegfried, still ignorant ofthe ring's power, is tempted to give it to the
Rhinemaidens as a gesture of friendship. But their pleading suddenly
alters to what he perceives as a threat. A hero cannot bow to threats!
He puts the ring back on his finger.97
Beyond the examples cited of the Hegelian pattern in the Ring's
plot, there is also a wealth of evidence in its language of the impact
which the Hegelian dialectic made upon Wagner. On numerous occa-
sions he treats reality as an interplay between a positive idea and its
94- Ibid., Act II, scene 2, pp. 188-98; scene 3, pp. 207-38.
95. Gotterddmmerung,ct I, scene 3, pp. 100-13.96. Other occasions occur, for example, in Das Rheingold,when Wotan first acquires
the ring firom Alberich in scene 4, pp. 172-78, again when he gives the ring to the giantsinstead of returning it to the Rhinemaidens later in the same scene, pp. 189-90, 196, and
once again when he denies the Rhinemaidens' plea for the return ofthe gold as the godscross the rainbow bridge into Valhalla, pp. 216-19.
97. Gotterddmmerung,ct III, scene 1, pp. 251-62.
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George G. Windell 51
negation. Occasionally these instances involve little more than an al?
most frivolous play on words, as when Fasolt in Das Rheingold refers to
Freia as Freia, die holde, Holde, die Freia.98 More frequently, however,
they reflect a deliberate intent. From the wealth of material of this type,
space permits extended discussion of only two examples. Again, there
is no meaningful precedent for either in the myths upon which the
Ring is based.
By far the most touching theme in the Ring is Wagner's depiction of
the relationship between Wotan and his Valkyrie daughter Briinnhilde.
When she first appears in the second act o?Die Walkure, Briinnhilde is
Wotan's alter ego. A few moments later, when he appears reticent to
explain to her the cause of his sudden dejection, she turns to him and
sings, to some ofthe most poignant music Wagner wrote:
You are speaking to Wotan's will,
tell me what you wish;
who am I, were I not your will?"
He answers:
What I say to no one in words,
let it remain unspoken forever;
I am consulting only with myself,when I speak to you.100
Wotan's "will" now becomes its own negation. Briinnhilde disobeys
her father's command to shield Hunding, Sieglinde's husband, instead
of the Walsung, Siegmund, her brother and lover, as ordered earlier.
Throughout the remainder o?Die Walkure Wagner maintains the con?
ceptual pattern he had here set up. The lengthy scene which forms the
core of Act Three is east in the form ofa classical dialogue. A question
is posed, an answer given; the answer generates another question. Out
of the process each gradually acquires understanding of the rational
grounds on which the other had acted.101 The climax comes in Briinn-
hilde's lines, set to transparently lovely music, describing Wotan as
The one who breathed
this love into my heart;
whose will caused me
to join the Walsung,
98. Das Rheingold,scene 2, p. 69.
99. Die Walkiire,Act II, scene 2, p. 111.
100. Ibid., pp. 111-12.
101. Ibid., Act II, scene 3, pp. 265-97.
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52 Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagners Ring
inwardly trusting him9
I defied your command.102
Her concluding lines focus upon the dialectical tension between Wo-
tan's will and the decision which convention had forced upon him.
A still more persuasive example may be found in the way Wagner
conceived and treated the relationship between the gods and the Nibe-
lungs, and their chief protagonists, Wotan and Alberich. In the thir-
teenth-century Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson described two distinct va-
rieties of elves, light and dark.103 Wagner's Nibelungs are descended
from the dark-elves ofthe Edda. The composer refers to them repeatedlyas Schwarz-Alben, and they, like their Norse originals "livfe down in the
earth."104 What is unprecedented is Wagner's equation of the gods
with the light-elves. Both usages appear first in Scene Three of Das
Rheingold. First Alberich chides Loge for consorting with the gods,
since he has arrived in Nibelheim in the company of Wotan.105 A few
moments later he expresses hatred for the "eternal revellers" who live
above and have nothing but contempt for the Schwarz-Alben. But one
day they will all become slaves of Alberich through the power of the
Rhinegold.For your men will
first bow to my power
your jewelled women?
who disdain my wooing?the dwarf will force to his desire
although they deny him love.
Hahahaha!
Doyou
understand me?
Beware!
Beware the army of nightwhen the Nibelung hoard
rises out ofthe silent depths to daylight!106
These lines employ the obvious dialectic of night and day. More im-
portantly, they are those in which Wagner came closest to Marx, for
Alberich in this scene is unmistakably, as George Bernard Shaw appears
102. Ibid., pp. 273-74. Italics added.
103. ProseEdda,p. 46. See also E. O. B. Turville-Petre, Myth andReligionofthe North:
The Religion of Ancient Scandinauia New York, 1964), pp. 23-31.
104. ProseEdda,p. 46.
105. Das Rheingold,scene 3, p. 136.106. Ibid., pp. 141-143.
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GeorgeG. Windell 53
first to have noted, the capitalist exploiter using the power of gold to
subjugate the world.107
Wagner later develops this idea of the reciprocal relationship be?
tween gods and Nibelungs into a highly dramatic conception which
pictures Wotan and Alberich as dialectical antitheses. Each is part ofa
unity that transcends both; alone neither is comprehensible or com?
plete. The name "Alberich" is related to Alb, and is almost certainly
derived from it. As early as the second scene of Das Rheingold, Loge
refers to the Nibelung dwarf as Nacht-Alberich.108 This rubric is con?
nected both logically and psychologically with Schwarz-Alberich, the
form in which it more frequently appears.109 It is the personalized
analog of Schwarz-Alben. For symmetry this scheme requires Wotan,
the chief ofthe gods, the "light-elves," to occupy a position correspond-
ing to that of Alberich. In the riddle scene ofthe first act ofSiegfried we
find the pattern completed in a way which confirms that Wagner did
indeed see Wotan and Alberich linked in this manner.
To Mime's first riddle: what kind of beings live deep in the earth,
Wotan replies:In the depths ofthe earth
the Nibelungs rule.
Their country is Nibelheim.
107. George Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite (1898), reprinted in Shaw, MajorCriticalEssays (London, 1932), pp. 170-74, 179-81. Although Wagner's anticapitalismresembled that of Marx, it was probably derived, insofar as it did not reflect his own
experience, from Proudhon and/or Bakunin. (See Mayer, pp. 185-187, 195-99, and n.
52, above.) It is also probable that the notoriously anti-Semitic Wagner intended Al?
berich and his brother Mime to serve as caricatures of archtypal Jews. (See Adorno, pp.23-25; Newman, Life, 2: 346-47; Newman, Wagner Operas, p. 543, n. 1; Strobel,Skizzen und Entwiirfe,pp. 99, 138.) The association of Jews with the idea of capitalist
exploitation was already deeply ingrained by the mid-nineteenth century in the con?
sciousness of Europe. Cf. Marx in 1844: "Let us not seek the secret ofthe Jew in his
religion, but let us seek the secret of the religion in the real Jew. What is the profanebasis of Judaism: Practical need, self-interest.What is the worldly cult of the Jews?
Huckstering.What is his worldly god? Money. Very well: then in emancipating itself
from hucksteringand money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would
emancipate itself." Marx, "On the Jewish Question," Early Writings,p. 34. Wagner's
chief contribution to modern anti-Semitism (and perhaps to Zionism) is found in thesupport he later gave and the prestige he lent to defining Judaism in racial rather than in
religious terms.
108. Das Rheingold,scene 2, p. 87. In Gotterddmmerung, ct II, scene 1, p. 132, Hagenaddresses him as schlimmerAlb.
109. See, e.g., Das Rheingold,scene 3, p. 142; Siegfried,Act I, scene 2, pp. 57-58, Act II,scene 1, p. 142.
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54 Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner s Ring
Black elves are they.Black-Alberich
once exercised mastery over them.110
And to the third riddle: what kind of beings live on the cloudy heights,
he answers:
On the cloudy heightsthe gods live.
Their dwelling is called Valhalla.
Light elves are they.
Light-Alberich,
Wotan, governsthe band.111
The description of Wotan as Licht-Alberich is crucial. It shows that
Wagner intended each to be seen as Hegelian antitheses, inseparably
linked, common victims of their lust for power. Each, by forcibly
appropriating the Rhinegold, had sacrificed his freedom and become
enslaved to it.
VI
A study of influences upon what is, after all, a mwsic-drama must, in the
absence of an analysis of the music itself, remain incomplete. Such an
analysis would require the knowledge and training of a musicologist
who is also a philosopher and historian. Unfortunately, most works by
musicologists are only minimally helpful.112 But even to the historian
there are obvious examples of how Wagner employed a dialectical
scheme in the music ofthe Ring. The technique that he first used here
of associating specific musical themes, which others have dubbed "lead?
ing motives," with personages, emotional states, ideas, etc. was superbly
adapted to depict dialectical movement, whether Wagner adopted it
consciously for that purpose or not. Two examples only will be given
here, primarily to suggest a direction for further research.
The ascending theme which forms almost the entire content of the
prelude to Das Rheingold, incidentally one ofthe most stunning breaks
with musical tradition in the history of the art, suggests primeval un-
corrupted nature.113 At various times during the Ring Wagner asso-
no. Siegfried,Act I, scene 2, pp. 57-58.111. Ibid., pp. 61-62.
112. For the Ring the best accessible treatments are in the appropriatesections of Gut?
man, Newman, Life and WagnerOperas,and in Robert Donington, Wagner*s"Ring"and Its Symbols (New York, 1963).
113. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 1-5; Newman, WagnerOperas,pp. 451-52.
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GeorgeG. Windell 55
ciates it with difFerent aspects of nature?the Rhine, the earth goddess,
Erda, the Norns who
spin
the web of
destiny.114Usually, as in the
Rheingold prelude, it connotes movement out of a state of timeless
simplicity toward the increasing complexity of historical time and
space. But the motive has a negative, descending form. This antithetical
version first appears in the scene of Erda's warning to Wotan in Das
Rheingold at the lines,
All that is comes to an end,
a dismal day dawns for the gods.115
It is therefore associated with decline, destruction, Gotterddmmerung. In
form, as well as connotation, it is the mirror image of the theme of
primitive nature. Wagner makes that relationship clear on this occa?
sion, as frequently later, by employing the two together in a cyclical
pattern.116
In some ways even more revealing of the composer's design is the
way in which he juxtaposed the two musical themes which symbolize
the quest for power. The first, Wagner always associated with the ring
itself, power used illegitimately to enslave the world to the will ofthe
ring's possessor.117 The second identifies Valhalla, the physical em-
bodiment of power used to defend the rightful authority ofthe gods.118
Both motives appear early in Das Rheingold. Wagner makes unequiv-
ocal their connection by employing a symphonic treatment ofthe ring
theme to effect the transition from the bottom of the Rhine (where
Alberich steals the gold) to the mountaintop (where Wotan and the
other gods appear for the first time).119 At the instant when the mists
clear, (or, as is more customary, the curtain rises) revealing the castle
gleaming in the morning sun, the theme ofthe ring is suddenly trans-
formed into the one symbolizing Valhalla.120 Despite the difFerent
sound and feeling, the two are musically as close as the obverse and
reverse of a coin. They are in fact musically the same theme treated
114- Das Rheingold,scene 4, pp. 193-94; Siegfried, Act III, scene 1, pp. 242-43; Gotter?
ddmmerung, rologue, pp. 1, 41-42.
115. Das Rheingold,scene 4, p. 194; Newman, WagnerOperas, p. 487.116. Das Rheingold,scene 4, p. 194. See also, Siegfried,Act III, prelude, pp. 239-40, and
Brunhilde's entry in Gotterddmmerung, ct III, scene 3, p. 314.
117. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 41-42; Newman, Wagner Operas, p. 455.118. Das Rheingold,scene 2, p. 55; Newman, WagnerOperas, p. 457.
119. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 53-54.120. Ibid., scene 2, p. 55.
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56 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner's Ring
differently. The composer has thus fixed in the minds of attentive
spectators the dialectical link between the alternate versions of power
which ties together all the drama's complex strands of action.
In the course of the century since its completion, Wagner's Ring des
Nibelungen has become part of the repertory of every major opera
theater in the western world. But it was its musical appeal, not its
philosophical content, that guaranteed its survival through two world
wars. During that time it has been viewed in many contradictory ways.
For too long German nationalists were allowed to exploit it for their
own purposes without effective challenge. Regrettably, the aging Wag?
ner associated himself with nationalist extremism, as did later his widow
and members ofthe "Bayreuth Circle" which gathered about the fam?
ily. This group became a focus for many of the tendencies, including
racism and virulent anti-Semitism, which have become associated with
the term "Wagnerism." It served as one bridge from Wagner to Hitler
and National Socialism.121 Those, largely non-German, who, however
dimly, sensed the revolutionary reordering of values implied by Wag?
ner's replacement of Siegfried by Briinnhilde as the protagonist of his
drama recognized that they were outside the mainstream.122 Some, like
Shaw, regarded Gotterddmmerung as an unequivocal betrayal of Wag?
ner's revolutionary past.123
Later Wagnerian works such as Tristan und Isolde (1859) and even
Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (1867), not to speak of Parsifal (1882)
and the outrageous essays ofthe Bayreuth period, do reveal a growing
despair about humanity. The Ring, however, even though it was com?
pleted only in 1874, is largely the work ofthe younger Wagner who
still believed in the possibility of improving humanity through revolu?
tionary social change.124 That Wagner conceived Siegfried, and then,
121. See George G. Windell, "Hitler, National Socialism, and Richard Wagner,"
Journal of CentralEuropeanAffairs, 22 (Jan. 1963): 479-97, and Winfried Schiiler, Der
BayreutherKreis von seinerEntstehungbis zum Ausgangder WilhelminischenAra: Wagner-kult und Kulturreformm Geiste volkischer Weltanschauung,Neue Miinstersche Beitragezur Geschichtsforschung, vol. 12 (Miinster, 1971).
122. See, e.g., Anne Dzamba Sessa, "An Inner Ring of Superior Persons: The Cult of
Wagner in Nineteenth-Century England" (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1973).
123. PerfectWagnerite,pp. 235-45.
124. In his perceptive essay "The Quest for the Grail: Wagner and Morris," Critical
Spirit%. 221, Carl E. Schorske argues that "Because he saw convention as having in
Reason its strongest ally, Wagner became the lifelong enemy of Reason." The operativeword here is "lifelong." Schorske pushes back to an earlier period some ofthe attitudes
Wagner developed later in his life, and thereby attributes to him a consistency he did not
display.
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in an amazing quantum leap, Briinnhilde as Hegelian "instruments of
a purpose which represents a stage in the progress of the universal
spirit."125 That was the Wagner who consorted with Bakunin and who
saw in Feuerbach "the representative of ruthlessly radical liberation of
the individual from the burden of restraining ideas associated with be?
lief in authority."126
Today both casual audiences and serious scholars, to whom the idea
ofa catastrophic end to civilization has become commonplace, find the
holocaust which consumes Valhalla more relevant as prophecy than did
earlier generations. But the Ring does not in fact end on this vision of
universal destruction.127 When, in 1874, Wagner at last put down on
paper the music which does bring the colossal music-drama to a close,
all the Schopenhauerian pessimism faded, and for a while the composer
returned to the milieu in which he had lived a quarter-century earlier.
Recalling for the only time the music to which Sieglinde had apos-
trophized Briinnhilde as the agent of her deliverance in the third act of
Die Walkure,128 Wagner allows us to experience through music in
those final serene measures what Feuerbach had sought to convey in
mere words: "What faith, creed, folly separates, love unites."129
125- Hegel, Vemunftin derGeschichte,pp. 99-100.
126. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 443.
127. Hans Mayer, Studien zur deutschenLiteraturgeschichte,p. 202-4, points out that
Wagner wrote three separateversions ofthe final lines of Brunnhilde's immolation scene,one derived from Feuerbach, one from Schopenhauer, and one which he finally used
from Bakunin. He regards Wagner's claim (GesammelteSchriften,6: 254-56) that his
choice of the last was motivated by purely musical reasons as untrue. It is, however,
indubitably the shortest of the three versions.
128. Die Walkure,Act III, scene 1, p. 228; Gotterddmmerung, ct III, scene 3, p. 340.
129. Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums,SdmtlicheWerke,6: 59.