Adonis Diaries

Mythical Tetralogy of Richard Wagner:

Masterpieces, the Ring or Chant of Nibelungen, manipulated and abused by Germany bourgeois class

The 20th century political/economic system in Germany disseminated this myth that German culture doesn’t care about society composition but mainly about the individual human spirit.

This tendency of setting Germany culture apart from western Europe’s Latin culture and the Slovak culture was initiated by manipulating Goethe’s work in the 19th century.

Unlike Dickens, Thackeray, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Zola… masterpieces that envisioned the world in its social aspect, The German culture wanted to see the masterpieces of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner as representative of the human in his absolute quest that is crystalized in the myths of the primitive people, the in-temporal poetry of the nature and of the heart.

This cultural explanation was used by Imperial Germany as an expedient for the dissemination of mythical concepts in order to resolve the tenuous organization of its social/economic system “All I want is the popular story“. The Nazi movement took it to its ultimate level of how it interpreted National Socialism.

This genius poet/musician or musician/poet of Wagner had to seek refuge in Switzerland after the failed uprising of Dresden in 1849. It is in Zurich that Wagner composed most of his masterpieces. The German term elend, which means misery, originally meant being in a foreign country, and that is how Wagner felt in his first few years in Switzerland.

And it is from Zurich that Wagner felt deceived by the successive enlargement of the Prussian Empire to include all of Germany and part of Austria.

Wagner wanted that his mythological story goes as far as the origin of mankind and as far as the myths went back in time. Myths not linked to the  Scandinavian or German Medieval myths.

He wanted to take care of the primitive nature of a myth in its simplicity.

And Wagner production was not done in a linear manner. The first work was Gold of the Rhine in which Wagner described the primitive life of the natives who didn’t care about wealth, gold or power. He then composed the Death of Siegfried, but had to wait until he  produced The Valkyrie, Lohengrin, Tannhauser and the Youth of Siegfried. Why?

Wagner was composing for the masses who were more apt to understand and appreciate the primitive way of life and Not for the bourgeois elite society.

However, the little people need a continuity in the story and need to the genesis of the story first thing first and thus, what took place before the death of Siegfried was essential for the tetralogy and Wagner worked 20 years before he presented his first work.

“The initial plan didn’t include many of his works “This is not what I wanted, but now it must be and may God come to my rescue”

The ambition in the great work has its source in the work in progress as the author seeks larger reach than he initially endeavoured.

“The most little of detail is the fruit of a happy inspiration”

“Enthusiasm has the greater part in my plan and Not the fruit of reflection. But it is wrong to understand the power of reflection: In a period of high culture, the artist work cannot but be born from full consciousness.”

Without primitive music his dramas would have lost a great deal of their poetic values.

The music of the original period in mankind history must be incorporated in the ears of the audience before the audience hear the music in the last episodes.

For example, the motif in the question of the kid’s impatience to get tot know who is his mother, the heroes of a race from an enslaved God who wanted his descendants to live the life of the Free without a God, the rapt of Alberich, the ballade of Senta, the incestuous hymn of Siegfried and Siegelinde, the malediction of love, malediction of gold in the mind of Wotan.

In the beginning was the River Rhine.

Creating the myth of the music and its genesis and knowing that Love and Fear are intertwined so that only music can disseminate these intricate feelings.

The German bourgeois society was initially appalled by the tetralogy, but as it gained momentum and appeal to larger section in society, this bourgeois class ran with it and usurped the masterpiece to give it a nationalistic mythical dimension.

The colonial powers could now send the little people to the colonies under the motto: “What is good for the Nation (elite class) is necessarily good for the citizens”

Note: Read the essay of Thomas Mann “The Nobleness of the Spirit“