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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-51739-3 - Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks Daniel H. Foster Excerpt More information Introduction To be able to understand the relationship between Wagner and the Greeks one must be conversant with those primary sources that 1 Wagner read and re-read throughout his life. This seems obvious. But what does not seem so obvious, at least given the way that previous authors have approached this topic, is that one should also be conversant with the ways in which Wagner’s understanding of the Greeks was influenced by secondary scholarship and scholars. And yet it is this academic research that sometimes, quite surpris- ingly, illuminates the murk of Wagner’s prose and the peaks of his music. In fact I would argue that, as with all other modes of research, one can never really speak of the Greeks per se, much less Wagner and the Greeks, no matter how much scholars, Semele-like, may desire to gaze upon their subjects unadorned. Because even scholar- ship is political, one must recognize that Wagner’s Grecocentrism was part of his own ideological bent as well as a larger national trend, a particular manifestation of the nineteenth-century German Zeitgeist. The way in which Wagner and his compatriots chose to dress up the Greeks says as much or more about them and about Germany as it does about Greece. But what does it say? In his acute but all too brief appraisal of such philhellenism John Deathridge summarizes how and why Wagner and like-minded Germans used the Greeks: “from the start of his career Wagner was in thrall to the idea of the Greeks as the pristine source of a lost culture – an ideal of fundamental origins projected onto the utopian future of a society encumbered by alienated living and a lack 2 of spiritual freedom.” While the compact truth of Deathridge’s summary is striking, it omits one important detail. At least in Wagner’s case this ideal of a “lost culture” was not merely a figment of the composer’s imagination. It was also based on a surprisingly 1 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-51739-3 - Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks Daniel H. Foster Excerpt More information 2 Introduction wide familiarity with classical scholars and scholarship, some of it the most respected of the period. Although previous works on the topic of Wagner and the Greeks have sometimes pointed this out, never- theless, if they have developed the claim any further they have tended to focus primarily on Wagner’s relationship to Friedrich Nietzsche and Johann Gustav Droysen, a landmark translator of Aeschylus and founder of Alexander studies. While these two men might have been co-chairs of the virtual classics department one could people with Wagner’s professor friends and mentors, there were others too who were, at least in their own time, equally if not 3 more esteemed. The two scholars that this book focuses on in addition to Nietzsche and Droysen are Karl Otfried Mu¨ller, an authority on all things Doric, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose Aesthetics presents a Grecocentric paradigm for the evolution of poetry. Information on how these classical influences impressed Wagner is best gathered from numerous sources: Wagner’s own theoretical works, letters, and the so-called Brown Book; the cata- logues of his Dresden library and his Wahnfried library; works about Wagner by other scholars; and the very detailed and helpful entries in Cosima’s diaries about her and Wagner’s life together, their 4 discussions, and their nightly readings. 5 One caveat though. And this is directed mostly at classicists. Despite Wagner’s broad acquaintance with classical sources, scholars, and scholarship it is important to remember that he was not himself a scholar and we should not treat him as such. In the case of Greek scholars one assumes that the Greeks are an end, not a means. In the case of Wagner the opposite is true. For him the 6 Greeks were a means, not an end. And this must sometimes make him seem rather dilettantish in his knowledge of antiquity. While not disqualifying his perspective it does complicate the goal of figuring out exactly what Wagner knew about the Greeks, to what extent he knew it, and how far it influenced his theoretical and musical works. But as we shall see later in this introduction, being a dilettante was in Wagner’s case not all bad. In fact ignorance was in some cases more fruitful than knowledge. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-51739-3 - Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks Daniel H. Foster Excerpt More information Introduction 3 WAGNER AND HIS SOURCES In an open letter to Friedrich Nietzsche, Wagner once told the classical philologist that, from his earliest childhood, Greece had a profound emotional and intellectual hold on him: “no boy could have had greater enthusiasm for classical antiquity than myself; although it was Greek mythology and history which interested me deeply, I also felt strongly drawn to the study of the Greek language, to such an extent in fact, that I was almost rebellious in my efforts to 7 shirk my Latin tasks.” The self-portrait that Wagner paints here differs in one small but important detail from an earlier account that he gives in Mein Leben concerning the philhellenic tendencies of his boyhood. In Mein Leben Wagner tells us that his interest in Greek myths and stories far surpassed his interest in the grammatical forms of the Greek language itself: With regard to the ancient languages I was also able to concentrate only as much as absolutely necessary to learn through them about subjects that stimulated me to reproduce their most characteristic aspects for myself. In this I was particularly attracted by Greek, because the stories from Greek mythology seized my imagination so strongly that I wanted to imagine their heroic figures speaking to me in their original tongue, in order to satisfy my longing for complete familiarity with them. Under these circumstances it can easily be imagined that the actual grammar would only be considered a tiresome obstacle and not an academic 8 subject with its own attraction. Despite this early fascination with the Greeks it seems that Wagner’s study of the ancient Greek language never progressed beyond his boyhood efforts. He was all his adult life a novice in the field of classics and, once out of school, he eventually lost most of his ability to read 9 Greek texts in the original. The last time that Wagner contemplated relearning Greek was while he was living in Paris. He was ultimately persuaded by scholar and translator, Samuel Lehrs, not to waste his time. As Wagner tells it, Lehrs advised him that “the way I was and the music I had in me, I would find a way to extract knowledge from them 10 [the Greeks] even without grammar and dictionary.” © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-51739-3 - Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks Daniel H. Foster Excerpt More information 4 Introduction But whatever one might say about the deterioration of his translating capabilities, Wagner’s youthful interest in the Greeks is still impressive, and, significantly, it was not limited to tragedy alone. It also extended to epic. While still a young man Wagner even tried his hand at writing a Homeric-style epic. Entitled Die Schlacht am Parnassus, the poem was based on a story by Pausanius that tells of how the muses descended from Parnassus in the second century B.C. in order to help defend Greece against, appropriately enough, the 11 Gauls. In his “Autobiographical Sketch” he also claims that while still in his early teens he translated the first twelve books of the 12 Odyssey. This interest in Homer and the Greeks did not fizzle out as he grew older. In fact, it seems only to have grown to include comedy, lyric, history, rhetoric, and philosophy. As far as primary works are concerned, from various sources we know that Wagner owned, read, and re-read a wide selection of Greek authors (albeit mainly in German translation). Curt von Westernhagen’s catalogue of Wagner’s Dresden library includes not only the major tragedians, 13 Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, but also Aristophanes, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Homer, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Thucydides, and Xenophon. Although less represented, the catalogue lists Roman authors as well: Gaius Julius Caesar, Horace, Livy, Tacitus, and 14 Virgil. The Wahnfried library catalogue, cross-referenced with the Dresden catalogue, Cosima’s diaries, and Wagner’s own writings, adds a few more names to the list of those primary authors that 15 Wagner mentions by name. On the Greek side: Anaxagoras, 16 17 Hesiod, Lucian, Polybius, Pythagoras, Sappho, Thales, and 18 Zeno. And on the Roman side: Epicurus, Lucretius, Ovid, Pliny the Elder, and Seneca. There are also several other classical person- ages who, although not primarily remembered as authors, also figure prominently in Wagner’s picture of antiquity: Alexander, Cato, Lycurgus, Pericles, and Thrasybulus. These at least are the ones that show up with any frequency in Wagner’s writings and conversations. His knowledge of other historical and mythological figures probably extended far beyond this, given his reading of Plutarch and other primary and secondary sources particularly rich © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-51739-3 - Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks Daniel H.