schopenhauer and wagner

8/9/2019 Schopenhauer and Wagner

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Arthur Schopenhauer reads Richard Wagner

about the relationship of these two giants ofcultural life, Teutonic style, than any number ofin-depth analyses of their relationship deducedfrom intellectual history. (I quote the annotationsby permission of Houghton Library.)

In his autobiography, Mein Leben, Wagnerdescribes vividly his encounter with

Schopenhauer's The World as Will andRepresentation: "The impact was extraordinaryand decisive for the rest of my life." He read thehefty volume four times between the autumn of1854 and the following summer. Like arevelation, the book illuminated for him themeaning of his own work. "I looked at myNibelungen poem," he wrote, "and realized to myown surprise that what was now stupefying me[befangen machte] as theory had long beenfamiliar to me in my own poetic creation. In thismanner, I came to understand my own Wotan."

Throughout his theoretical writings, he wouldinvoke the authority of Schopenhauer'sunderstanding of music as the manifestation of"being" in its true essence or essential truth; noother aesthetics of music had, to Wagner's mind,any claim to validity-or was better suited tofurther Wagner's own cause. Schopenhauer, onthe other hand, whose magnum opus had

appeared with little notice in 1819, owed hisoverwhelming upsurge of fame in the second halfof the nineteenth century to a considerableextent to the phenomenal ascent of his ardentfollower, who incorporated the Weltanschauungof Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung not only intohis musical aesthetics but also into some of hislater operas-Tristan und Isolde, DieMeistersinger, and Parsifal.

Schopenhauer confirmed Wagner's own

philosophical mood of resignation, which declareseveryday reality an illusion; he enlightenedWagner about himself. Wagner stated thisunequivocally in letters written at this time; herecommended Schopenhauer to any and all of hisfriends in the warmest terms and before long hadsurrounded himself in his Zurich exile with acrowd of Schopenhauer fans. One friend waseven dispatched to Frankfurt to visit thenotoriously disgruntled sage with an invitation to

come to Switzerland to be lionized.Schopenhauer played coy: he no longer traveled,he responded. Undaunted, the Zurich Wagneriansintensified their veneration to the point ofpromoting the establishment of a professorship of

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Schopenhauerism at the University of Zurich.Schopenhauer acknowledged that "would be agreat honor for me."

The project failed. But that did not dampen theenthusiasm of the Zurich cénacle for the grim oldman in Frankfurt-nor Schopenhauer's gratitudefor their attention: he had, after all, been chafing

for decades at the inattention of the readingpublic. Yet the beautiful Zurich-Frankfurtrelationship wouldn't have been quite the same ifWagner had known how Schopenhauer thereader reacted to the copy of Der Ring desNibelungen that Wagner had sent him inDecember 1854 "in veneration and gratitude," asthe autograph dedication of the Houghton copyproclaims. Wagner's autobiography discloses aslightly embarrassing secret: Schopenhauernever did send a written reply. Like the goodSchopenhauerian that he was, Wagner claimed inMein Leben that he had "resigned himself" fromthe outset to the prospect of not receiving areply. But in fact he did suffer fromSchopenhauer's chilling silence; Cosima Wagner'sdiary records his grief and chagrin as late asMarch 1878-a generation after the fact.

Still, Wagner did not hold this disappointmentagainst Schopenhauer. His forbearance was

made easier by reports from two friends who hadvisited the philosopher. They told him thatSchopenhauer "had made significant andfavorable comments on my poem." That the truthwas cosmetized more than a little in thisformulation is proved by wording reported inSchopenhauer's Conversations. But what thesage of Frankfurt penciled in the margins of hispresentation copy of the Ring was even moredrastic. For Schopenhauer did look this gift-horsein the mouth, and what he saw didn't please himin the least.

Taking a good look at these marginal notes is notwithout some voyeuristic thrill. Do they, forexample, confirm what we are told in theauthoritative Wagner-Handbuch, published in1986-namely, that the philosopher's comments,no matter how biting, "evidently appreciated theliterary rank" of Wagner's ambitious work?

No doubt about it: Schopenhauer, readingWagner's Ring in the winter of 1854-55, pencil inhand, was in a difficult position. The book hadbeen sent to him as a token of reverence, andyet only the



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preceding May he had been flattered by reportsthat music critics were using his"pronouncements" about music in their polemicsagainst Wagner's operas, "and rightly so," as hewrote to a friend. What exactly did Schopenhauerindicate about his admirer and adversary in hismarginal annotations?

It is obvious from the start that it isSchopenhauer the famed stylist, the universallyacknowledged master of German prose, who waswielding the pencil. Wagner's language wasoffensive to Schopenhauer-as it still is to manyreaders for precisely the same peculiarities thatirritated Schopenhauer. And the sage of Frankfurtread the text most carefully. Of course, much ofSchopenhauer's criticism loses its pungency intranslation, but a few examples of his stylisticcomments may give anglophone readers someidea of his objections.

Schopenhauer was particularly annoyed, as hisvigorous question marks and critical underlinings(sometimes accompanied by multipleexclamation marks) suggest, by Wagner'sartificially archaic vocabulary. Nobody but anexpert in things medieval would know today, anymore than Schopenhauer did then, that afreislicher Streit is a "terrifying quarrel." Nor did

infelicitous constructions, stylistic awkwardness,and illogical turns of phrase escapeSchopenhauer's angry pencil. Some of thesepassages are mildly funny, like the onesuggesting that Erda does not know--to judge byher syntax in Rheingold--whether she gave birthto her three daughters or whether they werecreated at the dawn of time. Another suchstylistic aberration, which rated one ofSchopenhauer's quizzically amused exclamationmarks, eventually caught the dull eye of Wagnerhimself when he revised his text slightly: Wotanoriginally says about Wala in Walküre, "News Ireceived from her; / but from me she received achild."

What Schopenhauer found consistentlyexasperating about Wagner's style were hischaracteristic composite nouns, like Felssteine,Felsensaum, Felsspitze (rocks, rocky edge, rockypeak). "Ears!" Schopenhauer repeatedly penciled

in the margin in his powerful hand, "he has noears! the deaf musician." It is the sound of theseand other such difficult words that go againstSchopenhauer's grain. The implication is, clearly,that Wagner is a poet-composer who is at odds



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with the building materials of his trade, "the deafmusician." Schopenhauer summed up thiscriticism in large letters: "Language should bethe serf of the master."

Other marginal notes remark on elements ofsubstance and subject matter, rather than style.In one instance, Schopenhauer was reminded of

Goethe's Faust, writing in the line that came tomind, without implying any criticism orworthwhile comment. But the runningcommentary becomes more interesting when thetext becomes more immoral. The prime bone ofcontention is the adulterous and incestuous lovescene of Siegmund and Sieglinde that concludesthe first act of Walküre. Sieglinde's seductivesuggestion that, were she to find "the sacredfriend," her arms would embrace the hero, istranslated into plain English (Schopenhauer wasnotoriously anglophile) in a firm marginal note:"Go, and murder my husband." Near thebeginning of this fervid scene he writes in largeletters, "One may forget about morality onoccasion, but one should not slap it in the face,"and a little later, "Infamous!" Likewise, it is thedubious morals of the sibling lovers that theaustere critic has in mind when, at the end of thescene (after brother and sister have recognizedeach other, which only increases their turgid

infatuation), he comments as the curtain falls,"High time, too." Understandably, Schopenhauercouldn't let pass such unbridled abandon to whathe called the "will," in the sense of animal drive.

The "slap in the face of morality" occurs a secondtime in the first act of Siegfried, when theuncouth young hero turns brusquely againstMime, who has raised him with paternal love andsacrifice. "Outrageous ingratitude," saysSchopenhauer, "maulschellirte Moral." Thephilosopher who preached abnegation of theworld (and who in private life was much lessinclined to such abstinence) here took theposition of conventional morality and pedestrianpropriety-rather an unexpected spectacle. In anycase, and contrary to what the Wagner-Handbuch tells us, Schopenhauer seems to seeneither hide nor hair of literary value, be itstylistic or substantive, as he goes over the Ring,pencil at the ready.

This is confirmed by a few additional, satiriccomments, all pointing to somethingunintentionally comical in Wagner's writing. Howelse should one take Schopenhauer's comment



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on Fricka's obstreperousness toward herhusband, Wotan, in Act II of Walküre? "Wodanhenpecked," he writes in the margin (Wotan"under the slipper" is the somewhat moredomestically picturesque German). A stagedirection soon after is annotated by the remarkthat Wotan-a god, after all-"cowers and obeys."

At the beginning of the third act of Walküre,Wagner isn't doing much better, his criticalreader thinks. Die Wolken spielen die Hauptrolle,we read: "The clouds play the lead role."Schopenhauer also seems to be amused by theinept and tongue-twisting description in Siegfriedof the dragon, Fafner, which he underlines andmarks with an exclamation mark:eidechsenartiger Schlangenwurm (lizardlikeserpent-worm) is apparently just a bit too muchfor him. (In 1904 Wagner biographer W. A. Ellis,who knew of Schopenhauer's comments, came tohis hero's rescue, somewhat unhelpfully, bypointing out that this was a zoologically accuratedescription of an iguanodon.) Siegfried'ssimplemindedly blunt self-introduction to Guntherin Götterdämmerung--"Now fight with me, or bemy friend!"--rates three astonished exclamationmarks in the margin. Nor does the pencil-happycritic seem able to take Brünnhilde entirelyseriously. When she announces her intention to

be burned alive, and on horseback, too, onSiegfried's funeral pyre, Schopenhauer, whodrew so much inspiration from Indian culture,writes "Suttee" in the margin. This is hardly acompliment; more likely it indicates amusedsurprise about the inappropriateness of suchfulsome expression of sorrow in the world ofNordic mythology.

What, then, was Schopenhauer's overallimpression of Wagner's Ring as a text? Nothing inthe marginal notations points to any kind ofappreciation of the "literary rank" of the work. Onthe contrary, both the infelicitous style and thequestionable morality of the Ring provokeSchopenhauer the stylist and the moralist, andthe evidently amused reactions to involuntarilycomical scenes continue this critical vein. When

latter-day Wagnerians (as representedmagisterially in the Wagner-Handbuch) claim thaton the whole Schopenhauer approved of the textof the Ring, they take into account theconversational remarks he reportedly made



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about the work shortly after reading it. Butremember that these remarks, to the effect thatWagner-or rather, "the jerk" (der Kerl), in onehonest report-was a poet, not a musician, wererepeated to Wagner by friends who no doubtheard what they wanted to hear and told himwhat he was eager to hear. The remarks,moreover, were suspiciously similar, and by the

time they reached Wagner they had already beenpurified to unadulterated flattery. In CosimaWagner's diary of 16 January 1869, some 14years after the fact, they are: "I admire Wagneras a poet; but a musician he is not."

So, would "admiration" for Wagner the poet havebeen Schopenhauer's last word on the subject?The marginal notes to the Ring in HoughtonLibrary suggest nothing of the sort. Not one ofhis notations appears favorable, by any stretch ofthe imagination. The Weltanschauung of mysticalresignation both men may have shared. But intheir literary and musical tastes (Schopenhauerpreferred Mozart and Rossini), they wereantipodes. Harvard's copy of the Ringdemonstrates this only too clearly. Thathandshake (symbolically celebrated at Bayreuthyear in, year out) could only have beensomewhat backhanded. But that pose is not quitesuitable for a monument.

Karl S. Guthke is the Kuno Francke professor of German artand culture and a Corresponding Fellow of the BritishInstitute of Germanic Studies.

Graf van Arthur Schopenhauer - Hauptfriedhof Frankfurt

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