The problem of capitalism and revolution in the political teaching, creativity and work of Richard Wagner
N. A. Kravtsov
R. Wagner is one of the thinkers and, of course, cultural figures of the 19th century who condemned capitalism. At a quick glance, what is most striking is the rejection of the exploitation of the proletariat, which Wagner views as the cause of the intellectual degradation of the working people. He writes: “Such is the fate of the slave of Industry; our modern factories show us a pitiful picture of the deepest degradation of man: continuous labor, killing soul and body, without love, without joy, often even almost without a goal... The slave is not free even now, but the free man has become a slave.”[2] Wagner is outraged that the proletariat “creates everything useful in order to extract for itself least benefit" The German researcher W. Wolf pointed out: “How seriously he [Wagner] was concerned about this problem is clear from a letter to Ludwig II dated August 25, 1879. Having learned that at one large factory they had fired old workers, depriving them of all means of subsistence, Wagner immediately wondered if he could help them with his concerts. He calmed down only when other measures were taken in favor of those dismissed.”[3]
At the same time, we see that Wagner had an aversion to the repressive apparatus of capitalist society, even in cases where the repression was directed against representatives of the oppressed class quite rightly. Another German researcher, Martin Gregor-Dellin, testifies to an episode relating to Wagner’s stay in Riga: “Once in Riga, the clothes of Mina (Wagner’s first wife - N.K.) were stolen. The discouraged maid Lizhen immediately exposed her admirer. The police informed Wagner that if the value of the stolen goods exceeds 100 rubles, the accused will be exiled to Siberia. Wagner set the cost as low as possible, but he was unable to save the man because he turned out to be a repeat offender. Wagner happened to see him in chains and shaved bald when sent to Siberia. He was terribly impressed and promised himself never to expose anyone again.”[4]
However, justice requires that, when speaking about Wagner’s criticism of capitalism, we remember: at one time (1850s), he, like Hitler later, identified capitalism with the omnipotence of Jewish capital and, like Hitler, dreaming of an anti-capitalist revolution, the last thing he had in mind was an economic revolution, paradoxical as it may seem to those brought up on Marx’s theory of revolution.
But if Hitler’s concept of revolution is inseparable from fundamental anti-intellectualism, then in Wagner’s plan for the great transformation of the world, intellectuals and artists are given almost decisive role. His anti-bourgeois attitude is the conscious position of a true aristocrat of spirit. Wagner's complex and amazingly rich artistic thinking is truly incompatible with bourgeois vulgarity. Political reality irritated him, but not primarily because the oppression of the proletariat was disgusting for him, not because he saw a danger to the future of Germany in an unreasonable domestic or foreign policy. It’s just that the burghers, who were increasingly penetrating into power, opposed his artistic ideals by the very manner of their thinking. Universal and international art, close to everyone due to its intellectual completeness (and not a primitively understood “popularity”), similar to the synthetic drama of the ancient Greeks, is Wagner’s ideal. This ideal is unattainable in conditions of the triumph of bourgeois tastes. Soviet researcher B. Levik notes: “Like other advanced artists, he was opposed to the capitalist system. But he was dominated not so much by political as by artistic considerations, an ever-growing confidence in the impossibility of the free development of art and the realization of beautiful ideals in such conditions.”[5]
The only form of populism for which the bourgeois has the ability - whether in politics or art - is populism. But Wagnerian populism never stoops to populism. It is important to remember that Wagner late period of his work, he increasingly speaks out against the falsely understood “democratization” of art, against the dictates of fashion in art.
In general, can any benefit come from bourgeois populism if the main thing is not eliminated - the dependence of art on trading, which we see everywhere in the kingdom of Industry? A.F. Losev wrote with delight about Wagner: “No one could fight vulgarity in music and art as masterfully as Wagner did. The bourgeoisie will never forgive the fatal inner breakdown that was caused by Wagner’s work. In this sense, Wagner could never become a museum curiosity; and to this day, every sensitive musician and music listener cannot regard it calmly, academically, and historically dispassionately. Wagner’s aesthetics are always a challenge to every bourgeois vulgarity, no matter whether musically educated or musically uneducated.”[6] This protest of Wagner is especially understandable now. Today in Russia art is not just a “servant of Mercury”. In our country, bourgeois vulgarity has reached great “heights”. Popular music itself becomes a form of commerce, an industry. But even this is not enough for representatives of the “creative intelligentsia” who are stupefied by daily “parties.” They put their travestied “art” at the service of the gods of politics, being ready to participate in any election campaign. As a result, the inevitable happens: art, which has become a form of trading, will one day necessarily become a form of prostitution.
The supreme god-intellectual Wotan understands that he good intentions is not enough to build world harmony. He is bound by his own laws, not free, forced to make compromises and justify unseemly means to achieve noble goals. He needs a Hero, free and brave, who will help him. The philosophical plot of the drama is completed.
Wotan cannot feel safe, since the thick-headed Fafner has become the keeper of the ring. However, as the supreme god - the creator and keeper of the law, he cannot again commit deception and take the ring from the giant, who got it not by theft, like Alberich, but on the basis of an agreement with him, Wotan. Only a free person should take the ring from Fafner, and free from the rule of law. This can only be the illegitimate son of Wotan from an earthly woman - Sigmund. Wotan's throne must be protected from dark forces by his fanatical daughters, the Valkyries, and the souls of heroes who ascended to Valhalla. However, Wotan lacks the courage to put his plan into action. The free act of the free hero Sigmund - his incestuous marriage with his sister - horrifies the wife of the supreme god. It demands the fulfillment of the Law. Wotan submits and all the pleas of his beloved daughter Brünnhilde, in whom his spiritual beginning is embodied, are in vain. Law conquers spirituality. The authorities lack the courage to become an ally of the rebel hero. The hero is defeated, Brünnhilde, who has taken his side, is immersed in eternal sleep, and her bed is guarded by a magical flame, lit on the orders of Wotan by the cunning and treacherous Loge. The show sees this as an allegory of lies and frightening tales that the authorities and the church resort to to hide the truth.
However, the line of heroes continues in Siegmund's son, Siegfried. He is even freer than his father: having grown up in ignorance, he knows neither law nor fear. His very birth from an incestuous relationship is a challenge to the law. But the situation is becoming more and more complex. Siegfried was raised by the dwarf Mime, Alberich's brother, who dreams of taking possession of the Rhine Gold with the help of his powerful pupil. Now the “aristocracy” and the “bourgeoisie” are concerned with making the hero their ally. Shaw himself does not sympathize with him too much: “The father was a devoted and noble man, but the son does not know any law except his own mood; he can’t stand the ugly dwarf who nursed him... In short, he is a completely immoral person, Bakunin’s ideal, a harbinger of Nietzsche’s “superman.” He is extremely strong, full of life and cheerful; he is dangerous and destructive to everything he does not love, and gentle to what he loves.” It must be admitted that Shaw is really witty, seeing in the anarchist-revolutionary of Wagner's times a descendant of the intellectual aristocracy, nurtured by bourgeois society!
The hero, in a sense, remains outside the influence of other “social strata”. He inherited from Wotan only fragments of a sword, which he melts down himself, ignoring the art of his dwarf mentor. He kills the keeper of gold - Fafner, but not for the sake of gold, but out of a desire to know fear. Having become the owner of gold, he does not know its meaning. For him it is only a battle trophy. Siegfried, raised as a “bourgeois” by Mime, thus does not become a bourgeois himself. Without the slightest pity, he beheads his treacherous teacher, who tried to poison him. But he also ignores his aristocratic ancestors. Wotan's spear is crushed by his sword. The fire of the cunning Loge is not afraid of him. The hero awakens Brünnhilde from sleep. It is curious that in the love scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilde, Shaw refuses to see any allegory and views it as a “purely operatic element.” Although his method of artificial analogies could in this case provide food for thought: if Siegfried is a revolutionary hero, and Brünnhilde embodies the spiritual, noble principle of aristocratic power, then their union can well be considered as the revolutionaries’ desire to build a liberal system of government! Shaw analyzes the fourth part of the tetralogy solely as love drama in the Ibsenian spirit.[7]
Undoubtedly, it would be absurd to see in The Ring an exclusively political treatise presented in dramatic form. The Soviet researcher G.V. Krauklis was mistaken when he wrote that “the main idea of the tetralogy was the denunciation of capitalism contemporary to Wagner.”[8] In general, in relation to “The Ring”, as well as, for example, to Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” or “Faust” Goethe, it is quite difficult to speak of a “fundamental idea.”
The allegory of capitalism that Shaw sees in The Ring can be attributed to the “good old” England, where the aristocracy retained its political power and by force or cunning did not easily allow the bourgeoisie to join it, to France during the Restoration, to Bavaria during the time of Ludwig II, but certainly not to capitalism in general. Wagner still considers capitalism to be a force hostile to the aristocratic state, and believes in a state that will become a fighter against Industry. He does not understand that the process of merging power and capital has already begun. Shaw notices this limitation of Wagner's ideas. Essentially, the English writer sees that Wagner, like Marx, is largely mistaken regarding the historical prospects of capitalist society. His analysis of the results that led to the European revolutionary movement in the second half of the 19th century, in terms of Wagnerian allegories, is very witty: “Alberich regained his ring and became related to the best families of Valhalla. He abandoned his long-standing desire to remove Wotan and Loge from power. He became convinced that since his Nibelheim was an unpleasant place and since he wanted to live beautifully and prosperously, he should not only allow Wotan and Loge to take care of the organization of society, but also pay them generously for this. He wanted luxury, military glory, legality, enthusiasm and patriotism” [9] (Nazism would later grow from among the Alberichs!). What about Siegfried and similar anarchist heroes? They were either shot among the Paris Communards, or drowned in the verbal disputes of the First International...
Too bold parallels between Wagner and Marx, however, are inappropriate. Where Marx has historicism, Wagner has fatalism and voluntarism. Marx proceeds from economic determinism. Wagner primarily starts from problems of a moral order. The gold in The Ring is initially a harmless toy of the Daughters of the Rhine. It becomes dangerous due to the moral limitations of Alberich, who is capable of renouncing love due to greed. Everything would have been different if Fafner and Fasolt had not been stupid and narrow-minded, and Wotan’s laws had not been based on the principle of positive morality. Here Wagner is close to the liberalism of the 18th century, which saw wealth as something completely harmless and reduced all the problems associated with it to the problem of abuses stemming from moral depravity. If Marx hopes for a political movement, then Wagner ultimately hopes for the overcoming of political man, as such, for his replacement by artistic man. Siegfried is more of a prototype of an artistic person, a bearer of intuitive morality, than a revolutionary in the political sense of the word. Here Shaw, who sees in him a semblance of an anarchist of the Bakunin type, is mistaken. Wagner began work on the “Ring” already in 1849, when before his eyes both the socialists and the anarchists suffered a crushing defeat. However, a similar erroneous interpretation of this image is also inherent in the National Socialists, which, in fact, is where all the distortions of Wagnerian ideology characteristic of the Third Reich began.
What is undoubtedly related in the political doctrines of Marx and Wagner is the very condemnation of capitalism as a vicious social system and the recognition of the dependence of consciousness on being (although Wagner does not absolutize the latter principle). “In Art and Revolution he argues that art depends on the socio-political reality of the modern world. In “The Work of Art of the Future” he tries to show what a detrimental effect this dependence has on various areas of art...”[10]
In Wagner, as in Marx, we see a condemnation of property to the extent that it becomes the main principle public organization. He writes: “In our social consciousness, property has become almost more sacred than religion: violation of religious law is tolerated, but any encroachment on property entails merciless punishment.”[11]
Wagner is also close to Marx in the principle of attitude towards history, expressed by him in a letter to August Röckel: “To desire the inevitable and to realize it ourselves.”[12]
An interesting remark made by Thomas Mann in 1933: Wagner “would undoubtedly be recognized today as a Bolshevik in the field of culture.”[13]
The question of how aware Wagner was of Marxism is quite complex. There is no evidence that Wagner studied the works of Marx or was even familiar with them. One thing is more or less clear. During his Swiss emigration, Wagner became close acquaintance with the poet Georg Gerwig. The latter was a close friend of Marx and an active figure in the labor movement. Gregor-Dellin does not allow the idea that Gerwig did not mention Marx and his teachings in conversations with Wagner. [14] However, it must be borne in mind that the acquaintance with Gerwig took place when Wagner had already written his main political works. It is hardly possible to talk about the significant influence of these conversations on his political consciousness.
It should also be remembered that, strictly speaking, Wagner condemns not capitalism in itself, but any society that encroaches on the spiritual freedom of man. The same G.V. Krauklis rightly noted that in Tannhäuser, among other things, there is a noticeable criticism of the moral limitations of feudal society. [15] In principle, disagreeing with any attempt to reduce Wagner’s ideology to a criticism of the exploitative society of his time, we cannot but admit that Wagner undoubtedly had an anti-bourgeois attitude, as well as a certain solidarity with the ideology of socialism. In a hymn written on the eve of the barricades of 1848, Wagner puts into the mouth of the Goddess of the Revolution the following words: “I will destroy the power of man over others, the power of the dead over the living, matter over the spirit; I will destroy the power of government, laws and property. I will destroy the established order that divides one humanity into hostile peoples, into the strong and the weak, into those under the shadow of the law and those outside the law, into the rich and the poor, for this order makes everyone unhappy. I will destroy the established order that makes millions the slaves of a few, and those few the slaves of their own power and wealth. I will destroy the established order that separates work from pleasure, which turns work into torture, and vice into pleasure, which makes one unhappy from need, another from satiety. I will destroy the established order, which forces people to waste their energy in vain, serving the power of the dead, soulless matter, which condemns half of humanity to inaction, and the other half to useless acts...” [16] In his twilight years, Wagner spoke in a private conversation about social -democracy: “The future belongs to this movement, and our absurd repressive measures will only contribute to its spread.”[17]
However, Wagner's “socialism” is unique. Gregor-Dellin is right when he emphasizes that Wagner is characterized by elitist socialism, which presupposes the establishment of universal happiness “from above” and, with all the sympathy for the exploited, is still inseparable from some contempt for the social lower classes - that socialism in which “everyone is equal, but intellectuals and artists are a little more equal than others."[18]
So, Wagner wanted social reforms. But here is his reaction to real historical events: “I remember that the descriptions french revolution filled me with sincere disgust for her characters. I was completely ignorant of the previous history of France, and it was natural that my tender sense of humanity was outraged by the terrible cruelty of the revolutionaries. This purely human indignation was so strong in me that subsequently I had to make great efforts to force myself to think carefully and understand the purely political significance of these powerful events.”[19]
The fear of a rebellious crowd haunted Wagner during the revolution of 1848, when he wrote: “Like everyone who cares about the good, the violent initiatives of the crowd ... are the greatest misfortune that can happen in history. The recent past has given us enough horrifying examples of such savage and primitive behavior.”[20]
However, the reaction to the July Revolution in Leipzig is completely different - joyful youthful excitement: “From that day, history suddenly opened up before me, and, of course, I took the side of the revolution entirely: it was, in my eyes, a brave and victorious struggle, free from those the terrible excesses that stained the first French Revolution.”[21] Wagner becomes involved in street events. He mainly participates in the revolution through participation in student corporations, despite the fact that “political life in Leipzig was expressed in only one thing: antagonism between students and the police.” Wagner, at one time frightened by the horrors of the first French Revolution, now succumbs to general madness: “I remember with horror the intoxicating effect that this senseless, frantic rage of the crowd had on those around me, and I cannot deny that I myself, without the slightest personal reason, accepted participation in the general destruction and how a man possessed in a rage destroyed furniture and smashed dishes... I was whirled like a madman in a general whirlwind of a purely demonic principle, which in such cases takes over the fury of the crowd.”[22]
Moreover, which is very characteristic, Wagner never lives in anticipation of the coming storm. He joins the revolution as an unexpected performance, and not a long-awaited battle. Just four years before the revolution of 1848, Wagner organizes a demonstration of devotion to the Saxon king upon the latter's return from England. In his autobiography, oil flows like a river on this occasion: “A gentle warm air blew from England over little Saxony, which filled us with proud joy and love for the king... Heartfelt love for the German monarch, which prompted me to undertake this undertaking...” and so on. [23] Already on the eve of the revolution, Wagner does not even foresee its coming: “Among my acquaintances, I belonged to those who least of all believed in the proximity and even in general in the possibility of a world political revolution.” European news causes Wagner to doubt its revolutionary significance. Even when he learns of the overthrow of Louis-Philippe, he does not believe in the seriousness of what is happening: “It not only surprised, but directly amazed me, although doubt about the seriousness of the events brought a skeptical smile to my face.” In Saxony, the revolution began from above - with the formation, at the initiative of the king, of a liberal government. Wagner’s reaction is again exaltation towards the king: “The king rode through the streets in an open carriage. With the greatest excitement I followed his meetings with the masses of the people and sometimes even hurried to run to where, it seemed to me, it was especially necessary to please and console the heart of the monarch with an enthusiastic manifestation. My wife was truly frightened when I returned home late at night, completely exhausted and hoarse from screaming.” He perceives events of a more radical order, taking place in parallel in Europe, only “as interesting newspaper news.” Moreover, at this stage he is interested not so much in the revolutionary pathos of events, but in “the emergence of a pan-German idea.”[24]
It is curious that at this time the problem of the revolution of artistic life interested Wagner almost more than the issues of political transformation. He proposes projects for organizing the theater and reforming the court chapel. One of the statements that we find in the section of Wagner’s autobiography relating to revolutionary events is indicative: “I thought a lot about the future forms of human relations when the bold desires and hopes of socialists and communists are fulfilled. Their teachings, which were then just taking shape, gave me only general grounds, since I was not interested in the very moment of political and social revolution, but in the order of life in which my projects related to art could find fruition.”[25]
In his autobiography, Wagner constantly denies his active role in revolutionary events. He emphasizes that he was simply carried away by a stormy stream into the thick of things. “Decisive battles could be expected in the near future. I did not feel a passionate desire to take an active part in them, but without looking back I was ready to rush into the flow of movement, wherever it led me.” [26] The excitement was almost childish: “I felt a special revival. I suddenly wanted to play with something that you usually attach serious importance to.” [27] The terror of the reaction intensifies the excitement: “This spectacle greatly shocked me, and I somehow immediately understood the meaning of the cry that was heard from all sides: “To the barricades!” To the barricades!” Carried away by the crowd, I moved with them to the town hall... From that moment, I remember quite clearly the move extraordinary events deeply interested me. I did not feel a direct desire to intervene in the ranks of the fighters, but excitement and participation in what was happening grew in me with every step.”[28] The next step is indignation at the sight of the impending danger of the Prussian occupation. Wagner writes appeals to the soldiers of the Saxon army, demanding support for the patriots. However, most of the subsequent actions, Wagner carefully emphasizes, he still performed, “driven by the passionate interest of the observer.”
For some time the revolution really seems to him to be something of an innocent game. “I was overcome by a complacent mood, not devoid of humor. It seemed that all this was not serious, that a peace-loving proclamation on behalf of the government would put everything in order.”[29] But with the direct attack of the Prussian troops, everything changes: “From that moment, my participation in the events began to take on a more passionate coloring.”[30] However, , despite constant contacts with the leaders of the uprising and friendship with the omnipresent Bakunin, Wagner’s actions were devoid of any clear direction or, at least, internal logic. With the delight of an observer, he rushes around the barricades, just as Berlioz did in a similar situation (with the latter it was completely anecdotal: while he had found weapons for himself to participate in the revolution, it had already ended.) Further, Wagner notes: “What previously excited In me, sympathy, not devoid of irony and skepticism, and then causing great surprise, expanded into an important event and full of deep meaning. I did not feel any desire, no calling to take on any specific function, but on the other hand, I completely gave up on all considerations about my personal situation and decided to surrender to the flow of events: to surrender to the mood with a joyful feeling similar to despair.”[31]
However, those who, based on these lines, would consider Wagner’s participation in revolutionary events as an unconscious impulse, not based on any clear political worldview, are wrong. Authors who adhere to this interpretation forget that the autobiography “My Life” was written at a time when Wagner had already been acquitted and favored by the German political elite and it was not at all beneficial for him to emphasize the awareness of his revolutionary antics. But you can’t hide an sew in a bag! In 1848, “Wagner was thirty-five years old. He has already lived half his life. He was a mature man, fully aware of his words and actions; he was not a young madman... Thus, while participating in the revolution, he was perfectly aware of both his goals and the means of achieving them.”[32]
Immediately after the fiasco that befell the Saxon movement, Wagner, in Swiss emigration, returned to thoughts about the artistic revolution. At the same time, he remains an optimist regarding the prospects for a radical reorganization of social life: “I was convinced that both in the field of art and in all of our social life in general, a revolution of enormous importance will soon come, which will inevitably create new conditions of existence, give rise to new needs... Very soon a new relationship between art and the tasks of social life will be established. These bold expectations... arose in me under the influence of an analysis of the European events of that time. The general failure that befell previous political movements did not disorient me in the least. On the contrary, their powerlessness is explained only by the fact that their ideological essence was not understood with complete clarity, was not expressed in a specific word. I saw this essence in the social movement, which, despite the political defeat, did not lose any of its energy, but, on the contrary, became more and more intense.” It immediately becomes clear that we are talking about social democracy.[33]
“The Dresden Revolution and its final result,” he writes elsewhere, “made me realize that I was not a real revolutionary in any case. The sad outcome of the uprising clearly taught me that a real... revolutionary should not stop at anything in his actions: he should not think about his wife, nor about children, nor about well-being. Its only goal is destruction... I belong to a breed of people that is incapable of this terrifying goal; people like me are revolutionaries only in the sense that we can build something on a new foundation; we are attracted not by destruction, but by change.”[34]
Thus, Wagner’s refusal from the revolution, which researchers talk about so much, did not come from disappointment in it and its goals, but from disbelief in the possibility of its implementation. In addition, he seemed to have come to the conclusion that his projects in the field of art could be realized in addition to furthering the goals of the then revolutionaries. In the end, Wagner was not the only romantic who renounced the revolution. Another genius of the romantic era, Hector Berlioz, also made this journey. Romain Rolland, for whom the comparison of Wagner and Berlioz acquired particular research importance (as the personification of the confrontation between French and German romanticism), was indignant: “Just as this pioneer of free music in the second half of his life was afraid, apparently, of himself, retreated before conclusions from his principles and returned to classicism - so Berlioz the revolutionary begins to grumpily vilify the people and the revolution, “republican cholera”, “dirty, stupid republic of hook and rag pickers”, “vile human bastard, a hundred times more stupid and bloodthirsty in their revolutionary leaps and grimaces than the baboons and orangutans of Borneo.” Ungrateful! To these revolutions, this turbulent democracy, these human storms, he owed the best sides of his genius - and he renounces them! He was a musician of a new time - and returned to the past! "[35] Wagner did not go so far as to denigrate the revolution in such a way. Unlike Berlioz, having become more conservative in politics, he did not become conservative in music. Quite the opposite.
The same Rolland, discussing the significance of Wagner’s public renunciation of the very fact of his active participation in revolutionary events, wisely notes: “If it is true that Wagner subsequently declared that “he was then in the grip of delusion and carried away by passion,” then for this historical period it doesn't matter. Delusions and passions are integral part all life; and we have no right to eliminate them from anyone’s biography on the pretext that twenty or thirty years later the hero rejected them. After all, for some time they guided his actions and inspired his thoughts.”[36]
Speaking about Wagner's revolutionary spirit, which clearly cooled down in the mature period of his work, we must not lose sight of the specifics of this revolutionary spirit. The History of Theoretical Sociology correctly emphasizes: “Neither the revolution, nor the society of the future, nor the communist man had, according to Wagner’s concept, a goal and meaning in themselves. They received both from art, from aesthetic reality, which alone was self-sufficient, self-legitimate and end in itself. The revolution worried Wagner as an aesthetic revolution, the society of the future - as a society of artists, the communist man - as an artist, and all this together - as the embodiment of the eternal ideals of art... But nevertheless, this social reality was always in mind, and the prospect for the development of art - supreme reality- was associated with the prospect of social development, political struggle, with the prospect of revolution.”[37]
Wagner himself wrote: “I have never been involved in politics in the strict sense of the word... I paid my attention to the phenomena of the political world exclusively to the extent that the spirit of the Revolution was manifested in them, that is, the revolt of pure Human Nature against the political-legal Formalism."[38]
Gregor-Dellin speaks in the same spirit: “Wagner was never a “political figure”; if he took part in revolutionary events, it was only for “purely human” reasons. This is a revolutionary for the love of art...” [39] “He was never capable of patient and thorough penetration into economic, scientific and social theories. He memorized mainly slogans, final provisions, the basis of which was unknown to him... Whatever extremism Wagner showed in his social, revolutionary and anarchist ideas, one thing is clear: he took root in him thanks to his personal experience of poverty, due to the disgust he had at the form of a corrupt artistic community, in which he saw a reflection of the state and society as a whole.”[40]
Earlier, H. S. Chamberlain noted: “The originality of his point of view was that he did not believe that political revolution could heal a sick society... The uprising was for him a phenomenon of an internal, moral order; it is a feeling of indignation against modern injustice: and this sacred anger is the first stage on the path to “rebirth””[41].
The words of Wagner himself seem to confirm what was said above: “I... developed in my mind ideas about this state of human society, the basis for which was the most daring wishes and aspirations of the then socialists and communists, who were so actively building their systems in those years, and these aspirations acquired meaning and significance for me only when political revolutions and constructions achieved their goals - then I, for my part, could begin to rebuild all art.”[42]
Wagner's revolutionary spirit cooled gradually. Those who see this process as happening instantly, after the collapse of the uprising of 1848, are wrong. In 1851, already working closely on the “Ring,” Wagner says in one of his letters: “Only a revolution can provide me with the artists and listeners I am waiting for; the coming revolution must necessarily put an end to all this insanity of theatrical life... With my work I will show the revolutionaries the meaning of this revolution in the noblest sense of the word. This audience will understand me; today’s public is not capable of this.”[43] And here is another letter: “My entire policy is nothing more than the most ardent hatred of our entire civilization, contempt for everything that stems from it, and nostalgia for nature. .. Despite all the cries of the working people, they are all the most pitiful of slaves... The tendency to serve is deeply rooted in us... In Europe, in general, I prefer dogs to these people who are nothing more than dogs. However, I do not lose hope for the future. Only the most terrible and devastating revolution can again make us from the civilized brutes that we are - people.”[44]
Only after receiving active help from the Bavarian king will Wagner give up his rebellion. But it is impossible to talk about his complete rejection of the revolution, given the role assigned to the king in the political thought of late Wagner. Without renouncing revolution as a process of global social reconstruction, Wagner ceases to identify it with rebellion, bloodshed, and the violent breakdown of an existing organization. Thus, Wagner’s rejection of the revolution is not a rejection of the goal, but a revision of the means to achieve it. The monarchism of late Wagner appeared new form his revolutionary spirit. The same revolution in meaning and significance, which in his younger years he expected to see coming “from below,” the elderly Wagner expected “from above.”
References
[1] Kravtsov N.A. Richard Wagner as a political thinker // Jurisprudence. 2003. No. 2. pp. 208–217.
[2] Wagner R. Art and Revolution // Wagner R. The Ring of the Nibelung. Favorite work. M., 2001. pp. 687–688.
[3] Wolf V. On the problem of Wagner’s ideological evolution // Richard Wagner. Sat. articles/ed.-comp. L. V. Polyakova. M., 1987. P. 69.
[4] Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. S. l.: Fayard, 1981. P. 126.
[5] Levick B. Richard Wagner. M., 1978. P. 49.
[6] Losev A.F. Historical meaning of the aesthetic worldview of Richard Wagner // Wagner R. Izbr. work. M., 1978. P. 8.
[7] Shaw G. B. The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Nibelung’s Ring // http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/classic_books_online/sring10.htm; http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1487
[8] Krauklis G.V. Overture to the opera “Tannhäuser” and Wagner’s programmatic and symphonic principles // Richard Wagner. Articles and materials. M., 1974. P. 140.
[9] Shaw G. B. The Perfect Wagnerite...
[10] Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 314.
[11] Wagner R. Know Thyself // Religion and Art. Richard Wagner's Prose Works. S. l., 1897. Vol. 6. P. 267.
[12] Quoted. by: Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 242.
[13] Mann T. The suffering and greatness of Richard Wagner // Collection. op. T. 10. M., 1961. P. 172.
[14] Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 346–347.
[15] Krauklis G.V. Overture to the opera “Tannhäuser”... P. 139.
[16] Quoted. by: Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 248–249.
[17] Ibid. P. 757.
[18] Ibid. P. 340.
[19] Wagner R. My life. St. Petersburg; M., 2003. P. 56.
[20] Wagner R. Letter to the King of Saxony dated June 21, 1848 (quoted in: Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 230).
[21] Wagner R. My life. P. 57.
[22] Ibid. P. 58.
[23] Ibid. pp. 336–340.
[24] Ibid. pp. 431–436.
[25] Ibid. P. 450.
[26] Ibid. P. 465.
[27] Ibid. P. 467.
[28] Ibid. P. 468.
[29] Ibid. P. 472.
[30] Ibid. P. 473.
[31] Ibid. P. 478.
[32] Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 232.
[33] Wagner R. My life. pp. 559–560.
[34] Wagner R. Letter to his wife dated May 14, 1848 (quoted in: Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 262).
[35] Rolland R. Musicians of our days // Musical and historical heritage. Vol. 4. M., 1989. P. 57.
[36] Ibid. pp. 64–65.
[ 37] History of theoretical sociology / comp. A. B. Goffman. In 4 volumes. T. 1. M., 1997. P. 469.
[38] Wagner R. A Communication to my Friends // The Art-Work of the Future. Richard Wagner's Prose Works. S. l., 1895. Vol. 1. P. 355.
[39] Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 330.
[40] Ibid. P. 150–151.
[41] Chamberlain H. S. Richard Wagner et le Genie français // Revue des deux mondes. T. 136. Paris, 1896. P. 445.
[42] Quoted. by: Gal G. Richard Wagner. Experience of characterization // Gal G. Brahms, Wagner, Verdi. Three masters - three worlds. Rostov/D., 1998. P. 259.
[43] Wagner R. Letter to Uhlig dated November 12, 1851 (quoted in: Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 337).
[44] Wagner R. Letter to Ernst Benedict Kitz dated December 30, 1851 (quoted in: Gregor-Dellin M. Richard Wagner. P. 339).
To prepare this work, materials were used from the website http://www.law.edu.ru/
Department of Russian Classical Literature and Theoretical Literary Studies of Yelets State University
http://narrativ.boom.ru/library.htm
(Narrativ Library)
Wagner Richard
Selected works. Comp. and comment. I.A. Barsova and S.A. Osherova. Will join. article by A.F. Loseva. Per. with him. M., “Iskusstvo”, 1978. 695 p. (History of aesthetics in monuments and documents).
The outstanding 19th century composer Richard Wagner is also known for his work on aesthetics. The collection includes the most significant works of R. Wagner (“Art and Revolution”, “Opera and Drama”, “Work of Art of the Future” and others), which allow us to understand not only the aesthetic views of the composer and his taste preferences, but also Wagner’s social position. The collection also includes articles from the early and late periods of R. Wagner’s theoretical work, through which one can trace his ideological evolution.
A.F. Losev
The historical meaning of the aesthetic worldview of Richard Wagner
ABOUT THE ESSENCE OF GERMAN MUSIC
Translation by E. Markovich
THE ARTIST AND THE PUBLIC
Translation by I. Tatarinova
VIRTUOSO AND ARTIST
Translation by I. Tatarinova
PILGRIMAGE TO BEETHOVEN
Translation by I. Tatarinova
ART AND REVOLUTION
Translation by I. Katsenelenbogen
A WORK OF ART OF THE FUTURE
Translation by S. Gijdeu
OPERA AND DRAMA
Translation by A. Shepelevsky and A. Winter
MUSIC OF THE FUTURE
Translation by I. Tatarinova
ABOUT THE PURPOSE OF THE OPERA
Translation by O. Smolyan
ABOUT ACTORS AND SINGERS
Translation by G. Bergelson
PUBLIC AND POPULARITY
Translation by O. Smolyan
THE PUBLIC IN TIME AND SPACE
Translation by O. Smolyan
ABOUT WRITING POEMS AND MUSIC
Translation by O. Smolyan
COMMENTS
HISTORICAL MEANING OF RICHARD WAGNER’S AESTHETIC WORLDVIEW
In 1918, A. Blok wrote: “Only a great and worldwide Revolution can return to people the fullness of free art, which will destroy the centuries-old lies of civilizations and raise the people to the heights of artistic humanity.”* For A. Blok these were not just solemn and empty words. He had in mind a very specific music, a very specific composer (or at least a very specific type of composer) and a specifically-minded audience, listeners of such music. A. Blok was talking about Richard Wagner here.
“Wagner is still alive and still new; when the Revolution begins to sound in the air, Wagner’s Art also sounds in response; his creations will still be heard and understood sooner or later; these creations will not be used for entertainment, but for the benefit of people; for art, so “remote from life” (and therefore dear to the hearts of others) in our days, leads directly to practice, to action; only his tasks are broader and deeper than those of “real politics” and therefore more difficult to implement in life”**.
According to A. Blok, Wagner was deeply aware of the ideals of spiritual freedom. But while European philistinism has always ruined this kind of artist, this is precisely what it did not achieve in the case of Wagner. Blok asks: “Why couldn’t Wagner be starved to death? Why wasn’t it possible to gobble it up, vulgarize it, adapt it and hand it over to the historical archive, like a frustrated, no longer needed instrument?”***
It turns out that Wagner, according to Blok, not only created beauty and not only loved to contemplate it. He still desperately resisted the transformation
* Block A. Art and revolution (About the creation of Richard Wagner). - A. Blok. Collection op. in 12 volumes, volume 8. M. - L. 1936, p. 59
** Ibid., p. 62.
*** Ibid., p. 67.
the reduction of this beauty into petty-bourgeois and everyday vulgarity. He knew how not only to love, but he also knew how to hate. “It was this poison of hateful love, unbearable for a tradesman even “seven spans of culture in the forehead,” that saved Wagner from death and desecration. This poison, spilled throughout all his creations, is the “new” that is destined for the future.”*
Wagner’s aesthetics is the aesthetics of revolutionary pathos, which he retained throughout his life and which he expressed with youthful enthusiasm back in 1849 in the article “Art and Revolution.” Wagner’s ideal, despite any life conflicts, always remained “free united humanity”, not subject, according to the composer, to “industry and capital” that destroy art. This new humanity, according to Wagner, should be endowed with a “social mind” that has mastered nature and its fruits for the common good. Wagner dreams of “future great social revolutions,” the path to which is pointed by the transformative role of art. He relies on human nature, from the depths of which a new artistic consciousness grows into the vast expanses of “pure humanity”. He places his hopes on the power of the “divine human mind” and at the same time on faith in Christ, who suffered for people, and Apollo, who gave them joy. Wagner's true revolutionary spirit in music, along with these contradictory but persistent dreams, as well as his deep antagonism with bourgeois-merchant reality, led to a struggle around the work of the great composer, which did not subside for more than a hundred years**.
After all, no one could fight vulgarity in music and art as masterfully as Wagner did. The bourgeoisie will never forgive the fatal inner breakdown that was caused by Wagner’s work. In this sense, Wagner could never become a museum curiosity; and to this day, every sensitive musician and music listener cannot regard it calmly, academically, and historically dispassionately. Wagner's aesthetics are always a challenge to every bourgeois vulgarity, no matter whether musically educated or musically uneducated.
Thus, we now have to briefly, but as clearly as possible, reveal the essence of Wagner’s aesthetics and note in it some, albeit few, but still basic features.
Before doing this, let us remind readers of some important
* Block A. Decree. cit., p. 63.
** The assessment by Russian and Soviet researchers of Wagner’s socio-political positions and their artistic reflection in his work are discussed in detail in the work: Losev A. F. The Problem of Richard Wagner in the Past and Present, - “Questions of Aesthetics” No. 8. M., 1968, With. 67 - 196
biographical information of Wagner. For our purposes, these data should be presented not just factually, but with a certain tendency, namely, in order to clarify the historical meaning of Wagner’s most important aesthetic aspirations. And they were associated in Wagner with the failures and death of the revolutionary movement of the 40s and romantic ideas about some other, not at all bourgeois, revolution that would renew and transform humanity with the help of new art.
Richard Wagner was born on May 22, 1813 in Leipzig into the family of a police official who died in the year his son was born. Wagner's family, his brother and sisters, were all passionate theater lovers, actors and singers. His stepfather, L. Geyer, himself an actor, artist and playwright, encouraged the boy's theatrical interests. The composer spent his childhood in Dresden, where his family settled, and he returned to Leipzig only in 1828 to continue his studies at the gymnasium and then at the university. It was here that Wagner began to seriously study music theory, harmony, counterpoint, preparing for composing activities, the result of which were his early symphony (1832), his first opera - “Fairies” (1833 - 1834), and wrote the article “German Opera” (1834) , in which one can already feel Wagner’s thoughts about the fate of opera music.
Until 1842, Wagner's life was extremely unsettled. He visits Vienna, Prague, Würzburg and Magdeburg, where he conducts opera house and meets the actress Minna Planer (1817 - 1866), who became his wife in 1836. Wagner conducted in theaters in Königsberg and Riga, cherishing the dream of creating a grand opera with a romantic plot. In 1840, he completed his opera Rienzi, dedicated to the dramatic fate of the hero who tried to create a republic in medieval Rome in the 14th century. Wagner tries in vain to stage it in Paris, where he first appeared in 1839, after he had to secretly leave Riga without a passport due to difficult financial circumstances (large debts and theatrical intrigues).
Wagner's ambitious dreams of conquering Paris were not realized. But in the summer of 1841, he wrote “The Flying Dutchman” there, where he developed an ancient legend about a sailor who is forever wandering and in vain seeking redemption. And although returning to Dresden with his wife (1842) without the slightest means and on the verge of disaster was quite deplorable, his operas “Rienzi” and “The Flying Dutchman” were nevertheless staged in Dresden (1842 - 1843).
Wagner's passion for romantic opera did not end there. On the contrary, from the decorative heroics of "Rienzi" and the fantasy of "The Flying
Dutchman" Wagner moves on to the deeper problems of the spirit, struggling with the irrationality of destructive feelings and winning victory in the radiance of goodness, beauty and moral duty. Wagner, who by this time had taken the post of court conductor of the Dresden Theater, staged Tannhäuser there (1845), wrote Lohengrin (1845 - 1848), during the production of which, already in Weimar, his new friend, the famous pianist and composer F. Liszt, conducted. August 28, 1850). For dozens of years these two great artists walked hand in hand, exerting a huge beneficial influence on each other and on the musical culture of their time. By the way, Liszt's symphonic poems, along with Beethoven's last sonatas, had a great and purely musical influence on Wagner, which, unfortunately, is written about much less often than the subject deserves.
An obsession with medieval subjects, so beloved by romantic poets (and Wagner showed himself to be an outstanding poet and librettist of his own operas), does not in the least interfere with Wagner’s essentially romantic fascination with the revolution of 1848 and meetings with the famous Russian anarchist M. Bakunin, who subverted in his own unrestrained dreams and unrealizable plans, the tyranny of European thrones. In the name of the rule of supreme justice, Wagner participates in the Dresden popular uprising of May 3-9, 1849, which expelled the king from Dresden. However, a few days later, Prussian troops defeated the rebels, the provisional government led by Bakunin was arrested; Bakunin was handed over to the Russian authorities, and Wagner hastily left Dresden to join Liszt in Weimar, and then to Jena, to finally leave Germany secretly, with a false passport obtained for him with the help of the same Liszt.
So in 1849, Wagner found himself in Switzerland, from where he immediately, albeit briefly, made a trip to Paris. His ten-year stay in Switzerland (until 1859) turned out to be extremely creative and fruitful.
Wagner lives in Zurich, being in close friendship with the wealthy businessman Otto Wesendonck (1815 - 1896) and his wife Mathilde (1828 - 1902), a musician and poet. Wagner travels to Paris and London (1855), conducting, earning a living, but quickly squandering on whims and luxury the money that he earns with great difficulty, and that which he often receives in the form of subsidies from friends and patrons. Wagner's wife, Minna, with whom life together was not at all successful, is seriously ill, and the illness is aggravated by her quarrelsome character and jealousy of the Wesendonks, who financially help the composer and ensure his independence.
Back in early 1852 in Zurich, when Wagner met the family of Otto Wesendonck, Matilda began taking lessons from him
music. The relationship between teacher and student gradually grew into true friendship, and then into the deepest feeling of enthusiastic love. In 1853, Wagner wrote “Sonata in an Album” to Matilda, which was essentially a fantasy on the themes of his operas. Both of them, however, understood that their love should remain in the sphere of sublimely ideal relationships, since it was impossible for both Wagner and for Matilda, Matilda Wesendonck, an exemplary mother, a caring wife, did not even hide her admiration for Wagner from her husband, but, on the contrary, did her best to ensure that Otto was imbued with the most friendly feelings towards the persecuted composer and sometimes helped him with financial subsidies. For example, Otto paid the costs of organizing concerts where the works of Wagner and Beethoven were performed. At the request of Matilda, Otto in 1857 bought for the composer a small plot of land near his villa with a house, which Wagner himself called “Refuge” and which was intended for his permanent residence. In this house at the end of April 1857, Wagner settled with Minna, whose sober practicality could not come to terms with the incomprehensible relationship between Wagner and the Wesendonks.
When on September 18, 1857, the poetic text of “Tristan”, written over several weeks, was completed and Matilda, hugging Wagner, said “now I have no more desires,” a moment of bliss came for him. However, this bliss was not destined to last. At the beginning of 1858, Wagner went to Paris for a short time to organize his musical affairs, and upon his return to Zurich, troubles awaited him. Wagner's wife, filled with jealousy and suspicion, opened one of Wagner's letters to Matilda and threatened a scandal. Minna had to urgently go to the water for treatment, the Wesendonks also left to stop idle gossip, to Italy, and Wagner was left alone in the “Refuge”, working on the composition of “Tristan”. But upon Minna's return, a break with the Wesendonks turned out to be inevitable. It took Wagner a lot of effort to convince Otto that Minna was not able to understand his high and selfless relationship with Matilda. True, Wagner himself perfectly understood the uselessness and belatedness of these beliefs. Wanting to protect Matilda from further everyday complications, he leaves for Geneva and then to Venice. Minna goes to Dresden in the care of Wagner's friends. Wagner has thoughts of suicide. He keeps a sad diary, painfully remembering his distant beloved, and sends her letters, which Matilda returns unopened this time.
The memory of the passionate love and self-denial of Wagner and Matilda remains “Five Songs for a Female Voice,” about which Wagner himself wrote: “I have never created anything better than these songs, and only a few of my works can stand comparison with them.” Wagner set the poems of Mathilde Wesendonck to music, and these songs can be considered a prelude to Tristan and Isolde.
All this time, Wagner lives with Tristan, completing it on August 8, 1859, thereby completing his personal life drama with Mathilde Wesendonck. When this year he meets Mathilde for a brief moment in Zurich, between them, as Wagner recalls, there is a thick fog through which the voices of both are barely distinguishable. Tristan, staged for the first time in Munich only in 1865, will forever remain a symbol of great love and great suffering.
More than once the Wesendonks will be friendly and affectionate with Wagner. But nevertheless, even the patience of the loving Wesendonks was sometimes exhausted. In 1863, after extremely successful concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg and after unsuccessful concerts in Budapest, Prague, Karlsruhe, Levenberg and Breslau, Wagner plans a new trip to Russia, borrows a lot of money for this trip to decorate a luxurious mansion in Penzing near Vienna; when the trip to Russia is disrupted and Wagner’s creditors threaten to sue, the composer finds himself in an unprecedentedly difficult situation. And so, in response to his desperate request to the Wesendonks to shelter him, they suddenly refuse. But this episode did not prevent the Wesendonks from being unfailing admirers of Wagner until the end of their lives and feeling the deepest reverence for his work. They would subsequently be present at the opening of the Bayreuth Theater in 1876 and from then on became regular visitors to the Wagner festivals in Bayreuth.
Finally, for Wagner’s Zurich period, and to a large extent for the composer’s further work, Wagner’s acquaintance with the philosophy of Schopenhauer (starting from 1854) was of great importance. However, the topic of Wagner’s relationship to Schopenhauer’s philosophy is so important that in the future we will deal with it specifically.
Only after the Zurich period of Wagner's life and work had passed, namely only in Paris in 1860, did Wagner receive permission to live in Germany, and even then first outside of Saxony. The composer received a complete amnesty at the request of a number of high patrons of Wagner only in 1862, when he was allowed to live within Saxony, where he had not been for thirteen years. His Tannhäuser was a scandalous failure in Paris (1861), and his only consolation is the production of Tristan.
Amidst bitter thoughts, Wagner creates the text of the German folk opera “Die Meistersinger of Nuremberg” (1861 - 1862), full of energy.
gy and a healthy love of life, in which medieval burghers and artisans, masters of singing, led by the famous poet and shoemaker Hans Sachs, are glorified. The score for this opera was completed only in 1867, and the first production was carried out in Munich. Here Wagner's love for his native German antiquity, respect for the talent of the common people, pride in his skill and inexhaustible vitality were manifested.
Wagner's operas become famous in Russia, where the composer was invited as a conductor. 1863 One of the promoters of Wagner's music in Russia is the famous composer and music critic A. N. Serov, who became a friend of Wagner. In the coming years, Wagner's operas are staged in Russia: Lohengrin (1868), Tannhäuser (1874), Rienzi (1879).
Following his success, Wagner’s fate unexpectedly changed dramatically in Russia. In 1864, he was visited in Stuttgart by the secretary of the young Bavarian king Ludwig II, who had just ascended the throne, with an invitation to come to the capital of Bavaria, Munich, where Wagner was promised royal assistance and the fulfillment of his wildest hopes. . Ludwig II, an ardent supporter, admirer and correspondence student of Wagner, immediately after coming to power staged his operas, spending huge sums on the construction of a special theater, and on production, and on gifts, and on paying off the composer’s debts, which by that time amounted to not less than forty thousand guilders. In 1866, Wagner's wife dies in Dresden, and he marries Liszt's daughter Cosima, who had separated from her husband, Liszt's student and friend of Wagner, the famous conductor Hans von Bülow.
Hans von Bülow (1830 - 1894), a devoted student of Liszt, married at the request of his teacher illegitimate daughter him and Countess d'Agu Cosima, in order to give this illegitimate child a position in the world, Bülow was the deepest admirer of Wagner and, back in 1857, together with Cosima, visited him in Zurich. When Wagner's affairs began to improve in connection with his friendship with the Bavarian king, he stood up On the question of staging his operas, Wagner first of all remembered Bülow. He happily agreed to come to Wagner in Starnberg, near Munich, and sent his wife and two daughters there, and here a deep feeling arose that connected Wagner and Cosima Bülow. forced the king to invite the composer to leave Munich, and he left for Switzerland. Cosima, taking advantage of her husband’s departure, visited Wagner in Geneva. In May 1866, she completely moved to his estate Tribschen near Lucerne, which they found together, Bülow, Kozina’s legal husband. who turned out to be a victim of her reckless love for Wagner, experienced the most difficult drama: his enemies accused him of
connivance with his wife and the fact that he owes his influence in Munich to the intrigues of Cosima, influencing the king through Wagner. By this time, Cosima already had two daughters from Wagner - Isolde and Eva.
Liszt tried in vain to reconcile all the people close and dear to him, and he had no choice but to end all relations with Wagner and his daughter for several years. But Wagner, sitting in Tribschen, dictated his “Autobiography” (1865 - 1870) in three volumes to Cosima and acquired another new admirer there - a young professor at the University of Basel, Fr. Nietzsche. Here, in Tribschen, the Bavarian king Ludwig II secretly came to visit his friend. The court decision on the divorce of the Bülow couple on July 18, 1870 also came here. Cosima, active and unshakable, did not hesitate to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism for the sake of her new marriage. Her marriage to Wagner took place on August 25, 1870 in the church of Lucerne, the birthday of King Ludwig II. Soon, on September 4, little Siegfried was baptized (this was her third child from Wagner), and Wagner wrote a musical poem in honor of Cosima, “The Idyll of Siegfried,” which amazes with its deep and calmly solemn thoughtfulness.
The years of his stay in Tribschen (1866 - 1872) were important not only for Wagner's personal life. During this time, Die Meistersinger (1868), Das Rheingold (1869) and Die Walküre (1870) were staged in Munich. Wagner finished his book Beethoven (1870) and, most importantly, completed Siegfried, which had been interrupted eleven years earlier, while simultaneously working on Twilight of the Gods, the last part of the Ring of the Nibelung tetralogy, and pondering the design of the future Parsifal.
And in 1874, the entire tetralogy of “The Ring” (now consisting of “Das Rheingold”, “Walkyrie”, “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods”) was completed and it became possible to perform it for the first time in its entirety in 1876 in a special Wagner Theater, built in Bayreuth, near Munich, with the help of the same Ludwig II. The most famous musicians of that time were invited from all countries to this performance, including P. I. Tchaikovsky and Ts. Cui who officially arrived from Russia, transmitting their correspondence to newspapers in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Since Wagner's rapprochement with Ludwig II, many of his dreams have largely come true. He had a family, a beloved wife and children. He lived in Bayreuth in the Villa Wahnfried, given to him by the king, whose bronze bust symbolically towered in front of the facade of the house. Wagner had his own theater, and the entire musical world was amazed at the greatness of his grandiose tetralogy.
Wagner still had to see his “Parsifal” (1882) on stage, in which the theme of the Knights of the Eve sounded in its entirety; Graa-
la, outlined by him in Lohengrin. Parsifal, a hero with a pure heart and a childishly naive soul, defeats the forces of evil of the wizard Klingsor, becomes a healer of the physical wounds of the unfortunate and a healer of human souls, joining the number of knights devoted to the veneration of St. Grail (the Holy Grail meant the spear with which Christ was pierced, and the cup with his blood). The world of evil, deception and hypocrisy collapses under the influence of love and goodness, moral duty, which has become a truly realized ideal of the heart, which has overcome selfish passions.
Wagner, who began his creative path from the colorful fantasy of "The Flying Dutchman" and the romantic impulses of "Lohengrin", "Tristan" and "Tannhäuser", after the fatal passions of catastrophic heroism, "The Ring" again returns to the bosom of the medieval legend, but already transformed by the light of the higher, detached from earthly passions, spiritual and effectively life-giving love, in Parsifal. Before us is a magnificent conclusion to the dramatic journey of a great artist.
We are presented with a circle of ideological and artistic development that is unprecedented in its completeness and immanent for the composer. The myth of Parsifal plays a major role already in Lohengrin (early 40s), where Lohengrin himself is no more or less than the son of Parsifal. The same figure appeared more than once in Wagner’s mind in the second half of the 40s when studying the history of the Nibelungen myth. In the sketch of the drama "Jesus of Nazareth" (1848), Wagner's imagination undoubtedly depicts Parsifal as a premonition of what, at the end of his life, he will portray in the third and fourth acts of his "Parsifal".
The idea of the holy simpleton Parsifal also appears in Wagner in 1855, when the original plan for “Tristan” was drawn up, in the midst of the creation of “Tristan and Isolde” (namely in the third act) amid all the torment and despair of 1858, because even here , at this stage of deepest pessimism, Wagner's life-loving spirit still dreams of a positive resolution to his then tragic situation. He, however, rejected this idea for purely artistic reasons, so as not to violate the unity of the tragic picture of “Tristan and Isolde.” However, by this time Wagner had already thought through and sketched out a plan for a drama specifically dedicated to the enlightenment of the sinner Kundry and the glorification of the heavenly purity of Parsifal. There is information about Wagner's involvement with the myth of Parsifal also in 1865. And only after the production of “The Ring” did Wagner completely immerse himself in the musical mythology of the “Parsi-
falya." The text of the entire drama was completed and printed on December 25, 1877; instrumentation of the entire piece" was completed on January 13, 1882. Thus, the ideological, artistic, literary and musical mythology of Parsifal, together with the myth of St. The Grail was experienced by Wagner throughout his life, beginning with the period of the romantic Lohengrin. The drama was staged for the first time and only time during the composer's lifetime in Bayreuth on July 26, 1882.
And on February 13, 1883, Wagner died of a broken heart in the very Venice where he once deeply experienced separation from Mathilde Wesendonck. Wagner died at the piano, playing works by various authors and his own, at the moment when he played the part of the Daughters of the Rhine from Das Rheingold.
No biographical review of the work of any great artist can give an idea of the essence of this work. Moreover, this must be said about Wagner, whose work seems to be some kind of boundless sea, difficult to be formulated in one way or another. In order to hold at least one thought about this creativity to fit it within the confines of a short article, it is necessary to limit this vastness and choose one thing, the most significant.
As we said at the beginning of the article, the most significant thing for Wagner is that he, to a greater extent than all other representatives of 19th-century art, was gripped by a premonition of the catastrophe of the old world. We will now dwell on precisely this thought, discarding everything else from Wagner or subordinating everything to this very thought. But now it will no longer be possible to formulate this idea in a general and vague form, so this will require a very careful critical approach from us. However, this central feature of Wagner’s work is still too extensive and also requires limitation and clarification for a short article.
First of all, it would seem to us extremely important to focus on aesthetics Wagner, discarding many other, although in themselves very valuable, materials. The fact is that Wagner was not only a composer, but also a very prolific writer. Sixteen volumes of his literary works and seventeen volumes of letters indicate that Wagner, from a very young age and throughout his life, acted as a writer on issues of music and. not only music, but also all other arts. In the musical field, he was neither specifically a music theorist, nor specifically a music historian. True, a review of Wagner's literary materials testifies to his deep knowledge in the field of theory and history of music. There is not a single composer of the past whom Wagner did not analyze, expressing not only deep and apt
judgments, but often also one-sided, schematic and even superficial judgments that appeared in him in connection with his incredible passion for his own doctrine.
In Soviet literature there is a rather thorough and valuable study of Wagner’s musical and aesthetic views, based on the analysis of musical works Wagner himself, but precisely these extremely diverse, often confusing and contradictory, literary statements by Wagner about music. This research belongs to S. A. Marcus*. Those readers who would like to get an overview of Wagner's actual statements about music throughout the composer's life should turn to him.
As for us, given all this literary factography of Wagner, we would like to delve into Wagner’s aesthetics primarily on the basis of studying his purely artistic works of music and poetry. We will, of course, keep Wagner's literary factography in mind all the time. And there is no way to do without this. However, the aesthetics of Wagner's musical works themselves are so original and so far from his prosaic statements that it requires special attention and clarity.
But to demand complete clarity, theoretical or historical, from Wagner would perhaps be unfair. None of famous composers did not write as much about music as Wagner. But in his literary statements he is more of a publicist, propagandist or music critic, very carried away and little following the logic of his statements. In addition, it cost him nothing, both publicly and in private correspondence, to completely renounce his previous views, often even very recent ones.
An example of such inconsistency of Wagner can be his attitude towards Feuerbach, whose philosophy Wagner was fascinated by in the late forties. And this passion of his was fully consistent with the passionate ardor with which Wagner participated in the revolutionary events of 1849. Moreover, Wagner dedicated one of his works, “A Work of Art of the Future” (1850), to Feuerbach, believing that here he “tried with sincere zeal to retell the thoughts” of the philosopher. At the same time, Wagner himself mentioned in one of his letters that he had read, and only briefly, the third volume of Feuerbach. When the composer's works were subsequently published, the dedication to Feuerbach was completely removed. However, no matter how the paths of Wagner and Feuerbach diverged (and they really diverged irrevocably), Wagner forever retained for himself the inherent Feuerbach
* Markus S. A. Musical and aesthetic formation, - In the book; History of musical aesthetics in 2 vols., vol.2. M., 1968, p. 433 - 545. This study represents one of the chapters of the book.
reverence for the greatness of nature as the true basis of existence, dreams of its renewing effect on man, deep interest in myth, whose heroes are naturally strong in their integrity. If we bear in mind not the random or superficial statements of Wagner, but his deep attitude towards religion, then, perhaps, the influence of Feuerbach can explain Wagner’s rejection of those obligatory forms of religion that existed before him or under him. As for his true and intimately experienced religion, it was certainly associated with the feeling of the impending catastrophe of the world of the money bag and capital, the symbols of which were his most important and central works. However, more on this below.
Finally, things were difficult for Wagner with his strong political views, which is why most experts and lovers of Wagner’s work claim that at first he was a revolutionary and then became a reactionary. This is not only incorrect on its merits. The most important thing here is that this kind of critics of Wagner again do not take into account his unprecedentedly innovative worldview, which cannot be reduced to any specific political views.
Without going into a detailed analysis of all such views of Wagner (the reader can find this analysis in the above-mentioned study by S. A. Marcus), we will point out only one curiosity that appears when reading Wagner’s 1848 essay on the Republic and the King in comparison with his own work 1864 “On State and Religion.” In the first work, classes and money are abolished, not only the aristocracy is destroyed, but the very memory of all ancestors is erased, universal elective principles and absolute republicanism are preached. And at the head of such a republic, Wagner has a king, who is declared the first republican. Let us ask ourselves: is there really such a big difference here with the direct monarchism preached by Wagner in 1864? And the whole point is that Wagner everywhere understands the republic, the abolition of estates, the destruction of the money economy, and royal power not at all in the traditional sense of the bourgeois theories of that time.
So, for example, in order to judge Wagner’s theory of money by its deep essence and by its deep revolutionary acuteness, you need to read not only Wagner’s treatises of 1848 - 1850, but you need to read and listen to his tetralogy of the 1870s “The Ring of the Nibelung”. Here the question is posed not just socio-politically, but cosmologically; and gold is interpreted here not just economically, but primarily cosmologically. This is where the true revolutionary essence of Wagner’s work lies, in comparison with which his prosaic socio-political and economic statements are
The expressions of the early years are only naive attempts to express what cannot be expressed in prosaic words.
It is interesting to note one circumstance that clearly convinces us of the complete incomparability of Wagner’s prose statements with his most important musical and dramatic works. When in the 70s Wagner finished his tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung” and dreamed of creating his own musical theater, a subscription for donations announced throughout Germany gave the most insignificant results. And it is characteristic that the then Chancellor Bismarck did not respond in any way to Wagner’s petition to provide him with state funds to build the theater. It is clear that this would not have happened if Wagner's monarchism of 1864 actually had anything in common with the bourgeois monarchist theories of that time. Bismarck understood perfectly well that this had nothing to do with politics and that for the then rising Germany all these Nibelungs would have no meaning. And when the famous Bayreuth Theater near Munich was built at the expense of the Bavarian King Ludwig II, Bismarck did not even appear at its grand opening in 1876 with the first production of the complete tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung”. And instead of himself, Bismarck sent Emperor Wilhelm I, who was known for his weak-willed and weak-willed behavior and complete dependence on Bismarck. Of course, for Wagner’s reputation, Bismarck’s arrival in Bayreuth would have been incomparably more significant than the arrival of Wilhelm I. But the Reich Chancellor understood perfectly well that there was not a grain of that monarchical and pan-Germanist idea in favor of which Bismarck himself had worked his whole life. This is the best proof of how unfounded the accusations against Wagner of his alleged adherence to reactionary politics have always been.
There was the only crowned head who was deeply devoted to Wagner's work. This is the Bavarian king Ludwig II, a true enthusiast and ardent admirer of the composer's work. But Ludwig II’s devotion to Wagner, his most sincere love for him, was not of a state nature, but of a purely personal nature. The ministers of Ludwig II always objected to spending millions on the Wagner cause. Therefore, we can say that there was only one king who became friends with Wagner, and even then, regardless of any monarchical or religious statements of the composer.
This is why all of Wagner’s socio-political theories must be understood not literally; and that is why their countless contradictions and inconsistencies have nothing to do with Wagner’s musical creativity.
In religion, Wagner was the same as in the socio-political field. Many lovers of schemes subsumed Wagner's Tristan and Isolde under Buddhism, The Ring of the Nibelung under the religion of ancient Germany, and Parsifal under Catholicism. In fact, if we take into account the depth and diversity of Wagner’s artistic creativity, then, despite some tertiary coincidences, the true religion of Wagner himself has little in common with any historically known religion. He had his own religion, incomprehensible to the bourgeois world, and even this religion, from a certain point of view, can not even be called a religion.
Disputes about whether Wagner is a revolutionary or a reactionary and whether he moved from one political worldview to another will be completely futile until his philosophy and his aesthetics, which are given in his major musical dramas, are fully taken into account. Wagner was not a philosopher by profession, he was not a theologian, he was not an esthetician, he was not a politician, and he was not even a music theorist. He touched on all these issues only by chance, exclusively in connection with the vaguely fluid situation of life, very often only journalistically, in passing, almost always one-sidedly, and we would even say, often very naively and superficially, without any desire for even the slightest consistency or system . This is the complete opposite of his pure music world, which he not only depicted with extraordinary genius, but also with unprecedented originality and iron consistency over several decades of his creative life.
Thus, the boundless sea of Wagnerian materials, about the need for orientation in which we spoke above, in this work we intend to specify in the following four respects.
Firstly, we would like to formulate at least some of the most significant points namely aesthetics Wagner. At the same time, Wagner’s aesthetics in its true meaning can be gleaned not so much from his literary critical statements as from his artistic creativity, from his well-known, but still very difficult to understand, musical dramas.
Secondly, no matter how you understand Wagner’s aesthetics, it was never abstract or only theoretical for him. His aesthetics are permeated with a sense of the catastrophe that Europe was experiencing at that time. The revolution, the preparation of which European society spent several centuries, collapsed, leaving behind no sufficiently deep traces and sufficiently solid hopes for the future. Wagner deeply experienced this collapse of revolutions,
and even more than that, he generalized the revolution to cosmic proportions, found revolutions of the same kind throughout the cosmos and depicted them with great delight.
Thirdly, Wagner himself was always very active and passionate nature. In no case could he limit himself to contemplating the collapse of the revolution and always looked for a way out of it. But in those days the way out of the collapse of the petty-bourgeois revolution was twofold. On the one hand, Europe began to cherish dreams of ideal socialism, which, in the sense of its scientific validity, would surpass all previous ideas about socialism. But Wagner was not a socialist in the sense of nineteenth-century theory. On the other hand, Europe was quickly moving towards imperialism and towards the transformation of petty-bourgeois dreams into a grandiose bourgeois-capitalist structure and the reorganization of all life of that time. But Wagner was not inclined towards imperialism. And finding out what he was in this sense requires careful analysis.
Fourthly, the central area of Wagner’s work turned out to be the image intimate fate a European individual who had lost his former revolutionary ideals and at first was unable to concretely imagine the ideal future for which all revolutions were made, as well as the direction in which the historical process developed. The soul of this individual, endowed with an unusually passionate thirst for life, but who knew the futility of any external structure of life, in conditions of complete uncertainty of the future of humanity - this is what attracted Wagner in an aesthetic sense, and this is what Wagner lived with during the heyday of his work.
At first he wrote romantic music, the highest achievements of which were Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. But after the collapse of the revolution, he ceased to be a romantic, or became a romantic in a completely different sense of the word. On the other hand, his positive achievements, which he reached in his “Die Meistersinger of Nuremberg” or in “Parsifal,” are characteristic not so much of the heyday of his work as of his last period. Therefore, his “Tristan and Isolde” and “The Ring of the Nibelungen,” at least within the framework of our brief presentation, were and remain the best indicator of Wagner’s true aesthetics, necessarily based not on his revolutionary or extra-revolutionary quests, but on his. for now only a prophecy of the future, for him still unclear, but certainly universal and necessarily passionately awaited revolution. This aesthetics of a constrained and desperate individual, crucified between two great eras, was in Wagner primarily a critique of the European individual who had long since discredited himself and passionate attempts to escape
beyond any subject-object dualism. We would like to try to at least remotely formulate this bottomlessly tragic aesthetics in our presentation.
This is what we limit ourselves to in this work. This determines the selection of those Wagnerian materials that we would like to use here. In particular, we will have to touch upon such materials from Wagner’s biography that are usually not taken into account at all when presenting his aesthetics. And they are precisely what are deeply indicative of that tragically doomed individual, the greatest depicter of whose depths was Wagner in “Tristan and Isolde” and in “The Ring of the Nibelung”. At the same time, there is nothing to say that Wagner’s theoretical statements, one way or another, must be taken into account in the most serious way. We fully take them into account, but we build Wagner’s aesthetics primarily on the analysis of his two musical works mentioned above.
If we stop at first literary-critical period of creativity (1833 - 1838), his most youthful judgments about music, then already in the first article written by Wagner at the age of twenty-one, namely “German Opera” (1834), a thesis central to all of Wagner’s work is presented and for its aesthetics. In this article he says that only one who will write “not in Italian, not in French, and also not in German” will become a master of opera. Already here the point of view of aesthetic universalism is expressed, with which Wagner never parted, no matter what one-sidedness he fell into due to the circumstances of the time.
As for the second period of Wagner’s literary-critical creativity, which others call Parisian(1839 - 1842), then here we would note the treatise “Pilgrimage to Beethoven” (1840), where Wagner declares Beethoven with his Ninth Symphony to be the predecessor of his musical drama and already outlines what will remain forever in his own musical drama.
In 1842, Wagner was invited as bandmaster to the court of the Saxon king in Dresden. From this Dresden period of Wagner's creativity (1842 - 1849), we would point, first of all, to his creation of four operas of high artistic merit - “Rienzi” (1842), “The Flying Dutchman” (1843), “Tannhäuser” (1845), “Lohengrin” ( 1845 - 1848). All these operas, in their style and worldview, differ little from the traditional romantic music of that time. However, one cannot help but notice the predilection for mythological and heroic themes that sharply distinguished Wagner’s works from all other
some everyday music for amusement and superficial fun. And this mythological heroism carried with it far-reaching life generalizations, which would triumph even more in him in the post-romantic period.
In 1848 - 1849, during the short period of the Dresden uprising, Wagner was passionate about revolution, proposed all sorts of incredible and hasty reforms, and most importantly, expressed his revolutionary enthusiasm and his extremely naive political and economic views. These articles are: “How do republican aspirations relate to the kingdom?” (May 1848); "Germany and Her Princes" (October 1848); "Man and Existing Society" (February 1849), "Revolution" (April 1849). This includes the poems “Greetings to the Crowns from Saxony” (May 1848) and “Need,” as well as a letter to the intendant of the royal theater von Lüttichau. We will pay attention to this letter, written in the middle of 1848, between the first two very radical treatises indicated to us now, which certainly defend the revolution.
In the letter, Wagner appears as a defender of the wavering Saxon monarchy: he assures the intendant of the royal theater of his loyalty to the king, fears the revolutionary actions of the masses, warns against revolution, regrets his participation in it and convinces that he will no longer engage in such matters.
After getting acquainted with similar materials from the biography of Wagner during the revolutionary period, the conclusion naturally follows about the complete frivolity of Wagner’s judgments of that time. However, let's talk about this in a little more detail.
Researchers usually highlight Wagner's participation in the 1848 revolution. This is done, however, for the most part very uncritically. Firstly, it was a purely bourgeois revolution, and Wagner always felt much superior to the traditional bourgeois culture of that time. Secondly, this participation was quite frivolous. Wagner himself writes that at that time he was worried about street crowds and he rushed into them, without knowing why or why. Of course, he had no thought-out ideology; only his expansive and easily excitable nature pushed him to participate in the revolution, as well as to quickly move away from it. Yet we must bear in mind that Wagner's participation in the Dresden uprising of 1849 was undoubtedly a reality; this can be judged from the case that has come down to us in the Dresden archives entitled “Acts against the former Kapellmeister Richard Wagner in connection with his participation in the local uprising of 1849”*.
* These acts are translated into Russian in the book: Gruber R. Richard Wagner. 1883 - 1933. M.. 1934, p. 125 - 126.
These Wagnerian sentiments were very short-lived (1848 - 1849). Upon arrival in Switzerland, he began working on materials for his future tetralogy, The Ring of the Nibelung, as well as on Tristan and Isolde, a musical drama completed in 1859. Both the unfinished “Nibelungen” and the drama “Tristan and Isolde” have nothing in common with any bourgeois revolution. Here Wagner preached a revolution that at that time hardly any of the artists in Europe could even dream of.
Finally, if you like, even in the midst of his revolutionary dreams, Wagner uses such expressions and constructs such images that very tangibly testify to the feeling of grandeur that always lived in the depths of Wagner’s consciousness, reaching to cosmic generalizations. True, during this period of Wagner’s revolutionary experiences, such paintings can be interpreted by us in the form of some kind of poetic metaphors, and nothing more. But if we seriously take into account the entire subsequent development of Wagner, his central musical dramas, then it would hardly be correct to find here only one pointless poetic invention. These metaphors that we will now cite, one might say, are almost no longer metaphors, but a real mythology, in which everything metaphorical is no longer thought of simply conventionally, but as the true substance of life and being.
In the article “Revolution” mentioned above, Wagner compares the revolution with some kind of supreme goddess and draws her image like this: “... she approaches on the wings of storms, with her forehead raised high, illuminated by lightning, punishing and cold eyes, and yet what a heat of purest love , what a fullness of happiness shines in them for the one who dares to look into those dark eyes with a bold gaze! Therefore, she approaches in the noise of a storm, the eternally rejuvenating mother of humanity, destroying and inspiring, she passes through the earth... the ruins of what was built in vain madness for thousands of years appear... However, behind her, a hitherto unprecedented paradise opens to us, illuminated by the gentle rays of the sun happiness, and where, destroying, her foot touched, fragrant flowers bloom, and where just recently the air shook with the noise of battle, we hear the jubilant voices of liberated humanity! *
An incredible mixture of individualism, cosmism and mythology is heard in this treatise in the words of the Revolution itself, addressed to oppressed humanity: “I am going to completely destroy the order of things in which you live, for it arose from sin, its flower is poverty, its fruit is - crime... I want to destroy the dominance of one over the other... destroy the power of the strong, the law-
on and property... Let one’s own will be the master of man, one’s own desire the only law, one’s own strength only his property... I want to destroy the existing order of things, dividing a single humanity into peoples hostile to each other, powerful and weak, those with rights and those without rights , rich and poor, for he makes only unfortunates out of everyone...”*.
The grandeur of such “revolutionary” images of Wagner is not much different from the grandeur of the main concept of the Ring of the Nibelung. And if we talk about Wagner’s revolutionary spirit, then throughout his entire life he was nothing but a revolutionary, although each time in different senses of the word.
After familiarizing yourself with all these materials about Wagner’s revolutionary passions of 1848 - 1849, the reader has the full opportunity to answer the question himself: what was Wagner’s revolutionary spirit, what bourgeois and non-bourgeois features are in it, where is the political-economic teaching in it, and where is the complete socio-political and economic frivolity, where, finally, are the beginnings of that cosmic mythology, of which his philosophical and aesthetic worldview will subsequently consist.
Here we would like to emphasize only one circumstance that cannot be ignored under any approach to Wagner’s life and work. This circumstance lies in the fact that, despite his theoretical formulas, Wagner always remained faithful to some absolute ideal, to which he sacrificed both everything that was happening around him and all his very changeable psychological moods. In his revolutionary writings, Wagner seems to be inclined towards complete atheism and materialism, and yet his faith in an ideal future, even if only an earthly one, does not decrease at all because of this, but rather even increases. His attitude towards Christianity before 1848 was positive, in the period 1848 - 1854 it was negative. Nevertheless, in his 1848 sketch “Jesus of Nazareth” he still finds something real and close to him in this image, namely self-giving in view of the sinful state of mankind. But the idea of self-denial is most clearly expressed in Wagner in The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin, that is, in the operas of the 40s.
In addition, we will find the same idea of \u200b\u200bself-denial in “The Ring of the Nibelung” and in “Tristan and Isolde”, that is, in musical dramas of the 50s. The same idea dominates him right up to Parsifal, which was created two or three years before his death. When, in the final version of the poetic text of “The Nibelungen” (1852), Bringilde throws herself into Siegfried’s fire, and the fatal ring returns
*Cit. by: Marcus S. A. Decree. cit., p. 473 - 474.
goes into the depths of the Rhine, then here, too, not only the idea of self-denial appears most clearly, but also that idea of the redemption of the world, which is the essence of Christianity. As for the concept of St. The Grail in Parsifal, here Wagner expresses not only his completely pious attitude towards the Christian shrine, but this attitude is completely reverent, and reverent in connection with the same assessment of the Gospel sacred history. However, even in the treatise “Nibelungen” (and this was all in the same revolutionary year of 1848) the legend of St. The Grail is also interpreted in a completely pious and even philosophical-historical spirit. In the same way, in his works of 1848 - 1854, Wagner preaches the primacy of nature as an omnipotent principle and criticizes theistic philosophy. But this indifferent, or, better to say, impersonal, principle triumphs in him both in “Nibelungen” and in “Tristan”, that is, in dramas opposed to all materialism and atheism. Wagner had not yet parted with the doctrine of necessity, which with him took on a materialistic connotation during the period of the revolution, but became with him the doctrine of fate, again in these same two dramas.
Therefore, anyone who, among all the endless and stormy aspirations of Wagner, does not sense in him that deepest unity of his artistic quests, which, as we will see below, always came down to a passionate criticism of subject-objective dualism, that is, to a criticism of the very basis of the new European culture, and to a sense of impending world catastrophe.
So, after the suppression of the uprising in Dresden in 1849, Wagner had to emigrate from Germany to save his life. He settled in Zurich, where he passed the Swiss, or, more precisely, Zurich period of his life and work (1849 - 1859).
In his 1850 treatise, “The Work of Art of the Future,” Wagner already had a number of deep ideas that would soon form the basis of all his musical work.
Here we would pay attention, first of all, to a discussion about the essence of art, which, according to Wagner, can completely reflect, rework and synthesize all life as a whole. There is necessity in life and in nature, but it is given here indiscriminately and unconsciously. Art reveals this need in complete consistency and system, clearly and understandably. A work of art should be an image of universal life. Individual heroes depicted in art, with their exploits and their logically justified death, reflect the expediency of the entire world order and merge with it. Here Wagner does not use the term
"myth". However, it is clear that the universal man he portrays already reveals in himself the entire essence of nature and the world and thus, from our point of view, and subsequently from the point of view of Wagner himself, is nothing more than a mythological hero.
One of the central ideas of this treatise is a passionate preaching of the unity of all arts and their final and ultimate synthesis. And if it is not immediately clear how this happens, then Wagner makes it quite understandable with the help of his theory of drama. It is in drama, where a stage and actors are assumed, that we find the fusion of poetry, sculpture, painting and architecture. In addition, a real drama must necessarily be musical, because only music is capable of depicting human experiences in all their intimate depth, and only an orchestra can give a single and comprehensive picture of everything that is happening dramatically in life and in the world. And all of Wagner’s thoughts of this kind will henceforth remain with him forever, until the end of his work. We would say that, from the point of view of subsequent Wagner, the musical drama with its actors, singers and orchestra is nothing more than a symbol of the whole space life with all its inherent organic and structural necessity.
Finally, from the numerous ideas of the treatise, one can also point out the role people which for Wagner is fundamental to the perfect art of the future. "But who will artist of the future? Poet? Actor? Musician? Sculptor? Let's put it bluntly: people. The very people to whom we owe the only true work of art that still lives in our memories and is so distortedly reproduced by us is the people to whom we owe art itself.”
It is necessary, however, to note that if in this treatise of 1850 there were remnants of Wagner’s revolutionary views, then in a letter to Berlioz in 1860 he already dissociated himself from the revolution. In this regard, we must say that Wagner dissociates himself not from any revolution in general, but from the bourgeois revolution. He himself is full of the deepest revolutionary ideas, since his musical drama in this treatise goes far beyond what the bravest musicians of the bourgeois world could dream of. In addition, priority absolute art and the concept of the people-artist can hardly be considered a revolutionary idea in the sense of the petty-bourgeois uprising in Dresden in 1849. Wagner was a profound revolutionary, but not in the sense of the petty-bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century. His revolution was a revolution that was supposed to sweep away from the face of the earth all the socio-political contradictions of that time and was thought of as the deepest transformation of the human world in general.
In his treatise of the same 1850, “Opera and Drama,” Wagner most unfairly attacks the entire previous history of opera, ignoring all the innovations of Gluck and Mozart, and at the same time all previous symphonic music, not excluding Beethoven and Berlioz. Beethoven, except for his Ninth Symphony, is portrayed in Wagner in such tones that seem somehow pathological, and in Berlioz all his luxurious romantic techniques are monstrously belittled or outright ignored. According to Wagner, all this happens only because before him, before Wagner, no one knew what musical drama was, and therefore no one could create it.
As for Wagner’s positive statements in this treatise, here for the first time, and moreover in the clearest form, it is said about mythology. According to Wagner, reason and feeling are synthesized in fantasy, and fantasy leads the artist to a miracle; and this miracle in drama is nothing other than its mythology. Of course, this deepest, purely Wagnerian thought is also not expressed here very clearly in the philosophical and aesthetic sense of the word. Wagner should not have spoken about reason, but rather about philosophical ideas, about broad and deep thinking, and instead of feeling it would have been more clear to speak about the material-sensory or the spatio-temporal realization or embodiment of thought. The term “miracle” is also not very clear. But the concept of musical-mythological drama that arises from this is expressed quite clearly in Wagner, especially if we bear in mind the later musical dramas that were central to his work.
The third part of the treatise is especially interesting. Here Wagner has many poetic expressions and many all kinds of logical ambiguities. But if we translate all this teaching of Wagner into a more understandable language of logic, then we can say this.
Wagner understands all artistic creativity and the object it creates as a realm of love. The masculine principle for Wagner is here poetic fiction, or poetic image. This image cannot be the only decisive one in art, because it is too abstract and too dismembered, too unassembled into a single and indivisible whole. This poetic image is opposed by the endless and in no way dissected element of absolute music, which, obviously, also cannot become the basis of true art. But this feminine musical principle is intended to embody the poetic
imagery and thereby deprive it of abstraction, fragmentation and transform it into creative development. At first, this brainchild is a melody. It is no longer just poetry, but is still within the horizons of the poet. A more significant embodiment of the musical image occurs when the infinite musical depth also begins to embody poetic imagery. But then, instead of melody, we get harmony, not harmony at all, but one that represents a vertical discharge of musical depth, enlightened and illuminated by the images of poetry. Thus, harmony is already a kind of relationship between melodic elements, and this relationship, poetically expressed, is musical drama. Therefore, musical drama is not at all only poetry or only the art of words, just as it is not simply musical sound as such, not fertilized by word and thought, but capable only of amusing and amusing. So, musical drama is the complete indivisibility of poetry and music, it is their true brainchild, which is created as a result of an act of their mutual love and which is already something new, not reducible to either poetry or music.
This presentation of Wagner's theory does not pretend to be its literal reproduction, which is impossible due to the vagueness of the expressions made in this treatise. But this is our analysis of the theory of musical drama, which, it seems to us, reproduces in a clear and dissected form what is not entirely clear and not completely dissected in Wagner himself. It is clear that even nine years before Wagner completed his first musical drama in the proper sense of the word, that is, before Tristan and Isolde, completed, as we know, in 1859, here, in the treatise of 1850, it was already almost completely formulated , what can be called Wagner's true aesthetics, namely his theory of musical drama. Since then, Wagner’s aesthetics will forever remain aesthetics musical and dramatic.
In the 1851 treatise entitled "Address to My Friends" we find a fascinating picture of Wagner's spiritual development in previous years and an explanation of some aspects of his work that were met with misunderstanding and outright hostility. From this work it is clear, first of all, that Wagner was interested in the revolution not just in the political revolution and not just in the legal and formal aspects, but only in pure humanity and artistic reforms. And when he soon became convinced that the bourgeois revolution did not pursue the goals of high and pure humanity, he immediately moved away from the revolution. “The lies and hypocrisy of the political parties filled me with such disgust that I again returned to complete loneliness.”
However, no loneliness can be an end in itself or the last word for an artist. Wagner, as he himself says, was looking for “pure humanity,” but could not find it in the crude, fragmented and contradictory facts of contemporary hypocrisy and constantly fluctuating legal relations. Wagner does not use the word “generalization” here. But when he starts talking about myth, it's done
it is clear that nothing more than generalized humanity, not the petty and always changeable, always unreliable modern humanity, but it was the generalized humanity that led him to the myth. He first turns specifically to antiquity and there encounters this generalized humanity of myth in Attic tragedy. But the same search for generalized humanity, as Wagner says, led him to his native German antiquity, and above all to the popular myth of Siegfried. “I threw it off (that is, from the myth of Siegfried. - A.L.) one garment after another, hideously thrown on by later poetry, in order to finally see him in all his chaste beauty. And what I saw was not a traditional historical figure in which the drapery interests us more than its actual forms - it was, in all its nakedness, a real living person, in whom I discerned an unconstrained, free excitement of the blood, every reflex of strong muscles : it was true man at all".
In the light of the search for this pure humanity, Wagner in this treatise draws in great detail and interestingly the history of the origin of his previous operas, which is important for Wagner’s biography, but secondary for characterizing his theoretical aesthetics.
Wagner’s understanding of his pamphlet “Art and Revolution” is interesting in the light of precisely these quests. It turns out that even before 1848 he had already understood the futility of contemporary art and the insignificance of both the public who perceives art and the authorities who encourage this art. During this period, he already felt lonely, and the Dresden uprising of 1849 only strengthened him in the awareness of the complete necessity of spiritual loneliness. Also, two other treatises of 1850 are characterized by Wagner as the result of his deepest desire to reject all existing forms of art, and above all opera, and sketch out thoughts about their complete overcoming. Wagner says directly here: “I no longer write any “operas,” and he intends to portray his enthusiastically experienced myth of Siegfried and Bringhild not operatically, but, as he now says, exclusively in drama, that is, in musical drama.
Wagner ends the entire treatise with a plan for such a huge musical drama, designed for three evenings, and even with a prologue, which will also require a whole evening. And although, until the last lines of the treatise, Wagner does not tire of scolding the theatrical art of his time and the impossibility of achieving an understanding of his work among the general public, he still asks his friends to help him in this grandiose task.
The rest of Wagner’s literary works in the 50s, that is, in the Zurich period of his work, are of little importance.
niya, since all these years Wagner enthusiastically indulged in his own literary and musical creativity, creating first “The Nibelungs” and then “Tristan and Isolde”. During these years, Wagner, one might say, almost abandoned all purely literary activity, and what’s more, in his letters he himself considers all his literary treatises to be a complete mistake and says that they are now simply “disgusting” for him. Not having time to arrive in Switzerland, he immediately stops his literary activity, largely connected with the revolution, in which he now no longer believes, and draws up a plan for his grandiose musical and dramatic work “The Ring of the Nibelung” *.
Now we can begin to ask what aesthetic worldview underlies the tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung” and how its aesthetics could be formulated here. Much, as we know, was formulated by Wagner himself in his literary works. This, however, is absolutely not enough, and Wagner himself abandoned these literary works of his. In his refusal, Wagner undoubtedly gets too carried away and exaggerates the unsuitability of these treatises for understanding his music. But undoubtedly, what he gave in his tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung” is in many respects difficult to even compare with his musical theory and journalism. Which of these treatises passed on to The Ring of the Nibelung as an indisputable aesthetic basis?
We have already seen that Wagner was always very enthusiastic about his call for musical universalism. Already in his first article in 1834, as we remember, Wagner was not interested in any separate and one-sided national music. Already here he is interested in what can be called universal the nature of the music. This, of course, does not prevent one from using one or another national story. But they should be interpreted, according to Wagner, in the spirit of universal human problems. Further, in “The Ring of the Nibelung”, of course, another principle is implemented, which Wagner previously contrasted with the frivolous, public and, as we would now say, petty-bourgeois content of the then traditional opera. The plot of a genuine work of art should be interpreted in such a generalized form that we are not talking about the trifles of everyday life, but about the ultimate generalization of all human life.
* We talk more about the history of the creation of the “Ring” in our work: Losev A.F. The problem of Richard Wagner in the past and present (In connection with the analysis of his tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung”). - In the book: Issues of aesthetics Vol. 8. M., 1968, p. 144 - 153.
life taken as a whole. According to Wagner, this meant that a genuine work of art is always a work mythological*. This applies entirely to The Ring of the Nibelung.
Further, in this grandiose work, Wagner’s dreams of a fusion of arts, and above all, of the fusion of poetry with music, were fully realized. In The Ring this theory was embodied through the use of leitmotifs, when every idea and every poetic image is immediately specifically organized with the help of a musical motif. Thus, we find in the “Ring” the motif of Wotan’s spear, given in the form of a long series of powerfully descending sounds, as if overthrowing all resistance until it is completely destroyed. So, in “The Ring” we have the motif of a sword, that heroic sword that Siegfried uses when performing his superhuman feats; this leitmotif is a powerful and invincible soaring upward. It was put into the mouth of Wotan himself, at the end of “The Valkyrie”, when the sleepy Bringhilde remains on a mountain, surrounded by fire and accessible only to Siegfried, who will break through this fire with a sword and wake Bringhilde with a kiss.
The abundance of leitmotifs in the “Ring” often irritated Wagner’s opponents, who criticized his musical works for being too saturated with philosophy and that the “Ring of the Nibelung” was not music at all, but only philosophy. And we, Wagner’s opponents said (and still say now), are not philosophers at all, but musicians; Therefore, we are not obliged to understand all this philosophical conglomeration of leitmotifs in Wagner. To this it must be said that Wagner’s leitmotifs are indeed not only music; and whoever approaches them exclusively as music deprives himself of the opportunity to understand such a work as The Ring of the Nibelung. To understand the aesthetics of “The Ring of the Nibelung”, its leitmotifs (and there are more than ninety of them), it is indeed necessary to understand all this not only musically, but also philosophically, or rather, not musically or philosophically, but synthetically, as Wagner demanded . In addition, Wagner’s opponents forget that leitmotifs are found in many composers besides Wagner, and in those whose worldview has nothing in common with Wagner’s.
Thus, in all the operas of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, although these composers were opponents of Wagner, the method of leitmotifs is constantly used; and they came to this method, of course, independently of Wagner. Rimsky-Korsakov's Snow Maiden has its own very definite orchestral leitmotif, also Berendey, also
* On the obligatory generalization in myth of natural and social phenomena, see the articles: Losev A, F. Mythology. - “Philosophical Encyclopedia”, vol. 3. M., 1964, p. 457; His own. Mythology. - TSB, vol. 16, p. 340.
Kupava, Mizgir, etc. The difference between Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner is only ideological, but not structurally musical. Therefore, it is clear that Wagner’s opponents are completely wrong when it comes to criticizing his leitmotifs.
Finally, from Wagner’s previous treatises, to analyze the aesthetics of “The Ring of the Nibelung”, it is undoubtedly necessary to draw on his theory musical drama. If the composer's practice of The Ring differs in any way from Wagner's previous theory of musical drama, it is only in the even more intensive implementation of his principles of musical drama, even more rich in both its content and its structure.
Thus, Wagner’s previous treatises very expressively depict the aesthetics of the “Ring of the Nibelung” as a universal musical and mythological drama with the consistent and strictly methodical use of a certain system of leitmotifs, conceived as the deepest fusion of poetic and musical imagery with its philosophical idea,
However, this is still not enough to understand the aesthetics of The Ring of the Nibelung; and now we will see that Wagner had some reasons to abandon his previous musical-dramatic theories. The latter now turned out to be too abstract for him and, therefore, of little significance. New views appeared in Wagner, firstly, as a result of studying the ancient German epic, which he now interpreted not optimistically, but pessimistically, and, secondly, in connection with the aesthetics of Schopenhauer, which Wagner encountered in 1854 and did not part with throughout his life or at least until 1870, when in his book about Beethoven he still very intensively uses Schopenhauer's aesthetics.
Wagner met Schopenhauer in the summer of 1854. By this time, as we know, the text of the entire “Ring” was already ready and the musical arrangement of this text had begun. Based on this alone, we need to talk not so much about Schopenhauer’s influence on Wagner, but rather about Wagner’s independent Schopenhauerism even before any acquaintance with Schopenhauer himself. True, Wagner read and re-read Schopenhauer’s main work “The World as Will and Representation” many times and was incredibly delighted with it. This must be said because Wagner, generally speaking, was not a particularly zealous reader and admirer of philosophers. For example, the borrowings he made from Feuerbach during the revolution are usually mercilessly exaggerated by Wagner scholars. It has been proven that Wagner read only “Thoughts on Death and Immortality” from Feuerbach, and even then superficially. And if anything was important from philosophical theories for Wagner during the period of the revolution, it was most likely not Feuerbach himself, but the general neo-Hegelian trend (Ruge, Strauss, Proudhon, Lameneg Weit-
ling). But Wagner did not read any neo-Hegelians at all; Likewise, Bakunin’s muddy anarchist preaching, the great influence of which researchers also insist on Wagner, in our opinion, passed almost without a trace for Wagner.
Wagner's attitude towards Schopenhauer is completely different. And the depth of this relationship is revealed in the fact that Wagner does not at all coincide with this philosopher in all details, but is also inclined to criticize him. And even without this Wagnerian criticism, it is not so difficult to notice many different differences between Wagnerian aesthetics and the aesthetics of Schopenhauer. During these years, we have no direct printed statements from Wagner about Schopenhauer. But his enthusiastic attitude towards this philosopher is evident from letters of that time to Liszt and Reckel.
So, after becoming familiar with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Wagner had nothing to change in his “Ring of the Nibelung”, which ended with the depiction of the death of all owners of the Rhine gold in the form of Alberich’s ring and the death of all the gods along with their Valhalla, since the gods also switched to illegal and unjust rule peace with gold. Nevertheless, in the text of “The Ring of the Nibelung”, where Bringhilde returns the fatal ring to the daughters of the Rhine before self-immolation, Wagner still found it necessary to change the optimistic version of Bringhilde’s words to a pessimistic one. Before reading Schopenhauer, Wagner put the following words into Bringhilde’s mouth;
“The Tribe of the Gods is gone like a breath; the world that I will leave will henceforth be without a ruler; I give the treasure of my knowledge to the world. Neither wealth, nor gold, nor the greatness of the gods, nor the house, nor the court, nor the splendor of the supreme dignity, nor the false bonds of miserable contracts, nor the strict law of hypocritical morality - nothing will make us happy; both in sorrow and in joy, only love will do this.”* What kind of love this is - Bringilda does not say, and the entire text of “The Ring” also does not say anything on this topic in a positive sense. Only the negative side is clear: a new life will be built without the pursuit of gold.
But in 1854, Wagner began to become interested in Schopenhauer. And Wagner crosses out Bringilda’s optimistic words with hope for love in the future, replacing them with the following tirade: “I will no longer lead heroes to the palace of Valhalla, and do you know where I am going? I leave this world of desires; I am leaving this world of illusions forever; I close the doors of eternity behind me. To that blissful world where desire and illusion cease, to that goal where universal development is directed, the Seer rushes there today, freed from the need to be born again. Do you know how I could bring about a blessed end to all that is eternal? Deep
*Cit. by: Lichtenberger A, Richard Wagner, as a poet and thinker. Per. S. M. Solovyova, M., 1905, p. 194.
the sufferings of love opened my eyes in sorrow: I saw the end of the world.”* These words of Bryngilde are nothing more than an adaptation of Schopenhauer’s thoughts, according to which the world is based on an unconscious and evil will; and in order to get rid of it, you need to renounce it and plunge into nothingness.
But there is another interesting biographical and creative detail here. Precisely: when Wagner, when creating his score, reached the finale of “The Death of the Gods,” he excluded these words of Bringilda. And it's not hard to say why. This happened with Wagner, undoubtedly, because he was always in the power of the musical myth he created, but not in the power of any theories, even Schopenhauer’s. For pure and naked theory, Wagner simply could not find the appropriate musical techniques. And the general myth of the Nibelungs, as it was developed throughout the tetralogy, was clear in itself, without this philosophical and theoretical conclusion of Bringilde.
Regarding the coincidence of the views of Wagner and Schopenhauer, not mechanical, but, as we said, creative, it would perhaps be interesting to cite Schopenhauer’s own opinion about opera. It largely coincides with Wagner's opinion. Schopenhauer wrote: “Grand opera is, in essence, not the product of a true understanding of art; it is rather caused by a purely barbaric tendency to intensify aesthetic pleasure by various means, by the simultaneity of completely heterogeneous impressions and by increasing the effect due to an increase in the number characters and strength - whereas, on the contrary, music, as the most powerful of all arts, alone can fill a soul open to it. In order to perceive and enjoy her most perfect works, an undivided and concentrated mood is necessary - only then can you completely surrender to her, immerse yourself in her, fully understand her so sincere and heartfelt language. Complex operatic music does not allow this. Here the attention is divided, since it affects the vision, dazzling with the brilliance of the scenery, fantastic paintings and bright light and color impressions, in addition, the attention is also entertained by the plot of the play. Strictly speaking, opera could be called a non-musical invention, made to please non-musical people, for whom music must be smuggled in." **
To understand Wagner’s aesthetics, how it was realized in The Ring of the Nibelung, it is necessary to understand what the aesthetics of Schopenhauer himself is, in what respects Wagner’s aesthetics coincides with it and in what respects it diverges. To put it briefly, bypassing all sorts of
* Quoted from: Lichtenberger A. Decree. cit., p. 353.
**Ibid. s. 329-330.
details and thus at the risk of falling into some kind of banality, it is necessary to say the following.
Schopenhauer proceeds from the inexorable and incorrigible chaos of life and therefore believes that all existence is guided by the world's unconscious will, insurmountable and, moreover, evil. However, there is also an objectification of this will. First Such objectification is the world of ideas, which are already understandable to reason principles and laws of everything that exists. In Schopenhauer this is a completely Platonic world of ideas, to which connoisseurs and lovers of Schopenhauer, unfortunately, pay much less attention, since in Schopenhauer himself the unconscious will underlying the world is certainly depicted more vividly than this world of ideas, which is the realm of the pure intelligence. Other The objectification of the world will is the world of matter and all its constituent material things. It is also full of chaos and nonsense, endless suffering and disasters; and in it the most that can be achieved is only boredom. Suicide is not a way out of this world of unconscious and evil will, but, on the contrary, only an even greater self-affirmation of this will. The true exit beyond the limits of the world will is a complete renunciation of it, the complete absence of any action and immersion only in one intellect, contemplating this will, but not participating in it, that is, what Schopenhauer calls presentation. Hence the title of his main work, “The World as Will and Representation.” The world's will itself, due to its meaninglessness and ugliness, is not something beautiful and therefore cannot be an object of art. But the self-absorbed intellect, be it the world intellect or the human one, contemplates this world will with complete independence from it. And then it is music, which, from the point of view of the contemplating intellect, thereby appears to be the basis of the world, nature, society and the individual. Thus, music, like the entire world will, is pure irrationality. But when this world will is contemplated by the intellect, detached from the world will itself, it experiences aesthetic pleasure. In the aesthetic pleasure received from music, a person thus finds the only consolation and salvation in life.
Bearing in mind the similar content of Schopenhauer's aesthetics, it is not difficult to give in a more precise form the aesthetics of Wagner in The Ring of the Nibelung.
What is in common with Schopenhauer's aesthetics, of course, is the feeling of the world basis as something dysfunctional and even meaningless. What is also common here is the need to renounce this eternal and meaningless volitional process and therefore the refusal and complete renunciation of this world will and life. The common thing is,
finally, the desire to find the final exit through immersion in pure intellect and in the detached aesthetic pleasure thus obtained in music. However, many connoisseurs and lovers of Wagner’s music, and above all Wagner himself, could not reduce the aesthetics of “The Ring,” and later also “Tristan,” only to the aesthetics of Schopenhauer.
Already from those mentioned by us different facts Wagner's biography shows that Wagner was a very active and passionate person, that his musical delights and the most complex musical creativity, which always required him to compose huge and complex scores, never interfered with his active life, did not prevent him from constantly moving from place to place and prevented the hassle of staging his musical dramas, did not hinder him from looking for all kinds of subsidies and immediately using them for business. Schopenhauer's aesthetics, which were very close to him, were still appreciated by him in his heart as a philosophy of passivism and hopelessly sitting still. Nevertheless, Wagner still continues to strenuously put forward the concept of love, which at first he was unable to reveal, but which nevertheless is the crown of his aesthetic theory in both “The Ring” and “Tristan”.
Then, Wagner’s aesthetics in “The Ring” is undoubtedly more concrete than that of Schopenhauer, simply because all human and world evil comes from the fact that people and gods build their well-being on the lawless use of the untouched power and beauty of the universe, the symbol of which is the gold of the Rhine, and this gold is taken possession of by one of the Nibelungs, Alberich, who renounces love and curses it. This idea is completely alien to Schopenhauer’s aesthetics. And even when, having realized the full destruction of gold, the heroes and gods perish, who tried to base their bliss on the illegal possession of this gold, and, moreover, perish in a global catastrophe, according to Wagner, there is still some kind of humanity left, about which Wagner himself cannot yet say anything to say something positive, but which - and this is absolutely clear - will no longer build its life on the pursuit of gold. Nothing like this can be found in Schopenhauer. Thus, the aesthetics of “The Ring” is ultimately based not on detached musical pleasure, but on a foretaste of the future of man, which, according to Wagner, is already devoid of any individualistic egoism.
Finally, in the light of the reasoning proposed above, the question of irrationality in the aesthetics of “The Ring,” which almost all connoisseurs and lovers of Wagner focus on, becomes very complex, and here Wagner also has a fundamental difference with Schopenhauer.
True, Schopenhauer himself has his admirers and non-admirers
Usually they grab first of all his teaching about the world's unconscious and evil will, which is indeed interpreted by Schopenhauer in a completely irrationalistic way. However, here they usually forget that the same Schopenhauer also has a doctrine of representation, which Schopenhauer himself understood primarily as a completely meaningful objectification of the world will in the form of a world of ideas, in the form world intelligence, very close to the Platonic doctrine of the kingdom of ideas and the universal Mind. Therefore, historical justice forces us to say that even in Schopenhauer one cannot find absolute irrationalism. There is even less of this irrationalism in Wagner's Nibelungen.
In fact, fate exists in “The Ring” and even appears as a deep symbol of Erda. The attraction of gods and heroes to gold in Wagner is also irrational, unconscious and blind. The seizure of a golden ring by one creature from another also occurs quite spontaneously in an anarcho-individualistic manner. But the whole point is that “The Ring” is permeated with a certain idea, or better yet, a whole system of ideas. The Rhine Gold is also far from completely irrational. It is a symbol of world power and world essence, naive, untouched and wise. There is no more irrationality in this symbol than in any world symbols of any poets and musicians who wanted to depict the deepest center of the entire universe. The heroes and gods who capture this ring also act quite consciously in Wagner. They know what they want, although they feel the complete illegality of this desire. Bringilda, who before her death returns the golden ring to the depths of the Rhine, also acts quite consciously and even, one might say, quite logically.
And finally, Wotan, a much more central figure in “The Ring” than Sigmund, Siegfried, Bringhilde and other heroes, is depicted as a very deep and serious philosopher, who perfectly understands both the disastrousness of the individualistic mastery of gold and the necessity of his own destruction, since he himself too involved in the general pursuit of gold. In this sense, Wotan really is the most tragic figure. But why can one say that this figure in Wagner is only irrational? Wotan has no less rational self-awareness than he once had an irrational attraction to gold. And Wagner himself wrote in one of his letters: “Wotan is like us down to the smallest detail. He is the summation of all the intelligentsia of our time.”
In his entry on December 1, 1858, Wagner, among other things, says that genius cannot be understood as a gap between will and intellect, but that it should be understood “rather as the rise of the intellect of the individual to the level of an organ of knowledge of the totality of phenomena,
including the rise of the will as a thing in itself, from which alone one can understand the amazing enthusiasm of joy and delight at the highest moment of brilliant knowledge.” “I have come to the firm conviction,” Wagner further writes in the same entry, “that in love one can rise above the desire of one’s personal will, and when this is completely successful, then the will inherent in people in general reaches full awareness, which at this level is inevitably tantamount to perfection.” calm down." Thus, there is no need to talk about pure irrationality in Wagner’s aesthetics, as well as his unconditional submission to Schopenhauer. That Wagner wants to “correct the errors” of Schopenhauer. he himself writes in his diary on December 8, 1858.
And in general, the entire plot of “The Ring” should be called historical, or, more accurately, cosmic-historical, but certainly not just irrationalistic. It is this historicism that cannot be found in Schopenhauer. In Schopenhauer the world is completely stable; he really is seething with eternal aspirations and drives, from which there is only one way out - into the kingdom of ideas, or intellect. But this intelligence is even more stable and ahistorical. In general, Schopenhauer’s aesthetics is dominated by the primacy of nature, not history; and this nature, with all its eternal mobility, is always in its final essence something motionless. Therefore, in Schopenhauer’s aesthetics there is something Spinozist, but certainly not Hegelian and in no way Schellingian, since both Hegel and Schelling are filled with a sense of historicism in one sense or another of the word. And Schopenhauer does not have this historicism, but Wagner’s “Ring” has it.
In addition, if you think about the criticism of the art of opera that we cited above from Schopenhauer, then, in essence, it also contradicts Wagner’s aesthetics. True, Schopenhauer’s criticism of the artistic diversity of the then opera, its composition from separate isolated numbers, its superficial, funny and entertainment character, completely coincides with Wagner’s views here. But what does Schopenhauer offer instead of the opera of that time? He offers pure music, devoid of any poetic imagery and any, as they often said and are still saying, programmatic. Wagner offers something completely different. Energeticly rejecting, together with Schopenhauer, the too fragmentary and rationally amusing operatic art of that time, Wagner firmly stands on the basis of the complete fusion of all arts, and above all, music and poetry. And his “Ring” is neither a symphony, nor a sonata, nor any kind of solemn one, even if it is. tragic, concerto for violin or piano, but theoretically completely thought out and conscious, and in fact implemented without any deviation to the side musical drama. This also goes beyond Schopenhauer's aesthetics.
Based on all this, it must be said that, despite any pessimism and self-denial, no renunciation of self-pleasure, and, finally, despite any fate, by the command of which all these individualistically blissful gods and heroes are created and destroyed - despite everything This, the world catastrophe that Wagner talks about in The Ring, nevertheless opens the way to a new development of humanity and to its new achievements without the fatal pursuit of gold.
And therefore, completely unexpectedly, it turns out that Wagner, who outwardly moved away from the revolution, moved away, strictly speaking, only from its narrow socio-political goals. He elevated revolution to a world principle, to the fatal cause of the death of every world, which is trying to found itself on boundless individualism, on ignoring the common good of mankind, on the illegal, unfair, pitiful, although artistically beautiful, mastery of the foundations of the universe by an individual and powerless person, and even by the same gods who are also trying to master the basis of the world only for the sake of their individualistic lusts,
Why do we call it "The Ring of the Nibelung" prophecy revolution? After all, every prophet who speaks about the distant destinies of life is not at all obliged to represent the new post-revolutionary world with all scientific knowledge, system and completeness. This world, of necessity, is depicted to him in some kind of fairy-tale tones, and the revolutionary revolution itself also appears to him for the time being in a naive and mythological form. Therefore, bearing in mind the mythological structure of the tragedy of world life in Wagner, we must rightfully call this terrible news of “The Ring of the Nibelung” nothing more than a prophecy of an unprecedented, but essentially utopian revolution. In addition, with all his mythological generalizations, Wagner hardly completely forgot the biographically original socio-political understanding of the revolution. In any case, not just any commentator on Wagner, but he himself wrote the following words: “If we imagine a stock exchange briefcase in the hands of the Nibelung instead of the fatal ring, we will get a terrible image of the ghostly ruler of the world.”
So, Wagner’s aesthetics in The Ring is a truly revolutionary aesthetics, which cannot be found in Schopenhauer. And this revolutionary spirit of Wagner can no longer be put in quotation marks. What Wagner meant in quotation marks was that narrow and local, and essentially petty-bourgeois revolutionary uprising in which he so unsuccessfully participated in Dresden in 1849. Wagner’s pessimistic aesthetics, of course, is not at all canceled by this, since in this destruction of the world due to its illegal possession of gold there are quite enough bleak features to consider the aesthetics of “The Ring” pessimistic. All this beautiful
Great heroism, these delights of heroic love, all the wonderful power of world history can only be understood in the light of such deep-seated pessimism. But there is a way out of this pessimism. And this aesthetic outlet is colored by the entire heroism of “The Ring,” just as it is colored at every step by its hopelessness.
As stated above, Wagner interrupted his work on The Ring of the Nibelung in 1857 in order to work on Tristan and Isolde, a musical drama that he also wrote during his years in Zurich (1857 - 1859). They often talk about the suddenness of Wagner's transition to another topic or do not motivate this transition at all. These motives, however, were very important.
If we touch on the external side of the matter, then Wagner became more and more convinced of the impossibility of quickly putting on stage such a colossal work as “The Ring,” which would require four evenings and performers of the rarest in their heroic talent. And even then one must be surprised that the impatient Wagner had already been working on The Ring for three years and did nothing else. In 1857, he finally decided to write something lighter and more accessible - and wrote Tristan and Isolde, naively thinking that such a drama would be easier for the European public to perceive. But this drama, only in terms of its size, turned out to be more accessible, since it required only one evening for its performance. As for the content, this new musical drama turned out to be, perhaps, even more difficult and even less accessible to the public.
The very theme of the tale of Tristan and Isolde was not new for Wagner. It came to his mind back in 1854, not only during the period of his fascination with Schopenhauer, but also in the midst of work on The Nibelungs. He did not want to abandon his "Nibelungs", the musical score of which he had just begun. Therefore, he then postponed the topic of Tristan and Isolde. But by 1857, other, external reasons arose for the transition to a new musical drama. It must be said that the circumstances of his life in Switzerland were very unfavorable. Wagner needed and had to change his home, which was too noisy for him to quietly devote himself to his creativity. He felt lonely and unhappy, definitely missed Germany, and his close friend Liszt, who came to him, only aroused in him a greater desire for normal musical activity for an artist. But, perhaps, the most important reason for the transition to “Tristan” were two circumstances, one of which was more important than the other.
Firstly, the further, Wagner delved deeper into the philosophy of Schopenhauer. He wanted at all costs to depict the hopelessness of all human aspirations and to outline the inner identity of love and death. This theme was already deeply represented in The Ring. But, as we said above, “The Ring” was primarily a cosmic-historical drama, and not just a drama of the inner experiences of an individual. Probably, in 1857, Wagner unconsciously himself felt that he had not yet matured to the colossal cosmic historicism that he wanted to depict in The Ring. It is not for nothing that “The Ring,” as we already know, was completed by Wagner only in the early 70s. First it was necessary to delve into the psychology of this particular individual, still outside of any historicism. This individual had to be creatively experienced in all his abandonment, suffering and all his inherent necessity, even his deepest and highest experiences of love should be identified with the fatal necessity of death. As an artist who experienced this tragedy of individual death, Wagner was able to further expand this theme to cosmic-historical dimensions. This is where the legend of Tristan and Isolde came in handy.
Thus, if the socio-political situation is decisive for all artistic creativity, then Wagner’s emigrant life in Zurich, alone, far from friends, far from normal artistic activity, in those moments European history, when, after the collapse of the revolution of 1848, waves of political reaction spread, causing pessimism, and sometimes despair, naturally caused the same pessimism and despair in Wagner himself. For any historian of music and aesthetics, Wagner’s development of such themes as in “The Ring of the Nibelung” or in “Tristan and Isolde” turns out to be both completely natural and completely understandable. But from our previous presentation the reader could understand that Wagner was neither a public figure nor a politician by his inclinations, and therefore the pessimism of such an artist, of course, must be characterized not only as a result of the then socio-political situation, but also take into account his genuine internal needs and purely personal philosophical and musical quests.
Secondly, Wagner, as many believe, quite “accidentally” encountered Buddhist teachings about the insignificance of the human person, and indeed all human life, and with the need for immersion in complete non-existence, in nirvana. Of course, European man of the mid-19th century could no longer understand nirvana simply as non-existence or death. Wagner's personality was too complex for him to dwell on this. Wagner understood this nirvana and this death as
the limit of the highest tension in a person's life. And since love played the main role in the life of the individual for Wagner, nirvana turned out to be nothing more than a merger for him. love And death. And the plot of the tale of Tristan and Isolde was again most suitable for this.
An undoubted influence on the ideas expressed in Tristan was Wagner's brief engagement with the history of Buddhism. In 1856, Wagner read the book “Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism,” from which he drew on the plot of love and self-denial that interested him to sketch his never-written drama “The Victors.” This plot worried Wagner in the future, especially when he had to part with his beloved Mathilde Wesendonck and keep a Venetian diary in sad solitude. It was there, on October 5, 1858, that Wagner again recalled his studies in Buddhism, but now in connection with Köppen’s History of the Buddhist Religion. True, Wagner calls this learned work an “unpleasant book,” full of purely external details about the establishment and spread of the Buddhist cult. How alien to Wagner the Buddhist cult itself was, in fact, is indicated by the fact that he classified the Chinese figurine of Buddha sent to him as “tasteless,” and his disgust for the gift was so great that he could not hide his feelings from the sender. this lady's gift; Wagner writes about this in detail in the same entry.
For Wagner, all these Buddhist relics are nothing more than “grimaces” or “caricatures” of the “sick, ugly world.” And great efforts must be made to resist these external impressions and “keep the purely contemplative ideal intact.” As you can see, Wagner was attracted precisely by the pure, sublime ideal of the story of Buddha, his disciple Ananda, the latter’s beloved, perhaps because the composer himself deeply understood the impossibility of his union with Matilda in this world full of evil and the vicissitudes of life. There remained dreams of unity in the extrapersonal, extra-egoistic, sublimely spiritual sphere. Of course, Wagner was aware of how difficult it was to translate such a pious and sacred Buddhist plot into the language of musical drama, and even so that the circumstances of his personal drama were expressed in it.
For Wagner himself, the Buddhist ideal of unity with his beloved turns out to be absolutely unattainable in real life, since he is an artist who lives by the facts of life, transforming them with the help of art into poetically inspired images. Wagner is a poet who lives by mood, inspiration, connected with nature and the torment of real life. However, being an artist, he cannot live outside of art, and therefore cannot achieve true freedom in nirvana, which
Heaven is accessible only to those who, according to the teachings of the Buddha, resolutely reject everything, even art itself.
Therefore, Wagner is captivated by conflicting ideas and feelings. Separated from his beloved, he tries to retain at least her image, which is possible to his great art. But the more he plunges into the creation of his artistic fantasy, the more decisively his intimate ties with his beloved, who belongs to the world, belong to the world, as the art of a poet and composer belongs to the world. It turns out that for those who love there is no renunciation of the world, which means there is no salvation or unity in nirvana.
For hopelessness and drama life relationships Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck were not suitable for the Buddhist path to salvation, but the plot of the poetic tragedy of Tristan and Isolde with the indissolubility of love and death was all the more powerful and irrevocable.
We have outlined the necessary factual information from Wagner’s biography that must be kept in mind when analyzing the musical drama “Tristan and Isolde” in general form above. Now we have to pay attention to one circumstance that Wagner’s biographers often interpret too formally and from which very often no conclusions are drawn - neither truly socio-political nor essentially aesthetic. Formally speaking, it is often thought that “Tristan and Isolde” is simply the result of the author’s rational way of thinking, a product of the post-revolutionary gloomy and pessimistic era. The revolution, they say, failed, and therefore dark despair and political reaction set in. And this is the essence of Wagner's drama Tristan and Isolde.
This approach to Wagner’s drama must be considered too formal and incompletely depicting Wagner’s inner state during the period of writing Tristan and Isolde, the style of this drama itself, and the aesthetic worldview clearly expressed here. What is usually said about the failure of the petty-bourgeois revolutions of the first half of the 19th century, about pessimism, about the impossibility of a thinking individual of that time to find a foothold and, finally, about the political reaction of those times - this is all absolutely correct; This is discussed more than once in our work. However, it would be crude vulgar sociologism to reduce the ideological and artistic meaning of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde to only socio-political events. These events still need to be translated into the language of Wagner’s literary and musical creativity; they must be understood as a passionate impulse of the great composer’s creativity and as a living, not at all rationally schematic, intimate analogue of what happened in Wagner himself and in his play.
First of all, despite any pessimism and even despite
to him, Wagner, as indeed he always felt within himself, was a never-ending source of life, a never-fading faith in life, in its progress and in its achievements, some kind of endless and inexhaustible source of creativity, a never-waning quest and faith in love as the last support of life. Therefore, when creating Tristan and Isolde, Wagner was overwhelmed by two passions, which from an ordinary and petty-bourgeois point of view are complete opposites, but for Wagner they were something whole and inseparable.
We mean a combination of feelings unprecedented in its pathos love and feelings death in Tristan and Isolde. If you do not approach this drama deeply historically and at the same time deeply biographically, it becomes completely incomprehensible what love and death have in common, and why Tristan and Isolde are killed so much, and why they do not find any other way out except this terrifying synthesis. But the essence of the matter is that all real reality as a result of socio-political catastrophes was experienced by Wagner as something evil, worthless, discredited once and for all, from which one could only retreat into oblivion, only renounce and only hide in some inaccessible and dark corners of the human spirit. On the other hand, however, Wagner could not destroy this vibrant life in the depths of his spirit, this passionate desire to live forever, create forever and love forever. This is where the entire ideological and artistic structure of Tristan and Isolde flows. This musical drama can only be understood socio-historically. But this socio-historical picture also includes the creative individuality of Wagner himself. Not only philosophically and theoretically, but also quite vitally, Wagner understood the falsity of European individualism and the collapse of subject-object dualism as a result of the European revolutionary movement of the last decades of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century.
As a result of this, all the materials of Wagner’s biography of his Zurich period directly cry out about his loneliness, abandonment, the hopelessness of his situation and the complete impossibility of creating such musical works that could even remotely support Wagner’s dream of their theatrical production. And, we repeat, at the same time there is an inexhaustible thirst for life and an inexhaustible creative passion to love and be loved.
This is why the personality of Mathilde Wesendonck played such an unprecedented role in Wagner’s work during these years. For Wagner, this was not just an everyday novel. You can find any number of such novels in the biographies of any artist or non-artist. No, it was not only a vital, but even a physically tangible triumph of love.
vi and death, which, however, biographically took completely unusual forms. Captivated by such an unprecedented feeling, Matilda managed to convince her husband Otto Wesendonck of the sublimity of her relationship with Wagner. Under Matilda’s influence, Otto himself became Wagner’s friend and patron, built villas for him, supplied him with money, and together with Matilda remained a passionate admirer of Wagner’s talent until the end of his days. And when Wagner married Liszt’s daughter Cosima and, already having children from her, visited Switzerland and met with Matilda, this feeling of the merging of love and death never dried up for them and was completely incomparable to any everyday relationships.
In conclusion of this characteristic of “Tristan and Isolde”, we would like to note, based on the statements of Wagner himself, one more circumstance, which is also often not put forward and which very clearly contrasts the sentiments of Wagner during the period of “Tristan and Isolde” with both Schopenhauer and Buddhism, about connections with which biographical sources tell us.
The fact is that, musically, both Tristan and Isolde are depicted by Wagner as very strong, powerful personalities. This especially needs to be taken into account by those who bring this play too close to ancient Buddhism. Ancient Buddhism, not believing either in man or in objective reality in general, was permeated with a feeling of the complete insignificance of everything that happened. Ancient Buddhism completely denied this insignificant reality, all the weak and hopeless impulses of the human being, trying to plunge all this kind of weak and insignificant reality into one abyss of non-existence. Contrary to this, when listening to Wagner's musical drama, one is simply surprised by the inner strength of these two heroes striving for nirvana. What kind of nirvana is this with such a titanic spirit? It was not nirvana that had an impact here, but the deepest and most subtle development of the human personality in modern times. Tristan and Isolde go into oblivion not from their powerlessness, not from their insignificance, and not from the simple impossibility of making ends meet on earth. They go into this oblivion, into this universal night, with a deep consciousness of their identity with this universal night and therefore with a deep consciousness of their greatness. True, they want to avoid this opposition of subject to object, on which the entire European culture was based. But this was not the defeat of a small subject before a great object. On the contrary, it was a great victory of the infinite power of the spirit over the petty and insignificant human life and a heroic fusion with that which is already above any subject-object dualism. A study of Wagner's diaries and letters from the Zurich period convinces us that this was precisely his true aesthetic worldview.
We would also like to draw attention to one deep symbol in Tristan and Isolde, or, more accurately, to a symbolic myth, which is also central to the entire symbolic-mythological concept of this drama. Namely: it is necessary to clearly perceive the idea love potion, which, as we know, plays a decisive role in Tristan and Isolde. This love potion is not at all some kind of children's fairy tale or an idle fantasy of subjective fiction. It expresses the universal, inescapable, indestructible desire by any force to love forever, live forever and create forever in love and in life. This power is expressed here as completely total, even independent of the rational intentions of the human individual. However, this fatalism at the same time functions here quite realistically. After all, all the laws of nature also do not depend on the individual human individual, and in this sense they also act quite fatalistically. The law of falling bodies, for example, also cannot be canceled, it also cannot be avoided. And yet all mechanics and physicists seize on this law as the final truth. This same truth is the eternal, indestructible desire of a person to love and act according to the laws of love. We would say that this is a much more realistic law of human life than the endless sea of human passions in which a person often sees his real freedom. Tristan and Isolde are absolutely free, and no one was forced to love them. And since death is the law for all living things, therefore we do not have to be surprised that love and death, taken in their final generalization and limit, are also something whole and inseparable, and moreover, the most blissful and freest for both heroes Wagner's dramas. Freedom, bliss, pleasure, death and fatalistic predestination - this is what the love potion is, so brilliantly depicted by Wagner.
In the end, Wagner’s aesthetics during the heyday of his creative activity, or rather, his aesthetic worldview, examined socio-historically, is nothing more than a confession of the soul of a modern European individual who came to his final catastrophe in connection with the catastrophe of the bourgeois revolution. This individual has already traveled the false path of absolute opposition of subject and object, but, filled with his unrealized, but still monstrous forces of life, he achieved in Wagner a universal supra-individual fusion, prophetically speaking about a universal, and not a bourgeois, revolution.
Our task, expressed by the theme of this work, can, strictly speaking, be considered completed. However, due to the fact that we stopped
We focused only on the most important thing, it is necessary to at least briefly point out the existence of other Wagnerian materials related to this topic. Above we have already named the first four periods of Wagner's work - the initial period (1833 - 1838), Paris (1839 - 1842), Dresden (1842 - 1849) and Zurich (1849 - 1859). A more complete presentation would also have to cover the years of wandering after Zurich (1859 - 1865), the Triebschen period (1866 - 1872) and the Munich, or Bayreuth, period (1872 - 1883). However, we cannot touch upon the relevant literary works of Wagner here due to the plan of this introductory article.
S. A. Marcus, whose materials we used above, did a great job of formulating not only the endless contradictions and incorrect self-criticism of Wagner, but also his unfair assessment of the work of many composers whom we now honor, as well as Wagner himself, and in addition, his constantly fluctuating, sometimes sharply negative, and sometimes sharply positive attitude towards religion, monarchy and views on the relationship of art with other areas of culture. And yet, S. A. Marcus in the end still could not help but draw the conclusion about Wagner’s aversion to capitalism and could not help but note the revolutionary conclusions that Wagner himself made based on his even most religious and most Christian drama “Parsifal” . [
S. A. Marcus writes: “Can it be said that as a person and as an artist, Wagner at the end of his life came to terms with capitalist reality? No, this cannot be said. The German musicologist Werner Wolf rightly pointed out that not only the anti-capitalist idea of the “Ring of the Nibelung”, but also the ideas of “Parsifal” were “decisively opposed by Wagner to the main tendencies of the dominant aggressive circles in Germany”... A well-known statement of Wagner, in which he tried to somehow to explain his turn to the Christian mysticism of Parsifal, contains a devastating verdict on capitalist society as a world of “organized murder and robbery, legitimized by lies, deceit and hypocrisy...” *
Thus, the voluntary or involuntary prophecy of a future, but no longer bourgeois revolution, with all the deviations and vacillations of Wagner’s thought and artistic activity, still remains for the composer the main and irrefutable idea of all his musical, poetic, and literary-critical creativity.
A. F. Losev
* Marcus S. A. Decree. cit., p. 539 - 540.
Page 16 of 30
"Art and Revolution".
The following position, put forward by Wagner at the very beginning of the brochure, is highly progressive: “We will not at all engage here in abstract definitions of art, but we set ourselves another, in our opinion, quite natural, task: to substantiate the significance of art as a function of social life, political structure ; establish that art is a product of social life.” As can be seen, this statement by Wagner is in sharp, irreconcilable contradiction with reactionary “theories” such as
so-called “pure” art, supposedly independent of social and political life. Further, Wagner writes: “... art has always been a beautiful mirror of the social order.”
Wagner argues that the ideal of the social system is ancient Greece, which gave birth to greatest creation art - Greek tragedy. Correctly assessing the great artistic achievements of the ancient Greek theater, Wagner, at the same time, like many bourgeois art historians, idealizes the ancient social
a system that was in fact a slave-owning formation, although for its time progressive in comparison with the tribal community, but infinitely far from the ideal.
The pages in the brochure “Art and Revolution” devoted to criticism of Christianity, which, as Wagner says, contributed to the fall of art and the transformation of the artist into a “slave of industry” have a progressive significance. Wagner gives Christianity the most merciless characterization: “Christianity justifies the dishonest, useless and miserable existence of man on earth with the miraculous love of God, who did not create man at all... for a joyful, increasingly self-aware life and activity on earth; no, he locked him up here in a disgusting prison to cook him
to him after death, as a reward for the fact that he was filled here on earth with complete contempt, the most peaceful eternity and the most brilliant idleness.” “Hypocrisy,” writes Wagner, “is, generally speaking, the most outstanding distinguishing feature of all centuries of Christianity, right down to the present day...” “...Art, instead of freeing itself from supposedly enlightened rulers, which were
spiritual power, “rich in spirit” and enlightened princes, sold themselves body and soul to a much worse master: Industry... This is the art that currently fills the entire civilized world: its true essence is industry, its aesthetic pretext is entertainment for the bored.” .
It is necessary to correctly understand Wagner’s inaccurate formula: by “industry” he understands the bourgeois-capitalist system, which he severely criticizes as a system incompatible with the free development of art. It is under the conditions of this system, where everything is determined by the power of money, that art becomes a craft and an object of trade.
This is what Wagner rebelled against with all his strength and passion! Where is the way out? In the revolution. " Great Revolution of all humanity,” says Wagner, can revive true art. “True art can rise from its state of civilized barbarism to its worthy height only on the shoulders of our great social
movements; he has a common goal with him, and they can achieve it only if they both recognize it. This goal is a beautiful and strong man: let the Revolution give him Strength, Art - Beauty." It is also necessary to note Wagner’s inconsistency, which is a reflection of the limitations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism: criticism
capitalism is combined with a lack of understanding of the real social situation and the true tasks of the revolution; While asserting the correct idea about the dependence of art on social life and politics, Wagner simultaneously speaks of its incompatibility with any power or authority and calls all this “the highest freedom.” Such denial state power and the state in general is nothing more than a manifestation of petty-bourgeois anarchism.
In the same work, Wagner, still briefly, raises the question of “true drama,” which will be neither drama nor opera (in the old sense) and where all types of art will merge. Wagner develops the ideas of reform of musical drama widely and in detail in such works as “Artwork of the Future” (1850), “Opera and Drama” (1851), partly “Address to Friends” (1851), written as a preface to three opera libretto: “The Flying Dutchman”, “Tannhäuser”, “Lohengrin”.
On February 13, 1883, the German composer and poet Richard Wagner died. With the kind permission of the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house, we publish fragment of the book “Wagner” by Maria Zalesskaya, which was published in 2011 in the series “Life of Remarkable People”. This fragment talks about Wagner the revolutionary. Indeed, Wagner took part in the revolutionary events in Dresden in 1848, communicated closely with their direct organizers - August Röckel and Mikhail Bakunin, and then was forced to hide from the police for a long time. However, was Wagner himself a revolutionary? What was the ideological and aesthetic background that motivated Wagner during these events? What pushed a man, always far from politics, into revolutionary unrest? Maria Zalesskaya gives an answer to this question in the proposed passage.
The year 1848 was in many ways a turning point both for the composer himself and for his work. It began with a tragic event - on January 9, Wagner's mother Johanna Rosin died. He hurried to Leipzig and was in time for the funeral. “On the way back to Dresden I was overcome by a sense of complete loneliness. With the death of mother, the last blood connection with all the brothers and sisters, who lived by their own special interests, was broken. Cold and gloomy, I returned to the only thing that could inspire and warm me: to the adaptation of “Lohengrin”, to the study of German antiquity.”
Wagner's depression was aggravated by the ever-increasing wave of criticism against him raised by the Dresden press. “The Flying Dutchman” and “Tannhäuser” were literally hit with a barrage of negative reviews. Now critics have switched from creativity to the personality of the composer himself. He was accused of lack of talent, inability to conduct, and of the collapse of the theater. It was an outright lie. Contrary to popular belief, Wagner had no conflict with artists and musicians; The creative forces of the Dresden Theater as a whole did not resist his attempts to carry out theatrical reform, many supported him, and discipline in the troupe was established solely through his efforts. But the composer’s opponents even went so far as to attack his private life, blaming him for his large debts and love of luxury.
The reason for such vicious and often unfair criticism is quite understandable. We have already spoken about opera reviewers who were offended by Wagner’s neglect. But from his first steps in the position of royal bandmaster, he also opposed himself to that part of the Dresden pseudo-intelligentsia, recognized as the trendsetter of artistic fashion, with which any artist, musician or composer was obliged to take into account - the so-called theater experts. Such an irreconcilable reformer as Wagner could not help but alienate these militant amateurs - their tastes and beliefs were based on outdated traditions that Wagner sought to overthrow. The remarkable Russian philosopher and philologist A.F. Losev noted: “...no one could fight vulgarity in music and art as masterfully as Wagner did. The bourgeoisie will never forgive the fatal inner breakdown that was caused by Wagner’s work. In this sense, Wagner could never become a museum curiosity; and to this day, every sensitive musician and music listener cannot regard it calmly, academically, and historically dispassionately. Wagner’s aesthetics are always a challenge to every bourgeois vulgarity, no matter whether musically educated or musically uneducated.” The interests of the “high theatrical society” were again traditionally looked after by the management of the Royal Theater. Thus, having declared war on the philistines of art, Wagner automatically came into conflict with his immediate superiors.
So it was not the public as a whole or the artists under his command, but just a handful of reporters, amateurs and the theater management that made the composer’s life in Dresden unbearable.
He had to realize with all his bitterness that the reforms he dreamed of were impossible to implement in the current conditions. True, A. Listerberger believes that “the prospect that opened up for him outside Dresden was no better. Leipzig was closed to him because Mendelssohn, who was a trendsetter in musical fashion there, did not feel any sympathy for his talent or his ideas. In Berlin, where “The Wandering Sailor” and “Rienzi” were staged, he encountered the same resistance from experts that he had met in Dresden and, in addition, felt the hidden hostility towards himself on the part of the almighty Meyerbeer.
So, the circle of enemies is outlined - these are all those who interfere with the development of new art. They are corrupted by the power of money, their art is corrupt, and they will never give up the reins of power without a fight. It was then that Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn also fell into this circle, not at all because of their nationality, as was later commonly believed, but as representatives of precisely this, Wagner believed, corrupt art, following the base tastes of the public in the name of their own success.
Consequently, a general revolution is needed that would sweep away without regret the injustice and abomination of the existing system and would allow the rebirth of a new person capable of creating a new art. Wagner needed the revolution as a tool for conducting opera reform , which failed in Dresden!
In this mood he met the last days of February, which truly shook Europe with revolution. On the 22nd, unrest broke out in Paris. Events developed rapidly and quickly spread from France to Germany and Austria. Already on February 27, mass public meetings and demonstrations took place in Baden. On March 3, the workers of Cologne went out to demonstrate, on the 6th, unrest began in Berlin, and on the 13th, a popular uprising broke out in Vienna. On May 18, the all-German National Assembly opened in Frankfurt am Main, convened to resolve the issue of unifying the country. The rise of the national spirit was felt in all layers of German society.
It is quite obvious that the political revolution had nothing in common with that idealistic cultural revolution , which Wagner dreamed of. However, he was drawn into the thick of things by his friend Röckel, although he did not actually belong to any of the revolutionary parties in Saxony.
As for art itself, in relations with Röckel, Wagner was the clear and unconditional leader. But when politics got involved, their roles changed dramatically. Röckel took an active part in the revolutionary events of 1848-1849. Two political societies were formed in Dresden: the “German Union”, which aimed to achieve a “constitutional monarchy on the broadest democratic basis”, and the “Patriotic Union”, in which the main role was played by the “democratic basis”. Röckel became the most active member of the latter. As for Wagner, he came to meetings of the Fatherland Union, by his own admission, “as a spectator, as if to a performance.” Naturally, his aspirations were much closer to him " German Confederation", and in "Patriotic" he was involved solely under the influence of Röckel. Wagner believed that “for an enlightened monarch, in order to achieve his own highest goals, it should be important for him to govern a state built on truly republican principles... the Saxon king is, as it were, a chosen one of fate, capable of giving other German sovereigns high example" Wagner's enthusiastic attitude towards Frederick Augustus II was well known.
Roeckel stood on the extreme left positions. Not content with his activities in the political union, he became the publisher of the weekly magazine Volksblötter (People's Leaflets), which was distinguished by its radical orientation and reflected the views of the social revolutionary party. Wagner began to write fiery articles for this magazine. And although his views did not change at all, his very participation in Röckel’s publishing enterprise - the Volksblätter was published from August 26, 1848 to April 29, 1849 - marked Wagner as a left-wing revolutionary.
What pushed a man, always far from politics, into revolutionary unrest? Exclusively the fight for your own art! And one more thing romanticism, inherent in Wagner in all his endeavors.
We have already said that in many ways Wagner’s nature was contradictory. Let us add that this applies only to those external stimuli that affected himself, but not his work. Wagner the man was extremely touchy, ambitious, dependent on the momentary mood, Wagner the artist was unusually integral and consistent. Steadily moving towards the once chosen goal, he looked for various, sometimes mutually exclusive, ways to achieve it. Hence the apparent contradictions. But, we repeat, the main goal was always the same. What is more effective for the triumph of high art - revolution or proximity to the throne? You have to try both and then decide. At the same time, turning to the revolution, Wagner quite sincerely believed in the usefulness of her ideas for the triumph of her own. When it turned out that the goals of Wagner and the revolutionaries, to put it mildly, diverged, he rushed to the other extreme - he began to seek the highest patronage among the powers that be. At the same time, both the revolutionary barricades and the future cordial friendship with King Ludwig II - this is who truly embodied the Wagnerian ideal of an enlightened monarch! - are inspired by the romantic idea of building a higher, ideal world, the call to which is the primary task of the Artist.
Thus, for Wagner, only that system is important in which the Artist could freely create in order to restructure society.
Perhaps it would be appropriate here to quote lines from a letter from another great German composer Richard Strauss, which can be fully correlated with Wagner’s own attitude to politics: “For me, a people exists only at the moment when it becomes a public. Whether they are Chinese, Bavarians or New Zealanders, it doesn’t matter to me, as long as they pay for the tickets. Who told you that I am interested in politics? Because I'm the president of the Chamber of Music? I accepted this post in order to avoid the worst; and I would accept it under any regime.”
Wagner could have signed every word here. “On my completely solitary walks,” he recalled, “to give an outlet to seething feelings, I thought a lot about the future forms of human relations, when the bold desires and hopes of socialists and communists are fulfilled. Their teachings, which were then just taking shape, gave me only general grounds, since I was not interested in the very moment of political and social revolution, but in the order of life in which my projects related to art could find implementation(emphasis added - M.Z.)».
In his political views, he was neither a socialist, nor a republican, nor a democrat, and in general he looked at communism as “the most ridiculous, most absurd and dangerous of all doctrines” and, adds A. Lishtanberger, “as a dangerous and impracticable utopia.” . Let us repeat that Wagner's ideal is a powerful noble king at the head of a strong free people in the spirit of ancient Germanic legends. “At the head of a free people, it would be possible to have a sovereign-king who would be the first citizen of the nation, who would be elected to this high post by the consent and love of all free citizens, and who would not look upon himself as a master , commanding his subjects, but as a representative of the nation, as the first citizen in the state,” - this is how the researcher sees Wagner’s political preferences.
Based on such beliefs, Wagner’s sympathy for the uprising of the radical left-wing socialist party of the Saxon Democrats may seem strange. But Wagner himself explained this fact by saying that he unwillingly took the side of those who suffered and no creative idea could ever force him to renounce this sympathy. Let us remember how back in 1830 he was horrified by the cruelty of the French revolutionaries of 1789, which was completely unacceptable to him. Now in the uprising he saw only “a manifestation of the spirit of the Revolution” and idealized it. In other words, he was faithful revolutionary romanticism.
But he was much more oppressed by the dependent position of the artist, forced to turn his art into a commodity, which he directly stated in his “most revolutionary” work “Art and Revolution”: “What outraged the architect when he was forced to spend his creative power on building according to ordering barracks and houses for rent? What upset the painter when he had to paint a disgusting portrait of some millionaire; a composer forced to compose table music; a poet forced to write novels for libraries to read? What must have been their suffering? And all this because I had to waste my creative power for good Industries, make a craft out of your art. But what must a poet-playwright endure, who wants to unite together all the arts in the highest artistic genre- in drama? Obviously, all the suffering of the other artists combined. His creations become a work of art only when they are made public and have the opportunity, so to speak, to enter into life, and a dramatic work of art can only enter into life through the medium of the theater. But what are these modern theaters, having the resources of all the arts? Industrial enterprises - even where they receive special subsidies from the state or various princes: their management is usually entrusted to those people who yesterday were engaged in grain speculation, who tomorrow will devote their solid knowledge to the sugar trade, unless they have acquired the necessary knowledge to understand greatness theater as a result of initiation into the sacraments of the chamberlain or other similar positions ... Hence it is clear to every discerning mind that if the theater is to return to its noble natural purpose, it is absolutely necessary that it free itself from the clutches of industrial speculation.”
Wagner identifies the main enemy of real art - the “golden calf”, the power of money and industrial capital; often he summarizes all these concepts under the term "industry". “You, my suffering brothers from all strata of human society, who feel deep anger within yourself, if you strive to free yourself from the slavery of money in order to become free people, understand our task well and help us raise art to a worthy height, so that we can show you how to raise a craft to the height of art, how to elevate a slave of industry to the level of a wonderful, conscious person who, with the smile of one initiated into the secrets of nature, can say to nature itself, to the sun , stars, death and eternity: you also belong to me, and I am your master! . Wagner understands freedom in the spirit of the ancient Greeks. And he developed these ideals in his early youth. In this case, Wagner is not contradictory, but unusually consistent.
So, he contrasts the universal evil in the person of the “golden calf” with freedom and love, this true panacea, a universal medicine, only thanks to which it is possible to return lost natural happiness to humanity. “Both the person himself and everything emanating from him can gain freedom only through love. Freedom lies in satisfying a necessary need, the highest freedom lies in satisfying the highest need, and the highest human need is Love" The circle is closed.
In the formula “man - freedom - love - high art”, opposed industry(note that there is no place for politics here at all), Wagner first defines freedom as the main creative force, and freedom primarily from the power of money. This brings him to the barricades. Then he bets on love. It is not without reason that in the grandiose painting “The Ring of the Nibelung” Alberich renounces love, which is again opposed to the power of the “golden calf”; In renunciation of love, according to Wagner, there is the most terrible curse.
It is interesting to note that it was then, in the heat of 1848, that Wagner first turned to the tales of the Nibelungs and Siegfried, which completely captured his imagination. From his pen came a whole philological and historical study, which he later published under the title “Nibelungs”. At the same time, he noted that one of the main parts of the Nibelungen myth could well be turned into an independent musical drama. “But the decision slowly and timidly matured in me to dwell on this idea, since from the practical side, staging such a work on the stage of the Dresden theater was positively unthinkable. It was necessary to be completely disappointed in the possibility of doing anything for our theater in order to find the courage to do this work.” In other words, what was needed was... a revolution. But the composer still made the first sketches for the future work.
And Wagner himself succinctly summarizes the goals his revolution, fully aware that the power of art alone is clearly not enough to restructure the world: first you need to conquer the arena in which free art could develop. “When will society achieve beauty, high level human development - which we will not achieve solely through our art, but can only hope to achieve with the assistance of the inevitable future great social revolutions(emphasis added - M.Z.), - then theatrical performances will be the first collective enterprises in which the concept of money and profit will completely disappear; for if, thanks to the conditions assumed above, education becomes more and more artistic, then we will all become artists in the sense that, as artists, we will be able to unite our efforts for collective free action out of love for the artistic activity itself, and not for the sake of an external industrial goal ".
In his powerful and cruel work, like all powerful things, entitled “Art and Revolution,” Wagner establishes the following truths:
Art is the joy of being yourself, living and belonging to society.
Art was like this in the 6th century BC. Chr. in the Athenian state.
Along with the collapse of this state, extensive art also collapsed; it has become fragmented and individual; it has ceased to be the free expression of a free people. For all two thousand years - from that time until our time - art has been in an oppressed position.
The teaching of Christ, who established the equality of people, degenerated into Christian teaching, which extinguished the religious fire and entered into an agreement with a hypocritical civilization that managed to deceive and tame artists and turn art into the service of the ruling classes, depriving it of power and freedom.
Despite this, true art has existed for two thousand years and continues to exist, manifesting itself here and there as a cry of joy or pain of a free creator breaking free from the shackles. Only a great and worldwide Revolution can return to people the fullness of free art, which will destroy the centuries-old lie of civilization and raise the people to the heights of artistic humanity.
Richard Wagner calls on all brothers who suffer and feel deep anger to help him start this new organization art, which can become the prototype of a future new society.
Wagner's work, which appeared in 1849, is related to the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, which appeared the year before. Marx's manifesto, whose worldview had finally been defined by this time as the worldview of a “real politician,” represents a new picture for its time of the entire history of mankind, explaining the historical meaning of the revolution; it is addressed to the educated classes of society; fifteen years later, Marx found it possible to turn to the proletariat: in the manifesto of the International (1864), he turned to the practical experience of the last worker.
The creation of Wagner, who was never a “real politician”, but was always an artist, is boldly addressed to the entire intellectual proletariat of Europe. Being connected with Marx ideologically, vitally, that is, much more firmly, it is connected with the revolutionary storm that then swept across Europe; the wind for this storm was sown, as now, among others, by the Russian rebellious soul, in the person of Bakunin; this Russian anarchist, hated by “real politicians” (including Marx), with a fiery belief in a global conflagration, took part in organizing the uprising in Dresden in May 1849; Wagner, inspired by Bakunin, himself fought on the Dresden barricades. When the uprising was suppressed by Prussian troops, Wagner had to flee from Germany. The creation in question, as well as a number of others that complement and explain “Art and Revolution”, and finally, Wagner’s greatest creation - the social tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelungs” - were conceived and executed in the late forties and early fifties and carried out by him for beyond the reach of Prussian vulgarity.
The proletariat, to whose artistic instinct Wagner appealed, did not heed his call in 1849. I consider it worthwhile to remind the truth, all too well known to artists and, alas, still unknown to many “educated people”, that this circumstance did not disappoint Wagner, just as anything accidental and temporary can never disappoint a real artist, who is unable to make mistakes and be disappointed, for having it is a matter for the future. However, Wagner the man had a bad time, since the ruling class, with its characteristic dull rage, could not stop poisoning him for a long time. He resorted to the usual method for European society - indirectly and humanely starving people who were too bold and did not like him. The last significant representative of Wagner's persecution was the famous Max Nordau; Again, one cannot help but mention with bitterness that this “explainer” fifteen years ago was a “god” for many Russian intellectuals, who too often, due to a lack of musical feeling, fell against their will into various dirty embraces. It is still difficult to say whether the fact that Pobedonostsev used the same Max Nordau in his time (to criticize the parliamentary system dear to her heart) served as a lesson for the Russian intelligentsia.
The artist's star led Wagner away from the poverty of Parisian attics and from seeking outside help. Fame and fortune began to pursue him. But both fame and fortune are crippled by European petty-bourgeois civilization. They grew to monstrous sizes and took on ugly shapes. The national theater conceived by Wagner and erected in Bayreuth became a gathering place for a miserable tribe - jaded tourists from all over Europe. The social tragedy "The Ring of the Nibelungs" became fashionable; For a long series of years before the war, in the capitals of Russia we could observe huge theater halls, tightly packed with chirping young ladies and indifferent civilians and officers - right down to the last officer, Nicholas II. Finally, at the beginning of the war, the news spread throughout all the newspapers that Emperor Wilhelm had attached a siren to his car, playing the leitmotif of the god Wotan, always “looking for something new” (according to the text of “The Ring of the Nibelungs”).
However, this new hail of slaps did not hit the face of the great artist Wagner. The second method, which has long been used by the average person - to accept, devour and digest ("assimilate", "adapt") the artist when it was not possible to starve him to death - did not lead to the desired end, just like the first. Wagner is still alive and still new; when the Revolution begins to sound in the air, Wagner’s Art also sounds in response; his creations will still be heard and understood sooner or later; these creations will not be used for entertainment, but for the benefit of people; for art, so “remote from life” (and therefore dear to the hearts of others) in our days, leads directly to practice, to action; only his tasks are broader and deeper than those of “realpolitik” and therefore more difficult to implement in life.
Why was Wagner not starved to death? Why was it not possible to gobble it up, vulgarize it, adapt it and hand it over to the historical archive, like a frustrated, no longer useless instrument?
Because Wagner carried within himself the saving poison of creative contradictions, which bourgeois civilization has not yet been able to reconcile and which it will not be able to reconcile, because their reconciliation coincides with its own death.
The so-called advanced thought already takes this circumstance into account. While in the outskirts of the mind puzzles are still being solved and various “religious,” moral, artistic and legal dogmas are being turned this way and that, the pioneers of civilization have managed to “get in touch” with art. New techniques have appeared: artists are “forgiven”; artists are “loved” for their “contradictions”; artists are "allowed" to be - "outside politics" and "outside real life."
There is, however, one contradiction that cannot be resolved. In Wagner it is expressed in “Art and Revolution”; it refers to Jesus Christ.
Calling Christ in one place with hatred “the unfortunate son of a Galilean carpenter,” Wagner in another place proposes to erect an altar to him
It is still possible to somehow get along with Christ: in the end, he is already, as it were, “put out of the brackets” by the civilized world; People are “cultured”, which means they are also “tolerant”.
But the way of relating to Christ is strange and incomprehensible. How can you hate and build an altar at the same time? How is it possible to hate and love at the same time? If this extends to the “abstract”, like Christ, then perhaps it is possible; but what if this way of relating becomes common, if they begin to treat everything in the world in the same way? To the “homeland”, to “parents”, to “wives” and so on? It will be unbearable because it is restless.
It was this poison of hateful love, unbearable for a tradesman even “seven spans of culture in his forehead,” that saved Wagner from death and desecration. This poison, spilled throughout all his creations, is the “new” that is destined for the future.
The new time is alarming and restless. Anyone who understands that the meaning of human life lies in worry and anxiety will no longer be an ordinary person. This will no longer be a smug nonentity; it will be new person, a new step towards an artist.
Blok Alexander Alexandrovich (1880-1921) Russian poet.