/lit/ - Literature

>>23456303
>The emotions that are stirred by the cinematic realization of Tolkien’s rambling story are a faint echo of what would be felt, were The Ring to be performed as Wagner intended, with every single stage direction realistically obeyed. This would be the film to end all films, the Götterdämmerung of our modern era, in which Wagner’s moral would be apparent even to the unmusical. And almost certainly it would be banned.

>The Lord of the Rings is full of a kind of degenerate version of the Wagnerian approach to things. But Wagner is the real artist, and Tolkien a kind of second-rate populariser.

>>23388574
It's perhaps the greatest work of art ever created. The poetry has value on its own and can be read, but it's intended to be heard with the music. I encourage you to start with this lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL25ZMYFEcU

>>23388578
>Wagner was to the end of his life a philosopher. All the currents of philosophical thinking that were important in his day, from Fichte's idolisation of the self to Marx's critique of the capitalist economy, and from Feuerbach's repudiation of religion to Schopenhauer's theory of the will, left traces in his dramas. There is no work of philosophy that delves so deeply into the paradoxes of erotic love as Tristan and Isolde, no work of Christian theology that matches Wagner's exploration of the Eucharist in Parsifal, and no work of political theory that uncovers the place of power and law in the human psyche with the perceptiveness of The Ring.
>The Ring itself is a post-Hegelian work. In the descent into Nibelheim, Wagner gives us an image of industrial capitalism that says more than a thousand pages of Karl Marx. In the character of Wotan he presents a brilliant summary of the vision underlying Hegel's political philosophy. And in the drama of Siegfried and Brünnhilde he unfolds an epitome of the idealist philosophy of self-knowledge.

>The Lord of the Rings is full of a kind of degenerate version of the Wagnerian approach to things. But Wagner is the real artist, and Tolkien a kind of second-rate populariser.
t. Roger Scruton

>>20217286
Based Wagner poster.

>There is no work of philosophy that delves so deeply into the paradoxes of erotic love as Tristan and Isolde, no work of Christian theology that matches Wagner's exploration of the Eucharist in Parsifal, and no work of political theory that uncovers the place of power and law in the human psyche with the perceptiveness of The Ring.

>>20016266
>Shaftesbury
Already read him.

>Three great artists prepared the way for modernism – Baudelaire, Manet and Wagner. And all three haunt the work of T.S. Eliot, the greatest modernist writer in English, and the one who has inspired the thoughts contained in this book. To begin with Wagner is not to begin the story of modernism at the beginning. But it is to gain insight into the mission bequeathed by the Enlightenment to art. The operas of Wagner attempt to dignify the human being in something like the way that he might be dignified by an uncorrupted common culture. Acutely conscious of the death of God, Wagner proposed man as his own redeemer and art as the transfiguring rite of passage to a higher world. The suggestion was visionary, and its impact on modern culture so great that the shock waves are still overtaking us. Modern high culture is as much a set of footnotes to Wagner as Western philosophy is, in Whitehead’s judgement, footnotes to Plato.
>In the mature operas of Wagner our civilisation gave voice for the last time to its idea of the heroic, through music which strives to endorse that idea to the full extent of its power. And because Wagner was a composer of supreme genius, perhaps the only one to have taken forward the intense inner language forged by Beethoven and to have used it to conquer the psychic spaces that Beethoven shunned, everything he wrote in his mature idiom has the ring of truth, cnd every note is both absolutely right and profoundly surprising.

>>19704933
>The Ring itself is a post-Hegelian work. In the descent into Nibelheim, Wagner gives us an image of industrial capitalism that says more than a thousand pages of Karl Marx. In the character of Wotan he presents a brilliant summary of the vision underlying Hegel's political philosophy. And in the drama of Siegfried and Brünnhilde he unfolds an epitome of the idealist philosophy of self-knowledge.

https://youtu.be/H8nzHVBXUxI?t=298

>Three great artists prepared the way for modernism – Baudelaire, Manet and Wagner. And all three haunt the work of T.S. Eliot, the greatest modernist writer in English, and the one who has inspired the thoughts contained in this book. To begin with Wagner is not to begin the story of modernism at the beginning. But it is to gain insight into the mission bequeathed by the Enlightenment to art. The operas of Wagner attempt to dignify the human being in something like the way that he might be dignified by an uncorrupted common culture. Acutely conscious of the death of God, Wagner proposed man as his own redeemer and art as the transfiguring rite of passage to a higher world. The suggestion was visionary, and its impact on modern culture so great that the shock waves are still overtaking us. Modern high culture is as much a set of footnotes to Wagner as Western philosophy is, in Whitehead’s judgement, footnotes to Plato.
>In the mature operas of Wagner our civilisation gave voice for the last time to its idea of the heroic, through music which strives to endorse that idea to the full extent of its power. And because Wagner was a composer of supreme genius, perhaps the only one to have taken forward the intense inner language forged by Beethoven and to have used it to conquer the psychic spaces that Beethoven shunned, everything he wrote in his mature idiom has the ring of truth, and every note is both absolutely right and profoundly surprising.

>>19550740
Animals and humans are ontologically different.

That doesn't mean the moral question of vegetarianism is thrown out, or that factory farming shouldn't be morally criticised irrespective of one's own diet, but it does mean a puppy is not a cow.

>Three great artists prepared the way for modernism – Baudelaire, Manet and Wagner. And all three haunt the work of T.S. Eliot, the greatest modernist writer in English, and the one who has inspired the thoughts contained in this book. To begin with Wagner is not to begin the story of modernism at the beginning. But it is to gain insight into the mission bequeathed by the Enlightenment to art. The operas of Wagner attempt to dignify the human being in something like the way that he might be dignified by an uncorrupted common culture. Acutely conscious of the death of God, Wagner proposed man as his own redeemer and art as the transfiguring rite of passage to a higher world. The suggestion was visionary, and its impact on modern culture so great that the shock waves are still overtaking us. Modern high culture is as much a set of footnotes to Wagner as Western philosophy is, in Whitehead’s judgement, footnotes to Plato.
>In the mature operas of Wagner our civilisation gave voice for the last time to its idea of the heroic, through music which strives to endorse that idea to the full extent of its power. And because Wagner was a composer of supreme genius, perhaps the only one to have taken forward the intense inner language forged by Beethoven and to have used it to conquer the psychic spaces that Beethoven shunned, everything he wrote in his mature idiom has the ring of truth, and every note is both absolutely right and profoundly surprising.

>>19256344
>In the descent into Nibelheim, Wagner gives us an image of industrial capitalism that says more than a thousand pages of Karl Marx.

>>19156685
>Patrick White
>goes unread by the broader Anglosphere
Wrong.

>>19011957
>In the descent into Nibelheim, Wagner gives us an image of industrial capitalism that says more than a thousand pages of Karl Marx.

>In the descent into Nibelheim, Wagner gives us an image of industrial capitalism that says more than a thousand pages of Karl Marx. In the character of Wotan he presents a brilliant summary of the vision underlying Hegel's political philosophy. And in the drama of Siegfried and Brünnhilde he unfolds an epitome of the idealist philosophy of self-knowledge.

>>18316521
Smoking is good for you

Modern architecture btfo'd:

https://youtu.be/zZafdCxxW_Q?t=849

I miss him.

>>18018533
>Tolkien was a second-rate populariser to Wagner.

>>17870818
Based.

>Tolkien was a second-rate populariser to Wagner.

>>17831458
>Tolkien was a second-rate populariser to Wagner

>Tolkien was a second-rate populariser

>>17698408
Here's your saviour.

>Wagner tried to create a new musical public, one that would see the point of idealising the human condition. But with kitsch culture already eclipsing the romantic icon of the artist as priest, his attempt was doomed from the start.

>Since then, Wagner's enterprise has acquired its own tragic pathos, as modern producers, embarrassed by dramas that make a mockery of their way of life, in turn make a mockery of the symbolism. Sarcasm and satire run riot, as in Richard Jones's 1994-96 Covent Garden production of The Ring, because nobility has become intolerable.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2003/apr/12/classicalmusicandopera.artsfeatures1

>>17413894
It's amazing that literal pseuds get filtered by a documentary made to be brought down to, and appeal to the simple understanding of the common people. Wherein the moral imperative lies quite obvious to any seeing intelligent brain, that higher description and explanation can be found in his philosophical works, that is not a bbc documentary.

And I'm sure as a surprise to so many of his critiques from it, the documentary, he does indeed give a definition of beauty in these works proper.

>>17288804
He's one of the few thinkers worth reading in contemporary thought. And if you liked that documentary, you'll love this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoybTk6TEX4&t=0s

Though I warn you, this is known only to those esoteric on youtube and I try not to recommend it too much. It's a more complex portrayal of his ideas than Why Beauty Matters, as well as more personal. Overall kino as well.