/lit/ - Literature

>>20404115
>It were strange if what a man did best and most liked to do could not be traced in the general outline of his life, and in the case of those who are remarkably endowed there is all the more reason for supposing that their life will present not only the counterpart of their character, as in the case of every one else, but that it will present above all the counterpart of their intellect and their most individual tastes. The life of the epic poet will have a dash of the Epos in it—as from all accounts was the case with Goethe, whom the Germans very wrongly regarded only as a lyrist—and the life of the dramatist will probably be dramatic.

>The dramatic element in Wagner’s development cannot be ignored, from the time when his ruling passion became self-conscious and took possession of his whole being. From that time forward there is an end to all groping, straying, and sprouting of offshoots, and over his most tortuous deviations and excursions, over the often eccentric disposition of his plans, a single law and will are seen to rule, in which we have the explanation of his actions, however strange this explanation may sometimes appear.

>What is truth? It is a tremendous nervous excitation which can easily turn into the very opposite.

>>20185727
Wagner is Mishima before Mishima. His Patriotism was based on Tristan und Isolde, and his film adaptation used the music from the opera, and the Sea of Fertility Tetralogy is based on the Ring cycle. His focus on youth, and the fusion of eros and thanatos, is what most attracted Mishima. But no doubt his nationalism did as well.

>Art is the highest expression of activity of a race that has developed its physical beauty in unison with itself and Nature; and man must reap the highest joy from the world of sense, before he can mould therefrom the implements of his art; for from the world of sense alone, can he derive so much as the impulse to artistic creation.

>>20141512
>That one rejected gift: "the ne'er contented mind, that ever broods the New," the youngest Norn holds out to all of us when we are born, and through it alone might we each, one day, become a "Genius;" but now, in our craze for education, 'tis Chance alone that brings this gift within our grasp,—the accident of not becoming educated (erzogen). Secure against the refusal of a father who died beside my cradle, perchance the Norn, so often chased away, stole gently to it, and there bestowed on me her gift; which never left poor untrained me, and made Life and Art and mine own self my only, quite anarchic, educators.—

>>20127235
>Man, acting in conformity with his organisation, has recourse to endless expedients in order to grasp the Universe as a whole: these expedients in all their endless complexity are simply a group of concepts; and in our pride at having thus attained to a concept of the world in its entirety, we lose sight of our true position, forgetting that after all we have grasped nothing but the concept, and that consequently we are simply taking pleasure in the instrument of our own making, while all the time we remain further removed than ever from the reality of the world. But the man who can find no lasting delight in the phantasms of this illusion, at last, becomes conscious that his own mind rebels against its tyranny. He recognises the unreality of this barren illusion and feels impelled to turn to reality and to approach it by means of feeling. Then the question arises: how is this to be done, seeing that reality conceived of as a whole can only be made intelligible to the intellect, and cannot be brought into relation with feeling? It can only be done by recognising that the essence of reality consists of infinite multiplicity. This inexhaustible multiplicity, incessantly renewed and renewing, can only be apprehended by feeling, as the one ever-present though ever-varying element. This variability is the essence of the real; the unreal, or that which is imagined, alone being invariable and immutable. Nothing but what is variable can be real. To be real-to live-what is it but to be born, to grow, to bloom, to wither and to die? Without death as a necessary concomitant, there is no possibility of life: that alone has no end which has no beginning; but nothing real can be without beginning, only abstract ideas.

>That one rejected gift: "the ne'er contented mind, that ever broods the New," the youngest Norn holds out to all of us when we are born, and through it alone might we each, one day, become a "Genius;" but now, in our craze for education, 'tis Chance alone that brings this gift within our grasp,—the accident of not becoming educated (erzogen). Secure against the refusal of a father who died beside my cradle, perchance the Norn, so often chased away, stole gently to it, and there bestowed on me her gift; which never left poor untrained me, and made Life and Art and mine own self my only, quite anarchic, educators.—

>>20104223
>Dear Uhlig! You once let slip that you still were guilty of a conservative weakness for collecting autographs. As Christmas is just upon us, it gives me pleasure to supply that weakness with a friendly sop. In the name of God, then, conserve this manuscript as pertaining to your household goods. But above all take cheer from the binding, in which I have endeavoured to reverse Goethe's saying: 'Grey, my friend, is every theory,' so that I may call to you with a good conscience: 'Red, o friend, is this my theory!' Zurich, December 21, 1851. Yours, Richard Wagner.
>To Philosophy and not to Art, belong the two thousand years which, since the decadence of Grecian Tragedy, have passed till our own day.

>in its flowering time the Grecian Art was conservative, because it was a worthy and adequate expression of the public conscience: with us, true Art is revolutionary, because its very existence is opposed to the ruling spirit of the community.
Is this still true?

>>19922326
>For years I had come across his name in the newspapers, and always under extraordinary circumstances. He turned up in Paris at a Polish gathering, but although he was a Russian, he declared that it mattered little whether a man were a Russian or a Pole, so long as he wanted to be a free man, and that this was all that mattered. I heard afterwards, through George Herwegh, that he had renounced all his sources of income as a member of an influential Russian family, and that one day, when his entire fortune consisted of two francs, he had given them away to a beggar on the boulevard, because it was irksome to him to be bound by this possession to take any thought for the morrow. [...] When I met him, therefore, under the humble shelter of Rockel's roof, I was immediately struck by his singular and altogether imposing personality. He was in the full bloom of manhood, anywhere between thirty and forty years of age. Everything about him was colossal, and he was full of a primitive exuberance and strength. I never gathered that he set much store by my acquaintance. Indeed, he did not seem to care for merely intellectual men; what he demanded was men of reckless energy. As I afterwards perceived, theory in this case had more weight with him than purely personal sentiment; and he talked much and expatiated freely on the matter. His general mode of discussion was the Socratic method, and he seemed quite at his ease when, stretched on his host's hard sofa, he could argue discursively with a crowd of all sorts of men on the problems of revolution. On these occasions he invariably got the best of the argument. It was impossible to triumph against his opinions, stated as they were with the utmost conviction, and overstepping in every direction even the extremest bounds of radicalism. So communicative was he, that on the very first evening of our meeting he gave me full details about the various stages of his development, he was a Russian officer of high birth, but smarting under the yoke of the narrowest martial tyranny, he had been led by a study of Rousseau's writings to escape to Germany under pretence of taking furlough. In Berlin he had flung himself into the study of philosophy with all the zest of a barbarian newly awakened to civilisation. Hegel's philosophy was the one which was the rage at that moment, and he soon became such an expert in it, that he had been able to hurl that master's most famous disciples from the saddle of their own philosophy, in a thesis couched in terms of the strictest Hegelian dialectic.

>>19689417
>For this is the essence of true Religion: that, away from the cheating show of the daytide world, it shines in the night of man's inmost heart, with a light quite other than the world-sun's light, and visible nowhence save from out that depth.
- Wagner's State and Religion

>I, too, felt driven to this "Whence and Wherefore?" and for long it banned me from the magic of my art. But my time of penance taught me to overcome the question. All doubt at last was taken from me when I gave myself up to the Tristan. Here, in perfect trustfulness, I plunged into the inner depths of soul-events, and from the inmost centre of the world I fearlessly built up its outer form. . . Life and death, the whole import and existence of the outer world, here hang on nothing but the inner movements of the soul. The whole affecting Action comes about for reason only that the inmost soul demands it, and steps to light with the very shape foretokened in the inner shrine.
- The Music of the Future

>The mystic is the man for me…the man who feels the urge to ignite for himself the inner light in contrast to the outer brightness which shows him nothing. The name of illuminati was for this reason very aptly chosen, only, as Schopenhauer rightly says, one must be able to strip off the layers which the catechism spreads over such natures.
- The Diaries of Cosima Wagner March 17, 1873

>>19506984
>I too, as I have told you, felt driven to this "Whence and wherefore?" and for long it banned me from the magic of my art. But my time of penance taught me to overcome the question. All doubt at last was taken from me, when I gave myself up to the Tristan. Here, in perfect trustfulness, I plunged into the inner depths of soul events, and from out this inmost center of the world I fearlessly built up its outer form. A glance at the volumen of this poem will show you at once that the exhaustive detail-work which a historical poet is obliged to devote to clearing up the outward bearings of his plot, to the detriment of a lucid exposition of its inner motives, I now trusted myself to apply to these latter alone. Life and death, the whole import and existence of the outer world, here hang on nothing but the inner movements of the soul. The whole affecting action comes about for reason only that the inmost soul demands it, and steps to light with the very shape foretokened in the inner shrine.

>>19148365
>creates the perfect synthesis between German Idealism and Materialism with the neckbeard

>>19019331
Wagner's description of him:

>It was long before this date that I first made the acquaintance of this most remarkable man. For years I had come across his name in the newspapers, and always under extraordinary circumstances. He turned up in Paris at a Polish gathering, but although he was a Russian, he declared that it mattered little whether a man were a Russian or a Pole, so long as he wanted to be a free man, and that this was all that mattered. I heard afterwards, through George Herwegh, that he had renounced all his sources of income as a member of an influential Russian family, and that one day, when his entire fortune consisted of two francs, he had given them away to a beggar on the boulevard, because it was irksome to him to be bound by this possession to take any thought for the morrow. [...] When I met him, therefore, under the humble shelter of Rockel's roof, I was immediately struck by his singular and altogether imposing personality. He was in the full bloom of manhood, anywhere between thirty and forty years of age. Everything about him was colossal, and he was full of a primitive exuberance and strength. I never gathered that he set much store by my acquaintance. Indeed, he did not seem to care for merely intellectual men; what he demanded was men of reckless energy. As I afterwards perceived, theory in this case had more weight with him than purely personal sentiment; and he talked much and expatiated freely on the matter. His general mode of discussion was the Socratic method, and he seemed quite at his ease when, stretched on his host's hard sofa, he could argue discursively with a crowd of all sorts of men on the problems of revolution. On these occasions he invariably got the best of the argument. It was impossible to triumph against his opinions, stated as they were with the utmost conviction, and overstepping in every direction even the extremest bounds of radicalism. So communicative was he, that on the very first evening of our meeting he gave me full details about the various stages of his development, he was a Russian officer of high birth, but smarting under the yoke of the narrowest martial tyranny, he had been led by a study of Rousseau's writings to escape to Germany under pretence of taking furlough. In Berlin he had flung himself into the study of philosophy with all the zest of a barbarian newly awakened to civilisation. Hegel's philosophy was the one which was the rage at that moment, and he soon became such an expert in it, that he had been able to hurl that master's most famous disciples from the saddle of their own philosophy, in a thesis couched in terms of the strictest Hegelian dialectic.

>Take Goethe, who held Christ for problematical, but the good God for wholly proven, albeit retaining the liberty to discover the latter in Nature after his own fashion; which led to all manner of physical assays and experiments, whose continued pursuit was bound, in turn, to lead the present reigning human intellect to the result that there's no God whatever, but only "Force and Matter."

>>18217340
>Here lies Wagner, who came to nothing:
>Decorated not even by the crummiest order;
>Couldn't lure a dog out from behind the stove;
>Didn't get even [so much as] a university doctorate.
>Hier liegt Wagner, der nichts geworden,
>Nicht einmal Ritter vom lumpigsten Orden;
>Nicht einen Hund hinterm Ofen entlockt 'er,
>Universitäten nicht mal ’nen Doktor.
- written before the success of Rienzi

Was he the only sozialrevolutionären Dichterkomponisten in history?

>tfw you will never be a sozialrevolutionären Dichterkomponisten

>>17786537
Science disproves you.

I'll begin.

>"Wagner read through Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation several times, well after he had already written several operas as well as his important early books on opera theory. After reading Schopenhauer (beginning in 1854 when Nietzsche was a church-going ten year old), Wagner’s previously held view—that the different, individual arts enjoyed a state of basic equality within the Gesamtkunstwerk—came to an end."
>Wagner continues to be a revolutionary to the end of his life and retains his Pantheistic worldview.