/lit/ - Literature

>>19290259
>Day – Night. –
>The Hellenes had a fine sense of the sanctity of night. The profoundest sense of it must have been revealed to those attending the great performances of the Oresteia of Aeschylus. This began in daylight: Agamemnon – complete human error – crime – desire. Afternoon: Electra – revenge – expiation – punishment. With the Eumenides dusk falls; at the end fully night: the young men escort the appeased, reconciled daemons of revenge in torchlight procession to their nocturnal place of rest. –
>Now the sanctity of the night feeling gives birth to playful merriment also: fauns and satyrs tease each other by torchlight, jocular dismay and disappointment – drunks scrambling for resting-place. The world lightly sheds its burdensome seriousness, and – peace becomes possible. – Here sleep – there death! –

>>19265858
Parsifal is re-Hellenized Christianity.

>'Without embarking on an inquiry into the mystery just mooted, we yet must call to mind the distinction between the modern culture poet and the naive poet of the ancient world. The latter was in the first place an inventor of Myths, then their word-of-mouth narrator in the Epos, and finally their personal performer in the living Drama. Plato was the first to adopt all three poetic forms for his "dialogues," so filled with dramatic life and so rich in myth-invention; and these scenes of his may be regarded as the foundation nay, in the poet-philosopher's glorious "Symposium," the model unapproached—of strictly literary poetry, which always leans to the didactic. Here the forms of naive poetry are merely employed to set philosophic theses in a quasi-popular light, and conscious tendence takes the place of the directly-witnessed scene from life.'
>One day, over lunch, Wagner rates Plato's Symposium above all other literary works: 'In Shakespeare we see Nature as it is, here we have the artistic awareness of the benefactor added; what would the world know about redeeming beauty without Plato?'

>>19216732
>To the French, as representatives of modern civilisation, Shakespeare, considered seriously, to this day is a monstrosity; and even to the Germans he has remained a subject of constantly renewed investigation, with so little [142] positive result that the most conflicting views and statements are forever cropping up again. Thus has this most bewildering of dramatists—already set down by some as an utterly irresponsible and untamed genius, without one trace of artistic culture—quite recently been credited again with the most systematic tendence of the didactic poet. Goethe, after introducing him in "Wilhelm Meister" as an "admirable writer," kept returning to the problem with increasing caution, and finally decided that here the higher tendence was to be sought, not in the poet, but in the embodied characters he brought before us in immediate action. Yet the closer these figures were inspected, the greater riddle became the artist's method: though the main plan of a piece was easy to perceive, and it was impossible to mistake the consequent development of its plot, for the most part pre-existing in the source selected, yet the marvellous "accidentiæ" in its working out, as also in the bearing of its dramatis personae, were inexplicable on any hypothesis of deliberate artistic scheming. Here we found such drastic individuality, that it often seemed like unaccountable caprice, whose sense we never really fathomed till we closed the book and saw the living drama move before our eyes; then stood before us life's own image, mirrored with resistless truth to nature, and filled us with the lofty terror of a ghostly vision. But how decipher in this magic spell the tokens of an "artwork"? Was the author of these plays a poet?

>What little we know of his life makes answer with outspoken naïvety: he was a play-actor and manager, who wrote for himself and his troop these pieces that in after days amazed and poignantly perplexed our greatest poets; pieces that for the most part would not so much as have come down to us, had the unpretending prompt-books of the Globe Theatre not been rescued from oblivion in the nick of time by the printing-press. Lope de Vega, scarcely less a wonder, wrote his pieces from one day to the next in immediate contact with his actors and the [143] stage; beside Corneille and Racine, the poets of façon, there stands the actor Molière, in whom alone production was alive; and midst his tragedy sublime stood Æschylus, the leader of its chorus.—Not to the Poet, but to the Dramatist must we look, for light upon the Drama's nature; and he stands no nearer to the poet proper than to the mime himself, from whose heart of hearts he must issue if as poet he means to "hold the mirror up to Nature."

>Goethe, Cervantes saw and created characters, D. Q., Sancho, Faust, Mephisto; Dante, Vergil were wanderers who looked around them, whereas Aeschylus spoke like a priest in the midst of a community. Shakespeare neither the one nor the other, the most enigmatic of them all.
Is he right?

Is he the only good German comic writer?

Is the Ring a Marxist, Fascist, Hegelian, Schopenhauerian, Feuerbachian, Humanist, White supremacist, Revolutionary, Conservative, Anarchist, Buddhist, Pagan or Christian work?

>>19001967

>'Nothing could equal the sublime emotion with which the Agamemnon inspired me, and to the last word of the Eumenides I remained in an atmosphere so far removed from the present day that I have never since been really able to reconcile myself with modern literature.'
>'My ideas about the whole significance of the drama and of the theater were, without a doubt, molded by these impressions'
>On the last day of his life, the great German composer and theatre director said of Aeschylus, 'my admiration for him never ceases to grow'.

https://georgekokkos.com/2020/08/31/wagner-and-aeschylus/

>>18555259
>ONE might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion by recognising the figurative value of the mythic symbols which the former would have us believe in their literal sense, and revealing their deep and hidden truth through an ideal presentation. Whilst the priest stakes everything on the religious allegories being accepted as matters of fact, the artist has no concern at all with such a thing, since he freely and openly gives out his work as his own invention. But Religion has sunk into an artificial life, when she finds herself compelled to keep on adding to the edifice of her dogmatic symbols, and thus conceals the one divinely True in her beneath an ever growing heap of incredibilities commended to belief. Feeling this, she has always sought the aid of Art; who on her side has remained incapable of higher evolution so long as she must present that alleged reality of the symbol to the senses of the worshipper in form of fetishes and idols,—whereas she could only, fulfil her true vocation when, by an ideal presentment of the allegoric figure, she led to apprehension of its inner kernel, the truth ineffably divine.

>Yet a further feature was drawn to our attention, which was not just characteristic of this final period of his life. It was not possible to keep anything hidden from him; he always knew everything. When Mrs Wagner wanted to give him a surprise of any sort, it would turn out that he had dreamt about it the previous night and told her in the morning. This ability to see through people often appeared demonic, particularly with strangers: his penetrating gaze would enable him to discern a person's foibles at a glance and it often happened that, even though he had no wish to offend a person, he nevertheless touched on the sorest points.

>>18423765
>[Richard] earnestly reproached Malwida [von Meysenbug] for not having her ward baptised. This was not right, he said, not everyone could fashion his religion for himself, and particularly in childhood one must have a feeling of cohesion. Nor should one be left to choose: rather it should be possible to say, You have been christened, you belong through baptism to Christ, now unite yourself once more with him through Holy Communion. Christening and Communion are indispensable, he said. No amount of knowledge can ever approach the effect of the latter. People who evade religion have a terrible shallowness, and are unable to feel anything in a religious spirit. (Cosima's Diary entry for 12 December 1873)

>Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit
No seriously, what did he mean by this?

>word and music haven't been united since the Greeks
Did he succeed in uniting them?

>To the French, as representatives of modern civilisation, Shakespeare, considered seriously, to this day is a monstrosity; and even to the Germans he has remained a subject of constantly renewed investigation, with so little [142] positive result that the most conflicting views and statements are forever cropping up again. Thus has this most bewildering of dramatists—already set down by some as an utterly irresponsible and untamed genius, without one trace of artistic culture—quite recently been credited again with the most systematic tendence of the didactic poet. Goethe, after introducing him in "Wilhelm Meister" as an "admirable writer," kept returning to the problem with increasing caution, and finally decided that here the higher tendence was to be sought, not in the poet, but in the embodied characters he brought before us in immediate action. Yet the closer these figures were inspected, the greater riddle became the artist's method: though the main plan of a piece was easy to perceive, and it was impossible to mistake the consequent development of its plot, for the most part pre-existing in the source selected, yet the marvellous "accidentiæ" in its working out, as also in the bearing of its dramatis personae, were inexplicable on any hypothesis of deliberate artistic scheming. Here we found such drastic individuality, that it often seemed like unaccountable caprice, whose sense we never really fathomed till we closed the book and saw the living drama move before our eyes; then stood before us life's own image, mirrored with resistless truth to nature, and filled us with the lofty terror of a ghostly vision. But how decipher in this magic spell the tokens of an "artwork"? Was the author of these plays a poet?

>What little we know of his life makes answer with outspoken naïvety: he was a play-actor and manager, who wrote for himself and his troop these pieces that in after days amazed and poignantly perplexed our greatest poets; pieces that for the most part would not so much as have come down to us, had the unpretending prompt-books of the Globe Theatre not been rescued from oblivion in the nick of time by the printing-press. Lope de Vega, scarcely less a wonder, wrote his pieces from one day to the next in immediate contact with his actors and the [143] stage; beside Corneille and Racine, the poets of façon, there stands the actor Molière, in whom alone production was alive; and midst his tragedy sublime stood Æschylus, the leader of its chorus.—Not to the Poet, but to the Dramatist must we look, for light upon the Drama's nature; and he stands no nearer to the poet proper than to the mime himself, from whose heart of hearts he must issue if as poet he means to "hold the mirror up to Nature."

>>16861738
>He used his eyes above all else, and repeatedly referred to them as the most important means of communicating the conductor’s wishes. Consequently his outward passion was more restrained; it revealed itself at the end when people noticed his very heavy perspiration. The sight was always an aesthetic one for the audience, without any of the exaggerated gesticulation which is so popular nowadays and creates the impression that the ultimate object of the music is the conductor, and the work being performed is incidental. It was his eyes that electrified.”
---Siegfried Wagner writing about his father’s conducting style

>These rehearsals convinced me that Richard Wagner was not only the greatest dramatist of all time, but also the greatest of managers, and a marvelous character actor as well. Now at the end of these long thirty years I can still distinctly recall certain incidents of his wonderful mimetic powers. I never hear a performance of Tannhäuser or Lohengrin without his image rising before me in certain scenes. How wonderfully he took the part of Tannhäuser finding himself at the crossways in the forest after his release from the enchantments of Venusberg. Riveted to the spot, he stood like a graven image, with arms upraised; then gradually, at the entrance of the pilgrims, came to life with a tremendous shuddering start, and finally, overcome with emotion, sand to the ground as the chorus proceeded; to break out at the end in his great cry—‘Ach, schwer drückt mich der Sünden Last!’ What stately dignity and what knightly fire he put into this role as Tannhäuser listens to the song of Wolfram. Then in the final great scene of the first act how he dominated, moved, and inspired his company—assigning places, prescribing gestures, and arranging expressions, till the tableau was perfect and the whole cortége, Landgrave, knights, chorus, horses, and dogs took their places with utmost artistic precision. These were moments to make an indelible impression on my mind.”
---Director Angelo Neumann, recalling Wagner’s fantastic stage managing and acting skills during rehearsals and performances of Tannhäuser in Vienna in 1875.

Why were his eyes so electric?

>>16832183
>He used his eyes above all else, and repeatedly referred to them as the most important means of communicating the conductor’s wishes. Consequently his outward passion was more restrained; it revealed itself at the end when people noticed his very heavy perspiration. The sight was always an aesthetic one for the audience, without any of the exaggerated gesticulation which is so popular nowadays and creates the impression that the ultimate object of the music is the conductor, and the work being performed is incidental. It was his eyes that electrified.”
---Siegfried Wagner writing about his father’s conducting style

>These rehearsals convinced me that Richard Wagner was not only the greatest dramatist of all time, but also the greatest of managers, and a marvelous character actor as well. Now at the end of these long thirty years I can still distinctly recall certain incidents of his wonderful mimetic powers. I never hear a performance of Tannhäuser or Lohengrin without his image rising before me in certain scenes. How wonderfully he took the part of Tannhäuser finding himself at the crossways in the forest after his release from the enchantments of Venusberg. Riveted to the spot, he stood like a graven image, with arms upraised; then gradually, at the entrance of the pilgrims, came to life with a tremendous shuddering start, and finally, overcome with emotion, sand to the ground as the chorus proceeded; to break out at the end in his great cry—‘Ach, schwer drückt mich der Sünden Last!’ What stately dignity and what knightly fire he put into this role as Tannhäuser listens to the song of Wolfram. Then in the final great scene of the first act how he dominated, moved, and inspired his company—assigning places, prescribing gestures, and arranging expressions, till the tableau was perfect and the whole cortége, Landgrave, knights, chorus, horses, and dogs took their places with utmost artistic precision. These were moments to make an indelible impression on my mind.”
---Director Angelo Neumann, recalling Wagner’s fantastic stage managing and acting skills during rehearsals and performances of Tannhäuser in Vienna in 1875.

Why were his eyes so electric?