/lit/ - Literature

>>22168233
>At 12 o’clock a sitting for the French painter Renoir, whom R. jokingly claims to have mistaken for Victor Noir (a french-jewish journalist shot dead by Prince Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte in 1870). This artist, belonging to the Impressionists, who paint everything bright and in full sunlight, amuses R. with his excitement and his many grimaces as he works, so much so that R. tells him he is the painter from the "FIiegende Blätter". Of the very curious blue-and-pink result R. says that it makes him look like the embryo of an angel, an oyster swallowed by an epicure.

>>21346930
>Attack and defence, want and war, victory and defeat, lordship and thraldom, all sealed with the seal of blood: this from henceforth is the History of Man. The victory of the stronger is followed close by enervation through a culture taught them by their conquered thralls; whereon, uprooting of the degenerate by fresh raw forces, of blood-thirst still unslaked. Then, falling lower and yet lower, the only worthy food for the world-conqueror appears to be human blood and corpses: the Feast of Thyestes would have been impossible among the Indians; but with such ghastly pictures could the human fancy play, now that the murder of man and beast had nothing strange for it. And why should the imagination of civilised modern man recoil in horror from such pictures, when it has accustomed itself to the sight of a Parisian slaughter-house in its early-morning traffic, and perhaps of a field of carnage on the evening of some glorious victory? In truth we seem to have merely improved on the spirit of Thyestes' feast, developing a heartless blindness to things that lay before our oldest ancestors in all their naked horror. Even those nations which had thrust as conquerors into hither-Asia could still express their consternation at the depths to which they had sunk, and we find them evolving such earnest religious ideas as lie at root of the Parsee creed of Zoroaster. Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Ormuszd and Ahriman, Strife and Work, Creation and Destruction:—"Sons of the Light, have fear of the Shadow, propitiate the Evil and follow the Good!"—We here perceive a spirit still akin to the old Indus-people, but caught in the toils of sin, and doubting as to the issue of a never quite decisive fight.
>But yet another issue from the degradation of its innate nobleness was sought by the baffled will of the human race, becoming conscious of its sinfulness through pain and suffering; to highly-gifted stocks, though the Good fell hard, the Beautiful was easy. In full avowal of the Will-to-live, the Greek mind did not indeed avoid the awful side of life, but turned this very knowledge to a matter of artistic contemplation: it saw the terrible with wholest truth, but this truth itself became the spur to a re-presentment whose very truthfulness was beautiful. In the workings of the Grecian spirit we thus are made spectators of a kind of pastime, a play in whose vicissitudes the joy of Shaping seeks to counteract the awe of Knowing. Content with this, rejoicing in the semblance, since it has banned therein its truthfulness of knowledge, it asks not after the goal of Being, and like the Parsee creed it leaves the fight of Good and Evil undecided; willing to pay for a lovely life by death, it merely strives to beautify death also.

(1/2)

>>21270956
>anti-intellectualism
Wagner is the prime representation of that line of thought in European culture, and is in many other respects Europe's first vitalist artist. Mishima was always attracted to Wagner, with his fusion of eros and thanatos, worship of youth, nationalism, etc., and his Tristan and Ring being important influences on Patriotism and Sea of Fertility.

>Above the ruins of tragic art was heard the cry of the mad laughter of Aristophanes, the maker of comedies; and, at the bitter end, every impulse of Art stood still before Philosophy, who read with gloomy mien her homilies upon the fleeting stay of human strength and beauty.
>To Philosophy and not to Art, belong the two thousand years which, since the decadence of Grecian Tragedy, have passed till our own day.
>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.

>The end of Science is the justifying of the Unconscious, the giving of self−consciousness to Life, the re−instatement of the Senses in their perceptive rights, the sinking of Caprice in the Want of Necessity. Science is therefore the vehicle of Knowledge, her procedure mediate, her goal an intermediation; but Life is the great Ultimate, a law unto itself. As Science melts away into the recognition of the ultimate and self−determinate reality, of actual Life itself: so does this avowal win its frankest, most direct expression in Art, or rather in the Work of Art.
>The actual Art−work, i.e. its immediate physical portrayal, in the moment of its liveliest embodiment, is therefore the only true redemption of the artist; the uprootal of the final trace of busy, purposed choice; the confident determination of what was hitherto a mere imagining; the enfranchisement of thought in sense; the assuagement of the life−need in Life itself.
>The Art−work, thus conceived as an immediate vital act, is therewith the perfect reconcilement of Science with Life, the laurel−wreath which the vanquished, redeemed by her defeat, reaches in joyous homage to her acknowledged victor.

>>20287546
>What Hegel asserted concerning art-that it had lost its power to be the definite fashioner and preserver of the absolute-Nietzsche recognized to be the case with the "highest values," religion, morality, and philosophy: the lack of creative force and cohesion in grounding man's historical existence upon beings as a whole. Whereas for Hegel it was art-in contrast to religion, morality, and philosophy-that fell victim to nihilism and became a thing of the past, something nonactual, for Nietzsche art is to be pursued as the countermovement. In spite of Nietzsche's essential departure from Wagner, we see in this an outgrowth of the Wagnerian will to the "collective artwork." Whereas for Hegel art as a thing of the past became an object of the highest speculative knowledge, so that Hegel's aesthetics assumed the shape of a metaphysics of spirit, Nietzsche's meditation on art becomes a "physiology of art."

>>19787193
>At 12 o’clock a sitting for the French painter Renoir, whom R. jokingly claims to have mistaken for Victor Noir (a french-jewish journalist shot dead by Prince Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte in 1870). This artist, belonging to the Impressionists, who paint everything bright and in full sunlight, amuses R. with his excitement and his many grimaces as he works, so much so that R. tells him he is the painter from the "FIiegende Blätter". Of the very curious blue-and-pink result R. says that it makes him look like the embryo of an angel, an oyster swallowed by an epicure.

>Wagner had hoped that Parsifal, the “pinnacle of my achievements,” would “preserve the world’s profoundest secret the truest Christian faith, nay to awaken that faith anew!”

>>18031228
In Search of Lost Time, Ulysses, etc., all just attempts to do the Gesamtkunstwerk in literature.

>>17523931
Nietzsche is inextricable from Wagner. You cannot talk about Nietzsche without eventually talking about Wagner.

>>17446573
What do you guys think about the dialogue that Wagner sets up between East and West, Christianity and Buddhism, in his Parsifal?

>>17161977
He's a brilliant thinker, and in many respects of his thought (especially on art), still hasn't been superseded. Most of early Nietzsche's understanding of art comes from Wagner, and it's a mistake to think he necessarily went beyond Wagner's own ideas on art, or even covered much of the same breadth of Wagner's ideas on it. A lot can be said about him and his lifelong writing, but I recommend starting with his later works at least post 1860, being much easier to understand and the final conclusions of his life. Specifically his "Regeneration writings," literally the very last things he ever wrote.

- Religion and Art
- "What Boots this Knowledge?"
- Know Thyself
- Introduction to a work of Count Gobineau's
- Hero-dom and Christendom (last finished essay)

Other very worthwhile works of his (mostly later years) are:

- Judaism in Music
- Beethoven (1870, and his major book on art post-1860, the only work of his with a modern translation but will cost you over a $100 to get)
- The Destiny of Opera
- What is German?
- Modern (continuation of Judaism in Music)
- On Poetry and Composition

He also has a beautiful and sweet short story trilogy about a young German composer who considers himself a disciple to Beethoven, and are very useful for understand Wagner's early understanding and feeling about art, such as his lifelong obsession with unifying word and music:

- A Pilgrimage to Beethoven
- An End in Paris
- A Happy Evening

That said, he doesn't feel it necessary to restate everything he has said in the past. At this point you might as well dive into his major works from the middle of the century, where most of his thought on art, history, science, psychology and generally philosophy are included. Though there is much of it he would later reject or improve upon, and is written with the brashness and arguably unnecessary length (most of them are book-long) of a younger Wagner which can make it difficult to tell what he's exactly trying to say, they are extremely brilliant, original and important works. But a philosopher not being his primary disposition, and feeling the need to say much and all with an artistic slant, so as to convey the meaningful feeling prior to these ideas, he crams a lot into each paragraph. Often ideas of his can sound more eccentric than they are because of this, but with persistence you'll understand. They are (from what I know):

- Art and Revolution
- The Art-Work of the Future
- A Communication to my Friends
- Opera and Drama

But there is one problem in reading Wagner in English, the only translation of any of his prose works (except his Beethoven) is from the 1890's, incredibly poor and often purposefully mistranslates for the benefit of Wagner's reception in England at the time. For the most part it suffices, though it makes those already arduous revolutionary (mid-century) works incredibly tiresome. If you can read German then find the originals.

>>16814592
>""Property" is practically held to be more sacred than religion in our state-run society: for offence against the latter there is lenience, for damage to the former no forgiveness. Since property is deemed the foundation of our entire existence as a society, it seems all the more destructive that we do not all own property, and that the greatest part of society even comes disinherited into the world. Society is thus manifestly reduced by its own principle to such a state of dangerous discontent, that it is forced to estimate all its laws to the impossibly of settling this antagonism. Protection of property, in its widest universal legal sense — what armed force is selectively maintained for — can truly mean nothing else than a defence of the Haves [Besitzenden] against the Have-Nots [Nichtbesitzenden]. As many serious and keen calculating minds have applied themselves to the study of the problem before us, a solution to this — the final one perhaps being an equal distribution of all property — is something nobody has wished to bring to fruition [glücken wollen]; and it seems as if, through state exploitation of an apparently so simple a concept as property, a stake had been driven into the body of mankind that makes it waste away from the misery of a painful illness."
>"Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about the invention of money and its enormous value as a civiliser, against such praises should be set the curse to which it has always been doomed in song and legend. If gold here figures as the demon strangling manhood's innocence, our greatest poet shews at last the goblin's game of paper money. The Nibelung's fateful ring become a pocket-book, might well complete the eerie picture of the spectral world-controller. By the advocates of our Progressive Civilisation this rulership is indeed regarded as a spiritual, nay, a moral power; for vanished Faith is now replaced by "Credit," that fiction of our mutual honesty kept upright by the most elaborate safeguards against loss and trickery. What comes to pass beneath the benedictions of this Credit we now are witnessing, and seem inclined to lay all blame upon the Jews."

Why was he so based?

>>16785911
>W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived"
I can say what Sophocles or Shakespeare, or Beethoven's, art amounts to in life, but as for Wagner I cannot. It is so beautiful, but I fail to see its relation to life, or one as large as it is as an artwork, as I feel in it.

Art without life is vapid, and life without art; or beauty, is lost. What was it Holderlin said again?

>In life learn art, in the artwork learn life. If you see the one correctly you see the other also.
Now, what do I see in life correctly from Richard Wagner?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIU97BmRKSY