/lit/ - Literature

>>23373203
Indisputably the instinct of preservation is stronger than one commonly supposes: the Roman Empire maintained itself in a state of dissolution for half a thousand years. The period of two-thousand years, which great historic civilisations have hitherto covered in their evolution from barbarism back to barbarism, would carry ourselves to somewhere about the middle of the next millennium. Can one imagine the state of barbarism at which we shall have arrived, if our social system continues for another six-hundred years or so in the footsteps of the declining Roman world-dominion? I believe that the Saviour's second advent, expected by the earliest Christians in their lifetime, and later cherished as a mystic dogma, might have a meaning for that future date, and perchance amid occurrences not totally unlike those sketched in the Apocalypse. For, in the conceivable event of a relapse of our whole Culture into barbarism, we may take one thing for granted: namely, that our Historical science, our criticism and chemistry of knowledge would also have come to end; whilst it may be hoped, on the contrary, that Theology would by then have come to a final agreement with the Gospels, and the free understanding of Revelation be opened to us without Jehovaistic subtleties—for which event the Saviour promised us his coming back.
And this would inaugurate a genuine popularisation of the deepest Knowledge. In this or that way to prepare the ground for cure of ills inevitable in the evolution of the human race—much as Schiller's conception of the Maid of Orleans foreran its confirmation by historical documents—might fitly be the mission of a true Art appealing to the Folk itself, to the Folk in its noblest, and at present its ideal sense. Again, to even now prepare the ground for such an Art, sublimely popular, and at all times so to prepare it that the links of oldest and of noblest art shall never wholly sunder, our instant efforts may not seem altogether futile. In any case, to such works of art alone can we ascribe ennobling Popularity; and none save this dreamt-of Popularity can react on the creations of the present, uplifting them above the commonness of what is known to-day as popular favour.

Aeschylus = Wagner > Sophocles > Euripides

>>19376546
>He who does not strive to find joy in life is unworthy to live.

>>19361446
>The four most original characters literature has given us: Hamlet, Falstaff, D.Q. and Sancho.

>>19361501
Shakespeare's entire value comes from his characters.

>>19250261
>The four most original characters literature has given us: Hamlet, Falstaff, D.Q. and Sancho.

>>18866019

>The four most original characters literature has given us are Hamlet, Falstaff, D.Q. and Sancho.
Is he right?

>>18397886
>Indisputably the instinct of preservation is stronger than one commonly supposes: the Roman Empire maintained itself in a state of dissolution for half a thousand years. The period of two-thousand years, which great historic civilisations have hitherto covered in their evolution from barbarism back to barbarism, would carry ourselves to somewhere about the middle of the next millennium. Can one imagine the state of barbarism at which we shall have arrived, if our social system continues for another six-hundred years or so in the footsteps of the declining Roman world-dominion? I believe that the Saviour's second advent, expected by the earliest Christians in their lifetime, and later cherished as a mystic dogma, might have a meaning for that future date, and perchance amid occurrences not totally unlike those sketched in the Apocalypse. For, in the conceivable event of a relapse of our whole Culture into barbarism, we may take one thing for granted : namely, that our Historical science, our criticism and chemistry of knowledge would also have come to end; whilst it may be hoped, on the contrary, that Theology would by then have come to a final agreement with the Gospels, and the free understanding of Revelation be opened to us without Jehovaistic subtleties—for which event the Saviour promised us his coming back. And this would inaugurate a genuine popularisation of the deepest Knowledge. In this or that way to prepare the ground for cure of ills inevitable in the evolution of the human race—much as Schiller's conception of the Maid of Orleans foreran its confirmation by historical documents—might fitly be the mission of a true Art appealing to the Folk itself, to the Folk in its noblest, and at present its ideal sense. Again, to even now prepare the ground for such an Art, sublimely popular, and at all times so to prepare it that the links of oldest and of noblest art shall never wholly sunder, our instant efforts may not seem altogether futile. In any case, to such works of art alone can we ascribe ennobling Popularity; and none save this dreamt-of Popularity can react on the creations of the present, uplifting them above the commonness of what is known to-day as popular favour.

What's his best character?

Or did he rely too much on music?

Is any of Wagner's scientific work worth reading?

>the feminine bearing music must be inseminated by the masculine poetry.
What did he mean by this?

>>17215014
It's called the face of genius.

>IN exact measure as any art-tendency draws near its prime, does it gain the power of closer, plainer, surer shaping. In the beginning, the Folk expresses by cries of Lyric rapture its marvel at the constant wonders of Nature's workings; in its efforts to master the object of that marvel, it condenses (verdichtet) the many-membered show of Nature into a God, and finally its God into a Hero. In this Hero, as in the convex mirror of its being, it learns to know itself; his deeds it celebrates in Epos, but itself in Drama re-enacts them. The tragic Hero of the Greeks stepped out from amid the Chorus, and, turning back to face it, cried: "Lo!—so does, so bears himself, a human being! What ye were hymning in wise saws and maxims, I set it up before you in all the cogence of Necessity."

>Greek Tragedy, in its Chorus and its Heroes, combined the Public with the Art-work: the latter held before the Folk, not only itself, but also its own judgment on itself—as it were, a concrete meditation. Now the Drama ripened into Art-work in exact measure as the interpretative judgment of the Chorus so irrefutably expressed itself in the actions of the Heroes, that the Chorus was able to step down from the stage and back into the Folk itself; thus leaving behind it only actual partakers in the living Action. (012) Shakespeare's Tragedy unconditionally stands above that of Greece, in so far as it has enabled artistic technique to dispense with the necessity of a Chorus. With Shakespeare, the Chorus is resolved into divers individuals directly interested [61] in the Action, and whose doings are governed by precisely the same promptings of individual Necessity as are those of the chief Hero himself. Even their apparent subordination in the artistic framework is merely a result of the scantier points of contact they have in common with the chief Hero, and nowise of any technical undervaluing of these lesser personages; for wherever the veriest subordinate has to take a share in the main plot, he delivers himself entirely according to his personal characteristics, his own free fancy.
- Wagner's Opera and Drama

How can anti-Shakespeare fags even cope with failing to understand the nature of drama?

>>16541250
>Is he the most controversial author
No, there is another.

What's his best work? Which of his works can you look to and go "Yeah, that's how a story should be written"?

>>16523819

>HOI HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, HOI HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, HOI HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX8aYU3-CRc

>>16408779
The Ring cycle libretto and score.

>>15373062
Come now, doubters. Redemption can only come through the redemption of another. In a complete self-sacrificing will, are you transformed into love of other. And here lies the fatal difference between Buddhist and Christian--: the Buddhist will always be willing to an unwilling, while the Christian will as much as he may, but in the spirit of conviction, willing but always willing to self-sacrifice, ones own death; it is the "free inclination" in which Schiller spoke of, and in this it is an actual Buddhism. Who could fill this (possibly human) role of conviction if not God?

>from one of Schiller's letters to Goethe:—
>"If one would lay hand on the characteristic mark of Christianity, distinguishing it from all mono-theistic religions, it lies in nothing less than the upheaval of Law, of Kant's 'Imperative,' in whose place it sets free Inclination. In its own pure form it therefore is the presentation of a beautiful morality, or of the humanising of the Holy; and in this sense it is the only æsthetic religion."—

And again, as Wagner says:
>taken strictly, they are mere forbiddals... We have no idea of entering upon a criticism of those Commandments, for we should only encounter our police and criminal legislation, to which their supervision has been committed in the interest of civic order,
>Impossible, that commandments here should bring about a knowledge only to be woken in the natural man by proper guidance to an understanding of the natural descent of all that lives.
>Only the love that springs from pity, and carries its compassion to the utmost breaking of self-will, is the redeeming Christian Love, in which Faith and Hope are both included of a—Faith as the unwavering consciousness of that moral meaning of the world, confirmed by the most divine exemplar; Hope as the blessed sense of the impossibility of any cheating of this consciousness

From earlier in the essay:
>Nevertheless it is quite appalling to find this philosophy, based as it is on the most perfect of ethics, described as shorn of hope; from which it follows, that we wish to be of good hope without the consciousness of true morality. That upon this very depravation of men's hearts rests Schopenhauer's relentless condemnation of the world—in its only aspect shewn to us by history,—affrights all those who take no pains to track the paths so plainly traced by Schopenhauer for turning the misguided Will. Yet these paths, which well may lead to hope, are clearly and distinctly pointed out by our philosopher, and it is not his fault if he was so fully occupied with the correct portrayal of the only world that lay before him, that he was compelled to leave their actual exploration to our own selves; for they brook no journeying save on foot.
Redemption through Love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2tq8fFDVys

Redemption through Love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2tq8fFDVys