/lit/ - Literature

>>23697104
Wagner's Siegfried drama, and his prose writings.

>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.
- Art and Revolution

>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 Artwork of the Future

>That which a man loves, that deems he beautiful; that which strong, free Men—who in community are all that of their essence they can be—that which they love in common, that is in very surety beautiful. No other natural standard exists for true, not inculcated, Beauty.
- Art and Climate

>In the struggle to give the wishes of my heart artistic shape, and in the ardour to discover what thing it was that drew me so resistlessly to the primal source of old home Sagas, I drove step by step into the deeper regions of antiquity, where at last to my delight, and truly in the utmost reaches of old time, I was to light upon the fair young form of Man, in all the freshness of his force. My studies thus bore me, through the legends of the Middle Ages, right down to their foundation in the old-Germanic Mythos; one swathing after another, which the later legendary lore had bound around it, I was able to unloose, and thus at last to gaze upon it in its chastest beauty. What here I saw, was no longer the Figure of conventional history, whose garment claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside; but the real naked Man, in whom I might spy each throbbing of his pulses, each stir within his mighty muscles, in uncramped, freest motion: the type of the true human being.
- A Communication to my Friends

>>23622264
Also the music of Siegfried is the most typically anti-decadent music ever created, even by Nietzsche's standards, who praised Siegfried as a sin against romanticism in Beyond Good and Evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08vTtu4pmjk

>>23555526
Siegfried is a being much like the youth in the fairy tale who goes out into the world that he may learn what fear is, which he quite fails to do, owing to his healthy natural instincts and his inability to see things otherwise than as they actually are.

The development of the whole poem sets forth the necessity of recognising and yielding to the change, the many-sidedness, the multiplicity, the eternal renewing of reality and of life. Wotan rises to the tragic height of willing his own destruction. This is the lesson that we have to learn from the history of mankind: to will what necessity imposes, and ourselves to bring it about. The creative product of this supreme, self-destroying will, its victorious achievement, is a fearless human being, one who never ceases to love: Siegfried. That is the whole matter.

I do not mean my hero to make the impression of a wholly unconscious creature: on the contrary, I have sought in Siegfried to represent my ideal of the perfect human being, whose highest consciousness manifests itself in the acknowledgment that all consciousness must find expression in present life and action.

The enormous significance that I attach to this consciousness which can scarcely ever find adequate expression in mere words, will be quite clear to you in the scene between Siegfried and the Rhine-daughters. Here we see that infinite wisdom has come to Siegfried, for he has grasped the highest truth and knows that death is better than a life of fear: knowledge of the ring, too, has come to him, but he does not heed its power, for he has something better to do; he keeps it only as a proof that he at least has never learnt what fear means.

>>23383828
Wagner's Art and Revolution. Also his Siegfried drama, which expresses all the vitality and inner development of a masculine nature in music.

>The free Greek, who set himself upon the pinnacle of Nature, could procreate Art from very joy in manhood. 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.

>From the dishonouring slave−yoke of universal journeymanhood, with its sickly Money−soul, we wish to soar to the free manhood of Art, with the star−rays of its World−soul; from the weary, overburdened day−labourers of Commerce, we desire to grow to fair strong men, to whom the world belongs as an eternal, inexhaustible source of the highest delights of Art.

>In the struggle to give the wishes of my heart artistic shape, and in the ardour to discover what thing it was that drew me so resistlessly to the primal source of old home Sagas, I drove step by step into the deeper regions of antiquity, where at last to my delight, and truly in the utmost reaches of old time, I was to light upon the fair young form of Man, in all the freshness of his force. My studies thus bore me, through the legends of the Middle Ages, right down to their foundation in the old-Germanic Mythos; one swathing after another, which the later legendary lore had bound around it, I was able to unloose, and thus at last to gaze upon it in its chastest beauty. What here I saw, was no longer the Figure of conventional history, whose garment claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside; but the real naked Man, in whom I might spy each throbbing of his pulses, each stir within his mighty muscles, in uncramped, freest motion: the type of the true human being.

Books about superhumans or demigods? Why does it seem as if almost all representations of this concept in literature, outside of the original products of mythology, are confined to the lowest spheres of pulp and entertainment? It's as if modern artistry is too faint to recuperate this vital element of the popular imagination.

Has anyone here even read "Das Nibelungenlied".
It seems to be such an important part of German art and culture.
The tale is well known to every German and it most definetly had influence on many great german writers and also musicians (Wagner).
The tale is the german equivalent of the Illiad yet I never see it dicussed here.
Don't Start with the Greeks if you want to read any German philosopher or writer, rather "Start with the Nibelungenlied!"