Excerpts from Wagner's essay Know Thyself

[Anonymous No.21786978]

Who ever finds that "Know thyself" applied to any rating of the world? Not one Historic action do we know, that betrays this doctrine's influence on the transactors. We strike away at what we know not, and should we haply hit ourselves, we think another struck us. Who has not witnessed this once more in the present stir against the Jews, let us say, when looked at in light of that doctrine? What has given the Jews their now so dreaded power among and over us, not one man seems to stop and ponder; or if he goes into the question, he seeks no farther than the facts and phases of the last ten years, or at most a few years earlier: nowhere can we trace as yet an inclination to a deeper search into ourselves, in this case to a thorough criticism of the will and spirit of all that conglomerate of nature and civilisation which we, for instance, call the "German."

[...]

However, an inner motive plainly lies at bottom of the present movement, little as it may be evinced by the behaviour of its leaders so far. We expressed our belief, above, that this motive was the re-awakening of an instinct lost to the German nation. People speak of an antagonism of races. In this sense we should have fresh cause for self-inspection, as it would necessitate our defining the relation of certain given breeds of man to one another. Here it would probably have to be recognised at the outset that, in talking of a German "race," it would be very difficult, nay, wellnigh impossible to compare it with a race so strongly pronounced, and still unaltered, as the Jewish. When learned men debate the relative value of mixed or pure-bred races, for the evolution of mankind, the decision must surely hinge on what we mean by man's developmental progress. The so-called Romanic nations, and the English too, are praised as hybrid stocks that obviously surpass in Culture-progress the peoples of a haply pure Germanic breed. On the other hand, if one declines to be blinded by the glamour of this culture and civilisation, and seeks the welfare of mankind in its bringing-to-birth of great characters, one finds that these far rather come to light—nay, almost solely—in pure-bred races; where it seems that the still unbroken nature-force of Race at first makes up for every higher human virtue yet unformed, and only to be won through life's sore trials, by that of pride. This peculiar pride of race, that still gave us in the Middle Ages such towering characters as Princes, Kings and Kaisers, may be met even to-day in the old nobility of German origin, although in unmistakable degeneration; and that degeneration we should have to take seriously into account if we wished to explain the fall of the German Folk, now exposed defenceless to the inroads of the Jews. ...

[Anonymous No.21786982]

... For this, the proper course might be to first recall the unexampled devastation which Germany suffered through the Thirty Years War: after by far the greatest part of the male population had been rooted out of town and country, while the female had been violated to no less a degree by Walloons, Croats, Spaniards, French and Swedes, the relatively little-injured nobles may scarcely have felt themselves one racial body with the remnant of this decimated people. That feeling of community we still find markedly expressed in many a preceding epoch; and then it was the true patrician families, that contrived to re-illume the proper spirit after serious diminution of the nation's substance. This we may see in the revival of Germanic races by new offshoots from the parent stock, when tribal migration had robbed the home-stayers of their first heroic clans; we see it in the resuscitation of the German language by patrician poets of the Hohenstaufen era, after monkish Latin had become the only medium of gentility, whereas the spirit of their poetry thrust down to the peasant's hut and shaped one wholly equal speech for Folk alike and Noble; and once again we see it in the stand against the outrage foisted on the Germans by the Church of Rome, when the example of its lords and princes led the Folk to stout defence. 'Twas otherwise after the Thirty Years War: the nobles found no nation left, to which to feel their kinship; the great monarchic powers shifted from the stricter seat of Germany towards the Slavic east: degenerate Slavs, decadent Germans, form the soil of the eighteenth century's history, a soil to which the Jew might confidently migrate from a Poland and a Hungary sucked dry, since even prince and noble durst no longer be ashamed of doing business with him; for—Pride itself had just been pledged already, exchanged for vanity and greed.

Though in recent days we see these last two traits of character adopted by the Folk itself—our ancient relatives the Swiss can think of us no otherwise!—and though the title "German" has thus been almost coined anew, yet this new-birth still lacks too much, to constitute a real rebirth of racial feeling, a thing that always finds its first expression in a settled instinct. Our nation, one may say, has not the natural instinct for that which suits it, for what becomes it, helps and furthers it; estranged from itself, it dabbles in foreign manners. On none other have great and original spirits been bestowed, as on it, without its having known in time to treasure them: yet if the silliest news-writer or political cheap-jack but brazens out his lying phrases, it chooses him to represent its weightiest interests; whilst if the Jew comes tinkling with his bell of paper, it throws its savings at his feet, and makes him in one night a millionaire.

[Anonymous No.21786986]

The Jew, on the contrary, is the most astounding instance of racial congruence ever offered by world-history. Without a fatherland, a mother-tongue midst every people's land and tongue he finds himself again, in virtue of the unfailing instinct of his absolute and indelible idiosyncrasy: even commixture of blood does not hurt him; let Jew or Jewess intermarry with the most distinct of races, a Jew will always come to birth. Not into the remotest contact is he brought with the religion of any of the civilised (gesittete) nations; for in truth he has no religion at all—merely the belief in certain promises of his god which in nowise extend to a life beyond this temporal life of his, as in every true religion, but simply to this present life on earth, whereon his race is certainly ensured dominion over all that lives and lives not. Thus the Jew has need to neither think nor chatter, not even to calculate, for the hardest calculation lies all cut and dried for him in an instinct shut against all ideality. A wonderful, unparalleled phenomenon: the plastic dæmon of man's downfall in triumphant surety; and German citizen of State, to boot, with a Mosaic confession; the darling of Liberal princes, and warrant of our national unity!—

Despite the enormous disadvantage at which the German race (if so we still may call it) appears to stand against the Jewish, we yet have ventured to suggest the re-awakening of a German instinct as one factor in the present agitation. As, however, we have been obliged to discard all idea of its being a purely racial instinct, we perhaps might search for something higher: a bent that, merely vaguely (wahnvoll) felt by the Folk of to-day, would at first appear indeed as instinct, though really of far nobler origin and loftier aim, and which might haply be defined as the spirit of the purely-Human.

[Anonymous No.21786991]

From the Cosmopolitan proper, if such a man exists in fact, we probably should have little to expect for the solution of our problem. 'Tis no small thing, to run through the history of the world and yet preserve love for the human species. Here nothing but a rooted feeling of kinship with the immediate nation whence we sprang, can serve to re-knit the strand dissevered by a survey of the whole: here operates the thing we feel ourselves to be; we pity, and strive our best to hope, as for the future of our nearer family. Fatherland, mother-tongue: woe to the man bereft of these! But what unmeasured happiness, to recognise in one's mother-tongue the speech of one's ure-fathers! Through such a tongue our feelings and beholdings stretch right back to early Man himself; no fence and pale there hedge our nobles in, and far beyond the fatherland at last assigned us, beyond the landmarks of historic knowledge and all our outer trappings thence derived, we feel ourselves one kin with pristine Man's creative beauty. Such is our German language, the only heritage retained intact from our forefathers. Do we feel our breath fast quitting us, beneath the pressure of an alien civilisation; do we fall into uncertainty about ourselves: we have only to dig to the roots in the true father-soil of our language, to reap at once a reassuring answer on ourselves, nay, on the truly Human. And this possibility, of always drawing from the pristine fount of our own nature, that makes us feel ourselves no more a race, no mere variety of man, but one of Manhood's primal branches,—'tis this that ever has bestowed on us great men and spiritual heroes, as to whom we have no need to trouble whether fashioners of foreign fatherless civilisations are able to understand and prize them; whilst we again, inspired by the deeds and gifts of our forefathers, and gazing with unclouded eye, are able to rightly estimate those foreigners, and value them according to the spirit of pure Humanity indwelling in their work. For the sterling German instinct asks and seeks for nothing but this Purely-Human, and through that search alone can it be helpful—not merely to itself, but to all that shews the pure and genuine under never so great disguise.

[Anonymous No.21787017]

Does he ever say anything unique or interesting?

[Anonymous No.21787041]

>>21787017
no

[Anonymous No.21787410]

>>21787017
TLDR: da joos put da german down, we wuz vikangz n shiet

[Anonymous No.21787455]

>>21786978
>>21786982
>>21786986
>>21786991
ok

[Anonymous No.21787511]

>>21786991
>But what unmeasured happiness, to recognise in one's mother-tongue the speech of one's ure-fathers! Through such a tongue our feelings and beholdings stretch right back to early Man himself; no fence and pale there hedge our nobles in, and far beyond the fatherland at last assigned us, beyond the landmarks of historic knowledge and all our outer trappings thence derived, we feel ourselves one kin with pristine Man's creative beauty. Such is our German language, the only heritage retained intact from our forefathers. Do we feel our breath fast quitting us, beneath the pressure of an alien civilisation; do we fall into uncertainty about ourselves: we have only to dig to the roots in the true father-soil of our language, to reap at once a reassuring answer on ourselves, nay, on the truly Human.
Actually extremely beautiful.

[Anonymous No.21787516]

>>21787017
It's like two pages. Just read it.

[Anonymous No.21787522]

Wagner's writings range from meh to cringe but thankfully his music is extraordinary.

[Anonymous No.21787603]

>>21787511
germans had such a low self-esteem in the 19th century, maybe the result of Napoleon buck-breaking and before that the 30 years war
Germans didn't know who they were anymore, had to look up to what Romans like Tacitus said about them and started wewuzing and sperged out into genocidal maniacs

[Anonymous No.21787625]

>>21787603
Honestly feels no different from reading a modern day german larper except with grandiose prose.

[Anonymous No.21787628]

When a group of people sings the praises of some ideal or virtue, it can only be for want of that thing. One doesn't stress the importance of something if they truly have it. Evidently Germans felt distant from their ancestors, otherwise this paean would not exist

[Anonymous No.21787638]

>>21787628
>One doesn't stress the importance of something if they truly have it
so a warrior tribe that glorifies combat is secretly pacifist
thx mr psychologist

[Anonymous No.21787641]

>>21787628
Genuinely imbecilic post.

[Anonymous No.21787659]

>>21787638
>>21787641
I'm just paraphrasing Ellul here

[Anonymous No.21787685]

>>21787659
>poetry is produced only as a result of absence and loss
Didn't know Ellul was just another posturing French pseud. Now I don't have to read him.

[Anonymous No.21787694]

>>21787685
If you're too autistic not to take him dead-literally and gloss over his meaning, yeah you are too dumb for Ellul and shouldn't bother.

[Anonymous No.21787725]

>>21787694
Everything he said there is the very definition of empty posturing. Vague psychological impressions mixed with his own depressive state, all wrapped up as French philosophy.

>hurr durr if you talk about an impending danger to something you have it means you don't really have it

It doesn't matter if he wasn't being 'literal' with anything he said there, it's still retarded and not a substitute for an intimate engagement with whatever examples he gives. The only supporting feature given is the airs of a French philosopher, the implicit assurance that his random view of the world is absolute.

[Anonymous No.21787729]

>>21787603
>>21787625
post nose

[Anonymous No.21787890]

>>21787725
I agree to some extent. Anyway, I feel the German existential crisis of the 19th century is not entirely racial. I think it occurred less from the sense of an outward threat, and more because they felt estranged from their own ancestors. Like the modern world has pulled away Germanic people from their roots, and they are now trying to re-establish themselves in a modern context. On the one hand, we are aware of the incredible potential of the Germans and their high intelligence and strength. Yet we also feel they are missing something, and we find most efforts by the great Germans to be an attempt at fixing this emptiness with something: Martin Luther, the Idealists, the Romantics incl. Wagner, Hitler, etc. All undertook some larger-than-life endeavor, grasping desperately for something to fill some hole they felt. In this context, Wagner's appeal to Germanic people is not a mere call for tradition, but a longing for some Third Reich style government that can elevate Germanic people to the place they deserve.

And I can't help but wonder why this afflicts Germans in particular. The French, their neighbors for over a millennium, have had no such crisis on these terms. They float from one era to the next, apathetic to external changes, as if there's some spiritual continuity in the culture which survives and contents them. Everyone who reads French literature knows exactly what I mean; it is satisfied with itself. German literature never is. Like Hesse's protagonists, they are continually looking for something. I am not an expert in Germans or their history, but this fact about them always makes me curious, and I have to wonder whether it's an innate trait to their race, or if their culture had something and lost it, and have been searching ever since to fill the void.

[Anonymous No.21788365]

>>21787729

[Anonymous No.21788820]

>>21787890
>All undertook some larger-than-life endeavor, grasping desperately for something to fill some hole they felt.
Benjamin Constant admired in Germany its native substance, contrasted with a French culture artificially constructed upon Latinate rules. And it is most insightful that he could see this element at work as a foreigner, since he was without biases. I don't think that incredible potential of the Germans merely comes from the need to fill a cultural void. And Luther was long before any Thirty Years War. What void was he trying to fill when Germany was just as contented in its identity as any other nation at the time? It's possible it is merely a racial, or cultural, 'trait' a la Spengler. A 'Faustian' yearning. But that in itself does not account for the concurrence of culture which does exist in Germany. As Wagner described it:

>The German is conservative: his treasure bears the stamp of all the ages; he hoards the Old, and well knows how to use it. Fonder is he of keeping, than of winning: the gathered New has value for him only when it serves to deck the Old.

Wagner did not want a Third Reich, but conservation. He called the attempt the revive pagan culture illusory, but that does not mean it didn't offer him something distinctly German. Just as the Lutheranism of 16th century Nuremberg, which really was living on.

[Anonymous No.21788862]

>>21787729
Why?

[Anonymous No.21789689]

>>21788820
>He called the attempt the revive pagan culture illusory, but that does not mean it didn't offer him something distinctly German.
Yeah, I agree.

I feel that probably the overall German view of the world is the root here. Unlike the French or even English, Germans tend to speak more directly about things, and have a tendency to approach thought systematically and carry ideas to their conclusions. I have noticed personally that Germans have this trait of speaking clearly on topics, and seeing clearly. I wouldn't call it mechanical or logical, they just see and think very directly (which is perhaps why all the great mathematicians and physicists were also German). Perhaps the "filling a void" idea really is wrong, and it's just a cultural trait of taking ideas to their logical conclusion, because that's just how they think.

[Anonymous No.21791045]

>>21789689
based

[Anonymous No.21791741]

>>21789689
I think that's one way of putting it. In his highly penetrating analysis of the German in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche attributed a 'super plenitude of the soul' behind this directness. If you want to read Wagner's analysis you can in What is German?:

https://deutsch.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~Gottschewski/history/u14/Richard_Wagner(english).pdf

Undoubtedly it is from the idealistic perspective of a German nationalist, but it gets to an essential truth.

[Anonymous No.21791836]

>>21791741
Thanks for the link.

I'm really unsure why Germans are like that. But even if you hear one talk nowadays you know what I mean. When a topic comes up they just jump straight to the heart of it. I don't believe the outstanding German achievement is entirely because they are just outstanding genetically, but also thanks to this way of seeing the world and discussing it.

Contrast this with the Latin languages and their cultures and you get what I mean. They are so stylish and elegant that they often dance around the significance of whatever they are talking about. This comparison dates back to Rome vs. Greece -- look at how much more the Latin authors resemble the French in content, and the French adoration of the Roman writers as well. Meanwhile the Germans were fonder of the Greeks, while the Anglos were somewhere in the middle (fitting since they are torn between the two backgrounds).

In Greek literature you will find a very German strain of thought. Much like Germans they did not mince words, and leapt into the heart of topics whenever they wrote. And I think this is a key component of their cultural greatness

[Anonymous No.21791885]

>>21788820
>foreigner
>without biases

[Anonymous No.21791920]

Does Wagner say anything positive about homosexuals?

[Anonymous No.21792530]

>>21791836
Speaking of Greek, there is a prophecy that Germany will convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church and will lead a resurgence of Orthodoxy throughout the whole world.

[Anonymous No.21792540]

>>21786978
Wagner was a genius who absolutely understood the value of art and artistic thought. I've been reading some of his essays recently and they are so clear and lucid it's really opened my eyes to a lot of things I'd taken for granted or never really understood in the realms of literature and music.

[Anonymous No.21792560]

>>21791920
Germanics traditionally were not tolerant of homosexualism. The ancient Germanic tribes would throw them in bogs, and there also are numerous examples of Medieval Germans burning homosexuals at the stake.

[Anonymous No.21792630]

>>21792560
What did Wagner say though, I'm interested as his son was a homosexual right?

[Anonymous No.21792856]

>as a writer, wagner isn't true to himself. he doesn't compose, the totality doesn't come into full view: he digresses in details, is obscure, and not benign and predominant.

>wagner's prose is very dense in ideas, hard to understand, because he eschews emphasis and because he doesn't balance high and low tones in compound sentences; everything is equally important to him.

>the biggest obstacle to the non-initiated is his type of authoritative dignity, which is very special and hard to describe: it's almost as if wagner talks in front of opponents, with whom he doesn't want to establish familiarity and to whom he speaks unnaturally and reservedly. yet occasionally the passion breaks through this artificiality; then the heavy and swollen period disintegrates and he lets slip out sentences or whole pages which belong to the most beautiful in german prose: particularly in the "beethoven" essay.

>i would like to know how big the confusion about wagner and his music would have become if he didn't write anything: and certain texts like "beethoven", "actors and singers", "on conducting" have a stunning force which will become more apparent with time.

>those who can do better, should do so. it's bad enough that wagner had to carry this burden himself.
t. nietzsche 1875

[Anonymous No.21792992]

>>21791836
>Much like Germans they did not mince words, and leapt into the heart of topics whenever they wrote.
Maybe because they only wrote when they saw 'something'? This goes back to the divide between the French and German as that between style and substance. Ovid was a refined poet, he writes as an art, not because he has a genuine vision of the Gods before him. But as soon as we contrast peoples we're very quickly talking about vagaries, which even Wagner, in his extensive writings on Germany, occasionally grew sceptical from. From a letter to Nietzsche:

>I think more and more about ‘What is German?’ and my latest studies on this question have aroused the most remarkable degree of scepticism in my mind, so that I am now beginning to believe that ‘being German’ is a purely metaphysical conception, As such, however, it is intensely interesting to me, and in any case, is unique in the history of the world, and is to be compared only to Judaism, unless Hellenism can also be made to serve as an historical parallel.

[Anonymous No.21793023]

>>21792856
>>wagner's prose is very dense in ideas, hard to understand, because he eschews emphasis and because he doesn't balance high and low tones in compound sentences; everything is equally important to him.
This is the reason Wagner is unreadable to me.

[Anonymous No.21793869]

>>21793023
It's written to express his ideas. If you're an intellectual and care about ideas then you'll read him. Baudelaire literally read Opera and Drama in an English translation and then translated portions of it into French. Besides, Wagner's later works, such as the three Nietzsche mentions, are very lucid and well structured.

[Anonymous No.21794086]

>>21792992
>Maybe because they only wrote when they saw 'something'?
With Greeks it is hard to get a complete perspective because what's been preserved will obviously skew towards what is 'important', but I would say this divide is certainly real. It's not absolute, but you need only look at the Greek lyric poets like Pindar to see strong evidence: In his poetry, style is actually subordinate to a greater purpose, which is celebrating the virtues of those who won at the Olympic games. Greek drama too is heavily laden with meaning, to the point almost nothing escapes it.

The truth is probably like you say:
>Ovid was a refined poet, he writes as an art, not because he has a genuine vision of the Gods before him
Greek culture, and German culture, is an extension of mankind's desire to understand itself. I haven't found any other cultures with this same aim

[Anonymous No.21794214]

>>21792856
Nietzsche, especially later Nietzsche, is not the best perspective on Wagner. He got mad so mad at Parsifal he wrote an entire book that was pure seethe in response.

[Anonymous No.21794270]

[Anonymous No.21794272]

[Anonymous No.21794282]

[Anonymous No.21794299]

Germans are some of the best at music in the whole world!
>Bach
>Beethoven
>Handel
>Brahms
>Wagner
>Kraftwerk
>Can
>Ash Ra Tempel
>Basic Channel
>Todesstoß
>Moondog (American but spiritually German)

[Anonymous No.21794305]

[Anonymous No.21794313]

[Anonymous No.21794342]

Your thoughts on Peter Sloterdijk???

[Anonymous No.21794592]

bump desu

[Anonymous No.21794786]

>The so-called Romanic nations [...] are praised as hybrid stocks that obviously surpass in Culture-progress the peoples of a haply pure Germanic breed
I think this explains why I can contemplate nationalist ideals with certain affection but could never embody it. They are two kinds of creative forces, it seems, the Romanic, Mediterranean, I'd extend, exposing a more outward creative expression, whereas the Germans have always expressed an internal force and this explains their always sought ideal of Nation.

[Anonymous No.21795839]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZKw9Br5opc

>He then plays Siegfried’s awakening of Brünnhilde, is pleased with the character of this work, its trueness to Nature: “Like two animals,” he says of Br. and Sieg. “Here there is no doubt, no sin,” he continues, and in his Wotan he recognizes the true god of the Aryans.

>But in the evening the 3rd act of Siegfried, very well played by Herr Rubinstein, pleases both him and us. “That is Gobineau-music,” R. says as he comes in, “that is race. Where else will you find two beings who burst into rejoicing when merely looking at each other? The whole world exists just to ensure that two such beings look at each other!” “Here is just forest and rocks and water and nothing rotten in it.” “Here is a couple who rejoice in their happiness, immerse themselves in the happiness of being together—how different from Tristan!”