The Nietzsche-Wagner Relationship : An Overview (original) (raw)
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Was Nietzsche Ever a True Wagnerian? Nietzsche’s Late Turn to and Early Doubt About Richard Wagner
Nietzsche-Studien, 2011
Below, I argue that Nietzsche was only a true Wagnerian for fifteen months rather than for the fourteen years as still widely believed. I claim that definite proof of Wagner-enthusiasm on Nietzsche's part is not traceable before November 1868 and that he expresses his first doubt about Wagner in February 1870, hence one year earlier than Landerer and Schuster (2005) argued. My claim is based on an examination of Nietzsche's reflections on Wagner and German avant-garde music in letters and notes drafted between 1858 and 1870. I particularly focus on neglected sources such as the reports of the Germania Society, Nietzsche's reception of Louis Ehlert's Letters on Music to a Lady, Jahn's Essays on Music, and Oswald Marbach's essay on the Rebirth of Drama in Music, and his journalism for the Deutsche Allgemeine. My conclusion that Nietzsche's unconditional Wagnerism lasted for fifteen months rather than for fourteen years is especially important for the understanding of Wagner's influence on the The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche's early doubt concerning Wagner implies that The Birth of Tragedy must be reassessed in view of its diagnosis of modern culture, the cultural powers ascribed to Wagner's music, and the identification of Wagner's music with Dionysus and the Greek, aesthetic view of art, science, and life.
Idolatry and envy as a tragic tale of friendship between Nietzsche and Wagner
2023
Nietzsche’s oeuvre, both his praise and criticism, cannot possibly be disconnected from Wagner’s art and theories. Because of this fundamental link, there was not only a constant stirring rivalry between both men, but also a certain kind of admiration, culminating towards the end in a sort of envy. The friendship between the two intellectuals faded and eventually ended. In the course of the development of Wagners last opera 'Parsifal' in 1878, their friendship was terminated for good. Not ‘art for the sake of art’ but ‘art for the sake of life’ was Nietzsche's motto. From this viewpoint, I will try to formulate (in the first part of this paper) answers to the following questions: why did he originally see in Wagner the rebirth of tragedy; and why did he reject Wagner in his various invectives, like Der Fall Wagner (1888), as a traitor of the tragic idea? In the second part, the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) and his vision on the polemic Nietzsche-Wagner will be highlighted. D’Annunzio can be considered as a Wagner adherent avant la lettre. He wrote the three-tier essay Il Caso Wagner (1893) as a reply to Nietzsche’s criticism on Wagner. In this work, D’Annunzio tried to outline the ambiguity in Nietzsche’s range of ideas with regard to Wagner, and also to spread Wagner’s ideas. It is remarkable to ascertain that in the course of his life Nietzsche has occupied two extremities: from pure Wagner idolatry in Die Geburt der Tragödie to ardent anti-Wagner writings at the end of the 19th century with his publications of Der Fall Wagner (1888) and Nietzsche contra Wagner (1889). How does D’Annunzio conceive this ambiguous stance in his own Il Caso Wagner? Is D’Annunzio himself not a dualistic figure who has inherited from both German thinkers?
Even before his first personal encounter with R. Wagner, Fr. Nietzsche had already been inspired by the composer’s tragic music epos Der Ring des Nibelungen and by Tristan und Isolde in view of an ethical concept which he would further develop and, finally, turn against Wagner himself. The plots of those operas – designed by Wagner as a critique of the social values of his time that later received a metaphysical touch – lay bare mechanisms of moral corruption that poison human relationships in which egotist and material interests prevail. Nietzsche agreed with Wagner’s diagnosis. The life he envisaged as ideal was to be built on ethical values similar to those of the ancient Greek tragedians: a life of individual moral rigour and uncompromising truths in a world without transcendent meaning. Nietzsche called such recognition ‘tragic insight’ upon which ‘true’ life was to be built. Nietzsche first believed that the person Wagner was the incarnation of such a ‘true’ life which he hoped would also become the paradigm of the cultural-ethical foundation of the newly founded German empire; during their friendship they developed plans accordingly. Nietzsche had to learn, however, that his mentor was more interested in his own person than in their common intellectual program; he felt that Wagner’s metaphysical turn inspired by Schopenhauer was just a cheap trick feeding his personal vanity. The process of this gradual discovery led to the end of their friendship. I reconstruct this story mainly on the basis of Nietzsche’s notes published nearly seven decades after his death, leaving aside the well-discussed role of Nietzsche’s ‘aesthetic existence’.
Cogito, 1994
Two philosophers who – against the background of their agreement, on the one hand, that Wagner is one of the great masters and, on the other, that he is an anti-Semite – discuss the question of whether his operas, in particular The Ring, can be given an anti-Semitic interpretation.
Nietzscheforschung, 2007
I thank Marian Counihan for her comments on and corrections of an earlier version of this text. 2 Richard Wagner, Beethoven, in: Dieter Borchmeyer (ed.), Richard Wagner 's Dichtungen und Schriften. Bd. IX, 38-109 [henceforth: DS IX and page-number]. All English translations from this text and from secondary literature are mine. English translations from Nietzsche's texts are according to the translations at hand. English abbreviations and translations of Nietzsche's works: AOM = Assorted Opinions and Maxims (first part of HH II); ASC = Attempt at Self-Criticism (1886 Preface