As a boundless admirer of Wagner’s art and of much of his artistic thought, I vacillate between horror and laughter when I encounter fragments of his writing on social and philosophical matters. A recent reading of Leon Stein’s The Racial Thinking of Richard Wagner (1950) prompted the latter response. Outside of the world of music […]
Nationalism, Culture and Identity: Israel and Wagner
Richard Wagner was an artist and a revolutionary nationalist. A fundamental rationale for his work was its function as a mythic summons to the volk – the German people – to remember their common and distinct heritage. He saw the Ring, in particular, as the great story of the roots of the German people, resonating […]
Wagner’s Art, Wagner’s Anti-Semitism
In his recent book, Sorcerer of Bayreuth, Wagner expert Barry Millington comes down hard on Wagner the anti-Semite. He rejects the “misapprehension that Wagner’s anti-Semitism is like a superfluous integument that can be peeled away from his oeuvre without leaving a trace, when in fact it is so intrinsic to his aesthetic that it is no […]
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