Windell Hegel, Feuerbach, And Wagner's Ring

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Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association

Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner's RingAuthor(s): George G. WindellReviewed work(s):Source: Central European History, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 27-57Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central European History of

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Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner's Ring

GEORGE G. WINDELL

AFE

W months ago the musical world observed the centennial of

the first complete performance of Richard Wagner's Der Ring

^ des Nibelungen, which took place in the then barely completed

Bayreuth Festspielhaus, August 13-17,1876. Few works of art have had

so long a gestation period; more than a quarter century separates Wag?

ner's original sketches, which date from the fall of 1848, and the realiza-

tion ofthe tetrology on the stage. The dramatic structure ofthe enor-

mous music-drama became definitive by February 1853, when Wagner

allowed to be printed privately the texts ofthe four operas. The music

for Das Rheingold, Die Walkiire, and the first two acts of Siegfried was

complete by the end of July 1857. There followed, however, an interval

of almost twelve years before Wagner again took up work on the Ring

in March 1869. He composed the music for the final act of Siegfried and

for all of Gotterdammerung between then and November 1874.1

Because the Ring was completed and first produced in the early years

of the Bismarckian Reich, it became easily identified with German

pretensions to cultural superiority. Audiences and scholars alike have

found it difficult to keep in mind that Wagner's masterpiece was al?

ready an anachronism when it was first performed. It has little in com?

mon with the Hohenzollern Empire; it is rather the greatest and possi?

bly the only artistic monument to the 1848 revolution and to its failure.

Thomas Mann described the Ring as an attack upon "all of bourgeois

culture and civilization which had been dominant since the Renais?

sance," adding that "in its mixture ofthe archaic and the anticipatory it

points to a nonexistent world of a classless commonwealth."2 The

sociologist and musicologist T. W. Adorno argues that ". . . the Ring

celebrates the renunciation ofthe revolution that was no revolution,"

and that "Wotan is the ghostly image ofthe dead and buried revolu-

1. Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (New York, 1933-46), 2:

28-30, 363-74, 395^96",512-13; 4: 282-83.2. Thomas Mann, "Richard Wagner und der 'Ring des Nibelungen,'

"in Gesammelte

Werke in zwolfBdnden (Frankfurt am Main, 1960), 9: 510.

27







28Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner s Ring

tion."3 However judged, its apocalyptic vision runs parallel to that of

the other great revolutionary tractof

1848, theCommunist

Manifestoof

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Moreover, when we identify the Ring

with the Wagner of 1848 rather than with the Bayreuth Wagner ofthe

1870s the other characteristic which the drama shares with the Com?

munist Manifesto comes immediately into sharp focus. The Ring too

owes a profound debt to the thought of G. W. F. Hegel and a some-

what smaller obligation to his sometime student and vehement critic,

Ludwig Feuerbach.

11

The extensive literature dealing with Wagner's relationship to specu-

lative thinkers of his age has concentrated largely upon the philosopher

with whom he had close personal ties, Friedrich Nietzsche, and those

whose influence he acknowledged, Arthur Schopenhauer and Feuer?

bach.4 The first two are only peripherally relevant to this study. Wag-

3. T. W. Adorno, Versuch iber Wagner (Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 1952), pp.

169, 171.

4. It has been said that no modern figure has stimulated a literature so large as that on

Wagner except Napoleon. The two indispensable recent studies of the composer are

Newman, Life, and Adorno, both cited above. Newman,by profession a music critic, not

a historian, accomplished a task of historical research which the professionalhistorian can

view only with unqualified admiration. Because of his work we know with a high de?

gree of accuracy whathappened in Wagner's life, if not always why. Adorno is the first to

have attempted a true synthesis of Wagner's life, politics, literary and musical achieve?

ments. Also useful is Robert W. Gutman, RichardWagner:The Man, His Mind andHis

Music (New York, 1968). The work is based largely on Newman, and attempts, with

indifferent success,to explain Wagner's life and work in terms of psychoanalytic criteria.Other works, new and old, relevant to this study are:Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx,

Wagner,26.rev. ed. (Garden City, N.Y., 1958); Maurice Boucher, Les Ideespolitiquesde

RichardWagner:ExempledeNationalismemythique Paris, 1948); Houston Stewart Cham?

berlain, RichardWagner,4th ed. (Munich, 1907); Hugo Dinger, RichardWagners eistige

Entwicklung:Versuch inerDarstellungder Weltanschauung ichardWagners,mit Riicksicht-

nahmeaufderen Verhdltnis u denphilosophischenRichtungenderfunghegelianerundArthur

SchopenhauerLeipzig, 1892); Arthur Drews, Der Ideengehalt on RichardWagnersdrama-

tischenDichtungen in Zusammenhangmit seinem Leben und seiner Weltanschauung, ebst

einemAnhang:Nietzsche undWagner, Leipzig, 1931);William Ashton EUis,Life ofRichard

Wagner, 6 vols. (London, 1900-1908); Othmar Fries, RichardWagner und die deutsche

Romantik:Versuch inerEinordnung Zurich, 1952); Carl Friedrich Glasenapp, Das LebenRichardWagners,6 vols. (3d ed., Leipzig, 1896); Henri Lichtenberger, RichardWagner,Poete et Penseur (26. ed., Paris, 1898); Paul A. Loos, RichardWagner: Vollendungund

TragikderdeutschenRomantik(Munich, 1952); Rudolf Louis, Die Weltanschauung ichard

Wagners Leipzig,1898); Frederick C. Love, YoungNietzsche andtheWagnerian xperience,

University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures,no.

39 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1963); Jack M. Stein, RichardWagnerand the Synthesisofthe Arts







GeorgeG. Windell 29

ner first met Nietzsche in November 1868 and their friendship really

begana

yearlater when the

young philosopher,who had

justbeen

ap?pointed to the faculty ofthe University of Basel, called upon the com-

poser at Triebschen, his home outside Lucerne.5 Their acquaintance

came much too late for Nietzsche to have exerted any meaningful in?

fluence upon the Ring. Schopenhauer, although his most important

work, Die Welt als Wille und Vor stellung, was published in 1818, also

became known to Wagner late. The composer was introduced to

Schopenhauer's masterpiece in the fall of 1854, almost two years after

the essential lines of theRing

drama had beenfirmly

established.6 Al?

though Wagner wrote later that only after reading Schopenhauer had

he come to understand his own Wotan, understanding clearly followed

creation.7

Feuerbach presents a different and more serious problem. Except for

Marx he is the best known ofthe Young Hegelians, and in the 1840s he

was more important than Marx. He was one ofa triumvirate of young

scholars?the others were David Friedrich Strauss and Bruno Bauer?

whoapplied

theHegelian

dialectic toChristianity

andthereby

reduced

it to a purely human, historical phenomenon. Feuerbach went a step

farther than the others by replacing Hegel's Weltgeist with the material

world as primal reality. He continued, however, like Hegel, to view

man as the agency through which reality is manifest historically.8

Scholars have been unable to agree upon an assessment of Feuerbach's

influence upon Wagner. He was certainly the first philosopher whose

(Detroit, 1960); Thomas Mann, "Leiden und Grosse Richard Wagners," GesammelteWerke, 9: 363-426; Hans Mayer, "Richard Wagners geistige Entwicklung," in Hans

Mayer, Studienzur deutschenLiteraturgeschichte,eue Beitrage zur Literaturwissenschaft,ed. Werner Krauss and Hans Mayer, vol. 2 (2d ed., Berlin, 1955) pp. 171-212; Carl E.

Schorske, "The Quest for the Grail: Wagner and Morris," in The CriticalSpirit: Essaysin Honorof HerbertMarcuse,ed. Kurt H. Wolff and Barrington Moore, Jr. (Boston, 1967)

pp. 216-32; Curt von Westernhagen, Wagner (Zurich, 1968).

5. Westernhagen, Wagner, p. 373; Gutman, pp. 353-54.6. Westernhagen, Wagner,pp. 190-92; Gutman, p. 159; Richard Wagner, Mein Leben,

ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin, 2 vols. (Munich, 1969), 2: 521. This critical edition is much to

be preferred over the somewhat carelessly edited version which has long been standard

2 vols., (Munich, 1911), although the differences are fewer and less consequential thanone might have expected. The authorized anonymous translation, My Life, 2 vols.

(London, 1911), is undependable.

7. Wagner, Mein Leben, 2: 523.8. See William J. Brazill, The Young Hegelians (New Haven and London, 1970), pp.

111-14; Eugene Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach(New York, 1970), pp.15-16; and Henri Arvon, Ludwig Feuerbach,ou la Transformation u Sacre (Paris, 1957).







30 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner

sRing

works brought an enthusiastic public response firom the composer.

Wagnerdedicated to him The Art Work

ofthe Future,the first of his

book-length treatises, written at Zurich in October and November

1849 following his flight firom Dresden in May of that year. The work,

he wrote, "owed its existence to the impressions your writings have

made upon me."9 Many years later he reminisced that he had then con?

sidered Feuerbach "the true and only philosopher of modern times."10

In that monograph, published in 1850, and the two books which fol?

lowed it, Opera and Drama and A Communication to My Friends, both

publishedin

1851,the

composerworked out for himself and

soughtto

communicate to others a new aesthetic designed to explain and justify

philosophically the single music-drama he then planned on the Nibe-

lung myth, Siegfrieds Death. All three employ a vocabulary which sug?

gests Feuerbach; all reflect that philosopher's rejection of God as any?

thing more than the idealization of human aspirations. To Feuerbach,

and to Wagner in the early 1850s, ". . . the quality or the precise char?

acter of God is nothing other than the essential quality ofthe individual

humanbeing."11

During the first wave of Wagnerian scholarship at the turn of the

century the question aroused much interest. Some students, such as

early Wagnerian enthusiasts like Carl Friedrich Glasenapp and Houston

Stewart Chamberlain, sought to minimize or deny altogether Feuer-

bach's importance for Wagner's ideas. Glasenapp saw The Art Work of

the Future as "the positive announcement of [Wagner's] artistic creed,

having [nothing] more than a few unimportant terminological usages

in common with thephilosophy

of Feuerbach."12 Chamberlainargued

similarly that Wagner took simply "individual words, individual con?

cepts, from Feuerbach," but in no sense derived his own philosophical

9- Richard Wagner, GesammelteSchriftenundDichtungen n zehn Banden,ed. WolfgangGolther (Berlin, 1913), 10: Anmerkungen, p. 44. Simon Rawidowicz, LudwigFeuerbachs

Philosophie: Ursprungund Schicksal(26.ed., Berlin, 1964), p. 392, suggests that Wagner's

title, Das KunstwerkderZukunft,was intended as a deliberate reference to Feuerbach's

GrundsdtzederPhilosophiederZukunft,published in Zurich in 1843.10. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 442.11. Ludwig Feuerbach,Das Wesen desChristenthums,n SdmtlicheWerke,ed. Wilhelm

Bohn and FriedrichJodl (2d ed., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt,1960), 16:24. See also Wagnerto FerdinandHeine, Zurich, Nov. 19,1849, John N. Burk, ed., LettersofRichardWagner:The BurrellCollection(New York, 1950), pp. 270-72.

12. Glasenapp, 2: 348.







GeorgeG. Windell 31

position from him.13 Henri Lichtenberger expressed much the same

view. "Wagner was able to borrow from the writers of 1848 and, in

particular, from Feuerbach, some formulas which appeared to him

suitable for explaining his thought. But that thought itself is original,

autonomous."14 With almost twenty years of hindsight Wagner himself

seemed to confirm this view in the preface to volumes three and four of

his Gesammelte Schriften, first published in 1872.15

At roughly the same time, however, scholars like Hugo Dinger and

Rudolf Louis concluded that Feuerbach's influence went much deeper.16

Granting that the composer had developed on his own an amorphous,

emotionally based atheism, a vague feeling for the "purely human," it

was Feuerbach, they argued, who enabled him to articulate those feel?

ings rationally. As Louis put it, "Feuerbach was the very first to make

Richard Wagner into a philosophical thinker, in so far as he, as an

artist, could become one."17 Dinger went even further, saying that

"Wagner took from Feuerbach the basis of his Weltanschauung."18 A

generation later Simon Rawidowicz and Arthur Drews echoed that

judgment. Recent students of Wagner such as Ernest Newman and

Robert Gutman have also adopted positions similar to that of Louis,

without, however, treating the question as one of major importance.

T. W. Adorno does not deal with the problem at all.19

Although a wholly satisfactory resolution of the matter is not pos?

sible, it seems reasonable to assume that, despite the 1872 statement,

Wagner did mean what he wrote in the dedication to his Art Work of

the Future, particularly since he reaffirmed it in the late 1860s when he

dictated Mein Leben to Cosima.20 Wagner's theoretical treatises ofthe

13. Chamberlain, p. 189. Chamberlain, however, seems earlier to have regardedFeuerbach as considerably more important to Wagner's thought. In a letter dated March

26, 1899, addressed to him, Cosima Wagner sharply criticized a lecture he had given in

Vienna entitled "Richard Wagner's Philosophy." She chided him for having drawn

false conclusions, as, "for example, when you decide from a letter that possibly shows

Feuerbachian terminology that Feuerbach up to the year 1854 dominated the mind [ofRichard Wagner], which is not the case." Paul Pretzsch, ed., Cosima Wagnerund Houston

Stewart Chamberlain m Briefwechsel, 888-igo8 (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 559-60.

14. Lichtenberger, p. 185.

15. GesammelteSchriften,3: 3-5; Rawidowicz, p. 404.

16. Dinger, pp. xiii, 22; Louis, pp. 64-78.

17. Louis, p. 69.18. Dinger, p. 22.

19. Rawidowicz, pp. 388-410; Drews, pp. 82-140; Newman, Life, 2: 431, n. 8; Gut?

man, pp. 140,143, 158: Adorno, passim.20. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 443-44; Newman, Life, 3: 517-18; 4: 179, 188-89, 259,

259, n. 16.







32 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s

Ring

early 1850s all owe much to Feuerbach, but that fact provides little help

ininvestigating

Feuerbach's influence on theRing, something

that all

the authors cited ignore. For Wagner conceived the idea for his master-

piece more than a year before he wrote The Art Work ofthe Future, and

he completed the text o?Siegfried's Death, which, except for the changed

ending, which will be treated in detaii later, differs in no material way

from that of Gotterdammerung, at least seven months before he began

that essay.21

The earliest version of what became the tetrology appears in the

thirty-five-hundred-worddraft entitled Der

Nibelungen-Mythusals Ent?

wurf zu einem Drama, which Wagner dated October 4, 1848. This was

followed over the next several months by successive versions of Sieg?

fried9 s Death. Two narrative renderings in prose led to a draft of the

complete poem, which Wagner finished on November 28. This he

subjected to a major revision during the first two months of 1849. All

these versions follow closely the Entwurf.22 Moreover, except for the

changed ending mentioned earlier, none of the extensive alterations

whichWagner

made as the drama evolvedduring

thefollowing years

shows any substantial shift in his philosophical point of view toward his

material. Thus, unless it can be shown that Wagner became acquainted

with Feuerbach's writings before he penned the Entwurf, or, at the very

latest, before he completed the revision of Siegfried1 s Death, Feuerbach

could have had no influence upon the original conception of the Ring

drama or its basic structure. At most some aspects of its later evolution

may be attributed to him. Careful reading ofthe evidence suggests that

this is indeed the case.

Direct information provided by Wagner himself is meager and has

been used to support contradictory conclusions. Contemporary mate?

rial by others bearing on the problem scarcely exists at all. The com?

poser tells us that he first became aware of Feuerbach through "a Ger-

man-Catholic preacher and political agitator with a Calabrian hat,

Metzdorf by name," with whom he became "profitably" acquainted in

21. Newman, Life, 2: 23-24, 28, 30-31; Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 442.22. For a detailed account of the changes during the evolution of the JRiTig,ee Otto

Strobel, RichardWagner,Skizzen undEntwurfezur Ring-Dichtung,mit derDichtung,Der

Junge Siegfried(Munich, 1930), pp. 25-69; Ernest Newman, The WagnerOperas (New

York, 1949), pp. 393-450, and his Life, 2: 23-24, 28, 241, 325-62. Newman's accounts

are based on Strobel.







GeorgeG. Windell 33

Dresden.23 In what Wagner called an "important conversation," the

preacher,

described as "a serious

youngman," referred him to Feuer?

bach's books.24 From the context it is clear that this conversation took

place sometime between the outbreak of the German revolution in

March 1848 and the collapse ofthe Dresden uprising in May 1849.

Wagner's only account was written approximately twenty years later,

and it unfortunately gives no indication of either the date of the con?

versation or when Wagner acted upon the suggestion. Most important,

it is not clear whether he did so before his escape to Switzerland. How?

ever,Wagner

described in the next sentence ofthe same

paragraph

how

his "new Zurich friend," Wilhelm Baumgartner, brought to his house

a copy of Feuerbach's Gedanken uber Tod und Unsterblichkeit25 It is ap-

parent that at the time he wrote, these two events, Metzdorf's recom-

mendation and Baumgartner's delivery of the book, were intimately

associated in his mind. His treatment suggests that he remembered the

second as having occurred shortly after the first. The most likely recon?

struction is that Wagner's conversation with the preacher took place

justbefore, or even

during

the DresdenAuf

stand, whichbegan

onMay

1, and that he took the first opportunity after he became settled in

Zurich in early July to follow his advice. It is probable that he asked

Baumgartner to acquire the book for him shortly before August 4,

1849, for on that date he wrote to Feuerbach's publisher, Otto Wigand,

requesting the philosopher's Werke. "Unfortunately," he wrote, "it

has not yet been possible here to track down [zur Kenntnis zu erhalten]

more than the third volume . . . with the Gedanken iiber Tod und

Unsterblichkeit."26

The recent publication of a complete catalog of the library which

Wagner collected during his Dresden residence provides new evidence

that materially increases the probability ofthe above reconstruction of

events.27 Although his library contained approximately a thousand

23. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 420, 442. In the 1911 edition ofMein Leben the name ap-

pears initially as "Menzdorff," later as "Metzdorf."

24. Ibid., p. 420.

25. Ibid., p. 442.

26. Letter quoted by Chamberlain, p. 188.

27. Curt von Westernhagen, Richard WagnersDresdenerBibliothek, 1842-1849: Neue

Dokumentezur Geschichte einesSchaffens(Wiesbaden, 1966). In 1846 Wagner put up the

library as collateral for a loan of five hundred Thalerfrom Heinrich Brockhaus, a partnerin the well-known publishing firm F. A. Brockhaus. Two of Wagner's sisters were

married to brothers of Heinrich Brockhaus. Heinrich acquired the library when Wagnerfled Saxony and declined to return it except upon repayment of the loan with accumu-








s Ring

volumes, almost all of them acquired after Wagner returned to Dresden

in 1842, there was not among its roughly two hundred titles a single

work by Feuerbach.28 Wigand's publishing house, which had begun

issuing Feuerbach's Samtliche Werke in 1846, was located in Leipzig,

only about sixty miles firom Dresden. Six volumes had already ap?

peared by the end of 1848. His library did contain three works pub?

lished by that house, and Wagner may even have been acquainted with

Wigand.29 Since he is known to have been an avid reader as well as

collector, it is difficult to imagine that, had he had anything beyond the

most minimal introduction to Feuerbach before he left Dresden, Wag?

ner would not have found a way to acquire some of his works for his

library.

Nonetheless, despite the unlikelihood that Feuerbach significantly

influenced Wagner's original conception of his Nibelung drama, much

of the text of the Ring was written and much of its music composed

during the period of his maximum interest in Feuerbach. It would be

surprising if that fascination did not produce some effect upon his work.

The

Ring

as we know it does show a number of shifts from

Wagner'soriginal design, and at least three of the major ones can be traced, at

least in part, to Wagner's study of Feuerbach. It was the philosopher's

elevation of human nature to the level of the divine rather than his

materialism that impressed Wagner, his doctrine that "... the antith?

esis ofthe divine and human is an illusory one, i.e., it is nothing else

than the antithesis between human nature [in general] and the human

individual."30 As Wagner pondered the implications of this dictum of

lated interest. This Wagner for a long time could or would not make. In 1873 the matter

was amicably settled, since the composer had long since lost interest in the collection. It

survived the destruction of the company's Leipzig headquarters during the Second

World War. See Westernhagen, pp. 75-82, and an undated draft in Wagner's hand-

writing for a letter of Minna Wagner to Heinrich Brockhaus, BurrellCollection,Appen-dix A, no. 185, pp. 484-85.

28. Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,pp. 12-16, 52, 84-113. On p. 52 Western?

hagen states flatly that this fact conclusively refutes the contention of those who have

detected the influence of Feuerbach on Wagner's sketch for his never completed drama,

Jesus von Nazareth, written early in 1849. Westernhagen presumably refers to HenriLichtenberger, pp. 182-84, and Simon Rawidowicz. The latter, p. 399, n. 1, described

Jesus vonNazareth as "possibly the first Wagnerian work influenced by Feuerbach."

29. Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,pp. 84-113; Kamenka, pp. 178-79. Wigand, a

political radical,published several of Wagner's essays, including the important Art Work

ofthe Future. See Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 438, 455, and Newman, Life, 2: 121-22.

30. Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums, dmtlicheWerke,16: 17.







GeorgeG. Windell 35

Feuerbach, he found that the ending he had first devised for Siegfried9s

Death no longer satisfied him. In it the shades of Siegfried and Briinn-

hilde arise from the ashes ofthe funeral pyre which has consumed their

bodies as the latter leads the slain hero to Valhalla, where the gods, their

crime expiated by the self-sacrifice ofthe former warrior-goddess, con-

tinue to reign over a world purged of evil.31 The revised ending was

implied in the earliest sketch for Young Siegfried of May 1851 and be?

came definitive with the conversion of Siegfried9s Death into Gotter-

dammerung in November and early December of 1852. Now the gods

are to be consumed in a holocaust which, Wagner suggested in his

stage directions, originates from Siegfried's funeral pyre. The dominion

ofthe gods comes to an end, a denouement accepted and even willed by

Wotan, the most powerful ofthe gods, yet brought about in the final

analysis not by him, but through the stronger will of Briinnhilde. Her

love for Siegfried leads inexorably to her own destruction, but at the

same time it confers upon her the power to bring to an end the corrupt

world order which has outlived its time. At the end the fate ofthe hu?

man race is for the first time totally under human control.32

Wagner's second major alteration followed logically from the first.

If love is the greatest power for good in the world, its absence is the

ultimate source of evil. Thus Wagner arrived at the theme of renun-

ciation of love. Of this there is no hint in either the Entwurf or Siegfried's

Death; the first reference comes in the earliest sketch for Das Rheingold,

which the composer drafted in early November 1851. Only he who

renounces love can forge the ring which will confer mastery of the

world.33 This idea is derivable from Feuerbach's

equation

of divine and

human, but it is closely related to another Feuerbachian concept which

had extraordinary appeal to one with the strong sexuality of Wagner:

the equivalence of reality and sensuality. "The real in its reality, or

taken as real, is the real as the object ofthe senses. Truth, reality, sen?

suality are identical. Only a sensual being is a true, a real being."34 In

31. SiegfriedsTod, Act III, scene 4, GesammelteSchriften,2: 228.

32. Gotterddmmerung,omplete vocal score... by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904),

Act III, scene 3, pp. 329-31; Newman, Life, 2: 28.33. Wagner to Theodor Uhlig, Albisbrunn, Nov. 12, 1851, RichardWagnersBriefean

TheodorUhlig, WilhelmFischer,FerdinandHeine in RichardWagnersBriefein Originalaus-

gaben, erste Folge (Leipzig, 1912), 4: 119-20; Wagner to Franz Liszt, Albisbrunn, Nov.

20, 1851, Briefwechselzwischen WagnerundLiszt, 3d ed. in WagnersBriefe, zweite Folge,9: 138-39; Newman, Wagner Operas, pp. 436-37.

34. Feuerbach, Grundsatze derPhilosophieder Zukunft, Samtliche Werke,2 (1959): 296.








sRing

the first scene ofthe completed Das Rheingold, the prologue to the Ring,

Wagner

established the dialectic of love, the creative force, and limit-

less power, its corrupting and destructive counterpart. The Nibelung

dwarf, Alberich, frustrated in his sexual pursuit of the Rhinemaidens,

resolves that, if love is denied him, he will take revenge upon all who

love. He renounces and curses love in order to acquire the means to

subdue the world to his will.35

Intimately bound up with both these modifications which altered

the focus ofthe work was Wagner's decision to expand it from the single

opera, Siegfried'sDeath, to the

gigantic, four-part Ring ofthe Nibelung.The fate of Siegfried had become secondary to the portrayal of the

overthrow of an outworn world order. The drama had turned into a

manifesto proclaiming the liberation of humanity from the burden of

superstition. Practical considerations had first led Wagner to consider

enlarging his plan; the material was too vast to be compressed ade-

quately into a single opera, or even two. The compulsion now became

irresistible. Produced at a festival created solely for that purpose, the

Ringwould offer a

"purely human,"Feuerbachian alternative to the

moribund faiths ofthe past. Its message: human love can redeem the

world.36

Although the probability is high that these aspects of the Ring did

originate firom Wagner's reading of Feuerbach, considerable caution is

still in order.37 It would, for example, not be entirely unreasonable to

treat the ending of Gotterdammerung as based directly upon Snorri

Sturluson's description of Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, in the

ProseEdda,

or evenupon

the final stanzas oftheVoluspd (The Prophecy

of the Seeress) in the earlier Poetic Edda?% Moreover, Wagner had al-

35- Das Rheingold,complete vocal score ... by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904),scene 1, pp. 1-51.

36. Wagner to Uhlig, Nov. 3, 1851, WagnersBriefe,4:117; Wagner to Uhlig, Albis?

brunn, Nov. 12, 1851, ibid., pp. 118-20; Wagner to Liszt, Nov. 20, 1851, ibid., 9:

136-40; Wagner, Eine Mitteilungan meineFreunde,GesammelteSchriften,4: 341-44.

37. One other significant addition to the plot, the theme of the young Siegfried's

inability to experience fear, Wagner took, possibly unconsciously, from an old folktale.See Wagner to Uhlig, May 10, 1851, WagnersBriefe,4: 91; Newman, WagnerOperas,

p. 428.

38. See Jean I. Young, ed. and trans., The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson:TalesfromNorseMythology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 86-92, and "Voluspd,the Proph-

ecy ofthe Seeress," stanzas45-65, in Lee M. Hollander, ed. and trans., The PoeticEdda,







GeorgeG. Windell 37

ready employed the theme of redemption by love in the Fliegende

Hollander and Tannhauser.39 Hisconception

ofreality

as dialecticalmay

have reached him from Hegel via Feuerbach, but, as will appear below,

it is more likely to have come directly. The most reasonable conclusion

is that Wagner's study of Feuerbach focused for him what was already

present in his mind in an inchoate form. It certainly gave him the as?

surance which, as an autodidact without adequate formal academic

training, he otherwise lacked.

ni

Since Feuerbach appears to have been responsible at most for modify-

ing, however significantly, a design whose basic outlines had been de?

termined earlier, it is necessary to search elsewhere for the philosophical

sources ofthe project itself. The most likely candidate is Hegel, despite

the disparaging comments that occur in Wagner's writings after he

moved to Bayreuth in 1872. Then, for example, he complained that

the Hegelian system had "succeeded in making the minds of Germans

incapableeven of

graspingthe

problemof

philosophyto such a

degreethat since then, to have no philosophy at all has been considered the

correct philosophy."40 Such remarks owe much to the influence of

Schopenhauer and possibly to that of Nietzsche, neither of whom ad-

mired Hegel. Moreover, the self-educated Wagner frequently dis-

played in his later years an arrogance toward academic thinkers which

sought to mask his diffidence.41 Significantly, however, the only work

(2d rev. ed., Austin, Texas, 1962), pp. 9-13. In Voluspdthe gods arereborn after Ragnarok:

I see a hall than the sun more fair

thatched with red gold which is Gimle*hight.There will the gods all guiltless throne

and Hve forever in ease and bliss.

Voluspd,stanza 63, The PoeticEdda,p. 12. Wagner's original ending for Siegfried'sDeath

may reflect this idyllic picture.

39. See Newman, WagnerOperas, pp. 19-20, 43, 49, 83, n. 1, 94~95-

40. "Deutscher Kunst und deutsche Politik," GesammelteSchriften,8: 45. Cf. Wagner

to August Rockel, Zurich, Feb. 5, 1855: "Schopenhauer's philosophy . . . completelydemolishes the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel nonsense and charlatanism." Wagner an AugustRockel in WagnersBriefe,zweite Folge, 11: 51, and Wagner to Liszt, Zurich, Dec. 16 (?),

1854: "What charlatans are all the Hegels beside him [Schopenhauer]!" Ibid., 9: 42.

41. This is almost certainly the reason he found the adulation ofthe young Nietzsche

so flattering; an authentic university professor had sought him out and asked his advice.







38 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s Ring

ofa modern philosopher which found its way into his Dresden library

wasHegel's Vorlesungen

iiber diePhilosophie

derWeltgeschichte.42

Neither the composer's autobiographical works nor his correspon?

dence provide much direct evidence. For a short time when he was

fourteen Wagner had developed an attachment to his uncle, Adolf

Wagner, a minor literary scholar, whom the composer later eulogized

for "the many-sidedness of his knowledge, which extended from phi-

lology to the areas of philosophy and poetic literature with equal

warmth. . . ,"43 The youngster had access to his uncle's extensive li?

brary,and he

reportsthat he was allowed to

accompanythe middle-

aged bachelor on his daily walks, during which the conversations "had

as their subject everything serious and lofty in the realm of knowl?

edge."44 The comment is a characteristic Wagnerian exaggeration, but

it is quite possible that he did make his first contact with formal phi?

losophy during these promenades. It is likewise by no means unlikely

that Adolf Wagner's library contained works by Hegel.

During Wagner's single term as a special student at the University of

Leipzigin

1831,he attended a few lectures on

philosophywithout as-

certainable effect. The only member ofthe faculty who impressed him

was a young aesthetician named Weiss, who had just dedicated his

translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics to Hegel, possibly, Wagner says,

as an academic joke.45 He did meet Weiss at his uncle's home. Some-

time later he "racked his brain in vain . . . trying to make some sense

out ofthe first pages" of Schelling's Transcendental Idealism.46

Although he and his first wife, Minna, endured extreme poverty

duringtheir Paris

sojourn between 1839 and 1842, Wagner did havethe time to renew his interest in philosophy. A young German Jewish

scholar, Samuel Lehrs, whom he met there, rekindled his enthusiasm,

and the two spent many hours discussing metaphysical questions.47 It is

likely that Hegel, then dead only a decade, figured in those conversa?

tions. Wagner's appointment, in 1842, as second conductor at the Royal

Saxon Opera in Dresden plunged him into the daily routine of theat-

rical production and composition. The painter Friedrich Pecht, another

42. Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,pp. 51, 93.

43. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 29.

44. Ibid., pp. 29-30.

45. Ibid., p. 62.

46. Ibid., pp. 62, 442.

47. Ibid., pp. 181-82, 220-21; Newman, Life, 1: 271-72.







GeorgeG. Windell 39

friend ofthe Paris days, described in his memoirs, published more than

forty years later, how he once visited the composer in Dresden and

found him immersed in Hegel's Phanomenologie des Geistes, "which ...

he praised as the finest of all books." It soon became apparent, however,

that Wagner could not explain the meaning of a passage he had read

aloud. After repeating it four times, Wagner concluded that he did not

understand it either. Both dissolved in laughter, "and that was the end

ofthe Phanomenologie ."48

As 1848 approached, Wagner once more inaugurated a consistent

effort to broaden his knowledge and understanding. This time he chose

Hegel's Philosophy of History as the vehicle for his "introduction to

philosophy."

A good deal of it made an impression on me, and it seemed to me that I should cer?

tainly reach the inner sanctum by this route. The more incomprehensible appeared

many of the speculative conclusions of the tremendously distinguished mind, which

had been extolled to me as the capstone of all philosophical knowledge,49 the more I

felt impelled to get to the bottom ofthe matter ofthe "absolute" and everything that

was associated with it.50

Unfortunately Wagner does not tell us whether or not he ever

fmished reading the Vorlesungen. In any event, the outbreak of the

revolution soon interrupted his studies. During the following months

he became deeply involved in radical politics. He discussed revolution?

ary tactics with the Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin, who had cer?

tainly studied Hegel, and was on familiar terms with Marx and Proud-

hon.51 It is reasonable to suppose, although there is no documentary

evidence, that he was introduced to Marx's ideas by the Russian. It is

less likely, but possible, that he had access through Bakunin to some of

Marx's early writings. Neither Marx nor Proudhon, however, was

represented in his Dresden library.52 Bakunin, too, became deeply im-

48. Friedrich Pecht, Aus meinerZeit, 1: 294, quoted by Glasenapp, 2: 349.

49. Probably by Lehrs.

50. Mein Leben, 1: 442.

51. Ibid., pp. 398-402; Newman, Life, 2: 50-51; E. H. Carr, MichaelBakunin (26.ed.,

New York, 1961), pp. 135-37, 153-55, i95-9<5.52. Newman, Life, 2: 50-51; Westernhagen, DresdenerBibliothek,p. 53. The conjecture

of Robert Craft in "Parsifal, the Worship of Wagnerism," New York Review of Books,Oct. 31,1974, p. 12, n. 4, that "it is unlikely that the composer had not read Marx ..." is

supported by no documentary evidence. Wagner ignores Marx in his own writing, and

is more likely to have read Proudhon, to whom he refers frequently. See Mayer, "Wag-ners geistige Entwicklung,,, Studien zur deutschenLiteraturgeschichte.pp. 186, 198.








sRing

plicated in the May 1849 Dresden insurrection; less fortunate than

Wagner, he was arrested and convicted.53

Taking the composer at his own word, the scholars cited earlier al?

most totally ignored the possibility of a direct Hegelian influence on

Wagner. Arthur Drews did conclude that *'certain thoughts of this

philosopher, especially his conception of great historical individuals,

remained not without influence upon him."54 Adorno conceded in his

study that there are some points of correspondence between the Ring

and Hegel's philosophy of history, without, however, suggesting that

Wagner derived those features of his drama from Hegel.55 Yet less

than five years after Wagner's death Nietzsche, his most brilliant crit-

ic,56 described him unequivocally as a Hegelian. "He became," Nietz?

sche wrote, "Hegel's heir. Music as 'idea.' "57 But Nietzsche failed to

develop the theme, and his aphorism does not in any case come to

terms with the crucial point: that Hegel's contribution to Wagner was,

like his contribution to Marx, less specific doctrine than an organizing

principle, the dialectic.

Dialectical thought had a profound appeal to the generation which

matured between 1820 and 1840, the last generation ofthe romantic

age. The classical Greek philosophers who had developed the dialectic

saw in it a method by which the human intellect could achieve under?

standing. Repeated collision between affirmation and negation, state-

53- Rolf Weber, Die Revolution in Sachsen, 1848/49: Entwicklungund Analyse ihrer

Triebkrdfte[East] Berlin, 1970), p. 261; Carr, pp. 204-8.

54. P. 84. The French Wagnerian scholar Edouard Rod also noted in 1885 that

"Wagner's aesthetic, very self-conscious and very deliberate, is the logical result of theGerman aesthetic, notably of that of Lessing, of Herder,... of Goethe and Schiller, and,

above all, of Hegel in the chapter of his Aestheticswhere he treats 'the relationship ofthe

means of musical expression with the subject dealt with.'"

RevueContemporaine,uly 25,

1885, quoted by L6on Guichard, La Musiqueau Tempsdu Wagnerisme Paris,1963), pp.

63-64.

55. Adorno, p. 166.

56. Cf. "There was a German Wagner criticism only once: with Nietzsche. The rest is

nonsense." Thomas Mann to Andre Gide, Munich, Jan. 21, 1922. Erika Mann, ed.,ThomasMann Briefe, 1889-1936 (Frankfurtam Main, 1961), p. 195.

57. Der Fall Wagner n Karl Schlechta, ed., FriedrichNietzsche: Werkein drei Bdnden(Munich, 1954-56), 2: 924. See also Die FrbhlicheWissenschaft,where Nietzsche wrote:

"Until the middle of his life Richard Wagner let himself be led astrayby Hegel." Ibid.,

p. 105, and Nietzsche to Georg Brandes, Nice, Feb. 19, 1888: ". . . all Wagnerians are

followers of Schopenhauer. This was different when I was young. Then it was the last

Hegelians who held on to Wagner, and 'Wagner and Hegel' was still the watchword of

the fifties." Ibid., 3: 1279.







GeorgeG. Windell 41

ment and contradiction, could make error apparent, separate truth from

falsehood, and open the way to certain knowledge. To Hegel, the dia?

lectic was all this, but more. It was at once the technique by which the

mind apprehends reality and reality itself. Reality ceased to be some?

thing given and therefore unchanging, as in the Christian tradition; it

became dynamic, always evolving. At any moment it is the product of

what was potential in the past, the logically necessary outcome of what

has gone before. It is the absolute, the spirit, the single substance which

transforms itself into ever higher forms in an unending rational process,

a process which is therefore self-determined.58

We cannot ascertain how far Wagner read in either of Hegel's

works which he at least sampled. The problem is not critical, however,

because each of them contains a succinct and nontechnical treatment of

the dialectic in its early pages, those which the academically untrained

Wagner is most likely to have read and understood. The first of these,'

which comes at the beginning ofthe long preface to the Phanomenologie,

describes a key element in the dialectic: the concept of reality as an

"organicunity" which embraces

negation

as well as aflirmation.

For opinion [in general], the contrast between the true and the false becomes so rigidthat it also tends to expect either agreement with, or contradiction of an existing philo?

sophical system, and in a statement about such [a system] to see only the one or the

other. It comprehends the difference of philosophical systems not so much as the pro?

gressive development of truth as it sees in the difference only contradiction. The bud

disappears in the bursting forth ofthe blossom, and one could say that the former is

refuted by the latter; likewise the blossom is declared a false existence by the fruit, and,

as truth, the latter takes the place of the former. These forms are not only different

from oneanother,

butthey

alsosupplant

one another, since each isincompatible [withwhat follows]. But their fluid nature makes them at the same time elements of an or?

ganic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but [in which] one is as necessary

as the other, and this equal necessity fills out the life ofthe whole.59

58. Recent useful works on Hegel include: Schlomo Avineri, HegeVs Theory of the

Modern State (London, 1972); J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-Examination (London, 1958);Ivan Soll, An Introduction o HegeVsMetaphysics(Chicago and London, 1969); Raymond

Plant, Hegel (Bloomington, Ind., 1973); and Walter A. Kaufmann, Hegel, A Reinterpre-

tation (Garden City, N.Y., 1966).59. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Die Phanomenologiedes Geistes (6th ed., ed.

Johannes Hoffmeister), in Samtliche Werke:Neue kritischeAusgabe (Hamburg, 1952), 5-10. Anyone must pale at the prospect of attempting to render even short passages from

Hegel in English. In the translations used here the author has sought to remain as close as

possible to the structure ofthe original as well as to convey the meaning, since so much of

Wagner's prose ofthe period reflects that structure.







42 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s Ring

The introduction to the Vorlesungen likewise contains a reasonably

concise statement of Hegel's conception of history. This is found chiefly

in the chapter entitled "The Realization ofthe Spirit in History," be?

ginning on the twenty-eighth page of the text proper.60 In this Hegel

expands the idea contained in the quotation given above, now with

specific application to history. Here Wagner probably first encountered

the Hegelian concept of "spirit," which, despite the mystical overtones

often ascribed to it, is clearly and unconditionally linked to human will

and activity.

The realm ofthe spirit is that which is produced by man. One may create any kind ofan idea ofthe realm of God, but it is always a realm ofthe spirit which is realized in

man and is to be brought into existence by him.61

It need not be assumed that Wagner was overly concerned with the

subtleties of Hegel's lengthy characterization of world history as "the

progress of the consciousness of freedom" which followed.62 What

must have appealed to him was the idea that the historical process be?

comes manifest through "external, phenomenal" means, i.e., human

will and action.63 Although, Hegel argued, "reason rules the world,

and, therefore,... rules world history," "nothing great is achieved ...

without passion."64 Individuals act selfishly to attain their own ends,

but "... through the actions of men something results which is quite

different from what they intend and accomplish, from what they di?

rectly know and will. They achieve their interest, but something be?

yond that is brought about which is immanent in the action, but which

was not in their consciousness or intent."65 Some few individuals, how?

ever, "have the good fortune to be the instruments ofa purpose which

represents a stage in the progress ofthe universal spirit."66 These "world-

historical individuals are those who have willed and brought about not

something imagined, supposed, but that which is right and necessary,

who know it, in whose inner being has been revealed what is timely,

60. Die Vernunft n derGeschichte Introduction to Vorlesungeniber die Philosophieder

Weltgeschichte]5th ed., ed. Johannes Hoffmeister), in SdmtlicheWerke, 18a, Teilband 1:

50-110.61. Ibid., p. 50.62. Ibid., pp. 63-78.

63. Ibid., pp. 78-79.

64. Ibid., pp. 85, 87.

65. Ibid., p. 88.

66. Ibid., pp. 99-100.







GeorgeG. Windell 43

what is necessary."67 "The special interest of passion," Hegel continues,

"is inseparable from the actualization ofthe universal." What he calls

"the cunning of reason" makes individuals serve reason's higher purpose.

The particular is for the most part too insignificant compared with the universal; indi?

viduals are sacrificed and abandoned. The idea pays the tribute of existence and of

transience, not out of itself, but with the passions of individuals.68

Wagner's own account of his philosophical studies, written many

years later, suggests that his interest in Hegel reached its peak during

the early months ofthe 1848 revolution. Reexamined in that light, his

famous Vaterlandsverein speech of June 15, 1848, however impoliticit may have been, no longer appears irrational nonsense.69 When he

urged the king to declare Saxony a republic and to place himself at its

head in order to become "what according to his noblest conception of

himself he should be: the first ofthe people, the fireest ofthe free,"70

he was only paraphrasing Hegel. The king, no Hegelian, declined the

role of world-historical figure.

iv

Wagner made his first attempt to reduce the Nibelung material to

usable form during that same revolutionary summer of 1848. It took

the shape of a historical essay, Die Wibelungen: Weltgeschichte aus der

Sage.71 His use of Weltgeschichte, a term closely identified with Hegel,

in the subtitle of this ludicrous, amateurish effort at historical interpre?

tation on a grand scale was probably deliberate. The structure, style,

and vocabulary of the essay show unmistakably the influence of the

Vorlesungen.12

67. Ibid., p. 97-68. Ibid., p. 105. Cf. "The Ring agrees in one specific theme with the Hegelian phi?

losophy of history. That is the cunning of reason." Adorno, p. 166.

69. See Gutman, pp. 130,135; Westernhagen, Wagner,^.132, and Newman, Life,2:11.The address was published in a special supplement ofthe DresdenerAnzeiger on June 16,

the following day, under the title "Wie verhalten sich republikanische Bestrebungendem Konigtum gegeniiber?" It appears in Wagner, GesammelteSchriften,1: 108-17.

70. "Wie verhalten sich . . . ?" GesammelteSchriften,1: 116.

71. Ibid., 2: 115-55. See also, Newman, Life, 2: 18.72. It is always possible that one finds what he is looking for because he is looking,

not because it is there. It is nonetheless difficult to imagine anyone having written the

following passage without having been familiar with the introduction to Hegel's

Vorlesungen:"In Charlemagne the oft cited primeval myth reached its most real actualiza-

tion in a harmonically interconnected splendid set of historical relationships. From then

on the growth of its essentially ideal substance would increase exactly to the degree to








sRing

In this piece of historical fantasy Wagner argued that the name

"Wibelung"

or

"Wibeling,"

one ofthe termsapplied

to the

imperialparty during the medieval struggle between popes and German em?

perors, had evolved firom "Nibelung."73 Moreover, a pre-Merovingian

Frankish royal family, he wrote, had also borne the name "Nibelung";

thus the Frankish monarchy itself had become identified with the

Nibelungs of the saga.74 The myth of the Nibelung smiths, the hoard

they piled up in the bowels ofthe earth, and its appropriation by Sieg?

fried was a "hereditary possession" ofthe Franks. It became for them,

and later for Germansgenerally,

thesymbol

of the eternalquest

for

power.75 Wagner traced this hypothetical relationship ofthe myth and

the events of medieval German history through the death of Barbarossa,

then more or less neatly tied together the Nibelung hoard and the

quest for the Holy Grail.76

The essay cannot today be read without acute embarrassment. It

does, however, provide the best evidence we have of this early stage in

the composer's effort to refashion the primitive materials into a present-

day myth depictingthe "human race itself, which

proceedson and on

from life to death, firom victory to defeat, from joy to sorrow, and so,

in constant rejuvenation, brings the eternal reality of man and nature,

in themselves and through themselves, actively to consciousness."77

Two years earlier he had begun with a sketch for a spoken drama on

Barbarossa, but abandoned it when he discovered what he viewed as

the resemblance of its subject matter to that ofthe Nibelung and Sieg?

fried myths.78 His subsequent venture into Hegelian Weltgeschichte was

transitional.Siegfried, Wotan,

andJesus

allappear

in theessay,

but

Wagner's world-historical figure is still Barbarossa.79 A few months

which its embodiment as reality dissolved and evaporated, up to the point that after

complete alienation of the real, pure idea enters into history, [but] finally withdraws

from it in order, in accord with external circumstances, to become again completely ab-

sorbed in the saga." Die Wibelungen,GesammelteSchriften,2: 142.

73. It was generally held, even then, that the term was a corruption ofthe name ofthe

town Waiblingen, the Hohenstaufen family seat in Wurttemberg.

74. Die Wibelungen,GesammelteSchriften,2: 128-30.75. Ibid., pp. 119-24.

76. Ibid., pp. 130-55.

77. Ibid., p. 132.

78. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 389-90; Gutman, pp. 120-21.

79. Die Wibelungen,GesammelteSchriften,2: 115-55, esp. 119, 144-50.







GeorgeG. Windell 45

later came the Nibelungen-Mythus als Entwurf zu einem Drama, men?

tioned earlier.80

The change in Wagner's point of view between Die Wibelungen and

the Entwurf is striking. Barbarossa and Jesus have both disappeared, and

the hero has become ostensibly Siegfried, but Wagner is noticeably

ambivalent toward him. In the early paragraphs of the Entwurf he de?

scribed the hero who is to redeem the world as one ". . . in whom

autonomous strength has come to full consciousness, so that he is able

through his own free will to comprehend atonement by death [and]

to will the brave deed himself."81 This characterization includes the

idea of Christ as redeemer, and is obviously related as well to Hegel's

definition of the world-historical individual. Wagner later elaborated

this description ofthe hero to come in the second act of Die Walkure,

when Wotan reveals to Briinnhilde his desperate longing for someone

independent of his will. In these lines Wagner was close indeed to Hegel:

Only one may do

what I may not:

A hero to whom I never

offered a helping hand;

One who, a stranger to the god,free of his favor,

unknowing,without bidding,out of his own need,

with his own weaponwould perform the deed

which I must avoid,

one to which my advice never urged him,

although it was my sole desire.

He, who against the godwould fight for me,

the friendly enemy,how could I find him?

How was I to create the free one,

whom I never protected,one who in his own defiance

was dearest to me?

80. Newman, Life, 2: 28; text, GesammelteSchriften,2: 155-66.81. Nibelungen-Mythus,GesammelteSchriften,2: 158.








s Ring

How do I create the other

who is no more myself,

and would do on his ownwhat I alone desire?82

Significantly, both passages deal only with expectation or hope;

Wagner's Siegfried never really becomes capable of such responsible,

self-sacrificing behavior. Since he never attains comprehension of the

meaning of his own life, his mission, or his death, Siegfried is not a

truly tragic figure. During the slightly more than two weeks Wagner

worked on the Entwurf, he became dimly conscious that Siegfried was

scarcely a redeemer or a Hegelian hero. He was still uncertain how to

proceed, as the final pages of his draft reveal clearly. He had taken,

however, perhaps without knowing it, a fateful step. His world-his-

torical figure had become: Briinnhilde! It is she, not Siegfried, to

whom both sets of lines quoted above really apply. Her final words in

the Entwurf reveal Wagner trying, not wholly successfully, to cope

with the problem.

Youhaughty

hero, howyou

held me in thrall! Ibetrayed

allmy knowledge

toyou,mortal one, so that my wisdom had to become of no avail; it was of no use to you,

you relied upon yourself alone; now you must free it [wisdom] again through your

death; my knowledge returns to me, and I understand the runes of this ring. The runes

ofthe primal law I also comprehend, the old prophecy ofthe Norns! Hear them, you

glorious gods, your crime is expiated: thank him, the hero, who took your guilt uponhimself. He gave it now into my hands to complete the work. Ended is the slavery of

the Nibelungs, the ring shall bind them no more. Alberich shall not receive it; it shall

no longer be your master; instead, let him also be free as you are. For I give this ringto you, wise sisters ofthe watery depths; the flame which burns me shall cleanse the

evil jewel; dissolve it and keep it harmless, the Rhinegold that was stolen from you inorder to forge slavery and evil from it. Only one rules, father of all, you! So that your

power will be eternal I bring this man to you; receive him, he is worthy of you.83

Although Siegfried here still has something of Jesus Who took upon

Himself the sins of all men, it is not he, but Briinnhilde who acquires

understanding and thereby the capacity to lift Alberich's curse firom

the world.

In the roughly six weeks which separate the Entwurf firom the com?

pleted text of Siegfried's Death, some of Wagner's ambivalence disap?

peared. In the latter there are no references to Siegfried as Christ. Al-

82. Die Walkure,complete vocal score . . . by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904),Act II, scene 2, pp. 120-22.

83. Nibelungen-Mythus,GesammelteSchriften,2: 165-66.







GeorgeG. Windell 47

though Briinnhilde's apostrophe runs along lines similar to those ofthe

sketch, it issubstantially

briefer. Mostsignificantly, Wagner

eliminated

the final lines quoted above referring to Siegfried's worthiness. She

says only:I bring you Siegfried:

give a loving greeting to him,

the guarantor of eternal power.84

Her final words are directed not to Wotan, but to her great charger:

"Rejoice, Grane, soon we shall be free!"85 In the closing moments of

Gotterdammerung Wagneronce more alters

significantlythis

conception,as Briinnhilde, majestically and with irresistible authority, wills and

thereby brings about the destruction ofthe gods and the birth ofa new

world order.86

The shift in viewpoint described here has the utmost significance for

a proper understanding both ofthe Ring and Wagner's place in the in?

tellectual history of the nineteenth century. In making Briinnhilde

rather than Siegfried the instrument of the revolutionary cataclysm he

envisioned, Wagner parted companywith orthodox nineteenth-cen-

tury attitudes which made women, in Simone de Beauvoir's expressive

phrase, "the second sex." In that sense he went beyond his intellectual

antecedents, Hegel, Feuerbach, and even Schopenhauer, his contem?

poraries, such as Marx and Engels, and successors such as Freud.87 It was

not only his music that pointed to the future. It would be inaccurate to

describe Wagner as a conscious feminist in the twentieth-century sense

of the word, or perhaps even in the sense of his contemporary Ibsen.

Hisdifficulty

intreating

theSiegfried-Brunnhilde relationship

is re-

84. Siegfrieds Tod, Act III, scene 3, GesammelteSchriften,2: 227.

85. Ibid.

86. Gotterddmmerung, ct III, scene 3, pp. 329-31.

87. Nowhere, however, does Hegel specifically exclude the possibility that a world-

historical figure might be female. He does distinguish between the natures of men and

women in a fashion which clearly regards the male as primary and probably superior."In relation to externality the former [man] is powerful and active, the latter [woman]

passive and subjective." See Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (4th ed., ed.

Johannes Hoffmeister), in SdmtlicheWerke, 12: Par. 166, pp. 154-55. Marx and Engels

were interested in women only as proletarians, as exploited members of an exploitedclass.See, e.g., "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts," in KarlMarx: Early Writings,trans. and ed. T. B. Bottomore (New York, 1963), pp. 151-55. Cf. Freud to Martha

Bernays, Vienna, Nov. 15, 1883. ". . . legislation and custom have to grant to women

many rights kept firomthem, but the position of woman cannot be other than what it is:

to be an adored sweetheart in youth, and a beloved wife in maturity." Lettersof SigmundFreud,ed. Ernst L. Freud (New York, 1960), p. 76.







48 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner s

Ring

vealing. But in the Ring he certainly abandoned the romantic stereotype

ofthepassive

woman who redeems sinful manby

herconstancy alone,

which had been characteristic of his earlier operas.88 It needs to be

recognized that in this sense too the Ring significantly contributes to

the revolution against nineteenth-century bourgeois values to which

Thomas Mann referred.

As he expanded Siegfried7s Death into the Ring, Wagner converted into

dramatic form the material that had beenonly briefly

narrated in his

earlier versions. What resulted from this revamping is, however, hardly

a drama at all according to classical canons. It is rather, as Mann pointed

out, an epic portrayal through mythical symbols of the collapse of a

civilization which closely resembled that of nineteenth-century Europe.

Through its sheer length, the grandeur of its conception, the intricacy

of its plot, the Ring became an analog for a world-historical process. It

is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Wagner consciously used the

patternof historical

developmentdescribed

by Hegelin the introduc?

tion to the Vorlesungen as the structure for his plot. Again and again the

actions depicted exemplify basic Hegelian premises, such as the dia-

lectical relationship between reason and passion, the certainty that ra?

tional actions will produce consequences which are unforeseen, but

part ofa larger design, thus, the correspondence between rational, self-

serving acts of individuals and historical necessity. In Wagner's words:

... the course ofthe whole poem shows the necessity of recognizing change, diversity,

plurality, the eternal novelty of reality and of life and of yielding to it. ... This is all

88. Senta in the FliegendeHolldnderdreams only of saving the tormented captain by

proving loyal unto death; Elisabeth savesTannhauserfrom the arms of Venus?by dyingat the appropriatemoment! In LohengrinElsa has a vision ofa pure knight who will de?

fend her. Of these early heroines Elsa alone proves unworthy. Wagner's later female

characters are of sterner stuff. In Die WalkureSieglinde drugs her husband and incites

Siegmund to seize for himself Wotan's sword. The Irishprincess completely dominates

the action of Tristanund Isolde. Tristan, like Siegmund, Siegfried, and even Wotan, is

basically passive, more victim than hero. In Parsifal,Kundry is far more forceful than

Amfortas or Parsifal.The composer's life does not bear out the myth that he was a "malechauvinist." (Cf. Robert Craft, New York Review of Books, Oct. 31, 1974, p. 14.) He

seemed to be attracted to women who were what today would be called "liberated."

Among the better known were the famous soprano Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient, the

novelist Judith Gautder,the first woman to be elected to the AcademieGoncourt,and,

above all, Cosima. The author is currently studying the question of why Wagner's ideas

appealed to such an extraordinary number of self-conscious and self-confident women.







GeorgeG. Windell 49

we have to learn firom the history of humanity; to will what is necessary and to ac-

complish it ourselves.89

It is not possible here to recapitulate the complex plot. One illustra-

tion from each ofthe Ring operas must suffice. Only the example from

Siegfried can be traced even indirectly to the myths from which Wagner

worked. The already considered opening scene of Das Rheingold, al?

though it owes much to Feuerbach, illustrates all the above points.

Alberich's decision to seize the Rhinegold is obviously motivated by

calculated self-interest, but it is certainly coupled with extreme passion:

sexual lust suddenly transformed into consuming hatred for all wholove.90 In a sense all later events in the Ring are logically inevitable, but

unforeseen consequences of Alberich's act.

In the final act of Die Walkiire Wotan has resolved to punish his

daughter, the Valkyrie Briinnhilde, for disobeying his command. He

will deprive her of her godhood and leave her asleep on a mountaintop,

to become, as a mortal woman, the prize of whatever man awakens

her.91 At last, however, he accedes to her impassioned plea that her

sleeping form be surrounded by a wall of fire penetrable only by afearless hero. Both are aware that Sieglinde's unborn child will be such

a hero.92 Wotan desperately hopes that she and the fearless hero, Sieg?

fried, together, without his aid, will return the ring to the Rhine and

lift Alberich's curse. Neither anticipates that Briinnhilde, the woman,

will think and act as a woman, not as a Valkyrie. The consequences of

her transformation are thus wholly different from what either can

conceive.

The climax of the first act of Siegfried comes when the young hero

reforges the fragments of the sword, Nothung. His conscious motive is

simple: to provide himself with a dependable weapon so that he may

leave forever the Nibelung, Mime, who has raised him, but whom he

nonetheless loathes. Mime, however, intends to use Siegfried to kill the

dragon, Fafner, and then treacherously to slay the youth in order to

acquire for himself the hoard and the ring which Fafner guards.93

Neither can foresee that Siegfried, after killing Fafner and inadver-

89. Wagner to August Rockel, Zurich, Jan. 25, 1854, WagnersBriefe, 11: 36.

90. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 1-51.

91. Die Walkiire,Act III, scene 2, pp. 249-53.

92. Ibid., scene 3, pp. 280-94.

93. Siegfried,complete vocal score .. . by Karl Klindworth (New York, 1904), Act I,

scene 3, pp. 107-35.








sRing

tently tasting his blood, will become able to understand the speech of

birds and to read the meaning hidden in Mime's flattering words. Thus

warned, Siegfried dispatches Mime, learns from the forest bird of the

beauty asleep on the rock, and departs to find her and to accomplish a

destiny he is fated never to comprehend.94

In the first act of Gotterdammerung, Briinnhilde awaits on her fire-

encircled mountaintop the return of Siegfried, whom she had sent into

the world of men. Her Valkyrie sister, Waltraute, comes to her and

describes how Wotan and the gods silently await the end. Movingly

she relates how Wotan had learned from his raven messengers of Sieg-

fried's union with Briinnhilde, at which news he "smiled for the last

time." He whispered that were Briinnhilde to return the ring to the

Rhinemaidens, gods and men would yet be freed from the curse.

Waltraute begs her sister to give up the ring. But to her it is now a love

token from Siegfried and nothing more. She therefore refuses to part

with her treasure. Her action, motivated by passion, is, however, wholly

rational, given the state of her knowledge. Its consequences, once again,

are altogether unimagined.95

The ensuing catastrophe is in no way predestined, however, as this

scene is designed to make clear. It depicts the penultimate occasion upon

which a decision of one character or another to relinquish the ring

would drastically change the outcome of the drama. Yet in each case,

calculation, emotional attachment, or a combination of the two make

that decision impossible.96 At last, in the third act of Gotterdammerung,

Siegfried, still ignorant ofthe ring's power, is tempted to give it to the

Rhinemaidens as a gesture of friendship. But their pleading suddenly

alters to what he perceives as a threat. A hero cannot bow to threats!

He puts the ring back on his finger.97

Beyond the examples cited of the Hegelian pattern in the Ring's

plot, there is also a wealth of evidence in its language of the impact

which the Hegelian dialectic made upon Wagner. On numerous occa-

sions he treats reality as an interplay between a positive idea and its

94- Ibid., Act II, scene 2, pp. 188-98; scene 3, pp. 207-38.

95. Gotterddmmerung,ct I, scene 3, pp. 100-13.96. Other occasions occur, for example, in Das Rheingold,when Wotan first acquires

the ring firom Alberich in scene 4, pp. 172-78, again when he gives the ring to the giantsinstead of returning it to the Rhinemaidens later in the same scene, pp. 189-90, 196, and

once again when he denies the Rhinemaidens' plea for the return ofthe gold as the godscross the rainbow bridge into Valhalla, pp. 216-19.

97. Gotterddmmerung,ct III, scene 1, pp. 251-62.







George G. Windell 51

negation. Occasionally these instances involve little more than an al?

most frivolous play on words, as when Fasolt in Das Rheingold refers to

Freia as Freia, die holde, Holde, die Freia.98 More frequently, however,

they reflect a deliberate intent. From the wealth of material of this type,

space permits extended discussion of only two examples. Again, there

is no meaningful precedent for either in the myths upon which the

Ring is based.

By far the most touching theme in the Ring is Wagner's depiction of

the relationship between Wotan and his Valkyrie daughter Briinnhilde.

When she first appears in the second act o?Die Walkure, Briinnhilde is

Wotan's alter ego. A few moments later, when he appears reticent to

explain to her the cause of his sudden dejection, she turns to him and

sings, to some ofthe most poignant music Wagner wrote:

You are speaking to Wotan's will,

tell me what you wish;

who am I, were I not your will?"

He answers:

What I say to no one in words,

let it remain unspoken forever;

I am consulting only with myself,when I speak to you.100

Wotan's "will" now becomes its own negation. Briinnhilde disobeys

her father's command to shield Hunding, Sieglinde's husband, instead

of the Walsung, Siegmund, her brother and lover, as ordered earlier.

Throughout the remainder o?Die Walkure Wagner maintains the con?

ceptual pattern he had here set up. The lengthy scene which forms the

core of Act Three is east in the form ofa classical dialogue. A question

is posed, an answer given; the answer generates another question. Out

of the process each gradually acquires understanding of the rational

grounds on which the other had acted.101 The climax comes in Briinn-

hilde's lines, set to transparently lovely music, describing Wotan as

The one who breathed

this love into my heart;

whose will caused me

to join the Walsung,

98. Das Rheingold,scene 2, p. 69.

99. Die Walkiire,Act II, scene 2, p. 111.

100. Ibid., pp. 111-12.

101. Ibid., Act II, scene 3, pp. 265-97.







52 Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagners Ring

inwardly trusting him9

I defied your command.102

Her concluding lines focus upon the dialectical tension between Wo-

tan's will and the decision which convention had forced upon him.

A still more persuasive example may be found in the way Wagner

conceived and treated the relationship between the gods and the Nibe-

lungs, and their chief protagonists, Wotan and Alberich. In the thir-

teenth-century Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson described two distinct va-

rieties of elves, light and dark.103 Wagner's Nibelungs are descended

from the dark-elves ofthe Edda. The composer refers to them repeatedlyas Schwarz-Alben, and they, like their Norse originals "livfe down in the

earth."104 What is unprecedented is Wagner's equation of the gods

with the light-elves. Both usages appear first in Scene Three of Das

Rheingold. First Alberich chides Loge for consorting with the gods,

since he has arrived in Nibelheim in the company of Wotan.105 A few

moments later he expresses hatred for the "eternal revellers" who live

above and have nothing but contempt for the Schwarz-Alben. But one

day they will all become slaves of Alberich through the power of the

Rhinegold.For your men will

first bow to my power

your jewelled women?

who disdain my wooing?the dwarf will force to his desire

although they deny him love.

Hahahaha!

Doyou

understand me?

Beware!

Beware the army of nightwhen the Nibelung hoard

rises out ofthe silent depths to daylight!106

These lines employ the obvious dialectic of night and day. More im-

portantly, they are those in which Wagner came closest to Marx, for

Alberich in this scene is unmistakably, as George Bernard Shaw appears

102. Ibid., pp. 273-74. Italics added.

103. ProseEdda,p. 46. See also E. O. B. Turville-Petre, Myth andReligionofthe North:

The Religion of Ancient Scandinauia New York, 1964), pp. 23-31.

104. ProseEdda,p. 46.

105. Das Rheingold,scene 3, p. 136.106. Ibid., pp. 141-143.







GeorgeG. Windell 53

first to have noted, the capitalist exploiter using the power of gold to

subjugate the world.107

Wagner later develops this idea of the reciprocal relationship be?

tween gods and Nibelungs into a highly dramatic conception which

pictures Wotan and Alberich as dialectical antitheses. Each is part ofa

unity that transcends both; alone neither is comprehensible or com?

plete. The name "Alberich" is related to Alb, and is almost certainly

derived from it. As early as the second scene of Das Rheingold, Loge

refers to the Nibelung dwarf as Nacht-Alberich.108 This rubric is con?

nected both logically and psychologically with Schwarz-Alberich, the

form in which it more frequently appears.109 It is the personalized

analog of Schwarz-Alben. For symmetry this scheme requires Wotan,

the chief ofthe gods, the "light-elves," to occupy a position correspond-

ing to that of Alberich. In the riddle scene ofthe first act ofSiegfried we

find the pattern completed in a way which confirms that Wagner did

indeed see Wotan and Alberich linked in this manner.

To Mime's first riddle: what kind of beings live deep in the earth,

Wotan replies:In the depths ofthe earth

the Nibelungs rule.

Their country is Nibelheim.

107. George Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite (1898), reprinted in Shaw, MajorCriticalEssays (London, 1932), pp. 170-74, 179-81. Although Wagner's anticapitalismresembled that of Marx, it was probably derived, insofar as it did not reflect his own

experience, from Proudhon and/or Bakunin. (See Mayer, pp. 185-187, 195-99, and n.

52, above.) It is also probable that the notoriously anti-Semitic Wagner intended Al?

berich and his brother Mime to serve as caricatures of archtypal Jews. (See Adorno, pp.23-25; Newman, Life, 2: 346-47; Newman, Wagner Operas, p. 543, n. 1; Strobel,Skizzen und Entwiirfe,pp. 99, 138.) The association of Jews with the idea of capitalist

exploitation was already deeply ingrained by the mid-nineteenth century in the con?

sciousness of Europe. Cf. Marx in 1844: "Let us not seek the secret ofthe Jew in his

religion, but let us seek the secret of the religion in the real Jew. What is the profanebasis of Judaism: Practical need, self-interest.What is the worldly cult of the Jews?

Huckstering.What is his worldly god? Money. Very well: then in emancipating itself

from hucksteringand money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would

emancipate itself." Marx, "On the Jewish Question," Early Writings,p. 34. Wagner's

chief contribution to modern anti-Semitism (and perhaps to Zionism) is found in thesupport he later gave and the prestige he lent to defining Judaism in racial rather than in

religious terms.

108. Das Rheingold,scene 2, p. 87. In Gotterddmmerung, ct II, scene 1, p. 132, Hagenaddresses him as schlimmerAlb.

109. See, e.g., Das Rheingold,scene 3, p. 142; Siegfried,Act I, scene 2, pp. 57-58, Act II,scene 1, p. 142.







54 Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner s Ring

Black elves are they.Black-Alberich

once exercised mastery over them.110

And to the third riddle: what kind of beings live on the cloudy heights,

he answers:

On the cloudy heightsthe gods live.

Their dwelling is called Valhalla.

Light elves are they.

Light-Alberich,

Wotan, governsthe band.111

The description of Wotan as Licht-Alberich is crucial. It shows that

Wagner intended each to be seen as Hegelian antitheses, inseparably

linked, common victims of their lust for power. Each, by forcibly

appropriating the Rhinegold, had sacrificed his freedom and become

enslaved to it.

VI

A study of influences upon what is, after all, a mwsic-drama must, in the

absence of an analysis of the music itself, remain incomplete. Such an

analysis would require the knowledge and training of a musicologist

who is also a philosopher and historian. Unfortunately, most works by

musicologists are only minimally helpful.112 But even to the historian

there are obvious examples of how Wagner employed a dialectical

scheme in the music ofthe Ring. The technique that he first used here

of associating specific musical themes, which others have dubbed "lead?

ing motives," with personages, emotional states, ideas, etc. was superbly

adapted to depict dialectical movement, whether Wagner adopted it

consciously for that purpose or not. Two examples only will be given

here, primarily to suggest a direction for further research.

The ascending theme which forms almost the entire content of the

prelude to Das Rheingold, incidentally one ofthe most stunning breaks

with musical tradition in the history of the art, suggests primeval un-

corrupted nature.113 At various times during the Ring Wagner asso-

no. Siegfried,Act I, scene 2, pp. 57-58.111. Ibid., pp. 61-62.

112. For the Ring the best accessible treatments are in the appropriatesections of Gut?

man, Newman, Life and WagnerOperas,and in Robert Donington, Wagner*s"Ring"and Its Symbols (New York, 1963).

113. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 1-5; Newman, WagnerOperas,pp. 451-52.







GeorgeG. Windell 55

ciates it with difFerent aspects of nature?the Rhine, the earth goddess,

Erda, the Norns who

spin

the web of

destiny.114Usually, as in the

Rheingold prelude, it connotes movement out of a state of timeless

simplicity toward the increasing complexity of historical time and

space. But the motive has a negative, descending form. This antithetical

version first appears in the scene of Erda's warning to Wotan in Das

Rheingold at the lines,

All that is comes to an end,

a dismal day dawns for the gods.115

It is therefore associated with decline, destruction, Gotterddmmerung. In

form, as well as connotation, it is the mirror image of the theme of

primitive nature. Wagner makes that relationship clear on this occa?

sion, as frequently later, by employing the two together in a cyclical

pattern.116

In some ways even more revealing of the composer's design is the

way in which he juxtaposed the two musical themes which symbolize

the quest for power. The first, Wagner always associated with the ring

itself, power used illegitimately to enslave the world to the will ofthe

ring's possessor.117 The second identifies Valhalla, the physical em-

bodiment of power used to defend the rightful authority ofthe gods.118

Both motives appear early in Das Rheingold. Wagner makes unequiv-

ocal their connection by employing a symphonic treatment ofthe ring

theme to effect the transition from the bottom of the Rhine (where

Alberich steals the gold) to the mountaintop (where Wotan and the

other gods appear for the first time).119 At the instant when the mists

clear, (or, as is more customary, the curtain rises) revealing the castle

gleaming in the morning sun, the theme ofthe ring is suddenly trans-

formed into the one symbolizing Valhalla.120 Despite the difFerent

sound and feeling, the two are musically as close as the obverse and

reverse of a coin. They are in fact musically the same theme treated

114- Das Rheingold,scene 4, pp. 193-94; Siegfried, Act III, scene 1, pp. 242-43; Gotter?

ddmmerung, rologue, pp. 1, 41-42.

115. Das Rheingold,scene 4, p. 194; Newman, WagnerOperas, p. 487.116. Das Rheingold,scene 4, p. 194. See also, Siegfried,Act III, prelude, pp. 239-40, and

Brunhilde's entry in Gotterddmmerung, ct III, scene 3, p. 314.

117. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 41-42; Newman, Wagner Operas, p. 455.118. Das Rheingold,scene 2, p. 55; Newman, WagnerOperas, p. 457.

119. Das Rheingold,scene 1, pp. 53-54.120. Ibid., scene 2, p. 55.







56 Hegel, Feuerbach, andWagner's Ring

differently. The composer has thus fixed in the minds of attentive

spectators the dialectical link between the alternate versions of power

which ties together all the drama's complex strands of action.

In the course of the century since its completion, Wagner's Ring des

Nibelungen has become part of the repertory of every major opera

theater in the western world. But it was its musical appeal, not its

philosophical content, that guaranteed its survival through two world

wars. During that time it has been viewed in many contradictory ways.

For too long German nationalists were allowed to exploit it for their

own purposes without effective challenge. Regrettably, the aging Wag?

ner associated himself with nationalist extremism, as did later his widow

and members ofthe "Bayreuth Circle" which gathered about the fam?

ily. This group became a focus for many of the tendencies, including

racism and virulent anti-Semitism, which have become associated with

the term "Wagnerism." It served as one bridge from Wagner to Hitler

and National Socialism.121 Those, largely non-German, who, however

dimly, sensed the revolutionary reordering of values implied by Wag?

ner's replacement of Siegfried by Briinnhilde as the protagonist of his

drama recognized that they were outside the mainstream.122 Some, like

Shaw, regarded Gotterddmmerung as an unequivocal betrayal of Wag?

ner's revolutionary past.123

Later Wagnerian works such as Tristan und Isolde (1859) and even

Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (1867), not to speak of Parsifal (1882)

and the outrageous essays ofthe Bayreuth period, do reveal a growing

despair about humanity. The Ring, however, even though it was com?

pleted only in 1874, is largely the work ofthe younger Wagner who

still believed in the possibility of improving humanity through revolu?

tionary social change.124 That Wagner conceived Siegfried, and then,

121. See George G. Windell, "Hitler, National Socialism, and Richard Wagner,"

Journal of CentralEuropeanAffairs, 22 (Jan. 1963): 479-97, and Winfried Schiiler, Der

BayreutherKreis von seinerEntstehungbis zum Ausgangder WilhelminischenAra: Wagner-kult und Kulturreformm Geiste volkischer Weltanschauung,Neue Miinstersche Beitragezur Geschichtsforschung, vol. 12 (Miinster, 1971).

122. See, e.g., Anne Dzamba Sessa, "An Inner Ring of Superior Persons: The Cult of

Wagner in Nineteenth-Century England" (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1973).

123. PerfectWagnerite,pp. 235-45.

124. In his perceptive essay "The Quest for the Grail: Wagner and Morris," Critical

Spirit%. 221, Carl E. Schorske argues that "Because he saw convention as having in

Reason its strongest ally, Wagner became the lifelong enemy of Reason." The operativeword here is "lifelong." Schorske pushes back to an earlier period some ofthe attitudes

Wagner developed later in his life, and thereby attributes to him a consistency he did not

display.







GeorgeG. Windell 57

in an amazing quantum leap, Briinnhilde as Hegelian "instruments of

a purpose which represents a stage in the progress of the universal

spirit."125 That was the Wagner who consorted with Bakunin and who

saw in Feuerbach "the representative of ruthlessly radical liberation of

the individual from the burden of restraining ideas associated with be?

lief in authority."126

Today both casual audiences and serious scholars, to whom the idea

ofa catastrophic end to civilization has become commonplace, find the

holocaust which consumes Valhalla more relevant as prophecy than did

earlier generations. But the Ring does not in fact end on this vision of

universal destruction.127 When, in 1874, Wagner at last put down on

paper the music which does bring the colossal music-drama to a close,

all the Schopenhauerian pessimism faded, and for a while the composer

returned to the milieu in which he had lived a quarter-century earlier.

Recalling for the only time the music to which Sieglinde had apos-

trophized Briinnhilde as the agent of her deliverance in the third act of

Die Walkure,128 Wagner allows us to experience through music in

those final serene measures what Feuerbach had sought to convey in

mere words: "What faith, creed, folly separates, love unites."129

125- Hegel, Vemunftin derGeschichte,pp. 99-100.

126. Wagner, Mein Leben, 1: 443.

127. Hans Mayer, Studien zur deutschenLiteraturgeschichte,p. 202-4, points out that

Wagner wrote three separateversions ofthe final lines of Brunnhilde's immolation scene,one derived from Feuerbach, one from Schopenhauer, and one which he finally used

from Bakunin. He regards Wagner's claim (GesammelteSchriften,6: 254-56) that his

choice of the last was motivated by purely musical reasons as untrue. It is, however,

indubitably the shortest of the three versions.

128. Die Walkure,Act III, scene 1, p. 228; Gotterddmmerung, ct III, scene 3, p. 340.

129. Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums,SdmtlicheWerke,6: 59.

Windell Hegel, Feuerbach, And Wagner's Ring

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