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| Schopenhauer |
How much Schopenhauer is there really in Wagner?
A l e s s a n d r o P
i n z a n i
Universidade
Federal de Santa Catarina – UFSC – Florianópolis
ABSTRACT
The paper aims at
analyzing some Wagnerian figures in order to show that the influence of
Schopenhauer’s philosophy on Wagner is not as strong as commonly held – at
least not in his operas. The figures that shall be considered are: Wotan
and Brünnhilde, Tristan and Isolde, and finally Parsifal, who appears
to be the only Schopenhauerian character of all.
It is not my
intention in this paper to speak generically of the influence of Schopenhauer’s
philosophy on Wagner. I shall rather try to analyze five Wagnerian figures in
order to show that the current opinion on Schopenhauer’s influence on his
works should be at least partially revised. While Schopenhauer’s thought undoubtedly
impressed Wagner very much, this influence should be sought rather in some
theoretical aspects, that is, with regard to the role Wagner assigns to art in
general and to music in particular, and maybe in some musical aspects. This
influence seems to be weaker precisely with regard to the dramaturgical aspect,
to the librettos, in which we would expect to find it at its strongest, but in
which on the contrary we are confronted with figures andsituations that are
rather at odds with Schopenhauer’s thought.
The figures I shall
consider are Wotan and Brünnhilde, Tristan and Isolde, and finally Parsifal. The
choice is not arbitrary, but is in a sense an obligatory one, since Wagner himself
connects these figures to Schopenhauer’s philosophy. But first, let me
reconstruct briefly the circumstances under which Wagner fell under the spell of
Schopenhauer.
In 1854 Wagner
finishes with the composition of the musical score of Walküre. In
the fall of that year he reads for the first time The World as
Will and Representation.
In the summer of 1855 he claims to have read the book already four times and in
fact he shall read it over and over since that moment. The diaries of his wife Cosima
testify of this steady, systematical and repeated study of Schopenhauer’s
masterwork. At first she notes when she and her husband would have read Kant and
Schopenhauer at night. After a while, she notes rather the uncommon event of not
having read Schopenhauer (“Heute kein S.”). It seems that this enthusiasm was
not reciprocated by the philosopher. He liked the libretto of the Ring,
although he wondered why the composer had sent it to him without a presentation letter;
he even held Wagner for a decent, even if not a good poet, but
apparently he did not
like Wagner’s music. This should come as no surprise, since the examples of opera
he mentions with appreciation in his book are Mozart’s Don Giovanni and
Bellini’s Norma, which are quite far from Wagnerian artistic
forms and ideals. Anyway, Wagner became a life-long adept of
Schopenhauer: he gave his book as a present
to friends and simple acquaintances and always wanted to discuss it with them.
Some reacted with irritation or rage, since they considered
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| Ludwig Feuerbach |
is correct with
regard to Parsifal.
On the other side, if
we consider Wagner’s theoretical writings before his encounter with
Schopenhauer, we can find many common points with regard to the priority assigned to
music over the other arts. This lead Edouard Sans, who analyzed extensively
the relationship between the composer and the philosopher, to write that Wagner
“was intimately ready to get from the philosopher the validation of his
deepest convictions. Schopenhauer will preach to the choir”
(SANS 1969, p. 263).
From this point of view, the writing on Beethoven from 1870, the most
“Schopenhauerian” among Wagner’s writings, could be seen alternatively either
as the most accomplished expression of the “true” Wagner, or as a mere repetition
of old ideas in new form, or as a complete change in the composer’s
theoretical stance. The querelle is far from being solved, but
it will not matter here (for an
analysis of the different readings see COOKE 1979, MAGEE
1988 and NATTIEZ
1997).
Wagner himself
admitted that in reading Schopenhauer he recognized in the idea of the
renunciation to will the very same idea that moved all his main characters: the
Flying Dutchman, whose only aspiration is to be freed from his immortality, from the
eternal cycle of seven years and a day to which he is condemned;
Tannhäuser, who in fact seeks in sex only a way of escaping from the
world; even
Lohengrin, although it is not so easy to understand what Wagner is referring to. In any
case, he claims that thanks to his reading of The World as Will and
Representation he became conscious of things he had just sensed
before, without grasping them
fully. He even wrote in a letter that “only now I got to understand my Wotan”.
In his highly unreliable, but nevertheless fundamental autobiography Wagner
writes that he found in Schopenhauer all what he had
already expressed in
literary and metaphorical form in the Ring libretto. This is a relevant claim and we
should take it seriously. What was Wagner’s
original aim when he started working on the Ring? Of course he had an
aesthetical intention, namely to complete an artwork that corresponded to the
ideals he defended in his theoretical writings like The Artwork of the Future
or Opera and Drama. But we are not interested in the
aesthetical or musical aspects, rather in the philosophical, ideal or
even ideological ones in the librettos. Wagner’s
original intention when he started working on the libretto was notably to describe a
world characterized by the lack of love and by injustice (in
that time the
composer stood under the influence of Feuerbach, as it is well known). This is
symbolized by the act through which at the beginning of the Ring Alberich curses love
and steals the Rhine gold – an act that, however, just duplicates the act
through which Wotan had ripped out a branch of the cosmic ash in order to build a
shaft for his spear. The redemption from this unjust, loveless world should happen
through an extraordinary couple, Brünnhilde and Siegfried,
which should come
about thank the breaking-off of social conventions (Siegfried is the son of two
siblings: Siegmund and Sieglinde) and of the dominant social order (Brünnhilde is a
rebel against the father and, indirectly, against Fricka, who stand both guarantor for
this order: Wotan guaranteeing pacts and contracts, Fricka guaranteeing the
familiar ties and the mores, the Sitten). While working at the libretto, however,
dramaturgical reasons lead Wagner to change radically his project. Far from
redeeming the world through their love, Siegfried and Brünnhilde end up drifting apart
irreconcilably.2 When, at the end of the Ring, Brünnhilde throws the ring back
into the Rhine, Siegfried has already died thanks to her plotting with Hagen
and the Walhalla is burning. Her redemptive act is very different from the
one initially imagined by Wagner: apparently we are not faced with redemption
through the love of a couple, rather with expiation through havoc
and destruction.
To this change in the
story corresponds a radical change in one of the Ring’s main characters,
namely, Wotan. At the beginning of Rheingold we find an extremely
self-confident Wotan. At the end of this opera, after Erda has warned him to let the ring
go and has preannounced the twilight of the gods, Wotan loses shortly his
self-confidence, but he thinks immediately of a plan to get back the
ring and prevent the fall
of Walhalla, as his words to Fricka let guess. At the beginning of Walküre he
is still convinced that his plan is going to work: he will use Siegmund to vanquish
Fafner and get back the ring. His confidence is destroyed by Fricka in a dialogue
that represents the central moment of the Ring along with the following scene with
Brünnhilde. His wife shows him the futility of his effort: far from acting freely,
Siegmund is just a tool in Wotan’s hands, a puppet executing his order, while he,
the god, is the real actor. Wotan is forced to acknowledge that Fricka is right and
this revelation devastates him. Therefore, in the following dialogue with his
daughter he expresses all his discouragement and despair, coming so far as to
wish that Alberich might recover the ring. This is not even pessimism: it is
plain nihilism, if one considers the dwarf’s intentions. In one of the musically more
intense pages of the whole Ring Wotan cries:
“I give up my work.
Only one thing I want
now:
the end,
the end!”
However, on several
occasions Wotan shall admit that this decision of wanting the end was taken in a
moment of despair and rage and that he did not renounce definitively his
plans. In Siegfried, Wotan, who now calls himself Wanderer
(but The hero, under the
spell of Hagen’s magic potion, promises to Günther to conquer
Brünnhilde for him as a bride in order to get in exchange Gutrune’s
hand. When Brünnhilde sees her husband at the side of his new bride,
she swears revenge and reveals to Hagen where Siegfried’s weak spot
lies: in his back.Therefore Hagen is
able to kill Siegfried. When she learns from Gutrune that Siegfried
was under the spell of the magic potion, however, Brünnhilde goes
back to her initial love, climbs up the pyre where his lover’s
corpse lies, starts the fire that shall destroy Walhalla and throw
the ring in the Rhine.
