Department of Russian Classical Literature and Theoretical Literary Studies, Yelets State University
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Wagner Richard
Selected works. Comp. and comment. I.A. Barsova and S.A. Osherov. Enter. article by A.F. Losev. Per. with him. M., Art, 1978. 695 p. (The history of aesthetics in monuments and documents).
The outstanding composer of the 19th century, Richard Wagner, is also known for his work on aesthetics. The collection includes the most significant works of R. Wagner (“Art and Revolution”, “Opera and Drama”, “A Work of Art of the Future” and others), which allow us to understand not only the aesthetic views of the composer and his taste preferences, but also Wagner’s social position. The collection also includes articles from the early and late period of R. Wagner's theoretical work, which can be used to trace his ideological evolution.
A.F. Losev
The historical meaning of the aesthetic worldview of Richard Wagner
ABOUT THE ESSENCE OF GERMAN MUSIC
Translation by E. Markovich
ARTIST AND PUBLIC
Translation by I. Tatarinova
VIRTUOSIS AND ARTIST
Translation by I. Tatarinova
PILGRIMAGE TO BEETHOVEN
Translation by I. Tatarinova
ART AND REVOLUTION
Translation by I. Katzenelenbogen
THE ART OF THE FUTURE
Translation by S. Gijdeu
OPERA AND DRAMA
Translation by A. Shepelevsky and A. Winter
MUSIC OF THE FUTURE
Translation by I. Tatarinova
ON THE APPOINTMENT OF THE OPERA
Translation by O. Smolyan
ABOUT ACTORS AND SINGERS
Translation by G. Bergelson
PUBLIC AND POPULARITY
Translation by O. Smolyan
THE PUBLIC IN TIME AND SPACE
Translation by O. Smolyan
ON WRITING POETRY AND MUSIC
Translation by O. Smolyan
COMMENTS
HISTORICAL MEANING OF RICHARD WAGNER'S AESTHETIC WORLD VIEW
In 1918, A. Blok wrote: “Only a great and worldwide Revolution can return to people the fullness of free art, which will destroy the centuries-old lies of civilizations and raise the people to the height of artistic humanity”*. For A. Blok, this was not just solemn and empty words. He had in mind a completely specific music, a completely specific composer (or, in any case, a completely specific type of him) and a specifically tuned audience, listeners of such music. A. Blok was talking about Richard Wagner here.
“Wagner is still alive and still new; when the Revolution begins to sound in the air, the Art of Wagner sounds in response; his creations will hear and understand sooner or later anyway; these creations will be used not for entertainment, but for the benefit of people; for art, so “remote from life” (and therefore dear to the hearts of others) in our days, leads directly to practice, to business; only its tasks are broader and deeper than the tasks of "real politics" and therefore more difficult to implement in life"**.
According to A. Blok, Wagner was deeply aware of the ideals of spiritual freedom. But while European philistinism has always ruined these kinds of artists, this is exactly what it did not achieve in the case of Wagner. Blok asks: “Why didn’t they manage to starve Wagner to death? Why was it not possible to devour it, trivialize it, adapt it and hand it over to the historical archive, as an upset, no longer needed instrument?
It turns out that Wagner, according to Blok, not only created beauty and not only loved to contemplate it. He was still desperately resisting the transformation
* Blok A. Art and Revolution (About the creation of Richard Wagner). - A. Blok. Sobr. op. in 12 volumes, v. 8. M. - L. 1936, p. 59
** Ibid., p. 62.
*** Ibid., p. 67.
the transformation of this beauty into petty-bourgeois and everyday vulgarity. He not only knew how to love, but he also knew how to hate. “This is the poison of hateful love, unbearable for the bourgeois even “seven cultural spans in the forehead”, and saved Wagner from death and desecration. This poison, poured into all his creations, is that “new” that is destined for the future”*.
The aesthetics of Wagner is the aesthetics of revolutionary pathos, which he retained throughout his life and which he expressed with youthful enthusiasm as early as 1849 in the article "Art and Revolution". Wagner's ideal, in spite of any collisions in life, always remained "free united humanity", not subject, according to the composer, to "industry and capital", destroying art. This new humanity, according to Wagner, should be endowed with a "social mind" that has mastered nature and its fruits for the common good. Wagner dreams of "future great social revolutions" to which the transformative role of art points the way. He relies on human nature, from the depths of which a new artistic consciousness grows into the vast expanses of “pure humanity”. He places his hopes on the power of the "divine human mind" and at the same time on faith in Christ, who suffered for people, and Apollo, who gave them joy. The genuine revolutionary nature of Wagner in music, along with these contradictory but stable dreams, as well as his deep antagonism with bourgeois-merchant reality, led to a struggle over the work of the great composer that did not subside for more than a hundred years **.
After all, no one could so masterfully fight against vulgarity in music and art, as Wagner managed to do. The tradesman will never forgive that internal fracture that was fatal for him, which was committed by the work of Wagner. In this sense, Wagner could never become a museum rarity; and to this day, every sensitive musician and listener of music has by no means been able to treat him calmly, academically, and historically dispassionately. Wagner's aesthetics is always a challenge to every bourgeois vulgarity, whether musically educated or musically uneducated.
Thus, we now have to briefly, but as clearly as possible, reveal the essence of Wagner's aesthetics and note in it some, although not numerous, but still the main features.
Before doing so, let us remind readers of some of the main
* Block A. Decree. op., p. 63.
** The assessment by Russian and Soviet researchers of the socio-political positions of Wagner and their artistic reflection in his work are considered in detail in the work: Losev A.F. The problem of Richard Wagner in the past and present, - "Questions of Aesthetics" No. 8. M., 1968, With. 67 - 196
Biography of Wagner. For our purposes, these data should be given not just factographically, but with a certain trend, namely, in order to clarify the historical meaning of Wagner's most important aesthetic aspirations. And they were associated with Wagner with the failures and death of the revolutionary movement of the 40s and romantic ideas about some other, by no means bourgeois, but that revolution that would renew and transform humanity with the help of new art.
Richard Wagner was born on May 22, 1813 in Leipzig into the family of a police officer who died the year his son was born. Wagner's family, his brother and sisters were all passionate theatergoers, actors and singers. Stepfather - L. Geyer, himself an actor, artist and playwright - encouraged the boy's theatrical interests. The composer spent his childhood in Dresden, where his family settled, and he returned to Leipzig only in 1828 to continue his studies at the gymnasium and then at the university. It is here that Wagner begins to seriously engage in music theory, harmony, counterpoint, preparing for composing, which resulted in his early symphony (1832), the first opera - "Fairies" (1833 - 1834), and writes the article "German Opera" (1834) , in which Wagner's thoughts about the fate of operatic music are already felt.
Until 1842, Wagner's life was extremely unsettled. He visits Vienna, Prague, Würzburg and Magdeburg, where he conducts at the opera house and meets the actress Minna Planer (1817 - 1866), who became his wife in 1836. Wagner conducts in the theaters of Königsberg and Riga, cherishing the dream of creating a grandiose opera based on a romantic plot. In 1840, he completed his opera Rienzi, dedicated to the dramatic fate of a hero who tried to create a republic in medieval Rome in the 14th century. Wagner tries in vain to stage it in Paris, where he appeared for the first time in 1839, after he had to secretly leave Riga without a passport due to difficult financial circumstances (large debts and theatrical intrigues).
Wagner's ambitious dreams of conquering Paris did not come true. But on the other hand, in the summer of 1841, he wrote The Flying Dutchman there, where he developed an old legend about a sailor who is always wandering and in vain seeking redemption. And although the return to Dresden with his wife (1842) without the slightest funds and on the verge of disaster was quite deplorable, nevertheless, his operas Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman were staged in Dresden (1842 - 1843).
Wagner's fascination with romantic opera does not end there. On the contrary, from the decorative heroics of "Rienzi" and the fantasy of "The Flying
Dutchman" Wagner moves on to the profound problems of the spirit, struggling with the irrationality of destructive feelings and winning in the radiance of goodness, beauty and moral duty. Wagner, who by this time had occupied the post of court bandmaster of the Dresden Theater, staged Tannhäuser (1845) there, wrote Lohengrin (1845 - 1848), during the production of which his new friend, the famous pianist and composer F. Liszt, conducted already in Weimar ( August 28, 1850). For decades, these two great artists walked hand in hand, having a huge beneficial effect on each other and on the musical culture of their time. By the way, Liszt's symphonic poems, along with Beethoven's last sonatas, had a great and already purely musical influence on Wagner, which, unfortunately, is written much less often than the subject deserves.
The obsession with medieval plots, so beloved by romantic poets (and Wagner showed himself as an outstanding poet and librettist of his own operas), does not in the least interfere with Wagner’s essentially romantic passion for the revolution of 1848 and meetings with the famous Russian anarchist M. Bakunin, who subverted in his unbridled dreams and unrealistic plans for the tyranny of European thrones. In the name of the rule of higher justice, Wagner participates in the Dresden popular uprising on May 3-9, 1849, which expelled the king from Dresden. However, a few days later the Prussian troops defeated the rebels, the provisional government headed by Bakunin was arrested; Bakunin was extradited to the Russian authorities, and Wagner hurriedly left Dresden for Liszt in Weimar, and then to Jena, in order to finally leave Germany secretly, with a false passport obtained for him with the help of the same Liszt.
So in 1849 Wagner found himself in Switzerland, from where he immediately, albeit not for long, made a trip to Paris. His ten-year stay in Switzerland (until 1859) proved to be extremely creative and fruitful.
Wagner lives in Zurich, being in close friendship with the wealthy businessman Otto Wesendonck (1815 - 1896) and his wife Mathilde (1828 - 1902), a musician and poetess. Wagner travels to Paris and London (1855), conducting, earns a living, but quickly squanders on whims and luxury the money that he earns with great difficulty, and that which he often receives in the form of subsidies from friends and patrons. Wagner's wife, Minna, whose life together was completely unsuccessful, is seriously ill, and the disease is aggravated by her quarrelsome character, jealousy of the Wesendonks, who financially help the composer and provide him with independence.
Back in early 1852 in Zurich, when Wagner met the family of Otto Wesendonck, Matilda began to take lessons from him.
music. The relationship between the teacher and the student gradually developed into true friendship, and then into the deepest feeling of enthusiastic love. In 1853, Wagner wrote "Sonata in an Album" to Mathilde, which was essentially a fantasy on the themes of his operas. Both of them, however, understood that their love should remain in the sphere of sublimely ideal relations, since it was impossible for both Wagner and Matilda, Matilda Wesendonck, an exemplary mother, a caring wife, did not even hide her admiration for Wagner from her husband, but, on the contrary, did her best to ensure that Otto was imbued with the most friendly feelings for the persecuted composer and sometimes helped him with financial subsidies. So, for example, Otto paid the costs of arranging concerts where the works of Wagner and Beethoven were performed. At the request of Mathilde, Otto in 1857 bought for the composer near his villa a small plot of land with a house, which Wagner himself called "Refuge" and which was intended for his permanent residence. In this house at the end of April 1857, Wagner settled with Minna, whose sober practicality could not reconcile with the incomprehensible relationship between Wagner and the Wesendonks.
When on September 18, 1857, the poetic text “Tristana” written over several weeks was completed and Matilda, embracing Wagner, said “now I have no more desires,” a moment of bliss came for him. However, this bliss was not destined to last. At the beginning of 1858, Wagner went to Paris for a short time to arrange his musical affairs, and on his return to Zurich trouble awaited him. Wagner's wife, full of jealousy and suspicion, opened one of Wagner's letters to Matilda and threatened to scandal. Minna had to urgently go to the waters for treatment, the Vezendonks also left to stop idle gossip in Italy, and Wagner was left alone in the Vault, working on the composition Tristan. But on Minna's return, a break with the Wesendonks was inevitable. It cost Wagner many efforts to convince Otto that Minna was unable to understand his lofty and disinterested relationship with Matilda. True, Wagner himself was well aware of the futility and belatedness of these beliefs. Wanting to protect Matilda from further worldly complications, he leaves for Geneva, and then to Venice. Minna goes to Dresden in the care of Wagner's friends. Wagner is visited by thoughts of suicide. He keeps a sad diary, painfully remembering his distant beloved, and sends her letters, which this time Matilda returns unopened.
The memory of the passionate love and self-denial of Wagner and Matilda remained “Five Songs for a Female Voice”, about which Wagner himself wrote: “I have never created better than these songs, and only a few of my works can withstand comparison with them.” Wagner set the poems of Mathilde Wesendonck to music, and these songs can be considered a prelude to Tristan and Isolde.
All this time, Wagner lives "Tristan", completing it on August 8, 1859, thus completing his personal life drama with Matilda Wesendonck. When this year, for a brief moment, he meets Matilda in Zurich, between them, as Wagner recalls, a thick fog, through which the voices of both are barely distinguishable. Tristan, staged for the first time in Munich only in 1865, will forever remain a symbol of great love and great suffering.
More than once the Wesendonks will be friendly and affectionate with Wagner. Nevertheless, even the patience of the loving Wesendonks sometimes wore thin. In 1863, after extremely successful concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg and after unsuccessful concerts in Budapest, Prague, Karlsruhe, Levenberg and Breslau, Wagner plans a new trip to Russia, borrows a lot of money for this trip to finish a luxurious mansion in Penzing near Vienna; when the trip to Russia is upset, and creditors threaten Wagner with a lawsuit, the composer finds himself in an unprecedented predicament. And now, to his desperate request to the Wesendonks to shelter him, they suddenly refuse. But this episode did not prevent the Wesendonks from being unfailing admirers of Wagner until the end of their lives and from feeling the deepest reverence for his work. Subsequently, they would attend the opening of the Bayreuth Theater in 1876 and from then on would become regular visitors to the Wagnerian festivals in Bayreuth.
Finally, for the Zurich period of Wagner, and to a large extent for the further work of the composer, Wagner's acquaintance with the philosophy of Schopenhauer (beginning in 1854) was of great importance. However, the topic of Wagner's attitude to Schopenhauer's philosophy is so important that in the future we will deal with it specifically.
Only after the Zurich period of Wagner's life and work had passed, namely only in Paris in 1860, did Wagner receive permission to live in Germany, and even then at first outside Saxony. At the request of a number of high patrons of Wagner, the composer received a full amnesty only in 1862, when he was allowed to live within Saxony, where he had not been for thirteen years. His Tannhäuser was a scandalous failure in Paris (1861), and his only consolation is the production of Tristan.
In the midst of bitter thoughts, Wagner creates the text of the German folk opera Die Meistersinger Nuremberg (1861 - 1862), full of energy.
gia and healthy love of life, which glorifies medieval burghers and artisans, masters of singing, led by the famous poet and shoemaker Hans Sachs. The score of this opera was completed only in 1867, and the first production was carried out in Munich. Wagner's love for his native German antiquity, respect for the talent of the common people, pride in his skill and inexhaustible vitality were manifested here.
Wagner's operas are becoming known in Russia, where the composer is invited as a conductor. 1863. One of the propagandists of Wagnerian music in Russia is the well-known composer and music critic A. N. Serov, who became a friend of Wagner. In the coming years, Wagner's operas were also staged in Russia: Lohengrin (1868), Tannhäuser (1874), Rienzi (1879).
Following the success, in Russia, Wagner's fate suddenly changed dramatically. In 1864, the secretary of the young Bavarian king Ludwig II, who had just ascended the throne, visited him in Stuttgart with an invitation to come to Munich, the capital of Bavaria, where Wagner was promised royal assistance and the realization of his wildest hopes. . Ludwig II, an ardent follower, admirer and correspondence student of Wagner, immediately after coming to power staged his operas, spending huge amounts of money on the construction of a special theater, and on staging, and on gifts, and on paying the debts of the composer, which by that time amounted to not less than forty thousand guilders. In 1866, Wagner's wife dies in Dresden, and he marries Liszt's daughter Cosima, who divorced her husband, Liszt's student and Wagner's friend, the famous conductor Hans von Bülow.
Hans von Bülow (1830 - 1894), a devoted student of Liszt, married at the request of his teacher the illegitimate daughter of him and Countess d "Aga Cosima, in order to give this illegitimate child a position in the world, Bülow was the deepest admirer of Wagner and back in 1857 visited him in Zurich with Cosima.When Wagner's affairs began to improve in connection with his friendship with the Bavarian king and the question arose of staging his operas, Wagner first of all thought of Bülow, who gladly agreed to come to Wagner in Starnberg, near Munich , and sent his wife and two daughters there. Here a deep feeling was born that connected Wagner and Cosima Bülow. When Wagner's enemies forced the king to offer the composer to leave Munich, and he left for Switzerland, Cosima, taking advantage of her husband's departure, visited Wagner in Geneva. In May In 1866, she completely moved to him in the Tribschen estate near Lucerne, which they had found together.
indulgence to his wife and the fact that he owes his influence in Munich to the intrigues of Cosima, who influences the king through Wagner. By this time, Cosima had already had two daughters from Wagner - Isolde and Eva.
Liszt tried in vain to reconcile all the people close and dear to him, and he had no choice but to stop all relations with Wagner and his daughter for several years. But Wagner, sitting in Tribschen, dictated to Cosima his "Autobiography" (1865 - 1870) in three volumes and acquired another new admirer there - a young professor at the University of Basel, Fr. Nietzsche. Here, in Tribschen, the Bavarian king Ludwig II secretly came to visit a friend. The decision of the court on the annulment of the marriage of the Bülows on July 18, 1870 also came here. Cosima, active and unshakable, did not hesitate to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism for the sake of her new marriage. Her marriage to Wagner took place on August 25, 1870 in the church of Lucerne, on the birthday of King Ludwig II. Soon, on September 4, little Siegfried was baptized (it was her third child from Wagner), and Wagner wrote in honor of Cosima the musical poem “Idyll Siegfried”, which strikes with deep and calmly solemn thoughtfulness.
The years of stay in Tribschen (1866 - 1872) were important not only for Wagner's personal life. In Munich during this time they staged The Meistersingers (1868), The Rhine Gold (1869) and The Valkyrie (1870). Wagner completed his book Beethoven (1870) and, most importantly, completed Siegfried, which had been interrupted eleven years earlier, while simultaneously working on The Death of the Gods, the last part of the Nibelungen Ring tetralogy, and pondering the concept of the future Parsifal.
And so, in 1874, the entire tetralogy of The Ring (now included in the Rhine Gold, Valkyrie, Siegfried and The Death of the Gods) was completed and it became possible to perform it for the first time in its entirety in 1876 in a special Wagnerian theater, built in Bayreuth, near Munich, with the help of the same Ludwig II. The most famous musicians of that time from all countries were invited to this performance, including P. I. Tchaikovsky and C. Cui officially arrived from Russia, who transferred their correspondence to the newspapers of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Since Wagner's rapprochement with Ludwig II, many of his dreams have come true to a large extent. He had a family, a beloved wife and children. He lived in Bayreuth in the villa "Wanfried", given to him by the king, whose bronze bust symbolically stood in front of the facade of the house. Wagner had his own theatre, and the whole musical world was amazed at the grandeur of his grandiose tetralogy.
Wagner had yet to see his Parsifal (1882) on stage, in which the theme of the Knights of the Eves sounded in full; Graa-
la, outlined by him in Lohengrin. Parsifal - a hero with a pure heart and a childishly naive soul - defeats the forces of evil of the wizard Klingsor, becomes a healer of physical wounds of the unfortunate and a healer of human souls, joining the number of knights devoted to the veneration of St. Grail (the Holy Grail meant the spear with which Christ was pierced, and the cup with his blood). The world of evil, deceit and hypocrisy is collapsing under the influence of love and goodness, moral duty, which has become a really realized ideal of the heart, overcoming egoistic passions.
Wagner, who began his career with the colorful fantasy of The Flying Dutchman and the romantic impulses of Lohengrin, Tristan and Tannhäuser, after the fatal passions of the catastrophic heroism of The Ring, returns again to the bosom of a medieval legend, but already transformed by the light of a higher, estranged from earthly passions, spiritual and active life-giving love, in Parsifal. Before us is a magnificent completion of the dramatic path of the great artist.
We are drawing a circle of his ideological and artistic development, unprecedented in its completeness, immanent for the composer. The myth of Parsifal plays a major role already in Lohengrin (early 40s), where Lohengrin himself is nothing more nor less than the son of Parsifal. The same figure appeared more than once in the mind of Wagner in the second half of the 40s when studying the history of the myth of the Nibelungs. In the sketch for the drama Jesus of Nazareth (1848), Parsifal is undoubtedly drawn to the Wagnerian imagination as a premonition of what, at the end of his life, he will portray in the third and fourth acts of his Parsifal.
The idea of the holy simpleton Parsifal also appears in Wagner in 1855, when the initial plan of Tristan was drawn up, in the very midst of the creation of Tristan and Isolde (namely, in the third act) amid all the torment and despair of 1858, because even here , at this stage of deepest pessimism, Wagner's life-loving spirit still dreams of a positive resolution of his then tragic situation. True, he rejected this idea because of purely artistic considerations, so as not to violate the unity of the tragic picture of Tristan and Isolde. However, by this time, Wagner had already thought over and outlined a plan for a drama specifically dedicated to the enlightenment of the sinner Kundry and the glorification of the heavenly purity of Parsifal. There is also information about Wagner's occupation with the myth of Parsifal also in 1865. And only after the production of The Ring did Wagner completely immerse himself in the musical mythology of Parsi-
fall." The text of the entire drama was completed and printed on December 25, 1877; instrumentation of the whole piece" was completed on January 13, 1882. Thus, the ideological-artistic and literary-musical mythology of Parsifal, together with the myth of St. The Grail was experienced by Wagner throughout his life, starting from the period of the romantic Lohengrin. The drama was staged for the first time and only once during the composer's lifetime in Bayreuth on July 26, 1882.
And on February 13, 1883, Wagner died of a heart attack in the same Venice, where he once experienced a deep separation from Matilda Wesendonck. Wagner died at the piano, playing the works of various authors and his own, at the moment when he played the part of the Daughters of the Rhine from the Rhine Gold.
No biographical survey of the work of any great artist can give an idea of the essence of this work. All the more it should be said about Wagner, whose work seems to be some kind of boundless sea, which is difficult to formulate in one way or another. In order to carry out at least one thought about this work in order to fit it within the bounds of a brief article, it is necessary to limit this boundlessness and choose something one, the most significant.
As we said at the beginning of the article, the most significant thing for Wagner is that he, to a greater extent than all other representatives of the art of the 19th century, was seized with a premonition of the catastrophe of the old world. We will now focus on this idea, discarding everything else in Wagner or subordinating everything to this idea. But now it will no longer be possible to formulate this idea in a general and indefinite form, so that a very careful critical approach will be required from us. However, this central feature of Wagner's work is still too extensive and also requires limitation and clarification for a short article.
First of all, it would seem to us extremely important to focus on aesthetics Wagner, discarding many other, although in themselves very valuable, materials. The fact is that Wagner was not only a composer, but also a very prolific writer. Sixteen volumes of his literary works and seventeen volumes of letters testify that Wagner, from a very young age and throughout his life, acted as a writer on music, and. not only music, but all other arts. In the field of music, he was neither specifically a music theorist nor specifically a music historian. True, a review of Wagner's literary materials testifies to his deep knowledge in the field of theory and history of music. There is not a single composer of the past that Wagner would not analyze, expressing not only deep and well-aimed
judgments, but often also one-sided, schematic and even superficial judgments, which appeared in him in connection with the incredible passion for his own doctrine.
In Soviet literature there is a rather thorough and valuable study of Wagner's musical and aesthetic views, based on an analysis not of the musical works of Wagner himself, but precisely of these extremely diverse, often confusing and contradictory, literary statements of Wagner about music. This study belongs to S. A. Markus*. It is to him that readers should turn who would like to receive an overview of Wagner's actual statements about music throughout the composer's life.
As for us, taking into account all this literary factography of Wagner, we would like to delve into Wagner's aesthetics primarily on the basis of a study of his purely artistic works of music and poetry. Wagner's literary factography will, of course, be kept in mind all the time. And you can't do without it. However, the aesthetics of Wagner's musical works themselves are so peculiar and so far from his prose statements that it requires special attention and clarity.
But to demand complete clarity, theoretical or historical, from Wagner, perhaps, would be unfair. No famous composer has written as much about music as Wagner. But in his literary statements, he is more of a publicist, propagandist or music critic, very carried away and little following the logic of his statements. In addition, it cost him nothing, both publicly and in private correspondence, to completely renounce his former views, often even very recent ones.
An example of such inconsistency of Wagner can be his attitude towards Feuerbach, whose philosophy Wagner was carried away in the late forties. And this enthusiasm of his fully corresponded to the passionate fervor with which Wagner participated in the revolutionary events of 1849. Moreover, Wagner prefaced one of his works, A Work of Art of the Future (1850), with a dedication to Feuerbach, believing that here he “with sincere zeal tried to retell the thoughts” of the philosopher. At the same time, Wagner himself mentioned in one of his letters that he read, and even then fluently, only the third volume of Feuerbach. When the composer's works were subsequently published, the dedication to Feuerbach was generally removed. However, no matter how the paths of Wagner and Feuerbach diverged (and they really did irrevocably diverged), Wagner forever retained Feuerbach's inherent
* Markus S. A. Musical and aesthetic formation, - In the book; History of musical aesthetics in 2 volumes, v.2. M., 1968, p. 433 - 545. This study is one of the chapters of the book.
reverence for the greatness of nature as the true basis of being, dreams of its renewing effect on man, a deep interest in the myth, the heroes of which are naturally strong in their integrity. If we keep in mind not Wagner's casual or superficial statements, but his deep attitude to religion, then, perhaps, Feuerbach's influence can explain Wagner's rejection of those mandatory forms of religion that were before him or during his time. As for his true and intimately experienced religion, it was undoubtedly associated with a sense of the impending catastrophe of the world of the money bag and capital, the symbols of which were his main and central works. However, more on that below.
Finally, things were difficult for Wagner with strong political views, in connection with which most connoisseurs and lovers of Wagner's work claim that at first he was a revolutionary, and then became a reactionary. This is wrong not only in essence. The most important thing here is that this kind of criticism of Wagner again does not take into account his unprecedentedly innovative worldview, which cannot be reduced to any specific political views.
Without entering into a detailed analysis of all such views of Wagner (the reader can find this analysis in the above-mentioned study by S. A. Marcus), we will point out only one curiosity that appears when reading Wagner's 1848 essay on the republic and the king in comparison with his own work. 1864 "On State and Religion". In the first work, estates and money are abolished, not only the aristocracy is destroyed, but the very memory of all ancestors is also crossed out, universal elective principle and absolute republicanism are preached. And at the head of such a republic, Wagner has a king, who is declared the first republican. Let us ask ourselves: is there really such a big difference here with the direct monarchism preached by Wagner in 1864? And the whole point lies in the fact that Wagner everywhere understands the republic, and the abolition of estates, and the abolition of the money economy, and royal power, not at all in the traditional sense of the then bourgeois theories.
So, for example, in order to judge the Wagnerian theory of money by its deep essence and its deep revolutionary sharpness, you need to read not only Wagner's treatises of 1848-1850, but you need to read and listen to his tetralogy of the 1870s, The Ring of the Nibelungen. Here the question is not just socio-politically, but cosmologically; and gold is treated here not just economically, but primarily cosmologically. This is precisely the true revolutionary essence of Wagner's creativity, in comparison with which his prosaic socio-political and economic statements
early years are only naive attempts to express what is inexpressible in a prose word.
It is interesting to note one circumstance that convinces us with our own eyes of the complete incomparability of Wagner's prose statements with his most important musical and dramatic works. When in the 1970s Wagner was finishing his tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen and dreamed of creating his own musical theatre, the subscription for donations announced throughout Germany gave the most insignificant result. And it is characteristic that the then Chancellor Bismarck did not respond in any way to Wagner's request for state funds for the construction of the theater. It is clear that this would not have happened if the Wagnerian monarchism of 1864 actually had anything in common with the then bourgeois monarchist theories. Bismarck was well aware that this had nothing to do with politics and that all these Nibelungs would have no meaning for the then rising Germany. And when the famous Bayreuth theater near Munich was built at the expense of the Bavarian king Ludwig II, Bismarck did not even appear at its grand opening in 1876 with the first production of the complete tetralogy "The Ring of the Nibelungen". And instead of himself, Bismarck sent Emperor Wilhelm I, who was known for his weak character and weak-willed behavior and complete dependence on Bismarck. Of course, for the reputation of Wagner, the arrival of Bismarck in Bayreuth would have been incomparably more significant than the arrival of Wilhelm I. But the Reich Chancellor was well aware that there was not a grain of that monarchist and pan-Germanist idea in favor of which Bismarck himself had worked all his life. This is the best proof of how unfounded the accusations against Wagner in his alleged adherence to reactionary politics have always been.
There was a single crowned lady who turned out to be deeply devoted to the work of Wagner. This is the Bavarian king Ludwig II, a real enthusiast and zealous admirer of the composer's work. But the devotion of Ludwig II to Wagner, his most sincere love for him, was not of a state, but of a purely personal nature. The ministers of Ludwig II, on the other hand, always objected to spending millions on the Wagner cause. Therefore, it can be said that there was only one king who became friends with Wagner, and even then, regardless of any monarchical or religious statements of the composer.
That is why all of Wagner's social and political theories must not be understood literally; and that is why their innumerable contradictions and inconsistencies have nothing to do with Wagner's musical work.
In religion, Wagner was the same as in the field of socio-political. Many lovers of schemes summed up Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" under Buddhism, "Ring of the Nibelung" - under the religion of ancient Germanism, and "Parsifal" - under Catholicism. In fact, if we take into account the depth and diversity of Wagner's artistic work, then, despite some third-rate coincidences, the true religion of Wagner himself has little in common with any historically known religion. He had his own religion, incomprehensible to the bourgeois world, and even this religion, given a certain point of view, might not even be called a religion.
The debate about whether Wagner is a revolutionary or a reactionary, and whether he passed from one political worldview to another, will be completely fruitless until his philosophy and his aesthetics, which are given in his main musical dramas, are fully taken into account. After all, Wagner was not a philosopher by profession, he was not a theologian, he was not an esthetician, he was not a politician, and he was not even a music theorist. He touched on all these questions only by chance, exclusively in connection with the indefinitely fluid situation of life, very often only publicistically, in passing, almost always one-sidedly, and we would even say, often very naively and superficially, without any desire for even the slightest sequence or system. . This is the exact opposite of his purely musical world, which he depicted not only with extraordinary genius, but also with unprecedented originality and iron consistency over the course of several decades of his creative life.
Thus, that boundless sea of Wagnerian materials, the need for orientation in which we spoke above, in this work we intend to specify in the following four respects.
First, we would like to formulate at least some of the most significant points precisely aesthetics Wagner. At the same time, Wagner's aesthetics in its true meaning can be drawn not so much from his literary-critical statements as from his artistic creativity, from his well-known, but still with great difficulty understood musical dramas.
Secondly, no matter how one understands Wagner's aesthetics, he never had it abstract or only theoretical. His aesthetics are permeated with a sense of the catastrophe that Europe was going through at that time. The revolution, for the preparation of which European society spent several centuries, collapsed, leaving behind no sufficiently deep traces and sufficiently solid hopes for the future, Wagner deeply experienced this collapse of revolutions,
and even more than that, he generalized the revolution to cosmic dimensions, found revolutions of the same kind in everything in the cosmos and displayed them with great enthusiasm.
Thirdly, Wagner himself has always been a very active and passionate nature. In no case could he confine himself to contemplating the collapse of the revolution and was always looking for a way out of it. But in those days the way out of the collapse of the petty-bourgeois revolution was twofold. On the one hand, Europe began to cherish dreams of an ideal socialism, which, in terms of its scientific validity, would surpass all previous ideas about socialism. But Wagner was not a socialist in the sense of a nineteenth-century theory. On the other hand, Europe was moving rapidly towards imperialism and towards the transformation of petty-bourgeois dreams into a grandiose bourgeois-capitalist structure and the reorganization of all life at that time. But Wagner did not lean towards imperialism either. And finding out what he was in this sense requires careful analysis.
Fourthly, the central area of Wagner's work turned out to be the image intimate destiny a European individual who lost his former revolutionary ideals and at first was unable to concretely imagine the ideal future for which all revolutions were made, as well as the direction in which the historical process developed. The soul of this individual, endowed with an unusually passionate thirst for life, but knowing the futility of any external arrangement of life, in the conditions of the complete uncertainty of the future of mankind - this is what attracted Wagner in the aesthetic sense, and this is what Wagner lived during the heyday of his work.
At first he wrote romantic music, the highest achievement of which was Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. But after the collapse of the revolution, he ceased to be a romantic, or became a romantic in a completely different sense of the word. On the other hand, his positive achievements, to which he reached in his Nuremberg Meistersingers or in Parsifal, are characteristic not so much of the heyday of his work, but of his last period. Therefore, his Tristan and Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen, at least within the framework of our brief summary, were and remain the best indicator of Wagner's true aesthetics, necessarily based not on his revolutionary or non-revolutionary quests, but on his. so far only the prophecy of a future, for him as yet unclear, but necessarily universal and necessarily passionately awaited revolution. This aesthetic of the constrained and hopelessly feeling individual, crucified between two great epochs, was in Wagner, first of all, a critique of the European individual, who had long since discredited himself, and passionate attempts to get out.
beyond any subject-object dualism. We would like to try at least remotely to formulate this bottomless tragic aesthetics in our presentation.
This is what we limit ourselves to in this work. This determines the selection of those Wagnerian materials that we would like to use here. In particular, we will have to deal with such materials of Wagner's biography, which are usually not taken into account at all when presenting his aesthetics. And they are just deeply indicative of that tragically doomed individual, the greatest depicter of the depths of which Wagner was in Tristan and Isolde and in Der Ring des Nibelungen. At the same time, it goes without saying that Wagner's theoretical statements should be taken into account in the most serious way one way or another. We fully take them into account, but we build Wagner's aesthetics primarily on the analysis of the two of his musical works mentioned above.
If you stop at first literary-critical period of creativity (1833 - 1838), his most youthful judgments about music, then already in the first article written by Wagner at the age of twenty-one, namely "German Opera" (1834), the thesis is put forward, which is central to all of Wagner's work and for its aesthetics. In this article, he says that only one who writes "not in Italian, not in French, and also not in German" will become an opera master. Already here the point of view of aesthetic universalism is expressed, from which Wagner never parted, no matter how one-sided he fell into in connection with the circumstances of the time.
As for the second period of Wagner's literary-critical creativity, which others call Parisian(1839 - 1842), then here we would note the treatise "Pilgrimage to Beethoven" (1840), where Wagner declares Beethoven with his Ninth Symphony the predecessor of his musical drama and already outlines what will remain forever in his own musical drama.
In 1842, Wagner was invited as bandmaster to the court of the Saxon king in Dresden. From this Dresden period of Wagner's work (1842 - 1849), we would point out, first of all, to his creation of four operas of high artistic merit - Rienzi (1842), The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin ( 1845 - 1848). All these operas in their style and worldview differ little from the then traditional romantic music. However, it is impossible not to notice that predilection for mythological and heroic themes, which sharply distinguished Wagner's works from all
some household music for entertainment and superficial fun. And this mythological heroism brought with it far-reaching generalizations of life, which will triumph even more with him in the post-romantic period.
In 1848 - 1849, during the short period of the Dresden uprising, Wagner was passionately interested in the revolution, proposed all sorts of incredible and hasty reforms, and most importantly, expressed his revolutionary enthusiasm and his extremely naive political and economic views. Here are the articles: “How do Republican aspirations relate to the kingdom?” (May 1848); "Germany and Her Princes" (October 1848); "Man and Existing Society" (February 1849), "Revolution" (April 1849). Here adjoin the poems "Greetings to the Viennese from Saxony" (May 1848) and "Need", as well as a letter to the quartermaster of the royal theater von Lüttichau. We will pay attention to this letter, written in the middle of 1848, between the first two very radical treatises we have just mentioned, which unconditionally defend the revolution.
In the letter, Wagner appears as a defender of the wavering Saxon monarchy: he assures the intendant of the royal theater of his loyalty to the king, fears the revolutionary actions of the masses, warns against the revolution, regrets his participation in it and convinces that he will no longer engage in such matters.
After getting acquainted with such materials from the biography of Wagner during the revolution, the conclusion follows by itself about the complete frivolity of Wagner's judgments of that time. However, let's talk about this in a little more detail.
Usually, researchers highlight Wagner's participation in the 1848 revolution. This is done, however, for the most part very little critically. Firstly, it was a purely bourgeois revolution, and Wagner always felt himself far above the traditional bourgeois culture of that time. Secondly, this participation was rather frivolous. Wagner himself writes that at that time he was worried about the street crowds and he rushed into them, not knowing himself Why and why. Of course, he didn't have any elaborate ideology; only an expansive and easily excitable nature pushed him to participate in the revolution, as well as quickly enough to move away from it. And yet we must bear in mind that Wagner's participation in the Dresden uprising of 1849 was undoubtedly a reality; this can be judged from the case that has come down to us in the Dresden archives under the title "Acts against the former Kapellmeister Richard Wagner in connection with his participation in the local uprising of 1849"*.
* These acts were translated into Russian in the book: Gruber R. Richard Wagner. 1883 - 1933. M.. 1934, p. 125 - 126.
These Wagnerian sentiments were very short-lived (1848 - 1849). Upon his arrival in Switzerland, he began to work on materials for his future tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, as well as on Tristan and Isolde, a musical drama completed in 1859. And the unfinished "Nibelungen" and the drama "Tristan and Isolde" have nothing in common with any bourgeois revolution. Here Wagner preached a revolution that at that time hardly any of the artists in Europe could even dream of.
Finally, if you like, even in the midst of his revolutionary dreams, Wagner uses such expressions and builds such images that very tangibly testify to the feeling of grandiosity that has always lived in the depths of Wagner's consciousness, reaching cosmic generalizations. True, during this period of Wagner's revolutionary experiences, such paintings can be interpreted by us in the form of some kind of poetic metaphors, and nothing more. But if we seriously bear in mind the entire subsequent development of Wagner, his central musical dramas, then it would hardly be correct to find here only one pointless poetic invention. These metaphors, which we will now cite, can be said to be almost no longer metaphors, but real mythology, in which everything metaphorical is no longer conceived simply conditionally, but as a true substance of life and being.
In the article “Revolution” mentioned above, Wagner compares the revolution with some kind of higher goddess and draws her image in this way: “... she approaches on the wings of storms, with her brow held high, illuminated by lightning, punishing and cold eyes, and yet what a heat of purest love what a fullness of happiness shines in them for one who dares to look boldly into these dark eyes! Therefore, she approaches in the noise of a storm, the eternally rejuvenating mother of mankind, destroying and inspiring, she passes through the earth ... the ruins of what in vain madness was built for millennia arise ... However, behind her, a hitherto unseen paradise, illuminated by the gentle rays of the sun, opens up to us happiness, and where, destroying, her foot touched, fragrant flowers bloom, and where until recently the air trembled with the noise of battle, we hear the jubilant voices of liberated humanity! *
An incredible mixture of individualism, cosmism and mythology resounds in this treatise in the words of the Revolution itself, addressed to oppressed humanity: “I am going to destroy to the ground the order of things in which you live, for it arose from sin, its color is. crime ... I want to destroy the dominance of one over the other ... destroy the power of the strong, law-
on and property ... Let one's own will be the master of a person, one's own desire be the only law, one's own strength only his property ... I want to destroy the existing order of things, dividing a single humanity into peoples hostile to each other, powerful and weak, having rights and powerless , rich and poor, for he only makes unhappy out of everyone ... "*.
The grandiosity of such "revolutionary" images of Wagner is not much different from the grandiosity of the main concept of the "Ring of the Nibelung". And if we talk about the revolutionary nature of Wagner, then he was the only revolutionary throughout his life, although each time in a different sense of the word.
After getting acquainted with all these materials of Wagner's revolutionary passions of 1848 - 1849, the reader gets the full opportunity to answer the question for himself, what was Wagner's revolutionary nature, what are the bourgeois and non-bourgeois features in it, where is the political and economic doctrine in it, and where is the complete socio-political and economic frivolity, where, finally, are the beginnings of that cosmic mythology, from which in the future his philosophical and aesthetic worldview will consist.
Here we would like to emphasize only one circumstance that cannot be ignored in any approach to the life and work of Wagner. This circumstance lies in the fact that, despite his theoretical formulas, Wagner always remained true to some absolute ideal, to which he sacrificed both everything that was happening around him and all his very changeable psychological moods. In his revolutionary writings, Wagner seems to be inclined towards complete atheism and materialism, and yet his faith in an ideal future, even if it is earthly, does not diminish at all, but rather even increases. His attitude to Christianity before 1848 was positive, in the period 1848-1854 it was negative. Nevertheless, in his sketch of 1848 "Jesus of Nazareth" he still finds something real and close to him in this image, namely self-giving in view of the sinful state of mankind. But the idea of self-denial is most clearly expressed by Wagner in The Flying Dutchman, and in Tannhäuser, and in Lohengrin, that is, in the operas of the 1940s.
In addition, we will find the same idea of self-denial in Der Ring des Nibelungen and in Tristan and Isolde, that is, in the musical dramas of the 1950s. The same idea dominated him right up to Parsifal, which was written two or three years before his death. When in the final version of the poetic text of The Nibelungs (1852) Bringhilda throws herself into the fire of Siegfried, and the fatal ring returns
* Quoted. by: Markus S. A. Decree. op., p. 473 - 474.
et in the depths of the Rhine, then here, too, not only the idea of self-renunciation, but also that idea of the redemption of the world, which is the essence of Christianity, appears most clearly. As for the concept of St. Grail in Parsifal, here Wagner expresses not only his completely pious attitude towards the Christian shrine, but this attitude is completely reverent, and reverent in connection with the same assessment of the gospel sacred history. However, even in the treatise "Nibelungs" (and this is all in the same revolutionary year of 1848), the legend of St. The Grail is also interpreted in a completely pious and even philosophical-historical spirit. In the same way, in his works of 1848-1854, Wagner preaches the primacy of nature as an omnipotent principle and criticizes theistic philosophy. But this indifferent, or rather, impersonal, principle triumphs in him both in The Nibelungen and in Tristan, that is, in dramas opposed to all materialism and atheism. Wagner did not yet part with the doctrine of necessity, which took on a materialistic tinge with him during the period of the revolution, but became with him the doctrine of fate again in these same two dramas.
Therefore, anyone who, among all the endless and stormy aspirations of Wagner, does not feel in him that deepest unity of his artistic searches, which, as we will see below, always boiled down to a passionate critique of subject-objective dualism, that is, to a critique of the very foundation of the modern European culture, and to a sense of impending global catastrophe.
So, after the suppression of the uprising in Dresden in 1849, Wagner, in order to save his life, had to emigrate from Germany. He settled in Zurich, where he passed the Swiss, or, more precisely, Zurich period of his life and work (1849 - 1859).
In the 1850 treatise The Work of Art of the Future, Wagner already has a number of deep ideas that will soon form the basis of all his musical work.
Here we would pay attention, first of all, to the discussion about the essence of art, which, according to Wagner, can completely reflect, process and synthesize all life as a whole. There is a necessity in life and in nature, but it is given here indiscriminately and unconsciously. Art reveals this need in full sequence and system, clearly and understandably. A work of art must be an image of universal life. Individual heroes depicted in art, by their exploits and their logically justified death, reflect the expediency of the entire world order and merge with it. Here Wagner does not use the term
"myth". However, it is clear that the universal man depicted by him already reveals in himself the whole essence of nature and the world, and thus, from our point of view, and later from the point of view of Wagner himself, is nothing more than a mythological hero.
One of the central ideas of this treatise is a passionate preaching of the unity of all arts and their final and ultimate synthesis. And if it is not immediately clear how this happens, then Wagner makes it quite understandable with the help of his theory of drama. It is in drama, where the stage and the actors are supposed, that we find the fusion of poetry, sculpture, painting and architecture. In addition, a real drama must necessarily be musical, because only music is capable of depicting human experiences in all their intimate depths, and only an orchestra can give a single and cumulative picture of everything that is dramatically happening in life and in the world. And all such thoughts of Wagner will henceforth remain with him forever, until the end of his work. We would say that, from the point of view of the subsequent Wagner, the musical drama with its actors, singers and orchestra is nothing but a symbol of all cosmic life with all its inherent organic and structural necessity.
Finally, from the numerous ideas of the treatise, one can also point out the role people, which for Wagner is fundamental in the perfect art of the future. "But who will artist of the future? Poet? Actor? Musician? Sculptor? Let's put it bluntly: people. The very people to whom we owe nothing but the only true work of art that lives in our memories and so distortedly reproduced by us is the people to whom we owe art itself.
It must be noted, however, that if in this treatise of 1850 there were remnants of Wagner's revolutionary views, then in a letter to Berlioz in 1860 he already dissociates himself from the revolution. On this occasion, we must say that Wagner dissociates himself not from any revolution in general, but from the bourgeois revolution. He himself is full of the most profound revolutionary ideas, since his musical drama in this treatise goes far beyond what the most daring musicians of the bourgeois world could dream of. Moreover, the priority of absolute art and the concept of the artist-people can hardly be considered a revolutionary idea in the sense of the petty-bourgeois uprising in Dresden in 1849. Wagner was a profound revolutionary, but not in the sense of the petty-bourgeois revolutions of the nineteenth century. His revolution is a revolution that was supposed to wipe out all the then socio-political contradictions from the face of the earth and was conceived as a profound transformation of the human world in general.
In the same 1850 treatise Opera and Drama, Wagner unfairly attacks the entire previous history of opera, ignoring all the innovations of Gluck and Mozart, and at the same time, all previous symphonic music, not excluding Beethoven and Berlioz. Beethoven, except for his Ninth Symphony, is portrayed by Wagner in such tones that seem somehow pathological, while in Berlioz all his luxurious romantic devices are monstrously belittled or outright ignored. According to Wagner, all this happens only because before him, before Wagner, no one knew what a musical drama was, and therefore no one could create it.
As for the positive statements of Wagner in this treatise, here for the first time, and, moreover, in the clearest form, it is said about mythology. According to Wagner, reason and feeling are synthesized in fantasy, and fantasy leads the artist to a miracle; and this marvel in drama is nothing but its mythology. Of course, this deepest, purely Wagnerian thought is also not expressed here very clearly in the philosophical and aesthetic sense of the word. Wagner should have spoken not about reason, but rather about philosophical ideas, about broad and deep thinking, and instead of feeling, it would have been clearer to talk about the material-sensory or spatio-temporal realization or embodiment of thought. The term "miracle" is also not very clear. But on the other hand, the concept of musical-mythological drama that arises from this is expressed by Wagner quite clearly, especially if we have in mind the later and central musical dramas for his work.
Particularly interesting is the third part of the treatise. Here Wagner has a lot of poetic expressions and a lot of all sorts of logical obscurities. But if we translate all this teaching of Wagner into a more understandable language of logic, then we can say this.
Wagner understands all artistic creativity and the object created by it as an area of love. The masculine principle for Wagner here is a poetic fiction, or a poetic image. This image cannot be the only decisive one in art, because it is too abstract and too divided, too unassembled into a single and inseparable whole. This poetic image is opposed by the infinite and in no way dissected element of absolute music, which, obviously, cannot become the basis of true art either. But this feminine musical beginning is intended to embody the poetic
imagery and thereby deprive it of abstractness, fragmentation and turn it into creative development. At first, this brainchild is a melody. It is no longer simply poetry, but is still within the horizons of the poet. A more significant embodiment of the musical image occurs when the infinite musical depth also begins to embody poetic imagery. But then, instead of a melody, we already get harmony, not harmony in general, but one that is a vertical discharge of musical depth, enlightened and illuminated by the images of poetry. Thus, harmony is already a kind of correlation of melodic elements, and this correlation, poetically expressed, is a musical drama. Therefore, musical drama is not at all only poetry or only the art of the word, just as it is not simply musical sound as such, not fertilized by word and thought, but only capable of amusing and amusing. Thus, the musical drama is the complete inseparability of poetry and music, it is their true offspring, which is created as a result of an act of their mutual love and which is already something new, not reducible either to poetry or to music.
This presentation of Wagner's theory does not pretend to be its literal reproduction, which is impossible due to the vagueness of the expressions allowed in this treatise. But this is our analysis of the theory of musical drama, which, as it seems to us, reproduces in an understandable and dissected form what Wagner himself is not quite understandable and not quite dissected. It is clear that even nine years before Wagner finished his first musical drama in the proper sense of the word, that is, before Tristan and Isolde, completed, as we know, in 1859, here, in a treatise of 1850, that what can be called the true aesthetics of Wagner, namely his theory of musical drama. Since then, Wagner's aesthetics will forever remain aesthetics. musical drama.
In a treatise of 1851 entitled "An Address to My Friends" we find a fascinating picture of Wagner's spiritual development in previous years and an explanation of some aspects of his work that met with misunderstanding and outright hostility. First of all, it is clear from this essay that Wagner was interested in the revolution not just a political upheaval and not just a legal and formal side, but only pure humanity and artistic reforms. And when he soon became convinced that the bourgeois revolution did not pursue the goals of lofty and pure humanity, he immediately withdrew from the revolution. "The lies and hypocrisy of political parties filled me with such disgust that I returned to complete loneliness again."
However, no loneliness can be an end in itself or the last word for an artist. Wagner, as he himself says, was looking for "pure humanity", but could not find it in the rough, fractional and contradictory facts of contemporary hypocrisy and constantly fluctuating legal relations. Wagner does not use the word "generalization" here. But when he talks about mythe, what is done
clear that nothing else but general humanity, not the petty and always changing, always unreliable modern humanity, but it was the generalized humanity that led him to the myth. He first turns precisely to antiquity and encounters there this generalized humanity of myth in Attic tragedy. But the same search for generalized humanity, as Wagner says, led him to his native German antiquity, and above all to the popular myth of Siegfried. “I dumped from him (that is, from the myth of Siegfried. - A. L.) one garment after another, ugly thrown over by later poetry, in order to finally see him in all his chaste beauty. And what I saw was not a traditional historical figure, in which the drapery interests us more than its actual forms - it was in all its nakedness a real living person, in whom I discerned an unrestrained, free excitement of the blood, every reflex of strong muscles : it was a true man in general."
In the light of the search for this pure humanity, Wagner in this treatise draws in great detail and interestingly the history of the emergence of his previous operas, which is important for Wagner's biography, but secondary to characterizing his theoretical aesthetics.
What is interesting is Wagner's understanding of his pamphlet Art and Revolution in the light of precisely these quests. It turns out that even before 1848 he already understood all the futility of contemporary art and all the insignificance of both the public that perceives art and the authorities that encourage this art. During this period, he already felt lonely, and the Dresden uprising of 1849 only strengthened him in the consciousness of the complete need for spiritual loneliness. Likewise, two other treatises of 1850 are characterized by Wagner as the result of his deepest desire to reject all existing forms of art, and above all - opera, and outline thoughts about their complete overcoming. Wagner here directly says: “I don’t write any more “operas”, and he is going to depict his enthusiastically experienced myth of Siegfried and Bringhilde not in opera, but, as he now says, exclusively only in drama, that is, in musical drama.
Wagner's whole treatise ends with a plan for such a huge musical drama, designed for three evenings, and even with a prologue, for which it will also take a whole evening. And although, until the last lines of the treatise, Wagner does not get tired of scolding the theatrical art of his time and the impossibility of reaching an understanding of his work among the general public, he still asks his friends to help him in this grandiose undertaking.
The remaining literary works of Wagner in the 50s, that is, in the Zurich period of his work, are of little importance.
nia, since all these years Wagner enthusiastically indulged in his own literary and musical creativity, creating first the Nibelungen, and then Tristan and Isolde. During these years, Wagner, one might say, almost abandoned all purely literary activity, and moreover, in his letters he himself considers all his literary treatises a pure mistake and says that they are now simply “disgusting” for him. Before he could arrive in Switzerland, he immediately ceased his literary activity, largely connected with the revolution, in which he now no longer believes, and draws up a plan for his grandiose musical and dramatic work, The Ring of the Nibelung *.
Now we can proceed to the question of what aesthetic worldview underlies the tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelungen" and how one could formulate its aesthetics here. Much, as we know, was formulated by Wagner himself in his literary works. This, however, is absolutely not enough, and Wagner himself abandoned these literary works of his. In his refusal, Wagner is undoubtedly too carried away and exaggerates the unsuitability of these treatises for understanding his music. But undoubtedly, what he gave in his tetralogy "The Ring of the Nibelung" in many respects is difficult even to compare with his musical theory and journalism. Which of these treatises was transferred to the "Ring of the Nibelung" as an indisputable aesthetic basis?
We have already seen that Wagner was always very enthusiastic in calling for musical universalism. Already in his first article in 1834, as we remember, Wagner is not interested in some separate and one-sided national music. Already here he is interested in what can be called universal the nature of the music. This, of course, does not prevent the use of these or other national plots. But they must be interpreted, according to Wagner, in the spirit of universal human problems. Further, in Der Ring des Nibelungen, of course, another principle was realized, which Wagner had previously opposed to the frivolous, generally accessible and, as we would now say, petty-bourgeois content of the then traditional opera. The plot of a genuine work of art should be interpreted in such a generalized form that it is not about the little things of everyday life, but about the ultimate generalization of all human life.
* We talk more about the history of the creation of the “Ring” in our work: Losev A.F. The problem of Richard Wagner in the past and present (In connection with the analysis of his tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung”). - In the book: Questions of aesthetics Vol. 8. M., 1968, p. 144 - 153.
life taken as a whole. According to Wagner, this meant that a genuine work of art is always a work of art. mythological*. This applies entirely to the Ring of the Nibelung.
Further, in this grandiose work, Wagner's dreams of merging the arts, and above all, of merging poetry with music, were fully realized. In The Ring, this theory was embodied through the use of keynotes, when every idea and every poetic image is immediately specifically organized with the help of a musical motif. Thus, we find in the "Ring" the motif of Wotan's spear, given in the form of a long series of powerfully descending sounds, as if overthrowing all resistance until it is completely destroyed. So, we have in the "Ring" the motif of the sword, that heroic sword that Siegfried uses when performing his superhuman feats; this leitmotif is a powerful and invincible soaring upwards. It was put into the mouth of Wotan himself, at the end of the Valkyrie, when the lulled Bringhilde remains on the mountain, surrounded by fire and accessible only to Siegfried, who with a sword will break through this fire and wake Bringhilde with a kiss.
The abundance of leitmotifs in The Ring often irritated Wagner's opponents, who criticized his musical works for being too full of philosophy and that the Ring of the Nibelung was not music at all, but only philosophy. And we, said the opponents of Wagner (and they still say now), are not philosophers at all, but musicians; therefore, we are not obliged to understand all this philosophical heap of leitmotifs in Wagner. To this it must be said that Wagner's leitmotifs are indeed not only music; and whoever approaches them exclusively as music, deprives himself of the opportunity to understand such a work as the "Ring of the Nibelung". In order to understand the aesthetics of the Ring of the Nibelung, its leitmotifs (and there are more than ninety of them here), it is really necessary to understand all this not only musically, but also philosophically, or rather, not musically and not philosophically, but synthetically, as Wagner demanded. . In addition, Wagner's opponents forget that leitmotifs are found in many composers besides Wagner, and in those whose worldview has nothing in common with Wagner's worldview.
Thus, in all operas by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, although these composers were opponents of Wagner, the method of leitmotifs is constantly used; and they arrived at this method, of course, independently of Wagner. The Snow Maiden by Rimsky-Korsakov has its own well-defined orchestral leitmotif, also Berendey, also
* For obligatory generalization in the myth of the phenomena of nature and society, see the articles: Losev A, F. Mythology. - "Philosophical Encyclopedia", vol. 3. M., 1964, p. 457; His own. Mythology. - TSB, vol. 16, p. 340.
Kupava, Mizgir, etc. The difference between Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner is only ideological, but by no means structural and musical. Therefore, it is clear that Wagner's opponents are not at all right in their criticism of his leitmotifs.
Finally, from Wagner's previous treatises, to analyze the aesthetics of the Nibelungen Ring, of course, one must also draw on his theory. musical drama. If the compositional practice of The Ring differs in any way from the previous Wagnerian theory of musical drama, it is only by an even more intensive implementation of its principles of musical drama, even more saturated with both its content and its structure.
Thus, Wagner's previous treatises very expressively depict the aesthetics of the "Ring of the Nibelungen" as universal human musical mythological drama with a consistent and strictly methodical use of a certain system of leitmotifs, conceived as the deepest fusion of poetic and musical imagery with its philosophical idea,
However, this is still not enough to understand the aesthetics of the "Ring of the Nibelung"; and now we will see that Wagner had some reason to abandon his former musical-dramatic theories. The latter turned out to be too abstract for him now and, therefore, not very talkative. New views appeared in Wagner, firstly, as a result of studying the ancient Germanic epic, which he now interprets not optimistically, but pessimistically, and, secondly, in connection with the aesthetics of Schopenhauer, which Wagner encountered in 1854 and did not part with for a whole life or at least until 1870, when in his book on Beethoven he still uses Schopenhauer's aesthetics very intensively.
Wagner met Schopenhauer in the summer of 1854. By this time, as we know, the text of the entire "Ring" was already ready and the musical arrangement of this text had begun. For this alone, one must speak not so much of Schopenhauer's influence on Wagner as of Wagner's independent Schopenhauerism even before any acquaintance with Schopenhauer himself. True, Wagner read and reread Schopenhauer's main work, The World as Will and Representation, many times and was incredibly delighted with it. This must be said because Wagner, generally speaking, was not a particularly zealous reader and admirer of philosophers. For example, the borrowings he made during the revolution from Feuerbach are usually mercilessly exaggerated by Wagner's researchers. It has been proved that from Feuerbach Wagner read only Thoughts on Death and Immortality, and even then superficially. And if anything from philosophical theories mattered to Wagner during the period of the revolution, then, rather, not Feuerbach himself, but the general neo-Hegelian trend (Ruge, Strauss, Proudhon, Lameneg Veit-
ling). But Wagner did not read any neo-Hegelians at all; Equally, Bakunin's obscurely anarchist sermon, on whose great influence scholars also insist on Wagner, in our opinion, passed almost without a trace for Wagner.
Quite another is the attitude of Wagner to Schopenhauer. And the depth of this relationship is revealed in the fact that Wagner does not at all coincide with this philosopher in all details, but is also inclined to criticize him. And even without this Wagnerian criticism, it is not so difficult to notice the many different differences between Wagnerian aesthetics and Schopenhauer's aesthetics. During these years, we do not have direct printed statements by Wagner about Schopenhauer. But his enthusiastic attitude towards this philosopher is clear from the letters of that time to Liszt and Rekel.
So, after getting acquainted with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Wagner had nothing to change in his "Ring of the Nibelung", which ended with the image of the death of all the owners of the gold of the Rhine in the form of Alberich's ring and the death of all the gods along with their Valhalla, since the gods also switched to illegal and unfair management the world with gold. Nevertheless, in the text of The Ring of the Nibelung, where Bringhilde returns the fatal ring to the daughters of the Rhine before self-immolation, Wagner nevertheless found it necessary to change the optimistic version of Bringhilde's words to a pessimistic one. Before reading Schopenhauer, Wagner put these words into Bringhilda's mouth;
“The Tribe of the Gods is gone like a breath; the world that I will leave, henceforth without a ruler; the treasure of my knowledge I give to the world. Neither wealth, nor gold, nor the greatness of the gods, nor the house, nor the court, nor the brilliance of the supreme dignity, nor the false bonds of miserable contracts, nor the strict law of hypocritical morality - nothing will make us happy; and in sorrow, and in joy, only love will do this. What kind of love is this - Bringhilda does not say, and the entire text of the "Ring" also does not say anything on this topic in a positive sense. Only the negative side is clear: a new life will be built without the pursuit of gold.
But in 1854, Wagner begins to get involved in Schopenhauer. And Wagner crosses out the optimistic words of Bringhilda with hope for love in the future, replacing them with the following tirade: “I will no longer lead the heroes to the palace of Valhalla, and do you know where I am going? I leave this world of desires; I am forever leaving this world of illusions; I close the doors of eternity behind me. To that blissful world where desire and illusion cease, to that goal where universal development is directed, the Seer rushes there today, freed from the need to be born again. Do you know how I could get a blessed end to all that is eternal? deep
* Quoted. Quoted from: Lichtenberger A, Richard Wagner as a Poet and Thinker. Per. S. M. Solovyova, M., 1905, p. 194.
the sufferings of love opened my eyes in grief: I saw the end of the world. These words of Bringhilda are nothing but a retelling of Schopenhauer's thoughts, according to which the world is based on an unconscious and evil will; and in order to get rid of it, one must renounce it and plunge into nothingness.
But there is another interesting biographical and creative detail. Precisely: when Wagner reached the finale of The Death of the Gods when creating his score, he also excluded these words of Bringhilda. And it's not hard to say why. This happened with Wagner, no doubt, because he was all the time in the grip of the musical myth he created, but not in the grip of any theories, even Schopenhauer's. For a pure and naked theory, Wagner simply could not find the appropriate musical techniques. And the general myth of the Nibelungs, as it was developed throughout the tetralogy, was clear in and of itself, without this philosophical and theoretical conclusion of Bringhilda.
With regard to the coincidence of the views of Wagner and Schopenhauer, not mechanical, but, as we said, creative, perhaps it will be interesting to quote Schopenhauer's own opinion about the opera. It largely coincides with the opinion of Wagner. Schopenhauer wrote: “A grand opera, in essence, is not a product of a true understanding of art; rather, it is due to a purely barbarous tendency to increase aesthetic enjoyment by various means, the simultaneity of completely heterogeneous impressions, and the intensification of the effect by an increase in the number of actors and forces - while, on the contrary, music, as the most powerful of all arts, alone can fill the space open to it. soul. In order to perceive and enjoy her most perfect works, an inseparable and concentrated mood is necessary - then only can one fully surrender to her, immerse herself in her, fully understand her so sincere and cordial language. Complex operatic music does not allow this. Here the attention is split in two, as it acts on the eye, dazzling with the brilliance of the scenery, fantastic paintings and bright light and color impressions, in addition, the attention is also entertained by the plot of the play. Strictly speaking, the opera could be called a non-musical invention, made to please non-musical people, for whom music should be introduced by smuggling” **.
To understand the aesthetics of Wagner, how it was realized in the "Ring of the Nibelung", it is necessary to understand what the aesthetics of Schopenhauer himself is, in what respects the aesthetics of Wagner coincides with it and in what respects it diverges. In short, bypassing all sorts of
* Quoted from: Lichtenberger A. Decree. op., p. 353.
**Ibid, e.s. 329-330.
details, and thus at the risk of falling into some kind of banality, it is necessary to say the following.
Schopenhauer proceeds from the inexorable and incorrigible chaos of life and therefore believes that all being is guided by the world's unconscious will, which is insurmountable by nothing and, moreover, evil. However, there is also an objectification of this will. First such an objectification is the world of ideas, which are already understandable to the mind the principles and laws of everything that exists. With Schopenhauer, this is a completely Platonic world of ideas, to which, unfortunately, Schopenhauer experts and lovers pay much less attention, since in Schopenhauer himself the unconscious will underlying the world is certainly depicted more vividly than this world of ideas, which is the realm of pure intellect. Other the objectification of the world will is the world of matter and all the material things that make it up. It is also full of chaos and nonsense, endless suffering and catastrophes; and in it the most that can be achieved is only boredom. Suicide is not a way out of this world of unconscious and evil will, but, on the contrary, only an even greater self-affirmation of this will. The true going beyond the limits of the world will is a complete renunciation of it, the complete absence of any action and immersion in only one intellect that contemplates this will, but does not participate in it, that is, what Schopenhauer calls representation. Hence the title of his main work, The World as Will and Representation. The world will itself, in view of its nonsense and ugliness, is not something beautiful and therefore cannot be an object of art. But the intellect immersed in itself, whether it be the world intellect or the human one, contemplates this world will with complete independence from it. And then it is music, which, from the point of view of the contemplative intellect, thus appears to be the basis of the world, nature, society and the individual. Thus, music, like all world will, is pure irrationality. But when this world will is contemplated by the intellect, detached from the world will itself, it experiences aesthetic pleasure. In the aesthetic pleasure received from music, a person thus acquires the only life consolation and salvation.
Bearing in mind the similar content of Schopenhauer's aesthetics, it is not difficult to give in a more precise form Wagner's aesthetics in Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Common with the aesthetics of Schopenhauer, of course, is the feeling of the world basis as something dysfunctional and even meaningless. What is also common here is the need to renounce this eternal and meaningless volitional process and therefore the renunciation and complete renunciation of this world will and life. common is,
finally, and the desire to find the last way out by immersion in pure intellect and in the resulting detached aesthetic pleasure in music. However, many connoisseurs and lovers of Wagner's music, and above all Wagner himself, could not reduce the aesthetics of The Ring, and later also Tristan, only to the aesthetics of Schopenhauer.
Already from the various facts of Wagner's biography we have mentioned, it is clear that Wagner was a very active and passionate nature, that his musical enthusiasm and the most complex musical creativity, which always required him to compose huge and complex scores, never interfered with his active life, did not interfere with him constantly. to move from place to place and did not interfere with the chores of staging his musical dramas, did not interfere with seeking all kinds of subsidies and immediately using them for business. Schopenhauer's aesthetics, which was very close to him, he nevertheless appreciated with his heart as a philosophy of passivism and hopeless sitting still. Nevertheless, Wagner still continues strenuously to put forward the concept of love, which at first he was not able to reveal, but which nevertheless is the crown of his aesthetic theory in both The Ring and Tristan.
Then, the aesthetics of Wagner in The Ring is undoubtedly more concrete than that of Schopenhauer, already by the mere fact that all human, and even worldly evil comes from the fact that people and gods build their well-being on the lawless use of the untouched power and beauty of the universe, the symbol of which is the gold of the Rhine, and this gold is possessed by one of the Nibelungs, Alberich, who renounces love and curses it. This idea is completely alien to the aesthetics of Schopenhauer. And even when, realizing all the destruction of gold, the heroes and gods perish, who tried to base their bliss on the illegal possession of this gold, and, moreover, perish in a world catastrophe, according to Wagner, there remains some kind of humanity, about which Wagner himself still cannot do anything. to say positive, but which - and this is quite clear - will no longer build its life on the pursuit of gold. Nothing like this can be found in Schopenhauer. Thus, the aesthetics of The Ring is ultimately built not on detached musical enjoyment, but on a foretaste of the future of man, which, according to Wagner, is already devoid of any individualistic egoism.
Finally, in the light of the reasoning we have proposed above, the question of irrationality in the aesthetics of The Ring, on which almost all connoisseurs and lovers of Wagner focus their attention, it becomes very difficult, and here Wagner also has a fundamental divergence from Schopenhauer.
True, even Schopenhauer himself has his admirers and detractors
Usually, first of all, they grab hold of his doctrine of the world's unconscious and evil will, which is indeed interpreted by Schopenhauer in a completely irrationalistic way. However, it is usually forgotten here that the same Schopenhauer also has a doctrine of representation, which Schopenhauer himself understood primarily as a completely meaningful objectification of the world will in the form of a world of ideas, in the form world intelligence, very close to the Platonic doctrine of the realm of ideas and of the world Mind. Therefore, historical justice forces us to say that even in Schopenhauer one cannot find absolute irrationalism. Even less this irrationalism in Wagner's Nibelungen.
In fact, fate in the "Ring" is and even appears as a deep symbol of Erda. The attraction of gods and heroes to gold in Wagner is also irrational, unconscious and blind. The capture of the golden ring by one being from another also occurs quite spontaneously anarcho-individualistically. But the whole point is that the "Ring" is permeated with a certain idea, or rather, with a whole system of ideas. The Rhine Gold is also far from absolute irrationality. This is a symbol of world power and world essence, naive, untouched and wise. There is no more irrationality in this symbol than in any world symbols of any poets and musicians who wanted to depict the deepest center of the entire universe. The heroes and gods who capture this ring also act quite consciously in Wagner. They know what they want, although they feel the complete illegality of this desire. Bringhilde, who before her death returns the golden ring to the bowels of the Rhine, also acts quite consciously and even, one might say, quite logically.
And finally, Wotan, a much more central figure in The Ring than Sigmund, Siegfried, Bringhilde and other heroes, is depicted as a very deep and serious philosopher, who perfectly understands both the entire fatality of the individualistic mastery of gold, and the need for his own death, since he himself too involved in the general pursuit of gold. In this sense, Wotan is indeed the most tragic figure. But why can it be argued that this figure in Wagner is only irrational? Wotan has no less rational self-consciousness than he once had an irrational attraction to gold. Yes, and Wagner himself wrote in one of his letters: “Wotan is similar to us to the smallest detail. He is the sum total of all the intelligence of our time.”
In his entry of December 1, 1858, Wagner says, among other things, that genius cannot be understood as a gap between will and intellect, but that it should be understood “rather as the rise of the intellect of the individual to the level of the organ of knowledge of the totality of phenomena,
including the rise of the will as a thing in itself, from which alone one can understand the amazing enthusiasm of joy and delight at the highest moment of brilliant cognition. “I have come to the firm conviction,” Wagner writes further in the same entry, “that in love one can rise above the aspiration of one’s personal will, and when this is completely successful, then the will inherent in people in general reaches full awareness, which at this level is inevitably tantamount to perfect calm." Thus, there is no need to talk about pure irrationality in Wagner's aesthetics, as well as about his unconditional submission to Schopenhauer. That Wagner wants to "correct the errors" of Schopenhauer. he himself writes in his diary on December 8, 1858.
And in general, the entire plot of The Ring should be called historical, or rather, cosmic-historical, but certainly not only irrationalistic. It is this historicism that cannot be found in Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer, the world is perfectly stable; it really boils with him with eternal aspirations and inclinations, of which one way out is to the realm of ideas, or intellect. But this intelligence is even more stable and ahistorical. In general, the primacy of nature, not history, dominates Schopenhauer's aesthetics; and this nature, with all its eternal mobility, is always in its ultimate essence something immovable. Therefore, in the aesthetics of Schopenhauer there is something Spinozist, but certainly not Hegelian and not Schellingian, since both Hegel and Schelling are filled with a sense of historicism in one sense or another of the word. And this historicism is not in Schopenhauer, but in Wagner's "Ring" it is.
In addition, if you think about the criticism of operatic art that we cited above from Schopenhauer, then, in essence, it also contradicts Wagner's aesthetics. True, Schopenhauer's criticism of the artistic variegation of the opera of that time, its composition from separate isolated numbers, its superficial, amusing and entertaining character here completely coincides with Wagner's views. But what does Schopenhauer propose instead of the then opera? He offers pure music, devoid of any poetic imagery and any, as has often been said and is being said, programming. Wagner proposes something quite different. Vigorously rejecting, together with Schopenhauer, the too fractional and rationally amusing operatic art of that time, Wagner firmly stands on the basis of a complete fusion of all the arts, and above all, music with poetry. And his "Ring" is neither a symphony, nor a sonata, nor any solemn, even. tragic, a concerto for violin or piano, but theoretically quite thought out and conscious, but in fact, without any deviation to the side, carried out musical drama. This, too, goes beyond Schopenhauer's aesthetics.
Based on all this, it must be said that, in spite of any pessimism and self-denial, in spite of any renunciation of self-enjoyment, and, finally, in spite of any fate by whose command all these individualistically blissful gods and heroes are created and perish, - in spite of all this, that world catastrophe, about which Wagner broadcasts in The Ring, nevertheless opens the way to a new development of mankind and to its new achievements without the fatal pursuit of gold.
And therefore, quite unexpectedly, it turns out that Wagner, who outwardly departed from the revolution, actually departed only from its narrow socio-political goals. He elevated the revolution into a world principle, into the fatal cause of the death of any world that tries to base itself on boundless individualism, on ignoring the universal good, on the illegal, unjust, pitiful, albeit artistically beautiful, mastery of the foundations of the universe by an individual and powerless person, and even by the same gods who also try to master the basis of the world only for the sake of their individualistic desires,
Why do we call the "Ring of the Nibelung" prophecy revolution? After all, every prophet who speaks about the distant destinies of life is not at all obliged to represent the new post-revolutionary world with all its scientific character, system and completeness. Of necessity, this world is drawn to him in some fabulous colors, and the revolutionary upheaval itself, for the time being, also appears to him in a naive and mythological form. Therefore, bearing in mind the mythological structure of the tragedy of world life in Wagner, we have every right to call this terrible news of the "Ring of the Nibelung" nothing more than a prophecy of an unprecedented, but in fact a utopian revolution. In addition, with all his mythological generalizations, Wagner hardly completely forgot the biographically original socio-political understanding of the revolution for him. In any case, not some Wagner commentator, but he himself owns the following words: “If we imagine in the hands of the Nibelung, instead of a fatal ring, an exchange portfolio, we will get a terrible image of the ghostly ruler of the world.”
So, the aesthetics of Wagner in The Ring is a truly revolutionary aesthetics, which is not to be found in Schopenhauer. And this revolutionary Wagner can no longer be put in quotation marks. In quotation marks for Wagner was that narrow and local, but in essence petty-bourgeois revolutionary uprising, in which he so unsuccessfully participated in Dresden in 1849. The pessimistic aesthetics of Wagner, of course, is not at all canceled by this, since in this death of the world due to its illegal possession of gold there are quite enough bleak features to consider the aesthetics of The Ring as pessimistic. All this beauty
great heroism, these raptures of heroic love, all the beautiful power of world history can only be understood in the light of such profound pessimism. But there is a way out of this pessimism. And the whole heroism of The Ring is colored by this aesthetic exit, just as it is colored at every step by its hopelessness.
As mentioned above, Wagner interrupted his work on The Ring of the Nibelung in 1857 in order to work on Tristan and Isolde, a musical drama that he also wrote in his Zurich years (1857 - 1859). People often talk about the suddenness of this transition of Wagner to another topic, or they do not motivate this transition at all. These motives were, however, very important.
If we touch on the external side of the matter, then Wagner became more and more convinced of the impossibility of quickly putting on stage such a colossal work as The Ring, which would require four evenings and performers rare in their heroic warehouse. And even then one should be surprised that the impatient Wagner had been working on The Ring for three years already and did nothing else. In 1857, he finally decided to write something lighter and more accessible - and wrote "Tristan and Isolde", naively thinking that it would be easier for the European public to perceive such a drama. But this drama turned out to be more accessible only in its size, since it required only one evening for its performance. As for the content, this new musical drama turned out to be, perhaps, even more difficult and even less accessible to the public.
The very theme of the story of Tristan and Isolde was not new for Wagner. She came to his mind as early as 1854, not only during the period of his passion for Schopenhauer, but also at the height of work on the Nibelungen. He did not want to abandon his Nibelungs, the musical score of which he had just begun. Therefore, he then postponed the topic of Tristan and Isolde. But by 1857 there were other, external reasons for the transition to a new musical drama. It must be said that the circumstances of his life in Switzerland were very unfavorable. Wagner needed and had to change his home, which was too noisy for him to indulge in his creativity. He felt lonely and unhappy, he definitely missed Germany, and his close friend Liszt, who came to him, only aroused in him a desire for a normal musical activity for an artist. But perhaps the most important reason for the transition to "Tristan" were two circumstances, of which one was more important than the other.
First, Wagner went deeper and deeper into the philosophy of Schopenhauer. He wanted at all costs to depict the hopelessness of all human aspirations and to depict the inner identity of love and death. This theme was already deeply presented in The Ring. But, as we said above, The Ring was primarily a cosmic-historical drama, and not just a drama of the inner experiences of an individual. Probably, in 1857, Wagner unconsciously and himself felt himself not yet ripe for such colossal cosmic historicism, which he wanted to portray in The Ring. It is not for nothing that The Ring, as we already know, was completed by Wagner only in the early 1970s. Previously, it was still necessary to delve into the psychology of this particular individual, as yet beyond any historicism. This individual had to be creatively experienced in all his abandonment, suffering and in all his inherent need, even his deepest and highest experiences of love should be identified with the fatal necessity of death. As an artist who survived this tragedy of individual death, Wagner was able to further expand this theme to cosmic-historical dimensions. It was then that the legend of Tristan and Isolde came in handy.
Thus, if the socio-political situation is decisive for any artistic creativity, then Wagner's emigrant life in Zurich, alone, away from friends, away from normal artistic activity, at those moments in European history when, after the collapse of the 1848 revolution, waves of political a reaction that evoked pessimism, and sometimes despair, naturally, evoked the same pessimism and despair in Wagner himself. For any historian of music and aesthetics, Wagner's development of such themes as in "Ring of the Nibelung" or in "Tristan and Iseult" turns out to be both quite natural and quite understandable. But from our previous presentation, the reader could understand that Wagner was neither a public figure nor a politician in his inclinations, and therefore the pessimism of such an artist, of course, must be characterized not only as a result of the then socio-political situation, but also take into account his true inner needs. and purely personal philosophical and musical searches.
Secondly, Wagner, as many believe, quite "accidentally" encountered Buddhist teachings about the insignificance of the human person, and indeed of all human life, and with the need to plunge into complete non-existence, into nirvana. Of course, a European man of the middle of the 19th century could no longer understand nirvana simply as non-existence or death. Wagner's personality was too complex for him to stop there. Wagner understood this nirvana and this death as
the limit of the highest tension in the life of the individual. And since love played the main role in the life of a person for Wagner, nirvana turned out to be nothing more than a merger for him. love And of death. And the plot of the legend of Tristan and Isolde, again, was most suitable for this.
An undeniable influence on the ideas expressed in Tristan was Wagner's brief preoccupation with the history of Buddhism. In 1856, Wagner read the book An Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism, from which he drew for the outline of his never written drama The Conquerors, which interested him in the story of the test of love and self-denial. This plot worried Wagner in the future, especially when he had to part with his beloved Matilda Wesendonck and, in woeful seclusion, keep a Venetian diary. It was there, on October 5, 1858, that Wagner again recalls his studies in Buddhism, but now in connection with Köppen's History of the Buddhist Religion. True, Wagner calls this scholarly work an "unpleasant book" full of purely external details about the establishment and spread of the Buddhist cult. How alien to Wagner was, in fact, the Buddhist cult itself, is also indicated by the fact that he ranked the Chinese Buddha figurine sent to him as “tasteless”, and his disgust for the gift was so great that he could not hide his feelings from the sender. this lady gift; Wagner writes about this in detail in the same entry.
For Wagner, all these Buddhist relics are nothing but "grimaces" or "caricatures" of a "sick, ugly world." And great efforts must be made to resist these external impressions and "keep intact the purely contemplative ideal." Apparently, Wagner was attracted precisely by the pure, sublime ideal of the story of the Buddha, his disciple Ananda, the latter's beloved, perhaps because the composer himself deeply understood the impossibility of his union with Matilda in this world full of evil and life's vicissitudes. There remained dreams of unity in the sphere of the impersonal, extra-egoistic, lofty spiritual. Of course, Wagner was aware of how difficult it was to translate such a pious and sacred Buddhist story into the language of musical drama, and in such a way that the circumstances of his personal drama were expressed in it.
For Wagner himself, the Buddhist ideal of unity with his beloved turns out to be absolutely unattainable in real life, since he is an artist who lives the facts of life, turning them into poetically inspired images with the help of art. Wagner is a poet who lives by mood, inspiration, is connected with nature and the torments of real life. However, being an artist, he cannot live outside of art, and therefore cannot achieve true freedom in nirvana, which
paradise is available only to those who, according to the teachings of the Buddha, resolutely reject everything, even art itself.
Therefore, Wagner is captivated by conflicting ideas and feelings. Separated from his beloved, he tries to keep at least her image, which is possible for his great art. But the more he immerses himself in the creation of his artistic fantasy, the more decisively his intimate ties with his beloved are torn, which belongs to the world, just as the art of a poet and composer belongs to the world. It turns out that for those who love there is no renunciation of the world, which means that there is neither salvation nor unity in nirvana.
The Buddhist path to salvation was not suitable for the hopelessness and drama of the life relationship between Wagner and Matilda Wesendonck, but the plot of the poetic tragedy of Tristan and Isolde with the indissolubility of love and death was brewing all the more strongly and irrevocably.
The necessary factual information from the biography of Wagner, which must be kept in mind when analyzing the musical drama "Tristan and Isolde", we have outlined in a general form above. Now we have to pay attention to one circumstance, which is often treated too formally by Wagner's biographers and from which no conclusions - neither truly socio-political nor essentially aesthetic - are drawn. Arguing formally, it is often thought that "Tristan and Isolde" is simply the result of the author's rational way of thinking, a product of the post-revolutionary gloomy and pessimistic era. The revolution, they say, failed, and so gloomy despair and political backlash ensued. And this is the essence of the Wagnerian drama Tristan and Isolde.
Such an approach to Wagner's drama must be considered too formal and incompletely depicting Wagner's inner state at the time of writing Tristan and Isolde, the style of this drama itself, the aesthetic worldview clearly expressed here. What is usually said about the failure of the petty-bourgeois revolutions of the first half of the 19th century, about pessimism, about the impossibility for the thinking individual of that time to find a foothold, and, finally, about the political reaction of those times, is all quite correct; this is discussed more than once in our work. However, it would be crude, vulgar sociologism to reduce the ideological and artistic meaning of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde to only one socio-political event. These events still need to be translated into the language of Wagner's literary and musical creativity, they must be able to be understood as a passionate impulse of the great composer's creativity and as a living, by no means conceptually schematic, intimate analogue of what happened both in Wagner himself and in his play.
First of all, in spite of any pessimism and even in spite of
to him, Wagner, as, indeed, he always felt within himself the never-failing source of life, the never-quenched faith in life, in its progress and in its achievements, some kind of endless and inexhaustible source of creativity, never weakened searches and faith in love as the last pillar of life. Therefore, when creating Tristan and Isolde, Wagner was overwhelmed by two passions, which from an ordinary and petty-bourgeois point of view are complete opposites, but for Wagner they were something integral and inseparable.
We have in mind, unprecedented in its pathos, the combination of feelings love and feelings of death in Tristan and Isolde. If you do not approach this drama deeply historically and at the same time deeply biographically, it becomes completely incomprehensible what is there in common between love and death, and why Tristan and Isolde are so killed, and why they find no other way out than this terrifying synthesis. But the essence of the matter lies in the fact that as a result of socio-political catastrophes, the whole reality of reality was experienced by Wagner as something evil, worthless, discredited once and for all, from which one could only go into oblivion, only renounce and only hide in some kind of inaccessible and dark corners of the human spirit. On the other hand, however, Wagner could not in any way destroy this vital life in the depths of his spirit, this passionate desire to live forever, create forever and love forever. This is where the whole ideological and artistic structure of "Tristan and Isolde" follows. This musical drama can only be understood socio-historically. But this socio-historical picture also includes the creative individuality of Wagner himself. Not only philosophically and theoretically, but also quite vitally, Wagner understood the whole falsity of European individualism and the collapse of subject-object dualism as a result of the European revolutionary movement of the last decades of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century.
As a result of this, all the materials of Wagner's biography of his Zurich period directly cry out about his loneliness, abandonment, about the hopelessness of his situation and the complete impossibility of creating such musical works that could even remotely support Wagner's dream of their theatrical production. And, we repeat, at the same time there is an inexhaustible thirst for life and an inexhaustible creative passion to love and be loved.
That is why the personality of Mathilde Wesendonck played such an unprecedented role in Wagner's work during these years. For Wagner, it was not just an everyday romance. Such novels can be found in the biographies of any artists and non-artists. No, it was not only a vital, but even a physically tangible triumph of love.
and death, which, however, biographically took on completely unusual forms. Seized by such an unprecedented feeling, Matilda also managed to convince her husband, Otto Wesendonck, of the loftiness of her relationship with Wagner. Under the influence of Matilda, Otto himself became a friend and patron of Wagner, built villas for him, provided him with money, and, together with Matilda, remained a passionate admirer of Wagner's talent until the end of his days. And when Wagner married Liszt's daughter Cosima and, already having children from her, visited Switzerland and met Matilda, this feeling of the fusion of love and death never dried up and was completely incomparable with any everyday relationships.
In concluding this characterization of Tristan and Isolde, we would like to note, based on the statements of Wagner himself, one more circumstance, which is also often not put forward and which just very clearly contrasts the moods of Wagner during the period of Tristan and Isolde both to Schopenhauer and to Buddhism, about connections with which biographical sources tell us.
The fact is that musically, both Tristan and Isolde are depicted by Wagner as very strong, powerful personalities. This should be especially taken into account by those who bring this play too close to ancient Buddhism. Ancient Buddhism, not believing either in man or in objective reality in general, was imbued with a feeling of the complete insignificance of everything that happened. Ancient Buddhism completely denied this insignificant reality, all the weak and hopeless impulses of the human being, striving to plunge all such weak and insignificant reality into one abyss of non-existence. Despite this, when listening to Wagner's musical drama one has to be downright surprised at the inner strength of these two heroes, striving for nirvana. What kind of nirvana is this with such titanism of the spirit? It was not nirvana that affected, but the deepest and subtlest development of the human personality in modern times. Tristan and Isolde go into oblivion not from their impotence, not from their insignificance, and not from the simple impossibility of making ends meet on earth. They go into this non-existence, into this universal night with a deep consciousness of their identity with this universal night and therefore with a deep consciousness of their greatness. True, they want to avoid this opposition of the subject to the object on which the whole of European culture was based. But this was not the defeat of a petty subject in front of a great object. On the contrary, it was a great victory of the infinite power of the spirit over petty and insignificant human life and a heroic merging with that which is already above any subject-object dualism. The study of Wagner's diaries and letters of the Zurich period convinces us that this was precisely his true aesthetic worldview.
We would also like to draw attention to one deep symbol in Tristan and Isolde, or, more precisely, to the symbolic myth, which is also central to the entire symbolic-mythological concept of this drama. Namely: it is necessary to clearly perceive the idea love drink, which, as we know, plays a decisive role in Tristan and Isolde. This love drink is not at all some kind of children's fairy tale or an idle fiction of subjective fantasy. It expresses the universal, inescapable, indestructible desire to love forever, live forever and create forever in love and in life. This power is expressed here as completely total, not even dependent on the reasonable intentions of the human individual. However, this fatalism at the same time functions quite realistically here. After all, all the laws of nature also do not depend on a single human individual, and in this sense they also act quite fatalistically. The law of falling bodies, for example, cannot be canceled either, it cannot be avoided either. And yet all mechanics and physicists cling to this law as the ultimate truth. This is the same truth as the eternal, indestructible desire of a person to love and act according to the laws of love. We would say that this is a much more realistic law of human life than that endless sea of human passions in which a person often sees his true freedom. Tristan and Isolde are absolutely free, and no one forced them to love. And since death is the law for all living things, therefore, we should not be surprised that love and death, taken in their last generalization and limit, are also something whole and inseparable, and, moreover, also the most blessed and freest for both heroes. Wagner dramas. Freedom, bliss, pleasure, death and fatalistic predetermination - that is what a love potion is, so brilliantly depicted by Wagner.
In the end, the aesthetics of Wagner during the heyday of his creative activity, or rather, his aesthetic worldview, considered socio-historically, is nothing more than a confession of the soul of a new European individual who has come to his last catastrophe in connection with the catastrophe of the bourgeois revolution. This individual has already traveled the false path of the absolute opposition of subject and object, but, full of his unfulfilled, but still monstrous forces of life, he achieved in Wagner a universal supra-individual fusion, which prophesies about a universal, and not bourgeois, revolution.
Our task, expressed by the theme of this work, can, in fact, be considered completed. However, due to the fact that we stopped
only the most important thing, it is necessary to at least briefly point out the existence of other Wagnerian materials related to this topic. Above, we have already named the first four periods of Wagner's work - the initial one (1833 - 1838), Parisian (1839 - 1842), Dresden (1842 - 1849) and Zurich (1849 - 1859). A more complete account would have to capture also the years of wandering after Zurich (1859 - 1865), the Tribschen period (1866 - 1872) and the Munich or Bayreuth period (1872 - 1883). However, we cannot touch upon the relevant literary works of Wagner here in connection with the plan of this introductory article.
S. A. Markus, whose materials we used above, did a great job of formulating not only the endless contradictions, Wagner’s wrong self-criticism, but also his unfair assessment of the work of many composers, whom we now honor, as well as Wagner himself, and in addition, his constantly fluctuating, sometimes sharply negative, and sometimes sharply positive attitude towards religion, the monarchy and views on the relationship of art with other areas of culture. Nevertheless, S. A. Marcus, in the end, still could not help but draw a conclusion about Wagner’s disgust for capitalism and could not help but note the revolutionary conclusions that Wagner himself drew from his even most religious and most Christian drama, Parsifal. . [
S. A. Markus writes: “Can it be said that, as a person and as an artist, Wagner came to terms with capitalist reality towards the end of his life? No, this cannot be said. The German musicologist Werner Wolf rightly pointed out that not only the anti-capitalist idea of the Ring of the Nibelungen, but also the ideas of Parsifal were "resolutely opposed by Wagner to the main tendencies of the dominant aggressive circles in Germany" ... Wagner's well-known statement in which he tried to somehow to explain his turn to Christian mysticism, Parsifal contains a devastating sentence on capitalist society as a world of "organized murder and robbery, legitimized by lies, deceit and hypocrisy ..." *
Thus, the voluntary or involuntary prophecy of a future, but by no means a bourgeois revolution, with all the deviations and vacillations of Wagnerian thought and artistic activity, still remains for the composer the main and irrefutable idea of all his musical, poetic, and literary-critical creativity.
A. F. Losev
* Markus S. A. Decree. op., p. 539 - 540.
In his powerful and cruel, like all mighty, creation, entitled "Art and Revolution", Wagner establishes the following truths:
Art is the joy of being oneself, living and belonging to society.
Art was like that in the VI century BC. Chr. in the Athenian state.
Together with the disintegration of this state, extensive art also disintegrated; it became fragmented and individual; it ceased to be the free expression of a free people. All two thousand years - from that time until our time - art has been in the position of the oppressed.
The teaching of Christ, who established the equality of people, degenerated into a Christian teaching that put out the religious fire and entered into an agreement with a hypocritical civilization that managed to deceive and tame artists and turn art to serve the ruling classes, depriving it of strength and freedom.
Despite this, true art has existed for all two thousand years and exists, manifesting itself here and there as a cry of joy or pain from the fetters of a free creator. Only a great and worldwide Revolution can restore to people the fullness of free art, which will destroy the centuries-old lies of civilization and raise the people to the heights of artistic humanity.
Richard Wagner appeals to all the brothers who suffer and feel dull malice to work together to help him lay the foundation for that new organization of art, which can become the prototype of the future new society.
The creation of Wagner, which appeared in 1849, is connected with the "Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels, which appeared a year before it. Marx's manifesto, whose worldview was finally determined by that time as the worldview of a "real politician", is a picture of the entire history of mankind, new for its time, explaining the historical meaning of the revolution; it is addressed to the educated classes of society; Fifteen years later, Marx found it possible to turn to the proletariat: in the manifesto of the International (1864), he turned to the practical experience of the last worker.
The creation of Wagner, who has never been a "real politician" but has always been an artist, is boldly addressed to the entire mental proletariat of Europe. Being connected with Marx ideologically, vitally, that is, much more firmly, it is connected with the revolutionary storm that swept through Europe at that time; the wind for this storm was sown, as now, among others, by the Russian rebellious soul, in the person of Bakunin; this Russian anarchist, hated by "real politicians" (including Marx), with a fiery belief in a world conflagration, took part in organizing the uprising in Dresden in May 1849; Wagner, inspired by Bakunin, fought on the Dresden barricades himself. When the uprising was crushed by the Prussian troops, Wagner had to flee from Germany. The creation in question, as well as a number of others that complement and explain "Art and Revolution", finally, the greatest creation of Wagner - the social tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelungen" - were conceived and executed in the late forties and early fifties and endured by him for beyond the reach of Prussian vulgarity.
The proletariat, to whose artistic instinct Wagner appealed, did not heed his call in 1849. I consider it not out of place to recall the truth, which is too well known to artists and, alas, still unknown to many "educated people", that this circumstance did not disappoint Wagner, just as accidental and temporary in general can never disappoint a real artist who is unable to make mistakes and be disappointed, for the matter it is - a matter of the future. However, Wagner the man had a bad time, because the ruling class, with its characteristic stupid fury, could not stop persecuting him for a long time. He resorted to the usual method for European society - indirectly and humanely to starve people who are too brave and who do not like him. The last significant exponent of Wagner's bullying was the famous Max Nordau; again, one cannot fail to mention with bitterness that even fifteen years ago this "explainer" was a "god" for many Russian intellectuals, who too often, due to the lack of musical feeling, fell against their will into various dirty embraces. It is still difficult to say whether the fact that Pobedonostsev also used the same Max Nordau in his time (to criticize the parliamentary system dear to her heart) served as a lesson for the Russian intelligentsia.
The star of the artist took Wagner away from the poverty of Parisian attics and from seeking help on the side. Fame and fortune began to pursue him. But both fame and fortune have been crippled by European petty-bourgeois civilization. They grew to monstrous sizes and took on ugly forms. Conceived by Wagner and erected in Bayreuth, the national theater became a meeting place for a miserable tribe - satiated tourists from all over Europe. The social tragedy "Ring of the Nibelungs" came into vogue; For a long series of years before the war, we in the capitals of Russia could observe huge theater halls, tightly packed with chirping ladies and indifferent civilians and officers - right down to the last officer, Nicholas II. Finally, at the beginning of the war, all the newspapers spread the news that Emperor Wilhelm attached a siren to his car, playing the leitmotif of the god Wotan, who is always “looking for a new one” (according to the text of “The Ring of the Nibelungs”).
However, this new hail of slaps did not hit the face of the great artist Wagner. The second method, which has long been used by the layman - to accept, devour and digest ("assimilate", "adapt") the artist, when it was not possible to starve him to death - did not lead to the desired end, just like the first. Wagner is still alive and still new; when the Revolution begins to sound in the air, the Art of Wagner sounds in response; his creations will hear and understand sooner or later anyway; these creations will be used not for entertainment, but for the benefit of people; for art, so "remote from life" (and therefore dear to the hearts of others) in our day, leads directly to practice, to business; only its tasks are broader and deeper than the tasks of "real politics" and therefore more difficult to implement in life.
Why Wagner failed to starve to death? Why was it not possible to devour it, vulgarize it, adapt it and hand it over to the historical archive, as a tool that was out of tune and no longer needed?
Because Wagner carried within himself the salutary poison of creative contradictions, which the petty-bourgeois civilization has so far failed to reconcile and which it will not be able to reconcile, for their reconciliation coincides with its own death.
The so-called advanced thought already takes this circumstance into account. While in the mental backyards puzzles are still being solved and various "religious", moral, artistic and legal dogmas are turned over this way and that, the pioneers of civilization have managed to "get in touch" with art. New techniques have appeared: artists are "forgiven"; artists are "loved" for their "contradictions"; artists are "allowed" to be - "out of politics" and "out of real life".
There is, however, one contradiction that cannot be seen through. Wagner expresses it in Art and Revolution; it refers to Jesus Christ.
Calling Christ in one place with hatred "the unfortunate son of the Galilean carpenter", Wagner in another place suggests that an altar be erected to him.
It is still possible to cope with Christ somehow: in the end, he is already and now, as it were, "bracketed" by the civilized world; After all, people are "cultured," which means they are "tolerant."
But the image of the attitude towards Christ is strange and incomprehensible. How can you hate and build an altar at the same time? How can you hate and love at the same time? If this extends to the "abstract", like Christ, then, perhaps, it is possible; but what if such a way of relating becomes common, if everything in the world is treated in the same way? To the "homeland", to "parents", to "wives" and so on? It will be unbearable because it is restless.
It was this poison of hateful love, unbearable for a tradesman even "of seven cultural spans in the forehead," that saved Wagner from death and desecration. This poison, spilled in all his creations, is the “new” that is destined for the future.
The new time is disturbing and restless. Anyone who understands that the meaning of human life lies in anxiety and anxiety will already cease to be an inhabitant. It will no longer be a self-satisfied nonentity; it will be a new person, a new step towards the artist.
Blok Alexander Alexandrovich (1880-1921) Russian poet.
Page 16 of 30
"Art and Revolution".
The following position, put forward by Wagner at the very beginning of the pamphlet, is extremely progressive: “We will not at all deal with abstract definitions of art here, but we set ourselves a different, in our opinion, quite natural task: to substantiate the significance of art as a function of social life, a political structure. ; establish that art is a product of social life. As can be seen, this statement by Wagner is in sharp, irreconcilable contradiction with the reactionary "theories"
called "pure" art, allegedly independent of social, political life. Wagner writes further: "... art has always been an excellent mirror of the social system."
Wagner argues that the ideal of the social system is ancient Greece, which gave birth to the greatest creation of art - Greek tragedy. Correctly assessing the great artistic achievements of the ancient Greek theater, Wagner, at the same time, like many bourgeois art historians, idealizes the ancient public
a system that was actually a slave-owning formation, although for its time progressive in comparison with the tribal community, but infinitely far from ideal.
Of progressive importance in the brochure "Art and Revolution" are the pages devoted to the criticism of Christianity, which, as Wagner says, contributed to the fall of art and the transformation of the artist into a "slave of industry." Wagner gives Christianity the most merciless characterization: “Christianity justifies the dishonorable, useless and miserable existence of man on earth with the miraculous love of God, who did not create man at all ... for a joyful, more and more self-conscious life and activity on earth; no, he locked him up here in a disgusting prison to cook
him after death, as a reward for the fact that he was filled here on earth with the most complete contempt in himself - the most peaceful eternity and the most brilliant idleness. “Hypocrisy,” writes Wagner, “is, generally speaking, the most outstanding distinguishing feature of all ages of Christianity, up to the present day ...”. “... Art, instead of freeing itself from supposedly enlightened rulers, which were
spiritual power, "rich in spirit" and enlightened princes, sold body and soul to a much worse master: Industry ... This is what art is that currently fills the entire civilized world: its true essence is industry, its aesthetic pretext is entertainment for the bored. .
One must correctly understand Wagner's inaccurate formula: by "industry" he means the bourgeois-capitalist system, which he subjected to severe criticism as a system incompatible with the free development of art. It is under the conditions of this system, where everything is determined by the power of money, that art becomes a craft and an object of trade.
This is what Wagner rose up against with all his strength and passion! Where is the exit? In the revolution. "The Great Revolution of all mankind," says Wagner, can revive true art. “True art can rise from its state of civilized barbarism to its worthy height only on the shoulders of our great social
movement; he has a common goal with him, and they can achieve it only on the condition that both recognize it. This goal is a beautiful and strong man: let the Revolution give him Strength, Art - Beauty. Wagner's inconsistency, which is a reflection of the limitations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, should also be noted here: criticism
capitalism is combined with a lack of understanding of the real social situation and the true tasks of the revolution; while affirming the correct idea that art depends on social life and politics, Wagner simultaneously speaks of its incompatibility with any authority, with any authority, and calls all this "higher freedom." Such a denial of state power and the state in general is nothing but a manifestation of petty-bourgeois anarchism.
In the same work, Wagner, still fluently, raises the question of "true drama", which will be neither drama nor opera (in the old sense) and where all forms of art will merge. Wagner develops ideas for the reform of musical drama extensively and in detail in such works as A Work of Art of the Future (1850), Opera and Drama (1851), and partly An Appeal to Friends (1851), written as a preface to three opera librettos: "Flying Dutchman", "Tannhäuser", "Lohengrin".
1
In his powerful and cruel, like all mighty, creation, entitled "Art and Revolution", Wagner establishes the following truths:
Art is the joy of being oneself, living and belonging to society.
Art was like that in the VI century BC. Chr. in the Athenian state.
Together with the disintegration of this state, extensive art also disintegrated; it became fragmented and individual; it ceased to be the free expression of a free people. All two thousand years - from that time until our time - art has been in the position of the oppressed.
The teaching of Christ, who established the equality of people, degenerated into a Christian teaching that put out the religious fire and entered into an agreement with a hypocritical civilization that managed to deceive and tame artists and turn art to serve the ruling classes, depriving it of strength and freedom.
Despite this, true art has existed for all two thousand years and exists, manifesting itself here and there as a cry of joy or pain from the fetters of a free creator. Only a great and worldwide Revolution can restore to people the fullness of free art, which will destroy the centuries-old lies of civilization and raise the people to the heights of artistic humanity.
Richard Wagner appeals to all the brothers who suffer and feel dull malice to work together to help him lay the foundation for that new organization of art, which can become the prototype of the future new society.
2
The creation of Wagner, which appeared in 1849, is connected with the "Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels, which appeared a year before it. Marx's manifesto, the worldview of which was finally determined by this time as the worldview of the "real politician", is a picture of the entire history of mankind, new for its time, explaining the historical meaning of the revolution; it is addressed to the educated classes of society; Fifteen years later, Marx found it possible to turn to the proletariat: in the manifesto of the International (1864), he turned to the practical experience of the last worker.
The creation of Wagner, who has never been a "real politician" but has always been an artist, is boldly addressed to the entire mental proletariat of Europe. Being connected with Marx ideologically, vitally, that is, much more firmly, it is connected with the revolutionary storm that swept through Europe at that time; the wind for this storm was sown, as now, among others, by the Russian rebellious soul, in the person of Bakunin; this Russian anarchist, hated by "real politicians" (including Marx), with a fiery belief in a world fire, took part in organizing the uprising in Dresden in May 1849; Wagner, inspired by Bakunin, fought on the Dresden barricades himself. When the uprising was crushed by the Prussian troops, Wagner had to flee from Germany. The creation in question, as well as a number of others that complement and clarify "Art and Revolution", finally, the greatest creation of Wagner - the social tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelungs" - were conceived and executed in the late forties and early fifties and endured by him for beyond the reach of Prussian vulgarity.
3
The proletariat, to whose artistic instinct Wagner appealed, did not heed his call in 1849. I consider it not superfluous to recall the truth, which is too well known to artists and, alas, still unknown to many “educated people”, that this circumstance did not disappoint Wagner, just as accidental and temporary in general can never disappoint a real artist who is unable to make mistakes and be disappointed, for the matter it is - a matter of the future. However, Wagner the man had a bad time, because the ruling class, with its characteristic stupid fury, could not stop persecuting him for a long time. He resorted to the usual method for European society - indirectly and humanely to starve people who are too brave and who do not like him. The last significant exponent of Wagner's bullying was the famous Max Nordau; again, it is impossible not to mention with bitterness that even fifteen years ago this “explainer” was a “god” for many Russian intellectuals, who too often, due to the lack of musical feeling, fell against their will into various dirty embraces. It is still difficult to say whether the fact that Pobedonostsev also used the same Max Nordau in his time (to criticize the parliamentary system dear to her heart) served as a lesson for the Russian intelligentsia.
The star of the artist took Wagner away from the poverty of Parisian attics and from seeking help on the side. Fame and fortune began to pursue him. But both fame and fortune have been crippled by European petty-bourgeois civilization. They grew to monstrous sizes and took on ugly forms. Conceived by Wagner and erected in Bayreuth, the national theater became a meeting place for a miserable tribe - satiated tourists from all over Europe. The social tragedy "Ring of the Nibelungs" came into vogue; For a long series of years before the war, we in the capitals of Russia could observe huge theater halls, tightly packed with chirping ladies and indifferent civilians and officers - right down to the last officer, Nicholas II. Finally, at the beginning of the war, all the newspapers spread the news that Emperor Wilhelm attached a siren to his car, playing the leitmotif of the god Wotan, who is always “looking for a new one” (according to the text of “The Ring of the Nibelungs”).
However, this new hail of slaps did not hit the face of the great artist Wagner. The second method, which has long been used by the layman - to accept, devour and digest ("assimilate", "adapt") the artist, when it was not possible to starve him to death - did not lead to the desired end, just like the first one. Wagner is still alive and still new; when the Revolution begins to sound in the air, the Art of Wagner sounds in response; his creations will hear and understand sooner or later anyway; these creations will be used not for entertainment, but for the benefit of people; for art, so “remote from life” (and therefore dear to the hearts of others) in our days, leads directly to practice, to business; only its tasks are broader and deeper than the tasks of "real politics" and therefore more difficult to implement in life.
4
Why Wagner failed to starve to death? Why was it not possible to devour it, vulgarize it, adapt it and hand it over to the historical archive, as a tool that was out of tune and no longer needed?
Because Wagner carried within himself the salutary poison of creative contradictions, which the petty-bourgeois civilization has so far failed to reconcile and which it will not be able to reconcile, for their reconciliation coincides with its own death.
The so-called advanced thought already takes this circumstance into account. While in the mental backyard puzzles are still being solved and various "religious", moral, artistic and legal dogmas are turned over this way and that, the pioneers of civilization have managed to "get in touch" with art. New techniques have appeared: artists are "forgiven"; artists are "loved" for their "contradictions"; artists are "allowed" to be - "out of politics" and "out of real life".
There is, however, one contradiction that cannot be seen through. Wagner expresses it in Art and Revolution; it refers to Jesus Christ.
Calling Christ in one place with hatred "the unfortunate son of the Galilean carpenter", Wagner in another place suggests that an altar be erected to him.
It is still possible to cope with Christ somehow: in the end, he is already and now, as it were, “bracketed” by the civilized world; After all, people are “cultured,” which means they are “tolerant.”
But the image of the attitude towards Christ is strange and incomprehensible. How can you hate and build an altar at the same time? How can you hate and love at the same time? If this extends to the "abstract", like Christ, then, perhaps, it is possible; but what if such a way of relating becomes common, if everything in the world is treated in the same way? To the "homeland", to "parents", to "wives" and so on? It will be unbearable because it is restless.
It was this poison of hateful love, unbearable for the bourgeois even "seven cultural spans in the forehead," that saved Wagner from death and desecration. This poison, spilled in all his creations, is that “new” that is destined for the future.
The new time is disturbing and restless. Anyone who understands that the meaning of human life lies in anxiety and anxiety will already cease to be an inhabitant. It will no longer be a self-satisfied nonentity; it will be a new person, a new step towards the artist.
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Alexander Alexandrovich Blok
Art and Revolution
(About the work of Richard Wagner)
1
In his powerful and cruel, like all mighty, creation, entitled "Art and Revolution", Wagner establishes the following truths:
Art is the joy of being oneself, living and belonging to society.
Art was like that in the VI century BC. Chr. in the Athenian state.
Together with the disintegration of this state, extensive art also disintegrated; it became fragmented and individual; it ceased to be the free expression of a free people. For two thousand years - from that time until our time - art has been in the position of the oppressed.
The teaching of Christ, who established the equality of people, degenerated into a Christian teaching that put out the religious fire and entered into an agreement with a hypocritical civilization that managed to deceive and tame artists and turn art to serve the ruling classes, depriving it of strength and freedom.
Despite this, true art has existed for all two thousand years and exists, manifesting itself here and there as a cry of joy or pain from the fetters of a free creator. Only a great and worldwide Revolution can restore to people the fullness of free art, which will destroy the centuries-old lies of civilization and raise the people to the heights of artistic humanity.
Richard Wagner appeals to all the brothers who suffer and feel dull malice to work together to help him lay the foundation for that new organization of art, which can become the prototype of the future new society.
2
The creation of Wagner, which appeared in 1849, is connected with the "Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels, which appeared a year before it. Marx's manifesto, the worldview of which was finally determined by this time as the worldview of the "real politician", is a picture of the entire history of mankind, new for its time, explaining the historical meaning of the revolution; it is addressed to the educated classes of society; Fifteen years later, Marx found it possible to turn to the proletariat: in the manifesto of the International (1864), he turned to the practical experience of the last worker.
The creation of Wagner, who has never been a "real politician" but has always been an artist, is boldly addressed to the entire mental proletariat of Europe. Being connected with Marx ideologically, vitally, that is, much more firmly, it is connected with the revolutionary storm that swept through Europe at that time; the wind for this storm was sown, as now, among others, by the Russian rebellious soul, in the person of Bakunin; this Russian anarchist, hated by "real politicians" (including Marx), with a fiery belief in a world fire, took part in organizing the uprising in Dresden in May 1849; Wagner, inspired by Bakunin, fought on the Dresden barricades himself. When the uprising was crushed by the Prussian troops, Wagner had to flee from Germany. The creation in question, as well as a number of others that complement and clarify "Art and Revolution", finally, Wagner's greatest creation - the social tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelungen" - were conceived and executed in the late forties and early fifties and endured by him for beyond the reach of Prussian vulgarity.
3
The proletariat, to whose artistic instinct Wagner appealed, did not heed his call in 1849. I consider it not superfluous to recall the truth, which is too well known to artists and, alas, still unknown to many “educated people”, that this circumstance did not disappoint Wagner, just as accidental and temporary in general can never disappoint a real artist who is unable to make mistakes and be disappointed, for the matter it is - a matter of the future. However, Wagner the man had a bad time, because the ruling class, with its characteristic stupid fury, could not stop persecuting him for a long time. He resorted to the usual method for European society - indirectly and humanely to starve people who are too brave and who do not like him. The last significant exponent of Wagner's bullying was the famous Max Nordau; again, it is impossible not to mention with bitterness that even fifteen years ago this “explainer” was a “god” for many Russian intellectuals, who too often, due to the lack of musical feeling, fell against their will into various dirty embraces. It is still difficult to say whether the fact that Pobedonostsev also used the same Max Nordau in his time (to criticize the parliamentary system dear to her heart) served as a lesson for the Russian intelligentsia.
The star of the artist took Wagner away from the poverty of Parisian attics and from seeking help on the side. Fame and fortune began to pursue him. But both fame and fortune have been crippled by European petty-bourgeois civilization. They grew to monstrous sizes and took on ugly forms. Conceived by Wagner and erected in Bayreuth, the national theater became a meeting place for a miserable tribe - jaded tourists from all over Europe. The social tragedy "Ring of the Nibelungs" came into vogue; For a long series of years before the war, we in the capitals of Russia could observe huge theater halls, tightly packed with chirping ladies and indifferent civilians and officers - right down to the last officer, Nicholas II. Finally, at the beginning of the war, all the newspapers spread the news that Emperor Wilhelm attached a siren to his car, playing the leitmotif of the god Wotan, who is always “looking for a new one” (according to the text of “The Ring of the Nibelungs”).
However, this new hail of slaps did not hit the face of the great artist Wagner. The second method, which has long been used by the layman - to accept, devour and digest ("assimilate", "adapt") the artist, when it was not possible to starve him to death - did not lead to the desired end, just like the first one. Wagner is still alive and still new; when the Revolution begins to sound in the air, the Art of Wagner sounds in response; his creations will hear and understand sooner or later anyway; these creations will be used not for entertainment, but for the benefit of people; for art, so “remote from life” (and therefore dear to the hearts of others) in our days, leads directly to practice, to business; only its tasks are broader and deeper than the tasks of "real politics" and therefore more difficult to implement in life.
4
Why Wagner failed to starve to death? Why was it not possible to devour it, vulgarize it, adapt it and hand it over to the historical archive, as a tool that was out of tune and no longer needed?
Because Wagner carried within himself the salutary poison of creative contradictions, which the petty-bourgeois civilization has so far failed to reconcile and which it will not be able to reconcile, for their reconciliation coincides with its own death.
The so-called advanced thought already takes this circumstance into account. While in the mental backyard puzzles are still being solved and various "religious", moral, artistic and legal dogmas are turned over this way and that, the pioneers of civilization have managed to "get in touch" with art. New techniques have appeared: artists are "forgiven"; artists are "loved" for their "contradictions"; artists are "allowed" to be - "out of politics" and "out of real life".
There is, however, one contradiction that cannot be seen through. Wagner expresses it in Art and Revolution; it refers to Jesus Christ.
Calling Christ in one place with hatred "the unfortunate son of the Galilean carpenter", Wagner in another place suggests that an altar be erected to him.
It is still possible to cope with Christ somehow: in the end, he is already and now, as it were, “bracketed” by the civilized world; After all, people are “cultured,” which means they are “tolerant.”
But the image of the attitude towards Christ is strange and incomprehensible. How can you hate and build an altar at the same time? How can you hate and love at the same time? If this extends to the "abstract", like Christ, then, perhaps, it is possible; but what if such a way of relating becomes common, if everything in the world is treated in the same way? To the "homeland", to "parents", to "wives" and so on? It will be unbearable because it is restless.
It was this poison of hateful love, unbearable for the bourgeois even "seven cultural spans in the forehead," that saved Wagner from death and desecration. This poison, spilled in all his creations, is that “new” that is destined for the future.
The new time is disturbing and restless. Anyone who understands that the meaning of human life lies in anxiety and anxiety will already cease to be an inhabitant. It will no longer be a self-satisfied nonentity; it will be a new person, a new step towards the artist.
