2.1. Conceptos básicos
2.1.3. Energías no renovables
As we have seen, influences from the two religions that became important to Wagner after he read Schopenhauer for the first time seem to balance each other out in the prose sketch of 1865. Twelve years elapsed between the time he wrote down the first extant sketch and when he penned the text of the final drama. During this period he composed Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg, finished Der Ring des Nibelungen, and built the Bayreuth
Festspielhaus. Moreover, his religious standpoint changed in the mean- time, moving closer to Christianity.
On October 28, 1873, Cosima Wagner wrote in her diary:
Das Leiden Christus’ erregt uns tiefer als das Mitleiden Buddha’s, wir lei- den mit und werden zu Buddhas, durch die Betrachtung. Christus will leiden, leidet und erlöst uns, Buddha schauet und bemitleidet, lehrt, wie wir zur Erlösung kommen. (CT 1:744)
[The suffering of Christ moves us more deeply than the compassion of Buddha; we suffer with him and become Buddhas through observing it. Christ wants to suffer, He suffers and redeems us; Buddha observes and pities, and in doing so shows us how we can achieve redemption.]
This diary entry shows the shift of emphasis referred to above. Wagner explains the difference between Buddhism and Christianity with the polarities of suffering and compassion, redemption and dogma. For him, Buddhism is primarily a religion of knowledge. “Betrachtung,” or knowing the world through philosophical reflection, leads one along the path toward redemp- tion; as far as Wagner was concerned, that was the essence of Buddhism. The main feature of Buddhism is this kind of mediation. Buddha was a teacher, and not a martyr. In contrast, Christianity is a religion of universal redemption, which is a direct result of the vicarious suffering of Christ, who took this freely upon Himself. This was not a matter of philosophical knowledge, but rather a radical act of self-martyrdom unlike the suffering of the Buddha. From this time of his life onward, Wagner valued the suffering of Christ much more highly than the compassion of Buddha. In his late essay “Religion und Kunst” (1880), Wagner wrote that the religion of the Brahmans was a religion of wisdom, one for the initiated. The
religion of Jesus Christ, in contrast, was intended for the poor in spirit.49
This polarity became increasingly important for Wagner. How did this happen?
We can find one answer to this question in Wagner’s reaction to the political events that took place after the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Like most of his contemporaries, Wagner took a nationalistic stance on the war and the subsequent founding of the Second Empire. A few years later, though, his enthusiasm was gone. Along with many others, Wagner had hoped that German unification would bring about a spiritual renewal — a politics of liberalism and social justice, combined with generous support for culture and the arts, which in times of political strife promised to bind the people together and grant the Germans a cultural identity. The Second
Empire, though, was characterized by a materialistic and opportunistic way of thinking. The impoverishment of huge groups of workers, the rapid growth of cities, and an open show of militarism formed the sobering downside of the new political regime. Knowledge was valued as long as it was scientific and positivistic. Art had a merely representative function, and found little state support.
This strongly contradicted Wagner’s philosophical orientation. The ethic of compassion, which had been so important to him ever since he had read Schopenhauer, meant little in a land where the survival of the fittest was the rule of life and had the highest societal worth, for this meant for Wagner, in Schopenhauerian terms, the brutal reign of the Will. Rational- ity was valued more highly than empathy. The utopia in which egotism would be overcome and mankind would live in peaceful coexistence with
nature receded further and further into the distance.50Wagner’s metaphys-
ical view of life contrasted strongly with the materialistic worldview that his contemporaries held. Because of these circumstances, Wagner ascribed to a religion that he understood to be a protest against the ruling materialism. He juxtaposed the poverty and the suffering of Christ with the values of his contemporary society. Wagner never tired of emphasizing that every true religion, and especially Christianity, had acknowledged the insubstantiality and frailty of this world, and that this was the foundation upon which they
were built.51He offered the radical pessimism of Schopenhauer as a coun-
terbalance to the optimism of his contemporaries and he considered reli- gion the only consolation that was possible in a world in which ruled “das Grauen der Natur, des ewigen Verschlingens” (the horror of nature, of eternal devouring; CT 1:940).
Wagner saw Western history as just a series of wars and other acts of violence — and these were also waged in the name of Christianity. Thus he rejected all organized forms of religion, because he felt they had been exploited as instruments of power. Instead, he considered the primal Christian teachings, which he found in Buddhism as well as in the secret societies of the Pythagoreans, to be pacifism and abstinence from eating meat. The readiness of mankind to wage war, the phenomenon of murder,
50It is beyond question that Wagner’s own thinking was fraught with the ideologi-
cal contradictions of his time; for example, he ascribed to the prevalent anti-Semitism of his day. For him, Judaism was an example of a religion of optimism, capitalism, and egotism; he held the judgmental and punishing God of the Old Testament responsi- ble for this. On this topic, and for a discussion of Wagner’s anti-Semitism in particu- lar, see Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, “Religion und Kunst beim spätem Wagner: Zum Verhältnis von Ästhetik, Theologie und Anthropologie in den ‘Regenerations- schriften,’ ” in Jahrbuch der deutschen Schiller-Gesellschaft 40 (1996): 297–323.
and other acts of violence were, as far as Wagner was concerned, a logical consequence of the disregard that mankind shows toward animals in killing them for food. In contrast, Christ gave His apostles “als letztes höchstes Sühnungsopfer für alles sündhaft vergossene Blut und geschlachtete Fleisch dahin, und reichte dafür seinen Jüngern Wein und Brot zum täglichen Mahle” (wine and bread for the daily meal as the last and supreme reconciliatory sacrifice for all the blood that was sinfully shed and
the flesh that was sinfully slaughtered).52
In his late writings, Wagner severely criticizes the failings of his con- temporary society, for it had no religious piety or compassion toward suf- fering. Starving workers, and animals that are tortured in scientific experiments to forward the state of knowledge, throw a dark shadow on a society that is focused on profit and progress (which would be impeded, Wagner theorized, by religion). This is the stigma of a barbaric civilization. The “Anbetung der Leiden des Erlösers” (adoration of the sufferings of
the Redeemer) cannot be expected any longer from such a society.53
Therefore Wagner champions the teachings of Christ, for he felt that Christ’s voluntary suffering overturned the reigning moral code and value system of the day. Wagner felt that only a religion of this kind could form the basis for possibly bringing about a renewal of society, and through that, an end to violence and egotism. The organized church was not a candidate for this: “Für mich ist das Christentum noch nicht in das Leben getreten, und wie die ersten Christen erwarte ich eine Wiederkunft von Christus” (As far as I’m concerned, Christianity has not entered the world yet, and just like the first Christians I await the second coming of Christ), Wagner once said to Cosima (CT 2:382). In this sense, Christianity is for Wagner a religion of the future, which is based on a redeeming event in the past, the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth.
Wagner observed with distress the “Absterben der Religion, die sich nur durch Verdummung des Volkes aufrecht erhält” (the dying away of religion, which maintains itself only through the stupidity of the common people), as he said to Cosima (CT 1:535). The contradiction consisted for him in the fact that modern science had made “den Gott-Schöpfer”
(the Creator-God) more and more impossible.54With this, he also had no
quarrel. Wagner had been an atheist a long time earlier, when he ascribed to Schopenhauer’s concept of the will and could no longer believe in a
52“Religion und Kunst,” SSD 10:230. On Wagner’s philosophy of regeneration
and its place in the contemporary context, see Hartwich, “Religion und Kunst beim späten Wagner.”
53“Wollen wir hoffen?” SSD 10:123–24. 54“Publikum und Popularität,” SSD 10:86.
loving and benevolent god who made the heavens and the earth.55Though
he rejected the traditional understandings of god, he did not want to dis- card religion entirely. Wagner was well aware that Christianity could not exist without the concept of a god. “Es wäre schon der Mühe wert, den Begriff Gott festzustellen, aber wer sollte es tun” (It would certainly be worth the trouble to define the concept of god, but who would do it), he admitted to Cosima (CT 2:472). He did not trust this task to contempo- rary theologians. Thus he undertook intensive religious-historical studies, and read Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, Luther and the Deutsche
Theologie. He studied the Christliche Mystik of the writer Joseph Görres
and the Geschichte des Urchristentums by the distinguished theologian
August Friedrich Gfrörer.56All of these studies stand in close relation to his
renewed interest in working on the Parsifal plan after 1875.
While undertaking these theological studies, he became particularly interested in the mystics, as the evidence in various diary entries by Cosima Wagner, including this one of September 23, 1875, reveals: “Abends öffnet R. Meister Eckhart, einige Sätze erfüllen uns ganz, Sehen und Hören, das Sehen das Wirken, dass man durch das Wissen zum Unwissen kommen muß — so tief — da fühle ich mich heimisch, sagt R.” (In the evening R. opens Meister Eckhart, a few sentences impress us deeply, about seeing and hearing, that one must process through knowledge to inno- cence — so deep — there I feel at home, says R; CT 1:937). The complex way in which Meister Eckhart understood the deity appealed to Wagner — it harked back to the “negative theology” of Dionysius Areopagita, which sees the deity as a being that cannot be defined and exists above all but is at
the same time insubstantial and can be described as “Nichts” (nothing).57
According to Meister Eckhart, only through destruction of one’s egotism can the soul find its way to God. “Wo die Kreatur endet, da beginnt Gott zu sein” (Where the creature ends, there God begins to be), he states in
one of his sermons.58One can understand the paradox of coming “vom
Wissen zum Unwissen” (from knowledge to innocence) in a similar way — to him who leaves egotism behind and forgets everything that he knows
55Numerous pieces of evidence substantiating this can be found in the late letters
and essays as well as in Cosima’s diaries.
56Joseph von Görres, Die christliche Mystik, 5 vols. (Regensburg: Manz, 1836–42);
August Friedrich Gfrörer, Geschichte des Urchristentums, 3 vols., Stuttgart: E. Schweizerhart, 1838.
57On Wagner’s Eckhart reception, see also Alan David Aberbach, Wagner’s Reli-
gious Ideas: A Spiritual Journey (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1996), 194–203.
58Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen Werke, ed. Josef Quint (Stuttgart: W. Kohlham-
(and included is also forgetting God), is revealed the working of the divine will. Perhaps Wagner thought of Parzival here, the prototype of innocent mankind, who precisely because he is a fool and forgets himself, that is, his own ego, is predestined to resolve the conflict of the other human beings, who are caught up in their egotism and with themselves. Thus the fool can rise to higher knowledge because of his innocence. There can be no doubt that Wagner interpreted the medieval mystics in a Schopenhauerian way and saw in their teachings Schopenhauer’s postulate of the negation of the will. “Das Schweigen aller Vorstellung bringt die beseligende Ruhe der Seele hervor, zu dieser Ruhe zu kommen ist Christus der Weg” (The silencing of all representation brings a blessed peace to the soul, and Christ is the way to achieve this rest), Wagner said to Cosima on October 27, 1873 (CT 1:744). This refers to Martin Luther, but Wagner’s reading of Meister Eckhart and also his study of the Indian mystics have other conno- tations as well: the “Schweigen aller Vorstellung” (silencing of representa-
tion) is the first goal of Buddhist meditation.59
Wagner returned repeatedly to a philosophical understanding of God. He believed, “die Wahrheit zu sehen, nicht mehr den Schein der Dinge, macht den Gott aus” (God consists of seeing truth, and not just the appearance of things; CT 2:376). This obviously comes from an anthropo- logical perspective. Thus Wagner does not conceive of the divinity of Christ literally in the sense that Christ is descended from the highest deity, who has created the world, but rather felt that Christ was solely human — but He was the perfect human being. Therein rested His divinity. Wagner also followed among other sources August Friedrich Gfrörer’s comprehen- sive Geschichte des Urchristentums, which he read in 1874–75, and through
which he became acquainted with Jewish mysticism and the Kabbala.60
Gfrörer wrote:
Ich verstehe unter Gottes Sohn nicht das metaphysische, menschlicher Erfahrung ferne liegende Wesen der hergebrachten Dogmatik, sondern ich bezeichne damit die sittliche und geistige Vollkommenheit, durch welche sich Christus von anderen Menschen unterscheidet.61
59In the later twentieth century the parallels between Meister Eckhart and far
eastern mysticism were investigated more closely for the first time. See Shitsuteru Ueda, Die Gottesgeburt in der Seele und der Durchbruch zur Gottheit (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1965).
60See Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, “Jüdische Theosophie in Richard Wagners Parsifal:
Vom christlichen Antisemitismus zur ästhetischen Kabbala,” in Richard Wagner und
die Juden, ed. Dieter Borchmeyer, Ami Maayani, and Susanne Vill (Stuttgart:
Metzler, 2000), 103–22.
[I understand God’s son as not the metaphysical essence that traditional dogmatism teaches us lies far away from human experience, but rather I use this term to describe the ethical and spiritual perfection through which Christ distinguished Himself from other human beings.]
This is just what Wagner portrayed in his early sketch Jesus von
Nazareth. Now his conception became more precise: the divinity of
Christ is described here by Wagner as a capacity for conscious and volun- tary suffering. Therein consisted for Wagner the highest stage of the development of mankind. Working on the basis of Schopenhauer’s philos- ophy, Wagner thus redefines the divinity of Christ. In voluntary suffering, Christ attains
Freiheit durch Aufhebung des rastlos sich selbst widerstreitenden Willens. Der unerforschliche Urgrund dieses Willens, wie er in Zeit und Raum unmöglich aufzuweisen ist, wird uns nur in jener Aufhebung kund, wo er als Wollen der Erlösung göttlich erscheint.62
[Freedom through elimination of the will that restlessly strives against itself. The incomprehensible primal foundation of this will, which is impossible to designate in time and space, becomes known to us in this elimination, when, as the will to redemption, it then appears divine.]
Jesus of Nazareth overcomes egotism by consciously taking suffer- ing upon himself. Thereby he succeeds in transcending the laws of nature. Wagner summarizes the unnatural and wondrous nature of this deed with the concept of the divine. For Wagner, Christ becomes the “Inbegriff des bewußt wollenden Leidens selbst . . . das als göttliches Mitleiden durch die ganze menschliche Gattung, als Urquell derselben, sich ergießt” (embodiment of consciously willed suffering . . . which pours forth as divine compassion through all mankind, as its first foun-
dation).63The late mysticism of suffering that Wagner devised can only
be understood against the background of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. On the other hand, it becomes clear that Wagner valued voluntary suffering also as a conscious opposition to the contemporary belief in progress.
Within this framework of ideas, Wagner turned again to Parzival in 1875. Here is the introductory passage from his essay “Religion und Kunst” from 1880, when Parsifal was largely completed:
Man könnte sagen, daß da, wo die Religion künstlich wird, der Kunst es vorbehalten sei den Kern der Religion zu retten, indem sie die mythischen
62Richard Wagner, “Heldentum und Christentum,” SSD 10:281. 63Richard Wagner, “Heldentum und Christentum,” SSD 10:281.
Symbole, welche die erstere im eigentlichen Sinne als wahr geglaubt wissen will, ihrem sinnbildlichen Werthe nach erfaßt, um durch ideale Darstellung derselben die in ihnen verborgene tiefe Wahrheit erkennen zu lassen.64
[One could say that when religion has become artificial, it is the task of art to rescue the core of religion by using the mythical symbols, which religion wants us to believe in literally, as just symbols, to make the deep truth that is hidden in them evident through ideal presentation.]
Wagner’s final drama is an attempt to rescue the core of religion by transforming it into art, and thereby through “work on myth” to reveal anew the message of Christianity that had in his view become corrupt. He wrote another prose sketch in 1877, as well as the text and much of the music of the first act; the score was finished in 1882. For the most part, Wagner retained the conception of 1865 while making a few important details more specific. In so doing, he oriented the entire action, more emphatically than in the earlier conception, upon an undisclosed redeemer, who is never named but who can be assumed to be Christ. He becomes the hidden center of the stage consecration festival play.
This new perspective is most clearly shown in the part of the drama connected with Kundry and her past. Wagner now links her ancient curse, which in the prose sketch was not described any more specifically, directly with the Passion. Kundry encountered the suffering Christ and laughed at Him. In the prose sketch, Wagner had compared Kundry with the “Eternal Jew” Ahasuerus, who was damned for a similar transgres- sion to be unable to die. But only in the text of 1877 did Wagner for the first time expand upon this parallel. Kundry’s restless wanderings now appear as a futile search for a reconciliation with Christ. This seemingly impossible event happens when she is baptized by Parsifal in the third act. In this way, Wagner uses another Christian sacrament in the action of the drama.
In addition, in the final text Wagner more strongly emphasizes another layer of meaning: the drama of the suffering Christ, the unre- deemed redeemer. This idea can be found in the earlier sketch in a rudi- mentary form, but now it becomes associated with a new complex of notions that resulted from Wagner’s study of early Christian and Gnostic sects. Christ’s death on the cross exemplifies the mystery of compassion to