The art and the revolution
The art and the revolution is one of the main writings of Richard Wagner and closely related to his pamphlet The Revolution .
Emergence
Wagner wrote his revolutionary pamphlets in 1848 and 1849 in Dresden and Zurich, respectively. Wagner puts forward the thesis that a “new, true art ” ( the work of art of the future ) can only emerge if “everything old” is destroyed beforehand, namely through a revolution . To this radical view, he came after he under the influence of Mikhail Bakunin , Gottfried Semper and August Röckel in Dresden the objectives of the Republicans had joined and the chance saw through a fundamental change in the political and social conditions and the theater to change . He strove to move the theaters from the overly shallow entertainment performances to a more sophisticated and serious art.
Wagner was convinced that only a real revolution, and one "from below", can free people from their misery. In his opinion, people have distanced themselves from the divine origin of nature in the course of history and created property and laws for themselves . Instead of the “state of nature” there is now the state with an (im) legal order. In favor of the rich, God mutated into industry, Wagner attacked the conditions of the time and this now established “industrial god” would only keep the poor Christian worker alive until “heavenly trade constellations” bring about the gracious necessity of converting it into a better one Dismiss world. These "unchristian" conditions would have to be overcome by the "free man", who can become happy even without laws, because laws inevitably include breaking them.
He published his first work, The Revolution , anonymously in the popular papers of his friend August Röckel in Dresden. He later included the treatise in his collected works, Volume 12.
Content
The revolution
“If we look beyond the countries and peoples, we recognize the fermenting of a mighty movement all over Europe, whose first vibrations have already seized us, whose full force threatens to break in upon us soon. Europe appears to us like an immense volcano, from the inside of which a constantly growing, frightening roar sounds, from whose crater dark, thunderstorm-pregnant columns of smoke rise high to the sky and, covering everything all around with night, lie over the earth, while individual lava flows that Breaking through the hard crust, as fiery harbingers, destroying everything, roll down into the valley. A supernatural force seems to want to grasp our part of the world, to lift it out of the old track and to hurl it into a new path. "
This is how Wagner begins his first “revolutionary pamphlet”. In the following text he greets his goddess of revolution with the words:
“I am the eternally rejuvenating, eternally creating life! Where I am not there is death! I am the dream, the consolation, the hope of the sufferer! I destroy what exists, and wherever I go, new life gushes out of the dead rock. I come to you to break all the chains that oppress you, to redeem you from the embrace of death and to pour a young life through your limbs. Everything that exists must perish, that is the eternal law of nature, that is the condition of life, and I, the eternally destructive, carry out the law and create the eternally young life. "
When the Dresden May uprising of 1849, in which Wagner actively participated, had been crushed, and Wagner, who was being persecuted in a letter, had found asylum in Zurich, he put his ideas into concrete terms and put further thoughts on paper, also in the hope of getting money for his maintenance to be able to earn. For the subsequent work Die Kunst und die Revolution he received applause from some reviewers and a handsome fee from Leipzig publisher Otto Wigand , which, according to his own statements, encouraged him to continue writing. During this time he also wrote letters, including a. to Franz Liszt and Theodor Uhlig , in which he gave free rein to his "revolutionary whimsy", for example in a letter of October 22, 1850 to Uhlig:
“... but how will it appear to us when the enormous Paris is burned to rubble, when the fire moves from city to city, we ourselves finally set fire to these impossible-to-muck stables in wild enthusiasm in order to gain healthy air? - With the utmost prudence and without any fraud, I assure you that I don't believe in any other revolution than the one that began with the downfall of Paris ... Are you shocked? - think honestly and carefully, - you will not come to any other conclusion! It will require strong nerves, and only real people will survive, that is, those who have only become human through hardship and the greatest horror. Let's see how we find each other again after this fire cure: I could picture it if necessary, I could even imagine how an enthusiastic man here or there would summon the living remains of our ancient art and tell them - who would like to give me one To help perform drama? Only those who really want to answer will answer, because now there is no more money for it, and those who come will suddenly show people what art is in a quickly prepared wooden structure. "
The art and the revolution
Wagner was inspired by gods and heroes and recognized the ideal of a future human culture, especially in the world of the Greeks and in their art. With great emotion he called for the revolution of the arts and of man at the same time. He mixes ideals of art with criticism of the times and social and dreams of a revolutionary renewal that should lead to a “strong, beautiful person” (a possible ancestor of the “ Übermenschen ” from Friedrich Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra ). In the first part of the book, Wagner describes in great detail the ideals of Greek art and then passionately laments their decay. Since then, art would "only occasionally send its flashing rays into the night of the brooding madness of humanity and would never again have become an expression of a free generality." To blame for this - besides the philosophers - above all the Romans and Christians , whereby he adapted the criticism of religion by Ludwig Feuerbach , whose treatise Das Wesen des Christianentums (written in 1841) he had previously studied intensively, and to which he dedicated his next work, The Artwork of the Future , a little later .
For Wagner, true art - the original Greek art - was the expression of absolute freedom and "the highest activity of a person who is in harmony with himself and nature". In contrast, Wagner increasingly attributed negatives to Christianity, especially a lack of art literacy. He derives sarcastically: "If it [Christianity] really wanted to create the work of art that corresponds to its faith, it could not represent the sensual beauty of the world, which for Christians is an appearance of the devil." He goes on to explain that art has sold more and more "skin and hair":
“Its real essence is industry, its moral purpose is the acquisition of money, its aesthetic pretension is the entertainment of the bored. From the heart of our modern society, from the center of its circular movement, the money speculation on a large scale, our art sucks its lifeblood, borrows a heartless grace from the lifeless remnants of medieval knightly convention, and leaves it - with an apparent Christianity, the bit too not spurning the poor - down to the depths of the proletariat , unnerving, demoralizing, dehumanizing wherever the poison of their lifeblood pours. "
Art has degenerated into a commodity, only to earn money and fame, Wagner continues, and compares the artistic handicraft, which gives the creative artist, who makes the production of his “work” a pleasure and satisfies him, with the activity of the craftsman, who mostly without joy and with the compulsion to satisfy other people's needs in return for cash payments, sees his doing only as effort, as sad, acidic work. He could also be replaced more and more by machines and would thus be a slave to industry, “whose factories are a pitiful image of the deepest degradation of man, a constant effort that kills the mind and body without air and love; often almost without purpose “show us.
swell
- http://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/texts/revoluti.html
- Sven Friedrich (Ed.): Richard Wagner; Works, writings and letters , digital library, Berlin 2004.
- Richard Wagner: Complete Writings and Seals , Leipzig 1911.
- Josef Lehmkuhl: The Art Messiah, Richard Wagner's legacy in his writings , Würzburg 2009.