Religion and art
Religion and Art is one of Richard Wagner's main writings and was written by him while he was composing his last musical drama Parsifal in 1880 in Naples (Villa Angri) and published in the Bayreuth papers and later published in book form in the tenth volume of his Collected Writings and Seals .
In this book, Wagner expresses himself comprehensively on the subject of religion - also known as the “regeneration book” - and presents his view of the world. From his letters to Hans von Wolzüge , the editor of the Bayreuther Blätter, it can be seen that he “did not want to understand him World ”and wanted to write“ a strong article ”. Even in the introduction, Wagner establishes the connection between religion and art that he believes:
- One could say that where religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for art to save the core of religion by capturing the mythical symbols, which it actually wants to be believed to be true, according to their symbolic values to allow the deep truth hidden in them to be recognized through ideal representation of them.
The themes of the regeneration script
Christian Faith and Buddhism
At the beginning Wagner explains how religions came into being and how these were all based only on the “frailty of the world”, whereby successful founders of religions made themselves heard by the people with mythical allegories. A special feature of the Christian religion is that it addresses the “poor in spirit” ( Mt 5.3 EU , cf. Beatitudes ) and thus wants to provide comfort and healing instructions especially for “poor people”. In contrast to this is Buddhism , which shows ways to self-knowledge without God , without heaven and hell and is more of a religion for "thinking" people. Wagner then compares Christianity with Buddhism, in the spirit of Arthur Schopenhauer , who was also drawn to the teachings of the Brahmins, to rebirth and asceticism , and from this he developed his major work The World as Will and Idea . It should be noted that Wagner intended to compose an opera The Sieger with Buddhism as the theme.
Criticism of Christianity
Using the example of Greek art , Wagner goes on to explain what he means by art and then draws a link between the Greeks' belief in gods and the crucified Christ , whom he describes as a "divine" man, but expresses his deep dislike for the "Jewish creator Jehovah ". In long passages Wagner sharply criticized the official church , which exercises its power over the “souls of the poor” preferably with the terrible image of hell and the “ last judgment ”. There is nothing more ugly and disgusting than the pictures of eternal damnation , including the painting of Michelangelo's “Last Judgment” in the Sistine . On the other hand, the portraits of the Savior suffering on the cross are far more impressive representations, which quickly developed into a basic type for further images of religious martyrs and saints . Suffering from transfigured "rapture delight" has become a main subject of the visual arts, Wagner continues, whereas the representation of motifs from the real world has gradually been forgotten. As a result, a strong affinity between religion and art developed, at least through painting , but later also through music .
Origin of music from Christianity
Wagner argues that music is the only art that fully corresponds to the Christian faith. Thus today's music developed from religion and is without a doubt a product of Christianity.
- In this sense, after the previous discussion about the necessity of poetic lyric poetry to dissolve the literal term into the tone structure, it must now be recognized that music reveals the very essence of the Christian religion with incomparable certainty, which is why we relate it to religion symbolically want to set in which we represented the boy of God to the virgin mother on that Raphaelic painting: As a pure form, the music can count as a world-redeeming birth of the divine dogma of the nullity of the world of appearances itself.
In the case of the painted pictures it would say: “That means”, but the music says: “That is”, Wagner continues, because music eliminates any dichotomy between concept and sensation, completely turning away from the world of appearances and our minds as if through to have a special grace .
Decline of the human race
Similar to his earlier “Revolutionsschriften” (Art and Revolution), Wagner dealt extensively with the in the second part of his age-writing, which he wrote under the impression of the book: “ Thalysia , or the salvation of humanity” by the vegetarian Robert Springer "Decline" of the human race. Man is a " beast of prey " who conquer countries, subjugate the naturally living "natives", found great empires of subjugated and establish states and civilizations just to enjoy their predation in peace. This is followed by passages about money and property , a topic to which Wagner has repeatedly devoted himself, especially in his Der Ring des Nibelungen .
Wagner goes on to describe how Buddhism arose in India under the influence of the landscape and climate , which respects the life of animals more than Christian Europeans do, and refers to the orientalist Eugène Burnouf .
Wagner then comes to a topic that preoccupied him very much in the last years of his life. In the fall of 1879 he read the pamphlet “ The Torture Chamber of Science ” by Ernst von Weber . It was about vivisection , about animal experiments for the advancement of medicine. Wagner then wrote a public letter and campaigned vehemently for animal welfare . A total of 46 diary entries on the part of Cosima underscore how intensively this was discussed in the Wagner house, whereby he also referred to the Greek “number philosopher” Pythagoras .
- A mystery enveloped Pythagoras, the teacher of plant food. No sage pondered after him about the nature of the world without returning to his teaching. Cooperatives were formed which, hidden from the world and its raging, practiced the observance of this doctrine as a religious cleansing agent from sin and misery. Among the poorest, the Savior appeared to show the way of salvation no longer by teaching but by example. He gave his own flesh and blood as the highest atonement for all sinful blood and slaughtered flesh, and in return gave his disciples wine and bread for the daily meal: "Such things alone enjoy in my memory."
In the further course of his "Religions -schrift" Wagner states that the development of humans was shaped by the climate of nature and that nutrition also played a role in evolution . As there are herbivorous animals, humans did not necessarily have to become animal killers and "carnivores", but evidently evolution wanted it to be so, and so humans went from the "fruit eater" of Paradise to a predator. The story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise should therefore be understood as an allegory , namely expulsion of former “vegetarians” after a bloody feast. Later, the “unjust God of the Jews” valued Abel's “meat offering” more than the “fruit offering” of Cain .
Criticism of Church and Judaism
Wagner personally felt repeatedly disavowed by Jews, for example by his successful musician competitors Giacomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , by journalists and critics of his avant-garde musical art, and by the Jewish “money nobility” who - according to his reading - denied him the fair reward of being an artist . Although he had many friends of Jewish descent, he suffered from a downright paranoia and made this clear in his book Das Judentum in der Musik , published in 1850 . Later he was encouraged in his sweeping criticism of the Jews by his wife Cosima, who was much more radical in her views.
In his criticism of Christian doctrine, the Church and Judaism, Wagner took over positions that were increasingly popular in his time, particularly through the religious-philosophical writings of Ernest Renan and Franz Overbeck . Wagner had received these writings from Friedrich Nietzsche in April 1873 . Ernest Renan caused a sensation especially with his book The Life of Jesus (1863). Here the life and person of Jesus was explained from the ancient circumstances of the time and Jesus of Nazareth was portrayed as a person who was only stylized as the Son of God after his death , especially at the instigation of the fanatical Apostle Paul . A similar position could be identified with the Swiss theologian Franz Camille Overbeck. As a Protestant theologian, close friends with Friedrich Nietzsche and influenced by Baruch Spinoza and Arthur Schopenhauer, he had great doubts about "God's existence": "The best school to doubt the existence of a god as a world leader is church history."
Wagner's idea of regeneration
In the last part of his remarks, Wagner tries - despite all the resignation of old age - to show a way out, and delves into his thesis that the degeneration of the human race was caused by the abandonment of its natural diet. Only a relentless inventory and regeneration would help mankind:
- We have to recognize that a great regeneration of the corrupt human race can only grow out of the deep soil of a true religion [...] Let us understand it right - history! In spirit and in truth, not according to the words and lies of our university historians, who only sing their song to the conqueror, but do not want to know anything about the suffering of humanity. Let us recognize that it is not their actions but their sufferings that bring people closer to us and make them worthy of our remembrance, that our participation belongs only to the defeated hero, not the victorious hero.
Wagner now shows how art and especially music can help people:
- As the all-saying, resounding soul of the Christian religion, the Christian church left us as the noblest legacy of music, which taught humanity in need of redemption a new language in which the most unrestricted could now express itself with the most unmistakable certainty.
Wagner then makes a comparison with the divine service of the Shaker sect in America, "whose members, after solemnly and heartily confirmed vows of renunciation, indulge in singing and dancing in the temple."
- If a childlike joy over regained innocence is expressed here, then we, who celebrate the certainty of victory of the will over ourselves, gained through the knowledge of the decline of the human race, with our daily meal, should immerse ourselves in the element of those symphonic revelations a holy cleansing religious act itself.
What use is this knowledge?
Wagner's Parsifal stage consecration festival was intended to act as a “holy, cleansing religious act”. To explain this even more precisely, Wagner wrote an “addendum” to his work with the title: “What use is this knowledge?”
"If you ask what the knowledge of the decline of humanity is supposed to do, ask the truly great poets of all times; ask the founders of true religions," writes Wagner, referring to Goethe and Schopenhauer . He then again poses the question of the "regeneration" of a human race that has fallen into "war civilization" and vehemently promotes Schopenhauer's ideas, who would have shown ways to reverse the misguided will. The right way is to be found when one recognizes that the whole civilization perishes for lack of love and that this lovelessness of the world must be made understandable as its real suffering. To understand, however, would mean: compassion in order to be able to alleviate the suffering of the other. Music can promote this understanding by addressing feelings and the mind.
Wagner now makes it clear that in order to transform his parable message, namely redemption and regeneration of humanity through compassion - represented by the searching Parsifal and the suffering Amfortas - he has chosen an art form which, with religious symbolism, is supposed to exert a "rapturous effect on the mind" . Finally, he comes back to the vegetarians and reaffirms their idea of regeneration: Improving the world “by purifying the blood”, thus placing his work Parsifal in a context that was current at the time. He concludes his remarks:
- We recognize the cause of the decline of historical mankind, as well as the necessity of a regeneration of it; we believe in the possibility of this regeneration and we dedicate ourselves to its implementation in every sense.
Parsifal intention
How his work of regeneration Parsifal should “work” can be seen in the final passage of Wagner's last contribution: “The stage consecration festival in Bayreuth 1882”, which he wrote on November 1, 1882, shortly before his death, in Venice for the “Bayreuther Blätter” :
- Who can look a lifetime with open minds and a free heart into this world of murder and robbery organized and legalized by lies, deceit and hypocrisy, without having to turn away from it at times with disgust? Then where does his gaze go? Often in the depths of death. All of you, my friends, recognized that the truthfulness of the model [Parsifal] which he offered you for replication was precisely what gave you the consecration of the rapture from the world; for you could not do anything other than seek your own satisfaction in that higher truthfulness.
literature
- Richard Wagner: All writings and poems. Volume 10. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1911.
- Sven Friedrich (Ed.): Richard Wagner. Works, writings and letters. Directmedia Publishing, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89853-507-X ( digital library 107).
- Josef Lehmkuhl: The Art Messiah. Richard Wagner's legacy in his writings. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8260-4113-6 .