What
of the music dramas? Who cares, ultimately, what Wagner thought about
Jews—or anything else for that matter—because the works exists
and can be separated from his anti-Semitic views, or so many believe.
All his works, beyond Die Meistersinger, are placed in a
mythical context. There are no Jews. There is no Shylock. There is
no Fagin. Without actual Jews, it is hard to inject
anti-Semitism, though many make the argument that
his works are filled with it nonetheless. I think it is very
clear, though, that there is no way you could possibly find anything
anti-Semitic in his music or text if you did not have prior knowledge
of Wagner’s views.1
His works are universal, by design and intent, and therefore one has to “hunt” for interpretations beyond the obvious.
This
fact makes it incredibly easy for most Wagner lovers. They revert to
this formula: “I hate the man and his views; I love the music.”
They shrug at the disconnect, and have little problem doing so. Others,
like me, seek to understand how a man like him, with some character traits that
were despicable and some views that were intolerant, created his works. Is it an anomaly, a mystery, or is it, as I believe, explainable (even if it takes a year to create my explanation)?
The
reason that the disconnect between the man and his art is seen to be
so large is that Wagner’s operas have a depth of characterization
that is remarkable and, as Brian Magee posits, have “the deepest
psychological penetration, inexhaustible in its insight into the
human condition.”2
In the Ring, for example, there is not a simple good guys/bad
guys equation, as everyone in the entire cycle is deeply flawed, but each also has a understandable reason for their actions. They are all
recognizable and knowable, and therefore, available for our sympathy
and empathy as well as our antipathy, both the “dark” characters
and the “light” characters. The complexity of the
characterization, along with the breath-taking intensity and beauty of
the music, is why people come back again and again, as each
viewing/listening of his works brings different resonances depending
on the production and the emotional response to the work that varies
with our own life experience and emotional moment in time.
In
the last several decades, there have been a number of papers and
books written by great experts for the edification of other great
experts3
that claim that Wagner saturates his work with anti-Semitism, that—to
quote Barry Millington specifically on Meistersinger, but others use
this formulation for all his work—“anti-Semitism is woven intro
the ideological framework” of the works.4
These experts live in an echo chamber and, according the members of this club, there is now a consensus on this “fact.” Marc
Weiner, a member of the club, claims those who don’t believe this
“consensus”, such as Michael Tanner and Bryan Magee, are the “bad
guys.” Another club member, David Levin, says that “there is a
consensus of all but the most delusional,” but then adds, “this is
not to say that there aren’t a surprising number of delusional folks
out there.”5
 |
| Marc Weiner |
Marc
Weiner trashes those who disagree with his views calling us
“apologists,” asserting that we “make short shrift of [anti-Semitism],”
and implying that we might in fact be anti-Semitic ourselves, smugly
asking if we “continue
to respond to the nineteenth-century ideology associated with
[Wagner's works] ...?” This does not warm my heart to this man, I
will say.6
He then has the chutzpah to write elsewhere,
“there must be a way to make the discussion less contentious and
less polarized.”7
 |
| "Bay Guy" Bryan Magee |
 |
| "Bad guy" Michael Tanner |
 |
| This is Barry Millington with Leslie's mom's finger-puppets of Wotan and Brunnhilde |
For
those who don’t know Beckmesser, he is the Town Clerk and a
pedantic, rule-following sort of fellow without much artistic
imagination. He is played by a bass, but Wagner writes high notes
for him when he is agitated. A older bachelor, he has low
self-confidence, and his pedantic nature is clearly an outgrowth of
that. We all know this character. In fact, a well-known
representation of this type is Barney Fife from the Andy Griffin show. This character type is
frequently played by a guy who could be seen as gay, such as the kind of characters played by Tony
Randall. I can think of lots of people in my life who
meet this stereotype from a wide variety of backgrounds. It’s a
universal type, but yes, some Jews meet the stereotype, too.
I prefer to view the characters as representing a more ambiguous and universal “other,” and consider the implications for those who fill that category for me. As I argued here, we all have people who fill this slot; it’s a universal problem. (See aside below.) I reject Wagner’s views on the answer to this problem, but I personally find his works a good way to reflect on these problems nonetheless.
Marc
Weiner, in his book Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic
Imagination, finds anti-Semitic representations all over the
place: beyond Beckmesser, he adds Mime, Alberich, the Niebelungens,
Hagen, the Dutchman, Kundry, and Klingsor as all having Jewish
representations via the iconography of bodily images. In a symposium
about Wagner’s anti-Semitism, this exchange occurred between Leon Botstein, who partially challenged this view, and Marc Weiner:
Botstein:
I disagree a little bit about what Marc Weiner thinks. I don’t
read Mime as anti-Semitic because I think there are many sources for
the character type that you see on the stage. Same as Beckmesser.
There are many pedants that are not Jews. I know a lot of them [laughter here; Botstein is President of Bard College and his wife is
also an academician]. I don’t think people are irrational to see
Jewish stereotypes. There’s no reason [however] to look at
everything in a pre-determined way.
Weiner:
I don’t think any of us is making the argument that this figure is
primarily a figure who carries the sign of a Jew. Of course these
characters had various, diverse long traditions that stand behind
them so they are not just one or the other.9
 |
| The entertaining Leon Botstein |
These
guys make very slippery arguments. To paraphrase what they seem to
be saying: If you don’t think there are Jewish representations,
there is something wrong with you, your scholarship, your perceptive abilities. Oh, but, we don’t mean that they are primarily Jewish
representations! Banish the thought.
Weiner
claims that most people in Wagner's time understood that he intended
these characters as anti-Semitic representations but, as Wagner
scholar Tom Grey points out, this is based on an “almost complete
absence of concrete examples of contemporary audiences reading
anti-Semitic messages in Wagner’s works.”10
And a complete lack of any
evidence that Wagner intended such a thing, which is notable because
Wagner did write extensively on what he did intend the characters to
be and to represent. In fact, Weiner, along with others in his
club, have created a conspiracy theory, and it is only slightly
more credible than “Paul is Dead” or the Dark Side of the Moon being intentionally linked to the Wizard
of Oz. I admit those analogies are hyperbolic, but his work is definitely
a case of pattern recognition run amok, just as I wrote about in this
post.
My
claim is not that one couldn’t see Jewish representation in one or
more of Wagner’s characters. I fully concur with a reviewer who
wrote, “Any fool can find anti-Semitism in a Wagner opera,
particularly if one looks for it. But that is the beauty of Wagner.
There is such a degree of complexity in this work, so many levels of
interpretation, that one can find a myriad of meanings. I believe
that Weiner is onto something. But it is not profound, it is
overdone, and it misses much more profound and meaningful levels of
interpretation.”11
I
was an electrician, so allow me this analogy: Current follows all
paths, but the majority goes along the path of least resistance. In
the case of interpretation, the path of least resistance is the
obvious path: that Beckmesser, for example, is simply “a plausible
representation of a fussy, sterile, un-musical pendant, German or
otherwise,” as Tom Grey puts it.12
In other words, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. However, with
Wagner there are multiple other paths that can be followed in
analysis, and a credible case can be made for all sorts of
representations. So, I will grant that, at least in the case of
Beckmesser and Mime, the path contains some current. Another path
that would allow current is to see various characters through a lens
of homosexual characterizations. I would argue that Beckmesser,
Mime, and Klingsor would easily fit into that tradition. (And,
beyond that, most characters in Tristan and Isolde would as well.)
It
really depends on the perceptions, the eyes and the ears of the
viewer. The
“we must be obsessed with anti-Semitism” club seems to feel that
this particular interpretation should have to be acknowledged by all,
even those people who do not see it, feel or, or find it valid. Does
a Japanese listener, for instance, have to know anything about
Wagner’s views to find meaning in the work? Of course not. In most
cases I don’t find the “Jew-spotting” valid in any event. I
don’t buy it at all for Alberich, the Niebelungens, Kundry,
Klingsor, Hagen or the Dutchman. Moreover, I personally have no
interest in listening through the lens of anti-Semitism, as it isn’t illuminating to me even when I can “see” it, as the
Patrice Chéreau Ring
encouraged the viewer to do through the representation of Mime (watch below).
I prefer to view the characters as representing a more ambiguous and universal “other,” and consider the implications for those who fill that category for me. As I argued here, we all have people who fill this slot; it’s a universal problem. (See aside below.) I reject Wagner’s views on the answer to this problem, but I personally find his works a good way to reflect on these problems nonetheless.
Paul
Lawrence Rose goes much farther in his book, Wagner, Race and
Revolution. He says that anti-Semitism is “the hidden agenda
of virtually all his operas” and rails agains the alleged “cruelty
and hatred which permeate Wagner’s work.”13 He wants it banned in Israel, and is working to actively
suppress the audience elsewhere. Whether Jew are represented or not,
it’s all anti-Semitic trash to him. Yes, even Tristan and Isolde is permeated with anti-Semitism even with no characterizations of Jews.
His summary of why: “Redemption there is the annihilation of self
and the egotistic will: and of course, the supreme embodiments of
egoism are the Jews.”14
This is like saying if I wrote a work celebrating gay marriage
without any mention of those in opposition, it is anti-Christian.
I mean, it's true in a sense, but very beside the point. Rose marshals evidence in all the ways that
a supposed historian should not, such as drawing conclusions not supported in
the evidence, selectively highlighting only the bad, and ignoring contrary
evidence. It’s a polemic—and a very unfair one—not a
historical document.
An
aside
In the London Review of Books, there
was a fascinating back-and-forth dialogue between a reviewer of his book, the
Palestine-born Edward Said, and Rose. See here. The subject turned from
Wagner to the Israeli/Palestine conflict. After Said brought up the
topic of the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel in 1948 (and other
times in lesser numbers) by way of analogy, Rose retorted,
“I would have thought it blatantly obvious that there can be no
comparison between the ‘transfer’ of a German-Jewish population
which was devotedly loyal to the German state and Zionist
consideration – often under conditions of war – of the transfer
of an Arab population which was in large part the sworn enemy of the
Jewish state.” Without spending the time to deconstruct his not so
“blatantly obvious” position, Edward Said voices my thought:
“It just goes to show the process of “othering” where Jews get
to kick folks out because they decide that they are enemies, but
Germans who think Jews are the enemy of the state are just hateful.”
He goes on to add, “The fact is that the persecution of both
groups occurred because they were perceived as threats; one economic
and cultural, the other (having no opportunity to influence economic
or cultural events) physical. In both cases people were persuaded
that the survival of the state was at stake. In neither case was the
solution sensible, humane or appropriate.”
Rose
and Said are fundamentally in opposition to each other and, and you
can see the process of “othering,” even in that conversation.
It’s a massive topic: what to do with a hated “other,” both as
a group and individually. In every country I know, people are dealing
with versions of this. In the US, for example, the hated “others”
are immigrants or
anti-immigrants; gays and secular humanists or
religious fundamentalists. It is easy to assume your side is on
the right, and the other side is the problem. What is much more
difficult to do is to try to truly understand the other side. In
pretty much every case, each side feels something is at jeopardy:
their way of life, their most fervent desires and dreams. This was
certainly the case for Wagner, striking out at those who he believed
were in the way of his dreams. Essentially, critics like Rose and
Weiner replicate Wagner. They treat those who don’t agree with
them like enemies; blinded by their own viewpoints, they can’t see
that they are the same process of “othering” that Wagner did to
those with whom he disagreed. Rose, particularly, is supporting all
the bad things that Wagner did: trying to suppress those you don’t
agree with him, encouraging hate and intolerance.
Back
to the conclusion
Weiner and, particularly, Rose are arguing for a circumscribed view of
Wagner’s works, to deny them universality by forcing a particular
interpretation. They want us, therefore, to see only or primarily
the small-mindedness in Wagner. But why would I—anyone—want to do that
when the works, along different paths, have much more beautiful and
compassionate interpretations?
I
am not saying that there aren’t some troubling things in Wagner’s
works. I think there are, in fact, but just not in the area of
anti-Semitism per se. But, alas, that’s another post, outside the
realm of this series.
Next
week I will finally end this anti-Semitism series and move on to something more
fun.
End Notes
1
I do believe, however, you can find much that is “anti-other,”
but that is a different topic.
2 Magee,
Tristan Chord, page 74
3 I'm using
the wording here from Anna Russell’s great Ring parody.
4
Millington, Barry, “Is there anti-semitism in Die
Meistersinger?” - Cambridge Opera, Nov. 1991
6 Hammer, and last quote from Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic
Imagination, page 30
7 Bribitzer-Stull,
Lubet, and Wagner eds., Richard Wagner for the New Millennium,
Weiner, “Lingering Discourses,” page 150. In this article
Weiner renews and strengthens his allegations that those on the
other side are anti-Semitic themselves, though in true Wagnerian
fashion he obscures it very slightly. He says, “Their discourse
suggests that they are true followers of Wagner. And in this sense,
they are indeed symptomatic of others in Germany today.” The
irony of this sleazy attack on those who do not agree with him is
that the article is about sleazy attacks on a person on his “side.”
9 Hammer
from the Q&A
10 Grey,
Thomas, Cambridge Opera Journal, 8.2 (1996) 195
12 Op.
cit. Grey, page 191
13 Rose,
Paul Lawrence, Wagner, Race and Revolution, page 170
14 Ibid,
171
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