Wagner's Abnormal Mind - Part 6: Conclusion

Over several posts, I have been laying out various puzzle pieces to understand the very abnormal brain of Richard Wagner. I am going to do a synthesis in this post; for the details consult the other posts here. 

Wagner’s life of stress

Wagner was born with various attributes that manifested when he was still a boy: very high sensitivity, high sensation-seeking, and an optimistic and tenacious will that proved to be extraordinary. None of these things are pathological in and of themselves, but in combination they contributed to the enormous stress he endured throughout his life, and led to his developing both mental and physical problems.

In his childhood, Wagner's stress stemmed partly from his head-strong nature, which led him to often pit himself against family and authority. He also had stress from his sensitive nature, particularly in his family environment. For instance, nightly dreams of terror were met with upbraiding, not tenderness. Throughout his life, he considered himself to be singular: a man against the world. Adding to the problems that his natural temperament gave him was the financial stress his family was under via the loss of his father and step-father, the aftermath of war, and his frequent exiles from the family as he was so difficult to contend with.

He had no benefactor, no family money to help him along his chosen path. Virginia Woolf wrote that “a poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog’s chance.”¹ What is incredible about Wagner is that he was one of those with not a “dog’s chance” and yet he managed to become the most famous and influential composer of the 19^th century. His drive to create, to promote his vision, to defeat all obstacles before him, was completely single-minded and nothing short of miraculous and awe-inspiring. All this came at a high price: chronic stress that wrecked havoc on his body and mind.

His biography as an adult is filled with one major stress-inducing event after another, usually self-created, but almost always in service to his vision. I will just give a short summary:

• He had no regular means of support until he was 50; he was constantly in debt, often fleeing creditors.
• He escaped from Riga at high risk, to avoid imprisonment for debts.
• He suffered through abject poverty in Paris for three years while trying to make it as a composer.
• He escaped Germany after an arrest warrant was issued for his revolutionary activities; his co-conspirators ended up in jail for over a decade.
• His marriage was full of strife for decades, including infidelity on both sides.
• He had tremendous difficulty getting any of his operas staged outside of Germany (and many inside of Germany).  His only clear triumph until late in life was Rienzi (which he later denounced).
• He was attacked regularly in the press for both his music and his lifestyle.
• Even after King Ludwig rescued him financially, he was at the center of scandals from his affair and marriage to Cosima and with the release of the letters from his seamstress.
• He was attacked in the press and via demonstrations—very logically and rightfully—by the Jewish establishment after the re-release of his article “On Judaism in Music.”
• He took on a near-impossible task of building Bayreuth to stage the Ring. The whole enterprise was on the edge of collapse when King Ludwig saved him again.

But beyond the stress that life events put on him, Wagner put stress on himself through the composition process. In this letter, he describes this process.

I recognize now that the characteristic fabric of my music...owes its construction above all to the extreme sensitivity which guides me in the direction of mediating and providing an intimate bond between all the different moments of transition that separate the extremes of mood.

But this art is very much bound up with my own life. Extreme moods in a state of violent conflict will no doubt always remain part of my nature: but it is embarrassing to have to consider their effects upon others. To be understood is so indispensably important. Just as, in art, it is the most extreme and the grandest of life’s moods that must be made intelligible (moods which on the whole remain unknown in ordinary people’s lives, except in rare times of war and revolution), this understanding can be achieved only through the most well-defined and most compelling motivation of these transitions, and my entire work of art consists very much in producing the necessary and willing emotional mood by means of this motivation.² [emphasis added]

Essentially, he became extremely good at triggering the emotions he needed to produce the extreme lows and the soaring highs of his music. Wagner played with emotional fire, putting his health at serious and continual risk, in order to be in the “state of violent conflict” necessary to compose his works. Thus, his musical talent centered on his ability to access deep, wildly varying emotions easily and fully, and then create a musical language to compose those feelings. That was his creative genius in a nutshell. Is it any wonder that after composing, he often needed to go to a sanitarium for recovery?

There is now a large body of evidence that stress is the trigger for both physical and mental problems, as I wrote about here.  Physically, Wagner developed life-long problems with hemorrhoids and irritable bowel syndrome, a variety of long-term severe skin problems, including recurrent erysipelas and shingles, migraines, leg ulcers and abscesses, respiratory problems, bilateral hernias, nervous exhaustion, and, finally, the heart disease that killed him.³  Every one of those problems can be caused or made worse by stress. Wagner himself believed that most of these physical ailments were related to his stress, and all his biographers agree.

In the case of some conditions, there can be a genetic predisposition to it. For instance, via a number of studies summarized here, it is clear that bi-polar disorder has a genetic component. However, just because you have inherited a genetic predisposition for that disorder does not mean that you will develop it. That is where gene expression comes in.

I will take a quick detour regarding gene expression, because it is so interesting (and relevant). You know those killer African bees? They aren’t different, genetically, than our honey bees. So why are they so aggressive? A scientist had a hunch that it was really about environment, so he took a bunch of African bees and implanted them in a honey bee colony and visa versa. Guess what? The implanted African bees became as docile as their adopted mates and the implanted honey bees became just as aggressive as the others. This article discusses this example among others, in both humans and animal species. Its conclusion is: “When it comes down to it, really, genes don’t make you who you are. Gene expression does. And gene expression varies depending on the life you live.” Stress is hypothesized to be a central culprit in the gene expression of a wide variety of illnesses, both physical and mental.

This is where the “who was Wagner’s father” issue comes back. I wrote about it here, and pointed out that there was evidence on both sides. However, the fact that his step-father Geyer seemed to have the same disposition as Wagner to both manic and depressive states, not to mention creative talent in several fields, has tipped me to the “Geyer is the father” side of the equation.

I have argued that Wagner was on the bi-polar spectrum as he clearly had periods of depression alternating with manic, or at least, hypomanic periods. All the usual signs of mania or hypomania as specified here existed in Wagner, according to everyone’s account of him, along with his own self-account:

• Unrealistic, grandiose beliefs about one’s abilities or powers
• Feeling unusually “high” and optimistic OR extremely irritable
• Sleeping very little, but feeling extremely energetic
• Talking so rapidly that others can’t keep up
• Racing thoughts; jumping quickly from one idea to the next
• Highly distractible, unable to concentrate
• Impaired judgment and impulsiveness
• Acting recklessly without thinking about the consequences
• Delusions and hallucinations (in severe cases)

Beyond the last symptom (and the fact that he had the will and the wherewithal to complete all his unrealistic, grandiose plans), all of those symptoms describe Wagner perfectly. As for depression, he fit all those via self-reports, too:

Feeling hopeless, sad, or empty Irritability Inability to experience pleasure Fatigue or loss of energy Physical and mental sluggishness

Appetite or weight changes Sleep problems Concentration and memory problems Feelings of worthlessness or guilt Thoughts of death or suicide 4

Throughout his life, his letters contain many references to a number of depressions. Here is part of a letter to a friend describing a long depression in 1937 at the age of 24:

My light-heartedness has long been consumed by the financial misery that battened on my natural, sanguine resilience... All cheerfulness, all freedom, all openness fled before me: I can describe my state in no better way than by telling you that this was a year when I wrote scarcely a single note, conceived noting & comprehended nothing. I was deeply unhappy!⁵ 

By his 30s, thoughts of suicide became a constant theme:

I finally began to pine away and my thoughts turn increasingly towards death. I was on the point of returning to Zurich when I was again beset by my old complaint: I am paralyzed, overcome by melancholy and unhappiness....⁶

Hell, his entire oeuvre was suicide ideation. 

If you want to read more about his bi-polar nature, the author John Louis DiGaetani makes the case in his book Wagner and Suicide.

As for the other DMS categories of mental illnesses that people want to slot him into: sure, he fits into a bunch of them. I will leave it to those with expertise to sort that out, but there can be no doubt he would have received a diagnosis of mental illness if he presented to any therapist with his behaviors, actions and feelings. But concentration on his pathology does not explain his massive success in a large number of pursuits. Which brings us back to the question:

How could he have done it?

That is, how could Wagner have been so massively successful in doing what he did in the face of so much illness? My argument is that due to his very strong will and single-minded focus, he learned to control his conditions enough to be able to be productive. It wasn’t a smooth process, as he was often derailed by illness, but it was a very deliberate process. He learned to control his conditions in two large ways: through creating and following a workable routine, and through medication (both prescribed and self-medicated). And then he succeeded because—in spite of the risk-taking that would have derailed most folks, as well as his often demented personality—he had so much talent that others kept saving him from himself. And they did so often in the nick of time; thus in this, he had massive luck.

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Let’s see then what Hans Sachs can weave to turn the madness his own way, to serve for noble works. – Hans Sachs talking to himself in Die Miestersinger

Routine

By his mid-30s, Wagner knew he was in deep trouble in terms of his ability to continue working in the manner that he did. For him, it was the nervous exhaustion that he found most debilitating. He could work through physical pain, but not emotional shut-down. When he over-worked, it would often take a month or two to get over the effects of it. Thus, as he wrote to his friend and benefactor Julie Ritter in 1852,

...if I am to produce anything else, it can only be achieved by subjecting my entire nervous system to a most elaborate course of treatment. Above all, I need a will of iron to keep a close check on myself, more especially to be able to break off completely from my work, both quickly and at frequent intervals, so that, by dint of regular outings, I may distract my cerebral nerves form their present self-destructive course.

Of course, only my art can sustain me and disguise from me how insipid my life has become. The enormous effort it takes to do so is something I must seek to lessen as best I can.⁷

In terms of his “course of treatment,” he took a 9-week course of a water and dietary treatment at a sanitarium the year before, in 1851, which had little positive effect, as he describes in his diary briefly: “Dreadful nervous state: very thin and pale. Total insomnia.”⁸ In 1852, he tried another course of treatment, but this one in his own home: concentrating on diet, quiet and exercise, which he describes to Theodor Uhlig here:

I have now made a proper start on my course of treatment: apart from my diet—from which I do not exclude the occasional glass of good wine—it consists of a cold bath in the morning and a fifteen-minute warm one (22 degrees). Its effect on me is most soothing and gently invigorating. Above all, it does me good to get out into the open air, where I wander for 2-3 hours every morning before I settle down to work. The time I spend on work never lasts more than 2 hours: through working for 5-6 hours, as I often used to do in the past, I seriously overtaxed my nerves.⁹

He tinkered with his routine throughout his life, but he always kept a set one with a mix of walking, specific dietary times, proscribed period of composition, and relaxing through socializing in the evening. His general routine with Cosima went like this:

• 9:00 – small breakfast with Cosima
• 10:00-2:00 – work (no interruptions)
• 2:00 pm – large lunch (on the dot)
• 3:00 – rest
• 3:30 – correspondence if he had any, otherwise start walk
• 4:30 – walk
• 7:00 – light meal
• 8:00 – salon where there was nightly talk, music and reading with guests

He intensely disliked a change in routine.  For instance, Cosima wrote on October 15, 1874, “R has to write a letter in the morning, which always upsets him.”  This sort of mastery via routine was certainly a key ingredient for him to tame his volatile and changing moods.

Medication

Wagner self-medicated all his life in a some very normal ways: he was addicted to nicotine, which he took regularly primarily via snuff, but also through cigars and cigarettes; he drank, principally wine and champagne, though he also drank beer and, I am sure, spirits when the occasion did arise; he also was a regular coffee drinker.

Wagner offering Bruckner snuff

He used them in the usual manner: caffeine and nicotine throughout the day to bring him up; alcohol in the evening to calm him down.

However, as a young, manic man, he had regular insomnia. For that, he needed something stronger. He wrote to his friend, Keitz, in 1852 that he “required from our [doctor] Lindemann not cure, but merely palliatives to make my existence as an artist possible as long as this existence can be maintained at all.”¹⁰ The palliative he received was laudanum, which is a tincture of opium. He used this to help him sleep and calm his nerves until the end of his life. 

Wagner had a five and one half year period when he composed not a lick of music, which is singular in the history of great composers. This writing block ended very soon after he started taking the laudanum. As related in Wagner, Last of the Titans, “In December 1853, he told his benefactress Julie Ritter that thanks to Lindemann’s ‘method’ he not only felt ‘far better’ but was writing music ‘with the greatest and most consequential delight’.”¹¹ To his friend Keitz, he wrote in June 1854 that, “I keep up my spirits merely by intensive work... I really feel pretty much as I should like to, even though there is not a day without bad hours. I often take some of Lindemann’s powders.”¹² Thus, the medications, his rise in spirits, and the end of his unproductive drought were clearly connected.

Luck

Something will turn up! – Mr. Micawber, David Copperfield

But the Fates intervened, as they always did in some mystic way or another, when it was a question of saving Wagner for posterity. – Alfred Newman, Wagner biographer

I make my luck. – that obnoxious guy from the movie Titanic

Wagner was on the edge of the abyss many times in his life. Here are a few highlights.

• As a young man, he managed to get into and out of three duels, all with “formidable duelists” and, luckily for him, without a shot fired.¹³
• He was the trustee of his mother’s pension, and got within one thaler of losing it all via gambling. But he doubled down and rebuilt, luckily, enough to replace the pension amount and to settle his existing debts.¹⁴
• In 1839, he made a desperate flight from Riga, in Russian territory, to escape creditors and debtor’s prison. His passport had been impounded; he, with wife, dog and possessions in tow, had to slip through a well-guarded border, with armed sentries every 1000 feet. Luckily, he did it without getting caught or shot.¹⁵
• He made another desperate flight from Dresden to escape an arrest warrant for his revolutionary activities. Luckily for him, and with the help of Franz Liszt, he made it out, unlike all his other close co-conspirators who spent many years in prison.
• Once again trapped by debts, and debtor’s prison still an ever-present threat, luckily for him a rich industrialist, Otto Wesendonck, paid his debts and offered him a quiet place to compose. And, yes, then he promptly fell in love with his wife, and the gravy train came to an end, but still it was a good period, all in all.
• He once again had to flee his creditors in March of 1864. He wrote in a deep despondency to one friend, “some good and truly helpful miracle must befall me, otherwise it will be all over!”¹⁶ Luckily for him, one did: King Ludwig II’s courier found him on the run, and told him the King wanted to pay all his debts and provide for him so he could write the rest of the Ring.
• He decided to build his theatre in Bayreuth, as opposed to King Ludwig’s wishes of a site in Munich, so Ludwig withdrew his support. Wagner desperately tried to raise the money, initiating a fund-raising program that is the template for modern-day funding raising,¹⁷ but it came up far short. The project was about to go bankrupt when, luckily for Wagner, Ludwig changed his mind and saved the project.
• By the age of 40, Wagner had developed plans for all his later operas, and for building his theater.  Luckily for him, his health held out just long enough to finish all his work at age 70. He died seven months after the premiere of Parsifal.

I bring up all this luck here, because it relates to his mind. Wagner was always optimistic, though often thwarted as a result of the excessive risks he took. Yet, on the edge of failure, he was always saved in the nick of time. Thus, his optimism would return, he would feel fated to succeed and so it would continue. He never got the comeuppance—except in leading an extremely stressful life—that he probably deserved. Lucky for us.

But it certainly wasn’t primarily fortune. He had all the ingredients of success: passion, motivation, initiative, persistence, vision, resilience, energy, self-knowledge and talent. These things all helped him make his own luck.

Talent

Wagner’s chief area of genius was, of course, musical composition. But he was wildly creative and influential in all sorts of ways well beyond just that, which I will be writing about much more in coming blog posts. While he did not show any particularly strong creative gifts as a child, as I wrote here, he was a highly sensitive child: to the arts, nature, beauty, animals as well as to things that were horrible, frightening or disgusting.  To live his early life among creative artists certainly was crucial in setting his path, but I believe that his particular talent arose primarily from his sensitivity. 

It certainly wasn't clear that he would become a musician.  As quoted by Thomas Mann, Nietzsche said of Wagner’s childhood:

His youth was that of a dilettante all-rounder who didn’t seem to know where he was going. He was not confined by any inherited family tradition to one particular artistic discipline. Painting, poetry, acting and music were as much as part of his life as a scholarly upbringing and an academic future; a casual observer might well have supposed that he was born to play the dilettante.¹⁸ 

Mann then comments, “...Wagner’s art is a case of dilettantism that has been monumentalized by a supreme effort of the will and intelligence—a dilettantism raised to the level of genius.”  I think that insight captures some truth about Wagner's breadth of accomplishments, but it doesn't really give enough due to his innate music genius.  In any case, he made the absolute most of all his talents, but it was his will that was the truly incredible part of the equation.

To summarize Wagner’s awesomely abnormal mind, I would say that through his world-defying will, he was able to harness his talent, which sprung in large part from his unusual sensitivity, to create an oeuvre of exception beauty and depth. However, his risk-taking, which became clearly pathological, put him on a life-long figurative tightrope—foreshadowed by that literal tightrope he learned to walk at age 10—that always kept him close to the abyss. Luck and tenacity, with the help of many staunch supporters, got him across the chasm safely. 

All that said, I believe that his will, his talent, his behaviors, his thoughts were all beyond his conscious control as I argued in these posts. Yes, his life and mind are awe-inspiring, if sometimes horrifying, but the good and the bad in him and his works were really just a direct product of an interaction between his genetics and gene expression, upbringing and environment, brain processes and brain chemistry, none of which he had more than very minor control of, at best. He was absolutely unique, and his works reflect that completely, but I truly believe his massive will was not free, but just a product of his abnormal brain.

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1 Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, page 26

2 Millington and Spencer, ed., Selected Letters of Wagner, 475

3 Wagner Experience, 74-76

^{4. From here.}

5 Selected Letters, 71; this letter was Wagner's attempt to get money from his friend; some therefore discount his pain.  I do not.

6 Ibid, I forgot to note the page, dammit, but it’s in there!

7 Ibid, 265-266

8 Millington, Wagner, 50

9 Selected Letters, 260

10 Burrell Collection, Letters of Richard Wagner, 192

11 Köhler, Wagner, Last of the Titans, 305

12 Burrell, 198

13 Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, Vol 1, 78-79

14 Ibid., 79

15 Ibid., 244-245

16 Selected Letters, 583

17 read the book Richard Wagner – Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand for this angle 

18 Mann, Pro and Contra Wagner, “The Sorrows and Grandeur of Richard Wagner,” 103

Wagner's anti-Semitism - Part 7: Public and Private

Wagner was a very contradictory guy. His personality was always extraordinarily tempestuous, leading inevitably to good and bad character aspects intermixed. Add to that his self-righteous fanaticism, and a dark side was near inevitable.

I would like to quote a long passage from a much longer letter from Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck that you can read here. Wagner makes the case—very convincingly, I think—that to write his unique music required extreme moods, while defending himself in other contexts:

I am now becoming increasingly aware of a quality which I have acquired in my art, since it also determines me in my life. From the very beginning it has been a part of my nature for my moods to change rapidly and abruptly from one extreme to another.... I recognize now that the characteristic fabric of my music...owes its construction above all to the extreme sensitivity which guides me in the direction of mediating and providing an intimate bond between all the different moments of transition that separate the extremes of mood.

But this art is very much bound up with my own life. Extreme moods in a state of violent conflict will no doubt always remain part of my nature: but it is embarrassing to have to consider their effects upon others. To be understood is so indispensably important. Just as, in art, it is the most extreme and the grandest of life’s moods that must be made intelligible (moods which on the whole remain unknown in ordinary people’s lives, except in rare times of war and revolution), this understanding can be achieved only through the most well-defined and most compelling motivation of these transitions, and my entire work of art consists very much in producing the necessary and willing emotional mood by means of this motivation.

That is how it is with me in art. And in life? Did you not often witness the way in which people found that what I had to say was presumptuous, tiresome and unending whenever I was guided by the very same instinct, and wished only to guide the conversation gradually round, after some agitated or unusual remark, towards some conciliatory and conscious understanding? 

Do you still recall that last evening with Semper? I had suddenly lost my temper and insulted my adversary in a strongly worded attack. Scarcely had the words left my lips when my anger immediately abated, and all I could see – and feel – was the need of reconciliation and to restore a proper sense of composure to the conversation. At the same time, however, I was guided by a very clear feeling that this could not be sensibly achieved by suddenly falling silent, but only by a gradual and conscious transition; I recall, even while I was still speaking my mind quite forcefully, that I was already conducting the conversation with a certain artistic consciousness which, had I been allowed to have my way, would most certainly have led to an intellectually and conciliatory conclusion and have ended on a note of understanding and appeasement.…

Do you perhaps think that experiences like these are very painful to me? – In truth, I love my fellow humans, and it is no timid, egotistical instinct which increasingly drives me from their society. It is not injured vanity that makes me sensitive to reproaches that I talk too much, but the sad feeling –– what can I be to people and what can they be to me if, in my dealings with them, I seek not to achieve an understanding but only to maintain my opinion unaltered?

I loved his rationalization for being a blabbermouth! In fact, I thought all his rationalizations were first-rate.

He wasn’t anti-Semitic, though, because he had mood swings; that just made it a more rocky road. What made Wagner an anti-Semite was that he was a fanatic, a true believer in his artistic/religious vision. Like all fanatics, tolerance is not high on the list of virtues;  fidelity to the faith is. He expressed his vision rather succinctly (!) in the opening sentence of the essay “Religion and Art”:

One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion by recognizing the figurative value of the mythic symbols which the former would have us believe in their literal sense, and revealing their deep and hidden truth through an ideal presentation.

Wagner, obviously, thought he was the guy for the task, “saving” religion through his “ideal presentation.” Wagner particularly felt that the acts of baptism and communion were the symbols in Christianity worth saving because they revealed these “deep and hidden truths.” Parsifal was the epitome of his vision. This is probably one reason I have never liked Parsifal much; I am not much for the “spirit of religion.”

Anyway, Wagner wanted to create a universal, compassionate and empathetic art/religion, and he hated the Jewish culture that he felt stood in his way. Why did he feel Jews stood in the way? Because the Jewish religion was, intentionally, non-universal; Jews rejected the mythic symbols such as baptism and communion that he felt were at the center of his new art; Jews were leaders in the commodification of art; and Jews were on the cutting edge of capitalism. Those four things were all anathema to him.

Herman Levi, Wagner's good friend

Weirdly, though, Wagner had many close Jewish friends. In fact, during the latter years of his life two things accelerated: his anti-Semitism hardened and became obsessive where it had been sporadic before; and he gained more close Jewish friends. For his last several years, two Jewish men—a pianist Joseph Rubinstein and the conductor Hermann Levi—lived with him for long periods. As the writer Melton Brener wrote in Richard Wagner and the Jews, “[a]t the time of his death, four of his very closest friends were Jews, and two were among his 12 pallbearers. Never did he refuse the help or friendship of any Jews, or anyone else, for reasons of race or religion.”¹

Heinrich Porges, one of Wagner's Jewish pallbearers

Does this sound like something Hitler would have done? Or Mel Gibson, even? How to explain this?

I read a study many years ago that said those who didn’t know gay people tended to have anti-gay opinions, but as people got to know them, they changed their mind. This was true of everybody but the deeply religious. They might accept individuals, but it didn’t alter their view of gays.

I think it was a bit like this for Wagner. His opinions were deeply held, so he just carved out some exceptions. It could be that, in fact, knowing as many Jews as closely as he did had the opposite effect. Perhaps he found out that his friends’ “Jewishness” remained even under his sway and, therefore, he became more convinced that assimilation wouldn’t happen? He implies this in a letter to King Ludwig, who was not anti-Semitic: “I can explain my exalted friend’s favorable view of the Jews only in terms of the fact that these people never impinge upon his royal circle: for him they are simply a concept, whereas for us they are an empirical fact.”²

While it is true that Wagner only kept friends who were involved in his life-work, it is also true that he was often a warm and sweet guy. For instance, Paul von Joukowky, a Russian painter who became a frequent houseguest said: “No one who has not known Wagner in the intimacy of his home can have any idea of the goodness of his nature, his childlike lovableness”³ This sort of sentiment was oft-repeated. But all his friends also understood that he was tempestuous, and they concurred with Wagner’s contention that it was the source of his art, and therefore his mood swings were easily and readily forgiven.

Hermann Levi’s father, a rabbi, wasn’t thrilled that his son was good friends with an anti-Semite. Levi responded in a letter to him with this:

[Wagner] is the best and noblest of men. Of course our contemporaries misunderstand and slander him.... But posterity will one day recognize that he was just as great a man as an artist, which those close to him know already. Even his fight against what he calls “Jewishness” in music and modern literature springs from the noblest motives. That he harbors no petty anti-Semitism like some country squire or Protestant bigot, is shown by his behavior toward me, toward Joseph Rubinstein, and by his former relationship with Tausig [who had died], whom he loved dearly. The most beautiful thing I have experienced in my life is that I was permitted to be close to such a man, and I thank God for it every day.⁴

Carl Tausig

One doesn’t have to buy Levi’s sentiments that his anti-Semitism was noble to get that Levi felt that Wagner was an essentially decent guy with good motives. From reading Wagner’s letters and prose and listening to his music, I basically agree with that conviction—though I acknowledge, and thoroughly dislike, his dark side where his spiteful malice and intolerance comes to the fore, particularly in his later years.

So, how can one be universal and hate a part of the universe? This was a tension that was never really resolved in Wagner’s life, but it was a constant preoccupation. What is clear is that in his private life, his attraction to individuals was greater than his dislike of the whole. In his public life, he never wanted his universalism to be shown to be a lie by excluding a part of the universe. Thus, he had to hold open the doors to all humanity, even if he felt Jews couldn’t or wouldn’t walk through the doors.

Therefore, in this public writings and in his public stances, he continued to support the position he expounded in “Judaism in Music,” which is assimilation, though sometimes with dark undercurrents. For the record, his conclusion in “Judaism in Music”:

But right here Börne also learned that redemption cannot be attained in the state of cosy comfort, but, just as it does for us, it would cost sweat, distress, fear and be full of pain and suffering. Ruthlessly take part in this work of redemption through self-denying rebirth, so that we are united and without difference! Consider, however, that only one thing can be the Redemption from the curse that burdens you: the Redemption of Ahasver, going under.

He uses the writer Börne as his model of a Jew who thoroughly cast off the past, and became part of the struggle for redemption for all humanity, “united and without difference.” Wagner wrote here, and many other places, that it wasn’t just Jews that he thought needed to change themselves, but also Germans. When he refers to “going under,” he means a complete transformation to become, along with changed Germans, humans united in love, community and culture, not in money, property or greed.

As for the darker undercurrent, he wrote in preface of the 1869 re-release of “Judaism in Music”:

Whether the downfall of our Culture can be arrested by a violent ejection of the destructive foreign element [Jews], I am unable to decide, since that would require forces with whose existence I am unacquainted.

He just casually puts that in, on his way to supporting assimilation of this foreign element “in such a way that, in common with us, it shall ripen toward a higher evolution of our nobler human qualities.”

Obviously, he had no problem dropping the idea of Jewish expulsion, even if he moved on to a more highfalutin conclusion. With this exception, though, he rarely publicly let be known his level of antipathy to Jews that he frequently expressed in the private sphere. The vast majority of the world—at the time, later in the Nazi era, and well past World War II— knew his anti-Semitic beliefs only through the one essay. Scholars also knew his letters, but anti-Semitism only sporadically showed up in them and there was little said in them, with a couple of exceptions, that was notable or quotable. Thus, until very recently, Wagner’s anti-Semitism was not something scholar's concentrated on because it was not seen as central to Wagnerians and, for that matter, anti-Wagnerians. Of course, anti-Semitism was much more prevalent in the late 18^th century through World War II, so many people sympathized with his anti-Semitism or, at least, understood it was rather normal that people had those views in that time.

While changes that happened due to the Holocaust—particularly the decrease in anti-Semitism and increase in condemnation of it—were a factor in the increased emphasis on Wagner’s anti-Semitism, it was not the primary cause: that was the publication of Cosima’s diaries in 1977. She meticulously recorded their every-day life together for 14 years with the intention that her children have the document. It was not written with the idea of posthumous publication, and was only published by German court-order. Here is a description of the document from Brener:

The diaries cover about 5150 days from January 1, 1869 unit the day before his death, February 12, 1883. Whatever their original purpose, they are a remarkable compendium of Wagner’s everyday activities and utterances, a chronology of what parts or lines he was setting to music on what days, and his moods while doing so.... The diaries reveal also the depth of his rancor and malice towards the Jews. What had been limited, in essence, to one 23 page essay, parts of a number of others, and sporadic comments in correspondence and other writings, now is shown as a vital, if corrosive, part of his being that surfaced all too often.⁵

It was through data-mining these diaries that his anti-Semitism gained increased attention, focus and, even, obsession. There are problems with relying on the diaries for Wagner’s views. First, everyone agrees that Cosima was deeply and thoughtlessly anti-Semitic in a way and to a degree that Wagner wasn’t. In this lecture the conductor Leon Boltstein put it like this: “If Wagner was McCain, Cosima was Sarah Palin.” Given these differences, we don’t know to the degree that she is misinterpreting things he says through her more rigid, less visionary lens. Even if they were completely in accord on most things, my assumption is that no human being will always understand and interpret another human being correctly.

The next problem with her diaries is that we can’t know the full context: how something was said, if she quoted him correctly, and so forth. They were private conversations, and I assume that much of the negative stuff he said was venting. Notably, the things that seem the most inhumane were infrequent. For instance, this statement is often quoted as proof that he had changed his mind on assimilation and now wanted a more radical, and inhumane, solution to the Jewish question (from October 11, 1879): “R[ichard] is in favor of expelling them entirely.” The problem for those who quote that as definitive is that it wasn’t. When a year later he refused to sign the anti-Semitic petition to Bismarck (which garnered 200,000 signatures), he gave as one reason his frequent lament—as quoted by Cosima—“there was nothing more to be done in this matter.”⁶ After his public allusion in 1869 to the possibility of expulsion, he never raised it publicly again, though he raised it privately once more, but in a different context (see below).

Jacob Katz, in his study of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, concludes that, “[i]n reality, he lacked a clear idea of what should be done with the Jews.”⁷ I concur. I think he would have loved to twitch his nose and for Jews to disappear, except of course for the ones he liked. He was all over the map in the diaries—and his letters—about Jews, sometimes there was actual admiration, other times desperation. In “Judaism in Music,” he bemoaned that Jews do not have a state, and he supports the creation of one in Israel (though, at that point, there was no movement towards that). He clearly didn’t hate Jews as a people as much as he hated Jews in Germany.

Most of the diary comments recorded by Cosima are petty bitchings about the Jews. Cosima does write two things that need comment, though, as they are frequently quoted by anti-Wagnerians as proof that he was, essentially, just like Hitler.

In August, 1881, there were pogroms against the Jews in Russia.  On August 11, 1881 Cosima wrote: “An article about anti-Jewish demonstrations makes him remark, ‘That is the only way it can be done—by throwing these fellows out and giving them a thrashing.’” This is one of the few times he ever indicated any inclination to violence against Jews, and it clearly was against his general beliefs. He was a pacifist and frequently spoke out against violence against people and animals. However, he was inconsistent on that, as he had no problem when Bismarck defeated his foes, the French. He disliked Prussians for their militarism, but—again Cosima quoting Wagner—“The Prussians are just there to beat the French from time to time, when they get too arrogant.”⁸ This sort of casually mentioned violence is certainly repellent, but I think one really has to realize it was a thoughtless comment not intended for anyone’s ears but Cosima. It was venting and it was rare—except for the Franco-Prussian War—as there isn’t anything else similar in the diaries with one exception below. He certainly never did any violence against Jews. He recoiled from seeing any suffering of animals or humans. So to me this is the normal lack of empathy one has for the “other.” It’s mindless. Yes, it shows that he had a pretty dark side, but pretty much anybody who has ever felt a group was “the enemy” is in the same boat.

The second example was made after a theater fire in Vienna during a performance of the Lessing play, Nathan the Wise, in which hundreds—mostly Jewish theatergoers the Wagners assumed—lost their lives. On December 10, 1881, Cosima records Wagner as having little empathy for these victims. She records his feelings as this: “[I]f poor workers are buried in a coal mine, that both moves and angers him, but a case like this scarcely affects him at all.” This is in line with his dislike of the both Jews and most theatergoers, who were typically rich. They returned to the subject of the play on December 19^th and Cosima writes: “He makes a drastic joke to the effect that all Jews should be burned at a performance of Nathan.” Pretty much everybody agrees that this is the worst thing Wagner was ever recorded as saying in his life, and it certainly does show he has a very dark sense of humor, at best, if Cosima recorded it accurately.

It is, however, important to have some context. Nathan the Wise is set during the time of the Crusades where Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim to be the true religion. It is a plea for religious tolerance. Wagner knew the text very well. A minor, but significant, character is the Patriarch of Jerusalem. He is asked to pass judgment on what happens when a baby girl, born and baptized a Christian, is entrusted to Jews who bring her up in the Jewish faith. Three different times the verdict is affirmed: “The Jew must burn.” I am pretty sure that Wagner’s “drastic joke” was a reference to that character’s line and just that: gallows humor.  Wagner’s love of black humor was well-known, so I refuse to take it literally that he wanted all Jews to burn, as many critics do.

That said, in his most harsh moments, he was exceedingly insensitive. But, in my most harsh moments—thankfully, Leslie isn’t recording them—I have said things about as horrible. (I am not telling you what they are!) But, I don’t think it is unusual in the privacy of one’s own home to make such remarks about those whom you see as your adversary. I give him a pass—I give everybody a pass—for what he said in the privacy of his own home. Others clearly don’t agree with me. Fine, then please have someone record everything you say for 14 years. I bet few could pass through that exercise with their reputation intact.

I do not, however, give him a pass for things he said or wrote publicly. His allusion to expulsion, for one. The fact was that Wagner, a leading German intellectual, influenced countless other German (and other) intellectuals into thinking that anti-Semitism was acceptable within a generally humanitarian vision. This leaves a stain on him that cannot be erased by time, any more than it can be for any other such anti-Semite, of whom there were far, far too many.

If Wagner were alive today and told he was known, principally, as a man who hated, he would not recognize himself and would feel wounded and misunderstood. He was trying to make a better world, a world of beauty, love and culture. But he was a zealot, and couldn’t see that his vision had an inhumane essence. This is very much like evangelic Christians who feel wounded to be called a hater for being anti-gay. They feel they have the true path, but they, too, are wrapped in their self-righteousness and cannot see their own inhumanity. In both cases, it doesn’t mean that a large part of their hearts aren’t pure and good. It just means their zealot blinders will keep them on a partially inhumane path.⁹

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End Notes

1 Brener, Richard Wagner and the Jews, 2

2 Millington and Spencer, ed., Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, 489

3 Brener, 240

4 Ibid, 274

5 Ibid, 146

6 Gregor-Dellin and Mack, CosimaWagner Diaries-2, June 16, 1880, page 489 

7 Katz, The Darker Side of Genius, 113; I am not going into it because it would take too long, but there is a a debate about Wagner's later writings. Many, but certainly not all, interpret them as more darkly anti-Semitic and racist than his earlier essay. I do not, but it would take up way too much energy to take on the case. If anyone is interested, I am happy to direct you to both sides of this debate.

8 Gregor-Dellin, 435

9 Yes, I am aware that I might have some zealous blinders on, too!

Wagner's Character: The problem of biography (with selected, annotated bibiliography)

Summary and links to the series of Wagner character posts: 

I believe that Richard Wagner has been the victim of character assassination, which was started in his era but has come to full fruition in our own. While certainly Wagner does have character flaws, he is accused—casually, ubiquitously, and with no or little supporting evidence—of a whole host of faults, most of them exaggerated, and rarely counterbalanced with any sense of his goodness beyond musical genius. The result is that his true personality and character have been buried under an avalanche of mud. My introduction to that topic is here. I give a short introduction to his personality and character so that you can better understand the various charges here. I cover these traits: megalomania here; sexist, womanizer and wife-stealer – part 1 here, part 2 here; his problems with money and, consequently, friendship is here; the issue of his morality, hypocrisy and lying here; the issue of anti-Semitism is here. The first part of how his reputation got into the mess it is can be found here and the second here. This concludes this series.

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In my introduction to this section, I argued that the real Richard Wagner has been lost to history due to a one-sided attack against him without any presentation of any counterbalancing traits or any historical context. He is all caricature, a myth, and an ugly one that that.

The trouble in seeking any short biographical information about Wagner is that it is very hard to find anything but completely negative character profiles; they pile up on each other, making this tendency more pronounced as time goes on.  The Wikipedia entry on Wagner has generally sidestepped this problem, but their article, long on facts, is very short of charm.  Deadly dull, in fact.

I think biography is tough.  How do you reduce a life to a book, much less a short internet-sized bio? I read with interest this recent critique of Bob Woodward’s biography of John Belushi by another Belushi biographer, Tanner Colby. His method was unique: “Over the course of a year, page by page, source by source, I re-reported and rewrote one of Bob Woodward’s books.”

His conclusion regarding Woodward’s original biography: “There’s no question that he frequently ferrets out information that other reporters don’t. But getting the scoop is only part of the equation. Once you have the facts, you have to present those facts in context and in proportion to other facts in order to accurately reflect reality. It’s here that Woodward fails.”

I suspect that is where all biographers fail, and this is certainly true of the vast majority of Wagner’s biographers.  I think the problem might stem, in part, because there are so many facts and so much information about him. There are his 10,000—many long—letters, his autobiography, his diaries, Cosima’s diaries, his prose writings, the reminisces of those who knew him, thousands of letters to him, et al.

I think the temptation is great, too great, to find the most outlandish stories, the worst traits and the most titillating details, and make those the story, even though they reflect just some of his life.  Yes, he was bigger than life, excessive in most things, so there is a greater share of those type of stories than in a “normal” life.  But when those stories become the overwhelming focus, the man disappears.

Also, there is the problem that both his “friends” and “enemies” have not tried to reflect reality but, instead, tried to create a myth – a hero or a villain.  As Stewart Spencer put it in his first line of Wagner Remembered, “The demonization of Wagner started as the first calls for his canonization were being considered.” And each book published tends—often blatantly—towards one side or the other.  I am clearly on the pro-Wagner side, but I am trying as hard is possible to let you know where I am getting my facts and—to requote from above—to put them “in context and in proportion to other facts in order to accurately reflect reality.”

I write this all as a preamble on the following selected, annotated bibliography.  I am writing this now, I admit, as a convenience for myself.  I will refer to it, no doubt, throughout the rest of this blog, and my life, for that matter. As well, I plan to edit it as I read—or remember—other important sources.

I do think  it will be of help to anyone who wants to delve into the “case of Wagner”.  And certainly, it gives any reader a clear view of my biases, influences and beliefs.

I start with a premise, perfectly articulated in this Amazon review by a blogger and writer who I frequently find myself in agreement with named Laon, “Wagner may be the historical figure of whom secondary sources are most unreliable. With Wagner it ALWAYS pays to read the original source and NEVER to trust the commentator, some of whom should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.”

Best Starting Book

I think the best, most fun starting point is Wagner Remembered edited by the knowledgeable and fair-minded Stewart Spencer. It is all from primary sources, helpfully annotated so the reader knows the context of the selection and when it was written.  As I have mentioned earlier, this is the best single source to get a true sense of his personality, his strengths and weakness. It is the one indispensable book.

Best book to actually understand Wagner, his life and ideas

A much more dense book, but fascinating reading, is Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, edited by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington. It was through reading this book, not the various biographies I will list below, that I felt I understood him, what made him tick. He comes off as what he was: very dedicated to his art, complex, contradictory, emotional, turbulent and prescient. Unlike his prose, the letters are usually fairly easy to understand.  Most likely, this relates to the excellent translations by the editors as well as “a spontaneity of expression conspicuous by its absence from the majority of his prose writings,” as Stewart Spencer put it the Wagner Compendium1. After Spencer’s book, I think this is the most important one to read to really understand the man.

Biographies

The problem of Wagner biographies is there isn’t a good single-volume one out there, at least that I have read.  I am a big fan of the 4-volume Newman biography, Life of Wagner, completed in 1947, but I am sure that has limited appeal due to length.  But he did an excellent job of balancing the facts and giving a sense of the real Wagner. He wrote an earlier, and good, short biography, Wagner as Man and Artist, though he later said that he thought he was too hard on Wagner in that book, which is comical considering what was to come.  These are all considered outdated, as much has come to light since they were written.  But they remain the class of the English biographies.

Of modern biographies, the only one I think gets it right—who describes the guy that I have come to know through concentrating on primary sources—is Richard Wagner and the Jews. Because of the title, I thought it was going to be something other than a biography when I purchased it.  But a biography it is; it just spends more time on this one issue than most biographies.  He doesn’t shy away from the bad in Wagner, but also clearly shows the good.

I really can’t recommend any other biography, though.  There might be another good one out there, and I am trying to find it, but I haven’t yet.  I am going to write more about this topic at a later point, so stay tuned.

To avoid: The Man, His Mind, and His Music by Robert Gutman. A good critique of that book is here.  Also, if you are considering it, read the reviews on the Amazon page as well.

Autobiography

Mein Leben by Wagner (as told to Cosima for King Ludwig; it covers his life to age 50, when he met Ludwig). Ok, I admit it; I haven’t read it.  I’m gonna!  But lots of people think it is actually very interesting about the period and it gives a good sense of the man, even if given to hyperbole and avoidance of some subjects. I will report back someday when I actually read the thing.  But it is here and here, free.

Wagner’s prose writings

You can download them here. The problem, as I have mentioned in more depth in footnote three here, is that Wagner is a turgid writer and, his translator, William Ashton Ellison, stinks.  Let me give you an example of his translations, supplied by Laon in this review of Judasim in Music: “The German word ‘Erdball’ means ‘world’. It takes a weird translator to want to render it into English as ‘Earthball’.”

This creates a real problem for the English reader, who doesn’t know German, and it gives a great opportunity to Wagner’s enemies.  They use this state of affairs to misinterpret his writings, often egregiously.  I am sure many people just assume these misinterpretations are correct, but it is often not so.  More on this reality later, but I wanted to give the link here.

For an analysis of Wagner’s controversial writings—and the difficulties of the English translation—there are several interesting posts at this blog such as this one on Judaism in Music.

Cosima Wagner’s Diaries 

They are fascinating, covering the period from 1869-1883. Cosima wrote a detailed account of what they did most days, therefore it is a gold mine to biographers. That said, it has been used much too cavalierly by many.  Things she paraphrased that he allegedly said have been rendered as quotes of his, which is a total biographical no-no in my book. To say her diaries are quoted selectively—they run over 2000 pages of very small type—is a vast understatement. Beware quotes from her book: there will certainly be much to contradict anything quoted.  Here is a good piece about the Diaries, written by the historian Joachim Fest. 

General books about Wagner

The Tristan Chord and Aspects of Wagner by Bryan Magee are very fun, interesting and enlightening reads.  He is, I believe, the best writer on Wagner.  His books don’t have footnotes, though, and that is a crime.

Wagner by Michael Tanner is really thought provoking and interesting.  I have reread it more than any Wagner book except the above.  It’s a little dense sometimes, and not as clear as Magee.  And it, too, doesn’t have footnotes.  Can you tell that I really want to check sources?

Wagner and anti-Semitism

The Darker Side of Genius by Jacob Katz is the principal work on the subject, though I disagree with much of his analysis and interpretation of the primacy sources.

The Tristan Chord, Appendix 343-380 and Aspects of Wagner, pages 19-28 give Magee's views on the subject; he says much that I agree with in the former.

The Cambridge Companion to Wagner, ed. by Thomas Grey with an article by him on pages 203-218; again, I disagree with much of his view.

Richard Wagner and the Jews — see in biography above; he emphasizes the large gap between Wagner's hostility to Jews as a stereotypical entity in contrast to his continual kindness and friendship with many different Jews throughout his life and tries to make sense of this conundrum.

The Wagner Handbook, edited by Muller and Wapnewski; read the article "The Question of Anti-Semitism" by Dieter Borchmeyer; his interpretations are much closer to mine those of Grey, Millington and Katz, who all generally pitch the same line and make the same misinterpretations, in my view.

The Wagner Compendium, edited by Millington with an article by him on pages 161-164.

The Sorcerer of Bayreuth, a 2012 book by Millington is the best thing to read by someone who does believe Wagner's works were infused by anti-Semitism.  The reason is that his are better than the ones I put in the "Avoid" group below is because he doesn't exhibit the animus of the other writers, doesn't quote things about of context, and is even-handed in analyzing the information.

If you read German, I have read Dieter David Scholz's Richard Wagners Antiseitismus. is good, and given articles I have read in English by him, I am sure that is true.

On the Israeli boycott of Wagner, the book to read is Ring of Myths by Naomi by Sheffi. She knows much less about Wagner than about Israel and the boycott, but her contribution is invaluable on the principal subject.

To avoid: the complete rubbish of Paul Lawrence Rose, Marc Weiner, Joachim Köher.

A critique of Köhler here; A critique of Wiener is here (read reviews); a critique of Rose can be found in Magee, 373-380.  

Also interesting is this debate in the comment section of an article.

Wagnerism

Aspects of Wagner by Magee, chapters 3 "Wagnerolatry" and  chapter 4 "The Influence of Wagner" is the best place to start as it is an easy, fun read.

Wagernism in European Culture and Politics, edited by David Large and William Weber, is the best general survey, covering his multifarious—and highly contradictory—influence in some detail for Germany, France, Italy, Russia, England and, despite the title, America. There is a good introduction and conclusion by the editors that pulls it all together. 

Aubrey Beardsley and British Wagnerism in the 1890s, by Emma Sutton.  A very good review of the "Decadents" and their relationship to Wagnerism.  

Wagner Nights, an American History by Joseph Horowitz is focused on American Wagnerism.  Most American Wagnerians were women; Horowitz explores this phenomenon. 

The Cambridge Companion to Wagner and The Wagner Compendium both have good sections on Wagnerism in both music and the arts.

Good compilations

The Wagner Compendium, edited by Barry Millington is an excellent resource.  It meets its stated aim: “to provide a compendium of information on every significant aspect of Wagner and his music.”

The Wagner Handbook edited by Muller and Wapnewski. It has a series of interesting articles on various topics about Wagner. 

The Cambridge Companion to Wagner, edited by Grey, also has some interesting articles.

The Wagner Family

The Wagner Clan by Jonathan Carr is a fairly even-handed book and a good starting point for what happened after Wagner’s death in 1883.

Film Biography

There has only been one major film representation of Wagner, and it was a very unfortunate depiction indeed.  Richard Burton plays Wagner in a BBC nine-hour miniseries.  Though there was much that was good in this film, the problem was that the guy Burton played didn’t have a personality anything like Wagner.  He played him as either totally bombastic or very dour. One negative review in Amazon makes the point for me. 

The portrayal of Wagner as a spendthrift, vain, self important, emotionally cold, nasty bully is so relentless, that it quickly gets tiring. There is no contrast, no light and darkness. He treats everyone with scorn and contempt. So much so it's hard to imagine anyone loving him, or any woman wanting to have an affair with him. Whatever his faults, I find the portrayal hard to believe. 

The film consistently twists his biography in ways that leave only partial truth. For just one example, they show an episode in which Wagner reads a libretto to an assembled group.  It was depicted as if Wagner forced unsuspecting folks to listen, and that they were not into it and totally bored.  The point of the scene was clearly to show that he was am insensitive megalomaniac. However, the fact is that people who actually got the privilege of hearing him read his librettos uniformly said Wagner was mesmerizing, a born actor, and it was thrilling when he did this. (See, for instances, page 77, 79-80, 88, 97,113, 119, 134-5, 188, 219, 258 of Wagner Remembered)

In the movie, he wasn’t charismatic in the least; he seemed like a total jerk.  As I wrote in my personality profile, Wagner was a very lively, fun-loving guy.  From all descriptions, he had a lot in common with Robin Williams (and only someone with that sort of frenetic quality could possibly play him.) The cast, the production values, the music were all first rate.  But this was not Wagner, nor was it his biography.

However, if you glance through the reviews of the movie, no one seems to know that!  Everybody has bought into this unfair biographical view, and so only the one guy I quoted above—who doesn't even know much about Wagner—seems to get that there is something wrong with the portrayal.

Der Ring des Nibelungen

I am a big fan of John Culshaw,  who was the engineer for the celebrated Solti Ring (considered by many—like here—the best classical recording of all time).  He wrote two books, The Ring Resounding about that amazing recording venture. He concludes that book with  an extremely prescient article about the future of music and opera.  The video about the project is here.   His Reflections on Wagner's Ring is wonderful, which is taken from his 1975 talks on the ring for the Met.  The actual talks can be downloaded here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Derek Cooke’analysis of the Ring on CD is pretty cool. 

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End Notes

1 Millington, Wagner Compendium, 193