07-19-2025, 09:04 PM
I finally read a translation on Nietzsche's takes on Wagner---The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche contra Wagner, and some aphorisms collected by the translator---and it perhaps encourages me to listen again to Parsifal, so I'll get the hate for it (Mark Twain I hear dislikes it too xD).
It seems that his dislike of Wagner is rooted in profound disappointment, much like his dislike of women, only the disappointment is less rejection than the trend of conservatism (in the sense contemporary to him) and catholicism evinced by Wagner's later works? His critiques of the middle works seem relatively perfunctory---not as much to critique in works that are admittedly underdeveloped---while his critiques of the works I happen to love, Tristan und Isolde and the first three parts of the Ring Cycle, seem quite....specialized? Like, Tristan is overindulgent, the Ring is overidealistic, and those are precisely the things that make me enjoy them, or make Nietzsche, perhaps, give thanks to Wagner, and still recommend him to philosophers?
But more general critiques---Wagner not being true to his audience, Wagner being distinctly unmusical and un-German (especially when compared to the three B's, even if Nietzsche's characterization of Brahms isn't entirely flattering), and so on---it feels about right.
It seems that his dislike of Wagner is rooted in profound disappointment, much like his dislike of women, only the disappointment is less rejection than the trend of conservatism (in the sense contemporary to him) and catholicism evinced by Wagner's later works? His critiques of the middle works seem relatively perfunctory---not as much to critique in works that are admittedly underdeveloped---while his critiques of the works I happen to love, Tristan und Isolde and the first three parts of the Ring Cycle, seem quite....specialized? Like, Tristan is overindulgent, the Ring is overidealistic, and those are precisely the things that make me enjoy them, or make Nietzsche, perhaps, give thanks to Wagner, and still recommend him to philosophers?
But more general critiques---Wagner not being true to his audience, Wagner being distinctly unmusical and un-German (especially when compared to the three B's, even if Nietzsche's characterization of Brahms isn't entirely flattering), and so on---it feels about right.