The German Genius

incorporated into the libretto of The Ring , where many of the characters are “gods at an early stage of the world’s development.” 10 They are, in a Feuerbachian sense, projections of universal human characteristics and desires and not to be understood as inhabiting a transcendental world.
    Though this is fine as far as it goes, it omits several other elements in Wagner’s idea of musical drama that add levels of complexity. The first of these was nationalism, which we need to remind ourselves was then a left-of-center cause, drawing its power as a reaction to those political conservatives who wished to preserve the separateness of the smaller ancien régimes, each with its own ruling elite and, more often than not, archaic feudal institutions. In line with this, music had its own nationalist elements. Wagner, in particular, thought that, after Mozart and Beethoven, it was absurd that Germans should still place such a high premium on French opera. After Bach and Haydn, the German tradition was now the greater one. Die Meistersinger was his answer. 11
    Another complicating factor was what has been called Wagner’s “metaphysical turn.” According to his autobiography, the turning point was the right-wing antiparliamentary coup in Paris in 1851 when Louis Napoleon seized power. Wagner concluded from this that the world he wished to see exist would never come about by political action and that the human condition is essentially unchangeable. He turned away from politics, and became more inward-than outward-looking. 12 One final factor in Wagner’s psychological makeup was his view of ancient Greece. When ancient Greek civilization disintegrated, he said, the essentially humanistic Greek gods, and the most important subject matter of all—myth—was no longer available to art. 13
    T HE “G REAT E VENT”
     
    In many aspects of his thought, Schopenhauer had grasped most of the insights Wagner had arrived at, albeit by a different route. The minute he encountered Schopenhauer, Wagner realized not only how far ahead the other man was, but also that the philosopher’s German prose was itself “a work of art.” In the last half of 1854, Wagner was at work on the music for the beginning of The Valkyrie when he chanced upon Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation . Wagner, who was not in the best of health when he encountered Schopenhauer (he had a boil on his leg), never let go of this book and dipped into it often. 14
    The World as Will and Representation had been published as long ago as 1818 but had hardly set the Rhine on fire. In April 1853, however, in the radical Westminster Review , the assistant editor of which was the Germanophile George Eliot, an article titled “Iconoclasm in German Philosophy” appeared over the name of John Oxenford. Oxenford gave a commendably clear summary of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, so much so that the article was swiftly translated and published in the Vossische Zeitung , meaning the translation was seen by a far wider public than the original. Schopenhauer caught on and suddenly, in his midsixties, he became famous after a lifetime of being sidelined. 15
    It was this sudden burst of interest in Schopenhauer that brought him to Wagner’s attention, with the result that, at Christmas 1854, Wagner sent the philosopher a copy of the libretto of The Ring , inscribed “With reverence and gratitude.” Unfortunately, Schopenhauer took offense because Wagner did not enclose a letter with the libretto, and neither then nor subsequently did he have any dealings with Wagner. Bryan Magee again: “There is something almost unbearably poignant about the fact that Schopenhauer went to his grave not knowing that one of the greatest works of art of all time had already come into being under the influence of his philosophy.” 16
    M USIC AS M ETAPHYSICS
     
    Schopenhauer believed Kant was the most consequential philosopher of all time, certainly since the Greeks, and saw himself as carrying on the Kantian tradition. The single idea he found most seductive was Kant’s notion that “total reality is comprised of a part which can be experienced by us and a part which can not,” the division of “the phenomenal” from “the noumenal” (see Chapter 5). Building on this, Schopenhauer’s philosophy consisted of four intertwined entities. He thought, first, that Kant had it wrong when he said that, outside the empirical world, there are things in the plural. For one