In Verdi, the elephants are in Aida. In Wagner, the elephant in the room is a pamphlet: “Judaism and Music.” It seems the Rosetta Stone of Wagner scholarship, the central text that lays bare what lurks hidden in his life and work. Beyond a doubt, it is an egregious text, unforgivable and dangerous. Less egregious is a necessary preliminary topic: Wagner’s actual relationships with actual Jews. Though it, too has long excited rancorous debate, there exists a plethora of letters and incidents challenging the conventional wisdom that Wagner, in real life, was a “monster.”
And now we have a pertinent exercise in historical fiction: the novel Parsifal’s Seduction. Its topic is Hermann Levi, the Jewish conductor of the premiere performances of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. Its author, the music historian Laurence Dreyfus, first waded into the Levi-Wagner relationship in 1994 with “Hermann Levi’s Shame and Parsifal’s Guilt: A Critique of Essentialism in Biography and Criticism.”[1] His central purpose was to challenge “essentialists” reducing Wagner to a demagogue whose racism poisoned Parsifal and its Jewish first conductor.
Dreyfus’s article ultimately yielded a notable book: Wagner and the Erotic Impulse (2010). It made the seemingly obvious point that, both inherently and historically, Wagner’s erotics are more important to his operas than Wagner’s anti-Semitism. But this argument falls hopelessly far outside the mainstream discourse; it is not a perspective that a young Wagner scholar, seeking recognition and promotion, would likely adopt. The book’s most gripping pages, however, tackle the topic of anti-Semitism head on. Dreyfus’s novel, newly published in English (the original edition having been in German), in effect argues even more emphatically for a reconsideration of Wagner the man.
* * *
Though Richard Wagner’s ongoing personal and professional relationships with Jews (following Sartre and Amos Elon, here defined as those considered by others as Jews, irrespective of their religious or ethnic allegiance[2]) are sometimes dismissed as token or marginal, they were not: the puzzle of his anti-Semitic writings is real. The most copious description Wagner’s personal deportment known to me – Angelo Neumann’s book-length Personal Recollections of Wagner (1908) – was left by the gifted Jewish impresario who as director of the Leipzig Opera engaged the 28-year-old Anton Seidl at Wagner’s urging, and who with Seidl conducting toured a Wagner ensemble through Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and England.[3] These 135 stage performances and 58 concerts, beginning in 1882, both introduced the Ring and insured its best reception. Neumann recounts the crucial 1878 meeting at Wahnfried at which he conversed with Wagner for the first time:
“Coming directly toward me in his most gracious manner, he said, . . . ‘I can see that you’re thoroughly in earnest – you don’t look like a man who would take that trip from Leipzig to Bayreuth in the dead of winter simply for amusement.’ Then he picked up his little son Siegfried (then a child of seven), took him on his knee, and turned to me, saying, ‘Well, what have you to say to me?’ . . .
“My enthusiasm for his work lent conviction to my words, and I could see I had made a favorable impression. His eyes sparkled with satisfaction when I declared I should never consent to give Die Walküre first and follow it with Rheingold, as other managers had invariably done. At his assurance he interrupted me with an excited gesture and turning to his wife, said, ‘Listen, Cosima, to what Neumann is saying. He means to give the cycle complete, and in sequence, and has even set the days of each performance. But I’m afraid he’ll break his word as all the rest have done.’ Then turning again to me, he continued: ‘If you were really to do that, you’d be the first sensible theatrical manager I ever met.’ . . . .
“He scanned me keenly again for awhile, then turning to his wife, asked: ‘What would you say about it? Shall I trust this man?’ After her affirmative answer and the few sympathetic words she spoke in my favor, the Master turned again to me and began a series of questions with regard to our facilities for staging, the orchestra, and our singers. . . .
“”After we had settled a number of artistic and business particulars to the satisfaction of both sides, Wagner, beaming with benignity, waved me to his seat at the desk and asked me to draw up the article of our contract. Whereupon I remarked: ‘I should rather you sat at the desk, Master, and let me dictate to you!’ He looked at me in blank surprise, yet did not seem offended. ‘What!’ he said. ‘You mean to do the dictating and I’m to take your orders down?’ ‘Yes, Master, exactly. For in the first place I shall dictate such terms as will be to the best advantage of both sides, and furthermore I shall then have a document from your hand which will always be of inestimable value to me.’”
Neumann attended the premiere of Parsifal at Bayreuth four years later; he experienced ”a lofty ecstasy. . . . As to the interpretation . . . above all Emil Scaria’s Gurnemanz was a masterpiece.” As Scaria had suffered a breakdown performing Wotan for Neumann in London, his achievement in Parsifal was the more remarkable. Days after that, this topic surfaced over dinner at Wahnfried:
“Our talk at the table touched upon Scaria’s singing of Gurnemanz, and I must have expressed myself with great enthusiasm, for the Master suddenly sprang from his chair, rushed around to me and embrace me, saying over and over again, ‘No, Neumann – you can’t know what a joy it is to hear you acknowledge this! I was afraid you’d criticize him because of that little contretemps in London. You certainly are a capital fellow!’ . . . ‘But Master,’ I answered, ‘it goes without saying that Scaria’s Gurnemanz is simply unsurpassable!’ Wagner wrung my hand eagerly, and turning to Liszt, he said, ‘What do you think of that, haven’t I always told you that he was the one to depend upon?’ He was as pleased as a child; and I have felt that since that day the Master’s confidence in me was perfect.”
Neumann returned to Wahnfried to finalize his contract to tour the Ring. He also sought the exclusive privilege of presenting Parsifal outside Bayreuth.
“As we proceeded to business he signed at once my contract for the Ring; and now came the turn of the Parsifal agreement. Would the Master consent, as he had informally offered? . . . He was just about the sign the contract, when suddenly he paused. With his pen poised over the paper he sat there lost in reflection; then turning slowly to me, he said in a low, gentle voice: ‘Neumann, I did promise you, — and if you insist, I’ll sign the contract. But you would be doing me a great favor if you should not insist this time. I’ve pledged you my word – no one else shall ever have Parsifal but you!’
“I answered: ‘Master, if you say I should be doing you a great favor, then naturally that is quite enough for me!’ Wagner wrung my hand and kissed me eagerly, saying with touching emphasis, ‘Thank you, Neumann, thank you!’ and so closed one of the most important incidents of my life.
“My little son was waiting for me in the shady walk leading down to the gates of Wahnfried, and as he came to meet me I told him of our interview, and added, ‘Karl, my boy, today, when I relinquished Parsifal, I abandoned the prospect of many millions.’ ‘Father,’ said the little fellow (he was then just seven), ‘it’s worth more than millions, isn’t it, to have Richard Wagner thank you like that!’”
Wagner had decided to reserve Parsifal for Bayreuth.
The Neumann/Wagner relationship suffered a single lapse: in Berlin, at the close of a Götterdämmerung performance in 1881, Wagner took the stage and was expected to speak –- but instead turned and left while Neumann addressed the audience. Neumann felt humiliated. Wagner sent Seidl to explain that standing alongside Neumann and the singers he had suffered a “heart attack,” but Neumann was not consoled. Wagner then wrote to Neumann:
“My dear Neumann
“I can hardly say whether it was my own excitement of the surprise of your sudden tribute that caused the violent spasm which drove me from the stage last night: I only know that every one spoke of my paleness –and the feeble condition of my heart is well known. You should have known better than to count on me under such circumstances, especially as my wife has told you of these attacks, though I begged her not to. I am sorry that you refuse to take our word for this matter.
“The ‘insult’ you speak of vanishes utterly as soon as you accept my word for this, as I have tried by every means in my power to have you see.
“I have given every possible evidence, both in word and in deed, of my sentiments toward you and your entire staff; and no momentary spectacular action could call this now in question.
“First, I wish to calm your feelings on this vexed question, — and I for my part see no reason for breaking off our personal relations, — and then presently I shall have something further (thoroughly friendly) to tell you.
“With warmest greetings,
“Sincerely yours,
“Richard Wagner”
The relationship gradually regained its warmth. But it was not until Wagner’s sudden death from cardiac arrest that Neumann “was finally convinced of the tragic sincerity of [Wagner’s] words.” The news of Wagner’s passing had been conveyed to him by an associate. It so stunned Neumann that he “reeled into the next room and clutched the bed.” Neumann and Seidl choreographed an impromptu mourning ceremony in Aachen, where the troupe was giving the Ring. Neumann was unhappy with the funeral at Bayreuth: “I felt within my soul that a god had left this earth, — and they gave him a funeral whose pomp befitted a ‘prominent citizen of Bayreuth’!”
Jewishness and anti-Semitism surface only once in Neumann’s 318-page memoir. In 1881, it was rumored that Wagner was party to a faction of anti-Semites in Berlin, where the Ring was scheduled. Wagner wrote to Neumann: “Nothing is further from my thoughts than this same ‘anti-Semitic’ movement.” There can be no doubt that Neumann regarded his association with Wagner with more humility, pride, and gratitude than any other aspect of his long and successful career.[4]
* * *
No other Jewish acquaintance or associate publicly recounted their dealings with Wagner in such detail. But there are other such relationships, uncomplicated (insofar as one can tell) by anti-Semitism or Jewishness.
Samuel Lehrs – born Levi – was among Wagner’s closest associates during his Paris sojourn of 1839 to 1842. He encouraged Wagner to read ancient Greek literature and inspired him to fuse the legendary Tannhäuser with the Minnesinger Heinrich von Ofterdingen. In his autobiography, Wagner remembered Lehrs’ as “one of the most beautiful friendships of my life.” Lehrs died young, in 1843.
The critic/conductor Heinrich Porges produced a Wagner concert in Vienna in 1863. He helped Wagner sell his effects after Wagner fled his Viennese creditors. Wagner appreciated Porges’ efforts; he also admired an essay Porges wrote about Tristan und Isolde. In 1864, he wrote to his Jewish friend:
“My dear Heinrich
“Now let us be serious! My young King wants me to have everything I need. I need a secretary, but of the kind that I need. He must be able to deal with my business correspondence for me, keep my manuscripts in order, make literary and musical fair copies, and make arrangements of my scores etc. – in a word, he must be completely versatile. Do you wish to take this on? . . . You can live with me: here, as in my own house, allowance will be made for your accommodation (with piano). . . .
“If you accept, you will make me very, very happy! You know of course that the secretary is merely an excuse for having my friend here with me. If you wish to bind your life to mine (and how long will this life of mine last?), you will, I hope, never have cause to regret it. And how important, how splendid, and how reassuring it will be for me always to have my witty and friendly companion here beside me! . . . I yearn desperately for someone of your stamp, and – given the man I am – I suffer from this deprivation.” [May 28, 1864]
Though Porges turned down Wagner’s offer to join him in Munich, he wound up Wagner’s assistant during rehearsals for the 1876 premiere of the Ring cycle at Bayreuth. At Wagner’s request, he chronicled the rehearsals in detail so as to “establish a fixed tradition” — to this day, a well-known account. Porges again assisted with Parsifal in 1882. The eulogy at Porges’s funeral, in 1900, was delivered by Siegfried Wagner.
The soprano Lilli Lehmann,[5]who sang in the 1876 Bayreuth Ring, was an object of Wagner’s intense affection. In her memoirs, Lehmann charmingly recalls Wagner as an aspirant father figure (he was 35 years her senior) whom her mother handled with exquisite care because of his devouring charisma. But Lehmann knew how to stand her ground: no less than Cosima (with whom she feuded), she did not suffer fools. Remembering Wagner in 1913, Lehmann wrote:
“Wagner was goodness and consideration itself to all his artists [at the 1876 Ring]. He was most especially so to me. His penetrating eye often rested tenderly and searchingly on me as though he would pierce me through and through. He was troubled incessantly by others about little things, and, if he then occasionally flew into a passion, it was not to be wondered at. Only a few knew of the immense labor of this man. Even if he had trod on corpses to reach his goal, who would have blamed him for it? But Wagner did not do that. He exerted himself honestly, and often with endless patience, to see justice done to each, and to bring everything, even the most disagreeable happening, with the exercise of much skill, to a good issue. I have never experienced his ‘ingratitude,’ and I never observed it towards others. In order to create Bayreuth he had to believe in himself, and had to ask sacrifices of those who were able to make them. There were cares enough by his side, of which we had no suspicion. He did not succeed in confining his broad mind in narrow limits. We knew well, even then, that the money for the enormous expenses could be raised only through revenues that were refused. . . . It is remarkable that Wagner did not often lose courage entirely; he had enough against him, but his good humor and energy, thank God, always conquered afresh.”
Of the Jews closest to Wagner, none was more widely esteemed than Karl Tausig – considered to have been Liszt’s most remarkable pupil. He was also a student of mathematics, the natural sciences, and French philosophy. He died of typhus, only 29 years old, in 1871. Liszt sent him to Wagner was when Tausig was 17. Weeks later, Wagner reported his first impressions:
“You have given me great pleasure with little Tausig. . . . He is a terrible youth. I am astonished, alternately, by his highly developed intellect and his wild ways. He will become something extraordinary, if he becomes anything at all. When I see him smoking frightfully strong cigars and drink no end of tea, while as yet there is not the slightest hope of a beard, I am frightened like the hen when she sees the young duckling, which she has hatched by mistake, take to the water. . . . I should without hesitation have taken him into my house, if we had not mutually molested each other by pianoforte playing. So I have found him a room in a little hole close to me, where he is to sleep and work, doing his other daily business at my house. . . . He sits down to table every day stating that he has no appetite at all, which pleases me all the less, because the reason is the cheese and the sweets he has eaten. In this manner he tortures me continually and devours my biscuits, which my wife doles out grudgingly even to me. He hates walking, and yet declares that he would like to come with me when I propose to leave him at home. After the first half hour he lags behind as if he had walked four hours. My childless marriage is thus suddenly blessed with an interesting phenomenon, and I take in, in rapid doses, the quintessence of paternal cares and trouble. All this has done me a great deal of good; it was a splendid diversion, for which . . . I have to thank you. You knew what I wanted. Of course the youth pleases me immensely in other ways, and, although he acts like a naughty boy, he talks like an old man of pronounced character. Whatever subject I may broach with him, he is sure to follow me with clearness of mind and remarkable receptivity. At the same time it touches and moves me when this boy shows such deep, tender feeling, such large sympathy, that he captivates me irresistibly. . . . I must always think of you and of the strange influence which you exercise over so many, and often considerably gifted, young men. I cannot but call you happy, and genuinely admire your harmonious being and existence.” [July 2, 1858]
Eleven years later, Tausig attended Lohengrin in Berlin and reported “huge success . . . all Jews reconciled.” What Tausig meant was that Jews had reconciled with the republication of “Judaism and Music.” Wagner replied to Tausig as follows:
“Of course, your assurance that all Jews are reconciled with me also had its effect on me. It would certainly be no bad thing if my brochure were actually properly read by sensible and intelligent Jews, but it seems as though people have forgotten how to read. . . . When I reread it, I am bound to testify that there is probably no one who has shown more objective calm than I in depicting and discussing the history of such unheard-of persecution and of the disparagement that I have encountered, a disparagement that has been as exhaustive as it has been unrelenting. . . the unprecedented insolence of the Viennese press on the occasion of Die Meistersinger, the continual, brazen lie-mongering about me, and its truly destructive effects have finally persuade me to take this step . . . But I have now given some really intelligent Jew all the material he needs to give the whole question a new and, no doubt, beneficial twist, and to assume a highly significant attitude towards this most important of all our cultural concerns. I know there must be such a person: if he does not dare to do what it is his business to do, then it is with immeasurable sadness that I shall have to conceded that I was right to describe Judaism – or more especially German Judaism – as I did . . . But one needs courage as well as mere presumption, for I take the matter very seriously. – When you tell me that Lohengrin has reconciled the Jews with me, what I understand by this is really only that my brochure is regarded as over-hasty and, as such, is forgiven me. I do not find this every comforting. I have already encountered a very great deal of good-naturedness, especially on the part of Jews. Let one of them show real courage, only then will I rejoice!” [April 1869]
This notion that Jews could benefit from “Judaism and Music” was not new. Of the 1869 republication, Wagner had written that he undertook it with misgivings not about the response of his “enemies” (“as I have here no residue of hope”), but of certain Jewish “cherished friends” on whom the Jewish problem weighed “far more heavily” than on “native Germans.”[6] A Wagnerian dialectic of sympathy and castigation played out especially in the case of his two closest Jewish associates who were the least comfortable being Jewish: the pianist Joseph Rubinstein and the conductor Hermann Levi. Rubinstein was a disturbed Russian pianist who in 1871, at the age of 25, wrote to Wagner “demanding salvation” from his Jewishness through employment at Bayreuth. He was so engaged and became Wagner’s “court pianist” – a prominent part of the Bayreuth entourage. In this capacity, his important responsibilities included the preparation of piano transcriptions. He committed suicide a year after Wagner’s death. Wagner considered his own behavior toward Rubinstein sympathetic and “humane.” At the same time, Wagner and Cosima did not conceal that they also regarded Rubinstein as a tribulation.
The relationship to Levi, finally, is by far the most scrutinized of all Wagner’s dealings with the Jews within his circle. When King Ludwig agreed to fund the Parsifal premiere at Bayreuth in 1882, he stipulated that Wagner use “the orchestra, the singers and the artistic personnel of the [Munich] court theater.” That this stipulation necessarily included the court conductor – Hermann Levi – is open to doubt. [7] Wagner appreciated the incongruity of appointing a Jew to preside over a religious drama saturated with Christian iconography. But he also esteemed Levi as a musician of high skill and intelligence – and he named Levi his Parsifal conductor. Levi, for his part, was a confirmed Wagnerite who had switched allegiance from Brahms in the 1870s. On April 13, 1882, he wrote to his father, the chief rabbi of Giessen: “The most beautiful thing that I have experienced in my life is that it was granted to me to come close to such a man [as Wagner], and I thank God daily for this. So you go ahead and like him too!” Rabbi Levi proceeded to Bayreuth, where he ate at a kosher soup kitchen. The rabbi also had occasion to attend Parsifal and to shake Wagner’s hand.
That Wagner wanted Levi baptized did not seem to disturb their relationship; Levi ignored this request. He did not ignore, however, an anonymous letter Wagner produced on June 29, 1881, accusing Levi of having an affair with Cosima and demanding that another Parsifal conductor be found. The history of this notorious episode is tangled. Wagner asked Levi to read the letter and pressed him when Levi remained silent. Levi was offended and left Bayreuth. Wagner then sent a telegram:
“Dearest and best of friends,
“Much as I respect all your feelings, you are not making things easy either for yourself or for us! What could so easily inhibit us in our dealings with you is the fact that you are always so gloomily introspective! We are entirely at one in thinking that the whole world should be told about these Schweineris Schweinerei[8] but what this means is that you must stop running away from us, thereby allowing such stupid suspicions to arise. For God’s sake come back at once, and get to know us properly! You do not need to lose any of your faith, but merely to acquire the courage of your convictions!
“Perhaps some great change is about to take place in your life – but at all events – you are my Parsifal conductor! So, come on! Come on!” [July 1, 1881]
— whereupon Levi returned to Bayreuth. As recorded by Levi, Wagner also said: “When you return to Munich, give Herr . . . a slap in the face and tell him it comes from me. And thereafter the matter will be settled once and for all.” And so it seems that both Wagner and Levi suspected the identity of the letter-writer. Laurence Dreyfus, in his 1994 essay on the Wagner-Levi relationship, comments:
“‘Neither Cosima nor Richard Wagner seem to have believed that the letter would make such a disturbing impression on Levi, and completely missed the fact that it was largely Wagner’s humiliating behavior in showing Levi the letter and connecting it with his intimations of disloyalty that so disconcerted the Capellmeister. Cosima’s diaries report the incident in this way:
“‘Around lunchtime [Richard] comes to me in a state of some excitement. ‘Here’s a nice letter.’ I: ‘Something bad?’ ‘Ph, you’ll see.’ I read it, am at first astonished, but then join in R.’s lively merriment. But when the letter is shown to the poor conductor, he cannot master his feelings, it seems that such instances of baseness are something new to him!’
“The next day’s entries mention ‘poor friend Levi – who cannot recover his composure’ and the fact that Wagner had sent to the telegram to ‘friend Levi,’ after which Cosima comments. ‘Life, and people who expect something from it! On 2 July, following Levi’s return to Wahnfried, everyone is seemingly restored to good spirits . . . ‘” [9]
This contretemps is routinely read as a powerful indictment of Wagner the bad man, but is at least as plausibly read as evidence of Wagner being merely rash and obtuse. Levi continued to conduct Parsifal at Bayreuth until 1894.
That Levi’s relationship to his own Jewishness was cloudy is neither surprising nor unusual. The nineteenth century was a period of turbulent transition – of civil emancipation – for European Jews. Their increased mobility was social, economic, and educational. In Germany, political anti-Semitism was one response, integration into the elite another. Among Jews swept into the mainstream, “assimilation” could mean many things. At one extreme, there were Zionists intent on finding a Jewish homeland far from the ghetto. At the other, there were Jews who renounced their Jewishness. There were also, as in the well-known case of Otto Weininger, Jewish suicides. The rejection of bygone identities as parochial was pervasive. The very question “Who is a Jew?” became unanswerable. Stresses of realignment were a necessary and exigent component of the Jewish condition.[10]
The case of Hermann Levi was of a rabbi’s son who left the faith, a convert to secular Kunst who nonetheless remained closely in touch with his father’s world, even to the point of serving as musical advisor to Munich’s official Jewish Community (the chief cantor of which was known at home to sing Wolfram’s “Song to the Evening Star” from Tannhäuser and Hans Sachs’s “Schusterlied” from Die Meistersinger). The “painful mental anguish” Wagner (and many others) observed in Levi, no matter how much a product of Levi’s Jewishness, was not a product of Wagner’s anti-Semitism; it far preceded his conversion to Wagnerism. Levi told Clara Schumann in 1865 that his inner being was “a screeching dissonance that I am incapable of resolving; inner harmony remains an unattainable ideal.” When years later Wagner witnessed this condition, he may have aggravated it. As probably, his expressions of confidence in Levi, and of intimate friendship, alleviated it. An April 20, 1882 Wagner letter to Levi begins “Dear alter ago.” [11]
***
In Laurence Dreyfus’s novel, Hermann Levi produces Wagner’s 1882 letter in the course of a bristling conversation about Wagner’s relationships with Jews. “It was the greatest honour life ever bestowed on me,” he says.
Centrally, Parsifal’s Seduction deals sequentially with Levi’s relationships with Johannes Brahms, then Richard Wagner. As is well known, Levi controversially switched loyalties. But his friendship with Brahms had been more intimate. Dreyfus depicts Levi as a man tormented by suppressed and incompletely fulfilled homo-erotic passions. The “Judaism in Music” pamphlet barely comes up. When it does, Dreyfus writes:
“Wagner’s comportment . . . suggested indeed that his criticism of Judaism proceeded from the noblest motives. At least one could detect no sign of antipathy exhibited toward Jews in person. How else, indeed, would one make sense of his cordial reception of Hermann. Wagner had been exceptionally touched last year, he said, by Hermann’s refusal to conduct the unauthorized performances of the Rheingold and the Valkyrie given in Munich. Such a conscientious stand in the face of considerable pressure showed a commitment to basic principles of decency, to say nothing of the regard Hermann had shown for the composer’s wishes. It as the very least one could do, Hermann thought to himself, noting with some satisfaction how he’d spurned the sizable honorarium with which Munich tried to lure him. “(p. 100)
Though this may seem sophistry, it’s a view of Wagner’s essay that was hardly unknown prior to the Holocaust. There is, for instance, Henry Finck, a leading American Wagnerite who in 1893 wrote: “Among Wagner’s . . . personal friends there were many Jews – men and women who were intelligent enough to see that his tirades were directed against certain disagreeable general traits of their nation, and therefore not applicable to individuals who were free from those traits.”
Elsewhere, Dreyfus – based on Frithjof Haas’s Levi biography (2012) — has Wagner compliment Levi for not Germanizing his name: “I want you to know I consider it a sign of great dignity that you haven’t changed it to suit current fashion. . . . A less principled man who finds himself as much in the public eye as you do would surely have altered Levi to Lord knows what else – Löwe or Lewin or some such thing” (p. 104). Addressing Wagner’s urgings that Levi convert, Dreyfus writes:
“Wagner was far from a doctrinal Christian himself, and Hermann could count on his fingers the few times he saw the family go to church. Yet the Master had it in his head that the mysterious content of Parsifal would be impenetrable to someone distant from the Christian notions of sin, repentance, and salvation. An unbaptized and circumcised Levi therefore ran the risk of missing crucial elements necessary to the portray of the Third Act. How could a Jew ever achieve the proper rendering of Gurnemanz’s ‘the Redeemer himself on the cross’? Not to mention the bliss of the Good Friday meadows . . . “(p. 174)
The novel’s most startling outburst is reserved for Clara Schumann, in a letter to Brahms regretting Levi’s susceptibility to “the spell of the dreaded Wagner.” “He actually travelled all the way to Munich to attend the dress rehearsal of Rheingold. The uncontrolled enthusiasm in his letter frightens me to be honest. Do try to exercise some restraint over Levi, won’t you?” (In an actual letter to Levi, she called his “Wagnerei” a “severe illness to which you’ve succumbed with body and soul.”)
In an Afterword, Dreyfus says: “Without disparaging historical writing proper, reinventing the past can uncover truths – especially complex truths – which history skirts in the name of caution.” That has certainly been my experience writing historical novels, based in New York City, about Gustav and Alma Mahler (The Marriage) and Anton Seidl (The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the Gilded Age — in which Wagner occasionally puts in an appearance). As Wagner’s protégé and surrogate son, Seidl – in my novel – was a man who never recuperated from losing his prodigious mentor. Wagner had looked after Seidl. He was good to him.
Conventional wisdom holds that Wagner was self-serving and manipulative in his friendships. Whether any of these fictionalized treatments will impact on historical inquiry is a good question. They should.
***
For another blog denying that Wagner was a “monster,” click here for my “Wall Street Journal” review of Simon Callow’s “Being Wagner” (2018). My review reads in part:
In 1866, a Munich newspaper reported that Minna Wagner, the recently deceased wife of the composer Richard Wagner, had lived in “direst penury.” She was reduced to accepting poor relief notwithstanding “momentary” support “on the part of her [estranged] husband.” Never mind that a letter signed by Minna herself had stated that the voluntary annual allowance she received from her husband had permanently freed her from financial cares. The newspaper claimed— falsely—that the letter had been written for her in order to conceal the facts.
This instance of fake news was not a novel occurrence in Wagner’s harried life. And 135 years after his death he is harried still by the mandatory cartoon that makes him a “monster.”
There are three basic sources for depicting Wagner the man. First there are his operas, which remain as vital to the Western cultural canon as ever. Second there is his personal behavior, copiously recorded in letters and other written accounts. Third there are his essays, notoriously including the egregiously anti-Semitic “Judaism in Music” of 1850. Though any portrait of Wagner that begins with the essays will necessarily be prejudiced against him, this is a typical route. There are even influential writers on Wagner who disdain considering the operas altogether.
As it happens, the operas are saturated with complex self-portraiture, and a governing motif is Mitleid—compassion. Like it or not, Wagner’s characters specialize in empathetic comprehension. And any perusal of Wagner’s more than 12,000 letters will confirm that this humane aptitude was not foreign to Wagner the man. His many heart-breaking letters to Minna document astute, guilt-ridden understanding of their failed marriage, an understanding that impelled him to generously support an unhappy and unpleasant woman even when his own financial resources were nearly barren.
And Wagner was uncommonly rich in friendships. . . .
The Wagner literature disposes of Neumann, Hermann Levi and other Jews in the Wagner orbit as studies in self-hatred. Such an approach is patronizing and obtuse. A fairer question is why Wagner wrote and spoke such intolerable nonsense about Jews. Reasons of a sort may be adduced. But the simple fact is that his evil anti-Semitism does not align with his actual behavior. That behavior is often elusive because Wagner was a consummate actor. He wore many faces. Was he a master imposter, or was he (as his letters suggest) helplessly inhabited by a repertoire of demonic personae? . . .
Mr. Callow is seduced by the ironic panache of Wagner’s self-descriptions, the most memorable of which are nearly Dostoyevskian exercises in hilarious self-humiliation. Mr. Callow’s compression of these stories—their merciless expansiveness is itself comedic—does not do them justice. A greater injustice is that the derisive tone Wagner applies to himself turns patronizing when applied to Wagner by another, lesser writer.
That Mr. Callow’s breezy portrait of Wagner is disrespectful will not be noticed by readers brainwashed by the monster cartoon. A small minority will think twice and recognize that Mr. Callow is glibly passing judgment on a supreme psychologist whose distressing and self-distressing gift was to peer more profoundly into the human psyche than any of his contemporaries—a predicament that left him lonely, restless and insatiable. . . .
Central to Wagner’s identity was his unwavering recognition of the magnitude of his genius and the conditions for its proper cultivation. He was convinced that the world owed him a living. If he were to pursue conducting, or some other gainful employment, he could not compose. As a result, he was frequently impoverished and ill, vilified and derided. His enemies were real, powerful and numerous. Mr. Callow here discovers “a beady instinct for protecting his gift, his genius, and what fed it.” He argues that when Wagner “sued for favours, he had two modes: one, groveling, the other haughty.” Wagner was himself the keenest analyst of his extreme instability. “What makes you see or wish to see a wise man in me? How can I be a wise man, I who am myself only when in a state of raving frenzy?” Mr. Callow cites this frank testimony to an intimate correspondent only to discover evidence of “the unrelenting soap opera” of Wagner’s “emotional life.” . . .
The closest Mr. Callow comes to plausibly evoking Wagner the man is when he quotes those who admired him. Here, for instance, is the dramatist Édouard Schuré: “To look at him was to see turn by turn in the same visage the front face of Faust and the profile of Mephistopheles . . . one stood dazzled before that exuberant and protean nature, ardent, personal, excessive in everything, yet marvelously equilibrated by the predominance of a devouring intellect.” And here, balancing the books, is Mr. Callow’s follow-up: “Wagner had, it seemed, no inhibitions whatever, his qualities and defects on open display, to the delight of some and the deep repugnance of others.” . . .
It is wholly understandable that the shadow of the Holocaust has for more than half a century blackened our view of Wagner the man. Someday a revisionist wave will surface. But not yet.
[1] Cambridge Opera Journal, v. 6, no. 2.
[2] Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933 (2002), p. 5.
[3] A less reliable (but equally admiring) book-length memoir is Wagner as I Knew Him (1892) by Ferninand Praeger, who hosted Wagner in London in 1855. Praeger, too, was Jewish.
[4] Excerpts from Neumann’s Personal Recollections of Wagner (1908): pp. xxx, 231, 234, 36, 171, 270.
[5] Though Lehmann rarely figures in lists of “Wagner’s Jews,” that she was of Jewish extraction was well-known in New York.
[6] In My Life (Cambridge University Press, 1983), Wagner observes Joseph Joachim’s discomfort with “Judaism in Music” (p. 502). The passage is worth quoting in full: “Bulow explained [Joachim’s] rather modest and defensive attitude as resulting from a certain melancholy shyness toward me, because of the opinions I had expressed in my notorious article on ‘Judaism.’ In presenting Bulow with one of his compositions for perusal, he had asked him whether I might possibly find anything ‘Jewish’ in it. This gentle, even rather moving trait in Joachim’s character impelled me to give him a warm hug and a fond word of farewell. I have never seen him since then but have heard the most astonishing tales over the years of his inimical attitude towards Liszt and myself, which he began to strike not long after this meeting.” Wagner’s surprise to discover Jews of his acquaintance upset about what he had written about Jews is characteristic. He expected them to agree with him.
[7] Laurence Dreyfus, Wagner and the Erotic Impulse (2010), p. 130.
[8] I.e., a gross insult – “an elocution by which Wagner meant to assure Levi that he (Wagner) gave no serious thought either to the rumor of Cosima’s sexual impropriety with Levi or to the objection that Parsifal should not be conducted by a Jew.” (Dreyfus, p. 128)
[9] Laurence Dreyfus, “Hermann Levi’s Shame and Parsifal’s Guilt: A Critique of Essentialism in Biography and Criticism” (Cambridge Opera Journal, v. 6, no. 2).
[10] An unsurpassed portrait of Jews in fin-de-siecle flux is Arthur Schnitzler’s novel The Road into the Open (1908), in which a Gentile protagonist interacts with Viennese Jews of every stripe, each of whom exists in a state of tension conducive to creativity or paralysis, exuberance or morbidity.
[11] Peter Gay’s influential essay “Hermann Levi: A Study in Service and Self-Hatred” (in Freud, Jews, and Other Germans [1978]) is a lesson in the pitfalls of an ideological agenda. As Gay (as I had occasion to discover in Bayreuth years ago) was little acquainted with Wagner’s operas, he relied upon writings and received wisdom to frame his Levi portrait; that Levi considered Wagner far greater than Brahms seemed prima facie evidence of a pathology. In the June 1881 letter incient, Gay discerns a “frightening psychological abyss” based in contempt of self. Wagner more esteemed Levi than Gay does. A postscript to Gay’s article is Hilan Warshaw’s “’No One Can Serve Our Cause Better than You’ — Wagner’s Jewish Collaborators after 1869” (wagnerspectrum 2013). Though Warshaw concedes that “Wagner was indeed capable of friendships with Jews in which their Jewishness was not a central factor,” he reads Wagner’s dealings with Jews as double dealings – there is invariably a manipulative subtext. It is simply assumed that with Jews Wagner could never be wholly sincere. Of Rubinstein and Levi, Warshaw presumes that “they seem to have accepted [Wagner’s] theory of Jewishness as a tragic misfortune – and accepted him as their best hope of redemption” – an observation that deprives both men of agency. Warshaw’s statement that “the Wagner household was something of a magnet for lonesome, emotionally vulnerable young men,” with its implied derogation of such young men as Seidl and Tausig, is equally presumptuous.
Leave a Reply