Art and Revolution 2024 (III)
In this final part of our series on Wagner’s 1849 essay “Art and Revolution”, we will reflect and explore what we might take forwards for our art and networks today. If you haven’t read parts 1 and 2, start here and here.
First, let’s review some of the key points from Wagner’s essay.
Wagner periodises Art history by claiming Athenian Tragedy reached a pinnacle that affirmed the Beauty of Life and Death in this world, without needing to reach for another one. He claims Rome sank into a vulgar materialist decadence, preferring the bloody spectacle of gladiators and the abstract speculation of neoPlatonic philosphy over a vital and beautiful art culture. He claims Christianity emerged as a reaction against Roman decadence, turning against worldly life in disgust in response to the Roman carnage. He claims the medieval soul battled between Christian transcendentalism and pagan affirmation. He claims the Renaissance saw two new forces: a return to Greek Apollonian beauty, and the powerful injection of Commerce and Industry. Nonetheless, he views the Enlightenment as still too wedded to Christian world-denial, with the capitalisation of Art still afraid of what a spiritualised Beauty might mean. He views the age of Revolution, beginning with and inspired by 1789, as carrying the highest hopes for the future of mankind and a universal humanity, final freed from slavery and serfdom. However, he believes both liberal capitalism and socialism to be dead ends, aimed more at levelling all down to the status of slaves who care only for material satisfaction, than lifting universal mankind to a spiritual Art of Life.
He views the Theatre as the pinnacle of Art, in which all other arts (music, sculpture, painting, dance etc.) are brought together. (This is a thesis he expands in his book Opera and Drama, not discussed here). He views the Tragic Theatre as the pinnacle of Theatre, higher than Comedy and other forms, because it expresses the human cycle of life and death in all its honesty, shying away from nothing. He views this Tragic Theatre as being a higher form of spirituality than any church or temple worship, a place where the community of citizens gathers not to worship gods or another world, but to collectively affirm this one.
He views the Theatre as the first place that should be freed from Market demands. In what I have tentatively called an “Art Communism”, he imagines a community that of its own will, creates a fund to sponsor the theatre and its actors and staff, as well as their ongoing training. He also imagines this community will run a fund, so that noone must purchase a ticket in the manner of a buyer in a market. Forcing the theatre to run as a capitalist business, and forcing the audience to engage with it as a capitalist business, he views as a corruption of Art. He envisions a society that creates such a theatre, and imagines that if such a structure was erected, its influence would filter into other major institutions, with people funding and engaging them because of their own intrinsic worth, rather than for purely commercial gain.
He concludes with a surprise return to Christ, claiming that Jesus and Apollo together were the great teachers of mankind. Christ, because he teaches that no man should be the slave of another, and Apollo, because he teaches strength, glory, pride and beauty in this life.
We can begin our critical appraisal with the obvious: Wagner’s association with fascism. Hitler was famously a fan. We can see where this comes from. On the one hand, fascism does affirm an immanent spirituality in a way that both liberalism and socialism do not. Fascism is Apollonian in a way that both liberalism and socialism are not. Furthermore, Hitler’s infamous rallies take on a Wagnerian character, intensely theatrical performances designed at working the political body into a communal expression. Finally. Wagner’s later writings take on a more explicitly German nationalist and antisemitic character, both of which contribute to the culture which created and supported Hitler.
Wagner’s Art and Revolution, written in 1849, however, does not share this latter strain. As far as I can tell, Wagner’s nationalism and antisemitism emerges in his later period, possibly due to the growing influence of 19th century race thinking and German unification, whereas his middle period is more influenced by the French Revolution. Art and Revolution is explicitly skeptical of extreme nationalism, hoping that it will be a regional coloring of a culture that exceeds national allegiance. Furthermore, there is no mention of Jews, Jewishness or the Jewish question. Industry and Commercialism are criticized, but the association of Jews with Commerce, or Commerce with Jews, is never made.
On top of this, Wagner’s theory of the Tragic Theatre does not overlap with Hitler’s theopolitics, inspired as much by Mussolini as by Hitler. Wagner has no ambition to rule the Nation, setting himself instead up as High Priest in Bayreuth, to influence culture from above. Meanwhile, Hitler tries to bring the Theatre to the Reichstag, making himself High Priest and Chief-Warrior-King all at once. Alexander Bard has famously criticised this as the activity of a “Boy Pharaoh”, refusing to accept his own limitations; in Bard’s argument, Priest and Chief must be kept separate, forever in a dialectic, rather than united. We share this view.
The Wagner of Art and Revolution also balances his Apollonianism with Christian Love. Although he affirms strength, he views its proper expression as in Beauty and Art, rather than in Political domination. He resents slavery, and the idea that certain men will enslave others; he explicitly claims this is why the world of the Greeks is not one to return to, however much we might idealise its Art. If anything, the Wagner of Art and Revolution would likely have found Hitler and Mussolini to be vulgar materialists, too seduced by the promise of mass manipulation and adoring crowds to notice Beauty and dare to express it.
Another famous critic of Wagner is his student and later enemy Friedrich Nietzsche, who was a young child when Art and Revolution was published. We have already addressed the issues with Wagner’s later nationalism. Nietzsche’s other main criticism was that Wagner’s operas were overly sentimental and Christian, ultimately weakening the spirit rather than invigorating them. Part of this is surely Nietzsche’s jealousy (you can find recordings of Nietzche’s music, it’s ok, you wouldn’t go back to it). The best criticism was inspired by Nietzche’s viewing of Bizet’s Carmen in Paris, which drew influence from Spanish and Gypsy dance music. Such music, in turn, draws influences from a history when the Middle East sprung up into Spain and Portugal through Africa. It is fiery, earthy and sexual in a way that European classical music, deriving from medieval choral music and cold-climate folk music, is not. This is a fair and prophetic appraisal of Wagner’s excesssive Euroclassicism, especially in light of later influences that such “dark” music and spirituality had on Western music through blues, jazz and later house, jungle and hiphop.
Nonetheless, it should be clear by now that Nietzche’s philosophy and aesthetics are deeply Wagnerian. Nietzsche criticises Wagner for betraying his own philosophy, failing to drive the Tragic affirmative impulse onwards into life, instead creating meandering emotional smushes that leave the soul in languor and despair.
We may also wonder if Wagner was too much of a bourgeois individualist for his own idea. If his view was of a communal Tragic Theatre, inspired by the Greek model (where several playwrights would compete every year), why did he set himself up as the King of his own Artistic Kingdom? Would Wagner’s idea have flourished better if he had distributed power, being less the Romantic individual genius and more the orchestrator of what Brian Eno has recently called “scenius”?
All these ideas are interesting to us as we consider what our Dark Renaissance Art for the 2020s and beyond might look like. On the one hand, we recognise that the shared heritage of liberalism and socialism (commercial efficiency, negative freedom, materialism, care for the weak and oppressed) are not enough to guide our societies and inspire our souls. On the other, we recognise that totalitarian fascism leads to its own vulgar materialism of meat grinder death on the battlefield, whether tried by Germany, Italy, Russia or Iran.
Simiarly, suffocated by a commercial industry that increasingly creates “Art” to algorithmic design and trend rather than Beauty and Pathos, and an underground which suffers from underinvestment, malnourishment and an inability to stray beyond ecstatic Bacchanalia, we may be tempted to try something different.
Wagner’s Art and Revolution offers a vision of an Art which is free of market pressure, and which yet aims at verticality and Apollonian beauty. It treats its actors and staff as serious professionals, and its audiences as attendees to a sacred space. It aims at the highest expressions of music, dance, craftsmanship, acting and design, tied together in an aesthetic affirmation of life and death which ignites the communal spirit far more than any Church, rave or rock concert. It imagines this to be possible only when a community of free spirited men gather to create and sustain this structure, freely giving what they can towards a communal purse for the Art of the Community.
We would here add free women and queers too, and emphasise that what Nietzsche intuited in his criticisms was a masculinism and Protestantism of the Wagnerian genius, which needs to be supplemented with the feminine and earthy voodoo of southern and non-European spirituality. These are the pounding drums, fiery rhythms and ambiguous non-Platonic tonalities that open the dark lower chakras of womb and phallus, escaping the trap of Western choir and orchestra which float in the element of air and do not resonate below the heart and head.
Finally, we may reflect that the excesses of time, wealth and attention created by networked, internet technologies do not automatically lend towards Wagner’s monolithic, rooted Theatre, but may instead produce Art collectives that are nomadic, fluid and hard to spot. Nonetheless, like all good magic, their influence will be felt, if their work is done correctly.
The question for us to conclude with is, “What does a Wagnerian Theatre look like in an Age of Screens?”. To which the answer is “Anywhere where the attention of the community is singularly directed towards Beauty, Life and Death”. The first and foremost way to create this is to turn the screens off. The second is to cultivate a class of artists who can channel Beauty, Life and Death and devote themselves to this pursuit. The third is to gather a community who share in this Theatre, who are willing to participate in it and sustain it in a way which feels free and genuine and not compelled or exploitative. The litmus test: it gives life in a way nothing else does.