"A Pagan Spoiled: Sex and Character in Wagner's Parsifal" -
Anthony Winterbourne, Associated University Presses, 2003
Anthony Winterbourne's new book is a valuable contribution to the
discussion and understanding of the last of Wagner's dramatic works. Not
by contributing very much in the way of new information or insight, it
should be added; more by bringing issues to the attention of the reader
and by suggesting some interpretative possibilities. Some of those issues
and possibilities for interpretation deserve discussion at greater length
and in greater depth than is possible in this short review of the book.
The most serious weakness of "A Pagan Spoiled" is its concentration on
Wagner's libretto, with its literary and philosophical connections, to the
almost complete exclusion of his music. It is not difficult to agree with
Winterbourne's dismissal, in his preface, of the view that "Parsifal" is
of value for its music alone. One should not go too far in the opposite
direction, however. Although the libretto is arguably the densest in
allusion and the richest in irony and ambiguity that Wagner constructed,
and therefore of great interest in its own right, it is so intimately
related to the music that they should be considered together.
I feel that I should not be too hard on Winterbourne, for while I have, in
idle moments, only sketched my own book on "Parsifal", he has completed
one. It is an interesting book and readable too, despite the author's
fondness for using obscure words like "etiology" when simpler alternatives
might have been chosen. In my idle moments, as I have confided to this
newsgroup before, the working title for my book has always been "Kundry".
It will therefore come as no surprise to my readers that I agree with
Winterbourne's view that Kundry is as central to the work as Parsifal.
None of the other characters, in what Thomas Mann called "a bizarre
collection", approach them in importance. Gurnemanz is essentially a
narrator, Amfortas and Titurel are mere symbols (although important ones),
and Klingsor too is little more than a symbolic figure, whose destruction
does not affect us in the same way as we might be affected by the death of
Mime, for example. Parsifal at least seems to have been intended as a
real, three-dimensional human being. Wagner's "world-demonic" Kundry is
even more complex, indeed the most complex of all his characters, although
it might be argued that she is primarily symbolic rather than a
"character" in the usual sense.
The subtitle of the book ("Sex and Character in Wagner's 'Parsifal'")
refers to Otto Weininger's "Geschlecht und Charakter", the ultimate study
in misogyny. It might be noted here that the translation of Weininger's
title as "Sex and Character", whilst appropriate, loses some of the
ambiguity of "Geschlecht" in the original. Although in modern usage this
word most often means sex (as in "the weaker sex") or gender, it was never
used by Wagner (writing at least 20 years earlier) with that meaning, but
always with a meaning (inferred from the relevant context) of descent,
lineage, clan or extended family. Wagner's "Geschlecht" (as in, "des
siegreichsten Geschlechtes Herrn", "Parsifal" act I) was almost always
translated by Ellis as "race", which, although usually a valid choice, has
caused some misunderstandings among those who only know Wagner's prose
works in translation. Although I do not know the exact connotations that
"Geschlecht" would have implied in Vienna in 1903, I suspect that it was
an ambiguous term, in transition from the word used by Wagner to its
modern usage.
Winterbourne devotes many pages to discussing Weininger and in particular
to his use of Kundry as a representative of womankind. This is probably
giving the misogynist Weininger more attention that he deserves, although
it is interesting to note that his book (which although learned and
superficially reasoned, reaches bizarre conclusions by the application of
faulty logic to false premises) was taken seriously only a hundred years
ago. Weininger, who held that women have no reason to exist other than
men's desire for sex, should be regarded as no more than a footnote in the
prehistory of psychoanalysis, or as a wrong turning on the road to Freud's
theories about sexuality and hysteria. The reason that Winterbourne pays
so much attention to Weininger is that Nike Wagner, in her book "Wagner
Theatre", has asserted not only that Weininger understood Kundry, but also
that "Parsifal" (completed in 1882) is a staging of "Sex and Character"
(published in 1903):
"Das Weib Weiningers, dargestellt als ein hoffnungsloses existentielles
Paradoxon, gleicht in allen Zügen Wagners Kundry. Wagners 'Parsifal'
wirkt tatsächlich wie eine 'Veroperung' von 'Geschlecht und Charakter'
oder auch: 'Geschlecht und Charakter' liefert die Theorie zum Bühnenweih-
festspiel. Das geht viel weiter als die gelegentlichen (logischen)
Korrekturen, die Weininger an Wagners Dramaturgie anbringt -- etwa dass
Kundry schon im Zweiten Akt sterben müsste, in dem Augenblick, da
Parsifal ihren Verführungsversuchen widersteht, nicht erst nach den
langwierigen heiligen Handlungen im Dritten Akt". (Nike Wagner, "Wagner
Theatre", 1999, page 199).
This is Winterbourne's starting point and, to his credit, he does not buy
very much of Nike's interpretation of "Parsifal" through the distorting
lens of "Sex and Character". The question of whether Kundry should die in
the second act is one to which I shall return at the end of this review.
Winterbourne agrees with Nike Wagner, as with many other commentators, in
seeing this work as a "redemption drama". There is no consensus, however,
on who is redeemed by whom, or the nature of that redemption. Winterbourne
makes some rather dismissive statements about Nirvana, a concept which
deserves more serious attention than he is willing to give to it, and
which is highly relevant to "Parsifal". One of the things that should be
noted is that there is evidence that some of the initial, musical
inspiration for "Tristan u. Isolde" was found in a piano piece by Hans von
Bülow, studied by his friend and colleague Richard Wagner in October
1854. This piece was entitled "Nirvana" and had originated as incidental
music to a play with that title by Karl Richter. This shows us that the
concept was under discussion in Wagner's circle during the period in which
both "Tristan" and "Parsifal" were conceived. It was one of the Indian
concepts which was giving western scholars of oriental religious texts
some difficulty at this time, when E. Burnouf had just published the first
account of Indian Buddhism that had both breadth and depth (his
"Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism"). For an account of the
academic debate in the nineteenth century and its influence on
non-specialists (notably Schopenhauer, Wagner and Nietzsche), see Guy
Welbon's "The Buddhist Nirvana and its Western Interpreters" (Chicago,
1968).
Wagner's interest in Buddhism was not so much "deepened through contact
with the philosophy of Schopenhauer" (page 19), as an exploration of one
subject, among many others, about which he had read in books by
Schopenhauer. There are some disturbing indications that Winterbourne does
not understand Schopenhauer very well. It is hard to believe, however,
that anyone would be presumptious enough to write a book about "Parsifal"
without first making the effort to understand Schopenhauer's writings (of
which "On the Basis of Morality" is the most relevant). On page 102 he
states that Parsifal "undertakes some kind of Schopenhauerian renunciation
-- of desire, if not of the will". This seems to miss much both about
"Parsifal" and about Schopenhauer's philosophy of the will.
Wagner's "Parsifal" does, like "Tristan u. Isolde", deal with sexual
desire. More importantly, however, these dramas deal with desire in
general, and assert (following a fundamental doctrine both of Schopenhauer
and of Buddhism) that suffering is caused by desire, and that desire
inevitably and inescapably causes suffering. Not only sexual desire but
desire of any kind. Much attention has been given to the sexual subtexts
of "Parsifal" at the cost of appreciating that desire and suffering are
the central issue. Winterbourne seems to be yet another author who,
following well-trodden paths, misses the point. Before the third act
begins, both Parsifal and Kundry have renounced desire, and with it
pacified the will, which is why they seem so changed when they return to
the domain of the Grail. The shortest summary of the Good Friday morning
scene might be, "the extinction of desire": not only sexual, but all,
desire. The fuel that fed the flame has burned out and they are now ready
to enter into Nirvana. She does so, in two stages, but Parsifal does not
enter his final Nirvana; he is still standing, as the new spiritual leader
of the community, as the curtain falls.
Like most commentators on "Parsifal", Winterbourne chooses to disregard
elements of the work that do not fit his interpretation. Thus, when
Parsifal reveals that he has had many names, Winterbourne comments (page
33) that this should not be read as a suggestion that he, like Kundry, has
been reincarnated. These lines are to be "regarded as 'sui generis' and
as causally isolated from the rest of the work". So, despite his
acknowledgement of Wagner's belief in reincarnation -- he cites a letter
written to Mathilde Wesendonk in 1860 in which this subject is mentioned
within a few sentences of Wagner revealing that he would now introduce
Kundry into the second act -- and despite the evidence that, in this work
as in earlier dramas, names and naming were important for Wagner --
Winterbourne chooses to label Parsifal's cryptic statement about many
names, as "causally isolated". Parsifal has had many names but now has
none. Kundry too has had many names, although both Klingsor and Parsifal
address her as "Namenlöse".
Again referring to the letter (of August 1860) in which Wagner wrote to
Mathilde about reincarnation and "purity" (by which he can only mean the
merit resulting from karma, which Schopenhauer held to be his concept of
"eternal justice" in religious clothing), the author (pages 57-62) draws
attention to Wagner's revelation, first revealed in that letter, that
Kundry also should appear in act two of "Parsifal". Unfortunately he does
not follow this line of inquiry far enough to consider what might have
been Wagner's original (i.e. pre-1860) intentions for a Kundry who was
necessarily simpler that his final Kundry. Since this revelation struck
Wagner while he was rewriting the Venusberg scene in "Tannhäuser",
Winterbourne follows Anna-Christine Brade (in "Kundry und Stella:
Offenbach contra Wagner", 1997) in seeing Kundry as a reworking of Venus,
combined with Elisabeth. It seems strange, however, that Winterbourne
finds it "difficult to conceive that [the act three Kundry] could have
been formed as a stage presence before this 'revelation' of Wagner's had
occurred. for though she no longer behaves -- or looks -- like the
seductress of the previous act, her salvation through baptism would
otherwise makes no sense". According to the 1865 prose draft, Kundry is
trapped in a cycle of rebirths (clearly inspired by the Indian concept of
"samsara"), and she is reborn "in ever new forms":
"Kundry lebt ein unermessliches Leben unter stets wechselnden
Widergeburten, in Folge einer uralten Verwünschung, die sie, ähnlich dem
'ewigen Juden', dazu verdammt, in neuen Gestalten das Leiden der
Liebesverführung über die Männer zu bringen ..." (Das Braune Buch,
Wagner's entry for 29 August 1865, page 62)
Therefore the Kundry of the second act does not look like the Kundry of
the first act, nor does the Kundry of the third act resemble the
seductress. In the third act, after she has woken from her deathlike
sleep for the last time, Kundry is, as Gurnemanz remarks, much changed.
She is silent. Obviously the events of the second act have not only
changed Parsifal's life and destiny but also Kundry's. Specifically,
Parsifal destroyed the power of Klingsor, the lord of illusion, not only
the power Klingsor held over him but also that which he held over Kundry;
who is then released from his power but not from her curse (which,
incidentally, only became associated with Christ in Wagner's second prose
draft, in 1877). After years of wandering (he is now, like Kundry,
accursed) since that escape from illusions, Parsifal now arrives in the
domain of the Grail for the second time. He is silent. When he does
speak, he remarks that all seems to him much changed. Perhaps he refers
to the distress of Monsalvat, or perhaps he means that now he perceives
differently. The scene is heavy with ambiguities. It would make little
(or even less, if you prefer) sense in the absence of the silent Kundry.
As in the previous acts of the drama, we should pay attention to how
Kundry looks at Parsifal and to how he looks at her. It is not for
nothing that Wagner asks for looks, gazes and stares, the meeting and
avoidance of eyes ("da traf mich sein Blick", says Kundry) in many of his
stage directions until, at the end of the drama, Kundry falls dead with
her gaze fixed on Parsifal (compare the scene between the siblings in act
one of "Die Walküre", or Isolde's account of meeting Tantris' gaze).
Winterbourne's assumption that, in Wagner's original conception, Kundry
only appeared in the first act is untenable. The whole point of Wagner's
original conception was that the restless Kundry of the first act was to
reappear, transfigured, in the third act.
Winterbourne discusses all of the names mentioned by Klingsor in his
invocation of Kundry, including that of "Namenlöse". Kundry, it seems,
is not only all things to all men but also everybody and nobody. He has
some difficulty in explaining "Urteufelin", which strikes me as a possible
reference to Lilith, which would extend Kundry's history considerably
beyond the time of Herodias. He fails to understand the significance of
her snakeskin girdle; Kundry is reborn like a snake, shedding its skin.
Her exterior changes but something, deep down, remains the same. He does
admit, however, on page 91, that, "since Wagner will tell us that the
Grail messenger of act one is, after all, the same as the beautiful
seductress of act two, the resolution of her contradictory nature will in
the end be found in metempsychosis ..." Like Wagner, however,
Winterbourne is a little confused about metempsychosis (page 107), the
transmigration of souls. Despite what Wagner wrote in that letter,
knowing no better, it is not a Buddhist teaching but one taught by the
Brahmins, as it had been in many other cultures; Schopenhauer notes for
example that it was a doctrine attributed to the Buddha's
near-contemporary Pythagoras. Wagner obtained his ideas about
reincarnation, in the first instance, from Schopenhauer, and in particular
the second edition of his "The World as Will and Representation". The
failure to distinguish between the Brahmin teaching of metempsychosis and
the subtler Buddhist teaching of palingenesis in 1860 tells us that Wagner
had not yet read the third edition of Schopenhauer's most substantial
work, which had been published in the previous year (see volume II,
chapter 41, page 502 in the English translation by Payne, or page 642 in
the corresponding volume of the "Sämtliche Werke"), or the books and
articles to which Schopenhauer directs his readers for further details.
Wagner did read it eventually, however, as evidenced by his well-thumbed
copy of the third edition in the salon at Wahnfried. Even in that edition
Schopenhauer had not fully incorporated his doctrine of reincarnation into
his philosophy, although Wagner's letter suggests that in 1860 he
simultaneously believed both in Schopenhauer's doctrine and in
metempsychosis.
Like many commentators on "Parsifal", Winterbourne is puzzled by the death
of Kundry. He writes (page 69) that she is "allowed to die", which
although true is not very explanatory. Like Brünnhilde in the 1856
"Schopenhauerian-Buddist" rewrite of the ending of "Götterdämmerung",
Kundry dies knowing that she will never be reborn. Her death is release
from her "endless cycle of rebirths", a unique kind of metempsychosis or
palingenesis. Death, without rebirth, is only possible for her after the
events of act two, when she was freed from her curse, and after baptism,
which washes away her sins. According to Carl Suneson, in the revised
ending of "Götterdämmerung", Brünnhilde becomes "die Wissende", the
possessor of knowledge. In the context of discussing Wagner's lack of
interest in "Faust" (in which he overlooks the orchestral work on this
subject), Winterbourne finds it strange that Wagner was not interested in
a legend concerning the quest for complete knowledge, which is Faust's
undoing. I find it strange that Winterbourne does not mention the veil of
Maja, which connects Wagner's ideas about the limitations of human
knowledge (and with it the need for belief) to the brief penetration of
that veil in the second act of "Parsifal".
It also seems odd that Winterbourne has some difficulty in accepting that
the Grail is held in "sullied hands" (page 58), although he has no
difficult in accepting that the Spear is held in unholy hands. If he
examines the libretto of the second act, he might find that Wagner is
quite explicit about the "Heilands Klage". Even if one cannot accept all
of the symmetries that Wieland Wagner, in his obsessive search for
symmetry and asymmetry, found in "Parsifal", there is a clear symmetry in
the possession of the Spear by the unholy Klingsor and that of the Grail
by the no better qualified (or to put it bluntly, disqualified) Amfortas.
Like many other commentators, especially in recent decades, Winterbourne
assumes that Amfortas' sin was sexual in nature. In this he and others
have overlooked the fact that Amfortas had sinned before he arrived in
Klingsor's garden, by bearing the Spear not as a holy object but as a
weapon. It seems, to me at least, that Amfortas' failure to resist the
charms of the seductive Kundry was a secondary failure, that only served
to confirm his unsuitability as protector of the Spear and Grail. Once
this is understood, many of the arguments that Winterbourne recites
(developed by other recent commentators) about sexual contact between
Amfortas and Kundry as the cause of the distress in which Parsifal finds
Monsalvat, either fall apart or become, at best, subtext.
Winterbourne follows other commentators on "Parsifal" again in assu ing
that the "homeopathic" action of the lance is an idea that Wagner took
from Wolfram's epic poem "Parzival" (page 49). This is only partly true,
since in the latter the lance alleviates the pain of the wound but does
not heal. The spear that could wound and heal was the spear of Achilles,
in the myth of Telephos, which Wagner might have first encountered in 1848
while gathering material for a projected drama about Achilles. It is
difficult to dispute Winterbourne's assertion that the Spear is more
important than the Grail, given that Wagner stated that the recovery of
the Spear was the important thing, in place of the "question" that was the
linchpin of the medieval romances. Yet Wagner also stated, in "The Brown
Book", that the Grail belongs with the Spear, and therefore the former is
important at least in the ending of "Parsifal", in which the reunification
of these holy objects can be read as symbolizing the restoration of
wholeness and balance to the community. It is also worth noting, and this
is perhaps why Kundry does not expire in the meadow, that Kundry is
allowed by Parsifal to enter the Temple for the first time, presumably as
the first woman to do so. Clearly this is related to the Buddha's
decision to admit the woman (page 79), which is the turning point of the
final scene of "Die Sieger", and which, in Wagner's version of the story,
lifted the last load from his head, after which "the Victoriously Perfect"
proceeds to the place of his final enlightenment. It was by considering
this aspect of "Die Sieger", together with suggestions made by Carl
Suneson, that led me to an understanding of the ideas underlying the third
act of "Parsifal". Winterbourne does not seem to have grasped those
ideas. He sees the Schopenhauerian- Buddhist dimension only in Kundry,
leaving Parsifal in the entirely Christian domain in which, according to
Lucy Beckett, the third act takes place.
Winterbourne believes that Wagner presented an "exemplary society" (page
35), although not one that would be viable. He has been misled, perhaps,
by one of the aging Wagner's excuses for not writing "Die Sieger" -- that
in "Parsifal" he had already shown his idea of a community. One does not
have to look too deeply into "Parsifal", to realize that the community of
Monsalvat is far from "exemplary", indeed it is, like its king, profoundly
sick. Winterbourne also alludes to the myth of the wasteland, asserting
that both Monsalvat and the unnamed domain of Klingsor have become
wastelands. This is a common misunderstanding that has no foundation
either in Wagner's libretto, or in his drafts, or in other statements made
by Wagner. Klingsor's domain was once as a wasteland, which was turned
into a luxuriant garden by the magic of Klingsor. The domain of the Grail
is never described by Wagner as a wasteland and the sickness of the king
does not, in this version of the Grail legend, whatever might be the case
in other (e.g. "Gawain") versions, cause the failure of crops or the
sickness of animals. The actual effect of the sickness of the king is
that the community becomes inward-looking and inactive. When Amfortas
tries to end his own life by refusing to uncover the Grail, the community
are denied their life-sustaining divine food and Titurel, who on his first
appearance told us that he was kept alive only by the Grail, withers and
dies. Wagner makes no suggestion that the land becomes infertile, nor
does he suggest that the king becomes infertile; as Winterbourne notes,
Wagner did not follow Wolfram in locating the wound in the genitals but
decided to locate it in the king's side ("jenen Speerstich in die Seite
erhalten", "Das Braune Buch", page 56); and obviously he did so to
emphasize the parallel between the wounding of Amfortas and the wounding
of Christ. Wagner expressed his "idea of community" in "Parsifal", not by
showing an "exemplary society", but by showing the catastrophic results of
separating male from female, or masculine from feminine. In "Parsifal",
as Wieland Wagner noted, we see separate domains, one of them containing
unnaturally chaste men, and the other populated by naturally unchaste
women. Thus one can agree with Winterbourne, first that there are issues
of sex and gender in "Parsifal", and secondly that, "even in Wolfram ...
we are supposed to read the drama as a drive toward synthesis, toward
sexual and spiritual unity where the masculine and feminine is [sic]
integrated and harmony is restored both to the individual and to the
collective psyche".
H.S. Chamberlain once said that there is no more Christianity in
"Parsifal" than there is paganism in the "Ring". He had a point,
especially when he said it at a time when Cosima Wagner and her friends
were making "Parsifal" into a strange cult at Bayreuth. Wagner had
insisted that "Parsifal" was truly Christian, although he could only do so
after he had made his own definition of Christianity, his idea of "the
religion of the early Christians", although more like Buddhism than modern
Christianity. This leads us to the question of whether there is paganism
in "Parsifal". Lucy Beckett (in "Richard Wagner: Parsifal", Cambridge
Opera Guide) insisted that "Parsifal" was inconsistent, by which I think
she meant that some of it did not fit her Catholic interpretation, and
that it was so because of a tension between pagan and Christian elements.
I am not sure what she meant by pagan, or that Winterbourne uses the term
with the same meaning. It might be said that Wagner retained from some of
his medieval sources elements that were non-Christian, which the Grail and
the Spear originally had been. Those particular elements he chose to
interpret in a "Christian" manner, and there are few other pagan elements
of any significance. I suspect that Beckett labelled everything that was
not obviously Christian, or at least monotheistic, as "pagan", regardless
of whether an element originated in Schopenhauer or Buddhism.
Winterbourne tries to make something of this but fails. He does point out
that Kundry's earlier lives -- or at least, the few to which she or
Klingsor refers -- were all heathens. Wagner made this choice, most
likely, to give emphasis to her baptism (which is not exactly, or at least
not simply, a Christian baptism, although it is a washing away of sins).
It might be of greater significance to note that, because of her curse, in
all of these lives she was a woman (although we cannot exclude the
possibility that she has also walked on the other side of the street).
This raises the question of whether Kundry represents womankind, as many
women assume that she does. While that might have been one part of
Wagner's intentions, it seems to me, and there are suggestions that
Winterbourne agrees, that Kundry represents mankind, regardless of sex.
Winterbourne notes that Hans von Wolzogen suggested to Wagner that Kundry
was a female Ahasverus; he overlooks the fact that already in the 1865
(Munich) Prose Draft, Wagner had written that Kundry wanders in a manner
reminiscent of the Wandering Jew ("ähnlich dem 'ewigen Juden'"), at least
until she comes under the spell of Klingsor. Winterbourne also seems not
to be aware that is was Heinrich Heine who first described his Dutchman as
the Wandering Jew of the sea.
It is well known that Wagner wrote some nasty things about Jews, and said
many more, sometimes behind the backs of his Jewish friends and
colleagues, notably Rubinstein and Levi. As Winterbourne rightly points
out, however, many of the statements in the prose writings that often are
labelled as anti-Semitic -- perhaps as much as two-thirds of them -- are
really anti-Judaic and therefore should not give offence, even when those
statements are made by an anti-Semite. This does not excuse the genuinely
anti-Semitic statements made by Wagner, at which we should take offence.
It is a common mistake to assume that any statement about Jews or
Jewishness or Judaism made by Wagner was necessarily anti-Semitic. One
might as well assume that his anti-clerical statements were anti-Gentile.
Winterbourne is rightly sceptical concerning claims that Kundry is an
anti-Semitic figure. That she is, like the Dutchman, an instance of the
Wandering Jew archetype (which, Winterbourne suggests, also appears in the
Wanderer; since Ahasverus was traditionally portrayed in "a long cloak and
broad-brimmed hat -- Wotan like", page 73), and that in one of her
previous lives she was the notorious Herodias, consort of Herod or
Herodes, does not make her a Jewess. Even if she were, the sympathetic
nature of her portrayal rules out any possibility of an anti-Semitic
subtext. Winterbourne finds it "hard to believe that anyone objectively
viewing this character as she interacts with others on stage ... could see
all of this as being part of a negative portrayal, let alone one that
either compels or persuades an audience to think of this woman as an
expression of anti-Semitism".
Herodias, it should be noted -- although Winterbourne does not do so --
was famously hostile to Judaism and, according to Ernest Renan (an author
whose works were read first by Cosima and then by Richard Wagner),
despised the Jewish law. Winterbourne does note, however, that the
Wandering Jew became in the romantic period a symbol for suffering
humanity, and here he comes closest to a realization that Kundry
represents suffering just as much as does Amfortas. She too, by her own
admission, has a wound that will not heal.
Wagner's "Parsifal" has been called a passion play, which it is only in
the sense that, like "Tristan", it concerns suffering. Winterbourne is
right in his conclusion that "it is more redemption drama than passion
play, and its metaphysical centre of gravity is Schopenhauerian-Buddhism,
not Christianity" (page 104). Yet he obstinately refuses to see any
character other than Kundry as based on Buddhist, or at least Indian,
ideas. Perhaps recalling Carl Suneson's account of the Schopenhauerian-
Buddhist ending of "Götterdämmerung", in which Brünnhilde becomes a
saint and redeemer, he considers and rejects the possibility that Kundry
is "a bodhisattva approaching enlightenment". It seems to me that
Winterbourne has misread Suneson (in his monograph, "Richard Wagner och
den indiske tankevärlden", Stockholm, 1985). It is clear to me at least
that Suneson saw Parsifal, not Kundry, both as a Christ-figure and as one
who finds and follows the path of the bodhisattva.
"Parsifal is obviously also a kind of Christ-figure, one who suffers the
torments of Christ, although Wagner's understanding of Christ is highly
individual, complicated, and in some ways incompatible with the Saviour
known to Christian theology ... On closer examination of Wagner's text, it
is not unreasonable to perceive in his Parsifal-Christ figure a suggestion
of the Buddhist bodhisattva-ideal." (Carl Suneson, "Richard Wagner och den
indiska tankevärlden", 1985, page 84)
Here I must declare an interest, for I have developed an interpretation of
"Parsifal" in which the path of the bodhisattva is the basis of the work
at its deepest level, as it was in my view from its beginning in the
spring of 1857. Here are some of the relevant facts and concepts. As in
other religions, there were certain unfortunate developments in Buddhism
within a few centuries of the departure of the Buddha Shakyamuni. One of
these was the tendency of the monks to look inwards and to become isolated
from the rest of society; the other was the growing need for a popular
religion accessible to the laity and in which they could participate. Both
of these problems were addressed by the early Mahayanists, who developed
on the basis of existing traditions the ideal of a kind of Buddhist saint,
the bodhisattva. I hope that Buddhists will forgive me a brief and
inaccurate summary of this concept, which Winterbourne understandably has
failed to grasp.
There was probably a pre-existing tradition of six perfections, or virtues
that had to be perfected before the Buddhist could become fully
enlightened and enter into Nirvana; which is a state of existence; or at
least it was that simple in the beginning, although in later Buddhist
theology the term Nirvana became a generic one covering many different
states of existence. It is always dangerous to attempt a mapping of any
Buddhist technical term to a western "equivalent"; but I think the
original concept of Nirvana might have been comparable to the western
concept of "eternal bliss". By tradition, even in the teaching of the
Buddha, there were two different kinds of Nirvana. One of them was
achieved only after death and transfiguration, the other might be compared
to the "eternal life" (Gk. zoë aioonios) of St. John's Gospel, which we
may enter into here on earth:
"The disciple who has put off lust and desire, rich in wisdom, has here on
earth attained the deliverance from death, the Nirvana, the eternal
state". (Hermann Oldenberg, "Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, sein
Gemeinde", 1882; quoting from "Dhammapada").
The early Mahayanists made a further destinction, between different paths
to total enlightenment, each with a different kind of Nirvana as the final
goal. The highest of these paths was the path of the bodhisattva, which
is most fully described in Shantideva's meditative poem of that title. The
bodhisattva, having made a decision to seek the path, makes a vow that he
will not enter Nirvana until all sentient beings have been enlightened.
Thus we can assume that there is a growing company of Buddhist saints
helping and encouraging us, the unenlightened, towards enlightenment. As
Winterbourne points out (page 107), following Carl Suneson, "the two
'cardinal virtues' of the bodhisattva -- Mitleid (compassion) and Wissen
(wisdom) -- are the linchpins of the drama as expressed in Parsifal's
journey through life". This is because Buddhism, and especially the
branch of Buddhism called Mahayana and all schools that derive from it,
stress those virtues. They are expressed in Parsifal's journey because he
follows the path of the bodhisattva, in which according to Shantideva, he
develops wisdom through compassion, and his capacity for compassion
increases as he grows wiser.
"Gesegnet sei dein Leiden,
das Mitleids höchste Kraft,
und reinsten Wissens Macht
dem zagen Thoren gab!" ("Parsifal", act III, final scene)
So if Winterbourne had thought this through, he might have realised that
Wagner's conception of Parsifal is at least as Buddhist as that of Kundry,
and probably more so. He might have been able to see "the significance of
the years of wandering" (page 58). Parsifal needs time and space in which
to develop in compassion and wisdom, through many "small awakenings" of
which Kundry gave him the first, before he can find Monsalvat for the
second time, and with it "der Rettung letzte Pfad", the final steps to
salvation. The bodhisattva develops his perfections in parallel but they
are completed in sequence, the sixth of them being the perfection of
wisdom. In my view it is only on attaining the perfection of wisdom that
Parsifal is able to find again the domain of the Grail, along the path
that, according to Gurnemanz, no sinner can find without a guide ("auf
Pfaden, die kein Sünder findet").
Spectacular things happen to the bodhisattva at and beyond the perfection
of wisdom. According to the Mahayana scriptures, the advanced bodhisattva
acquires supernatural powers, and becomes first a kind of superman and
then something more godlike. Mahayana developed four additional
perfections beyond the perfection of wisdom, although the Mahayanists
found these stages of the path so remote from human experience that they
were never clearly described, at least in the limited understanding of
this observer. It is only the first of these higher perfections that
concerns our study of "Parsifal". Even in the early, gentle stages of the
path, the bodhisattva is encouraged to give up, or to give away,
everything he possesses (in words that often are strikingly similar to
passages in the Christian Gospels). The bodhisattva is even encouraged to
give away the merit he has gained through good works (positive karma) in
previous lives! This is the virtue that he is asked to perfect in the
seventh perfection, in the stage beyond the perfection of wisdom in which
the bodhisattva becomes a fountain of merit. He is able to give
sufficient merit to other beings that it cancels out the burden of demerit
(roughly equivalent, with all necessary reservations taken, to the
Christian term "sin") that they have gained in earlier lives. In other
words, he is able to cancel their sins. He is even able to give them such
a spiritual boost that they can enter into Nirvana. Carl Suneson
suggested, cautiously, that this "transfer of merit" is the underlying
idea of the Good Friday morning scene in the third act of "Parsifal".
"The bodhisattva doctrine includes a description of the transfer of merit
from a bodhisattva to those in need of help. The being who receives this
help is freed from further rebirth and the consequences of their actions
in earlier lives, karma, are not brought to maturity but absorbed in the
depths of the bodhisattva's boundless sea of mercy." (Carl Suneson, ibid).
Parsifal, having passed beyond the perfection of wisdom, the level of
enlightenment at which those who have not taken the bodhisattva vow can
enter into Nirvana, is able to raise Kundry's karmic level so that she can
enter into Nirvana. As she enters into "deliverance from death, the
Nirvana, the eternal state", on this earth, the last load is lifted from
Parsifal's head. It could be argued that it is no longer necessary for
her to die. What we can say with some certainty is that it would be
inappropriate for Kundry to expire, as Otto Weininger and Nike Wagner
thought that she might have been allowed to do, in the second act after
her "rejection" by Parsifal. Theirs is, in my view, a misreading: as
Parsifal tells her, he has also been sent (although it is not stated by
whom) for her salvation. So it is possible, by considering Wagner's
attitude to the concepts of reincarnation (mentioned in the libretto),
karma (which in the libretto became "purity") and Nirvana (another concept
that links "Parsifal" with "Tristan"), to arrive at quite different
conclusions from those drawn by Weininger; whose interpretation is based
on a narrow and partial understanding of only one of the central figures
in Wagner's redemption drama.
--
We thank D. E. for that review, which we admired both in general and in detail.
(Speaking of details, I'd always overlooked the significance of
Kundry's snakeskin girdle too.)
Like you, I place very little weight on Otto Weininger's writing about
_Parsifal_. Or perhaps no weight at all, in my case. Nor do I see much
to admire in Weininger's writing in general. It's always a shame when
young people kill themselves, but that's no reason to start treating
them as romantic saints, or to think they had good judgement or
discernment.
Just a comment on Wagner's use of "Geschlecht". When Daland praises
Senta to the Dutchman, he says that Senta honours her "Geschlecht".
It seems that in that context Wagner was using the word to mean
"gender".
Thanks again for what seems a very fair review. I'll look out for
Winterbourne's book.
Like you, I place very little weight on Otto Weininger's writing about
_Parsifal_. Or perhaps no weight at all, in my case. Nor do I see much
to admire in Weininger's writing in general. It's always a shame when
young people kill themselves, but that's no reason to start treating
them as romantic saints, or to think they had good judgement or
discernment.
Weininger had at least the good taste to kill himself in the house in
which Beethoven died. More seriously, perhaps a few decades later it
might have been possible to treat his disorders. His book is (as Hanslick
famously said of "Judaism in Music") only of psychological interest.
Post by Laon
Just a comment on Wagner's use of "Geschlecht". When Daland praises
Senta to the Dutchman, he says that Senta honours her "Geschlecht". It
seems that in that context Wagner was using the word to mean "gender".
Well spotted, thanks. It could still be read as "family", I suppose.
Book review: "A Pagan Spoiled: Sex and Character in Wagner's Parsifal" -
Anthony Winterbourne, Associated University Presses, 2003
after he had made his own definition of Christianity, his idea of "the
religion of the early Christians", although more like Buddhism than modern
Christianity. This leads us to the question of whether there is paganism
in "Parsifal". Lucy Beckett (in "Richard Wagner: Parsifal", Cambridge
"The bodhisattva doctrine includes a description of the transfer of merit
from a bodhisattva to those in need of help. The being who receives this
help is freed from further rebirth and the consequences of their actions
in earlier lives, karma, are not brought to maturity but absorbed in the
depths of the bodhisattva's boundless sea of mercy." (Carl Suneson, ibid).
Parsifal, having passed beyond the perfection of wisdom, the level of
enlightenment at which those who have not taken the bodhisattva vow can
enter into Nirvana, is able to raise Kundry's karmic level so that she can
enter into Nirvana. As she enters into "deliverance from death, the
Nirvana, the eternal state", on this earth, the last load is lifted from
Parsifal's head. It could be argued that it is no longer necessary for
her to die. What we can say with some certainty is that it would be
inappropriate for Kundry to expire, as Otto Weininger and Nike Wagner
thought that she might have been allowed to do, in the second act after
her "rejection" by Parsifal. Theirs is, in my view, a misreading: as
Parsifal tells her, he has also been sent (although it is not stated by
whom) for her salvation. So it is possible, by considering Wagner's
attitude to the concepts of reincarnation (mentioned in the libretto),
karma (which in the libretto became "purity") and Nirvana (another concept
that links "Parsifal" with "Tristan"), to arrive at quite different
conclusions from those drawn by Weininger; whose interpretation is based
on a narrow and partial understanding of only one of the central figures
in Wagner's redemption drama.
Derrick:
As to Wagner's definition of Christianity (what ever that might have
been), we know that he was not satisfied with his Lutheran heritage,
and was always seeking beyond that in philosophy, mythology and
religion. What interests me in this analysis by way of reviewing the
book is that what Wagner finally achieves in Parsifal is also very
close to the "early" Christianity of the Russian and Greek Orthodox
Traditions (and those of the resulting Monastic aspects) which are
also very close to Buddhism in so many ways - the understanding of the
desires as the root of suffering, and overcoming through the
experience of this reality on one's journey in life, the co-suffering
with others (compassion) and the ultimate goal of unity with God
(Theosis) - and in their eschatology a transformation not only of
human beings but the interconnection of our human liberation with that
of the cosmos. It is too bad that Wagner (as a Protestant) could not
have know of this tradition. I wonder what he would have thought of
it.
Also, I wondered if you have ever heard of the Recording of Parsifal
on CD from an ancient performance with the Orchestra and Chorus of the
Radio Italiana Rome conducted by Vittorio Gui done on November 20-21,
1950 with Africo Baldelli as Parsifal, Maria Callas as Kundry and
Boris Christoff as Gurnemanz (all sung in Italian!!)?
Glen Wolfsen
Phillipsburg NJ, USA
Mike Scott Rohan
9 years ago
The message <***@posting.google.com>
from ***@eclipse.net (Glenroy B. Wolfsen) contains these words:
{snip}
Post by Glenroy B. Wolfsen
As to Wagner's definition of Christianity (what ever that might have
been), we know that he was not satisfied with his Lutheran heritage,
and was always seeking beyond that in philosophy, mythology and
religion. What interests me in this analysis by way of reviewing the
book is that what Wagner finally achieves in Parsifal is also very
close to the "early" Christianity of the Russian and Greek Orthodox
Traditions (and those of the resulting Monastic aspects) which are
also very close to Buddhism in so many ways - the understanding of the
desires as the root of suffering, and overcoming through the
experience of this reality on one's journey in life, the co-suffering
with others (compassion) and the ultimate goal of unity with God
(Theosis) - and in their eschatology a transformation not only of
human beings but the interconnection of our human liberation with that
of the cosmos. It is too bad that Wagner (as a Protestant) could not
have know of this tradition. I wonder what he would have thought of
it.
Now that's interesting -- something I don't remember seeing anything
about before, though Derrick may well have! It's only a minor point, but
I was startled at how well the Kirov -- not only Gergiev, but also his
soloists -- took to Parsifal when they lacked a recent performing
tradition and had grown up under a militantly atheist and anti-Wagnerian
government. They did a superb and unusually fervent job; the spiritual
elements came through very well and without seeming either stilted or
forced, as they so often do. It may be that they found more resonances
than I thought.
Post by Glenroy B. Wolfsen
Also, I wondered if you have ever heard of the Recording of Parsifal
on CD from an ancient performance with the Orchestra and Chorus of the
Radio Italiana Rome conducted by Vittorio Gui done on November 20-21,
1950 with Africo Baldelli as Parsifal, Maria Callas as Kundry and
Boris Christoff as Gurnemanz (all sung in Italian!!)?
I certainly have, and I know some others have also. Fascinating, and
much more than a curiosity, although it would never be my first choice!
Agreeable to hear such a young-sounding and passionate Kundry -- and
Gui, whom I only associated with Glyndebourne Rossini, is idiomatic and
strong. Christoff.....well, interesting is how I'd phrase it; but he has
the voice for it, all the same.
Cheers,
Mike
--
***@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Kimberley Cornish
9 years ago
We are all indebted to Derrick for drawing to our attention the fact
that there is at last a book on Wagner that takes Otto Weininger's
ideas seriously. I am not so sure that Derrick is correct to dismiss
Weininger so quickly, however and I rather think he has missed seeing
how an important aspect of the Mahayana Bodhisattva ideal links
Weininger, Wittgenstein, Hitler and Schopenhauer. Let me deal with
Weininger first.
Despite Derrick's and Laon's dismissal of Weininger, there remains the
awkward fact that one of the very greatest philosophers - Ludwig
Wittgenstein - throughout his life considered Weininger to be a genius
of the first rank. He described Weininger's work as "great". Since it
is a fair bet that Wittgenstein had a deeper insight into the
intellectual worth of his Viennese contemporaries than any of us here,
some degree of caution in criticism of Weininger is indicated. This is
doubly the case, since Weininger was at pains to stress that he was
not discussing men and women, but rather tendencies within the psyche
that can exist in either sex. That is, Weininger did NOT hold, as
Derrick writes, that "that women have no reason to exist other than
men's desire for sex". What he actually wrote on the matter is the
following:
"The woman question is as old as sex itself, and as young as mankind.
And the answer to it? Man must free himself of sex, for in that way,
and in that way alone, can he free woman. In his purity, not, as she
believes, in his impurity, lies her salvation. She must certainly be
destroyed, as woman; but only to be raised again from the ashes - new,
restored to youth - as a real human being." ("Sex and Character",
p.345.)
What Weininger offers here, then, is a doctrine in which the
liberation of woman is achieved by male "purity". He continues:
"So long as there are two sexes there will always be a woman question,
just as there will be the problem of mankind. Christ was mindful of
this when, according to the account of the Fathers of the Church -
Clemens - He talked with Salome, without the optimistic palliation of
the sex which St. Paul and Luther invented later; death will last so
long as women bring forth, and truth will not prevail until the two
become one, until from man and woman a third self, neither man nor
woman is evolved."
Since Weininger did, not presumably, think that there were no women in
the world before St Paul, it follows that the "destruction of woman"
he is concerned with, had nothing to do with the physical forms taken
by the sexes, but rather with sex insofar as it is something mental -
something concerned with "character". His concern was with the
redemption of mankind, which he saw as something involving both men
and women. There might still be male and female bodies after this
redemption, but women would then be activated by the categorical
imperative and the desire for freedom, rather than by the desire to
procreate (p.349.) as he thought they were now. This seems to me to be
a quite different doctrine from how it is presented by Derrick. It is
not that "women have no reason to exist other than men's desire for
sex". It is rather that WOMAN'S desire for procreation through sex is
the source of female enslavement, and that the female hope for
liberation lies in an encounter with a genuinely pure man. This,
Weininger illustrated with the example of Parsifal and, given this
alternate interpretation of Weininger, it certainly seems to be an apt
illustration.
If I may introduce another matter concerning Weininger, I believe that
Derrick is also incorrect to regard Weininger as "no more than a
footnote in the prehistory of psychoanalysis, or as a wrong turning on
the road to Freud's theories about sexuality and hysteria". Weininger,
in my opinion, is of colossal importance for a quite different reason.
This is because we have references to Weininger in both Hitler's
"Tabletalk" and in Hitler's joint work with Dietrich Eckart
"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin", indicating a Weiningerian connection
to Nazi anti-Semitism. Hitler refers to Weininger as "the one good
Jew" because he killed himself at the age of twenty three over the
fact that he was Jewish. Hitler wrote:
"The destructive role of the Jew has in a way a providential
explanation. If nature wanted the Jew to be the ferment that causes
people to decay, thus providing these peoples with an opportunity for
a healthy reaction, in that case people like St. Paul and Trotsky are,
from our point of view, the most valuable. By the fact of their
presence, they provoke the defensive reaction of the attacked
organism. Dietrich Eckart once told me that in all his life he had
known just one good Jew: Otto Weininger, who killed himself on the day
when he realised that the Jew lives upon the decay of peoples."
("Hitler's Tabletalk 1941-1944", p.141 in the English Phoenix Press
translation.)
It is intriguing that Hitler states explicitly that he came to
knowledge of Otto Weininger through Dietrich Eckart, whom he met in
the 1920s and who had never met Weininger, Weininger's funeral in
Vienna in 1903, however, was the focus of attention for the entire
city of Vienna and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands
attended Weininger's funeral, including the young Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Weininger's funeral was very big news indeed to the Austrians, amongst
the biggest events of the first decade of the twentieth century. It is
unclear why Hitler felt he had to dissemble about his knowledge of
Weininger (which must have dated to the 1903 funeral) but the fact
that he did so, ought to arouse our suspicions. Dissembling and
concealment, one thinks, has to be dissembling and concealment about
something that Hitler must have seen as worth keeping hidden.
Weininger's life, by the way, is documented in a book called "The Mind
and Death of a Genius" by (if I recall correctly - I am writing this
without checking the reference) David Abrahamsen. Weininger had
published "Sex and Character" in 1903, the same year when Hitler
attended school with Wittgenstein. It contains a chapter on Jews that
appears so anti-Semitic that it might as well have been written by
Julius Streicher. Hitler was quite certainly familiar with it. The
effect of reading Weininger is to force realisation that the most
virulent anti-Semites tend to be self-hating Jews. (I am not excusing
non-Jewish anti-Semites, but simply stating what I think is true -
Weininger's ideas were even broadcast in Nazi wireless propaganda that
Abrahamsen heard in Norway in 1940.) It is far from clear, then, that
Weininger can be treated merely as an historical footnote. He was
certainly a seminal influence on the young Wittgenstein and
acknowledged as such by Wittgenstein in his own writings even towards
the very end of his life. Weininger is likely also to have been a
seminal source for the young Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitism. The close
connection of Weininger to both Nazi doctrine and to the young
Hitler's school-fellow Ludwig Wittgenstein seems to me to indicate
that dismissal of Weininger is a mistake. I have remarked before that
nineteenth century popularisation of the SS and other rune symbols,
can be traced to Guido von List, the rune occultist. List published
"The Secret of the Runes" in 1903. Reading von List, we realize that
he treated runes as the Haredim treat Kabbala. That is, the runes
functioned for Nazis as the Hebrew alphabet functions for Jews. (The
only difference is that for Nazi occultists, the rune letters were
Aryan gods, for kabbalists the Hebrew letters are emanations of G-d.)
(I refer doubtful readers to List's book and to Stephen E. Flowers
account of Karl Maria Wiligut, "The Secret King", Dominion, Vermont,
2001.) List's financier and publisher, by the way, was Friedrich
Wannieck, a Czech MP and business partner of Karl Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Wittgenstein's billionaire industrialist father. The revival of rune
occultism was thus delivered into Germany from Austria by Wittgenstein
money. How many Holocaust victims, seeing the SS runes on their
guards, would realise thir origins? - not a single one. But taking
Weininger's views on magic (not in "Sex and Character") von List's
account of runes and Wittgenstein's account of propositions as
autonomous entities passing from mind to mind, it ought to be clear
that they fit together. Hitler clearly framed his rallies and speeches
upon the same ideas, with a common racial mind being fertilized with
self-propagating propaganda, one item of which was "The Jews are the
ferment of decomposition". This, however, is to digress.
I shall turn now to make a comment on I think is Derrick's very
important interpretation of Parsifal via the Mahayana idea of the
Boddhisatva.
BEGIN QUOTE FROM DERRICK:
"The early Mahayanists made a further destinction, between different
paths
to total enlightenment, each with a different kind of Nirvana as the
final
goal. The highest of these paths was the path of the bodhisattva,
which
is most fully described in Shantideva's meditative poem of that title.
The
bodhisattva, having made a decision to seek the path, makes a vow that
he
will not enter Nirvana until all sentient beings have been
enlightened.
Thus we can assume that there is a growing company of Buddhist saints
helping and encouraging us, the unenlightened, towards enlightenment.
As
Winterbourne points out (page 107), following Carl Suneson, "the two
'cardinal virtues' of the bodhisattva -- Mitleid (compassion) and
Wissen
(wisdom) -- are the linchpins of the drama as expressed in Parsifal's
journey through life". This is because Buddhism, and especially the
branch of Buddhism called Mahayana and all schools that derive from
it,
stress those virtues. They are expressed in Parsifal's journey
because he
follows the path of the bodhisattva, in which according to Shantideva,
he
develops wisdom through compassion, and his capacity for compassion
increases as he grows wiser.
"Gesegnet sei dein Leiden,
das Mitleids höchste Kraft,
und reinsten Wissens Macht
dem zagen Thoren gab!" ("Parsifal", act III, final scene)
So if Winterbourne had thought this through, he might have realised
that
Wagner's conception of Parsifal is at least as Buddhist as that of
Kundry,
and probably more so. He might have been able to see "the
significance of
the years of wandering" (page 58). Parsifal needs time and space in
which
to develop in compassion and wisdom, through many "small awakenings"
of
which Kundry gave him the first, before he can find Monsalvat for the
second time, and with it "der Rettung letzte Pfad", the final steps to
salvation. The bodhisattva develops his perfections in parallel but
they
are completed in sequence, the sixth of them being the perfection of
wisdom. In my view it is only on attaining the perfection of wisdom
that
Parsifal is able to find again the domain of the Grail, along the path
that, according to Gurnemanz, no sinner can find without a guide ("auf
Pfaden, die kein Sünder findet").
"The bodhisattva doctrine includes a description of the transfer of
merit
from a bodhisattva to those in need of help. The being who receives
this
help is freed from further rebirth and the consequences of their
actions
in earlier lives, karma, are not brought to maturity but absorbed in
the
depths of the bodhisattva's boundless sea of mercy." (Carl Suneson,
ibid).
END QUOTE FROM DERRICK:
This seems to me to be a overly Christianised version of what the
salvific mission of a Bodhisattva consists in and not true to the
Buddhist scriptures. If there is any undisputed scripture in the
Mahayana canon it is the Heart Sutra. Here is how the Heart Sutra
describes the Bodhisattva Vow: ("Buddhist Wisdom Books containing The
Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra", translated by Edward Conze, George
Allen & Unwin, London, 1958.)
17a. [(Subhuti asked: How O Lord, should one set out in the
Bodhisattva-vehicle stand, how progress, how control his thoughts? -
The Lord replied: Here Subhuti, someone who has set out in the
Bodhisattva-vehicle should produce a thought in this manner: 'all
beings I must lead to Nirvana which leaves nothing behind; and yet,
after beings have been led to Nirvana, no being at all has been led to
Nirvana'. And why? If in a Bodhisattva the notion of a 'being' should
take place, he could not be called a 'Bodhi-being'.
This gives us a clue as to HOW it is that the Bodhisattva effects
deliverance from Samsara of all beings. It is quite simple:
deliverance from Samsara for beings "multiple as the sands of the
Ganges" is effected by not seeing them as multiple in the first place!
THAT is what someone undertaking the Bodhisattva vow does! Consider
chapter 3:
3. The Lord said: Here Subhuti, someone who has set out in the vehicle
of a Bodhisattva should produce a thought in this manner: 'As many
beings as there are in the universe of beings, comprehended under the
term "beings" - egg-born, born from a womb, moisture-born, or
miraculously born; with or without form; with perception, without
perception, and with neither perception nor non-perception, - as far
as any conceivable form of beings is conceived: all these I must lead
to Nirvana, into that Realm of Nirvana which leaves nothing behind.
And yet, although innumerable beings have thus been led to Nirvana, no
being at all has been led to Nirvana.' And why? If in a Bodhisattva
the notion of a 'being' should take place, he could not be called a
'Bodhi-being'. 'And why? He is not to be called a Bodhi-being, in whom
the notion of a self or of a being should take place, or the notion of
a living soul or of a person.'
The Bodhisattva vow is simply an expression of the anatta doctrine
under which our common belief that there are multiple subjects of
experience is held to be illusory. The Bodhisattva putting off his
entrance into Nirvana in order to save all beings is in Samsara
precisely because he sees multiple beings to save - that is what
living in Samsara IS - and so hasn't attained the final fruits of
meditative practice. In Buddhism, success in meditative practice is
achieved when there is seen to be neither an ego within the meditator
nor a self-nature within the things perceived. The Bodhisattva saves
all beings by meditatively not seeing them as multiple. (Rather like
Schopenhauer's individual thing being seen as the unitary Platonic
form when the contemplator is "lost in contemplation".) Nirvana is one
without a second and the perception of the Visuddhimagga "Suffering
alone exists, but none who suffer, the deed there is, but not the doer
thereof." This is, I think, identical with the "no-ownership doctrine
of the mind" espoused by Wittgenstein on which a common pain causes
multiple human bodies to contort and emit the words "I'm in pain!" (no
multiple subjects and a unitary pain, despite the temptation to view
it as multiplied in accordance with the number of its sufferers.) Its
ultimate source is the orient and the hypothesized original
Indo-European ("Aryan") religion via Schopenhauer/Wagner/Weininger. If
we can insert "Hitler" into this troika - with his idea of a common
mind restricted to Aryans alone, from which Jews such as Wittgenstein
and Weininger are excluded - then a lot of doors open to understanding
what happened in our previous century.
Kimberley Corrnish
There is a somewhat indelicate linguistic point worth making
about Kundry, as the eternal feminine. Anyone interested in the
original proto-Indoeuropean language should have a copy of the
American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European roots by Calvert
Watkins. There are a number of variants of the proto Indoeuropean
sound kn or gn. Some of the many variants that have survived to (or
developed to) the present include (via Greek) "genitor", "gender",
"genesis", "genital", and the Germanic "kin", "kinder" etc, which
also connect to the English "kn" words in which the obvious spoken
taboo has made the "k" silent. Thus the English "Knowledge" applies
not just to facts, but also to what Abraham had of Sarah. Had "Kundry"
been rendered into English as "Cuntry", the point of the name might
have been clearer. (Given that Nietzsche was a professor of Philology
and that Wagner devoured the work of the brothers Grimm, it is
unlikely in the extreme that he was ignorant of proto-Indoeuropean
roots.) The Rhine Maidens words can also, I believe, be interpreted as
magical incantations using proto-Indoeuropean, but that is a matter
for another thread.
That's a very wide-ranging post, just barely on-topic, but at least
it's on a new track, unlike the Israel-Palestine thing. I don't think
I follow your main argument, but I've got a few marginal comments.
Post by Kimberley Cornish
Despite Derrick's and Laon's dismissal of Weininger, there remains the
awkward fact that one of the very greatest philosophers - Ludwig
Wittgenstein - throughout his life considered Weininger to be a genius
of the first rank. He described Weininger's work as "great". Since it
is a fair bet that Wittgenstein had a deeper insight into the
intellectual worth of his Viennese contemporaries than any of us here,
some degree of caution in criticism of Weininger is indicated.
Still, I just happened to read this only yesterday:
"Towards the end of his life, Ludwig Wittgenstein lived largely on a
diet of cornflakes; he reasoned that there came a time when, if you
found a perfectly agreeable foodstuff, it made little sense to
diversify."
(David Profumo, reviewing Iain Banks' "Raw Spirit: In Search of the
Perfect Dream" in the Nov 2003 _Literary Review_, p 35.)
I don't really mean, "Well, old 'Cornflakes' Wittgenstein, who takes
_him_ seriously?" Honestly, I think some people might mistake that for
a pathetically cheap shot. But still, it's an illustration of a real
point that could also be made with other examples: that outside some
specialist areas Wittgenstein's judgement could be somewhat flawed,
eccentric even.
I'd certainly turn to Wittgenstein for precision of thought on some
linguistic issues, with which I think Weininger was not much
concerned. But in wider kinds of judgements, I generally wouldn't find
Wittgenstein's pronouncements to be definitive. Especially when, as
with Weininger, you have a romantic young man who died tragically
early, who may have been known to the young Wittgenstein. And who like
Wittgenstein was gay, was somewhat misogynist, authoritarian, inclined
to the irrational/spiritual, conflicted about Jewishness, and so on.
In which case it's easy to feel that Wittgenstein's respectful
judgement involved some sympathy and even identification with
Weininger, and commendable loyalty to the memory of the dead.
It's perfectly reasonable to have more respect for Wittgenstein's
general views and judgements, and his appreciation of Weininger, than
I do. It's just that it's not unreasonable, either, for me not to give
Wittgenstein much weight, in this context.
Post by Kimberley Cornish
Since Weininger did, not presumably, think that there were no women in
the world before St Paul, it follows that the "destruction of woman"
he is concerned with, had nothing to do with the physical forms taken
by the sexes, but rather with sex insofar as it is something mental -
something concerned with "character". His concern was with the
redemption of mankind, which he saw as something involving both men
and women. There might still be male and female bodies after this
redemption, but women would then be activated by the categorical
imperative and the desire for freedom, rather than by the desire to
procreate (p.349.) [...] This, Weininger illustrated with the example of
Parsifal and, given this alternate interpretation of Weininger, it certainly
seems to be an apt illustration.
Yes, it's clear that by "destruction of woman" Weininger is using
destruction in a Wagnerian sense: he's not talking about "killing all
the women", but about destroying current ideas of what womenhood is
and means. So while I think Weininger was undoubtedly extremely
misogynist, and there are various passages that can be cited to
establish that point if it's disputed, he never proposed anything ...
er ... drastic concerning womenhood.
However, Weininger's use of _Parsifal_ to illustrate his case involves
what seems to me to be a basic misreading of _Parsifal_, that it is a
work about "chastity" or sexual purity, when it is not.
Post by Kimberley Cornish
This is because we have references to Weininger in both Hitler's
"Tabletalk" and in Hitler's joint work with Dietrich Eckart
"Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin", indicating a Weiningerian connection
to Nazi anti-Semitism. Hitler refers to Weininger as "the one good
Jew" because he killed himself at the age of twenty three over the
"[...] Dietrich Eckart once told me that in all his life he had
known just one good Jew: Otto Weininger, who killed himself on the day
when he realised that the Jew lives upon the decay of peoples."
("Hitler's Tabletalk 1941-1944", p.141 in the English Phoenix Press
translation.)
Hitler didn't _write_ anything of the sort. He _probably_ said it.
That is, the _Tabletalk_ supposedly consists of edited transcripts of
recordings of Hitler conversations. However neither the sound
recordings nor the original transcripts exist. What I understand about
their authenticity is that they are accepted as being probably based
on real recordings, but not 100% reliable in detail. It has been
credibly suggested that Bormann changed some passages to make Hitler's
views more closely resemble his own.
And there's a passage, for October 25 1944, in which Hitler is
supposed to have said: "It's not a bad idea, by the way, that public
rumour attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews."
The implication is that there is no such plan; it's only a rumour. But
in reality the Holocaust was far more than a "plan"; it was well under
way. Hitler knew that the Holocaust was no "rumour", and yet he is
supposed to have said this thing to the two men most responsible for
the details of the Holocaust: SS and Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler
and SS lieutenant Reinhard Heydrich.
So why is this passage in the "Tabletalk"? Leaving out the David
Irving option, which is sufficiently discredited, there are two
possibilities. Maybe the three men, Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich,
staged a little play for the recording, perhaps with the idea that the
record could be used to clear their names if they came to trial after
the war, which by then wasn't going so well for them. But it seems
more likely the passage was inserted at the transcript stage.
Therefore there are problems with the _Tabletalk_. I'm not disputing
the reference to Weininger, because there seems no reason why Bormann
would want to invent and insert it. Just being clear: this is not a
document written by Hitler.
The Dietrich Eckart document, "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A
Diaslogue between Adolph Hitler and Myself", is a different story.
As Saul Friedlander says:
"The notorious 'dialogue' between Eckart and Hitler [...] was written
by Dietrich Eckart alone, probably even without Hitler's knowledge."
_Nazi Germany and the Jews_, Vol. I - The Years of Persecution
1933-1939, Chapter 3, Redemptive Antisemitism, pp 73-112. (New York
1997).
Friedlander cited two authorities for this view of Eckart's pamphlet:
Shaul Esh, "Eine neue literarische Quelle Hitlers? Eine
methodologische oeberlegung," Geschichte und Unterricht , 15 (1964),
pp. 487ff; and
Margarete Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler: Der "voelkischeî Publizist
Dietrick Eckart (Bremen, 1970), pp. 108¯9.
Eckart put together the text that was posthumously published as
_Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin: Ein Zwiegespraech zwischen Adolf
Hitler und Mir_ (_Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A Dialogue Between
Adolf Hitler and Myself_) in September, October and November 1923. At
the time Hitler was planning the Beer Hall Putsch, and Eckart was a
sick man, dying of the effects of long-term drug and alcohol abuse.
Eckart would have been in Landsberg Prison with Hitler for five or six
weeks before his death. Hitler arrived in Landsberg Prison on 11
November 1923, where Eckart was already an inmate, and Eckart was
released "shortly before Christmas", dying of alcohol poisoning on 26
December 1923. Eckart was busy dying, when Hitler arrived at
Landsberg.
Still, Eckart had known Hitler for a long time. So while Hitler had no
hand in writing the book (and I've never found anyone who claimed that
he did, except for Kimberley), it does put words into Hitler's mouth
and it was written by someone who, unlike Rauschning for example, had
genuinely been an intimate of Hitler's.
So how accurate is Eckart likely to be, as a recorder of Hitler's
voice and views? There are two counts against him. First, Eckart
doesn't make a good witness, to put it mildly.
In his biography of Arthur Moeller van der Bruck, Stan Lauryssens put
it this way. Dietrich Eckart was "a poet, dramatist, and war veteran
... [who has] written a number of unpublished plays. Dietrich Eckart
is a drunk who has taken to morphine. Twice in Berlin he has been
confined to a mental institution where he has been able to stage the
plays using the inmates as actors."
Lauryssens, Stan, _The Man who Invented the Third Reich_, Sutton
Publishng, Thrupp Stroud Gloucestershire, 1999, p 49.
That is, _Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin_ was written by an insane
alcoholic morphine addict shortly before his death of alcohol
poisoning. Not a reliable source, I'd say.
Then you only have to look at the words that Eckart put into Hitler's
mouth, and compare it with other accounts of his conversation,
including (with mild reservations) the _Tabletalk_.
In chapter one, Hitler is supposed to have quoted, from memory,
Strabo, Cicero, and the lesser-known Heinrich Graetz, and to have
shown an astonishingly detailed knowledge of Gibbon as well as the Old
Testament, though at least he is supposed to have had a copy of the
Bible handy. In Chapter two Hitler gives near-verbatim quotes from
Friedrich Delitzsch, and further detailed references to the Old
Testament, this time apparently from memory.
Hitler's star turn is in Chapter 3, in which he is able to make
detailed references and a verbatim quote from the (deservedly obscure)
work of Otto Hauser, Werner Sombart and Dr Artur Brun, plus verbatim
quotes from Schopenhauer, Ludwig Börne and Walter Rathenau, Max
Nordau, and American trade Unionist Samuel Gompers. Also references to
Heine, and a Dr Heim. Hitler also makes verbatim quotes from newspaper
articles published in 1909, 1911, and 1913. And he gives a long
verbatim quotation from the proceedings of the 1919 Pan-Jewish
Conference held in Philadelphia.
In Chapter 4 Hitler quotes Schopenhauer, Martin Luther, Sombart again,
and now shows a remarkably detailed knowledge of the New Testament. In
chapter 5 Hitler produces verbatim antisemitic quotes from Kant and
Goethe, and philosemitic quotes from Disraeli and a Moritz Goldstein.
He refers in detail to Thomas Aquinas' views on Jews, and cites the
mysterious Dr Heim again, along with a Dr Schweyer. And he quotes
young Weininger.
Chapter 6 has Hitler citing from memory historical material concerning
the papacy, Charlemagne, the Crusades, the career of Frederick II
(Hohenstaufen), the alleged circumstances of Luther's Biblical
translations, and giving a verbatim citation from Giordano Bruno.
(Eckart meanwhile attributes to himself similar conversational
miracles. He describes himself producing a long series of citations
and quotations, mostly, oddly enough, from the same authors as Hitler.
In chapter 6 Eckart claims to have produced verbatim quotations from
sermons delivered in 1894 by the preachers Wallfisch and Schwalb, and
also gives a verbatim quotation from the theologian Professer
Walther.)
In chapter 7 Hitler gives verbatim quotes from the Jewish writer Doris
Wittner, and then shows himself to be a Talmud scholar, with two
verbatim quotes, before quoting, verbatim, from Moses Mendelsohnn.
That'll do. Does Eckart's "Hitler" ring true? Not in a million years.
Moreover I don't know of a single study on Hitler that takes seriously
the alleged quotations from Hitler in Eckart's _Bolshevism from Moses
to Lenin_. I think what we have here is a guide to the books that
Eckart had near to hand while he wrote _Bolshevism from Moses to
Lenin_, rather than a record of Hitler's conversation.
It is true that many of the opinions attributed to Hitler are
certainly the views that Hitler held. After all, Eckart really did
know Hitler. It's just that the actual words Eckart put into Hitler's
mouth that are simply not credible, and that especially includes the
many citations from so many authors, including Weininger.
So the alleged Hitlerian reference to Weininger in Eckart's book
cannot be relied upon. Eckart's general unreliability, and the
patently absurd nature of Hitler's citation-studded "conversation", as
written by Eckart, mean that any alleged literary reference attributed
to Hitler in that book has to be taken with an avalanche of salt.
Therefore we have only one reasonably reliable reference to Weininger
by Hitler, in the _Tabletalk_. Hitler said that Eckart told him that
Weininger was the only good Jew he had ever known, and that he'd
killed himself when he realised that Jews lived on the decay of
peoples.
So Hitler's statement is evidence that Hitler had heard, at second
hand, of a supposed fact about Weininger's biography. It's not
evidence of Hitler knowing anything Weininger's book.
As for the alleged indo-Aryan religion of Schopenhauer, Wagner and
Weininger, to which Hitler makes a fourth ... I don't think so. But
this is enough for now.
Kundry/Cuntry: I think that's possible but not proven. Wagner
wanted to call _Tannhäuser_ "The Mount of Venus" until his friends
talked him out of it, so maybe. I see a reference to "Kunden", as in
messages, tidings; but there's nothing to stop Wagner loading in more
meanings. Others may have a different view?
Kimberley Cornish
9 years ago
Dear Group,
Laon's point about Wittgenstein's JUDGEMENT being flawed because he
preferred to eat cornflakes is too deep for me, I'm afraid. I haven't
chased up the David Profumo article, being rather uninterested in
stuff like this, but wonder if Profumo provides a source reference for
what he writes. It's getting on for sixty years since Wittgenstein's
death and I would be rather surprised to find that Profumo knew him
personally. It sounds to my ear far more likely that he is simply
presenting a hack rehash of something he had read in order to appear
witty in a literary review. It is true that Wittgenstein preferred
simple fare, but my own assessment of the worth of Profumo's shot is
that it doesn't have any. Laon wrote:
I don't really mean, "Well, old 'Cornflakes' Wittgenstein, who takes
_him_ seriously?" Honestly, I think some people might mistake that for
a pathetically cheap shot. But still, it's an illustration of a real
point that could also be made with other examples: that outside some
specialist areas Wittgenstein's judgement could be somewhat flawed,
eccentric even.
Of course anyone's judgement can be flawed. The point is that the
judgements of a genius, flawed or not, need to considered very
carefully by lesser mortals such as ourselves. While I disagree with
many propositions about cultural matters that Wittgenstein presented,
I have yet to see a single one that is not arguable. His judgements
that is, were not those of a fool or even of an eccentric, but of a
highly civilized product of Viennese culture who knew every single
Austrian cultural icon worth knowing and most British.
On the accuracy of the "Tabletalk" and "Bolshevism" references, I
place my bets on the other side of the table from Laon. I cannot see
any reason why Bormann might have inserted the passage about
Weininger. I know of no interest that Bormann might have had
concerning Weininger to justify Laon's comment that "It has been
credibly suggested that Bormann changed some passages to make Hitler's
views more closely resemble his own". We are talking of the publicly
expressed opinions of the Fuhrer here. German secretaries are not
renowned for altering or making up what their bosses said, especially
when tasked with recording the words of the Great Man for the
long-suffering posterity of a thousand year Reich.
On the October 25 1944 passage, I can see no reason why Hitler might
not have made it. It is quite consistent with Hitler having a plan to
exterminate the Jews that he might also have said "It's not a bad
idea, by the way, that public
rumour attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews." Laon says
that "The implication is that there is no such plan; it's only a
rumour". But here again, what Laon says is too deep for me. Had Stalin
been reported to have said "It's not a bad idea, by the way, that
public rumour attributes to us a plan to arrest Soviet citizens with
German surnames", no-one would blink. Stalin DID have a plan to arrest
all Soviet citizens with German surnames and yet he might have also
commented to his henchmen on the benefits of it also being publicly
rumoured rather than kept secret. Why should it not be the same with
the Hitler quote?
On the veracity of "Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin", I simply point
out that it was widely distributed in the Third Reich as a genuine
report of Eckart's conversations with Hitler. Had there been any
doubts WHATEVER about it from the Nazi leadership, it would never have
seen the light of day. One must presume that Hitler himself saw no
objection to its being circulated. (It was even used in schools.)
There is the further point that Eckart was not just some minor Nazi
functionary: he was the man to whom "Mein Kampf" was dedicated. There
is therefore a clear onus of proof argument on the doubters. On the
authorites Friedlander cites, I confess both that I have never heard
of either of them and that I am in any case deeply distrustful of
modern German scholarship on the Nazi era. Eckart was not just some
alcoholic bum who happened to have drifted into Landsberg at the same
time as Hitler: he was editor of the Nazi newspaper "Volkischer
Beobachter" - rather like the editorial director of "Pravda" in the
days of the Soviet Union. Far from just being a man who had written a
number of unpublished plays, he was the author of the standard German
translation of "Peer Gynt". The Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg even
wrote a book on him.
Laon expressed doubt that Hitler could have quoted from memory from
Strabo, Cicero, Heinrich Graetz, Gibbon, the Old Testament,
Schopenhauer and so on. In previous posts, I documented that Hitler's
secretary testified that he would quote Schopenhauer by the page from
memory and the other references are consistent with everything else we
know about him. Hitler had a photographic memory and we have numerous
instances in his biographies where he displayed a detailed knowlege
of, for example, minute architectural details of the Paris Opera or
the Parthenon, or military details form the Great War. On the subject
of anti-Semitic passages in prominent authors, these are the one thing
above all others that we should expect Hitler to have learnt off by
heart. They formed part of his livelihood as an orator.
The "mysterious Dr Heim" whom Laon twice refers to Hitler quoting, by
the way, was, if memory serves, leader of the Bavarian People's Party.
Why should it be regarded as incredible that Hitler might not have
learnt telling passages from Heim's works for his own political
purposes?
Laon asks "Does Eckart's "Hitler" ring true?" and answers "Not in a
million years". Well, I think we must simply have different
perceptions of Hitler's personality. Laon's position seems to me to be
no more than a pious urging that Hitler was a fool and so couldn't
have read and learnt passages from the authors cited. Thus Laon
writes:
It is true that many of the opinions attributed to Hitler are
certainly the views that Hitler held. After all, Eckart really did
know Hitler. It's just that the actual words Eckart put into Hitler's
mouth that are simply not credible, and that especially includes the
many citations from so many authors, including Weininger.
So the alleged Hitlerian reference to Weininger in Eckart's book
cannot be relied upon. Eckart's general unreliability, and the
patently absurd nature of Hitler's citation-studded "conversation", as
written by Eckart, mean that any alleged literary reference attributed
to Hitler in that book has to be taken with an avalanche of salt.
What Laon claims is "patently absurd" ain't.
Sincerely,
Kimberley Cornish
Laon
9 years ago
1 The relevance of Wittgenstein, as a "referee" for Weininger
You cited Wittgenstein's admiration for Weininger as a reason for
considering Weininger with more respect.
That's an argument from authority, which raises the question of how
good that authority is likely to be, on that specific issue.
The topics that Weininger wrote about are not areas in which
Wittgenstein has any particular expertise, so an argument from
Wittgenstein's authority would only stand if Wittgenstein's judgement
was unusually good in general.
The "cornflakes" matter was a lighthearted illustration of the fact
that Wittgenstein's judgement outside his field was not unusually
good. I was content to give a secondary source because it's a very
ordinary sort of anecdote, and ordinary claims only require ordnary
evidence.
If challenged to come up with a better source than David Profumo's
second-hand reference, I wouldn't bother because it's not important
enough. Instead I'd cite something else that makes the same point,
where primary references are easy to find. Wittgenstein's period as a
primary school teacher at Trattenburg in Austria gives ample evidence
that this was not a man of unusually great wisdom or good judgement.
Wittgenstein's bullying cruelty was too much for the local parents,
which is a remarkable achievement given the notorious strictness of
Austrian schools at that time; Wittgenstein left after hitting one of
the pupils under his care so hard the kid passed out.
That's a less light-hearted illustration of the point that
Wittgenstein was not a man of unusually good judgement, outside his
specialised intellectual sphere. I preferred the cornflakes
illustration.
The point is not that Wittgenstein was an unusually terrible, or
unusually unwise, person, only that there seems no reason to take his
judgement on Weininger as authoritative, because Weininger's topics
are outside Wittgenstein's areas of expertise and there seems nothing
unusually good about Wittgenstein's judgement, outside his field.
In relation to Wittgenstein's over-generous verdict on Weininger I
indicated some specific reasons why Wittgenstein's judgement was
particularly likely to be over-generous: that Weininger had not only
died tragically young, but had had many things in common with
Wittgenstein, including being gay and conflicted about that, being
Jewish and conflicted about that, and a number of other things, which
I suggested as reasons why Wittgenstein is likely to have to felt
somewhat protective of Weininger's memory and reputation.
There is also the fact that Weininger was a youth suicide, as were
three of Wittgenstein's brothers, which seems a further reason for
Wittgenstein both to feel some identification with Weininger and to
wish to protect his memory.
2 The _Tabletalk_
I accepted the Weininger reference in the _Tabletalk_, so we're
actually on the same side of the table on that one.
I accepted it after a discussion, though, because the _Tabletalk_ is
not unproblematic. My problem was that you introduced a selection from
the _Tabletalk_ as something that "Hitler wrote". Hitler didn't write
it, and it's not that simple.
However since the Weininger reference in the _Tabletalk_ is "reliable"
in your view, and "probably reliable" in mine, that's close enough to
agreement on the central point, and I won't argue the other issues
further in this forum.
3 Eckart
Yes, Eckart had known Hitler for a long time; I acknowledged as much.
However he was also a morphine-addicted alcoholic with a history of
repeated psychiatric incarceration, which makes him an unreliable
witness.
Yes, Eckart's book was published in Nazi Germany. That does not make
it a reliable record. Lots of books published about Hitler by the
Nazis were full of fabrications and lies. Hitler seems to have
approved, so long as the fabrications and lies were flattering ones.
The portrait of Hitler in Eckart's book is a flattering one, in Nazi
terms, so there could be no problem with it from a Nazi point of view.
You dismissed Saul Friedlander's two citations concerning Eckart's
authorship on the grounds that you hadn't heard of them, and they were
German.
Shaul Esh was not German but an Israeli historian. Many of the books
written or edited by Esh remain in print; most concern Jewish history
or Holocaust studies. He was the editor of Vad Yeshem Studies. I
believe he died in 1968.
Margarete Plewnia is a German historian, though I know nothing else
about her. However her 1970 dissertation, _Auf dem Weg zu Hitler: Der
"völkische" Publizist Dietrich Eckart_ (Schünemann Universitätsverlag,
Bremen 1970), seems to be one of the very few studies to focus on
Eckart's life and work.
On why Eckart's version of Hitler seems ludicrous, the point is not
only whether Hitler had a good memory but how he spoke.
Eckart's version of Hitler seems bizarrely unlike any authentic or
near-authentic accounts of his conversation. As well as being
bizarrely unlike conversation of any kind.
The best way to illustrate the point would be to compare the extremely
strange, citation-studded, "conversations" written by Eckart with
other accounts of Hitler's speech. Now, I'm not sure how many pages
there are in _Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin" because I consulted an
on-line copy. I'll say 80.
To compare Eckart's citation-studded conversationalist with a more or
less authentic record of Hitler talking, let's compare two eighty-page
chunks of the _Tabletalk_: the first 80 and the last 80.
In the first 80 pages Hitler made not one quotation or citation, from
any written source.
He referred to Luther's Biblical translations, but gave no quotation.
He made some comments on the New Testament which showed general
knowledge, but made no quotations or citations. (He mentioned the
names of Dante and Shakespeare but without referring to any of their
work. I didn't count similar passing references in my survey of the
Eckart book.)
In the last 80 pages (pp 643 - 722), Hitler again made no quotation or
citation from any written source.
He mentioned having recently read a history book by "Alsdorf", but
made no quotation or citation, even from a book he'd just read. He
mentioned that Goethe disliked smoking, but not in the form of a
quotation of or citation to the particular passage. He mentioned ETA
Hoffmann's hostile review of _Der Freishütz_, but didn't quote from
it. On one page he mentioned Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but
again without quotations. He said enough to show that he knew who they
were, in general terms, but gave no quotations and cited no particular
ideas, unless you count things at the level of pointing out that
Schopenhauer was a pessimist.
That's it. That style of speech, showing a very low level of reference
to written sources, and no verbatim quotes at all, in 160 pages, is
what you'd expect from the Hitler portrayed in accounts by
acquaintances like Haenfstaengl and Ludecke.
This is not the same person as Eckart's Hitler. If Eckart's Hitler is
real then none of the others are. Of the two options, I'll go for the
one about the mad, alcoholic morphine addict writing a book, using the
books and some newspaper clippings he had in his room. The opinions
ascribed to Hitler are Hitler's opinions, because Eckart certainly was
an intimate of Hitler's when he died. The words are not.
By the way, I don't think Eckart would have survived the Night of the
Long Knives, if he hadn't had the decency to die first.
And rejecting Eckart doesn't just put me on the other side of the
table to Kimberley; it puts me on the same side of the table as every
other historian I've ever read in this area. Nobody takes Eckart's
book seriously, or cites it, that I'm aware of, except for Kimberley.
(Apart from the American Nazis who posted Eckart's book on the web,
which is useful of them; but they don't really count.)
So, once again, that brings me back to there being one reliable
Hitlerian reference to Weininger: a second-hand remark about
Weininger's suicide, not his work. So there's no evidence at all of
Hitler having ever read a word of Weininger. The rather dismissive
tone of Hitler's reference to Weininger is, if anything, evidence
against Hitler ever having read Weininger.
(Some Nazi propaganda did make use Weininger's antisemitic diatribes,
which were useful because they could say "even a Jew admits that we
are right about the Jews". But that shows opportunistic use, not
influence, and that's the Reichspropagandaministerium, not Hitler.)
Cheers!
Laon
Derrick Everett
9 years ago
Post by Glenroy B. Wolfsen
Post by Derrick Everett
Book review: "A Pagan Spoiled: Sex and Character in Wagner's Parsifal"
- Anthony Winterbourne, Associated University Presses, 2003
after he had made his own definition of Christianity, his idea of "the
religion of the early Christians", although more like Buddhism than
modern Christianity. This leads us to the question of whether there is
paganism in "Parsifal". Lucy Beckett (in "Richard Wagner: Parsifal",
Cambridge
"The bodhisattva doctrine includes a description of the transfer of
merit from a bodhisattva to those in need of help. The being who
receives this help is freed from further rebirth and the consequences
of their actions in earlier lives, karma, are not brought to maturity
but absorbed in the depths of the bodhisattva's boundless sea of
mercy." (Carl Suneson, ibid).
Parsifal, having passed beyond the perfection of wisdom, the level of
enlightenment at which those who have not taken the bodhisattva vow can
enter into Nirvana, is able to raise Kundry's karmic level so that she
can enter into Nirvana. As she enters into "deliverance from death,
the Nirvana, the eternal state", on this earth, the last load is lifted
from Parsifal's head. It could be argued that it is no longer
necessary for her to die. What we can say with some certainty is that
it would be inappropriate for Kundry to expire, as Otto Weininger and
Nike Wagner thought that she might have been allowed to do, in the
second act after her "rejection" by Parsifal. Theirs is, in my view, a
misreading: as Parsifal tells her, he has also been sent (although it
is not stated by whom) for her salvation. So it is possible, by
considering Wagner's attitude to the concepts of reincarnation
(mentioned in the libretto), karma (which in the libretto became
"purity") and Nirvana (another concept that links "Parsifal" with
"Tristan"), to arrive at quite different conclusions from those drawn
by Weininger; whose interpretation is based on a narrow and partial
understanding of only one of the central figures in Wagner's redemption
drama.
As to Wagner's definition of Christianity (what ever that might have
been), we know that he was not satisfied with his Lutheran heritage, and
was always seeking beyond that in philosophy, mythology and religion.
What interests me in this analysis by way of reviewing the book is that
what Wagner finally achieves in Parsifal is also very close to the
"early" Christianity of the Russian and Greek Orthodox Traditions (and
those of the resulting Monastic aspects) which are also very close to
Buddhism in so many ways - the understanding of the desires as the root
of suffering, and overcoming through the experience of this reality on
one's journey in life, the co-suffering with others (compassion) and the
ultimate goal of unity with God (Theosis) - and in their eschatology a
transformation not only of human beings but the interconnection of our
human liberation with that of the cosmos. It is too bad that Wagner (as
a Protestant) could not have know of this tradition. I wonder what he
would have thought of it.
At the risk of oversimplification: Wagner became interested in
Christianity after his marriage to Cosima, who had converted to
Protestantism in order to marry him. Wagner complained to his friends
that she took after her father, who became the Abbé Liszt, in her piety.
For this reason I treat all of Cosima's diary entries that deal with
Richard's attitude to religion with a pinch of salt, although this does
not mean that they are without any value. Among other things they record
what Richard and Cosima had been reading.
Both Cosima and Richard became interested in Church history. This was a
period in which Christian scripture and tradition were being examined by
free-thinking scholars, who sought the historical Jesus and the origins of
Christianity. During the 1870's, as recorded in Cosima's diaries, both
Cosima and Richard read and discussed numerous books by authors such as
D.F. Strauss, E. Renan (who speculated that early Christianity had been
influenced by Buddhism) and A.F. Gfrörer. Wagner was also interested in
the teachings of Christian mystics, such as Meister Eckhart. Although it
is unlikely that Wagner became acquainted with all Christian traditions,
it is probable that he was familiar not only with Protestantism but also,
at some level, with Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions and doctrines.
Post by Glenroy B. Wolfsen
Also, I wondered if you have ever heard of the Recording of Parsifal on
CD from an ancient performance with the Orchestra and Chorus of the
Radio Italiana Rome conducted by Vittorio Gui done on November 20-21,
1950 with Africo Baldelli as Parsifal, Maria Callas as Kundry and Boris
Christoff as Gurnemanz (all sung in Italian!!)?
Yes, although I fear that the performance is heavily cut. Baldelli is one
of the least memorable Parsifals on record, IMHO, and I find Callas'
interpretation of Kundry affected and unconvincing. Perhaps she thought
of her as a sister of Medea?
--
Derrick Everett (deverett at c2i.net)
==== Writing from 59°54'N 10°36'E ====
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/index.htm
Derrick Everett
9 years ago
Post by Kimberley Cornish
Dear Group,
We are all indebted to Derrick for drawing to our attention the fact
that there is at last a book on Wagner that takes Otto Weininger's ideas
seriously. I am not so sure that Derrick is correct to dismiss Weininger
so quickly, however and I rather think he has missed seeing how an
important aspect of the Mahayana Bodhisattva ideal links Weininger,
Wittgenstein, Hitler and Schopenhauer. Let me deal with Weininger first.
Actually I do not believe that either Nike Wagner or Anthony Winterbourne
take Otto Weininger's ideas seriously. They only consider how those ideas
influenced Weininger's contemporaries, together with the possible value of
Weininger's conceptual framework for the interpretation of Wagner's
"Parsifal". That value seems to me limited, given that, in order to fit
with Weininger's ideas about sex and character, he would need Kundry to
die at the end of the second act.
Post by Kimberley Cornish
Despite Derrick's and Laon's dismissal of Weininger, there remains the
awkward fact that one of the very greatest philosophers - Ludwig
Wittgenstein - throughout his life considered Weininger to be a genius
of the first rank. He described Weininger's work as "great". Since it
is a fair bet that Wittgenstein had a deeper insight into the
intellectual worth of his Viennese contemporaries than any of us here,
some degree of caution in criticism of Weininger is indicated. This is
doubly the case, since Weininger was at pains to stress that he was not
discussing men and women, but rather tendencies within the psyche that
can exist in either sex. That is, Weininger did NOT hold, as Derrick
writes, that "that women have no reason to exist other than men's desire
"The woman question is as old as sex itself, and as young as mankind.
And the answer to it? Man must free himself of sex, for in that way, and
in that way alone, can he free woman. In his purity, not, as she
believes, in his impurity, lies her salvation. She must certainly be
destroyed, as woman; but only to be raised again from the ashes - new,
restored to youth - as a real human being." ("Sex and Character",
p.345.)
What Weininger offers here, then, is a doctrine in which the liberation
"So long as there are two sexes there will always be a woman question,
just as there will be the problem of mankind. Christ was mindful of this
when, according to the account of the Fathers of the Church - Clemens -
He talked with Salome, without the optimistic palliation of the sex
which St. Paul and Luther invented later; death will last so long as
women bring forth, and truth will not prevail until the two become one,
until from man and woman a third self, neither man nor woman is
evolved."
Since Weininger did, not presumably, think that there were no women in
the world before St Paul, it follows that the "destruction of woman" he
is concerned with, had nothing to do with the physical forms taken by
the sexes, but rather with sex insofar as it is something mental -
something concerned with "character". His concern was with the
redemption of mankind, which he saw as something involving both men and
women. There might still be male and female bodies after this
redemption, but women would then be activated by the categorical
imperative and the desire for freedom, rather than by the desire to
procreate (p.349.) as he thought they were now. This seems to me to be a
quite different doctrine from how it is presented by Derrick. It is not
that "women have no reason to exist other than men's desire for sex". It
is rather that WOMAN'S desire for procreation through sex is the source
of female enslavement, and that the female hope for liberation lies in
an encounter with a genuinely pure man. This, Weininger illustrated with
the example of Parsifal and, given this alternate interpretation of
Weininger, it certainly seems to be an apt illustration.
I hope that I have not done any injustice to Weininger. Indeed his book
was highly regarded a century ago, and taken seriously even by proto-
feminists. His ideas about male and female elements of the psyche were
probably the most influential. Yet it is hard to take some of his other
ideas seriously, such as the one about Jewish and Aryan components of the
psyche. It is possible that Hitler, amongst others, did so. But then
Hitler was a crank, wasn't he?
Post by Kimberley Cornish
Here is how the Heart Sutra
describes the Bodhisattva Vow: ("Buddhist Wisdom Books containing The
Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra", translated by Edward Conze, George
Allen & Unwin, London, 1958.)
17a. [(Subhuti asked: How O Lord, should one set out in the
Bodhisattva-vehicle stand, how progress, how control his thoughts? - The
Lord replied: Here Subhuti, someone who has set out in the
Bodhisattva-vehicle should produce a thought in this manner: 'all beings
I must lead to Nirvana which leaves nothing behind; and yet, after
beings have been led to Nirvana, no being at all has been led to
Nirvana'. And why? If in a Bodhisattva the notion of a 'being' should
take place, he could not be called a 'Bodhi-being'.
This gives us a clue as to HOW it is that the Bodhisattva effects
deliverance from Samsara of all beings. It is quite simple: deliverance
from Samsara for beings "multiple as the sands of the Ganges" is
effected by not seeing them as multiple in the first place! THAT is what
3. The Lord said: Here Subhuti, someone who has set out in the vehicle
of a Bodhisattva should produce a thought in this manner: 'As many
beings as there are in the universe of beings, comprehended under the
term "beings" - egg-born, born from a womb, moisture-born, or
miraculously born; with or without form; with perception, without
perception, and with neither perception nor non-perception, - as far as
any conceivable form of beings is conceived: all these I must lead to
Nirvana, into that Realm of Nirvana which leaves nothing behind. And
yet, although innumerable beings have thus been led to Nirvana, no being
at all has been led to Nirvana.' And why? If in a Bodhisattva the notion
of a 'being' should take place, he could not be called a 'Bodhi-being'.
'And why? He is not to be called a Bodhi-being, in whom the notion of a
self or of a being should take place, or the notion of a living soul or
of a person.'
The Bodhisattva vow is simply an expression of the anatta doctrine under
which our common belief that there are multiple subjects of experience
is held to be illusory. The Bodhisattva putting off his entrance into
Nirvana in order to save all beings is in Samsara precisely because he
sees multiple beings to save - that is what living in Samsara IS - and
so hasn't attained the final fruits of meditative practice. In Buddhism,
success in meditative practice is achieved when there is seen to be
neither an ego within the meditator nor a self-nature within the things
perceived. The Bodhisattva saves all beings by meditatively not seeing
them as multiple. (Rather like Schopenhauer's individual thing being
seen as the unitary Platonic form when the contemplator is "lost in
contemplation".) Nirvana is one without a second and the perception of
the Visuddhimagga "Suffering alone exists, but none who suffer, the deed
there is, but not the doer thereof." This is, I think, identical with
the "no-ownership doctrine of the mind" espoused by Wittgenstein on
which a common pain causes multiple human bodies to contort and emit the
words "I'm in pain!" (no multiple subjects and a unitary pain, despite
the temptation to view it as multiplied in accordance with the number of
its sufferers.) Its ultimate source is the orient and the hypothesized
original Indo-European ("Aryan") religion via
Schopenhauer/Wagner/Weininger. If we can insert "Hitler" into this
troika - with his idea of a common mind restricted to Aryans alone, from
which Jews such as Wittgenstein and Weininger are excluded - then a lot
of doors open to understanding what happened in our previous century.
As I have stated before, we are in fundamental disagreement about the
possibility of identifying Schopenhauer's "will" and Wittgenstein's
"mind". It is clear to me at least that Schopenhauer distinguished
between will and intellect, and thus between willing and rational thought.
Hitler's idea of a racial will might be described as a parody of
Schopenhauer. Weininger's ideas, as expressed in his dissertation and
then in his book, are grounded not in Schopenhauer but in Kant.
Your description of the Bodhisattva vow is inaccurate. You do however
have a point concerning the (advanced) Bodhisattva overcoming the illusion
of multiplicity (one of the Kantian categories rejected by Schopenhauer as
belonging only to our representation of the universe and not to the
universe as it "really" is). To the (advanced) Bodhisattvas and Buddhas,
there are not innumerable beings. Their perception of the same streams
that we interpret using the Kantian categories and dimensions provided by
our mental apparatus cannot be conceived by the unenlightened, since we
cannot imagine how anything could be perceived without those categories
and dimensions.
Yet according to the Buddhist scriptues it is not, as you assert,
sufficient for a Bodhisattva or a Buddha to stop seeing those innumerable
beings as multiple. If that were so, then the first enlightened
Bodhisattva would already have taken all of us into Nirvana.
--
Derrick Everett (deverett at c2i.net)
==== Writing from 59°54'N 10°36'E ====
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/index.htm
Kimberley Cornish
9 years ago
Dear Group,
Laon wrote that "The topics that Weininger wrote about are not areas
in which Wittgenstein has any particular expertise, so an argument
from Wittgenstein's authority would only stand if Wittgenstein's
judgement was unusually good in general."
I think this is a common belief concerning Weininger's work and it is
quite wrong. Weininger's work is essentially conceptual - that is,
philosophical. Let me recommend what I think is a very perceptive
article by Arthur Evans on this:
http://www.geocities.com/wittgensteinonline/articles/6.htm
Evans' writes:
"While influenced by Frege and Russell in other respects, Wittgenstein
derived his truth-tables from Weininger's gender-tables in Sex and
Character, which used two symbols, M and W (for Mensch and Weib). By
looking at a person's M-W table, you can read off his or her overall
character. Wittgenstein created tables using the two symbols Wand F
(for Wahr and Falsch). He said they represented the polarity of
language, just as Weininger had spoken of the polarity of sex. In his
private notes, Wittgenstein said his tables displayed the physiognomy
of language, just as Weininger believed his tables displayed the
physiognomy of the body."
Evans writes, a paragraph or so before this"
"Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Weininger's Sex and Character share a
common leitmotif: the ascent of the socially isolated male ego up the
ladder of formal logic to a mystical vision of Truth. In Sex and
Character, Weininger calls the loner who reaches this peak "Kant's
solitary man": "Kant's solitary man laughs not, nor dances, shouts
not, nor rejoices. For him, no need to make a noise, so deeply does
the world-expanse its silence keep." In Tractatus, Wittgenstein
presents his "elucidations" of logic and language as a ladder by which
the enlightened loner transcends the world. Reaching the last rung, he
throws away the ladder, realizing the truth of the book's famous last
line: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one keep silent" "
I therefore do not concede that Wittgenstein's judgement of Weininger
was outside Wittgenstein's field of his expertise. Weininger is the
probable chief intellectual source for the ideas of Wittgenstein's
Tractatus. (Wittgenstein acknowledged Weininger's contribution to his
ideas in "Culture and Value"). "Sex and Character" is not a work of
Sociology or some discipline with which Wittgenstein was unacquainted.
It is a work of Philosophy through and through.
Now on his claim of Wittgenstein's "lack of judgement" Laon has still
not produced an example of INTELLECTUAL misjudgement by Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein did strike one of his students, which event was the
subject of a tortured "confession" to Fania Pascal years later in
Cambridge. He obviously agonised over it. Anyone who has marked
student essays, of course, will be familiar with the urge to pick up a
chainsaw for the occasion of one's next lecture. I do not excuse
Wittgenstein's reported deed, and Laon is correct that it shows very
poor judgement, but it is not an example of judgement ABOUT something,
but rather an example of misjudgement in ACTION. Even here, we lack
knowledge of details. I have memories of being caned at school myself
in the 1950s, but I don't think my Headmaster was guilty of
misjudgement - it was simply an automatic and standard response to
students fighting. Had I passed out, my Headmaster would have been in
much the same position as Wittgenstein. The only difference was that
(a) I didn't pass out and (b) I am male. That was then and this is
now. Amen.
So far as the Tabletalk is concerned, Laon notes "I accepted the
Weininger reference in the _Tabletalk_, so we're actually on the same
side of the table on that one." That said, there probably isn't very
much left to carry on this thread about. Of course Laon is correct
that Hitler didn't "write" it. It was written down by someone else.
Much the same applies to Bernard Shaw's plays and to Churchill's
speeches and to Hitler's speeches, so there doesn't seem to me to be
much in this. No one would doubt that Shaw wrote "Pygmalion" or that
Churchill wrote "We shall fight them on the beaches ..." just because
the dictated words were written down by a secretary.
On Eckart, Laon wrote "Lots of books published about Hitler by the
Nazis were full of fabrications and lies. Hitler seems to have
approved, so long as the fabrications and lies were flattering ones."
The difference in this case is that the book purports to present the
actual words of the Fuhrer as recorded by his acknowledged mentor and
the man to whom "Mein Kampf" was dedicated. It would HAVE to have been
checked VERY carefully at the highest levels. I don't know of any
other example where fabrications and lies purporting to quote the very
words of Hitler on an ideological matter would have been tolerated.
Perhaps Laon might care to offer some examples. Beyond this, there
isn't much else to discuss. Laon thinks "Bolshevism ..." to be dodgy
on the grounds he doesn't believe that Hitler read the books he is
presented as having read or that he could quote from them verbatim. I
don't find anything suspect in this at all. Laon argues that Hitler's
conversational style in "Bolshevism" differs from that in the
"Tabletalk" and so is evidence of concocted conversations. In the
early 1920s, however, Hitler was just a mob-orator under close
surveillance by the law. If he quoted from his opponents he had to be
very sure he got his quotes correct and could provide chapter and
verse. Twenty years later, he was ruler of most of Europe with
god-like powers and no need to convince anybody. He was the source of
chapter and verse; - the fact that Hitler said X implied X was true.
Why bother with references?
On Shaul Esh, Laon is correct. He is perfectly reputable. I haven't
read his work, however.
Laon's comment that "I don't think Eckart would have survived the
Night of the
Long Knives, if he hadn't had the decency to die first", like all
counterfactuals in History, is hard to sustain. I don't know of any
reason why Laon might think he was due for the long jump, but then
dictators don't need reasons. Maybe he might have been scheduled for
death, maybe not. Who knows?
Let me conclude with a remark on another comment of Laon's:
"So, once again, that brings me back to there being one reliable
Hitlerian reference to Weininger: a second-hand remark about
Weininger's suicide, not his work. So there's no evidence at all of
Hitler having ever read a word of Weininger. The rather dismissive
tone of Hitler's reference to Weininger is, if anything, evidence
against Hitler ever having read Weininger."
Laon is betting that Hitler didn't bother reading the most important
serious anti-Jewish work ever written by a Jewish author. This author
attracted attention Europe-wide and was a literary sensation in his
own country. On his last day alive before visiting Beethoven's house,
he frequented the Wittgenstein-funded Secession Art museum. This
author profoundly affected the young Wittgenstein who was a practising
homosexual (with the son of a school-master named Strigl) while at the
same school as Hitler. Wittgenstein's brother had also suicided over
homosexuality the previous year. Hitler refers to this author in one
and possibly two works. Laon's conclusion from these facts is that the
evidence "is, if anything, evidence against Hitler ever having read
Weininger". There might be something to be said for Laon's modus
operandi in assessing these historical matters, but not much, I think.
Sincerely,
Kimberley Cornish
P.S. On proto-Indoeuropean roots and Tannhauser; Calvert-Watkins lists
the root of "Tantra" on p.90 of his dictionary. Under its source,
"ten-" we read as one of its meanings "stiff, rigid". (He says it is
the same root as occurs in "tetanus" and in the Latin "tendere" = to
stretch or extend.) It appears that Wagner might have so chosen his
opera title that instead of "The Mount of Venus", which his friends
objected to, it secretly means "The House of Erections"
Mike Scott Rohan
9 years ago
The message <***@posting.google.com>
from ***@presto.net.au (Laon) contains these words:
{snip}
Post by Laon
And rejecting Eckart doesn't just put me on the other side of the
table to Kimberley; it puts me on the same side of the table as every
other historian I've ever read in this area. Nobody takes Eckart's
book seriously, or cites it, that I'm aware of, except for Kimberley.
(Apart from the American Nazis who posted Eckart's book on the web,
which is useful of them; but they don't really count.)
From my own reading I'd agree absolutely.
Post by Laon
So, once again, that brings me back to there being one reliable
Hitlerian reference to Weininger: a second-hand remark about
Weininger's suicide, not his work. So there's no evidence at all of
Hitler having ever read a word of Weininger. The rather dismissive
tone of Hitler's reference to Weininger is, if anything, evidence
against Hitler ever having read Weininger.
Indeed. Even if the remark were accurate, it could still derive from
hearsay rather than actual reading. For all the drooling about Hitler's
"wide reading" by his ardent admirers, there seems to be remarkably
little evidence of it in his verifiable speeches and writings -- even
"Mein Kampf", which was hastily tarted up by his more educated friends.
Re "country matters": isn't "Kundry" just Wagner's rendition of the
sorceress "Cundrie" in Wolfram von Eschenbach? Who herself may be a
confusion from earlier sources with the shadowy female character who
figures as Parsifal's wife, and eventually, along with Cundrie, joins
him in Montsalvat, namely Kondwiramurs. The resonance in the names is
obvious, and doesn't sound nearly so genital. The vaguely
Gothic-sounding alternative "Gundryggia" which Klingsor cites is purely
Wagner's invention. In any case, the resemblance between the words is
chiefly apparent to a modern English-speaker. Even today "d" and "t" are
less close and relatable sounds in German than they are in English -- eg
"gesamt" and "gesund" -- and I believe they were more so in the past. In
the closest relevant form of the word to Wolfram I can find -- Middle
Low German -- it's spelt "kunte", whereas "Cundrie" is always spelt
with the "C" and "d"; the resemblance at that time would have been even
less apparent. Old English forms often have a "qu" sound, further
distancing the words. Kundry's genital derivation seems vanishingly
unlikely, therefore. For any closer resemblance we must look to the
source of the assertion.
As to Indo-European, what a lot of people (especially the Nazis and
their fellow-travellers) fail to understand about it is that it's not a
language as such but a philological extrapolation of various versions
and states of languages which did not necessarily exist all in one time
or one place -- nothing anybody actually ever spoke, in other words,
just an analytical approximation. Attempts to use it to "interpret"
anything are therefore inevitably totally bogus, cheesy
pseudo-scholarship on a par with the lost-civilization nutters who claim
Christ's last words on the Cross were actually in Mayan...
Cheers,
Mike
--
***@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Kimberley Cornish
9 years ago
Dear Group,
A welcome post from Derrick raises several points. He wrote:
"I hope that I have not done any injustice to Weininger. Indeed his
book was highly regarded a century ago, and taken seriously even by
proto-feminists. His ideas about male and female elements of the
psyche were probably the most influential. Yet it is hard to take
some of his other ideas seriously, such as the one about Jewish and
Aryan components of the psyche. It is possible that Hitler, amongst
others, did so. But then Hitler was a crank, wasn't he?"
I think he is still taken seriously on feminism by Germaine Greer
though I am not sure if this is a recommendation or a warning. As it
happens, I take him very seriously indeed as the hidden half-author of
the Tractatus and as proto-anti-Semite of the century in which
anti-Semitism was the philosophy that created the world we now live
in. Some of what I take to be his more important thoughts - aphorisms
really - are not in "Sex and Character", but can be viewed online at
http://www.theabsolute.net/ottow/.
On whether there are distinct Jewish and Aryan modes of thought, I do
not think one need be a Nazi for thinking the answer to be
affirmative. The respected British psychologist Gerald Abrahams wrote
a book "The Jewish Mind" as a companion to "The Chess Mind" and
obviously thought there was something here worth probing. Wittgenstein
thought there was a difference and located it in the ability of Jews
to take an idea and see its implications to a greater depth than
others. Wittgenstein's "Culture and Value" has caused some angst
amongst liberal commentators for these reasons, but he was not
anti-Semitic in the least - quite the contrary, in fact and - as he
remarked to Drury - proud of the fact that his thought was "100%
Hebraic". I'm quite happy, by the way, to also recognise a Hindu mind
whose special forte is religious mysticism, a Negro mind whose special
forte is African rhythms and so on. If we view the virtues (and vices)
of different human groups as different facets of a jewel rather than
as things to be feared and exterminated, there is no reason not to
recognise and welcome what different groups can bring - something to
be celebrated in fact. A list of Chess grandmasters shows that Jews
are represented astronomically out of proportion to their numbers in
the general population. Much the same applies in Mathematics and
numerous other academic areas. Jews themselves tend to be on the side
of the "no innate human differences" brigade, but this, I think, is
because their obvious talents have resulted in persecution and it's
safer to attribute Jewish achievement to hard work rather than to
anything innate. On the issue of whether Hitler was a crank, the
answer, sadly, is no, just as Stalin, Mao and Saddam Hussein were not
cranks. Cranks have a negligible chance of gaining control of a
nation. I'm not sure what collective term to apply to these
individuals, but crank ain't it. We ordinary types want to ask how
anyone can genuinely believe or do what they believed and did. Well,
that's what History is for. In the case of Hitler, we don't know yet,
but this writer believes there are clues in the intellectual trail
that runs: Schopenhauer, Wagner, Weininger/Wittgenstein/Hitler. (This
is not to say that Wagner was responsible for Hitler, by the way, but
that ought not be news to anyone in this group.)
On the nature of Schopenhauer's account of the Will, Derrick wrote:
"As I have stated before, we are in fundamental disagreement about the
possibility of identifying Schopenhauer's "will" and Wittgenstein's
"mind". It is clear to me at least that Schopenhauer distinguished
between will and intellect, and thus between willing and rational
thought.
Hitler's idea of a racial will might be described as a parody of
Schopenhauer. Weininger's ideas, as expressed in his dissertation and
then in his book, are grounded not in Schopenhauer but in Kant."
For what it is worth, I actually don't think I have any fundamental
disagreement with Derrick here at all. For Wittgenstein, a unitary
pain can be felt by different individuals and cause different mouths
to emit screams. For Schopenhauer, the unitary will acts through
different bodies. I see this as an aspect of the Anatta doctrine. That
is, neither sensations, thoughts, intentions nor acts of will are
multiplied according to the number of men who feel them, think them,
intend them or will them. As Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 27 "My
thoughts, far from where I abide, intend a zealous pilgrimage to
thee". It is not the individual who intends, but rather the intention
or thoughts he has, which can be shared by others as a Siamese twin
can share a pain in a common limb. It is not the individual who wills,
but the shared Schopenhaurean Will. That Schopenhauer - unlike
Wittgenstein - did not hold this doctrine in its fullness, I accept.
The final and very interesting complaint Derrick makes is this:
"... according to the Buddhist scriptures it is not, as you assert,
sufficient for a Bodhisattva or a Buddha to stop seeing those
innumerable beings as multiple. If that were so, then the first
enlightened Bodhisattva would already have taken all of us into
Nirvana."
If it is true that it is the common thought that thinks, the common
Will that wills, the shared pain that pains and so on, rather than a
multitude of separated individuals, then we are all in one shared Mind
already, are we not? In the eternal present, you feel the very
toothache that Aristotle had, you can feel what Nietzsche felt when
the wind blew in his hair upon the mountain. This thought that I am
writing down in Australia will be thought in Derrick. "All the Buddhas
of the past, present and future breathe through the one nostril."
Here is the first paragraph of Emerson's essay "History":
"There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an Inlet
to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the
right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has
thought he may think; what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any
time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this
universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is
the only and sovereign agent.
Of the works of this mind, history is the record."
And here is Emerson's introductory poem to the "Essays":
"There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all.
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.
I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain."
Who or what is Derrick then? - He is Buddha.
Sincerely,
Kimberley Cornish
P.S. Come, Maitreya, come.
Derrick Everett
9 years ago
Post by Mike Scott Rohan
Re "country matters": isn't "Kundry" just Wagner's rendition of the
sorceress "Cundrie" in Wolfram von Eschenbach? Who herself may be a
confusion from earlier sources with the shadowy female character who
figures as Parsifal's wife, and eventually, along with Cundrie, joins
him in Montsalvat, namely Kondwiramurs. The resonance in the names is
obvious, and doesn't sound nearly so genital.
I do not see any connection, far less possibility of identification,
between Parzival's wife Kondwiramurs (a name supposedly derived from
"conduit amour") and Cundrie the sorceress, in Wolfram's poem. Those
names are even less similar when diacriticals are taken into account:
the precise name of the latter character is Cundrîe (with a caret over
the i).
It should hardly be necessary to add (but for the sake of any
newcomers I do so anyway) that Wagner's character Kundry is (among
other things) an amalgam of Cundrîe with other female characters from
Wolfram's poem, notably Sigune (the cousin) and Orgeluse (the haughty
lady of the castle of maidens).
--
Derrick Everett
Mike Scott Rohan
9 years ago
Post by Derrick Everett
Post by Mike Scott Rohan
Re "country matters": isn't "Kundry" just Wagner's rendition of the
sorceress "Cundrie" in Wolfram von Eschenbach? Who herself may be a
confusion from earlier sources with the shadowy female character who
figures as Parsifal's wife, and eventually, along with Cundrie, joins
him in Montsalvat, namely Kondwiramurs. The resonance in the names is
obvious, and doesn't sound nearly so genital.
I do not see any connection, far less possibility of identification,
between Parzival's wife Kondwiramurs (a name supposedly derived from
"conduit amour") and Cundrie the sorceress, in Wolfram's poem. Those
the precise name of the latter character is Cundrîe (with a caret over
the i).
I did say "may". Opinions differ, the more so as her role in the story
is otherwise inexplicable; if one unites the figures of Parsifal's
(largely absent) love-interest and the doomed sorceress, as Wagner did
in large degree, several elements make more sense -- her eventual
admission to Montsalvat, for example. How did they get separated? Could
have been in several ways, not least Christian squeamishness at the hero
marrying an unredeemed figure. And the names still have a similar first
syllable, with an r-dominated follow-up. But of course it's only a
theory, unprovable either way, and I don't insist on it at all. If
someone as steeped in Parsifal as you doesn't like it, so much the worse
for it.
None of this, though, affects the main point too radically, which is
that Kundry isn't likely to derive from "kunte" -- and I'd be glad to
know what you think about that!
(Incidentally I don't believe the "conduit amour" derivation for a
moment -- despite, admittedly, the presence of other names like "Repanse
de Schoie".)
Post by Derrick Everett
It should hardly be necessary to add (but for the sake of any
newcomers I do so anyway) that Wagner's character Kundry is (among
other things) an amalgam of Cundrîe with other female characters from
Wolfram's poem, notably Sigune (the cousin) and Orgeluse (the haughty
lady of the castle of maidens).
Yes indeed, but that wouldn't affect anything in Cundrie's own origin
(can't be bothered doing the diacritical), so was not immediately
relevant.
Cheers,
Mike
--
***@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Mike Scott Rohan
9 years ago
The message <***@posting.google.com>
from ***@msn.com.au (Kimberley Cornish) contains these words:
{snip}
Post by Kimberley Cornish
On whether there are distinct Jewish and Aryan modes of thought, I do
not think one need be a Nazi for thinking the answer to be
affirmative.
On the contrary. It's quite startling that you chose to make the
distinction in this fashion, and all too revelatory, since only one
group of people divides up humanity in that fashion. "Aryan" is a term
without any meaning or application -- except to Nazis.
Kimberley Cornish
9 years ago
dear Group,
Mike Scott Rohan writes of proto-Indoeuropean
"Attempts to use it to "interpret" anything are therefore inevitably
totally bogus, cheesy pseudo-scholarship on a par with the
lost-civilization nutters who claim Christ's last words on the Cross
were actually in Mayan..."
This sounds good as a rhetorical flourish, but there are two points to
consider:
1. Two centuries of work in philology show that it is simply false.
Interested readers should have a look at any serious work on the
Indo-Europeans. J. P. Mallory's "In Search of the Indo-Europeans:
Language, Archaeology and Myth" (Thames & Hudson, 1989) is as good as
any. Other academics worthy of looking at include Colin Renfrew and
Marija Gimbutas or various articles in "Scientific American" over the
last two decades devoted to the topic.
2. Even were Mike Scott Rohan's extraordinarily general statement true
(which I stress it is not) Wagner's contemporary philologist
acquaintances took it for granted that their liguistic discoveries
could be used to interpret both history and myth. Dismissing
investigations in this area by tarring them with the "Nazi" brush
fails to do justice to both contemporary research and to those of the
nineteenth century pioneers.
Sincerely,
kimberley Cornish
Richard Partridge
9 years ago
On 1/5/04 1:26 PM, Mike Scott Rohan, at
Post by Mike Scott Rohan
{snip}
Post by Kimberley Cornish
On whether there are distinct Jewish and Aryan modes of thought, I do
not think one need be a Nazi for thinking the answer to be
affirmative.
On the contrary. It's quite startling that you chose to make the
distinction in this fashion, and all too revelatory, since only one
group of people divides up humanity in that fashion. "Aryan" is a term
without any meaning or application -- except to Nazis.
That's true, with the possible exception that philologists used to use the
term to refer to the Indo-European language group. (They hastened to add
that the term had no racial significance.) I don't know if they still do.
I agree, that is a startling statement.
Dick Partridge
Kimberley Cornish
9 years ago
Dear Group,
Mike Scott Rohan's attemps to tar me with the NAzi brush are becoming
Post by Mike Scott Rohan
{snip}
Post by Kimberley Cornish
On whether there are distinct Jewish and Aryan modes of thought, I do
not think one need be a Nazi for thinking the answer to be
affirmative.
On the contrary. It's quite startling that you chose to make the
distinction in this fashion, and all too revelatory, since only one
group of people divides up humanity in that fashion. "Aryan" is a term
without any meaning or application -- except to Nazis.
Since in this very post from which this extract is taken I had quoted
Jewish writers who were indisputably not Nazis using this same
distinction, Mike Scott Rohan's statement is false. If he has any
evidence that I am a Nazi or have any Nazi sympathies or have politics
anything other than mainstream (I do not) then I would ask him to post
it. Otherwise, for goodness' sake, let us put aside this silliness and
stick to the issues.
Sincerely,
Kimberley Cornish
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