Barry Emslie - Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love

The standard English edition of Wagners essays is used: Richard Wagners Prose Works, translated and edited by William Ashton Ellis, 8 vols. (London, 18929). Many of these have been republished by the University of Nebraska Press and Scholarly Press, St. Claire Shores, Michigan. However, most of them are now on the Web at the Wagner Library: http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/. The Ellis translations are difficult, turbid, and dated. They have, however, the dubious advantage of giving the reader some idea of how (equally) inelegant Wagners prose can be. On one or two occasions I have suggested alternatives. All quotations from those essays available on the Web are referenced below in the text proper in square brackets with the number of the printed volume from the 1890s and then the page number: e.g. [I: 97]. If the essay is not on the Web the quotation is annotated in the usual way and the book details are found in the endnotes. References for the standard German editions are in the endnotes.

The English edition of Cosimas diaries is used: Cosima Wagners Diaries, edited and annotated by Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack, translated with an introduction by Geoffrey Skelton, 2 vols. (London: William Collins & Sons, 197880). All entries are given according to their original diary dates only, and are put directly into the text proper in round brackets: e.g. (23 January 1883).

The edition of Arnold Schopenhauers The World as Will and Representation used is the translation by E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, 1958). All references are given in the text in brace brackets with volume number and page number: e.g. {I: 257}.

No page references are given for quotations from the librettos. The translations have been taken from various sources.

On all other occasions when no English edition is given or no translator from the German named, the translations are mine.

Unlike Wagner, I have chosen to use the term music drama exclusively for all the theatrical works from The Flying Dutchman to Parsifal, and the term opera for the three completed stage works preceding The Flying Dutchman. I have used the English titles: The Flying Dutchman, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, and The Ring of the Nibelung as the originals lose nothing in translation. The rest I have left in German. For instance, Tristan und Isolde refers to the music drama, and Tristan and Isolde to its two principal characters. Wagnerites who know the libretto will appreciate how important the little word und is. The rest will find the answer in .

Some remarks on terminology

The terms Weltanschauung (a world view) and the prefix ur (meaning source or original as in ur-text etc.) are essentially a personal preference, although the German connotations strike me as apposite.

Teleology is used for a theory which sees the world as having a purpose. However the additional quality of a goal is always part of the mix. That is, teleology also implies (at the very least) an endpoint to which we/history are moving. The word telos is often employed to underline this.

Pantheism is used in the popular sense that the divine is best manifest in nature. However Schopenhauer and others dont mean this. The difference is made clear in .

Epistemology and ontology crop up. The distinction between these two is often much insisted upon but, at least for me, sometimes difficult to maintain. Ontology is used explicitly and exclusively for a theory of being, for a discussion of what exists and its nature. Epistemology is a study/theory of knowledge and therefore addresses the assumptions we employ in understanding the ontological world. I use the term epistemology more often than ontology and I suspect purists will think that it sometimes spills over onto the latters territory. Frankly I find this unavoidable. The context in which these words are used will make it clear what is meant.

Narrative and normative are often paired. The first is self-explanatory; the second signifies not merely a norm, but a norm with moral weight. The pairing is employed because the tension between the demands (and pleasures) of narrative on the one hand and the foregrounding of privileged moral or didactic values on the other is invariably present in Wagner. Put crudely, villains or flawed characters are more useful to story-tellers in making narratives go. The result is an aesthetic difficulty in finding an adequate and active place within the narrative for normative characters so that their customary, inherently passive status is circumvented. While Wagners various solutions to this difficulty are important across the board, they are particularly so with respect to the role of women.