Chapter 10 9

In arranging the plot, Wagner is first and foremost an actor.What he puts above all else is a staging of infallible effects, an actio of hautrelief with expressive gestures. Shocking scenes--he thinks about them and draws character out of them. From there, everything else follows from a not-so-subtle techno-economics.Corneille cared about the audience, but Wagner didn't have to. It's really the nineteenth century.Wagner must have judged "what must be done" as roughly as every other actor today: a series of exciting scenes, each more exciting than the last--with a lot of shrewd clumsiness in between.What he strives for is to guarantee the effect of his work, and he starts from the third act, and he proves his work with the final effect.Guided by such theater sense, there is no danger of creating a play on a whim.Drama requires strict logic, but what does Wagner call logic!Again, Corneille takes care of ideas, but Wagner doesn't have to take care of the audience. He's a true German!It is well known that the technical problem with which the playwright struggles, and often struggles, is that of giving conflicts and their resolution a certainty that they can have only one way.Make them give the impression of freedom (principle of least effort).Wagner, however, is casual in this respect; but he does minimize the effort of the conflict and its resolution.You might as well put one of Wagner's "conflicts" under the microscope - I guarantee you'll laugh.There is nothing more ridiculous than the conflict of "Tristan", unless you cite the conflict of "Meistersinger".Don't be fooled, Wagner is no dramatist.He likes the word "drama," that's all.He always liked pretty words.Nevertheless, in his essays the word "drama" remains a complete misconception (and a shrewdness: Wagner always feigns condescension to the word "opera"); roughly as the word "soul" It's a complete misunderstanding in the New Testament. —he was not a psychologist in the drama; he instinctively avoided explaining the psychological motives—in what way?Here's the approach: he's always having anaphylaxis where he needs to explain his psychological motivation... Trendy, isn't it?Very Parisian!Totally decadent! ...By the way, Wagner's factual preference for dramatic fictions to resolve the kind of conflicts of Yang is another matter entirely.Let me give you an example.Let's look at the situation where Wagner had to have a female voice.A complete scene without a female voice - how is that possible!But these "heroines" are not free for the time being.What is Wagner doing?He was liberating Elda, the oldest woman in the world. "Come on, Granny! You must sing!" sang Elda.Wagner achieved his goal.He immediately dismissed the old heroine. "Are you going to do it? Come on! You'd better go to sleep anyway?"—in short: a spectacle full of mythological horrors, the Wagnerites are terrified...

①Original Note: It is a real misfortune for aesthetics that people have always translated the word drama with "plot".It wasn't just Wagner who was wrong here; the whole world is still stuck, even linguists who should understand better.Ancient dramas performed grandiose scenes of passion—which happened to exclude the plot (which was hidden before the prologue or behind the scenes).The word drama comes from the Dorians. According to the usage of the Dorians, it expresses the opinions of the words "event" and "history" in the language of the ancient Egyptian monks.The oldest plays depict local legends and "sacred history" which are the basis for religious rites (so there is no action but only encounter: among the Dorians, δeav does not mean "action" at all). "Plot", Handlu ng, means "plot" and "action" in German.

② Elda, the character in the first part of the opera "The Ring of the Nibelung" "The Rhinegold", the goddess of wisdom. — "But the content of Wagner's plays! Their mythological content! Their eternal content!" Question: How to test these contents, these eternal contents? —The chemist replied: Make Wagner a secular play, a modern play—we are crueler!Adapted into a citizen drama!So, what will Wagner become? — Among us, I have experimented.There is no longer anything pleasing to the eye, worthy only of Wagner for the younger, such as the Parsifal, which can be included in the liberal arts curriculum (which is indispensable for idiots) as a theological substitute.How astonishing!You will find that Wagner's heroines all look like Madame Bovary once they take off the hero's skin! —Conversely, you will also find that Flaubert can adapt his heroines as Scandinavian or Carthaginian mythological characters at will, and then send them to Wagner as a script.On the whole, indeed, Wagner seems to be interested in nothing but the problems which fascinate the poor Parisian decadents today.Always close to the hospital!Full modern problems, full metropolitan problems!You needn't doubt it! ... Have you ever noticed (and this is an idea association) that Wagner's heroines have no children? —they were barren... Wagner deals with Siegfried's birth with a despair that shows how modern his feelings on this point are. — Siegfried "Liberated Woman" -- but with no hope of reproduction. ——Finally, there is a fact that confuses us: Parsifal is Lohengrin's father!How did he become a father? ——Could it be that we have to think of the famous saying "Chastity works miracles" here... Wagner once talked about the importance of a chaste reputation. ①

① This sentence is originally written in Latin.