WSWDC: Who We Are

Wagner the Mystic
Lecture by Mr. John J. Pohanka to the Wagner Society of Washington DC
Delivered at the George Washington University, May 29, 2003

I can think of no better way to introduce tonight's subject, "Wagner the Mystic", than to play the very beginning of Saul Lilienstein's marvelous "Commentary on Parsifal" which he recorded for Washington National Opera as part of their "Opera Commentary" series.

(Music: first one minute of the prelude to Act 1 of Parsifal. Lilienstein's voice: "Where are we? This plaintive melody moving along on its way without the benefit of classical balance…the tonality ambiguous…and the very time of it seeming to be suspended…Where for the love of God are we?")

Where are we? Saul, I'll try to answer your question. I think Gurnemanz hinted at the answer when he told Parsifal – "Here time and space are indivisible." What he meant by that was that here, this place, is outside of time and space. We do not experience time and space here in the normal way, and indeed, Wagner's music from the very beginning, as Saul says, sounds as if it is suspended in time. This is a mystical place… a metaphysical place… a place that is related, to Plato's world of eternal forms. What the neo-platonist, Plotinus, called "the world of the One". Emmanuel Kant called it the world of "things in themselves"; Schopenhauer, the "Noumenal" world. The Upanishads referred to it as "Atman" or "Brahman", and the Bhuddists called it "Samsara" or "Nirvanah". How in the world did we get here? More importantly, how did Wagner get here? We'll find out tonight. In doing this, two words keep cropping up: metaphysics and mysticism. I looked them up in the dictionary to see how Webster defines them.

Metaphysics – made up of ontology: What is reality? And Epistemology: How do we access it? Well, that's very simple. Reality is this chair, this room, the tree outside, etc. How do we access it? We touch it, see it, hear it, smell it, etc. But, as you know, things are not that simple for philosophers. Many philosophers feel there is another world - a world not accessible to our senses.

Mysticism: A belief in, or reliance on, the possibility of the spiritual apprehension, of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect. That phrase "inaccessible to the intellect", is important. Now you can see, if you were a metaphysician and a mystic as well, where it might lead you.

We're going to be looking at several quotations tonight. Two very important ones. One from Bryan Magee's Aspects of Wagner, written in 1968…a marvelous little book…still very well respected. Bryan writes, "Some people are made to feel by Wagner's music……that they are in touch with the depths of their own personality for the first time--a feeling of wholeness, yet unboundedness; compared to a mystical or religious experience." I will refer to this tonight as "a Wagner moment." Now, all of us have had strong aesthetic experiences…the kind one might get at the National Gallery of Art looking at Thomas Cole's the Four Stages of Life. You can get lost in those things. But there isn't any aesthetic experience with the intensity, or the length of the intensity, that you can get in listening to Wagner's music. I think all of us here tonight have felt it to one degree or another. If there are some here who are Wagner beginners, stick with Wagner. You'll eventually have your Wagner moment. Believe me.

It is a very difficult thing to put this kind of experience into words. It is, in effect, ineffable. It's almost impossible to describe it. Yet it's there, and it is objective and real. Objective in that it's not subjective – it isn't a dream. This is happening to us when we experience it. And it is certainly real. I think it's very difficult to come up with words to describe something like this, and that's why it's ineffable. Actually, McGee has done a very good job of describing it.

There are a couple of things we need to look at here, this business of "wholeness, yet unboundedness". It's actually a paradox. By getting in touch with the depths of our personality we have a feeling of wholeness, yet we have a feeling of being set free from our own individuality, the unboundedness, --- becoming one, with something else out there. Bear with me - it is, after all, ineffable.

Magee goes on to say that people who don't like Wagner's music (call them anti- Wagnerians) do so because they feel Wagner's music working on them.

It's hard for me to comment on that, because I'm not an anti-Wagnerian, but it's interesting that Michael Tanner in his book "Wagner" reaches a conclusion similar to Magee's: "It is satisfying to Wagnerians to feel that they can cope with uniquely explicit revelations of their unconscious. And it is satisfying to anti-Wagnerians to feel that they are rejecting the glorification of barbaric forces."

The second important quotation is quite different from Magee's. It's something I discovered as a student at Princeton while taking a course in Wagner under Prof. Roy Dickinson Welch. I found a book of Wagner's letters to Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Nietzsche's sister. Early in 1870, Nietzsche had been sending Wagner copies of his lectures on Socrates. These lectures eventually became "The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music", Nietzsche's first book of any consequence. It was basically a hymn in praise of Wagner.

Wagner liked what Nietzsche had sent him and wrote back to Nietzsche on February 6, 1870, saying, "Now you have the opportunity of proving the utility of philology." Philology, by the way, is a word which is not used much today. It is basically classical studies, and Nietzsche in 1870 was one of the leading classical scholar in Europe. "Now you have the opportunity of proving the utility of philology by helping me bring about the grand renaissance in which Plato will embrace Homer. And Homer, imbued with Plato's spirit, will become, more than ever before, the truly supreme Homer." I think it was in 1948 that I first read that, and for over fifty years I've been trying to figure out what it means. I've read many books on Wagner and I've only seen it referred to twice. Ernest Newman mentions it very briefly in his biography of Wagner, and Father Owen Lee in his "Athena Sings: Wagner and the Greeks", refers to it one time. What is the great renaissance, and why the combination of Homer and Plato?

This is the second of our two puzzles tonight. The first stems from Magee's quote regarding the impact of Wagner's music on the listener… the Wagner moment… Why does it happen? Did Wagner intend it to happen? And if so, why?

As years have gone by I have come to think that there might be a relationship between the answers to these two puzzles, but more about that later.

Wagner was the most well read composer of all time. His interests were widespread---philosophy, politics, history, drama, literature, myth, language, religion, poetry, music. Ernest Newman said "such a combination had never existed before. It has never happened since and, in all probability, it will never happen again." Wagner had over 400 volumes in his library in Germany. When he fled Germany, he left them behind. He left in a hurry as you know. For years, we didn't know what happened to them until after World War II, when sure enough, in Dresden, in the basement of the Brockhaus Publishing Company, we found all the volumes. So now we have them. And in Wahnfried he had over 2,500 volumes. Throughout his whole life he was reading, dissecting, talking to anyone who would listen to him about the things he had read and their importance. Fortunately, we have Cosima's diaries describing all this. It is a very important part of the development of Wagner. We might lament the fact that he spent so much time doing this, and that he spent so much time trying to put his ideas down on paper in very obtuse language…time that might have been spent composing opera. But that was a very important part of his development. Without that, he would never have been the Wagner that he was.

He became interested in serious reading at an early age – at age 9. He was fortunate that Germany had changed its education from one based on science to one based on classics. So at age 9 he was studying Greek, Latin, Ancient History, and Mythology. At age 13, he translated the first 12 books of the Odyssey from Greek into German. Before he was 16, he taught himself English so he could read Shakespeare in the original. This was no ordinary student. We know from Cosima that, as years went by, they had what they called their indispensables. The list is interesting…………. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, The Symposium of Plato, (which plays an important part tonight), Don Quichotte, the whole of Shakespeare and Goethe's Faust.

We're going to touch on some of the works and philosophies that Wagner came across, but only to the degree that they deal with tonight's subject – Wagner the Mystic. In doing this, I think it's important to know what Fichte, the philosopher, said… "that each of us has the philosophy he has, because he is the person that he is." Very interesting. So the writers and the people who influenced Wagner, influenced him, because Wagner was the kind of the person that he was. Somebody else being exposed to the same things, might have reacted quite differently.

Over a period of time, Wagner developed his own metaphysics, thoughts as to what constitutes reality and how to access it, and, very definitely, a feeling for mysticism: the belief in the possibility of spiritual knowledge inaccessible to the intellect. My thesis is that in the process, Wagner became a type of mystic himself, but unlike other mystics, Wagner was able to convey his vision to others through his art.

In tracing this development we will see that there are certain common threads, many of which were present in his early years and remained throughout the entire Wagner fabric.

First, as you know, Wagner didn't do anything on a small scale. He sought what was universal, eternal, and timeless. In 1834, at the age 21, he wrote, "the essence of dramatic art, is not consistent with a specific subject or a point of view, but in this: That the inner kernel of all human life, and action, the idea, he brought to show" '. In 1841, at age 28, he wrote "what music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal. It seeks none of the passion, love, and longing of this or that individual, in this or that situation, but of passion, love, and longing in themselves." Remember that quote, because unknown to Wagner, two years earlier, another German, Arthur Schopenhauer, had written almost those exact same words.

So Wagner turned to mythology where the universal can be found, and archetypes can be found. He wrote in "Opera and Drama", "the incomparable thing about a myth, is that it is true for all time, and its content inexhaustible throughout the ages," and from Cosima's diary…" Richard said what gives Homer's poetry – "its stamp of eternity, is that every episode has a mythical quality. It is not an arbitrarily invented adventure." So, this first thread, which is so important, is universality….Wagner's interest in the universal, the eternal, the timeless.

The next thread is other-worldliness, a type of metaphysics. Wagner read all the dialogues of Plato including The Republic. Remember the Cave dialogue in The Republic? In the Cave dialogue, mankind is chained facing the back of a cave. Outside are the eternal truths or forms… the real world; but all mankind can see is the shadow of these things which the sun casts on the back of the cave. Man does not see the real stuff, only the shadows. This is Plato's metaphysics… what mankind thinks is reality is only the shadow of the real world, the world of the eternal forms. Plato goes on to say that the right kind of education can enable mankind to break his chains and reach the mouth of the cave to see the eternal forms. Mathematics is a very important part of this education. Now it doesn't seem likely that something like mathematics would appeal to Wagner, and I don't think that it did. Plato's whole thrust here in the The Republic is the importance of the mind, the intellect, as opposed to feeling.

Let me digress for a moment. Plato was very much influenced by Pythagoras and the followers of Pythagoras. You all remember Pythagoras, I'm sure. He's Mr. A Square plus B Square equals C Square. Actually, Pathagoras was a Greek who lived 100 years or so before Socrates and Plato. He's known as the first scientist in Western civilization. He was the first person to call himself a philosopher – a lover of wisdom. He spent about 20 years in Egypt and brought back the mathematics and science of the Egyptians. For Pythagoras everything was related to mathematics… even music.

He discovered that if you plucked a string to sound a note, and then halved the length of the string, you would get the same note an octave higher. Two-thirds would result in an interval one fifth higher, and so forth.

Pythagoras also brought back the Egyptian Osiris religion which became the Dionysic religion - the religion of Greece during the time of Socrates and Plato.

The Dionysic religion was based on gnosis - knowledge. One is indoctrinated in the so-called mysteries, and through study and practice advances to higher levels in religion.

This was a precursor of the Christian Gnostics, and there are vestiges of it today in the Masonic Lodge.

Wagner was a student of religions all his life and undoubtedly knew the background of Plato's preoccupation with gnosis, knowledge and reason, and mathematics.

The problem that Wagner has with The Republic, is that Plato says the way to discover the eternal forms is through the intellect - through reasoning. This was Plato's thing. Wagner, on the other hand, favored feeling as opposed to reasoning.

Also, in The Republic, Socrates expresses problems with Homer, Wagner's hero. The Homeric epics had become the basis of Greek education. Children learned how to read by studying Homer. Even cases in court were decided by doctrines portrayed in Homer. Socrates had a problem with Homer and his influence, because, for one thing, Homer was from the heart, and Socrates and Plato were from the head. Homer talked about courage; Socrates wanted to talk about wisdom. And most importantly, in Homer, particularly in the Odyssey – people are rewarded for using duplicity, which is something that Socrates would have no parts of. So in The Republic, Socrates spends a good deal of time criticizing Homer.

In The Symposium Wagner discovered a different kind of Plato, and it is significant that it was The Symposium which made it to the list of Wagner's indispensables. Why The Symposium? Very interesting. Wagner said, "I read the best of Plato's Dialogues. It is only in The Symposium, in particular, that I gained such an insight into the wonderful beauty of Greek life, that I felt myself palpably more at home in ancient Athens than any circumstances afforded by the modern world."

What does Wagner mean by that? Well you have to know the story of The Symposium. Four or five Greeks like to go out, get drunk, and drink themselves under the table. They talk philosophy, and they hire some flute girls who are prostitutes, and have a jolly old time. I can see that that would appeal to Wagner. I would guess that when Wagner was talking philosophy to Nietzsche, or anybody else who would listen to him, he probably had a nip or two.

But, in The Symposium, they decide this night, they're going to be serious and send the girls home, so they can have a serious discussion about the subject, which is eros, or love. What is eros? What is love? How important is it? The first few presentations deal predominantly with physical love. Then comes Socrates' turn, and Socrates takes the high road. He says that love comes from appreciating the beautiful. You see a beautiful person, you love her, and what really is behind eros is the quest for eternity. In making love and having children you are, in effect, having your progeny perpetuate your name - providing a kind of immortality. But there's another kind of love, which is a spiritual one. Socrates points out that the results of physical love are not as fair or as enduring as the results of spiritual love. Now, as you know, Wagner needed both. His wife, Minna, probably satisfied the physical side, but flunked when it got to the spiritual side. As far as Matilda Wessendonk is concerned, we're not sure of the physical relationship, but God knows they had a strong spiritual relationship. So the idea expressed in The Symposium of a spiritual eros, appealed to Wagner.

In Socrates story, Diotima, who is a Daemon (a Priestess in the Dionysic faith) leads Socrates into a self-examination, discussion and discovery of beauty, and how it relates to eros. The philosopher must recognize the kinship in all beautiful bodies - physical or spiritual. Diotima leads Socrates up a ladder of the levels of beauty, first to see the beauty in the person, then to see the beauty in science, then the beauty in social institutions, and suddenly there's a revelation, of the eternal form of beauty itself, which is outside of time and space. The apprehension of it is ineffable. Only in intercourse with it, will the soul give birth to spiritual offspring, which is no shadow but substance.

In her diary Cosima wrote, "We read The Symposium until midnight. One of the deepest impressions of my whole life--as if I have seen the original beauty of that Diotima speaks. Tears of ravishment filled our eyes at the end of this wonderful poem." Wagner adds, "What would the world know about redeeming beauty without Plato?"

The sudden revelation, of the eternal form of beauty, is very important. A.E. Taylor, in his work "Plato the Man and his Works", says: "It is this conviction that all knowledge about, is only preparatory to a direct scienta visionis--that Socrates reveals the fundamental agreement of his conception with that of the great mystics of all ages." The mystical thought that the eternal forms could be found within the individual very much appealed to Wagner. It finds its way into all of Wagner's music dramas.

Albert Goldman in his book, "Wagner on Music and Drama" writes: "Wagner's most original contribution to dramaturgy in the 19th century was the perfection of the demotivated drama, a drama that speaks to us in anagogical terms"…. Let's stop right here. Anagogy might be an unfamiliar word for you as it was for me. Webster defines it as "interpretation of a word, passage or text, that finds beyond the literal, allegorical and moral senses, a fourth and ultimate spiritual or mystical sense." (Back to the quote).

"Wagner's most original contribution to dramaturgy in the nineteenth century was the perfection of the demotivated drama, a drama that speaks to us in anagogical terms and in which the story and characters are meant to serve as mediums between us and a larger, profounder, and truer world. Dramatists before Wagner—Byron, for example—had tried to do something similar, but Wagner provided his plays with a firmer philosophical basis by combining and amplifying the ideas of early German romanticists like Novalis, Gorres, Schelling, G.H. von Schubert, and the Schlegel brothers. In addition to regarding myths as the repositories of eternal truths and the folk as mythmakers, these German writers tended to share one key thought that is crucial for an understanding of the Wagnerian drama and its influence in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They assumed that the heart of the universe lay within each man's soul."

Along with the threads of universality, and other worldliness or metaphysics, we have the thread of redemption. As we know, redemption plays an important role in Wagner's early operas, in fact, all his operas. The German word for redemption is Erlosung, which also means deliverance. Basically, in these messages of redemption, or deliverance, Wagner's characters are seeking redemption or deliverance from this world into something much better. "Eternal nothingness absorb me!," cries The Dutchman.

Allen David Aberback, in his very good book, "The Ideas of Richard Wagner," points out that Wagner was very much involved with redemption in The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin. He adds, "The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin demonstrated a deepening involvement with mystical and transcendental thoughts. By the late 1840s, Wagner's mystical bent was clearly a major element in his life. It carried him on a spiritual odyssey that continued through Parsifal."

In 1845 Wagner was tired of working on Tannhauser and went to Marienbad, the spa in Bavaria. He took some books with him for light reading. He took a book of myths, a book on the Meistersingers, Wolfgang von Eschenbach's Parsifal, and Godfried von Strassfogel's Tristan and Isolde. In the 60 days he was there, the seeds were planted for all his work in the future. Particularly in Marienbad, Wagner got involved with the Grail legends.

Why The Grail? Because The Grail had a mystical quality about it, and at this point in time, Wagner's whole psyche was ready for this. He was just starting the mystical journey that Aberback talks about. Richard Cavendish says in his book, "The Legends of The Grail," that "The Grail has an enthralling atmosphere of mystery. There are some tremendous secrets which stay tantalizingly just outside the mind's grasp, in the shadows, beyond the edge of conscious awareness. The inner mystery of The Grail cannot be explained, because it is that which the heart of man cannot conceive, nor the tongue relate." John Matthews in his book, The Elements of The Grail Tradition: "The Grail prepares us for a passage beyond the known bounds and forms of space, time, and causality. It remains a vision where time and eternity are at one." Sound familiar?

The prelude to act one of Lohengrin is one of the most mystical things that Wagner ever composed. Tanner, in his book said, "He was the most intelligent and self- conscious, as well as the most intellectual of artists. Wagner could see that in the prelude he had written for Lohengrin, he had written a different kind of music, one for which he had a dangerous gift – the music of hypnosis." Wagner had finished the entire opera before composing the prelude. It would be five years before he would return to composing.

About this time in late 1848 or early 1849, Wagner discovered the writings of the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. In his autobiography, Wagner said, "I always regarded Feuerbach as the radical release from the throes of accepted notions." What were these accepted notions? Basically, they dealt with religion, love, and politics. Actually, Feuerbach said little about politics. It was the spin that Wagner and his friends put on Feuerbach's writings.

Religion, though, was a very important part of what Feuerbach had to say "Beyond man and nature, there's nothing." In other words, Gods don't exist, but that they are invented by people to serve a good purpose. And people invent their Gods in a form they would like to have… eternal, omnipotent, omniscient. Interestingly enough, about 2000 years earlier, the Greek philosopher Xenophaues, said exactly the same thing.

Wagner's views were very similar to those of Feuerbach. Wagner was not anti- religious. He was anti-church. Feuerbach said that by studying religion, he had learned a lot about people, and Wagner, in turn, studied religions all his life. Wagner's view of Christianity was that Jesus was a historical figure, and that his very important message of love and compassion, had been distorted by the Disciples and the Church, who had done a very poor job of selling it. He, Wagner, being the artist that he was, was going to correct this, and in Parsifal, make an artistic presentation of these same things, that would be much more powerful than anything the church had ever done.

Wagner did feel that religion plays an important part in life, as did Feuerbach. Wagner suggested to his friends that they have their children baptized and confirmed. It is interesting that Wagner, in laying out the religious education for his son Siegfried, said that it should be restricted to the readings and teachings of a 13th century mystic Catholic theologian named Meister Eckart. Meister Eckart was considered a heretic by the church, because he felt that God could be discovered within the soul of the individual, Wagner speaks of this in Cosima's diary - March 16, 1873: "The mystic is the man for me, even if he is mistaken… the man who feels the urge to ignite for himself the inner light in contrast to the outer brightness which shows him nothing."

Feuerbach's glorification of love very much appealed to the young Germans of this revolutionary period. Friedrich Engels wrote, "Enthusiasm was general. We all became Feuerbachians. His extravagant definition of love was excusable if not justified after the intolerable rule of pure reason." The initial concept of the Ring dealing with the change from the love of power to the power of love was much influenced by Feuerbach's writings.

After reading Feuerbach's brilliant book "The Philosophy of the Future" Wagner developed two more important threads: the idea of becoming knowers through feeling, and the importance for mankind's conscious to be in touch with its unconscious. In "The Philosophy of the Future," Feuerbach writes, "The new philosophy bases itself on the truth of love, the truth of feeling. It is nothing other than the essence of feeling raised to consciousness." In 1849, Wagner, in The Art Work of the Future which he originally dedicated to Feuerbach, writes, "In the drama we become knowers through feeling. Things which can be explained only by the infinite accommodations of the intellect are incomprehensible and disturbing to the feeling." Let's go back to our definition of mysticism… the possibility of the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect. Wagner's on a mystical bent right here.

So, the two threads that Wagner picks up from Feuerbach are "Becoming knowers through feeling" and "the importance for the conscious to make contact with the unconscious." In this latter thought, Wagner anticipates both Freud and Jung.

In 1854 Wagner discovered Schopenhauer – The World as Will and Representation. He read it four times in one year. If you've ever tried to read it, you know that it is not easy going. Wagner not only read it, he understood it. Nietzsche attested to that fact, and Nietzsche certainly qualified as a judge of that understanding. Wagner was so taken by this book, that until the end of his life – he sought out anybody who would sit and listen to him expound on Schopenhauer. Actually Wagner did a better job of promoting Schopenhauer than Schopenhauer ever did.

There's no way, we are going to talk tonight about all the ways Schopenhauer impacted Wagner. We're going to concentrate on just those areas germane to our subject.

Schopenhauer is known as the philosopher of pessimism, and in my view, too much emphasis has been put on Schopenhauer causing Wagner to take a pessimistic view of things. Wagner, himself is responsible for this. In his letter to Roeckel of August 23rd, 1856, Wagner says that after reading Schorenhauer he realized that unconsciously he was taking a different path in the Ring than the one he originally had intended, changing from "an optimistic view of the world based on Hellemic principles, to a pessimistic one recognizing the nothingness of the world."

Later in writing to Roeckel, about the ending of Gotterdamerung, Wagner, admitted that for once he was unable to put into words, the ending's true meaning. The meaning had to be found in the music. "Listen to the music, and it will become clear to you," writes Wagner. This must have been very frustrating for Wagner who considered himself as a poet first and a musician second, and in his writings always spoke of the poet, rather than the musician or the composer.

Wagner does try to explain his inability to articulate the ineffable in the final ending of the Ring by saying "How can a composer have his intuitive perceptions understood by others, when he himself stands before an enigma, and can suffer the same illusions as everyone else?" No doubt he was acquainted with the words of his idol, Goethe, that "the more incommensurable, and the more incomprehensible to the understanding, a poetic production is, the better it is."

Perhaps another favorite of Wagner, George Gordon Lord Byron, said it best in his Child Harold's Pilgrimage: "to mingle with the universe and feel, what I cannot express yet cannot all conceal."

It is interesting to note that from this point on, music, rather than the words, became the important thing in Wagner's composition. His last opera, Parsifal is his longest but has the shortest libretto.

So let's take Wagner's advice and consult the music at the end of Gotterdamerung for the meaning. The last motif played is the one generally referred to as "redemption through love", although Wagner referred to it as the "glorification of Brunhilda". As you know, this motif appears only one other time in the Ring, in Die Walkure when Sieglinda is told that she is going to hear Siegmund's child and that his name will be Seigfried. The music here expresses ecstasy and hope for the future. When it reappears at the end of Gotterdamerung, it is much more serene—a type of epiphany. The feeling it evokes here can best be described as "blessedness and peace."

Deryck Cooke had it right in his marvelous book "I Saw the World End" that Wagner had changed from a political solution to a metaphysical one, and although Wagner, and we as well, find it to be ineffable, the feeling (remember, we become knowers through feeling)…one of blessedness and peace, is certainly not a pessimistic one.

None of the operas Wagner completed after reading Schopenhauser in 1854 have a pessimistic resolution - Gotterdamerung, Tristan, Die Meistersinger, or Parsifal…and the final chords of Tristan and Parsifal, like Gotterdamerung evoke a feeling of blessedness and peace.

The fact is that most of Schopenhauer's philosophy is compatible with an optimistic point of view, and that is particularly true of the areas which most influenced Wagner, Schopenhauer's metaphysics and his aesthetics.

In his metaphysics Schopenhauer picked up where Emmanual Kant left off. Schopenhauer felt that Plato and Kant were by far the greatest philosophers who ever lived and that nothing philosophically important happened after Plato until Kant came along. Kant took Plato's ideas of the world's eternal forms and added a very important ingredient which Schopenhauer thought was a stroke of genius. That is, he explained why you cannot really ever get to know the world of eternal forms. The reason is that we are restricted by the apparatus that we have in our body. We can only see and hear and smell and touch and so forth. Being restricted by this, we only can be in touch with the world reached by our senses, which is the phenomenal world.

But Kant said there is a noumenal world, similar to Plato's world of eternal forms. Kant called them things-in-themselves rather than eternal forms, and this world is unknowable to the individual.

Schopenhauer takes this idea and says, "Yes, there is a phenomenal world and there is another world that is similar to Plato's eternal forms, but that is not the noumenal world." The noumenal world is a world above all that. And whereas the eternal forms and Kant's things-in-themselves, have a multiplicity of things in them, the nomenual world of Schopenhauer is made of one substance, and one only, and that's "Will", which we cannot really ever get to know. The closest we ever come to knowing the noumenal world of Will is in the act of making love or in listening to music. That certainly must have appealed to Wagner!

As for his aesthetics, Schopenhauer said that there is a hierarchy of the arts. He felt that one could be in touch with the eternal forms of the world – the middle world between the phenomenal and the noumenal - through architecture, sculpture, and painting. A genius was someone who sees the universal in the particular… a Wagnerian thought. The genius artist is one who can convey his sense of the universal to the person viewing the painting, so that person feels the same thing that the artist feels.

Schopenhauer said that the highest of all arts was music, and that music conveys to the listener what nothing else can convey. He referred to music as "the voice of the noumenal".

Remember our earlier quote? Here is what Schopenhauer says, "Music does not express this or that particular and definite pleasure, this or that affection, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment or peace of mind, but joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment peace of mind themselves." These are almost the same words that Wagner used in 1848 at age 21. You can see that when Wagner picked up this book and read it, it was like he was having a conversation with himself. It's no wonder he felt that Schopenhauer was bringing Wagner's unconscious to the conscious.

To Schopenhauer, music is the voice of the noumena speaking to the listener. He says, "music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics, in which the mind does not know that it's philosophizing. The composer reveals the innermost essence of the world and expresses the deepest wisdom in a language that his reason does not understand… in the same way a magnetic sonambulist gives information about things that she has no idea of when awake."

Schopenhauer also deals with the conscious – unconscious issue. "Let us compare our consciousness to a sheet of water of some depth. The distinctly conscious ideas are merely the surface. On the other hand, the mass of the water is the indistinct, the feelings, the after sensation of perceptions and intuitions and what is experienced in general. Hence, we often are unable to give any account of the origin of our deepest thoughts. They are the offspring of a mysterious inner being. Judgments, sudden flashes of thought, resolves, rise from the depths unexpectedly, to our own astonishment. Consciousness is the mere surface of our mind, and of this, as of the globe, we do not know the interior but only the crust."

So Schopenhauer is touching on two very important threads of the Wagner fabric "becoming knowers through feeling" and "becoming conscious of the unconscious." Bryan McGee apparently feels that these are factors in the Wagner moment. In his most recent book – The Tristan Chord he writes, "Schopenhauer put Wagner in touch with his own unconscious. As this is the key to what Wagner, himself, does for those who are susceptible to his art. It explains why Wagner's attitude of adulation for Schopenhauer is similar to our attitude towards Wagner."

Now, the question arises – Can the Wagner moment rightfully be called a mystical experience? In 1987 I found in a Madison Avenue book shop, a book by my old philosophy Professor, Walter P. Stace, called "Mysticism and Philosophy." I bought it and read it. It's considered to be the Bible on the subject of mysticism. In studying mystics of all cultures and ages, Stace found that there were seven characteristics common to all mystical experiences. At one time or another in tonight's discussion we have encountered each of these seven characteristics: Non-Spatial, Non-Temporal (outside of time and space). A feeling of the Religious or divine. A Sense of Objectivity, of Reality. Blessedness and Peace. Paradoxicality. Ineffable. The Unitary Conscious, the One, the void. This last one refers back to the "unboundedness" in the Wagner moment, where you lose your individuation, and feel you are becoming one with something much bigger. It sounds to me like the Wagner moment is a kind of a mystical experience. It may not be the extreme mystical experience that the Buddha or Plotinus had, but it is probably as close as we'll ever get to it in our life time.

Now the question – Is this experience something that Wagner intended or does this just happen? I was very fortunate in coming across a pamphlet by Jerry Sehulster, Professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut. "The Role of Altered States of Consciousness in the Life, Theater, and Theories of Richard Wagner." Sehulster feels that when we have our Wagner moment, we are experiencing what psychologists would call "an altered state of consciousness."

He points out that "Wagner's autobiography abounds with descriptions of trance, ecstasy, delirium, hypnagogic states, creative reveries, and wild dreams."

I have a favorite one of my own from Wagner's autobiography… "In my sixteenth year, chiefly from a perusal of E.T.A. Hoffman's works, on fire with the maddest mysticism, I had visions by day in semi slumber, in which the keynote third and dominant seemed to be taking on living form and reveal to me their mighty meaning."

Schulster goes on to say that Wagner's dramas too, abound with dramatization of similar states of altered consciousness…Senta's dreamy contemplation of the Dutchman's portrait and her state of ecstasy when she realizes the Dutchman is seeking her. Tannhauser experiences trance, ecstasy, delirium, and exhaustion during the course of the drama. Elizabeth describes the emotions elicited by Taunhauser's (Wagner's), true art:

(Quote) "But what a strange new life your song conjured up in my breast! Now it would thrill through me like pain, now penetrate me like sudden joy. Emotions I had never experienced! Longings I had never known! That which once was dear to me vanished before a bliss nameless heretofore! And when you left us then, peace and joy were gone from me; the melodies the minstrels sang appeared insipid to me, melancholy their temper. Dreaming, I experienced heavy sorrow, my waking hours became a troubled delusion, joy fled from my heart—Heinrich! Heinrich! What had you done to me?"

In Tristan, not only do the characters express experience altered states of consciousness, but they discuss them at some length. They sing, "I now then am the world." And, in a loss of identity, Tristan sings, "I, Isolde, you, Tristan."

Sehulster goes on to point out that Wagner adopted Schopenhauer's theory of creativity…that the artist perceives a world beyond everyday waking reality. He attempts to communicate this world to an audience by creating an art work. The artwork work is such that the listener experiences a state similar to that of the artist when the work was created… this being very intentional by the artist.

Wagner developed the artistic means to accomplish this. In his 1870 essay, "Beethoven", Wagner writes about "the dream-like nature of the state into which we are plunged through sympathetic hearing, and wherein that dawns in us that other world, the world in which the musician speaks to us. We recognize we have fallen into a state essentially akin to that of hypnotic clairvoyance. And, in truth, it is in this state alone that we immediately belong to the musician's world. From out that world, which nothing else can picture - the musician casts the meshwork of his tone to net us, so to speak, or with this wonder drops of sound, he dews our brain, as if by magic, and robs us of the power of seeing ought save our own inner world." (These are Wagner's own words.)

Sehulster points out all the devices Wagner used to enhance the effect of his wonder drops of sound. Nietzsche referred to them as "Wagner's hypnotic tricks"… dimming the lights, doing away with the distraction of applause, the disappearance of the orchestra, increasing the size of the orchestra, making climaxes louder and more visible, raising the temperature of a scene through sequencing…and chromaticism; establishing a very regular and steady pace to his drama, an effect similar to the regular chanting of a prayer or the steady sounding of the surf…scenic changes without interaption to the music…lengthening the dramas to distort the listener's sense of time. As Sehulster says, "a listener who has just spent four and one half hours in the dark, intensely concentrating on a powerful drama, is more likely to view the experience as spiritual, profound, or perhaps even mystical."

Interestingly, even Wagner's critic, Eduard Hanslick, was impacted by Wagner's devices. In writing about his experience at Bayreuth, Hanslick wrote, "Wagner strives everywhere with the strongest sensual impression with every available means. The mysterious heaving of his invisible orchestra gives the listener a mild opium jag, even before the rising of the curtain. He is subjected to the enduring impression of a magically lighted fairy tale scene before anyone on the stage has opened his mouth. In the numerous night scenes, a dazzling light plays upon the figure of the principal characters, while tinted steam undulates upon and above the stage. This steam, which in Das Rheingold, even takes the place of the change of scene curtain, constitutes the most powerful weapon in Wagner's new dramatic arsenal. As a formless, fantastic, sensually fascinating element, it has a special affinity with Wagner's musical principles. He, himself, compares the music emanating from his invisible orchestra with the 'steam' rising up from Pythia's tripod, which introduces the listener to an exalted condition of clairvoyance. From here it is only a step to the artificial enjoyment of certain smells and odors. Psychology recognizes them indeed as particularly stimulating and exciting."

Sehulster concludes that Wagner clearly wanted to create in his listeners, an altered state of consciousness.

Recently Will Crutchfield in his Opera News article, "Wagner and Bellini," wrote about some of Wagner's methods. Listen carefully to some of the words he chooses. "In Wagner, these wandering, unaccompanied lines roam farther and longer. They are descents into the subconscious. The long meditations in which we rest, digest, prepare ourselves for the next unfolding of the drama. I believe they are the key to the workability of Wagner's unprecendently long time span. Nobody could bear an opera six hours long if all of it had the intensity of Isolde's curse. But the long english horn solo while Tristan lies dying… the remote high-searching cry of the violins as Siegfried reaches the clearing at the top of the mountain… the cellos mournful meditation before the chorale tune in Die Meistersinger… the bass clarinet probing the depths of incomprehension as Brunnhilde mediates her plea to Wotan, or Marke his questioning reproach to Tristan… these are pages that bring on an altered state. This kind of immersion, part ultra-methodical development, part trance-like rumination, has a lot to do with the authenticity we sense, the feeling that the music rings true."

I think that we have made the case that Wagner moments not only happen, but that Wagner did indeed intend them to happen.

What about our second puzzle - the quote from Wagner's letter to Nietzsche. What is the great rennaissance? Why combine Homer and Plato to bring this about?

Could it be… that the great rennaissance - or rebirth - is the Wagner moment - experienced by those susceptible to Wagner's art? I wrote to Bryan McGee concerning this. He wrote back to me as follows: "Wagner thought that he was bringing philosophy and art together at the highest level, the level of Plato (representing philosophy) and Homer (representing art)."

I am very comfortable with that response, and also feel that it is fully compatible with the idea that the great rennaissance is accomplished in combining the best of Homer and Plato to bring about the Wagner moment.

Wagner says that "Plato will embrace Homer", but Plato did not like Homer. Remember - Homer's epics dealt with things from the heart - feeling if you will. Plato's dialogues, with things from the head - wisdom and reasoning.

Now, Plato will embrace the Homeric approach, the use of the epic to express feeling. But Homer in turn will be imbued with the Platonic spirit of The Symposium, and take the high road, enabling us to discover Plato's eternal forms within ourselves - thus bringing about the great rennaissance. Its combining the best of each of them. To put it mathematically, A (Homer) plus B (Plato) = C (great rennaissance), or better perhaps, Homer square plus Plato square equals Rennaissance square. Pythagoras would like that.

Finally, to sum up what we have covered tonight - I feel that in Wagner's last and greatest opera, Parsifal, which Cosima referred to as the crowning achievement, Wagner, the mystic, saw himself, as Parsifal. Wagner's Grail is his great art, which he holds up to us for us to experience, with the hope that we, too, can be redeemed from the everyday, nitty-gritty, phenomenal world… become knowers through feeling, and, in an altered state of consciousness, discover within ourselves, that which is universal, eternal, and timeless. That is an incredible task for a composer to undertake. But it is even more incredible that those of us, who are susceptible to his art, know in our Wagner moments, when we have this feeling of wholeness, yet unboundedness, ineffable but real…that he was successful.

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