Musica Ficta: Figures of Wagner

by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

This is a pioneering attempt to rearticulate the relationship between music and the problems of mimesis, between presentation and re-presentaion. Four "scenes" comprise the book, all four of them responses to two by French poets (Baudelaire and Mallarme), two by German philosophers (Heidegger and Adorno).

It is dificult to realize how profoundly Wagner affected the cultural and ideological sensibilities of the nineteenth century. Wagnerism rapidly spread throughout Europe, partly because of Wagner's propagandizing talent and the zeal of his adherents. But the main reason for his ascendance was the sudden appearance of what the century had desperately tried to produce since the beginnings of Romanticism - a work of art on the scale of great Greek and Christian art. At last, here it the secret of what Hegel called the "religion of art" rediscovered.

The first two scenes of the book present a historical sequence that is punctuated by the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, in which the universal unbridling of nations and classes is prefigured. The second two register certain effects of Wagnerism that are not just ideological but make themselves felt in a new political configuration of the "national" and the "social."

Genres: Art

161 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1995

About the author

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe—philosopher, literary critic, and translator—is one of the leading intellectuals in France. He teaches philosophy and aesthetics at the University of Strasbourg. Among his works translated into English is Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics (Stanford paperback edition, 1998).

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lack a theoretical foundation in Aesthetics. That case should be developed but my phone displays an appetite for noshing reviews. Hence I submit, to embroider when possible.

Lacoue-Labarthe offers four acts on the idea of Wagnerian Art: Baudelaire, Mallarme, Heidegger and Adorno are thus depicted, if not exactly interrogated. Adorno is cited largely with his treatment of Schoenberg, particularly the unfinished Moses and Aron. The Adorno section was delightful and unexpected as I imagined it an afterthought.

The Heidegger was lifted from his lectures on Nietzsche and such hinges on the rupture between Nietzsche and Wagner. Baudelaire’s letter to Wagner is explored at length and the subsequent essay penned in praise. Mallarme as usual was largely opaque and resistant to my weedy efforts. There’s another goal for the new year.

[Alyosha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating relates to the translation rather than the book itself. Why is it that Lacoue-Labarthe's works have so often been accorded such faulty translations, undertaken by those who have seemlingly little to no familiarity with Lacoue-Labarthe's work? It seems fairly clear the the translator in this case was more familiar with music and its theory than with philosophy. It is strikingly strange, for example - to pick but one - that Mallarmé's Livre is translated as "Volume" rather than "Book" throughout...

[Alyosha · Rating 4 out of 5]

An essential collection for the thought of Lacoue-Labarthe, which forges the essential links between minesis, figuration, appearance, and the demand to smash the figure, the demand of de-figuration as it is bound to the unraveling of religion, de-mythologized.

Only about Wagner by way of a surface reflection, or as the jumping-off point for a leap into thought beyond metaphysics and its inability to think music - and thus these texts are "on music" in a very singular manner, without prior figure (and to reduce what they have to say to rehashings of Nietzsche or Adorno completely misses what they have to say, which is inflected through the silent turn - nonetheless translating everything - of the caesura...).

[Freddie Murfin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's nothing really in here that can't already be found in the commentaries by Nietzsche and Adorno. Although, there is a very rewarding essay on Baudelaire.

[Carlos Martín]

[Me faltaron los capítulos sobre Heidegger y Adorno]

[Penny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The aestheticization of politics?
Well, OK.