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Wagner and Aeschylus: The Ring and the Oresteia
In 1847 Wagner read the Oresteian trilogy, the finest surviving work by Aeschylus. The impact on him of Aeschylus' work, at this crucial time in his development, changed Wagner's entire vision of his own role as an artist. As he wrote in his autobiography: 'I could actually see the Oresteia with my mind's eye, as though it were actually being performed and its effect on me was indescribable. ... My ideas about the significance of drama and of the theatre were, without a doubt, moulded by these impressions ...' Wagner and Aeschylus examines the role that the Oresteia played in the shaping of the Ring, showing how Aeschylus' masterpiece influenced Wagner's at many levels, from the basic idea of using mythical material for a cycle of 'stage festival dramas' right through to profound aspects of subject matter and form and Wagner's conception of the role of music in opera. Two introductory chapters look at the overall relationship between Wagner and Aeschylus; there follows an analysis of the four dramas of the Ring: the points of affinity and the differences, between Wagner's cycle and Aeschylus' are discussed in detail, an approach which throws fresh light on the form and meaning of the Ring.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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September 25, 2019
Very interesting book that has furthered my appreciation of Wagner's Ring. Thematic and structural similarities with and differences from Aeschylus' Oresteia nicely bring out many of the ideas and attitudes in the Ring.
Ewans begins by amassing enough evidence from Wagner's own writings to justify his study: it is clear from them that the Oresteia should be an important hermeneutical aid when it comes to understanding the Ring. But the task is problematic. Neoclassicising is invariably substantially different from the classical model, and Wagner thinks much more like a 19th century German philhellene than an Athenian of the early 5th century. In the first two chapters, before embarking on the analysis proper, Ewans addresses this. Firstly, by examining the medium through which the Oresteia reached Wagner - the translation of Droysen. Ewans notes two major divergences of Droysen's translation from the original text: a construal of responsibility as moral, in the sense of sin and guilt; and an overemphasis (rather than Aeschylus' deliberate underemphasis) of the role of the ancestral guilt of the Atreid house. It is not too hard to see how these two considerations have worked their way into the Ring. However, it is unfortunate that they are hardly brought up in the analysis itself. Secondly, something must be said about how Wagner in his intellectual context, which informed how he reconceived the ideas of the Oresteia. These considerations enjoy a more sustained presence through the main analysis of the book, though the focus in their deployment is definitely on Wagner's disagreements with Aeschylus, whereas I think even the agreements, because they are not exactly that, need them too. I probably situate Wagner in his 19th century context more strongly than most, because I think (per Scruton's The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung) that the fundamental way of understanding the Ring is as a post-Fichtean investigation, but this means sometimes for me not enough is done to bridge the gap between Aeschylus and Wagner. As an example, consider the role of the male/female dualism in both cycles. It is particularly tricky precisely because there are both major similarities and major differences in how the two dramaticians conceive of it. Both make, roughly, the equations: male = political; female = natural. Yet for Aeschylus it is the male that is ultimately superior, but for Wagner the female. This is certainly to do with the political optimism of Aeschylus' generation on the one hand and Wagner's Romanticism on the other, as Ewans says, yet there is so much hiding in the word 'Romanticism' to unpack, which is not really a dialogue with Aeschylus but with Fichte, the Frühromantiks and Hegel. That, then, is the shortcoming of the study: Wagner is not just in dialogue with Aeschylus, coming, as it were, from a settled position, but also conducting a dialogue within late 18th and 19th century positions.
This is a book of particular focus; I don't see this therefore as a major problem. All in all a good read.
I also note that I found it curious that the hunting motif, so prominent in both the poetry of the Oresteia and the action of the Ring, was not examined.
Ewans begins by amassing enough evidence from Wagner's own writings to justify his study: it is clear from them that the Oresteia should be an important hermeneutical aid when it comes to understanding the Ring. But the task is problematic. Neoclassicising is invariably substantially different from the classical model, and Wagner thinks much more like a 19th century German philhellene than an Athenian of the early 5th century. In the first two chapters, before embarking on the analysis proper, Ewans addresses this. Firstly, by examining the medium through which the Oresteia reached Wagner - the translation of Droysen. Ewans notes two major divergences of Droysen's translation from the original text: a construal of responsibility as moral, in the sense of sin and guilt; and an overemphasis (rather than Aeschylus' deliberate underemphasis) of the role of the ancestral guilt of the Atreid house. It is not too hard to see how these two considerations have worked their way into the Ring. However, it is unfortunate that they are hardly brought up in the analysis itself. Secondly, something must be said about how Wagner in his intellectual context, which informed how he reconceived the ideas of the Oresteia. These considerations enjoy a more sustained presence through the main analysis of the book, though the focus in their deployment is definitely on Wagner's disagreements with Aeschylus, whereas I think even the agreements, because they are not exactly that, need them too. I probably situate Wagner in his 19th century context more strongly than most, because I think (per Scruton's The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung) that the fundamental way of understanding the Ring is as a post-Fichtean investigation, but this means sometimes for me not enough is done to bridge the gap between Aeschylus and Wagner. As an example, consider the role of the male/female dualism in both cycles. It is particularly tricky precisely because there are both major similarities and major differences in how the two dramaticians conceive of it. Both make, roughly, the equations: male = political; female = natural. Yet for Aeschylus it is the male that is ultimately superior, but for Wagner the female. This is certainly to do with the political optimism of Aeschylus' generation on the one hand and Wagner's Romanticism on the other, as Ewans says, yet there is so much hiding in the word 'Romanticism' to unpack, which is not really a dialogue with Aeschylus but with Fichte, the Frühromantiks and Hegel. That, then, is the shortcoming of the study: Wagner is not just in dialogue with Aeschylus, coming, as it were, from a settled position, but also conducting a dialogue within late 18th and 19th century positions.
This is a book of particular focus; I don't see this therefore as a major problem. All in all a good read.
I also note that I found it curious that the hunting motif, so prominent in both the poetry of the Oresteia and the action of the Ring, was not examined.
Displaying 1 of 1 review