Miklós Szentkuthy (1988)
1. For me, a so called modern Hungarian writer who (in natural accordance with the writing of books on Händel, Mozart and Haydn) also knows the fascinating alchemy of harmony, for me and probably other writers and musicians of the 20th century, Wagner is still modern and up to date, despite some utopian ideas which one might call timeless.
If my brief statement starts with the friendship (1840-83) between Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, a friendship a thousand times reflected in literature, the motive for doing so is not naive patriotism but a fact of musical history: the consanguin harmonies of Wagner and Liszt are in 1988 as modern as ever. ” … When I compose and orchestrate, I think of you … “, writes Wagner to Liszt at the end of September 1856. He tells him on December 16: “Artistic stimulation the entire musical world cannot give me. You alone can do so.”
No less interesting than the similarity of the themes and melodies is the entire revolutionary harmonic concept; the way of composing, the garland of modulation, Liszt (Wagner’s “neighbour”) coming close to dodecaphonic themes, the principle of variation, the technique of thematic transformation, the free’r handling of chromatic dissonance, the less formal tonality. (Wagner writes to Cosima on September 10, 1865 that the curriculum vitae of her father would correspond to the principle of variation, not to canon or fugue.)
Less formal tonality? I always have before me the handwritten manuscript of Liszt’s (as Béla Bartók and Schönberg saw it) Mephisto Waltz, Bagatelle without Tonality!
2. The 20th century explores mythology and arch-myths to the full. Archaeologists, psychologists such as Jung and Freud, linguists and poets, historians of religion and art all participate. I have in hand Max Chop’s analysis of Rheingold. He writes of the infinity of the 136 measure E’Major pedal, on the biological and cosmogonic motives of birth and evolution, and the very first elements of human language and music. In this century also, existentialism (Heidegger, Sartre etc.) reached its black climax – the philosophy of “running towards death” and L’Etre et le Neant, Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlandes. In the texts and sounds of Wagner is the final collapse of all being, the Ragnarök, the Nihil. (Maybe in modern works this seems more up to date). And the Harem of death and destruction? The forecourt of Nihil? Seductive Nymphs, the beautiful voluptuous Freia taking care of the fruit of the tree of life, blissful youth, erotic sexuality à la Kundry … 1988! But one of the most interesting consanguinities between Wagner and the 20th century may be the astonishing similarity between the modern Psyché (psychology) and the use of musical motives! In reality as in the novel, in poems as in science, the highest quality of the soul is its compoundedness. Paradoxes, appositions, ambivalence. Isn’t the web of motives and the thematic architecture of Wagner’s music the unique expression of this “grandeur et misère”? Birth and death, orgasm and the Christology of the Grail, destiny, German springtime, idyll, thoughts à la Hamlet and the howling of female centaurs – mélange wagnérien, mélange quotidien du 20ème siècle …
3. An alarming ambiguity of revolutionary modernity on the one hand and the wilting, untheatrical and deromanticized mythology on the other can be found in literature as well as in Wagner. János Arany (1817-1882), the excellent Hungarian writer of epics, uses in his work medieval legends and tales of Etzel, Dietrich or Krimhilde as well as historical episodes from the Anjou time. Is this obsolete? He paints his figures with the most modern psychology – a consanguine of Flaubert and Tolstoj. So, too in Wagner’s works, behind the facade of quasi-obsolete myths, the orchestra provokes practically all deterministic, revolutionary Zukunftsmusik.
4. Literature, fine art and music are nowadays quite intellectual. The works themselves and the accompanying texts (programmes, magazines etc.) are full of philosophy and sociology, ranging from naive anarchy to highly complex thoughts. Isn’t Wagner, even in this regard, a far reaching guide? To read in his theoretical writings at times of the polemic, prophetic, utopian and at others of the practical, terribly naive, or unacceptably subjective? In his diaries and letters? This is probably unnecessary to remark that utopic ideas and errors can’t be guides for modern artists. But forever the intellectual attitude, a philosophy which is even rational in its romanticism, which is logical within the myth, which is psychological within depression, which is philosophical within the erotic, such an attitude inspires even in the age of Schönberg, Thomas Mann and André Breton. Wagner is a good partner in great discussions of the fin-de-siècle, be it by his Parisian Zukunftsmusik of September 1860, be it by his monumental
Oper und Drama (50 or 60 years ago I wrote, quoting Oper und Drama in my diary “The apprehensively conditioned work of art of the yearning artist of the present time will marry with the sea of the life of the future … “) This stimulating challenge to the duel (at times with blood, at times without) is also valid when one reads critically or affirmatively the pamphlet German Art and German Politics.
5. Coming from the primaeval state of language (“Weia! Waga! Wagalaweia! Wallala weiala weia!”) Wagner reached that ideally romantic, classical, philosophical and fantastic Valhalla of German language where Tieck, Goethe and George are the everpresent models regardless of whether I bring them into my mind as poet or philosopher, whether driven by sensual, musical or colouristic empathy. “After the wild night of grief, now sylvan splendour,” so speaks Amfortas, finding an echo in Tieck’s Genoveva: “To where I looked I saw the blossom’s splendour, out of the rays arose celestial flowers.” And who wouldn’t recognize the Wagner-Tieck identity (rhythmic, primaeval plants, plantlike primaeval rhythm), within Goethe’s phrase (1814/15): “By the blossommed veil of the meadow’s carpet, Thee, all coloured starry, I do recognize?” Gundolf correctly writes in his book on George (1930): “Language is not a separate thing, it is not a tool, it is not a costume. For the poet it is the blood of his soul, the veneration it demands must appear in his language.” The great meeting of the poets Tieck, Goethe and Wagner within Stefan George’s The Year of the Soul expresses this: “The meadow spreads shrubbery and blossoms, it spreads the evenings perfume for subdued grief … “, and an adieu for Tristan: “Somber love grows in the hoar of angaish.” The apotheosis of the German poetic language seems to be perfected. In case this apotheosis is truly a perfection, an undeniable role in this historical milieu would be due to Richard Wagner.