Redemption through Art 95sion of power, possessions, and dubious bargains. A new beginning
occurs without the gods, who can die, exhausted from their flawed cre-
ation, when man awakens to love and beauty.
The old wodd of the will to power and of greed is destroyed when
the new world is born of love and beauty. Wagner intended to contribute
to this new beginning with his cosmic mythological play. Should we
regard this mythical apparatus as anything other than fiction? Did
Wagner merely rework mythological material that was no longer ani-
mated by belief? Was his work designed solely for aesthetic reception,
and was the mythical effect neutralized in the process?
Wagner was well aware of the difficulties he faced, as is evident in his
numerous theoretical essays. These essays assert his intention to expand
the limits of pure aestheticism and to create a state of consciousness
that could be referred to as "mythical." Wagner himself called it "reli-
gion." He justified the use of this term as follows: "It may be claimed
that when religion becomes artificial, it falls to art to salvage the essence
of religion" (Wagner, Denken 362).
Wagner distinguished the "essence of religion" from its "mythical
apparatus" with its complex and disputed dogmas and ceremonies—the
whole fund of religious tradition that survives only where it is supported
by customs and safeguarded by political power. The essence of religion,
however, which his artistry was called upon to rescue, Wagner defined as
"recognition of the frailty of the world and the consequent charge to
liberate ourselves from it" (Wagner, Denken 363). He saw the wodd
through the eyes of Schopenhauer. What he called the frailty of the
world was for Schopenhauer a world in which the individual embodi-
ments of the will girded themselves for a hell in batde and mutual
destruction. This holds for both nature and humanity, for the whole bat-
de of life. Art was a redemptive force for Schopenhauer as well; he
wrote that when we experience true pleasure in art, "we are delivered
from the miserable pressure of the will; we celebrate the Sabbath of the
penal servitude of willing; the wheel of Ixion stands still" (Schopenhauer
1,196).