pro and contra wagner 211suggests how difficult this area can be. Adorno and others argue that
figures like the pedantic – and eventually humiliated – Beckmesser,
inDie Meistersinger, and both Alberich, who renounces love for money
and power, and his brother, the malicious dwarf Mime, in theRing, are
Jewish caricatures. Indeed, if looked at in the light of the pernicious
characterisations of Jews in the Judaism essay, this claim is quite easy to
defend. However, the spiteful portrayal of these figures in theRingdoes
not actually warrant an unambiguous link to anti-Semitism, not least,
as Magee ( 2002 ) and Said ( 1991 ) point out, because someone who
was as obsessed with being explicit as Wagner would very probably have
made such a link clear. Alberich’s son, Hagen, although malevolent,
has no traits associated with anti-Semitic caricature, and Beckmesser is
a Christian. Wagner had no hesitation about propagating his explicit
anti-Semitic essay, so why was he not explicit in the musical works? The
issue of his anti-Semitism is clearly not going to be made to go away by
adverting to such ambiguities, but they do suggest that Wagner’s racist
assertions cannot be the sole criterion for an assessment of his work.
Much of the debate about Wagner depends on how his intentions
are interpreted. Condemning someone for their moral failings gener-
ally has to relate to what they intended to do, so any such judgement
on Wagner must establish this in an appropriate manner. In some cases
this is not a problem: although it is wrong simply to project subsequent
history back onto Wagner’s text, condemnation of the Judaism essay is
unproblematic. Its potential performative effects are obvious, and Wag-
ner clearly meant it to have some such effects, although it is uncertain
just what his kind of ‘cultural anti-Semitism’ really intended. At its worst
the essay goes so far as to seem to invoke the destruction of the Jews, but
there is little evidence in the rest of Wagner’s life that he would really
have countenanced anything of the kind, despite his fondness for apoc-
alyptic visions. At the same time, one has to remember that very many
Germans at the time of the Holocaust would also not have sanctioned
what happened, but did nothing to prevent it. Wagner’s essay and his
other anti-Semitic attacks are in many respects just a piece of paranoia
and reveal more about the glaring psychological problems of its author
than anything else. His questionable personal traits, which include the
ability to sustain contradictory stances in relation to questions like anti-
Semitism, might, though, also be said to be one of the sources of some
of his most remarkable artistic achievements, and this idea will be given
some credence by examination of the relationship of his philosophical
self-contradictions to his music dramas.