Re: The absolutely human

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 07:12:31 -0800, Laon wrote:

> Derrick Everett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>> I feel obliged to point out that "das Reinmenschliche", an important
>> term in Wagner's highly individual vocabulary and one that he never
>> defines for us, appears already much earlier in his writings.  I
>> believe that the first appearance of this term was in 1849, in Wagner's
>> essay "The Art-Work of the Future".
> 
> And you're right, of course. I didn't look that far back. Though in my
> defence, or partial defence, I'd argue that at this stage Wagner hasn't
> yet reified the concept in the way he did later. He talked about "purely
> human virtue", "purely human need", or "purely human artwork", and so
> on. We haven't yet got "the purely, or absolutely, Human" as a noun, a
> head concept in its own right. (Or if it's there in that form I missed
> it.)
> 
> That's not a defence for missing it, really, so much as noting a stage
> in the development of that idea. (I withdraw "absolutely human" as an
> alternative translation, by the way. It's too much bother for too little
> gain, to depart from the usual translation.)

I think you are right when you say that Wagner's had not reified his
concept in 1849 -- but I believe that he had done so only a couple of
years later when he began "Opera and Drama", where the word first appears
(as far as I can recall) as a *noun* (GSD volume 3, page 250).


> I agree that Wagner never actually defines the concept of "das
> Reinmenschliche". Certainly I haven't found a formal definition anywhere
> in his essays. But he did come close to defining it, often enough for it
> to be reasonably clear what he means.  Take these two passages from
> "Artwork of the Future": Wagner doesn't use the word "reinmenschliche",
> or "das Reinmenschliche", but that appears to be the idea that he's
> talking about.

"Das Reinmenschliche" appears many times in "Opera and Drama", and if I
were to attempt to define the term I would begin by examining each of
those occurrences.  I have not seen any definition or explanation of this
term given by Wagner, in that treatise or elsewhere, although perhaps
someone else here can point to one.


> "The real Man will therefore never be forthcoming, until true Human
> Nature, and not the arbitrary statutes of the State, shall model and
> ordain his Life; while real Art will never live, until its embodiments
> need be subject only to the laws of Nature, and not to the despotic
> whims of Mode." (Artwork of the Future", page 71)
> 
> And:
> "It is in the natural customs of all peoples, so far as they embrace the
> normal man, and even of those decried as most uncultured, that we first
> learn the truth of human nature in its full nobility, and in its real
> beauty." [page 89].
> 
> 
More than a hint of Jean Jacques Rousseau there, don't you think?

-- 
Derrick Everett   (deverett at c2i.net)
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