Re: Gobineau, the "Bayreuth Circle" and Schemann

3  Gobineau's theory of history 

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Charles Zigmund) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> Laon, are you working on a Ph.D in Wagner studies as you announced as
> your intention some time ago? If not, what are you doing? One would
> hope such scholarship will eventually reach beyod an internet message
> board...

Yes, I'm working towards the said Ph D. Some of my posts are thinking
aloud on topics that will be relevant to that misshapen beast, my
thesis. But anything I post here does grow organically out of topics
raised on the board: it was a claim of Simon's that got me thinking
about whether it's possible to go past exchanging competing claims
about Gobineau and Wagner, and going to the details to see what's
really going on. So the issue came from the board: I might later shove
some of the Gobineau material into the thesis, but its genesis is
here.

The sidetrack that's calling to me at the moment is the fact that
Gobineau's _Essai_ was translated and published in English in the US
in the 1850s, where it circulated amongst the US racists who used it
as a justification of slavery. I'm starting to suspect that the US
popularity of Gobineau's work, long before Wagner had even heard of
the man, may have been more important than Schemann's Gobineau Society
in preserving the awareness amongst racists that Gobineau was a useful
resource, and in transmitting that awareness to the Nazis.

Michael Biddis' 1970s work on Gobineau is still the most recent
serious study of Gobineau's views and influence, but though I think
his work is excellent, it's very Euro-centric. I suspect there's an
overlooked story: the use of Gobineau's work in the US in the 19th
century, and the 20th century connection between the US racist right
and the German racist right. A topic for someone. But I'm going to try
to stay on the Wagner side of things.

Anyway, I'd got as far as Gobineau's Theory of History.


3  Gobineau's theory of history 

The last significant parallel between Gobineau and Marx is that both
developed a theory of history.

To Marx, history was driven by conflict between economic classes, the
process being worked out in accordance with Hegelian dialectic. In
Gobineau's theory history was driven by race. Gobineau was not a
conflict theorist, so his driving force was not conflict between races
but the differing capabilities of the different races.

The advantage of theories of history is that there is an awful lot of
history, and people can select from it whatever they feel best suits
their worldview. Moreover, a historicist theorist can amass so much
historical material favourable to their case, whatever their case
happens to be, that they can give the appearance of having provided a
comprehensive survey while in reality having done no more than having
assembled a more or less impressive collection of anecdotes.

Gobineau's survey of history is impressively wide and acute, as Wagner
said, and, as Wagner also said, it is not profound. Gobineau
essentially divides history into two sections:
* The history of the Aryan peoples, who are responsible for almost
every significant human achievement, and all but one of the
civilisations Gobineau's considers worthy of the name; and
* The history of everyone else, who achieved nothing much and for
whose history, such as it is, consists of a long featureless stasis.

The only history of importance, then, is the history of the Aryans.
Gobineau treats this history in terms of two themes:
* The race-related rise of civilisations; 
* The race-related fall of civilisations. 

Starting with the rise of civilisation, we find that Gobineau contends
that ten great civilisations have arisen in human history. These are,
in chronological order:
1  India, founded by Aryans moving from their original home in Asia;
2  Egypt, founded by Aryans moving Nile-wards from India, with some
Nubians and Ethiopians;
3  the Assyrian civilisation, which to Gobineau included the Jews, the
Phoenicians, Lydians and Carthaginians. This is the only ancient
civilisation counted as such by Gobineau that, in his system, was not
founded by Aryans. Still, Assyrians were part of Gobineau's white
race, which is the next best thing;
4  the Greeks, founded by Aryans from Persia, and Aryan Medes and
Bachtrians, but with a significant mixture of "semites" (the term
"semitic", in Gobineau, sometimes corresponds reasonably closely to
"Assyrian", but more often it means, rather surprisingly, "people of
mixed white and black descent");
5  The fifth civilisation is the Chinese, which Gobineau rather
surprisingly claimed was developed by Aryans, colonising eastwards
from India; Aryans here were mixed with what Gobineau called Mongoloid
Yellow races, plus what Gobineau called "Malays", by which term
Gobineau didn't mean real Malays but people of mixed Yellow and Black
descent;
6   The sixth civilisation was the Roman, which was set up by Aryans,
of course, but with a mix of Celts, Iberians, and Semites;
7   The seventh civilisation is that of the ancient Germans, and was
mostly Aryan;
8   The eighth civilisation is the Alleghenian, established by Aryans
in what is now the US; it's puzzling that Gobineau counted an
essentially Amerindian civilisation as Aryan, and also that Gobineau
counted this civilisation as one of his top 10 while omitting, for
example, the vast Khmer empire and its splendid architecture and other
arts (no disrespect intended to "Alleghenian" culture);
9   The Mexican civilisation, meaning the Toltec Indians and others,
is another surprising entry, both for its inclusion in Gobineau's Top
10 and for Gobineau's claim that it was Aryan; and
10  Gobineau's tenth entry, the Peruvian civilisation, which to
Gobineau included the Axtec, Inca and Mayan civilisations, is perhaps
a less surprising entry in a Top 10, but it's still a surprise to find
it claimed as Aryan.


This rather eccentric list reveals three things about Gobineau: 
*   He could assemble a reasonably wide range of historical, literary,
philological and anthropological material; the erudition is crankish
but in a sense impressive;
*   The arbitrariness of the list (why just 10 civilisations, and why
choose _those_ 10?) reveals the emptiness of Gobineau's claim to have
presented a comprehensive overview of history. The "survey" of history
that made up most of Gobinea's _Essai_ is exactly what a writer would
produce, if that writer was working in a hurry with whatever sources
they happened to have to hand. I suspect that the Allegheny and
Mexican cultures are two of World History's Top 10 Civilisations
simply because Gobineau happened to have some material on those
civilisations, perhaps acquired during his stint as French Ambassador
to Brazil;
*   Gobineau's racial theory would not lead one to expect to find
Aryans in charge of the Chinese civilisation or the three
civilisations he nominated in North and South America. Those should
surely be "Yellow" civilisations, since Gobineau's own racial
categories count Asian and American Indian people as "Yellow".  But
Gobineau started with the premise that the "Yellow" races could not
build a civilisation, so therefore he assumed that Aryans living in
the midst of the Yellow peoples must have been responsible for their
achievements. So he used his pre-determined conclusion to "prove" the
truth of his evience, which he then cited to prove his conclusion.
Conclusions first; evidence afterwards. Moreover, Gobineau did this
often, and clumsily.

There's one other observation. Gobineau was a conservative Catholic
who believed in the Genesis account(s) of creation. The mix of real
science and pseudoscience I've described was complicated by Gobineau's
belief in the literal truth of the Bible: periodically he had to make
adjustments in his theory to accommodate this. The effect of this
intermittent switch from pseudoscientific fudgings to creationist
fudgings can be disconcerting.

Anyway, the first part of Gobineau's theory of history is that the
history of the rise of civilisations is essentially the history of
Aryan migrations.


The second part of Gobineau's theory of history is kind of amusing.
Gobineau believed that Aryans are horny little root-rats (a fairly
self-explanatory Australianism, that one; or self-explanatory if you
know that "root" means "sexual intercourse" in this part of the
world). The consequence is that no sooner have Aryans established a
civilisation, than they find themselves ruling various lesser breeds,
many of whom have charming features. In no time the Aryans are jumping
the servants, the merchants, the labourers and the artists (all lesser
breeds in Gobineau's view), so that the next generation, and the
generation after that has progressively less and less pure Aryan
blood.


Gobineau argues that this interbreeding is responsible for the fall of
Greece, then of Rome, of the Mayan, Inca and Aztec civilisations, and
so on. Sometimes the historical facts can be made to fit this theory,
more or less. For example the downfall of the ancient German peoples
did involve interbreeding. But as Wagner noted, it was the downfall
that caused the interbreeding. When the German peoples were over-run
at the end of the Thirty Years War, a great deal of interbreeding
ensued. This happened by rape, by forced marriage, and by chosen
marriage. But for Gobineau it must be the interbreeding that caused
the defeat; so he will claim that that is how it was, and never mind
the chronology.

In another example, it is true that the Roman Empire, at the time of
decline, had significant numbers of people we would now call black in
leadership positions. One could reasonably argue that the Roman
Empire's racial inclusiveness was one of the conditions of that
empire's success and longevity. Moreover it is obvious that over time
racial diversity will naturally increase: the causes of the Empire's
decline are found elsewhere. But for Gobineau the racial inclusivity
and the downfall happened together, so the racial mixing must have
caused the decline. The fall of Rome, he says, proved the danger of
diluting Aryan blood.

Regrettably for Gobineau, history also records that the distressingly
racially heterogenous Greeks defeated the racially Aryan Persians at
Marathon. So Gobineau explained that this was only a freak event. That
which does not fit the theory is a freak event, and not important.

And so on.  So there we have Gobineau's theory of history, in two
parts:
1 Aryans brought about every worthwhile achievement in human history,
except for the civilisation of their cousins the Assyrians, who were
also white, and who achieved one civilisation to the Aryans' nine;
2 Aryan sexual interest in other lesser peoples is inevitable because
of Aryans' great sexual vitality, but this leads to inferior children
and the ultimate destruction of Aryan civilisations.


Where did Wagner stand on this?  

First, it seems clear that Wagner did for a time accept Gobineau's
idea that miscegenation could have ignoble effects. But that was one
specific idea, and not the totality of Gobineau's theory of history.
We'll discuss that slightly more narrow issue under the heading
"Degeneration through miscegenation."

As for Gobineau's theory of history as a whole, it is clear that
Wagner did not accept it. Wagner's essays, like Cosima's record of his
conversations, show no reference by Wagner to Gobineau's system in
which there were 10 great civilisations, nor to Gobineau's idea that
civilisations were created by Aryans, nor to Gobineau's franklly
eccentric idea that there were Aryans running things behind the scenes
in China and the ancient Americas. Wagner passed over all that in
silence; except perhaps for the general criticisms he made against
Gobineau's _Essai_, most of which criticisms have been cited
elsewhere.

In fact Wagner never showed any interest in Gobineau's "Aryan" races
at all, nor did he ever show any interest in or acceptance of the idea
that Aryan peoples are the driving force of history.

Here it again seems possible to prove a negative. "Aryanism" is the
crucial concept of Gobineau's theory of history, and Wagner didn't
care about it. In the complete essays of Richard Wagner, the term
"Aryan" occurs just twice. And on those two occasions he used the term
in the sense which is still respectable today: as a term in philology.
Wagner's two uses of "Aryan" concern language groups, not allegedly
superior races. Wagner's usage is more consistent with Wagner's
interest in the philological work of Max Müller, who did not think
that "Aryan" referred to a racial group, than of interest in the term
in the sense that Gobineau used it. Gobineau's four volumes on the
importance and superiority of "Aryan races" found no echo in Wagner.

Wagner made only one comment specifically on Gobineau's historical
interpretations, and it was negative.

Friday June 17, 1881
"Even Gobineau's book I now find distasteful, like everything else to
do with history.  And I am always on the side of the rebels – now, for
instance, the persecuted Bahais."

Wagner had noticed that Gobineau was generally on the side of the
powerful, the rulers and the owners, in his accounts of history
(Wagner referred to this trait in Gobineau on 23 September 1881, on 9
June 1882, and elsewhere). By contrast Wagner's sympathies lay with
victims and the weak; this had led to a number of quarrels between the
two men.

In summary, Wagner appears to have been uninterested in and
unimpressed by Gobineau's theory of history.


Now, there has been a point to all the comparisons between Gobineau
and Marx.

Marx was an economic determinist, who thought that economic relations
determined all of human culture, civilisation and history; who
believed that everything could be explained through an exhaustive
analysis of one topic, in Marx' case economics; and who thought that
all of history could be analysed and interpreted in relation to just
one factor, economic; and from that predictions could be made about
future history.

Now, let's suppose that you turned up to a Marxist Party Conference,
hoping to get the free sandwiches and drinks reserved for Marxist
delegates. And you were confronted by an ideological bouncer in a
too-tight tuxedo, who wanted to know if you were really a Marxist.  So
you explained to the bouncer that you didn't believe that economics
was a central factor in human life and development, that you didn't
think that economics was the driving force behind history or culture;
and you said that you rejected all of Marx's analysis of capitalist
relations; and on top of that you rejected Marx's theory of history.

In such a case, no bouncer would let you get at the sandwhiches and
wine: clearly you are not a Marxist at all, under those conditions. 
Not even a modified Marxist. Someone who rejects all the important
strands of the Marxist belief systems is not a modified Marxist; they
cannot be called a Marxist at all.

The same is the case for Wagner and Gobinism.  We've seen Wagner
reject Gobineau's racial determinism. We've seen him reject all that
complicated taxonomy of races that Gobineau devoted so much time to. 
And we've seen him reject the theory of history; the reading of all
civilisation as a matter of whether there were enough pure Aryans
around at any particular time or place.

Under those conditions, it's pretty clear that the only honest and
accurate way to report Wagner's reaction to Gobinism is to say that he
_rejected_ Gobinism.

The next couple of posts will tidy up, with a list of some of the more
specific ideas in Gobinism. The most important of these Gobinist ideas
is the evil of miscegenation, but there are several others, including
Gobineau's idea that you had to be black or of black descent in order
to have musical talent, Gobineau's idea that Europe was threatened by
the Yellow Peril; slavery; and Gobinist issues where we need to
identify Wagner's attitude and its connection to Gobineau's.

Cheers!


Laon