The Wagner-Gobineau correspondence

Derrick wrote:  

> Gobineau left Bayreuth on 7 June and, to judge from the letter he wrote to 
> Wagner on the following day, the dust had not yet settled.

> Gobineau set down the points on which he disagreed with Wagner in a letter
> that he wrote to Cosima on 29 July.  It was perhaps to avoid a complete
> rupture that he did not write about their differences to Wagner himself.
> The letter of 29 July is not only an indirect response to Wagner, but also
> to Cosima's half-sister Claire, who had made some comments on the "Essai"
> after Cosima had asked her to help in finding a publisher for the second
> edition.  Obviously Cosima was doing all she could to maintain a good
> relationship with Gobineau.

Thanks for that. Although the _Diaries_ do, as you say, indicate a
number of flare-ups between Wagner and Gobineau, I didn't find it
clear from those entries that a real break had threatened between
them. I interpreted the arguments that Cosima described in terms of
two cranky old men who struck sparks off each other, and occasionally
lost their tempers, but with a certain amount of enjoyment and without
lasting ill feeling. That would be consistent with Wagner's
temperament, at least.

But the Wagner-Gobineau letters obviously fill out the picture
considerably, and indicate a more substantial breach.  And I obviously
need to read this correspondence, though no libraries in my part of
the world seem to have a copy.



While we're on the subject of the Gobineau Wagner correspondence, I
was struck by a use of that correspondence in Geoffrey G Field's book,
_Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart
Chamberlain_. (All subsequent page references are to the Columbia
University Press, 1981, edition of this book.)  I wondered if you
could clarify something for me.

This is the book that Simon quoted to the effect that Wagner adopted
Gobineau's views, and began to use a more "biological" vocabulary, as
a result of his reading of the _Essai_.

At the time I said Field's book seemed a good Chamberlain biography,
but its account of Wagner's response to Gobineau was wrong. I also
noted that Field was guilty of a slight misrepresentation. To bolster
his claim that the _Bayreuther Blätter_ was enthusiastically promoting
Gobineau's racial theories in 1882, Field said there were seven
articles by or about Gobineau that year. While that is true in a
literal sense, he had to know that it was actually misleading. In
reality only three articles on Gobineau's racial theories appeared in
1882, each by Wolzogen. To bring the tally up to seven Field included
four articles by Gobineau that were actually about ancient Persian
theatre. It was only a small thing, but it showed willingness to be
misleading about evidence in order to shore up a point

But I decided that was a one-off and gave Field the benefit of the
doubt, despite the small piece of cheating and the inaccurate account
of Wagner's response to Gobineau. And despite Field's tone, which in
relation to Wagner is very like that of Paul Rose, say.

And I kept extending the benefit of the doubt, even after I took
another look at the book and noted things like Field's flat statement
that _Parsifal_ is about the racial purity of Aryan man [pages
162-163]. This without the slightest acknowledgement that Gutman's
fantasy about _Parsifal_ has been challenged, just a bit, since 1969.

I don't have a problem with an academic claiming that _Parsifal_ is
about "Aryan superiority", or that the moon is made of green cheese,
so long as they acknowledge, to a non-specialist audience, that some
debate exists on the point. I do have a problem with someone who
writes an academic text aimed at a general readership, who presents a
highly contentious (polite-speak for "demonstrably false") theory as a
settled and uncontroversial truth. That's more than holding a mistaken
view; concealing the controversy actively misleads the unwary reader,
going beyond mistake and into dishonesty.

But your mention of the Wagner-Gobineau correspondence has raised a
further doubt, for me, about Field's presentation of evidence. Field
claimed that Wagner's response to Gobineau's _Essai_ was positive and
"strongly influenced his last essays" [page 152]. To back this claim,
Field cited a letter written by Cosima to Gobineau in May 1881:
"My husband is quite at your service, always reading the Races when he
is not at work with the staging." [page 153].

This was the only citation that Field gave, in relation to Wagner's
response to Gobineau's _Essai_.

I thought this was an odd citation to select, since Cosima's words
were obviously dictated by politeness, and direct evidence of Wagner's
actual response to Gobineau's book is available in the _Diaries_. Of
course Wagner's comments, as recorded in the _Diaries_, would not
support Field's case. Still, giving Field the benefit of the doubt, I
decided that it was possible that he had simply overlooked the
_Diaries_, and he was not being deliberately misleading.

But Field chose the Wagner-Gobineau correspondence as his source for
Wagner's view of Gobineau's _Essai_. I now realise that there is more
to this correspondence than this one letter from Cosima to Gobineau,
cited by Field.  So I'm wondering whether Field made honest use of his
chosen set of source material.

Specifically, I wonder: in his own correspondence with Gobineau, did
Wagner criticise Gobineau's ideas on race, or was he broadly
supportive of Gobineau's ideas?

I'm asking because if Wagner's own correspondence expressed support
for Gobineau's racial theories, then it would be surprising, but not
actually misleading, for Field to quote Cosima's words instead of
Wagner's words, as evidence of Wagner's opinion.

But if Wagner was critical of Gobineau's racial theories in his
correspondence with Gobineau, then Field's decision to quote Cosima's
correspondence instead of Wagner's, as a supposed representation of
Wagner's views, would be worse than surprising: it would be actively
dishonest.

So my question is: Would you say that the correspondence from Wagner
to Gobineau indicates a positive and accepting response to Gobineau's
racial theories, or a negative and critical response?

Can you advise? 
 

Cheers!


Laon