Re: Wagner and the Greeks

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:32:16 -0800, Charles Zigmund wrote:

> Derrick Everett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> 
>> ...We should keep in mind that Wagner selected elements that suited his
>> purposes from contemporary interpretations of the Eddas and discarded
>> others that did not suit his purposes.  In the case of the Norns,
>> Wagner was more influenced by the Greek fates (Gk. Moirai) than by any
>> Nordic tradition; in particular it should be noted that there is no
>> reference there to the Norns weaving a rope of fate.  Like other
>> important aspects of Wagner's "mythology", this one was taken from
>> Greek, not Nordic, sources...
> 
> This is interesting. Would you be good enough to note some other
> instances of Wagner's use of Greek mythology as a source? Perhaps not a
> complete survey, this would be asking too much, but some important
> examples.

Wagner became interested in both lyric and classical Greece in the 1840s,
when he drafted a drama on the subject of Achilles. His ideas, which
might be entirely original and based on his reading of Homer, Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Plato, and/or to some extent derived from secondary sources
about Greek drama and Greek society, can be found in the essays of the
late 1840s (Wagner's period of "Greek optimism"), "Art and Revolution" and
"The Art-Work of the Future", to which I refer you for details.  Some of
those ideas were later developed in Wagner's conversations with Nietzsche,
who unlike Wagner had an extensive knowledge of classical literature,
around 1870.  As early as "Tannhäuser" there is an allusion to Homer in
the song of the sirens, heard in the Venusberg.

The influence of Greek mythology and its potential as a source of poetic
material can be seen in Wagner's "A Communication to My Friends" (Eine
Mitteilung an meine Freunde); where for example we find Lohengrin and Elsa
compared to Zeus and Semele.  Somewhere -- I think it is in "Oper und
Drama", although it might be in "Communication", or both -- Wagner writes
about the myths of Oedipus and Antigone respectively.  The latter can be
seen as an element of Brünnhilde.  Elements of Greek mythology are not
hard to find in the "Ring": in addition to the Norns as discussd above,
the relationship of Wotan and Fricka owes less to the Nordic Odin and
Frigg than it does to the strained marriage of Zeus and Hera; thus
Siegmund can be seen as a parallel to Heracles/Hercules.  There is also
IMO an unmistakeable reference to "Prometheus" in Brünnhilde's line: "ein
Aar kam geflogen mich zu zerfleischen!" (end of GD act one), which
suggests that she is to be seen as a female Prometheus and Siegfried as a
kind of Hercules, who in this case "rescues" an unwilling Prometheus from
the rock. 

-- 
Derrick Everett   (deverett at c2i.net)
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