Counter-Currents
Remembering Richard Wagner
(May 22, 1813–February 13, 1883)
Greg Johnson
You can buy Kerry Bolton’s More Artists of the Right here.
472 words
Richard Wagner was born on May 22, 1813 in Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony. He died on February 13, 1883 in Venice. As an artist, intellectual, author, and cultural force, Wagner has left an immense metapolitical legacy, which is being evaluated and appropriated in the North American New Right. I wish to draw your attention to the following writings which have been published at Counter-Currents.
About Wagner
- Kerry Bolton, “Wagner as Metapolitical Revolutionary”
- Jonathan Bowden, “Frankfurt School Revisionism”
- Collin Cleary, “Wagner’s Place in the Germanic Tradition,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
- Jef Costello, “Rage Against the Machine: A Very American Ring Cycle”
- Gabriele D’Annunzio, “Tristan and Isolde”
- Alexander Jacob, “The Aryan Christian Religion and Politics of Richard Wagner” (French translation here)
- Greg Johnson, “Make Rome Great Again: Rienzi in Berlin”
- Greg Johnson, Review of Bryan Magee’s Aspects of Wagner
- Greg Johnson, Review of Bryan Magee’s The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy
- Emi Mann Kawaguchi, “Yukio Mishima and Richard Wagner: Art and Politics, or Love and Death”
- Kurwenal, “Wagner, Nietzsche, and the New Suprahumanist Myth,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
- John Morgan, “I Saw the World End: Wagner’s Ring in Munich”
- John Morgan, “Boomer Bayreuth: Wagner’s Parsifal at the Festspielhaus in 2018”
- Sir Oswald Mosley, “The Meaning of Wagner’s Ring”
- James J. O’Meara, “My Wagner Problem — and Ours”
- Christopher Pankhurst, “Parsifal and the Possibility of Transcendence”
- Quintilian, “Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen”
- Brenton Sanderson, “Evil Genius: Constructing Wagner as Moral Pariah,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
- Deems Taylor, “The Monster” (Portuguese translation here)
- Theberton, “Wagner and Great Art” (Video of the Day)
- Donald Thoresen, “A Life with Wagner”
- Michael Walker, “Roger Scruton’s Death-Devoted Heart,” Part 1, Part 2
- Richard Widmann, “Never Surrender: Wagner on War and Culture”
Relevant to Wagner:
- Kerry Bolton, “Wotan as Archetype: The Carl Jung Essay”
- Jonathan Bowden, “Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Leni Riefenstahl’s Heir?”
- Collin Cleary, “Asatru as a Living Tradition”
- Collin Cleary, “An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga,” Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII
- Guillaume Durocher, “Brigitte Haman’s Hitler’s Vienna, Part 3: Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist”
- Alex Graham, “Stanisław Wyspiański’s Wawel Plays”
- Richard J. Herbert, “The Question of Race in Spengler & Its Meaning for Contemporary Racialism” (Spanish translation here)
- Gregory Hood, “Revolution from the Periphery: The Lessons of Nueva Germania”
- Greg Johnson, “The Hero at 150: Remembering Richard Strauss”
- Greg Johnson, Review of The Genius of Valhalla: The Life of Sir Reginald Goodall
- Greg Johnson, “Sir Reginald Goodall: An Apprecation”
- James J. O’Meara, “Our Wagner, Only Better: Harry Partch, Wild Boy of American Music,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
- James J. O’Meara, “Review of The Grail: Two Studies”
- James J. O’Meara, “The Bayreuth of Hobo Pythagoreanism: The University of Washington’s Harry Partch Festival”
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1 comment
Dear Dr Johnson
Thank you so much for posting this. The links to earlier articles are invaluable.
Wagner’s music is ultimately what brought me to this movement and indirectly to this site. I recall you saying on a podcast some time ago that you delivered some lectures on the Ring Cycle some years ago, I think before Counter Currents. I would be very interested to read them if ever you find the notes again.
In the meantime, I would urge readers of this site with an interest in music to check out two things in particular which are not available online and for which you will have to buy a physical object!
The first is Syberberg’s interviews with the wonderful Winifred Wagner, available from his own website. The more you watch those interviews, the more admiration you will have for that wonderful woman who more or less single-handedly built the Bayreuth festival into what it became and sacrificed herself for her sons. WW’s intelligence, humour, unbelievable strength of character shine through. I don’t believe for one minute that she didn’t know exactly what she was doing when she told the truth while the camera was still running.
The second is the Testament Ring on CD, conducted by Josef Keilberth with Astrid Varnay and Hans Hotter in their prime, recorded in 1955, so only a few years after the US occupation army left Bayreuth after allowing some of what Jared Taylor calls the “melanin enhanced” to make the town more “vibrant”. If you haven’t heard those recordings, please do get hold of them and listen to them.
If you’re a newcomer to Wagner and a native English speaker, then the best intro is probably Sir Reginald Goodall’s Ring Cycle in English from the ENO from the 70’s, also available on CD. I don’t know if you can stream it. Goodall was one of us, in British English in both senses of that expression, and suffered horrible harm to his career as a result.
The downside for you? A cost of less than £200 or the US dollar equivalent, a few days of your time, and thereafter spending a LOT of money on tickets and travel to feed the addiction.
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