Tag: Parsifal

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Trump’s antics never cease to amaze. This week, he brazenly declared that “Israel literally owned Congress ten years ago.” Was this Trump going ballistic and naming the Jew after having been their good goy for years, only to be betrayed? (more…)

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Alexander Jacob
Richard Wagner on Tragedy, Christianity, and the State: Three Essays, Second Edition
Melbourne: Manticore, 2020

“I am the most German being. I am the German spirit.” — Richard Wagner[1]

Counter-Currents readers will welcome another contribution from Alexander Jacob.[2] These essays make a useful companion, or counterpoint (sit venia verbo!), to Collin Cleary’s Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition. (more…)

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Why does Scruton not examine the role of Melot in Death-Devoted Heart more closely?

Tristan und Isolde echoes themes from Romeo and Juliet and Othello, so it is unlikely that Wagner did not have both plays in mind when he composed his opera. The Othello theme is especially clear in the regrets expressed by King Marke that he could not clearly see, just as Othello could not clearly see. Melot, like Iago, faces death if he cannot make good the claim of adultery; (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Sir Roger Scruton, who died of cancer on January 12th, 2020 at the age of seventy-five, wrote more than fifty books, was the editor of the conservative publication The Salisbury Review, and in his final years was briefly chairman — dismissed and subsequently reinstated — of the Conservative Government’s “Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.”

I once met Roger Scruton. He invited me to his flat in London in 1982 where I remember enjoying his excellent wine. (more…)

Parsifal and Gurnemanz travelling through German history and entering the Grail Hall in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s film of Parsifal – a truly outstanding presentation of the drama.

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For a Wagnerian, seeing a performance at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus (Festival House) – the theater that was built and established by Richard Wagner himself, with the financial support of Wagner Societies across Germany as well as King Ludwig II and the Bavarian state coffers in the 1870s – is the Holy Grail of Wagnerism, the pinnacle of the Wagner experience. (more…)

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In 1878 Nietzsche sent a copy of his book Human, All Too Human to Richard Wagner. At the same time Wagner sent Nietzsche a copy of the verse for his opera Parsifal. Nietzsche was later to write that when received this text, “I felt as if I heard an ominous sound – as if two swords had crossed.”[1] (more…)

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Editor’s Note:

The following text is a transcript by V. S. of a lecture by Jonathan Bowden given at the 14th New Right meeting in London on April 5, 2008. (more…)

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Bryan Magee
The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000

Bryan Magee’s The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (just Wagner and Philosophy in the UK) combines two of my favorite subjects into an informative, stimulating, and highly readable book. Creativity and critical reflection are two very different activities, and excellence in one is seldom accompanied by excellence in the other. (more…)