Wagner antisémite. Un problème historique, sémiologique et esthétique by Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Abstract

Wagner antisemite. Un probleme historique, semiologique et esthetique. By Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 2015. [716 p. ISBN 9782267029031 (paperback), euro28.] examples, bibliography, index.The subject ofJean-Jacques Nattiez's new book-which simultaneously relies upon and significantly contributes to social history-is one that touches upon Wagner past, present, and future. In sixteen extensively-argued and exhaustivelyresearched chapters, ranging from question of principally-offending essay itself (Das Judenthum in der Musik) to question of whether one ought to continue to perform and listen to Wagner, Wagner antisemite presents what is without doubt most comprehensive disquisition in French language on darker side of genius who composed Tristan und Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen. Equally well known for his work on musical semiotics as on Wagner, Nattiez is especially well placed to enter this debate-which in recent years has been carried forth by John Deathridge, Thomas Grey, Barry Millington, Paul Lawrence Rose, Hans Rudolf Vaget, and Marc Weiner (to mention some of those writing in English who are perhaps most familiar to readers of this journal)-because he understands history, culture, music, language; because he has read almost everything (which, in Land of Wagner, is a considerable undertaking; bibliography here encompasses 31 pages); and because he is conspicuously concerned with significance of words.Of this deeply reflective book (Nattiez limits himself to seven hundred pages), a brief review can do very little justice. Let me attempt to shine light upon three issues, thoroughly dissected here, that other scholars have lately attempted to see with what one might wish to call contemporary objectivity. First, upon crucial word Untergang, word of what is most crucial document of Wagner's antisemitism, Das Judenthum in der Music, that terrifying essay which appeared in September 1850 in two issues of Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, and again in 1869 in a separate, revised brochure of which we learn here (p. 506) Nazis, in 1933, distributed 250,000 copies to German libraries and schools. In best English translation, published in British journal Wagner, Stewart Spencer rendered title as Judaism in Music (Wagner 9, no. 1 [January 1988]: 20-33). (Others have opted for Jewishness, Jewry, and even Jewdom, latter etymologically neutral but, to an American ear, grotesque.) Nattiez and his collaborator Marie-Helene Benoit-Otis (who provides new French translations of that essay and five others) render it as La judeite dans la musique. For Untergang, Spencer chose destruction: bear in mind that one thing alone can redeem you from curse that weighs upon you, writes Wagner, addressing Jews: the redemption of Ahasuerus: Destruction! (Spencer, 33). To post-Holocaust listener, sounds identical to what we have come to know as Hitler's final solution. But word Untergang is highly ambiguous and can refer to destruction of a person, religion, nation, or way of thinking, i.e., of a cultural phenomenon (p. 215):The least one can say is that among its critics, shortly after appearance of pamphlet, Johann Christian Lobe, in an article of 25 January 1851, gives to word Untergang meaning of Vernichtung (anentissement) [annihilation] of Jews, just as does, today, Hartmut Zelinsky. (My translation, p. 216)Zelinsky was one of many German scholars, with Udo Bermbach, Dieter Borchmeier, Jens Malte Fischer, and Saul Friedlander, who in recent decades have seriously concerned themselves with this issue.After extensive reflection, Nattiez rather chooses engloutissement. The word, which in English would be swallowing up or devouring, resonates with swallowing up of Dutchman's vessel at end of Der fliegende Hollander-the opera conceived at precisely time, in early 1840s, that Wagner came under influence of perniciously judeophobic Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878); and it suggests autodejudaisation, or self-de-Judification, that Wagner exhorts Jews to undergo (p. …