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Wagner Society in NSW Inc
By Paul Schofield On a website for the Triplicate News ( http://www.triplicate.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=7507 ) your Editor has come across this book, published on 2 February 2008 by Amadeus Press. According to the Editor of Triplicate News, Matthew C. Durkee, who interviewed the author for his article ‘Zen and the art of the Wagnerian opera' : ‘in 2001, ordained Buddhist monk Paul Schofield asked permission to leave his monastery in Mt. Shasta so he could work on a book about the operas of Richard Wagner. Durkee apparently said: ‘I came out to explain to the modern world what Buddhism and Wagner really mean.' [The Editor of this Newsletter tends to bristle when anyone claims to tell anyone else what something ‘really' means – it's usually a prelude to a strongly ideological misunderstanding.] According to Durkee, Schofield elaborated: ‘There has been a lot written about this in the last few years, but it's not correct because they don't know enough about Buddhism. Wagner himself was very interested in Buddha in 1854, having read Schopenhauer's book,'Schofield says. Given that Buddhism, like most religions and political doctrines, has had many schools and schisms over the centuries, one could be forgiven for wondering again about Schofield's certainty about the ‘correct' interpretation of Buddhism or Wagner's operas. He seems to acknowledge that the Western understanding of Buddhism was severely hampered by only having access to ‘excerpts that were being translated,' so it rather begs the question of how Wagner was more accurate in his interpretation than Schopenhauer – it may be that it is because Wagner is the artist and Schopenhauer only a philosopher. According to the article, Schofield considers that ‘Schopenhauer developed a new philosophy centered on Buddhist principles of renouncing the material world in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment' , but I suspect, from my little knowledge of Schopenhauer that, Buddhism was largely a source of new ways of looking at old Western philosophical problems and a useful counter to Western materialism. Schopenhauer considered ‘spiritual enlightenment' a species of error since it assumes that one can separate oneself from the Will that seeks only to desire in its unending cycle. While Schopenhauer was attracted to the notion of Nirvana, of release from a world of suffering caused by unsatisfiable desire, it was not quite the state of blissful non-existence of Buddhism since Schopenhauer did not believe there was an afterlife or god or salvation.The closest one could come to Nirvana was to lose oneself occasionally in the experience of art, especially music. The capacity for humans to stand outside their experience of being manipulated by the Will may lead to a sense of detachment and calmness, but for Schopenhauer those experiences can only be temporary until the Will surges again through desire and returns us to suffering. One of Schofield's more interesting assertions, according to the report, is that ‘When Wagner read Schopenhauer's ‘The World as Will and Representation,' he embraced the idea of reincarnation not just as a theory but as a reality. Reincarnation was not simply a theoretical speculation. It was for Wagner an actual living reality that he embraced and accepted.' Wagner as a believer in reincarnation is not one of the images I have garnered from reading Wagner's works and letter, so I will have another look to see if Schofield's assertion can be supported. In asserting that ‘Wagner portrays the whole panorama of existence from the fall to salvation and reincarnation in his operas. He's using the fall and reincarnation not to convert anyone to Buddhism, but merely as an artistic symbol' , Schofield is asserting his right to an interpretation of both the Ring Cycle and Parsifal , but not to the interpretation. There is much to be said, as Schofield apparently argues that ‘Wagner's opus, the Ring cycle, is incomplete without a later Wagnerian opera, Parsifal.' Indeed some productions have made an explicit connection between the works, including, if my memory serves me correct, the 2000 Bayreuth Ring Cycle that ended with a very young Parsifal entering from backstage through a door in a huge metal wall. The article suggests that ‘Schofield believes the Ring ends with only partial redemption for its main characters. Wagner's later play Parsifal represents reincarnations of the Ring's major players, who achieve full redemption by also rescuing the spear and achieving full enlightenment. ‘This position, of course, assumes that Wagner was concerned about such redemption and, even more contentiously, that there is any credibility to the assertion that some or any of the Ring characters are ‘reincarnated' in those of Parsifal .It is a commonplace of literary criticism that artists often use a similar constellation of character traits, ideas, images, plots and so on in their work, because it represents what most deeply concerns them about the way the world and people work, but to elaborate that into a proposition that, because there are such similarities, Wagner intended the characters of Parsifal to be reincarnations of the characters of the Ring Cycle is certainly brave. But it does provide a strong incentive to read the book to find out the line of argument that Schofield uses to justify his contention. If you're interested in reading the article without the Editor's commentary, you can find it at http://www.triplicate.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=7507 . The Editor would love to incorporate your review of the book into a future Newsletter! [Editor]
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