Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Wagner vs. Nietschze


Nietschze, the philosopher said,

"Man must not eat meat."

Wagner, the composer replied,

"The life of man is a series of compromises. The only expiation is to do good. Man needs nourishment in order to do good."

Interesting excerpt from the diary of Cosima Wagner. Her husband gave Nietschze the life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and Nietschze's only comment was that the work smelled more like incense than of roses.

At the end of the transcript Nietzsche says, "I noticed that I was already beyond all questions of dogma. For me what was important was the human being."

Like all liberal secular humanists who say they only want to do good and serve the human being, by ignoring the Divine and the laws of nature help to destroy him.

5 comments:

Jamie Carin and Claudio Romano said...

Yeah, but you are considering Wagner the moral one?!?! Wagner was disgusting and a Nazi to boot.

Stick to his arch musical rival Brahms. Brahms was a great man (despite a few romantic exploits) and a far more brilliant composer in my opinion.

Wagner is good for two things...the traditional wedding march and Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Anonymous said...

I think the stark difference though is this, what Wagner wrote in his music has a lot of elements of truth and beauty, (I am a fan of his music,)but what Nietsche wrote was skewered and false. Also, Nazi? Certainly, they were a fan of his but I think that they hijacked his talent. Many of the anti semetic comments that he made were retracted and he certainly did not support the Holocaust as is rumoured now.

M. Alexander said...

"Wagner was disgusting and a Nazi to boot."

But at least he wasn't a vegetarian! J/K to all my veggie friends!

But really do you think this might be history revisionism, like the Pope is a nazi too?
Mary

Anonymous said...

I know that Hitler was reported to really love his music...other than that, I'm not sure where Wagner's personal feelings did actually lie on the issue.

Anonymous said...

I know!! He lived like 50 or 60 years before Hitler!!! Chesterton is called anti-semetic too!! DO you believe that? I don't .