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Your 3 Favorites from a Past Great Composer ... Dec 17, 2017 3:48:08 GMT

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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Dec 17, 2017 3:48:08 GMT

Dec 16, 2017 21:47:04 GMT general313 said:

Dec 16, 2017 8:21:04 GMT Eva Yojimbo said:

Parsifal isn't religious, it just liberally utilizes religious symbolism (not unlike my beloved Neon Genesis Evangelion). It was probably Wagner's most coherent representation of the philosophy he adopted from Schopenhauer. Wagner himself had the most enlightening comment on his views of religion and art: "When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain." It's a very Blakean/Jungian/Stevensian perspective. Really, Tannhauser and Parsifal are philosophical mirrors of each other.

If you want to see a visually interesting Parsifal, try Syberberg's film. It is a movie rather than a stage performance, but it's definitely fascinating and provocative visually.

I don't see how a work that "liberally utilizes religious symbolism" can be seen as non-religious. It could be argued to be an unorthodox interpretation with its blending of Christianity and Buddhism, but it still is a heavy handed and preachy narrative. The Guardian has an interesting article on this: The Parsifal Problem

Because there are universal themes within religions that aren't uniquely religious in nature. To use Evangelion as an example, its use of the cross does symbolize sacrifice, death and rebirth; but it removes the "Jesus, son of God, died for our sins" aspect. Parsifal is pretty much the same. Schopenhauer and Wagner were both atheists, but they both adopted a Buddhist-like philosophy on life, where human will lead to suffering and the way out of the cycle of suffering was through the negation of the will, which is why Schopenhauer came to admire the asceticism of monks. He also thought art was more effective than philosophy or logic in this negation because it could provoke meditation on the nature of life, which in itself is a type of negation.

Religions often naturally foster a similar perspective in which earthly will is negated by meditating on the universal and eternal, even if the nature of the "universal and eternal" differs among religions. One way they do this IS through art, through stories, parables, allegories and symbols that reinforce those ideas. Take away the "son of God" aspect and the story of Jesus is basically about a man who negates his own will and teaches others to do the same before he's killed by those of the world being negated, and by those who were supposed to be the representatives of the life/philosophy he was teaching and living, but had really just become corrupted by the will/world themselves.

Parsifal is very much about that world where religious symbols have become atrophied and the representatives of that philosophy have been corrupted by the world. Parsifal is the redeemer precisely because he ventures out into the world and becomes empathetic with the suffering it entails. But Parsifal isn't a god-figure redeeming man through his sacrifice; he's more representative of the artist who redeems the value and power of the symbols (and rituals) that were supposed to remind us of these truths and provoke that same empathy. He's very much the "Middle Way" between the sensually indulgent will to life and the ascetically abstract negation of that will. These themes are pretty much encoded into both the music and dramaturgy.

I've read that Guardian piece before, but it's nothing more than a shallow op-ed. The author may have been confused by Parsifal (many were, and still are), but Parsifal is not a "a confusion of Christian and Buddhist themes." The only confusion is in the fact that people can't seem to see past the religious symbolism to the non-religious themes underneath, which is perhaps appropriate since that failure seems to be one of the opera's themes.