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Was Wagner a Buddhist? Prof. Karel Werner
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), perhaps the greatest operatic composer ever, was not a religious man in the conventional sense, although he had been baptised in the church of St. Thomas in Leipzig (Wagner, 1993,1; but cf. Osborne, 10). He was, however, preoccupied from his early years till his death with the problems of human destiny and with the search for a final solution to its dilemma: to find fulfilment by embracing life in all its multifarious variety or salvation by resisting its allure and becoming a saint. On top of that he also played with the idea of redemption through the unique beauty of overwhelming love between man and woman stemming from unconstrained sexual love, but leading to the merging of souls and culminating, after their physical death, in the otherworldly dimension of non-being, i.e. not being in the world of temporality and suffering, i.e. in sasāra, but in nirvāa which is untroubled, pure harmony (ungetrübte, reine Harmonie; Wagner, 1975, 198). All this is expressed in his mature operas, partly in words, but fully by a powerful musical language. Of course, Wagner was also aware of the Christian message of vicarious salvation through Jesus’s self-sacrifice, but that has been, in his view, trivialised and distorted by dogmas of official theology. So Wagner sought to supplement and correct it by studying medieval legends and ancient Nordic myths with their hidden truths expressed in peculiar stories and rich symbols. Already his first opera composed when he was twenty, Die Feen (The Fairies, 1833), is set in a mythical past on earth and in a fairy realm and concerns the love of a fairy for a mortal man. Her problem was that she could not become human, although she managed to live with him for a time and bear him two children. However, after many setbacks the two were united in the fairyland forever. So here we have the young Wagner’s dream of salvation in the beyond by the power of love which involves full erotic fulfilment. After two ‘earthly’ operas (Das Libesverbot or ‘The Ban on Love’, 1836, and Rienzi, 1840) it is The Flying Dutchman (1841), which returns to an other-worldly theme and takes it from a‘ghostly’ nautical legend popular among seamen at least since the seventeenth century. It is about a Dutch sea captain who was approaching the Cape of Good Hope in a heavy storm which was pushing his ship off course, but he swore ‘by all the devils in hell’ that he would nevertheless make it round the Cape, even if he had to sail till the Day of Judgment. The devil took him at his word and he is still sailing in his ghost ship unable to find release in death. Many sightings of the ship have been claimed, including one by the future King George V near Australia when on a voyage as Prince of Wales. They were explained as instances of mirage. The legend was, over the years, adapted for the theatre, utilised in ballads and innumerable stories and made into a novel. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) re-told it in a fictional, somewhat satirical, memoir (Heine, Band 2, 3-37) and added an embellishment: the devil allowed the Dutchman to come ashore once in seven years to find a wife. If she would remain faithful to him till death, he would be released. Wagner read Heine’s version of the story while in Riga (1837-39) and based on it his libretto for the opera. After many betrayals (which meant eternal damnation for the unfaithful wives) the Dutchman found Katharina, who had heard about his fate and knew his likeness from an old picture. Being a romantic soul, she had dreamt since childhood of redeeming him. In Heine’s version they married, but eventually the Dutchman, who loved her so much that he did not want her to share his dreadful fate, boarded his ship and sailed off. Katharina rushed up a cliff and called to him: “I have been faithful to you and know how to preserve my faithfulness till death!” upon which she threw herself into the sea and the Dutchman’s ship immediately sank.
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Wagner changed the story somewhat. Everything happened on the day the Dutchman met the dreamy girl, renamed Senta, who pledged herself to him. But she had a suitor, Erik, who protested that she had previously acquiesced to becoming his. The Dutchman overheard Erik’s pleading and assumed that he would eventually be betrayed again, but wishing to spare his bride the peril, which was still possible as their union had not yet been consecrated, he dashed on board his boat to depart. But Senta called to him: “Here I stand, faithful to you till death!” and threw herself into the sea. In that moment the departing ship sank and in the distance the transfigured shades of the Dutchman and Senta were seen, embracing and rising upwards from the waves. The idea of salvation through a woman’s sacrifice, which Wagner derived from Heine, never left him and is present, in one form or another, in all but one of his later operas (the exception being Die Meistersingers von Nürnberg). He even felt that it somehow applied also to him in his relations with women. In the case of Minna, his first wife, it was the fact that she sacrificed her career as a successful actress, supported him and shared with him his financial and other hardships, although in desperation she escaped from him for a short time with another man. But their mutual attraction survived and there was harmony between them when she rejoined him in Riga (then in Russia) before they had to flee Wagner’s creditors to France, via a diversion to England because of a storm. Wagner even initially named the opera’s heroine Minna, but later changed his mind. Salvation through a woman’s sacrifice features most prominently in Wagner’s next opera, Tannhäuser (1845). It is based on a number of medieval sources - legends, ballads and songs - about the Mount of Venus, in combination with records of an actual song contest of minstrels (1206-7) at the court of Herman I, the Landgrave of Thuringia, at Wartburg, his castle. Several other versions of these two themes and their combination were produced early in the nineteenth century by, among others, Heine and E. T. A. Hoffmann, and were known to Wagner. He took up the combined version and portrayed the famous minstrel Tannhäuser as a restless wanderer who left Wartburg, despite the budding love for him of Elisabeth, the Landgrave’s niece. He somehow chanced on the Mount of Venus, her timeless underground refuge from the Christian world, and enjoyed her love for some years, but eventually felt satiated and longed for freedom. Venus wanted to keep him, but eventually released him. Tannhäuser was welcomed back by the other minstrels and the Landgrave and by Elisabeth, and the two declared their love for each other. At the song contest on the theme of the true essence of love, however, Tannhäuser opposed the other minstrels’ praise of pure courtly love, then fashionable, and proclaimed carnal union to be love’s culmination which they had never tasted so that their notion of love was impoverished. In his excitement he even advised them to visit the Mount of Venus. Upheaval followed and the minstrels drew swords, but Elisabeth shielded Tannhäuser, offering her life so that he could repent and be saved. Tannhäuser, recovering from his excitement, now realised the danger of eternal damnation and joined a procession of penitents on their pilgrimage to Rome, to seek absolution from the Pope. But the Pope regarded Tannhäuser’s stay in the Mount of Venus as unforgivable: “As the staff in my hand will never sprout, so you will not be saved from the flames of hell”. Tannhäuser returned to the vicinity of the Mount of Venus totally exhausted and called to her. She appeared and was willing to take him back, but suddenly the funeral procession with the dead Elisabeth appeared. She had made severe penitence, offering heaven her life for Tannhäuser’s salvation, and then died. Tannhäuser now sank on her corpse, asking her to pray for him. Just then young pilgrims were passing by, singing about a miracle: “The Pope’s staff sprouted, a sinner was saved”.
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The story suggests a confrontation between Venus’s profane and Elisabeth’s sacred, selfsacrificing love, but the music blends them: Wagner somehow felt that salvation contained total fulfilment in love in all its aspects. But even in his pre-Buddhist period he felt that it could be fully accomplished only in or after death. The idea of salvation through a woman’s sacrifice gets an unexpected twist in Lohengrin (1848). The story is based on an anonymous epic, Lohengrin, possibly from the 10th century, several times subsequently reworked by various authors, starting with Wolfram von Eschenbach, and followed by a number of others, including the Grimm Brothers. Lohengrin was the son of Parzival, the ruler of a land beyond the reach of mortals. His seat was a castle called Monsalvat which sheltered a splendid temple harbouring the Holy Grail, a vessel with miraculous powers, which had been brought by angels. It was guarded by a host of selected knights on whom it bestowed uncommon capabilities when they were sent incognito on errands of mercy wherever an innocent victim needed help. Once a year a dove descended from heaven to renew the Grail’s powers. (According to esoteric tradition, the Holy Grail is a vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper and into which his blood was caught when he was dying on the Cross. There are many versions of the Grail’s story, one even identifies the vessel as the Buddha’s begging-bowl given to him by gods when he renounced his princely status and became an ascetic to search for enlightenment.) Lohengrin was by his status already saved, but for Wagner salvation without a woman’s love was lonely and somehow incomplete. (Isn’t this perhaps, in a way, Wagner’s intuitive anticipation, even before he encountered Buddhism, of the Tantric conception of the final realisation symbolically depicted by Tibetan yab-yum statues?) Lohengrin was sent by the Grail to Brabant, a dukedom in Germany, on an errand of mercy to rescue a damsel in distress. The dying Duke of Brabant had entrusted his young children Elsa and Gottfried to Friedrich von Telramund as regent to bring them up. When Elsa matured Telramund sought her hand in marriage, and after she refused him, he married Ortrud, who still secretly worshipped pagan gods and was a witch. One day when Elsa was walking with her younger brother through a wood, he mysteriously disappeared. He was, in fact, bewitched by Ortrud, who then told her husband that she had seen Elsa drown him. Telramund accused Elsa of her brother’s murder. Ortrud’s plot was to be assured of Telramund’s and her permanent rule over Brabant. The action of the opera is placed in a historical context - the occasion when King Henry I of Saxony (919-936) came to Brabant to ask for help in his fight against invading Hungarian pagans. As the highest potentate present, he became the judge in the case against Elsa and summoned her to explain herself. But she only related a dream of hers about a knight in shining armour who would defend her. So the King chose to rely on God’s judgment (Gottesgericht), i.e. a single combat till death between the accuser and Elsa’s champion if someone volunteered. None of the assembled nobles did, but the knight from her dream eventually arrived in a boat drawn by a swan. He did not introduce himself and straightaway asked Elsa if she would take him for her husband when he had defeated her accuser. She agreed, but Lohengrin imposed a condition on her concerning his identity; she had to promise never to ask for his name or where he came from. He then easily defeated Telramund, but spared his life, and was thereafter proclaimed the protector of Brabant who would lead the combined German army against the Hungarians. Telramund would be banned. His scheming wife, however, managed to insinuate herself into Elsa’s confidence, won her compassion and managed persuasively to plant seeds of doubt in her mind as to Lohengrin’s status and origin. Next day Telramund and Ortrud interrupted the wedding procession and accused Lohengrin of sorcery, referring to the manner of his arrival, but they were rebuffed by all. Yet Elsa could not contain her doubts and when alone with Lohengrin on the wedding night she asked the 3
forbidden question. Their encounter was interrupted by Telramund’s attempt to ambush Lohengrin who, however, dispatched him and had the corpse and Elsa brought before the King. He then revealed his identity to the King and assembled nobles and where he had came from. His incognito breached, he was being summoned to return to Monsalvat; the swan was already approaching. Lohengrin knew that it was Elsa’s brother, bewitched but taken into the service of the Grail for ten years. One year on, Lohengrin would have seen him freed. Now Ortrud, thinking that with Lohengrin’s departure her spell would remain permanent, thanked Elsa derisively for driving Lohengrin away; this was the revenge of the ancient gods for being banned. But Lohengrin knelt in prayer whereupon the white dove of the Grail appeared, the swan sank into the lake and in its place appeared Elsa’s brother whom Lohengrin presented to the assembly as the rightful Duke of Brabant. He then departed in the boat, now being drawn by the dove. The unexpected twist which the idea of salvation through a woman’s sacrifice gets in Lohengrin is the necessity of love even in a knight of the Grail - not in the refined or sublimated sense, but in full consummation, albeit sanctified by marriage rites. When explaining the meaning of Lohengrin’s predicament in a letter circulated to his friends, Wagner expressed his own life’s credo: Man aspires for and may even soar into the heights of spirituality, but in the end he can only crave the experience of his own inmost nature. His yearning for the farthest reaches finds fulfilment only when it turns back to himself. And what is the inherent feature of his nature? It is the necessity of love, and the essence of this love in its truest expression is longing for full sensual realisation (Verlangen nach voller sinnlicher Wirklichkeit); the object of love has to be grasped by all the senses, to be embraced with all the power of one’s real being (App, 12; cf. Osborne, 110-111). After this frank confession it is difficult to assume that Wagner’s many involvements with women remained unconsummated, although hard evidence is usually missing. Wagner was deeply affected by feminine charms from his early teens. When his family moved to Prague, where his oldest sister had obtained an engagement in the theatre, he was at the age of thirteen lodging in Dresden with a family with grown-up daughters and often sat with them and their visiting girlfriends in the family’s living room. When once a particularly beautiful girl came to visit, he was struck dumb with amazement. He often liked to pretend to fall asleep, because the girls would then carry him to bed in his room so that he could enjoy the ‘direct fondling contact with the female essence’ (schmeichelnde unmittelbare Berührung mit dem weiblichen Wesen). When visiting his family in Prague, he got to know two beautiful aristocratic girls, friends of another sister of his, and became so attached to them that the following year he went on foot to Prague, with a school mate. No details of what happened during his stay in Prague are related, but when leaving, the fourteen-year-old Wagner looked back at Prague from a hill, and knowing he would never see the girls again, fell to the ground and wept for a long time before he could continue walking (Wagner, 1994, 18-19 & 21; Kapp, 23-24). Wagner’s next opera, Tristan und Isolde (1859), had a complicated gestation. Before he even thought about it, he started planning (in 1848) a ‘music drama’ on the Nordic myth of the Nibelungen. In May 1949, however, he had to flee Germany to avoid arrest for his part in the failed Dresden uprising and settled in Zurich. Even so, by the end of 1851 he had conceived the whole project of the Ring of the Nibelungen in four parts. A year later he gave a public reading of the libretto of the Ring and published it privately a few months later. The work had an optimistic outcome not dissimilar to the end of The Flying Dutchman in that the blissful fulfilment of love is found in death. “Bliss in joy and pain can be provided - only by
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love.” (Selig in Lust und Leid lässt - die Liebe nur sein, Wagner 1966, II, 269). These were the words of Brünnhilde at the end of the tetralogy when she decided to follow the murdered Siegfried onto his funeral pyre, riding on her horse. But the words were later discarded in an intermediary as well as in the final version. Wagner’s philosophical outlook, influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach, allowed him at the time to view the phenomena of nature and history as containing nothing bad except lovelessness, an aberration in the state of natural unconsciousness which must needs bring us to the recognition of the uniquely beautiful necessity of love. However, Wagner was soon to be awakened from this cosy optimism and his life would become more complicated than ever. In February 1852 he met Otto Wesendonck, a rich silk merchant, and his wife Mathilde. His relationship with her was long lasting and went through several complicated phases. It was characterised by Osborne (p. 134): “Acting true to his nature, the composer borrowed money from Otto and fell in love with Mathilde.” A powerful intrusion into Wagner’s developing passion, however, occurred in September 1854 when he got to know Schopenhauer’s work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstallung (The World as Will and Appearance), heavily based on study of the Upaniads and Buddhism, and Parerga und Paralipomena, a set of reflections in which Schopenhauer appears to adopt all the basic tenets of Buddhist teachings: reincarnation, perpetuated by the will to live and underlined by ignorance, and salvation by renunciation through the destruction of the will, underpinned by insight into the nature of existence as suffering. Wagner deepened his perception of Buddhism, gained from Schopenhauer, by study of books then available on it and readily adopted the idea of negation of will which alone could bring salvation. He began to believe that he had already anticipated this idea by poetic intuition in his previous three operas in which the tragedy of renouncing earthly love pointed to a higher solution. With this new philosophical insight Wagner now began to understand that love could be disastrous (verheerend). This eventually had an important influence on his struggle to formulate an ending of the Ring tetralogy, but there was another influence at play, and that was his emotional character and artistic nature. So it took a long time for the matter to be resolved. Now, however, his passion for Mathilde prevailed over philosophical insights, at least for a while, and bridged over the inherent contradiction between salvation through love and a vision of ultimate fulfilment through negation of desire. The poet failed to spell this out clearly in the libretto of his next opera, but the composer expressed it superbly in the musical score. In 1854 Wagner conceived Tristan und Isolde and struggled over it for five years. The legend on which he based the opera is of ancient Celtic origin, but he had probably already read it in 1847 or soon after in a contemporary version of the earlier epic by Gottfried von Strassburg (13th century) and had felt drawn to it. He set it aside to concentrate on the Ring, but Mathilde’s arrival on the scene provided a perfect muse for him to take up the story of an illicit love which found its ultimate fulfilment in death. Much is made in medieval romances of the love potion as a means of generating love where there was none before. Accidental sharing of a love potion by the wrong couple created the complications round which events in the old version of the romance unfolded, but Wagner allotted the potion a different role, reduced the number of participants and gave them well defined characters, thereby creating a more credible human drama. Also, he endowed the protagonists with higher aspirations in so far as the final fulfilment was concerned. Tristan had abandoned his ancestral estate in Brittany to serve his childless uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, whom he freed from having to pay tribute to the Irish by slaying their leader, Morold. But Morold wounded him with his poisoned sword and only princess Isolde,
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Morold’s betrothed, knew the cure. Tristan travelled to Ireland with a false identity, but while treating him, Isolde recognised him as Morold’s slayer and was about to take revenge by killing him. Then, as their eyes met, she found she could not do so and let him go, the implication being that they had fallen in love with each other without realising it. Back in Cornwall it was decided that King Mark would woo Isolde to secure an heir. The deal was struck, the two countries were thus reconciled and Tristan was sent to fetch Isolde. On the boat to Cornwall, however, Isolde, feeling betrayed and humiliated by the arrangement, resolved that they must both die and challenged Tristan to take a drink of ‘atonement’ with her. Tristan, now aware of his feelings and tortured by the hopelessness of the situation, accepted, anticipating Isolde’s real intention. But her servant substituted a love potion for the poison Isolde had asked her for and this fully released her and Tristan’s suppressed passion. At the court, before the planned royal wedding, they could not resist a secret meeting, but were discovered. When Tristan was attacked by one of King Mark’s knights, he did not defend himself, hoping to be killed, and was fatally wounded. His retainer Kurwenal brought him to his ancestral castle where Tristan eventually regained consciousness and told him of the ‘wide realm, the worlds’ night’ in which he had just dwelt (im weiten Reich, der Welten Nacht), where there was only one way of knowing - ‘godlike eternal, primeval forgetting’ (göttlich ew’ges Ur-Vergessen). - Was that, at the time, Wagner’s idea of what nirvāa might be like? But what brought Tristan back into the treacherous golden light of this world? It was yearning, an ardent desire to see Isolde, since he felt he could be granted only ‘in her’ the passing away, the disappearance (in der einzig zu vergehen, zu entschwinden Tristan ist vergönnt). He anticipated her coming and she did indeed arrive eventually over the sea, wishing to spend an hour in blissful union with him and then die with him. But just as she reached him, Tristan died in her arms and Isolde, lamenting her loss, fainted. She woke when the forgiving King Mark arrived, but absorbed in contemplating the beauty of Tristan’s dead body, and experiencing the highest joy of drowning in unconsciousness, she fell lifeless onto Tristan’s body. There are obvious inconsistencies and ambiguities in the story. Clearly, the ending does not suggest salvation through love for either of the protagonists. Isolde, addressing the dead Tristan, said she crossed the sea to experience love’s blissful union with him (sich wonnig dir zu vermählen), but her desire was frustrated. Tristan felt that his love for Isolde tied him to this world of suffering, so he hoped for salvation, also to be released from his yearning for her, to be accomplished if they died together, but he died alone and so did Isolde later on. Would then there be no yearning for her left in Tristan when he died or would it still block his ‘re-entry’ into the previously experienced ‘worlds’ night’? Isolde died with unfulfilled desire, although she imagined herself suffused with blissful feelings emanating from Tristan’s body and felt as if sinking into the highest joy of unconsciousness (ertrinken - versinken unbewusst - höchste Lust!). By Buddhist standards they would, of course, both carry on in the realms of ‘light’ and suffering kept in them by the residue of yearning for each other with which they died. Because of the great change in Wagner’s outlook between conceiving the opera and its final score, it is not surprising that the thinker and poet in Wagner could not reconcile the two opposing trends, yearning for love’s fulfilment and the abandonment of yearning. The musician, however, could reconcile them and produced a perfect vision of an otherworldly solution, but not in the opera’s finale. It is, in fact, the music accompanying the fatal secret meeting of the two lovers which expresses ecstatic union of such intensity that it could only culminate in ‘winsome death, longingly craved death through love ... freed from the plight of waking again’ (holder Tod, sehnend verlangter Liebestod ... von Erwachens Not 6
befreit). The Liebestod motive returns towards the end when Tristan rushes from his sickbed to Isolde, but the libretto does not allow for their final salvation. But is anything like that at all thinkable? Schopenhauer, being a misogynist, would never have contemplated such a possibility. Maybe that was why he was not interested in discussions with Wagner and declined his invitation to visit him in Zurich, but an item on Schopenhauer’s reading list provided the answer (Burnouf, 1844, 205ff). It contained a legendary story which did involve love and ended in salvation, but not in the way which would correspond to Wagner’s temperament (Burnouf, 1844, 205ff). Yet, it captivated him and changed his idea of salvation and even suggested a new ending for the Ring. In May 1856 he created, from a story in Burnouf’s work, a sketch for a Buddhist opera Die Sieger (The Victors). A low-cast girl, Prakriti, served a drink of water to a handsome young monk and fell in love with him. The monk was Ananda, a close disciple of the Buddha, who withstood her advances, but she was desperate for union with him and turned to the Buddha himself for help. The Buddha asked her if she would fulfil strict conditions which would make a union possible and she agreed without hesitation, assuming that he would sanction their worldly bond. When he explained that she had to respect Ananda’s vow of celibacy and renunciation of the world, she was devastated. But the Buddha explained to her that in a former life she was too proud of her birth and rejected the love of Ananda who was then of lower birth. Now the roles were reversed. Prakrti was then able to realise the hopelessness of her present desire and grasp the necessity of renouncing it so that she and Anada could both be liberated as a result of total abandonment of worldly attachments and thereby be eventually joined together in salvation within the community of saints, Buddha’s accomplished disciples. That was an entirely different union than the one she had yearned for and might be a remote goal, but by taking the vow Prakriti would at least become instantly Ananda’s sister in the Buddha’s monastic community. The fact that Wagner could, against his temperament, envisage salvation by renouncing love was psychologically possible for him after his platonic (or actual?) love affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, his muse when composing Tristan und Isolde, had virtually ended (although friendly relations between him and the Wesendoncks continued). Die Sieger became the artistic fruit of this experience (cf. Suneson, 57). The influence which Wagner’s new insight had on the ending of the Ring’s libretto resulted in Brünnhilde’s reformulated soliloquy before her ride onto Siegfried’s funeral pyre. It is, in effect, ‘a ride into nirvāa’, expressed in some typically Wagnerian poetical expressions (rather difficult to translate literally): Aus Wunschheim zieh ich fort. Wahnheim flieh ich auf immer; des ew’gen Werdens offne Tore schliess ich hinter mir zu: nach dem wunsch- und wahnlos heiligstem Wahlland, der Weltwanderung Ziel, von Wiedergeburt erlöst, zieht nun die Wissende hin. Alles Ew’gen sel’ges Ende, wisst ihr, wie ich’s gewann? Trauernder Liebe tiefstes Leiden schloss die Augen mir auf: enden sah ich die Welt. From the realm of wishing I depart. The realm of illusion I escape forever; the open gates of eternal becoming I shut behind me: into the holiest chosen land, devoid of wishes and illusions, the goal of wandering through the world, from rebirth liberated the knowing one now moves. Blessed end of all that is eternal, do you know how I have won it? The deepest suffering of sorrowful love had opened my eyes: I saw the world end.
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What the thinker in Wagner could grasp conceptually, the artist in him could not express in music driven by strong emotions and inspired by visions of salvation through uniquely beautiful love involving full erotic climax. That is the most likely reason why he kept postponing the creation of the Buddhist opera Die Sieger. How could he express musically the quiet ending of the story when both protagonists accept as disciplined members of the Buddha’s monastic community the necessity of renunciation? That is undoubtedly also why he did not keep the above ‘ride into nirvāa’ by Brünnhilde as the ending of the Ring. Musically, it would have to be a quiet ending indicating a solitary salvation of ‘the knowing one’, liberated from rebirth. Siegfried, on the other hand, would have to fare on tied to worldly life by his proclivity to easy amatory flare-ups, first to Brünnhilde and next to Gutrune, and even dallying with Rhine maidens and restraining himself from going all the way by reminding himself that he had just got married. So in the actual ending of the Ring, Brünnhilde, having understood Siegfried’s aberration, greets him as his bride with her heart aflame with mighty love for him (in mächtigster Minne vermählt ihm zu sein) as she joins him on his funeral pyre, just as a faithful Hindu wife (hallowed in ancient India as satī) would follow her deceased husband. No salvation, no liberation from rebirth here. Even though Wagner did not feel able to express it musically because of its ‘nirvāic’ ending, he never ceased to be preoccupied with the story of Die Sieger and was looking for its modification so that he would be able to put it to music. The ending could not be changed, it had to show at least that Prakrti entered on the path to final liberation as a result of genuine and total abandonment of desire. But maybe by introducing a more dramatic contrast between the worldly Prakrti and her new self as a renunciant nun, there would be more emotional material for powerful musical expression. So Wagner early in 1857 was thinking of changing Prakrti’s rather philosophical name (meaning ‘nature’) to Savitri, a passionately loving woman from another story which he may have known from reading Holtzmann. He envisaged portraying her musically as ‘wallowing in flowers in total rapture, voluptuously sucking in all nature’. But about a year later, when contemplating the revision of the draft, he returned to the name Prakrti, which after all expresses quite well her originally passionate character. The contrast between her love, with its full yearning for possessing the beloved person, and her grasp, through the ministration of the Buddha, of the necessity of renouncing the yearning love and settling for sisterly loving-kindness as the only way of being with Ananda, albeit within a wider community of the liberated ones, could not be greater. Here Wagner envisaged salvation of woman through love in a truly Buddhist way and no doubt believed he could express it musically. However, he found the traditional image of the Buddha as a perfectly liberated man free from all passion unsuitable for a dramatic musical portrayal. He needed to show him as having attained his final perfection and liberation through an emotional experience. This he found in the notion of compassion when he read about the Buddha’s consent to grant women acceptance into his monastic community as nuns (at the instigation of Ananda) on behalf of his aunt and foster mother. Wagner took the liberty of rewriting, in his new version of the story, the traditional account of the Buddha’s enlightenment and the reason for founding the order of nuns: even after he established his community of monks, there was still something binding him to existence. When Prakrti pleaded with him to allow her loving union with Ananda, he felt compassion for her, and seeing around him the Brahminic discrimination against women, he was moved to make it possible for women, if they accepted all vows, to tread the path to liberation in the same way as men. Besides helping Prakrti to renounce selfish love and find eventual liberation on the one hand, the emotional experience of compassion for subordinate position of women completed his own final transfiguration 8
(Verklärung) and his aim to benefit all beings, on the other. He thus perfected his wisdom through compassion. Wisdom and compassion are the two fundamental aspects of enlightenment in Mahāyāna Buddhism and Wagner would have learned about them when reading Burnouf. He obviously came to understand compassion as instrumental in leading to knowledge and coined the phrase ‘knowing through compassion’ (durch Mitleid wissend), which became important in Parsifal, his next opera. When Wagner produced the revised scenario of Die Sieger is not clear, nor is there a full text of it extant, but it seems that not even its added dramatic features allowed him to proceed with its musical realisation, because according to the entry in the diary of Cosima, his second wife, on 29 June 1869 he said he might produce it as a play. Then, on 2 April 1875, he returned to the plan of making it into an opera, but may not have been entirely sure how, because he set it aside and turned to the theme of the Holy Grail from the epic on Parzival (whom he renamed Parsifal as it allowed him, through a somewhat fancy etymology, to interpret the name as meaning ‘pure fool’; cf. Suneson, 88). He had already sketched the story for future use in 1859 and wrote it as a prose scenario in 1865. The time for it came in 1877 when he wrote the libretto and started composing the music. But Die Sieger as a Buddhist opera remained in his mind. In the entry of 27 February 1880 Cosima recorded: ‘R. relates to us the story underlying his Sieger, wonderful and moving’. That was while he was working on Parsifal, which became his last opera, so it is no wonder that he consciously or unwittingly incorporated in it several distinctly Buddhist elements. On 6 January 1881, a year before completing Parsifal, Wagner again promised to compose Die Sieger, which would be concerned, like Parsifal, with the salvation of woman. What he was not yet sure about at that point was how to convey the Buddhist message effectively through his art, because there was in Buddhism ‘so much educative effort which is very unartistic’ (im Buddhismus ist soviel Bildung und Bildung ist sehr unkünstlerisch). Wagner was prevented from attempting to solve this problem by his sudden death, so it is Parsifal, a quasi-Christian but in essence Buddhist opera, which suggests the possible solution. The action of the opera starts in Monsalvat long before the time of the Lohengrin story. Its prehistory is recounted in the course of the first act by the senior knight of the Grail, Gurnemanz. A group of Christian knights led by Titurel were saved by angels while in trouble fighting heathens. The angels brought to them from heaven the Holy Grail and the spear with which Christ’s breast was wounded after his death on the Cross. Titurel built Monsalvat to shelter these treasures and as King ruled the community of knights, noble and pure at heart, who were miraculously sustained by the communion with the Holy Grail when it was revealed once a year. When an outsider knight, Klingsor, asked for acceptance, he was refused, because he was not able to resist carnal passions. To free himself from them, he castrated himself, but that made him even less acceptable. So he turned to magic with the intention of corrupting the knights and eventually conquering Monsalvat. He created a kind of sexual paradise inhabited by beautiful flower maidens who managed to seduce a number of knights when they strayed into his realm while on rescue missions. Klingsor formed his army out of them and they became lovers of the flower maidens. Klingsor’s main asset in the game of seduction was Kundry, a woman who had laughed at Jesus carrying the Cross and was cursed to roam or be successively reborn as a seductress forever until somebody could resist her exceeding beauty. As Klingsor was immune to sex, he could subdue and use her. But she had periods of freedom from him and, hoping for salvation, used them to serve, in disguise, the knights in Monsalvat who did not know who she was. In time Titurel abdicated and his son Amfortas became the King. He set out, armed with the holy spear and accompanied by Gurnemanz, to destroy Klingsor who, knowing that fighting Amfortas was hopeless, 9
summoned Kundry to seduce him. She could have been freed from her plight if he managed to resist her charms, but he succumbed. That gave Klingsor the chance to seize the spear and try to kill Amfortas, but he only inflicted a wound in his side, at which point Gurnemanz managed to drag him to safety. Back in Monsalvat, Amfortas found that his wound would not heal and was causing him unbearable suffering so that he longed for death, but could not die owing to the sustenance provided by the Grail. In act one he is being brought to a lake which soothes his pain. Various balsams also relieved his suffering, including one brought by Kundry from Arabia, but the relief was only temporary. It was revealed to him that his healing would come about through a ‘pure fool’ (der reine Tor) who was made wise by compassion (durch Mitleid wissend). But Amfortas would rather welcome death. Suddenly a swan fell down killed by a rough young man. Questioned by Gurnemanz, he could not even tell his name, but Kundry revealed that she had known his mother who raised him in woods to keep him away from battles as his father had died in one before he was born. However, lured by the sight of passing noble horsemen, he had left his mother, whereupon she died of grief. Hearing this, the boy started trembling and felt that he was fainting. Kundry revived him with water. Gurnemanz wondered whether he might be the promised ‘pure fool’ and took him to the temple to witness the unveiling of the Holy Grail. As they headed for the temple, the youngster remarked that they were hardly moving and yet the scenery had completely changed. Gurnemanz’s explanation, ‘here time becomes space’ (zum Raum wird hier die Zeit) is the famous anticipation by Wagner of Einstein’s space-time continuum. In the temple Amfortas needed a lot of persuading to unveil the Grail, because his wound would start bleeding afresh owing to the divine sustenance. The youngster watched everything unmoved. So the disappointed Gurnemanz drove him away. Act two starts with Klingsor watching in a magic mirror the approaching youngster, who strayed into his domain, and aware of the fact that it was the ‘pure fool’ promised to Amfortas to heal his wound, he summoned the reluctant Kundry to perform on him her act of seduction. But first he sent his army of fallen knights ageinst him, but the youngster overpowered them easily. Then he had him surrounded by the flower maidens who invited him to dally with them, but he felt trapped and was about to flee when he heard Kundry calling ‘Parsifal, stay!’ He remembered that his mother had called him so once when dreaming. Kundry told him of his past and his mother’s death after he had left her and promised him alleviation of his guilt feeling with his mother’s blessing through love’s first kiss. With Kundry’s kiss, however, Parsifal realised in retrospect the meaning of what he had seen in Monsalvat, of how lust had been the cause of Amfortas’ wound. He now felt compassion for his suffering and pushed Kundry away. But she maintained that if her kiss had made him all-knowing (welthellsichtig), an hour of loving union with her would make him divine, he would redeem her thereby and himself become redeemer. But Parsifal knew what would happen if he succumbed and, anticipating his elevation if he returned to Monsalvat, offered her redemption in return for showing him the way. This made Kundry furious and she cursed the paths which would lead him away from her so that he would roam aimlessly. In that moment Klingsor appeared and threw at Parsifal the holy spear which, however, remained hanging over Parsifal’s head. He seized it and made with it a sign of the cross which caused Klingsor’s castle to collapse. To Kundry he said that she knew where to find him again. The third act starts some years later, on Good Friday, near Monsalvat in a meadow where Gurnemanz lives in a hut as a hermit. He and all the other knights have aged because Amfortas was no longer unveiling the Grail. Coming out from his hut, Gurnemanz discovered
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the unconscious Kundry dressed in the garment of a penitent and revived her. Then they both noticed a tired, battle-scarred knight in dark armour approaching, who came near and sat down. Gurnemanz recognised the holy spear in his hands and became aware that it was Parsifal, the ‘pure fool’, who would become the new King of the Grail. Kundry brought water from the holy spring and washed his feet and Gurnemanz sprinkled his head. Then Kundry produced a golden phial with balsam, spread part of it on Parsifal’s feet and dried them with her hair. Parsifal asked Gurnemanz to anoint his head with the rest of the balsam, and then sprinkled water on Kundry’s head. All three then proceeded to the temple where there was a funeral rite to be conducted for the deceased Titurel by Amfortas who, however, was refusing to unveil the Grail, asking Titurel to plead in heaven for his death. Parsifal touched with the spear his wound, which instantly healed, and performed the rite of unveiling the Grail which started glowing brightly, while a white dove descended from above and stayed hovering over Parsifal’s head. Kundry, with her eyes fixed on him, sank to his feet lifeless (entseelt). The opera ends with the whole assembly and voices from on high singing: ‘Miracle of the highest salvation: redemption to the redeemer!’ (Höchsten Heiles Wunder: Erlösung dem Erlöser!) Despite Christian elements in the imagery, parallels in the opera Parsifal with events from stories about the Buddha’s life before his enlightenment and elements of Buddhist teachings were already noticed in 1891 (viz. Parker, Suneson, Osthoff, Everett, App). Parsifal is a bodhisattva figure progressing gradually from a state of ignorance to wisdom. The figure of Klingsor with his erotic realm resembles Māra, the ruler of sasāra, and the flower maidens perform the same task as Māra’s daughters who tried to tempt the Buddha before his enlightenment. The figure of Kundry, whose complicated life suggests reincarnation, is in one respect similar to Prakrti in that she seeks fulfilment in the arms of Parsifal, but achieves it in the end as final salvation through renunciation. Her role as a single seductress is no doubt derived from the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, a christianised Buddhist legend (Josaphat being a corruption of Pāli bodhisatta and Barlaam of Bhagavan, i.e. Venerable, often used for the Buddha; MacDonald; Pitts; Suneson, 99) which Wagner knew from a German version published in 1843. The above mentioned notion of gaining knowledge through compassion was used by Wagner in Die Sieger for dramatic purposes as having been the last factor in making the Buddha’s enlightenment perfect; this was, of course, a distortion of the traditional account of the Buddha’s enlightenment as was ascribing his admittance of women to the monastic community to his compassion for women elicited by Prakrti’s plight. But it was out of compassion that the Buddha decided on his teaching mission ‘to save innumerable beings’ instead of resting content with his own liberation. It is also the motivation of bodhisattvas, who take the vow to postpone their own liberation until all other sentient beings are brought onto the threshold of it. The view that Parsifal is a Christian mystery play stems from the fact that Wagner presented its prose draft of 1865 as such to King Ludwig II at his request. Wagner had a definite view of Christianity as originating in Buddhism and as having had its character changed by association with the teachings of Judaism. In a letter to Lizst he wrote that “... modern research has succeeded in showing that pure and unalloyed Christianity was nothing but a branch of that venerable Buddhism which Alexander’s Indian expedition spread to the shores of the Mediterranean” (Peattie, 951). Jesus’s suffering on the Cross on Good Friday was, basically, a symbol expressing the character of all existence as taught in Buddhism. The opera never refers to Jesus as redeemer nor to his supposed resurrection. The words ‘redemption to the redeemer’ at the end of the opera refer to Parsifal, which is indicated by the dove which stayed hovering over his head. Parsifal had completed his spiritual journey and and could now, like an accomplished bodhisattva, bring liberation from suffering to 11
others. After 6 January 1881 we have no source confirming Wagner’s intention to start composing Die Sieger or at least finalising the libretto. So did he still think about composing the opera when he withdrew to Venice to rest after the premiere of Parsifal (26 July 1882)? There he was reading Oldenberg’s book on Buddhism and commented on 1 October to Cosima that Buddhism was a flower of the human spirit against which what followed was decadence (Skelton, 1997, 491). At the same time he was also writing an essay entitled ‘On the Feminine in the Human’ (Über das Weibliche im Menschlichen) which dealt with the liberation of woman, but was lying unfinished on his desk when he died. So Wagner was preoccupied with what constituted the background for the story. But what he needed for inspiration when composing an opera was a ‘muse’ born of a real life relationship with the feminine (which could be carnal or just emotional), and he may have found one in Carrie Pringle, an English soprano, who had sung the role of one of the six leading flower maidens in the 16 performances of Parsifal in Bayreuth (26 July - 29 August). Wagner attended the whole of the premiere, but subsequently only the ‘flower scene’ which obviously pleased him enormously so that each time he even applauded from his box and shouted ‘bravo’, contravening his own stipulation. Behind the scenes he warmly congratulated the flower maidens. Cosima was annoyed by his attentions to them, also during parties in their home (Wahnfried) where he even kissed two of them. Carrie Pringle was not one of them, but that may have been out of caution, since some closer contacts between them have to be assumed. Wagner had already heard her sing on 5 August 1881, as Cosima remarked in her diary that she sang Agathe’s aria (probably in Weber’s Der Freischütz or in a concert) very tolerably, a suspiciously disparaging remark. Was that because she already sensed Wagner’s interest? Wagner certainly valued her voice higher than his wife did, giving her the role of a leading flower maiden a year later. When Wagner left Bayreuth for Venice, Carrie Pringle also left for Italy and settled in Milan where she pursued her vocal studies. If the two maintained contacts, there is no record of it, but on the day of Wagner’s death (13 February 1883) Carrie Pringle’s telegram arrived, announcing her visit. Cosima intercepted the telegram and created a jealous scene. Rumours or knowledge of the relationship were handed down in Bayreuth and were recorded by a Bayreuth writer, Benedikt Lochmüller, as late as 1933. Ludowika, daughter of Hans Richter, who conducted some opera productions under the direction of the widowed Cosima, told Lochmüller: “The last woman Wagner loved was a certain Pringle ... she is said to have been very beautiful ... her telegram from Milan survived”. Carrie Pringle was the only one of the six leading flower maidens who did not, conspicuously, reappear in the 1883 revival of Parsifal in Bayreuth, produced under Cosima’s direction (Westernhagen, 395-7), which is rather telling. The contents of the telegram have not been made public, but Cosima’s jealous outburst allows to surmise its contents. As testified to by their daughter Isolde, she even raised her voice, causing Wagner to take refuge in his study. Cosima then went to the piano in the salon and started playing Schubert’s Lob der Tränen (Praise of Tears) with a ‘completely transported’ expression as described by their son Siegfried who was present. Suddenly their maid came in with the news that Wagner had collapsed, and Cosima rushed with an expression of passionate anguish to the door, almost splitting it (Wagner, Siegried, 35ff.), possibly belatedly realising what effect the scene might have had on Wagner’s weak heart. Hastily summoned, Dr Friedrich Keppler tried unsuccessfully to revive him. His published report is brief and gives no details. But there are signs that he wrote a more comprehensive one which was suppressed at Cosima’s instigation (Amerongen, 94-96). Thus Wagner’s Buddhist opera remained an unrealised project. 12
Now to the question: was Wagner a Buddhist? It depends on how we define a Buddhist. Wagner understood well the implication of full commitment to the Buddha’s teaching: embarking on the path of renunciation resulting in salvation, ‘becoming a saint’. That makes one a true Buddhist. But his ‘fatal art (unselige Kunst) ... this wonderful gift, the strong domination of creative imagination in him’ kept ‘turning him back into being a poet, an artist’. ... So ‘the wonderful Buddha was right to exclude art’ (Wagner, 1904, 59). However, how many of those who count as Buddhists are equally clear as Wagner was about full commitment to renunciation and what keeps them from it? The prevailing attitude among ‘ordinary’ Buddhists is one of worship or veneration of the Buddha and acceptance of his basic teachings and ethical precepts (no doubt with occasional or even frequent transgressions) and perhaps a mild practice of meditation. Wagner acquired a statue of the Buddha in October 1858, greatly admired him and regarded his teachings as the highest achievement of the human spirit. He believed in rebirth and in the possibility of final liberation from it. In a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck, his past great love and now a friend, he confessed that the necessity of suppressing what he felt for her was the ‘noblest demand in his life’ (dem edelsten Bedürfniss meines Lebens ... muss ich wehren), meaning that his giving up of more intimate contacts with her led to his becoming involuntarily a Buddhist (Sie wissen, wie ich unwillkürlich zum Buddhisten geworden bin. Wagner, 1904, 105). He studied books on Buddhism available in his time and in his last years Buddhist teachings were the most frequent subject of his conversations and discussions. He may even have died while contemplating the idea of or even composing in his mind his Buddhist opera as the final achievement of his artistic genius. There can be little doubt that Richard Wagner was a Buddhist by currently accepted standards as well as by his own confession. There is a ‘postscript’ to the idea that, when Wagner died, the intention of composing Die Sieger was still present in his mind. What death prevented him from accomplishing was taken up by the composer Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012) in his opera Wagner Dream (2007). The libretto uses Wagner’s sketch of Die Sieger (Wagner, 1902), extends it by new Mahāyāna features and combines it with an enacted drama of his death. Wagner is shown in the period between his heart attack and death, outwardly in a coma, but inwardly experiencing events in the intermediary dimension. He is approached by the Dhyāni Buddha Vairochana, who explains to him that he is free to make some choices as to his next steps. Wagner decides to compose Die Sieger and the semi-staged production of the opera unfolds. Simultaneously with the opera the actual events of the fateful morning as outlined above are taking place, supplemented by further presumed events, among them the arrival of Carrie Pringle, Wagner’s muse. When the opera comes to its end, Wagner’s body dies and he is led by Vairochana to his future destiny (Werner, 2012). *** Bibliography: Amerongen, Martin van (1983), Wagner. A Case History, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London & Melbourne (Dutch original’s title is De buikspreker van God). App, Urs (2011), Richard Wagner and Buddhism, University Media, Rorschach & Kyoto. Burnouf, Eugène (1844), Introduction à l’histoire du Buddhisme indien, Imprimerie Royale, Paris. (English translation by Katia Buffetrille & Donald S. Lopez, Jr., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010.)
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Burnouf, Eugène (1911), Legends of Indian Buddhism, John Murray, London. Everett, Derrick (2001), ‘Parsifal under the Bodhi Tree’, Wagner 22/2, The Wagner Society, London, 67-92. Heine, Heinrich, ‘Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski’, Werke, Band 1-2 (Sonderausgabe in zwei Bänden), R. Löwitt, Wiesbaden, no date. Holtzmann, Adolf (1854), Indische Sagen, Stuttgart. Kapp, Julius (1928), Richard Wagner und die Frauen, 15. Auflage, Max Hesses Verlag, Berlin-Schöneberg I. Kapp, Julius (1929), Wagner. Eine Biographie, 34. Auflage, Max Hesses Verlag, BerlinSchöneberg I. MacDonald, K. S. (Ed.) (1895), The Story of Barlaam and Josaphat: Buddhism and Christianity, Thacker, Spink, Calcutta. Osborne, Charles (1992), The Complete Operas of Wagner. A Critical Guide, Victor Gollanz Ltd, London. Osthoff, Wolfgang (1996), “Richard Wagners Buddha-Projekt ‘Die Sieger’. Seine ideellen und strukturellen Spuren in ‘Ring’ und Parsifal’”, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft xl, (1893), 189-211. Reprinted by Museum Rietberg, Zürich. Parker, D. C. (1909), ‘Wagner und Buddha’, The Buddhist Review 1, 184-191. Peattie, Antony (1997), in: Kobbé’s Opera Book, Ebury Press, London, 951. Pitts, Monique B. (1981), ‘Barlaam and Josaphat: A Legend for All Seasons’, Journal of South Asian Literature 16/1, Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University. Skelton, Geoffrey (1997) (ed.), Cosima Wagner’s Diaries. An Abridgement, Yale University Press, New Haven & London. Suneson, Carl (1989), Richard Wagner und die indische Geisteswelt, E. J. Brill, Leiden. (Orig. Richard Wagner och den indiska tankevärlden, Almquist & Wiksel International, Stockholm, 1985). Werner, Karel (2012), ‘ Wagner’s Dream or Wagner’s Nightmare?’ Wagner News 206, The Wagner Society, London, 12-14. Westernhagen, Kurt von (1979), ‘Wagner’s Last Day’, The Musical Times 120/1635, Musical Times Publications Ltd., 395-397. Wagner, Richard (1911), Mein Leben, F. Bruckmann, München. Wagner, Richard (1994), My Life. Authorised translation from the German. Constable and Company Limited, London. Wagner, Richard (1975), Das braune Buch, ed. by Joachim Bergfeld, Atlantis, Zürich. Wagner, Richard (1902), “Skizze zu ‘Die Sieger’.” Nachgelassne Schriften und Dichtungen von Richard Wagner, Breitkopf unf Härtel, Leipzig. Wagner, Richard (1966), Werke I-II, ed. Peter A. Faessler, Frankenbuchhandlung, Frankfurt. Wagner, Richard (1904), Tagebuchblätter und Briefe an Mathilde Wesendonck 1853-1871, 16. Auflage, Berlin.
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Wagner, Siegfried (1923), Erinnerungen, Stuttgart.
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