Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation

by Joachim Köhler

Book Overview

This book presents an absorbing account of the bizarre and fluctuating relationship between the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the composer Richard Wagner, and his wife Cosima. Nietzsche was 25 when... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300076401
• ISBN13: 9780300076400
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Ecce Homo(cough, you know what).

A great sage once said, "All history's a lie" and this book only further enhances that point. Which is why I am recommending it. Kohler not only contends that Nietzsche was a homosexual, but an uber-sissy who was lowered to menial tasks of propaganda and undershorts buying for the heavy-handed Master Wagner. Drawing largely from the diaries and personal correspondence of three megalomaniacs, which we know are highly accurate accounts of objective reality and history, Kohler paints a picture of a menage a trois of ascetic bondage: Nietzsche to Cosima and the Maestro, Cosima to the Master, and Wagner himself to the libidinous gods of hedonism. To top this off, the Dionysian Nietzsche in his final stages of dementia and mustachio maximus, calls out to Cosima, his spiritual Ariadne and soul-bride to come save his tottering soul from the labryrinth of the Wagnerian oppression that continued even after their reknowned split. Thus proclaiming, "C-o-s-i-m-a, you are the only MAN for me." Well Kohler didn't say that, but in saying that Wagner was "a woman" in Nietzsche's eyes and that Nietzsche himself, the constant companion of man-worshippers and man-worship was feminine in affection and mannerisms towards his friendths[sic], we can deduce from Nietzsche's admiration for her as an intellectual equal(remember his MISOGYNY!), that she was the only masculine personality in the triumvirate and thus Nietzsche's love and his homosexuality are validated. Not to mention that Herr Wagner is a dead ringer for Redd Foxx!All facts and fictions aside, the book made me laugh quite a few times. Maybe the truth was lost somewhere in the translation from German to English but it didn't stop my enjoyment. Why let history and truth get in the way of that? I mean, Nietzschean lore has purported that the young man, while serving in the German calvary during a riding exercise had fallen from his saddle and was dangling upside down under the belly of the horse(Perhaps it was the same horse that he witnessed being flogged and this was what sparked his madness!) and said, "Oh Schopenhauer, where are you now?" Who's buying that but the ghost of Schopenhauer and me?

Esthetic monstrosities

The author of _Zarathustra's secret_ takes us through the period encounter between Nietzsche and Wagner in a quite graphic tale of one of the first of the modern celebrity farces, that of Wagnerian ego and its hangers on. Although the account is well done, I should wonder if a clever cutpurse like Nietzsche was ever really subjugated and whether he didn't, despite an series of emotional shocks, achieve the net equivalent of going undercover as a Wagner disciple, to his profit or loss in unclear. For all the background music of the philosophic, more than musical, leitmotiv (Schopenhauer gave it away with fake hint, the 'will') this account of artistic overdrive twice over is a remarkable tale of psychological helplessness, in Wagner and Nietzsche. Anyway, worth reading.

if your interested in these two, buy it.

NW is not the most academic of books in form, but readability and lack of footnotes do not make a book worthless. Köhler may not have enough evidence to convince the critical, but the material provided is well worth the read. Homosexuality/onanism/anti-semitism: these elements are simply not central to either individual (Wagner's anti-semitism may be the exception). Some of Köhler's conclusions may be questionable, but his observations are not what make the book. The content itself is very interesting, and the intelligent and familiar (with RW/FN) will come away with a great degree of insight. To anyone sincerely interested in either, it is requisite. Perhaps you will not agree with Köhler, so what? The book is simply worth the read. My opinions didn't change from the book, but I have a much richer picture of both men. (I am honesty surprised that anyone could find this book upsetting [see review below]. It's a fun little book, if you hate it, you really ought to relax a bit. Not for tyros: if you've only read a bit of FN or seen an opera, and you want a key to understanding either, forget it. But if you are deep into either, you skip it at your peril.