Clearly aware that intellectual influences are only one stream flowing into great operas, Magee doesn't overstate the...
A sound and highly readable exploration of the composer’s philosophical milieu.
What were the ideas floating through Wagner's head when he wrote his operas, and how can they be seen at work in his music? Veteran popularizer Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher, 1998, etc.) offers intriguing answers. Here, he maps Wagner’s intellectual and emotional transformation by tracking the influences that shaped his worldview. The first concepts to inspire him were Hegel’s living reality, Feuerbach's liberation of mankind through love, and the anarchists’ direct action. Young Wagner fought at the barricades of Dresden side by side with Bakunin and believed that just as injustice arose, so righteousness might rise instead. Society gave life meaning and value, he affirmed, even though the society he lived in was loathsome and in need of radical realignment. These notions can be seen at play in Wagner’s first operas, particularly in the early elements of the Ring Cycle. There, love and sex and art can be seen in the context of socially subversive intoxication with specific ends in mind. But Hegel and Feuerbach gave way to Schopenhauer as Wagner gave in to the bitterness of a disappointed middle-aged left-winger; in his life and art, political struggle was superseded by metaphysics. Wagner's outlook at this time evinces an Eastern sensibility, considering life as indecipherable and touched with a generalized pessimism that pervades the latter parts of the Ring, Tristan and Isolde, and Parsifal, which view any form of political power as corrupting. Magee also convincingly argues that, contrary to popular belief, Nietzsche’s philosophy had no effect on Wagner's music.
Clearly aware that intellectual influences are only one stream flowing into great operas, Magee doesn't overstate the significance of such currents, yet his mellow, lucid interpretation of how they informed and nourished Wagner's libretti is highly persuasive.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6788-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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