
The best books on Wagner - tintinnabula
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/wagner/
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lukeqsee
Somewhat off-topic, but I had not discovered this site before. This is exactly
the kind of thing I was looking for to jumpstart my reading list. (I finished
school a few years ago, and I’m finally past forced-reading burnout and ready
to start diving deep in books again.)

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dskysky
Little known fact: in his heyday and for a few decades after, Wagner was the
3rd most written about person in Western Civilization after Jesus and
Napoleon.

One thing that faded away in time is the sheer intensity and cult-of-
personality that surrounded his fame.

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keiferski
I have always been fascinated by Nietzsche’s relationship with Wagner. What
began as a hero worship for N. ended in bitter disappointment, largely because
he was disappointed in Wagner’s “reversion” to Christianity and his Anti-
Semitism. I highly recommend reading “The Case of Wagner” if you get the
chance.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_Wagner](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_Wagner)

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25012?msg=welcome_stranger](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25012?msg=welcome_stranger)

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cerealbad
was there any philo-semitism in europe of the 1800s? christianity and anti-
semitism go hand in hand, which is why the definition of zionism had to be
reversed in the early 20th century.

you can be a christian zionist now (which is what the nazis were), can you
really be a christian philo-semite? but then of course christian now means
neosecular humanist.

nietzsche saw the structural problems in christianity, but he lacked the
social insight into why other people depended on it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ISzf2pryI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ISzf2pryI)

(because nobody likes feeling guilty)

he tried to work the problem from the wrong end, controlling what people do
and how they think quickly turns into socialism, fascism, communism. easing
the burden of their guilt after the fact is a much more convenient solution,
it's pragmatic and simple. children don't really learn what they are being
taught, they learn to teach it.

machiavelli solved both fascism and marxism 300 years before either had to
become a thing, the less said about the more unsavory aspects of the
enlightenment the better. i deeply suspect most influential thinkers of the
previous centuries had ulterior personal motives, some rather sinister when it
came to the mobilization of the furies and passions of human nature.

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damontal
Stephen Fry has a documentary on his relationship with Wagner on Netflix. Well
worth a look if you're interested in Wagner.

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mannykannot
How many hours of reading does this amount to?

