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Category: Literature & Art

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  • Blogsphere as Hesse’s Glass Bead Game against the ‘Feuilletonistic‘ world

    Blogsphere as Hesse’s Glass Bead Game against the ‘Feuilletonistic‘ world

    The Internet as the Glass Bead Game

    In Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, Castalia and the “Feuilletonistic Age” represent two diametric extremes of human civilization. Castalia is a sterilized, ascetic order of intellectuals dedicated to the preservation of pure, objective knowledge. In contrast, the Feuilletonistic Age—representing Hesse’s cynical view of the early 20th century—is characterized by mass consumerism, trivialized culture, and superficial media. In Castalia a hypothetical meta-game often described as a “neural network of the cosmic mind” is played. Hesse’ metaphors are used to analyze today’s digital social and knowledge networks as if they were iterations of the Glass Bead Game. I approach this through two distinct hypotheses:

    'feuilletonistic‘ media culture
    ‘feuilletonistic‘ media culture
    1. The book presents the Glass Bead Game as a prophecy of interconnected knowledge and a potential remedy for today’s trivialized, “feuilletonistic” world.
    2. Conversely, the book prophesies the very disease afflicting our current feuilletonistic media culture—a culture of which the internet is a central part.

    Also published under the title Magister Ludi (named after its main character), the novel is beautiful but demanding. While its length is not prohibitive, its prose is dense and highly descriptive. This essay focuses primarily on the Glass Bead Game itself, an activity that encompasses all human intellectual and mental faculties within the worldly environment. It synthesizes all fields of science and art that serve as the inventory of human orientation.

    Hesse describes the rules as follows:

    “These rules, the sign language and grammar of the game, represent a kind of highly developed secret language, in which several sciences and arts, in particular mathematics and music (or the science of music) participate which are able to express the contents and results of practically all of the sciences and relate them to each other.”

    It occurred to me that the underlying purpose—and curiosity—driving much of my own activity in the blogosphere is similarly devoted to connecting these disparate topics.

    Prophecy of the ‘Feuilletonistic’ World

    The novel is set in the distant future, in a world that has evolved past what Hesse calls the “Feuilletonistic Age.” This age mirrors our own postmodern, post-metaphysical society, where culture is trivialized and the boundary between truth and lies has dissolved.

    The fundamental clash between these two eras highlights Hesse’s ultimate philosophical warning about the human condition:

    • The Feuilletonistic Age (Triviality & Chaos): Described in the novel’s introduction, this era is marked by a bloated surplus of information and a degraded intelligentsia. Intellectuals use their skills not to seek truth, but to entertain the culture-hungry masses. Hesse viewed this age as a period of cultural exhaustion and ideological manipulation where meaningful values are drowned out by trivial, sensationalist media.
    • Castalia (Sterility & Detachment): Formed in response to the collapse of the Feuilletonistic Age, Castalia is an elitist, monastic province of secular scholars. To protect absolute truth from being cheapened, the Castalians completely isolate themselves from the rest of society. However, in doing so, their pursuit of abstract knowledge (via the Glass Bead Game) becomes sterile, emotionally bankrupt, and divorced from real human life.
    • The Clash of Extremes: The conflict is ultimately one of engagement versus isolation. The Feuilletonistic Age demonstrates the dangers of a society completely immersed in superficial information without substance. Castalia demonstrates the failure of a society that retreats so far into the ivory tower of objective intellectualism that it loses its soul.

    Hesse’s protagonist, Joseph Knecht, ultimately realizes that both extremes are flawed. He discovers that true human wisdom requires bridging the gap: an intellectual must synthesize pure, objective ideals with an active, empathetic responsibility to the imperfect, chaotic real world. The climax of the book conveys, that Joseph Knecht, the Magister Ludi (Master of the Game, Leader of Castalia), looks at this perfect, beautiful machine of knowledge and realizes it is not rigor nor wisdom but a dead, lifeless prison, its ‘elite’ already on a way to bureaucratic mediocrity.

    He walks away from Castalia to go into the real world to teach a single, real human child to do better, to create synergy. He trades perfect, infinite, automated symbols for messy, fragile, mortal human connection. He follows this human child Tino, the son of his lifelong friend Plinio Designori into the icey lake water of a mountain lake and drowns.

    Tino Designori looks back, try to find and save him. Exhausted he swims to the shore, warms himsel in Knecht’s bathrobe, taking over Knecht’s quest and responsibility.

    Alexander Shubin – The Glass Bead Game

    The Glass Bead Game serves as a fascinating prophecy of modern life, as well as a classic of Jungian-influenced literature. Hesse’s cultural critique describes a world divided between a shallow, feuilletonistic media culture and a sterile academic elite whose scholarship has no impact on real life. We can find both extremes in our contemporary landscape of knowledge distribution networks and social media. While the blogosphere generally contains less trivia than mainstream media, a deeper problem remains: without the material stakes of physical existence, how can we sustain responsibility for our spoken or written words? How can people say what they mean and mean what they say? In short, what does the global language of the internet actually refer to?

    The Game

    To understand this, let us take a step back. The foundational layer of the book is framed as a chronicle written after the chaos of the “Millennium Wars” in Castalia—a secular, pedagogical province located in the country of Waldzell that enjoys peace and prosperity.

    In this society, the academic pursuit of pure knowledge has transformed into an aesthetic discipline. This is personified by a philosophical game where players use glass beads to track their conceptual progress. The ultimate goal is to discover hidden interconnectedness across the realms of art and science—such as linking the precise mathematical notation of a Bach fugue to the structural interdependencies of music and literature.

    Master Ludi
    Master Ludi

    In its purest manifestation, the game allows philosophy, art, music, and scientific law to be appreciated simultaneously. It is played by scholar-elites in an autonomous institution wholly devoted to thinking and intuition (notably, two of the four Jungian functions). Set around 2500 AD, this ideal place evokes the inner harmony of a Benedictine monastery, the vast cultural synthesis required to make subtle intellectual connections, and the detached mindfulness of Chinese Zen masters. Essentially, the game can be interpreted as an attempt to discover a Grand Unified Theory of science (such as physics) and meaning (such as religion), using music and mathematics as its lingua franca. Ludwig Wittgenstein famously demonstrated that our language is not founded upon a set of hard-wired, absolute rules, but rather consists of fluid “language games.”

    The Magister Ludi

    The book tells the story of Joseph Knecht, who at the beginning is a young initiate in Castalia, a monastic order of secular scholars. His fellow monks study various subjects, but they are linked by a vaguely defined activity called the Glass Bead Game. Hesse never explains the game, except to say that it involves all forms of knowledge, particularly mathematics and music.

    Knecht works his way up in the order, finally becoming the Magister Ludi, or master of the game.The games are played according to strictly prescribed rules, overseen by an elite class of trained experts under the leadership of the Magister Ludi (the Master of the Game).

    The C.G. Jung Connections

    Beyond the structural alignment of the four Jungian functions with the novel’s four biographical narratives (the main biography of Josef Knecht and the three alternate life stories in the second part), the Glass Bead Game serves as a metaphor for a sterile knowledge society. However, if one looks for spiritual parallels, the structure of Hesse’s novel feels less like a traditional Christian text and more like the mystical, faintly Gnostic Gospel of John. Indeed, it frequently reads like a Gnostic or alchemical treatise.

    Many core concepts of Carl Jung’s analytical psychology—such as psychological typology, archetypes, and the collective unconscious—reverberate throughout the book. Hesse was deeply fascinated by the concept of individuation. He underwent psychoanalysis with Jung’s assistant, J.B. Lang, and visited Jung himself several times in 1921 for therapeutic discussions to overcome a severe creative crisis.

    The biographical parallels between Jung and Hesse are striking. Both had remarkably similar upbringings, including intense friction with rigid, religious fathers (Hesse’s father was a Pietist missionary, while Jung’s was a Swiss Reformed pastor), and both struggled against their conservative upbringings. In their respective spiritual searches, both men remained open to Western mysticism, Eastern philosophy, and Gnostic ideas. Later in life, both also faced criticism for their perceived compliance with Nazi ideology.

    The Jungian influence on Hesse’s creative output is undeniable; I find Jung’s psychology indispensable for fully understanding and appreciating Hesse’s writing. Jungian symbols and archetypes are vividly evident across his work. Today, both Jung and Hesse seem largely tuned out by the mainstream. Yet Hesse, like Jung, was a true seer—an intellectual explorer who was unafraid to look further, daring to examine anything that held psychological truth, whether it was Gnosticism, astrology, alchemy, or Eastern philosophy.

    Archetypal Knowledge

    This systematic, global approach to a universal game carries a profound methodological consequence. As Hesse states:

    “The Glass Bead Game is thus a game with all the contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, in the heyday of the arts, a painter may have played with the colors on his palette. What humankind has produced in its creative epochs in terms of knowledge, noble thoughts, and works of art—what successive epochs of learned reflection have conceptualized and claimed as intellectual property—all of this extraordinary material of intellectual values is played by the Glass Bead player like an organ is played by an organist. This organ is of a hardly graspable perfection; its manuals and pedals scan the whole spiritual cosmos, and its registers are almost uncountable. Theoretically, the complete intellectual contents of the world could be reproduced by playing.”

    Today, the concept of such a playful virtualization of the world is far more familiar than it was in Hesse’s time. Our modern inclination is to visualize the world in strict analogy with a network, utilizing the concept of the digital social grid as a guiding paradigm for grasping reality. This grid serves as a matrix, acting as a meta-language for content.

    Master of the Glass Bead Game
    Master of the Glass Bead Game

    It has often been said that our vision of the future includes the possibility of universal, “global” communication that is entirely independent of regional cultural contexts. Hesse saw this approach realized through the convergence of mathematics and art (specifically music), much like Johannes Kepler—who notably was one of the first to use the term archetype in a scientific context.

    Ironically, our contemporary iteration of Hesse’s Glass Bead Game is the internet, coupled with today’s Kafkaesque transnational systems and bureaucratic bodies. In many ways, have we not already arrived in Castalia’s administrative system of the year 2500? We live surrounded by institutional instances, administrative rules, game commissions, elite committees, game masters, specialized courses, systemic laws, massive data archives, controlled media, and Orwellian information gatekeepers. Meanwhile, the ordinary citizens—much like the prisoners in Plato’s Cave—remain below, viewing only the deceiving reflections of this grand game through today’s media.

    A Conceptual View

    The Glass Bead Game itself is a fascinating mathematical, aesthetic, philosophical, and mystical concept. To me, it lays the foundation for an artistic ritual that integrates all fields of human—and perhaps spiritual—knowledge through dense symbolism. As Hesse writes:

    “How far back the historian wishes to place the origins and antecedents of the Glass Bead Game is, ultimately, a matter of his personal choice… We find it foreshadowed, as a dim anticipation and hope, in a good many earlier ages. There are hints of it in Pythagoras, for example… and the path of its prehistory leads on through Scholasticism and Humanism to the academies of mathematicians… and on to the Romantic philosophies and the runes of Novalis’ hallucinatory visions.”

    The Game can be interpreted through C.G. Jung’s concepts or Wittgenstein’s language games, which organize the world through clusters of criterion properties. Music, particularly the Bach fugue, serves as a vital component in its ideal relation to mathematics, echoing Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. Fortunately, Hesse did not provide an explicit, unambiguous manual for the Game, providing instead an ascetic framework for interpretation.

    Broad Bandwidth/Flattened World

    To me, the Glass Bead Game is a metaphor to bring all relevant knowledge and art together. One example is how the inherent and direct feedback of blogs is used to learn, improve, and fine-tune on a Glass Bead Board (or net). We are embracing three megatrends in the Brave New World of digital media, science, art, and politics:

    • A shift from presentation to participation by bidirectional communication
    • Using technology to connect—or disconnect
    • Using social media interaction to make the world better—or worse

    The present (and future) seem like a net of interconnected social communication beyond AOL and Facebook trivia. Like any powerful change agent, social media interaction cannot only be used to make the world better but also worse. It is not surprising that blogging offers, beyond knowledge, a useful platform or medium for both serious and more trivial discussions about belief, belonging, and the distribution of self-published art. In recent years, this has taken place increasingly on weblogs which may or may not have been established by single-topic institutions, organizations, or groups. Unlike those dedicated to sports and politics (to take two obvious examples), serious blogs frequently engender passions and psycho dynamic energies which move significantly beyond the mere agenda of the targeted communities.

    Clearly, the Internet provides (as it does, respectively, for almost every area of human knowledge) a much-appreciated and used gateway for accessing and retrieving significant resources. However, it also offers at the same time a powerfully seductive arena in which belief systems do not merely get presented and convivially discussed but also baldly and repeatedly asserted. Taken together, the bidirectional communication in blogs constitutes a more efficient technological platform for a contest that has been ongoing in the real world for millennia: the control, manipulation, and, most significantly, replication of symbolic resources—archetypes—because of its theoretical ability to allow the opinions (and feedback) of anyone to be published without reference to tradition, canon, or other relevant authority—past or present.

    However, the blogosphere increases risk by limiting our ability to evaluate the truth of claims. For many, blogs bring the internet to life through participation rather than just perusal. Consequently, controversies often appear on blogs rather than moderated, official pages. Furthermore, the idea that the internet makes “geography history” conflicts with fundamentalist beliefs or political systems grounded in specific times and places.

    Real Variants on Hesse’s Game

    Generally, I am not interested in playing games (with the exception of chess), but I became fascinated by its psychoanalytic (C.G. Jung), religious (i.e., meditative), and philosophical aspects (in particular, Wittgenstein). I was thoroughly impressed by the complex and many incarnations of this game which have been posted up to today, and I will point out some of those games. What continues to strike me as I come across new games is the way in which different designers emphasize (“capture”) different aspects of the game.

    Here is a brief overview of a variety of current attempts to create playable variants of Hesse’s Game. The Game Hesse describes in his novel—and this is a very brief and dense overview—is played with ideas. The ideas themselves can be of any kind (musical, mathematical, verbal, or visual), but the game draws its profound beauty from the nodes of those ideas: the symbols. The ideas played are linked to one another, Hesse tells us, in much the same way in which melodies are presented in a musical form such as a Bach fugue. In another metaphor, he compares the Game to games of chess in which symbolic meaning has somehow been added to every move in its own concise and beautiful calligraphy.

    This calligraphy, in turn, is inscribed on beads, and these are displayed on a board. The hieroglyphs and “meanings” of games of merit are then stored in a Games Archive, so that they can be called into play again in future games. The moves and links themselves become the subjects of formal meditation. In the most lofty of games—the annual Solemn Games over which the Magister Ludi himself presides—the beads with their hieroglyphs are ceremoniously presented on a large board to an attentive and cultivated audience for their edification and contemplation. There is also a form of the Glass Bead Game which he describes in his poem Hours in the Garden. In this simpler form, the game consists of imagining the great minds and hearts of the past—”wise men and poets and scholars and artists”—meeting across the centuries and talking.

    Conclusion fifteen years later (2026)

    The original essay was written by someone who was still optimistic that the Internet might become Hesse’s “Glass Bead Game.” Reading it today is almost poignant because many of my hopes have not merely failed—they have inverted:

    “The present (and future) seem like a net of interconnected social communication…”

    Almost two decades later, this hope deserves neither ridicule nor apology. It reflected the experience of those who knew the early Internet before it became a commercial enterprise. The Internet of UUCP, Usenet, ASCII discussion groups, mailing lists and the academic ARPANET culture rewarded curiosity more than visibility. Information traveled slowly, communities were largely self-governing, and participation required genuine engagement rather than algorithmic optimization. The dominant currency was contribution, not attention.

    Today’s network is structurally different. It has become an economy of attention. Visibility is no longer primarily earned through intellectual value but increasingly allocated by recommendation algorithms whose objective is engagement. Hesse’s Feuilletonistic Age a satirical and cultural term coined Hermann Hesse is describing intellectual levity, and a lack of genuine cultural depth that appears less as an historical curiosity than as an uncanny anticipation of a culture in which immediacy continually displaces reflection.

    Exhibit I: Chess and the I Ching

    “A reader who chanced to be ignorant of the Glass Bead Game might imagine such a Game pattern as rather similar to the pattern of a chess game, except that the significance of the pieces and the potentialities of their relationships to one another and their effect upon one another multiplied many fold and an actual content must be ascribed to each piece, each constellation, each chess move, of which this move, configuration, and so on is the symbol.”

    William Horden’s Intrachange performs a skillful marriage of Chess and the I Ching, providing an exceptional current expression of the Glass Bead Game as a chess-like matrix. Horden takes brilliant advantage of the structural correspondences between the two systems:

    • The 64 hexagrams of the I Ching align with the 64 squares of the chessboard.
    • The 8 trigrams correspond to the 8 files of the board.
    • The 6 lines of a hexagram match the 6 unique pieces in a chess set.
    • The foundational Yin and Yang dynamics mirror the two opposing sides of the game.

    Exhibit II: The Language Game

    “Joculator Basiliensis applied himself to the problem. He invented for the Glass Bead Game the principles of a new language, a language of symbols and formulas, in which mathematics and music played an equal part, so that it became possible to combine astronomical and musical formulas, to reduce mathematics and music to a common denominator, as it were.”

    Mark Line’s Waldzell Glass Bead Game Approach features the development of a unique “constructed language” (conlang) for gameplay. This framework allows players from different linguistic backgrounds and cultures to utilize a shared, unambiguous semantic language to structure and express their moves.

    Exhibit III: Symbols and Decipherable

    “Each country’s Commission possesses its Archive of the Game, that is the register of all hitherto examined and accepted symbols and decipherments, whose number long ago by far exceeded the number of the ancient Chinese ideographs.”

    Ron Hale-Evans’s Kennexions Glass Bead Game offers a playable, real-world framework. These “Kenning Games” can be played right now. However, they will truly come into their own as their respective digital archives expand to cover a much wider, more interconnected universe of human ideas than they do at present.

    Exhibit IV: The Meditative Game

    “Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.”

    Variants of the game played via email give participants a direct experience of counterpointing the ego idea with the shadow idea—regardless of whether those ideas are musical, mathematical, verbal, or visual. Players name and quote the ideas directly without relying on a fictional hieroglyphic language, placing them on a spatial board layout that allows everyone to visualize and meditate on the deep correspondences between them.

    • Terence MacNamee’s Ludus Solemnis: MacNamee brings an understanding of liturgical drama to his games. This provides a clearer insight into the mystical, dramatic ritual presentations of Hesse’s work, striking a deeply Jungian chord.
    • Joshua Fost’s Paper: Toward the Glass Bead Game: Explores the concept of the game as a structured form of rhetorical invention.
    • Dunbar Aitkens’s The Glass Plate Game: Designed specifically as a collaborative thinking game.

    Related Theoretical Frameworks

    Several modern intellectual works closely mirror the structural and philosophical ambitions of the Glass Bead Game:

    • Christopher Alexander’s architectural design philosophy in A Pattern Language.
    • Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler’s exploration of natural structures in Laws of the Game.
    • Anthony Judge’s expansive semantic mapping projects, available via Laetus in Praesens and through the Union of International Associations on the UIA Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential.
  • Leni Riefenstahl – Germany’s convient Shadow

    Leni Riefenstahl – Germany’s convient Shadow

    Whatever you can say about Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) and plenty of people have said (and written) a lot about her, she led a fascinating life.

    • She was beautiful and talented.
    • She was a woman in a man’s field.
    • She made her career during Hitler’s Third Reich.

    Three strikes and you’re out.

    Despite (I am almost convinced because of) her demonstrated talent she could not escape historical contamination attached to her during the last 5o years of her life. Leni Riefenstahl, dancer, mountaineer, actress, a trail blazing film director and cinematographer, an accomplished still photographer finally became a writer. This list makes almost speechless. By all accounts, she was not a particularly pleasant person, who manifested an extreme degree of ego, certainly grabbing and creating opportunities. Leni Riefenstahl solicited Hitler’s attention and had very sharp elbows in her professional life.

    I want to approach her life from four directions:

    • Leni Riefenstahl Work
    • Ray Mueller’s, 1993 documentary film “Die Macht der Bilder” – Leni Riefenstahl (The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl)
    • Riefenstahl’s autobiography: Memoiren (Munich, 1987)
    • Psychological evaluation of the hate and witch-hunt particularly in Germany

    Riefenstahl revisited

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    Her childhood in the Wedding district of Berlin during the 1920’s particularly gives insight and helps enormously in explaining the environment out of which Leni emerged. She was the daughter of Alfred Riefenstahl, a prosperous businessman and  Bertha Sherlach. By her own account she was a tom boy, pursuing her goals relentlessly. Leni’s three and a half years younger brother, Heinz,  would later die in Hitler’s war on the Russian front. Young Leni lived at home until she was 21. Against the wish of her father, she studied dance and was soon performing in Munich, Berlin, and Prague.  She was promoted and encouraged by the famous Max Reinhardt, but had to give up dancing because of an injury.

    Leni Riefenstahl as actress

    Because of this, she became an actress in avant-garde movies and gradually slides in the film business. In the 1920s and ’30s, Riefenstahl appeared in a series of so-called Bergfilme (nature movies) directed by Arnold Fanck. The plot of such films was secondary to the spectacular scenes of the Bavarian and Austrian Alps.

    The central theme was always human surrender to the power of nature.  Dr. Franks approach to his actors was physically tough. In the picture above,  she must perform free climbing fifty years before it was “invented” in California.  Here she discovered her love for nature, becomes professional mountaineer and acts during the most difficult shots without any double. The often confusing conditions on the set brings her also behind the camera. Her amazing talent starts to show. Those early years played a significant role in shaping Riefenstahl’s own visual approach to film-making but particularly in understanding the importance of the cutting of a movie for dynamic effects.

    Leni Riefenstahl as director

    The first film, which she directed “Das blaue Licht” (“The Blue Light”) 1932, re-edited and cut 1951) is a milestone in the history of film with excellent international recognition. In the film, Riefenstahl played a peasant girl who protected a glowing mountain grotto, the main role of Junta which is a sort of witch despised from the ordinary people. Later she will say this girl Junta preempted her life. In 1932, this film won the Silver Medal at the Venice Film Festival and attracted the attention of Hitler. He is said to have believed that the image Riefenstahl created for herself in “The Blue Light” epitomised the ultimate German woman.

    Sieg des Glaubens (1933, Victory of Faith), filmed at the Nuremberg rallies of 1933, was basically a practice run for Riefenstahl’s  much better direction “Triumph des Willens” 1934. It took her five months to cut this movie, and the movie is undisputed the best documentary ever made. Suggestive shots (“The Power of the Pictures”), instinctively utilized  Archetypes and Symbols at that time described from C.G. Jung. Absolute mastery of light conditions – particularly light from the opposite, dynamic cut of the scenes filmed from multiple innovative camera angles is still taught in movie schools and those techniques still used even in today’ advertizing clips and movie industry.

    Riefenstahl’s great success was filming the 1936 Berlin Olympics, no minor undertaking. For Olympia she had to manage a total crew of 60 cinematographers and shoot over 400,000 meters of film. In the process, Riefenstahl invented or enhanced many of the techniques we now take for granted: slow motion, underwater diving shots, extremely high (from towers) and low shooting angles (from pits), panoramic aerial shots, and tracking systems for following fast action. Riefenstahl  ensured that every event was covered, and from multiple angles. Hans Ertl was her lead cameraman in many films also her Olympia film. During World he was supposedly a lover of Riefenstahl. In the mid 1950’s he resettled in Bolivia  and became father of the guerrilla Monika Ertl.

    However, Riefenstahl was proud of Olympia, that her pictures were not limited to the strict confines of documentary but also art. When she felt she had missed an angle or had been prevented from getting close enough during the official competition, she was known to invade the Olympic Village, even rousing medal-winning athletes from their sleep to re-enact their events for her camera crew..

    The result is considered a brilliant cinematic masterpiece. Olympia premiered at on Hitler’s birthday, April 20, 1938 an became a grandiose success. On more than one occasion she mentioned her art approach versa the “Wochenschau” approach of the state run propaganda film industry. The Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels hated her for many reasons (for her access to Hitler, her excessive need of cameras which were scare at that time and other more profane reasons). It took over a year until the film Olympia was cut and is listed and is Riefenstahl’s greatest success. The documentary won international awards and prizes.  Her next major project was “Tiefland” in which she played a gypsy heroine. Filming took her out of Germany and to Franco’s Spain. By the time the war ended, Riefenstahl had yet to edit the film and it was impounded during the denazification tribunals.

    She wrote film history. Period.

    Leni Riefenstahl as photographer

    After the war, the tides suddenly turn. The name of Leni Riefenstahl was brought over and over again in connection with the atrocities of the Nazis. Riefenstahl had to face Allied charges that she was a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer. Her close ties to Hitler and her propaganda films, most notably Triumph of the Will, made her an obvious target. The Americans officially “denazified”  her “without prejudice” on June 3, 1945, but she effectively became blacklisted, subsequently shut out of the film industry and continuously smeared by the press. The performances of her films are thwarted, and her new projects sabotaged. Finally, Leni Riefenstahl is forced to give up directing, although she tried again and again despite endless disappointments. She began a lifelong companionship with her cameraman Horst Kettner, who was 40 years her junior.

    The press and “their opponents” grant her lifelong “film ban”, which draws her into away to Africa, where she is an unknown. There, within the Nuba tribe in Sudan, she finds a new objective. She photographs this unique indigenous tribe people and falls in love with Africa.  All of their numerous attempts of new film projects  failed, however. Riefenstahl encountered resistance  from too many quarters. There was almost no prospect of getting a Riefenstahl film shot, much less shown in most of the world. So, she turned to the next best talent; she took up still photography. She lived for a time with the native tribe in Africa recording images published in two photographic essay books. Again, her photos become a sensational success. Publishers and newspapers dare to publish pictures of the Riefenstahl three decades after the war. Again there were hostile and slander activities. Finally, however, this paradise in Africa dies. The natives got  “help” by the socialist Government like the American Indians. She found a new passion, scuba diving in 1970s at the age of 72, and has continued doing astonishing underwater shots and movies into her 90s. But illness and age ultimately force her to “retirement”.

    Leni Riefenstahl as writer

    Finally, she writes her “memoirs”, the book of her life after the publishers crave for It took her  five years, a work strong over 900 pages appears. After so many untruths, which has been published about her person in numerous biographies, she finally published her own version of her life – her life, as she has experienced it, as it had been true for her. The memoirs griped me from the first to the last page.  How much of what she writes here is really true, everybody must decide for him/herself. One definitely shouldn’t rely not only on this a book to learn about the person of Leni Riefenstahl. Relying on her opinionated critics and to make a judgment without her own statement is not save either. She writes subjectively, what she felt and feels and I do believe most of it. Indeed it is like she writes in her last line of the book “not a happy book”, but I think it is very worth reading. It is a well written superb document of her turbulent life and a report, how devastating media lies can harm individuals and an incredible chronic how much strength and power a single human being can have. Hitler s mentioned only a few times but the book still is probably the most sophisticated personal account of Hitlers private life seen through woman’s eyes.

     Leni Riefenstahl as projection and hate object

    Although acquitted by American, French, and German authorities, she became the one who was handed over all the guilt. Others, who had done worse, eagerly confessing and denouncing what they had done. She never admitted political intentions in her work and insisted that Hitler was privately a nice man. Leni Riefenstahl still insists to separate her art work strictly from a possible political responsibility. Because Leni Riefenstahl refused an admission of guilt, there was no “discharge” in published and public opinion. Worse, throughout her life she made it clear, that she was once fascinated by Hitler’s charisma. She admitted that she was blinded as many millions of other German and many Non-Germans. Other artists, who had their “contact” with the Nazis, such as Heinz Rühmann, Luis Trenker (with whom she appeared in the nature films) and the famous Gustav Gründgens behaved after the coup d ‘ état “glibly”. They managed seamlessly to transfer back to the German (art) mainstream in the 50ties, the time of the “Wirtschaftswunder”. Even the director of “Jud Suess”, undoubtedly a vicious propaganda movie, was treated better by press and public opinion. Defamation of person appears up today, beyond her death with stubborn regularity. An exhibit of Riefenstahl’s movie stills and her African and underwater photographs in Hamburg in late 1997 brought out a whole new generation of protesters. There must be more behind these 50 years of hate against her, than only hypocrisy. It has been a classical projection of Germans – especially of the journalists and artists – who wanted to forget their own opportunism and maybe even mediocrity.

    Ray Mueller’s, documentary film “Die Macht der Bilder” – The power of pictures

    Ray Mueller’s excellent documentary is a fascinating, if somewhat long (188 min.) look at her cinematography achievements from her point of view. It is a must buy for everybody who is interested in movies and/or history.  The documentary starts disastrous, blending Nazi propaganda clips and Leni Riefenstahl work with the sound of Nazi drums. During the entire documentary she ridicules Mueller’s directing style and wants the movie shot differently. And she is quite right – even if the documentary won prices, it has it has major  flaws. He, however, keeps trying to steer her towards the politics of Germany in the 1930s and to admit the political responsibility for the events until 1945 almost in a cross examination manner.

    These unusual interviewing style shows involuntarily highly interesting results and discovers the truth by chance. Both let down their mask, for the first time. I understood why (IMHO mediocre so called) German intellectuals blame this outstanding artist and I understand the artist naive (if not even amoral) attitude toward art and powerful pictures. At that point I became convinced Mueller’s clumsy personal style, and that Riefenstahl and he never seem to hit it off was the biggest asset of this documentary. Ray Mueller’s trailer mentioned above, which was neither subtle (more of a bad abuse), nor professionally done was a provocation to get Leni Riefenstahl. When this documentary was made, Leni Riefenstahl was already in her nineties, but she still acted quite tough with an street wise Berlin accent.

    The key moment of this documentary to me,  is when they discuss “Triumph des Willens”. Mueller seriously asked her if she was involved in choreographing the Nuremberg rallies of 1933. She laughs at him saying that  Speer and Hitler himself did that. But that’s exactly the point; he / the political correct media blamed her not only for the Nazi propaganda and its powerful appeal to the unconsciousness via Archetypes and Symbols but basically for the reality the Nazis caused – the German history. Projecting the collaboration sins of the German intellectuals on her, she become all good and she all evil.

    Then, when Riefenstahl explains a particular shot, in which some Nazis walk down steps like in a ballet she got carried away too. She looses all distance and it becomes clear she was a victim of the Nazi imago’s too, even today. Her own victim, C.G. Jung almost was lured by the Nazis clever use of Wotan and other Archetypes,  but finally analyzed them 1936 very clearly. She fell for it. When Mueller asks her why she never apologized for making Triumph of the Will, she answers that she just documented (with  great art) what she saw. She documented the messages which were there and there’s nothing to apologize for. Again she is quite right. When he let her present her relations to the top Nazi party leadership (particularly Goebbels as propaganda guru) and political developments in Germany in the 1930′s, the viewer is much more prepared to understand Leni’s activities during this years. That becomes even more clear reading her memoirs.

    Leni comes across as a remarkable woman and Ray Mueller with all due respect as a run of the mill “Wochenschau” movie maker and clumsy interviewer. Nevertheless, the film is a not only a fascinating lecture about photography and movie techniques, but brings you as close to the truth of the person Leni Riefenstahl and the moral of art as you can get. You may not share her view, but you can’t help to admire her. She actually directs and refutes brilliantly any biased question of Ray Mueller.

    I think by the time Ray Mueller came closer. In the end of the first half he states that Leni Riefenstahl took over the guilt of all the Germans who refused to. In the words of Ray Mueller, “Her talent was her tragedy.” Five stars for Ray Mueller’s endurance confronted with a big ego (put politely), the result and objectivity he achieved, his courage to do this documentary and Leni Riefenstahl snappy answers.

  • Demian and Abraxas – Hermann Hesse and C.G. Jung revisited

    Demian and Abraxas – Hermann Hesse and C.G. Jung revisited

    In Hermann Hesse’s Demian, protagonist Emil Sinclair receives a note about the Gnostic deity Abraxas after sending a drawing, highlighting a union of divine and devilish aspects. This figure symbolizes a journey toward individuation and the synthesis of all things, prompting Sinclair to accept his complete human nature and abandon his restricted worldview. Introduced by Max Demian and explored through Pistorius, the concept encourages embracing, rather than suppressing, one’s inner darkness to achieve self-realization in Jungian terms the self.

    The things we see are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.” ― Hermann Hesse, Demian

    Herman Hesse is a Nobel Laureate who created four masterpieces – Demian, Siddhartha, Glasperlenspiel and Steppenwolf – that are well worth studying.  Hesse, the son of missionaries represents the last blue flower of German romanticism and the philosophical ideas that took the great journey of wisdom to the East with Schopenhauer and C.G. Jung himself (very attracted by the Abraxas). He cannot be understood if separated from the roots of his literary tradition of German romanticism of Novalis and Hölderlin, Kleist and Nietzsche himself, which Hesse had admired so much and most of all, the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung.

    Hesse derived his understanding of the Western and Eastern religious foundation and Gnostic thoughts from C.G. Jung’s psychology. It opened a new thinking and a new, modern and fascinating way to interpret and to make his personal experiences fruitful for his poetic work. C.G. Jung’s  teaching gives him the key for the synopsis of the world religions and specifically for the combination of psychology and religion, specifically in “Demian”. Even more C.G. Jung’s psychology of religion provides the theoretical justification for the central message of Hesse in his  poetry: the identity of raising consciousness and experiencing God. It confirms his own hunches and insights on the common psychological and anthropological understanding of the world religions and thus it opens access to those “summa metaphysica”.

    The tracks of C. G. Jung’s core ideas become increasingly clear in Hesse’s Work since 1922. Central for the development of Hesse’s intellectual ideas between 1919 and 1943 was Existentialism of the subjectivity search for meaning by the way of Individuation, reinforced by the personal and longer fight – and many psychoanalytic sessions – with Joseph B. Lang and Carl Gustav Jung. With Thomas Mann, he shared the conservative (better middle) position against the Nazi attacks of the bourgeois, non national socialist readers in Germany. Both meet several times in the Switzerland and Hesse was referring Mann in the work as a friend of the later Nobel Prize winner.  In all books the Christian  theological message and those from the Far East, are amazingly preserved until today.

    Siddhartha

    The key influences are the crisis phases are 1919-22 with Siddhartha in response to the total change of circumstances: Moving to Switzerland after the failure of his first marriage, the death of his Father (a lonely painter) and his own transformation of all own values after the First World War. “But this man, Siddhartha, was not a follower of any but his own soul…” Born the son of a Brahmin, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence and charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. At one point in the book, he says there are three things he can do – “I can pray, I can wait and I can fast. About 12 translations in Indian languages, of Siddhartha further ones into Chinese (three since 1968) and Japanese exit and proof its meaningful intercultural dialogue.

    Steppenwolf

    With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesse’s best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literature’s most poetic evocations of the soul’s journey to liberation. In the bourgeois circles of Europe after the Great War, Harry Haller, a solitary intellectual, has all his life feared his dual nature of being human and being a beast. He’s decided to die on his 50th birthday, which is soon. He’s rescued by the mysterious Hermine, who takes him dancing, introduces him to jazz and to the beautiful and whimsical Maria, and guides him into the hallucinations of the Magic Theater, which seem to take him into Hell. In the German original of the Steppenwolf, the female actress Hermina means this is the feminine form of Hermann (Hesse). This is same alchemic tantric game such as in Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte”: Pamino and Pamina. Hermann Hesse roots are like many other Germans in the great tradition in the music of Mozart and Bach. The female is an important and recurring motif for Hesse. Hesse pictures Freud’s Oedipus complex for Demian ( Emil’s Self) in his construction of Demians mother (Frau Eva)  and in his exploration of her relationship with Emil Sinclair. His treatment of the female becomes more intricate, however, in Steppenwolf, as the prostitute Hermine becomes the Ego for Harry Haller. According to Jung, “Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image…I have called this image the ‘anima’.” The character diagram mirrors Hesse’s experiences with psychoanalysis and his efforts to explore his subconsciousness:

    Hallucination, fantasy, and unreality are important elements in the novel. Consequentially it was tried to portray Hesse as a bohemian, as a hippie, as a follower of the drug culture or as a pacifist vagabond (he was by the way really pacifist) and to make Hesse to a consumer product. There is an impressing movie that is worth to see even with its primitive special effects/animation technology, are not convincingly covering the fantastic emotional/surreal visions of the book.

    Glasperlenspiel

    It is easy to belittle from postmodern mindset the “overachieving” epic unity. The insights Hesse about the collapse of opposites “yin and Yang, individualism and” Serve” in the reception “Eastern meditation techniques and the associated” Attitude” is caught up today by the spiritual multiculturalism fashion “ideal, that might have proved as hollow as the ideals the traditional values of good old Europe. Nonetheless the breaking out of the “self-sufficient spiritualism” at the end of the novel, his last “magnum opus” implies the “synthesis of spirit and life” for the continuing, global reader looking for a valid meaning of life. In this book are musical polarities Hesse and mathematical abstractions and similar as by C.G. Jung’s enigmatic holistic symbols of the Mandela.

    Demian

    Demian proves tha basic thesis that Hesse – merged autobiographical experiences and fictional plot elements-in the design of the main characters and themes, as well as in the his poetry. It is critical to understand the  Jungian psychology individuation model and the dualistic view of the world to understand Demian and other works of Herrmann Hesse.

    Under the influence of C.G. Jung’s (and Lang’s) psychoanalysis treatment, Hesse fell completely for the Germanic alchemical dream whose tendons to unity and the union of opposites. The inner self was revealed in Demian; the main character of his book was named, and loved and admired by Sinclair, i.e. of Hesse. Demian tells the story of a boy coming of age as a troubled German youth prior to WWI. Its imagery and plot have been the inspiration for countless songs, whether the composers read the book or not.

    “Our god’s name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.” ― Hermann Hesse, Demian

    The book gives a vision of the two worlds: for Emil the main character, there is a bright world to which his parents and siblings belong and where everything is good and pious, and another, dark world, which starts at the door of his home and which is both wild and ghastly as well as mysterious and fascinating. Sometimes he would live like in the dark, forbidden world because he felt the other world as boring. At other times in turn it was comforting and wonderful to live in the light, religious world and to feel like an Angel.

    Short overview of the book Demian.

    1. Chapter – The Shadow

    The story opens with Emil’s childhood experience, which earned him his first confrontation with the still so strange, dark world: Emil is little more than ten years old and visited the Latin school, when he met Franz Kromer, an older pupil of the elementary school. Franz is strong and quite malicious, so that it is feared among all kids. One afternoon, it happens that Emil and Franz talk about their school pranks. Emil spins a hero story to impress Franz how he stole apples with friends. As Emil wants to participate in the trip back, Kromer accompanied him and threatens Emil to reveal the theft, if he does not pay him two Reichsmarks the next day. After a few weeks, and Emil feels as he sinks ever further in the dark.

    If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

    2. Chapter “The Self”

    Emil is very fascinated of Max Demian, a new older student at the Latin school. He is some years older than Emil and visited a higher class. Initially, Emil is biased, but soon they deepen in a conversation about the story of Cain and Abel. Demian tells him that there are different interpretations for each story, and never one alone the truth corresponds to. Demian promises him that he will help him against Kromer. As the Self it leads Emil to the right decision. As Emil returns home that day, he confesses his parents which surprisingly listening to him and then forgive him. From now on he feels belong again the light world.

    3. Chapter Ego and Persona

    A few years later Emil and Demian in confirmation classes meet each other again. In the confirmation, the story is of the dying of Jesus tells them that there is no free will, however, it could affect the will of others if you focus just enough. A few days later Emil and Demian discuss the two worlds. Demian is impressed, and feels confirmed in his own, and comes to the conclusion that every person must find the right measure for themselves. The day of the confirmation is getting closer, and Emil decides to commit his recording in the mind at the same time with his inclusion in the Church. However, his parents decide that he should visit another school after the shortly upcoming holidays.

    4. Chapter Beatrice the Anima (Dantes »Divina commedia«)

    In his new boarding school, Emil receives little respect and sinks stages into melancholy and self-pity. Emil is now often in pubs with friends, where there lavishly richly celebrate and get drunk. So, his grades in school get always worse, and he is threatened even with the dismissal from the school. After the Christmas, which he spent at home, he falls in love with a girl, but does not dare however to attract them, and so he gives her the name Beatrice. His school grades improved, and again like he deals with spiritual themes. Also he starts to paint; first ornament and plants, and finally Beatrice. When the image is completed, Emil finds it not really resembles her, and later, he realizes that he had painted no her, but Demian. One night, Emil has a dream by Demian and the heraldic bird, which is placed over the door of his own home. He decides to paint this bird, and to send the image to Demian.

    5. Chapter – Abraxas

    Emil sends the drawing from his dream bird to Demian which come to a piece of paper. On it, he writes about a God named Abraxas, which is a combination of divine and devilish attributes. Emil is interested to understand this God and provides research, which remain however largely unsuccessful. One night Emil comes past on a walk on church organ music and stops and listens. The organist plays Bach is the pieces however, as Emil thinks, a passionate own note. From that day on, he often stands in front of the Church and listening to the music. One day he follows the musician, Pistorius, as he leaves the Church. He enters a bar on the outskirts of the city, and Emil sits down at the table to him. They start to talk amongst other things about and come on Abraxas.

    6. Chapter  The Jungian Adviser

    From his conversations with Pistorius Emil finds his self-esteem and learns more of Abraxas, his new God. One evening, he is approached by a classmate named Knauer, who asks him about spiritualism. On the same evening still Emil begins to paint a picture. Again, it’s a face that he can map not a particular person. Emil comes to the conclusion, that for everyone a particular work or task is intended, and that Pistorius had missed his. The only important work in a person’s life, it is however to find themselves.

    “Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man’s story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.”

    7. Chapter – The Great Mother  the fulfilment of individuation

    In the holidays Emil does looking after Demian and they meet and Demian recognizes his old friend, he invites him to his house, so that he could get to know his mother. During his visit, Emil discovered that Demian has his picture of the dream bird in the entrance hall to on slopes, what affects him deeply. He falls in love with Demians mother – his  The Great Mother, but the (sexual) desire  is rejected. Later in the war he gets injured by a grenade. Sinclair witnessed in one overwhelming vision the desirable rebirth of personal and collective by projecting the great mother into this:

    “In den Wolken war eine große Stadt zu sehen, aus der strömten Millionen von Menschen hervor […] – Mitten unter sie trat eine mächtige Göttergestalt, funkelnde Sterne im Haar, groß wie ein Gebirge, mit den Zügen der Frau Eva. In sie hinein verschwanden die Züge der Menschen, wie in eine riesige Höhle, und waren weg […]. Ein Traum schien Gewalt über sie zu haben, sie schloß die Augen, und ihr großes Antlitz verzog sich in Weh. Plötzlich schrie sie hell auf, und aus ihrer Stirn sprangen Sterne, die schwangen sich in herrlichen Bögen und Halbkreisen über den schwarzen Himmel. Einer von den Sternen brauste mit hellem Klang gerade zu mir her, schien mich zu suchen. Da krachte er brüllend in tausend Funken auseinander, es riß mich empor und warf mich wieder zu Boden, donnernd brach die Welt über mir zusammen.”

    C.G. Jung’s Psychology offers also attempt an explanation of this rebirth phenomenon.  Jung  notes that a mobilization the deeper archetypes – such as the “Anima” or of the “Self” only in a withdrawn and introverted life is possible. The Conclusion is valid, that Hesse was stimulated by reading C.G. Jung’s  ” Symbole der Wandlung / Icons” of the”Conversion” to his haunting poetic design of Sinclair’s  rebirth experience . The nature of incest fantasy is explained as  regression of the libido into the unconscious, where they enable the compensating and healing powers.

    I want to end with the power of the Self as a (spiritual)  leader, which I have experienced over and over again:

    Wenn der, der etwas notwendig braucht, dies  ihm Notwendige findet, so ist es nicht der Zufall, der es ihm gibt, sondern er selbst, sein eigenesVerlangen und Müssen führt ihn hin.”

  • Wagner Ring Cycle – so called Kupfer Version at Bayreuth (German).

    Wagner Ring Cycle – so called Kupfer Version at Bayreuth (German).

    Harry Kupfer’s Wagner Ring Cycle, particularly its opening conception of Die Walküre. Kupfer’s Bayreuth Ring demonstrates that radical abstraction need not obscure Wagner’s dramaturgy. His minimalist stage language consistently serves a single conceptual idea. One may disagree with his interpretation, but it remains internally coherent. Compelling theatrical images arrive at an equally clear interpretative centre.

    In Harry Kupfer’s legendary Bayreuth Ring production (1988–1992, designed by Hans Schavernoch), the traditional World Ash Tree (Weltesche) in Die Walküre was reimagined within a bleak, post-apocalyptic universe.

    Ich maße mir nicht an ein Kunst- oder gar Wagnerkritiker zu sein. Es geht um 7 hochwertige DVDs und ob diese Bayreuth und Wagner korrekt abbilden. Die Antwort ist, ja unbedingt.
    Die Neuauflage der Produktion bietet Breitwandformat und Surroundklang, so dass die Aura Bayreuths zumindest technisch ins Wohnzimmer übertragbar ist. Wagnerliebhaber – und solche wie ich die es werden wollen – sollten hier nicht vorbeigehen. Günstiger kann große Kunst nicht erfahren werden. Sowohl Kamera als auch Ton sind von hoher technische Qualität und das Orchester und die Stimmen in optimaler Balance. Die Darsteller des Bayreuther Rings haben wie zu erwarten Weltklasse, allen voran Siegfried Jerusalem als Siegfried, dramatisch Anne Evans als Brünnhilde und der starke Bass Philip Kangs als Hagen überzeugen. Die Nahaufnahmen, welche die Kameraperspektive ermöglicht, zeigen die Gestik alle Protagonisten allerdings teilweise in sehr gewöhnungsbedürftigen Kostümen. Die musikalische Leitung Barenboims wurde seinerzeit groß bejubelt und gefeiert – meines Erachtens nicht zu Unrecht. Barenboim hat Kupfer bis an die Grenze des vom Gesang her Möglichen nachgegeben – es wird gerannt, gelegen, geklettert, gerutscht, gekniet. Parallel zur Oper lese ich ein Buch des Kunsthistorikers Richard Wagner’s Robert Donington ‘Ring des Nibelungen’ und seine Symbole: Musik und Mythos. Er zitiert in der Einführung Richard Wagners Bemerkung sinngemäss: “Ein allzu offenes Aufdecken der Absicht stört das richtige Verständnis durchaus: es gilt im Drama – wie im Kunstwerk überhaupt – nicht durch Darlegung der Absichten, sondern durch Darstellung des Unwirklichen zu wirken”. Anders gesagt, Kunst kann durch sich selbst überzeugen. Ich kein Freund der unbedingten Werktreue, aber mit der Bühnenbildgestaltung durch Hans Schavernoch und der Inszenierung Harry Kupfers kann ich mich anfreunden. Wenn ich mich auf den Begriff Regietheater mal einlasse, sollte es besser Musiktheater heißen, mit guten Regisseuren und klugen Dramaturgen. Die Regie sollte nicht vorne stehen.
    Bei Wagner frage ich Simpel mich zudem immer, transportieren die Inszenierung die Bilder der Symbole und Mythen in der ganzen Vielschichtigkeit? Ein klares Ja, bei der genialen Laser Unterwasserszene in Rheingold (die den Ton störte), geschieht das hier immer. Die Götterdämmerung ist ganz besonders beeindruckend.
    Ein durchgängiges Moment des Regietheaters im negativen Sinne ist ja der pädagogische Zeigefinger: man will aufklären, erklären, den wahren “Gehalt” des Kunstwerkes zeigen, den Komponisten und Textdichter besser verstehen als der Bildungsbürger (der ja dafür zahlt), die Wichtigkeit des Werkes für heute zeigen. Letzteres ist ja auch in Ordnung. Zwei Kinder suchen den Weg aus der Katastrophe und ziehen von der Bühne.
    Die Konzeption des Gesamtkunstwerks der Ring entstand zur Zeit zwischen 1850-1890. Diese Epoche ist durch die Erstarrung des Bürgertums nach dem Scheitern der Märzrevolution (1848). Dies Erstarrung der Bürgertums – oder was heute noch davon übrig ist – und die Kapitalismuskritik Wagners ist heute aktueller den je. Andreas Kriegenburg im derzeitigen Ring im Nationaltheater München transportiert Wagners Metaphern meines Erachtens etwas besser. Trotzdem, unbedingt hörenswert, sehenswert – ganz besonders wenn man minimalistisch mag,

  • Richard Wagner from Scene to Scene utilizing C.G. Jung

    Richard Wagner from Scene to Scene utilizing C.G. Jung

    “Wagner’s Ring and Its Symbols” originally published 1984.  (English and German article). Applied in my article C.G Jung and Wagner – Rainy Götterdämmerung in Munich.

    I wanted to learn more about Wagner and bought therfore recently a used copy of the English musicologist Robert Donington. He provides an allegorical interpretation of the Wagners Ring Cycle according to the criteria music, drama and the psychological analysis of C.G. Jung. I have worked through the book scene for scene based on a DVD of the Bayreuth production of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen’ from the year 1991-92 (Kupfer / Barenboim). The author impresses with broad and in-depth knowledge suitable for the description of the complexity and richness of relationship the musical symbols of Wagner’s opera. Donnington analyzes and describes the entire ring from Rheingold and Götterdämmerung. The underlying ring myths and fairy tales are set in context with the poetic and musical symbols (e.g. recurrent sequences) of Wagner in an exciting way. From the symbolic and artistic consciousness he goes towards intellectual and analytical penetration of the substance. A very good appendix (notes of the sequences / relationship diagram) and scriptures complement the book.

    I am Opera fan, but (was) not a Wagner fan) but this very systematic approach in regards of general background lasting has significantly sharpened my senses (and reception). I have been subscribed to the scheme of C.G. Jung for a long time, and considers Robert Donnington’s approach to use it for Wagner brilliant and all in all valid. He does justice to the complexity of Wagner with a comprehensive knowledge of literary and musical material. C.G. Jung has dealt precisely with Archetypes of the hero and Wotan. Concepts of animus and Anima, shadow do very well describe Wagner’s poetic figures.Alberich pays by his own self. He gives up love for power, loses the power, which represents the Ring.  His life is hell.

    The appearance” of the “Unwillkürlichen”  is the subject of the ring according to Wagner’s own information. That fits in well with C.G. Jung’s unconscious, his view of consciousness functions – Sensing and Intuition and the a-causal contexts (synchronicity). Robert Donington used once in a while the vocabulary of modern psychology s quite arbitrarily. Then, I had to put a question mark and the edge in the “split shadow”. There is also a mix of Freud and Jung and concepts and occasionally heavily psychological charged sentences, whose meaning and benefit are not immediately clear to. However, for me a very successful and engaging introduction to The Ring.

    See also my article C.G Jung and Wagner – Rainy Götterdämmerung in Munich.

    Meine Rezension:  Richard Wagner’s ‘Ring des Nibelungen’ und seine Symbole: Musik und Mythos

    Der englische Musikwissenschaftler Robert Donnington gibt diesem Buch eine allegorische Deutung des Ring-Zyklus nach Kriterien Musik, Drama und der Psychoanalytik von C.G. Jung. Donnington analysiert und beschreibt den gesamten Ring von Rheingold bis Götterdämmerung. Die dem Ring zugrunde liegende Mythen und Märchen werden dabei auf sehr anregende Weise mit den poetischen und musikalischen Symbolen (z.B. immer wiederkehrende Sequenzen) von Wagner in Verbindung gebracht. Vom symbolischen und künstlerischen Bewusstsein geht es in Richtung intellektuelle und analytische Durchdringung des Stoffes. Ein sehr guter Anhang Noten der Sequenzen / Beziehungsvdiagramm) und Stichwortverzeichnis ergänzen das Buch. Ich habe das Buch Szene für Szene anhand einer DVD der Bayreuther Aufführung von Wagners ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ aus dem Jahre 1991/92 durchgearbeitet(Kupfer/ Barenboim). Bei der Beschreibung der Vielschichtigkeit und Beziehungsreichtum der musikalischen Partitur beeindruckt das breite und fundierte Wissen des Autors. Ich bin zwar Opern-Fan, aber (war) kein Wagner Fan) und diese sehr systematische Herangehensweise des Buches über gesamthaften Hintergrund und Zusammenhang hat meine Sinne (und Rezeption) entscheidend geschärft. Ich fühle mich durch die Systematik von C.G. Jung seit langem sehr angesprochen, und halte Robert Donnington’s Ansatz diesen bei Wagner zu verwenden, für brillant und alles in allem gültig durchgeführt. Der Komplexität von Wagner wird er mit einer umfassenden Kenntnis des literarischen und musikalischen Materials gerecht. C.G. Jung hat ja sich ja eingehend genau mit dem Archetypen des Helden und Wotan auseinandergesetzt. Konzepte von Animus und Anima, sowie Schatten beschreiben sehr gut Wagners poetische Figuren. Die “Darstellung des Unwillkürlichen” ist nach Wagners eigener Auskunft Gegenstand des Rings. Das deckt sich gut mit C.G. Jungs Unbewussten, seiner Sicht der Bewusstseinsfunktionen – Empfinden und Intuieren und der akausalen Zusammenhänge (Synchronizität). Nur verwendet Robert Donnington das Vokabular der modernen Psychologie einige Male recht willkürlich. Dann musste ich ein Fragezeichen and den Rand setzen, so bei den “gespaltenen Schatten”. Auch gibt es manchmal ein Gemengelage von Freud und Jung und gelegentlich stark mit Psychoanalytik geladene Sätze, deren Sinn und Mehrwert mir nicht sofort einleuchtet. Für mich ein sehr gelungene und fesselnde Einführung in den Ring.