Death drive: Eros and Thanatos in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

Cambridge Opera Journal

Volumn 11, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 267-294

  Hutcheon, Linda ^a   Hutcheon, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 62449143886     PISSN: 09545867     EISSN: 14740621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0954586700005073     Document Type: Article

References (145)

1. For another translation, see Richard Wagner, Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (London and Melbourne, 1978), 323
2. On the impact of Schopenhauer, see Richard Wagner, My Life, trans. Lord Harewood (London, 1994), 615
3. Bryan Magee, 'Schopenhauer and Wagner', Opera Quarterly, 1/3 (Autumn 1983), 148
4. Thomas Mann, Pro and Contra Wagner, trans. Allan Blunden (1963; London, 1985)
5. Edouard Sans, Richard Wagner et la pensée schopenhauerienne (Paris, 1969), 263
6. Wagner, The Music of the Future (1860)
7. cited in Rose, 'A Landmark' (see n. 2), 16
8. See Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, II, trans. E. F. J. Payne (1958; New York, 1966), 492
9. On Wagner anticipating Freud, see Peter Wapnewski, Tristan der Held Richard Wagners (Berlin, 1981), 29
10. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery Belgion (rev. ed.; New York, 1956)
11. Françoise Barteau, Les Romans de Tristan et Yseut: Introduction à une lecture plurielle (Paris, 1972), 188ff
12. Lawrence Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice 1800-1900 (Berkeley, 1990), 136-7
13. On Wagner as neurotic, see Richard D. Chessick, 'On Falling in Love: The Mystery of Tristan and Isolde', in Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music, ed. Stuart Feder, Richard L. Karmel, and George H. Pollock (Madison, CT, 1990), 469 and 476
14. On the lovers as narcissistic and on oceanic feelings, see Chessick, 482
15. See Iago Galdston, 'Eros and Thanatos: A Critique and Elaboration of Freud's Death Wish', American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 15 (1955), 124
16. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, XVIII, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London, 1955), 49-50
17. See A. J. Levin, 'The Fiction of the Death Instinct', Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 25 (1951), 257-81
18. A reminder that Wagner never intended Isolde's final section to be so labelled: that passage was referred to by him as the 'Verklärung' or transfiguration. On the literary rather than psychological value of Freud's dual instinct theory, see Robert Kastenbaum, The Psychology of Death (2nd ed.; New York, 1992), 205
19. and, of course, by implication, Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death (New York, 1959)
20. On the various kinds of attacks on the theory, see Kastenbaum, 204-5
21. For revisions of it, see Galdston, 'Eros and Thanatos' (n. 8), 124
22. See Cathy Caruth, 'Preface' to her edition of Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), vii
23. and, in the same volume, 'Introduction: Trauma and Experience', 4
24. See discussions of this in Richard Boothby, Death and Desire: Psychoanalytic Theory in Lacan's Return to Freud (New York, 1991), 13
25. and Ellie Ragland, 'Lacan's Concept of the Death Drive', in Essays on the Pleasures of Death (New York, 1995), 89
26. See Peter Urban, Liebesdämmerung: ein psychoanalytischer Versuch über Richard Wagners 'Tristan und Isolde' (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 85, on the pseudo-sexual verbalization of Tristan and Isolde's neurotic compromise between libido and fear as a manifestation of the repetition compulsion
27. On its untheatricality, see Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Wagner and Nietzsche, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York, 1976), 133
28. and Patrick Carnegy, 'The Staging of "Tristan and Isolde": Landmarks along the Appian Way', in Tristan and Isolde, ENO Opera Guide (n. 2), 29
29. Understandably, it is mostly musicological commentary that has not concentrated on the textual, while literary critics have given serious attention to the libretto's complex patterning. See especially Art Groos, 'Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde": In Defence of the Libretto', Music and Letters, 6/4 (1988), 465-81
30. Leo Spitzer, A Method of Interpreting Literature (Northampton, Mass., 1949), 49ff
31. Ulrich Weisstein, 'The Little Word und: Tristan und Isolde as Verbal Construct', in Wagner in Retrospect: A Centennial Reappraisal, ed. Leroy R. Shaw et al. (Amsterdam, 1987), 70-90
32. For example, see both Weisstein and Groos for excellent analyses of the textual parallels of the endings of each act; see Pierre Flinois, 'Miroir des trahisons', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 169-71, on the repetition of the accusation of 'traitor' in the text
33. see Ferlan, 'La Roi Marke' (n. 6), 178-80, on King Marke's discourse as narcissistic and repetitively self-centred ('mir')
34. See Jean-Pierre Krop, 'Le Sillon de Gottfried', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 14, on the structural repetitions conditioned by the epic form
35. For more on the comparisons, see Helmut Reichenbächer, 'Richard Wagner's Adaptation of Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan', University of Toronto Quarterly, 67/1 (1998), 762-7
36. Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (rev. ed.; Berkeley, 1988), 162
37. Adorno, In search of Wagner (see n. 18), 37 and 60 respectively
38. See Robert Bailey, Richard Wagner, Prelude and Transfiguration from 'Tristan and Isolde' (New York, 1985), 113-46, on the importance of repetition in the score
39. for detail on this, see Wolfram Steinbeck, 'Die Idee des Symphonischen bei Richard Wagner: zur Leitmotivtechnik in Tristan und Isolde', in Bericht über den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bayreuth 1981, ed. S. Wiesman and C. Mahling (Kassel, 1984), 424-36
40. Eric Bentley, The Playwright as Thinker (New York, 1946), 84
41. For an argument against Adorno's kind of accusation, see R. Jackson, 'Leitmotive and Form in the "Tristan" Prelude', The Music Review, 36 (1975), 42-53
42. William J. Mitchell, 'The Tristan Prelude: Techniques and Structure', The Music Forum, 1 (1967), 163-203
43. See Erika Reiman, 'The "Tristan Chord" as Music-Historical Metaphor', University of Toronto Quarterly, 67/4 (1998), 768-73
44. On recapitulation, see Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1991), 54
45. Of course, much has been written on the Tristan chord, mostly from a technical point of view. See, for summaries and analyses of the debates, Reiman (n. 32)
46. Hartmann (n. 27)
47. Jameux (n. 19), 44-7
48. Serge Gut, 'Encore et toujours: "L'Accord de Tristan"', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 148-51
49. Bailey (n.24), 113-46
50. See, on line, John Rothgeb, 'The Tristan Chord: Identity and Origin', MTO, 1/1 (1995)
51. Allen Forte, 'Tristan Redux: Comments on John Rothgeb's Article on the Tristan Chord in MTO', MTO, 1/2 (1995)
52. William Rothstein, 'The Tristan Chord in Historical Context: A Response to John Rothgeb', MTO, 1/3 (1995) (see http://smt.ucsb.edu/mto/mtohome.html)
53. See Barry Millington, s.v. 'Tristan und Isolde', The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992), 815-16, on the precedents in other music of elements of the chord
54. See Rolf, Der Tod (n. 20)
55. Doris Rosenband, Das Liebesmotiv in Gottfrieds 'Tristan' und Wagners 'Tristan und Isolde' (Göppingen, 1973)
56. Elisabeth Frenzel, 'Tristan und Isolde', in Stoffe der Weltliteratur: ein Lexikon dichtungs-geschichtlicher Längsschnitte (6th ed.; Stuttgart, 1983), 754-60
57. Jesse L. Weston, The legends of the Wagner Dramas: Studies in Mythology and Romance (New York, 1900), 309
58. Peter Wapnewski, Der Traurige Gott: Richard Wagner in seinen Helden (Munich, 1978), chapter 6
59. '[T]he drink is a love potion only insofar as it is believed to be a death potion . . . [I]f it is a yearning for death which is turned into love by the drink, it was from love that the yearning for death previously grew' (Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner's Music Dramas [see n. 27], 51)
60. See also Alain Gueullette, 'La Mer profonde', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 165
61. See Anthony Negus, 'Musical Commentary', in Tristan and Isolde, ENO Opera Guide (n. 2), 20
62. Cf. Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric (London, 1968), 167-85
63. Rosenband Das Liebesmotiv (n. 35)
64. and for a very different association - of the day as time of truth - see, in the major source text, Gottfried, II, lines 12,555, 12,559, 12,566, 14,630ff
65. See Vladimir Jankélévitch, 'La Nocturne', Cahiers du Sud (1937), 75-83
66. Martin Jay, in Downcast Eyes: The Denegration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley, 1993), 107, argues that dark began being positively valued in late eighteenth-century philosophy as part of a waning of Enlightenment trust in sight
67. J. See Bryan Magee, 'Schopenhauer and Wagner: Part Two', Opera Quarterly, 1/4 (Winter, 1983), 56
68. Owen M. Lee, 'Journey into Night', Opera News, 45/11 (31 January 1981), 10-11
69. Jean Matter, 'De Gottfried à Schopenhauer: Influences', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 10
70. Chessic, 'On Falling in Love' (n. 7), 467
71. de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (n. 6), 207-8
72. See Hartmut Reinhardt, 'Wagner and Schopenhauer', trans. Erika and Martin Swales, Wagner Handbook, ed. Ulrich Müller and Peter Wapnewski, trans. and ed. John Deathridge (Cambridge, 1992), 291
73. Arthur Prüfer, 'Novalis Hymnen an die Nacht und ihren Beziehungen zu Wagners Tristan und Isolde', Richard Wagner Jahrbuch (1906), 293
74. Siegfried Krebs, Phillip Otto Runges Entwicklung unter dem Einflüsse Ludwig Tiecks (Heidelberg, 1909), 137-8
75. Dieter Borchmeyer, Das Theater Richard Wagners: Idee-Dichtung-Wirkung (Stuttgart, 1982), 261
76. For an overview of German Romanticism's 'Thoughts of the Night', see the section by that name in The German Mind of the Nineteenth Century: A Literary and Historical Anthology, ed. Hermann Glaser (New York, 1981), 11-35
77. For an argument that Wagner was a pure Schopenhauerian, see Magee, 'Wagner and Schopenhauer' (n. 2), 159
78. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (see n. 5), II, 532
79. See Barry Millington, Wagner (New York, 1984), 230
80. Reinhardt, 'Wagner and Schopenhauer' (n. 41), 291
81. Edouard Sans, 'L'Amour dans Tristan, ou le romantisme surdimensionné', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 22
82. On naming and the relation to the 'und' that worries Isolde, see Groos, 'Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde"' (see n. 18), 471
83. Rose, 'A landmark' (see n. 2), 11
84. See Thomas Nagel, 'Death', in The Metaphysics of Death, ed. John Martin Fischer (Stanford, 1993), 67
85. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (see n. 5), II, 267-9
86. For one interpretation of this, see Grey, Wagner's Musical Prose (n. 2), 357: 'The "torch" motive, the original "death" motive, and the syncopated line of Tristan's anxious anticipation from the beginning of the scene all converge here, as the whole motivic complex of the Act I prelude wells up portentously one last time . . . This knot is audibly disentangled during Tristan's final moments.'
87. See Novalis in Simon Reynolds, ed., Novalis and the Poets of Pessimism. With an English Translation by James Thomson of 'Hymns to Night' (Whitby;, 1995), 30, 34, 48, 52
88. for commentary, see Scott, 'Night and Light' (n. 41)
89. Eric A. Blackwell, The Novels of the German Romantics (Ithaca, 1983), 216
90. Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln, Nbr., 1982), 111
91. Erwin Koppen, Dekadenter Wagnerismus: Studien zur europäischen Literatur des Fin de Siècle (Berlin and New York, 1973), 172
92. See also Gerhard Schulz, 'Liebestod' (n. 15), 121-8
93. Krebs, Phillip Otto Runges Entwicklung (n. 41), 130-1
94. Paul Kluckholm, Die Auffassung der Liebe in der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts und in der deutschen Romantik (1922; Tübingen, 1966), 390-5
95. Gerhard J. Winkler, 'Der "Schleier der Maja": Transformation eines Begriffs, Schopenhauer-Wagner-Nietzsche', in "Der Fall Wagner": Ursprünge und Folgen von Nietzsches Wagner Kritik, ed. Thomas Steiert (Laaber, 1991), 246
96. Respectively, Bentley, The Playwright as Thinker (see n. 25) 116
97. and Mann, Pro and Contra Wagner (see n. 2), 194
98. De Rougemont, Love in the Western World (n. 6), 229 and 230
99. See Francis Fergusson, 'Tristan und Isolde: The Action and Theater of Passion', in The Idea of a Theater (Princeton, 1949), 76
100. and Kerman, Opera as Drama (n. 21) 159, 163-5
101. For background on the mystical view of death, see James P. Carse, Death and Existence: A Conceptual History of Human Mortality (New York, 1980), chapter 3, 'Death as Separation - Love', esp. 69-78
102. See Martial Petitjean, 'L'Extase tristanienne: une initiation métaphysique', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 162, for example
103. A recent work by Sven Friedrich, Das auratische Kunstwerk: zur Ästhetik von Richard Wagners Musiktheaterutopie (Tübingen, 1996) argues Wagner's theory of a synesthetic 'aural artwork'
104. See the excellent analyses of Groos (n. 18) and Weisstein (n. 18)
105. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (see n. 5), II, 490
106. Borchmeyer, Das Theater Richard Wagner (see n. 41), 264, makes the connection to Gaston Bachelard's L'Eau et les rêves
107. See also Gueullette, 'La Mer profonde' (n. 36), 165-6
108. On the return to the mother, from a psychoanalytic perspective, see Michel Poizat, The Angel's Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera, trans. Arthur Denner (Ithaca, 1992), 167, 177
109. and Deathridge 'Post-Mortem' (see n. 7), 110-11
110. See Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (see n. 5), II, 495
111. Kramer, in Music as Cultural Practice (see n. 6), sees gender differentiation as what is lost here, but the important difference is simply in terms of individuals, whatever their gender
112. See Magee, 'Schopenhauer and Wagner: Part Two' (n. 40), 61
113. In contrast, see Rose (n. 2), 12
114. Winkler (n. 59), 237-40, 248-9
115. Reinhardt (n. 41), 292
116. Adorno (n. 18), 145
117. Mann, Pro und Contra Wagner (see n. 2), 126
118. Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music (1968; San Diego, New York, London, 1990), 252
119. Millington, 'Tristan und Isolde' (see n. 33), 819
120. Wagner's 'Program Notes' for the Prelude, in Bailey, Richard Wagner, Prelude (see n. 24), 48
121. See, for example, Sans, 'L'Amour dans Tristan' (see n. 48), 25
122. Wapnewski, Tristan der Held Richard Wagners (n. 6), 64
123. Johannes Bertram, Mythos, Symbol, Idee in Richard Wagners Musik-Dramen (Hamburg, 1962), 222
124. Gutman, Richard Wagner (n. 72), 164
125. See also Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiberg's late thirteenth-century conclusion to Gottfried, as discussed by Reichenbächer, 'Richard Wagner's Adaptation' (see n. 20)
126. See Russell Kilbourn, 'Redemption Revalued in Tristan und Isolde: Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche', University of Toronto Quarterly, 67/4 (1998), 781-8, for more on transfiguration and redemption
127. See Gwyneth Jones interviewed by Monique Barichella, 'Un message spirituel', Avant-scène opéra, 34-5 (1981), 191
128. See also Poizat, The Angel's Cry (n. 67), 37-8 for a Lacanian argument that the work moves beyond speech
129. Groos, 'Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde"' (n. 18), 467-8
130. On the redefinition, see Laurence Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice (n. 6), esp. 161-6
131. and Reiman, 'The Tristan Chord' (n. 32)
132. See Jean Laplanche, Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (Baltimore, 1976), passim
133. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1967), 126
134. E.g. Kaufmann's annotations to The Birth of Tragedy, 126
135. The Birth of Tragedy (n. 84), 103-4
136. The Birth of Tragedy, 104; the previous citation is from 103-4
137. The Birth of Tragedy, 131
138. Cited in Fischer-Dieskau, Wagner and Nietzsche (n. 17), 90
139. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (see n. 5), II, 451
140. Schopenhauer, II, 455-6
141. Martin Gregor-Dellin, 'Schopenhauer und die Musiker nach ihm', Schopenhauer Jahrbuch, 64 (1985), 51-3
142. As pointed out by Bentley, The Playwright as Thinker (n. 25), 111
143. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (see n. 5), II, 448
144. Winkler, 'Der "Schleier der Maja" (see n. 59), 248-9
145. John Keats, 'Ode to a Nightingale'