The Case of Wagner against the Grain: the Disagreement between Nietzsche and Adorno, and Its Relevance Today

To judge by contemporary cinema—think of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), or Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder (2012)—the claims of obsolescence as regards Wagner read like a chronicle of an end foretold. Aesthetic and political ambivalence, however, still remains the hallmark of Wagner’s aural effect, no matter how innocent the uses of his music (in cinema or elsewhere) might currently sound to so many listeners and spectators. Against this background, Adorno’s remark (from his 1963’s talk on “Wagner’s Relevance for Today” [“Wagners Aktualität”]) according to which, though “Wagner no longer possesses the boundless authority of the earlier time”, one “cannot ignore the political aspect” remains valid today. If only because, as Adorno puts it, “too much catastrophe has been visited on living beings for a consideration that purports to be purely aesthetic to close its eyes to it.”2