Ring und Gral: Texte, Kommentare und Interpretationen zu Richard Wagners ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’, ‘Tristan und Isolde’ ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ und ‘Parsifal’ ed. by Ulrich Müller, Oswald Panagl (review)
2004; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 99; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2004.a827039
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies
Resumo832 Reviews path, but merely to return to the conventional religious faith she has been persuaded to desert, van Ornam's line of argument demands some qualification. Nevertheless, the study makes an important contribution to our understanding of Lewald's fiction. Birkbeck College, London Anna Richards Ring und Gral: Texte,Kommentare und Interpretationenzu Richard Wagners 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', 'Tristan und Isolde', 'Die Meistersinger von Numberg' und 'Par? sifal'. Ed. by Ulrich Muller and Oswald Panagl. Wiirzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2002. 345 pp. ?35. ISBN 3-8260-2382-x(pbk). This volume contains substantial essays originally written by Ulrich Muller and Os? wald Panagl as programme guides for a number of Wagner's operas between 1986 and 2001. It also has a number of shorter contributions by Annemarie Eder, Irene Erfen, Thomas Lindner, and Michaela Muller-Auer. The resulting volume is a truly compendious work which is a fittingtribute to a composer described by Panagl as 'ein Virtuose des Synkretismus' (p. 239). Muller gives full accounts ofthe Scandina? vian and Germanic sources forthe Ring cycle with generous extracts from the Eddas, Thidreks Saga, Volsunga Saga, and the Nibelungenlied, and appends good explanatory material. The same format is applied to a number ofWagnerian sources and analogues from antiquity and the Oriental world (with an interesting discussion by Panagl of hints of Wagner's projected Buddhist work 'Die Sieger', discernible in Parsifal). Further sections are devoted to specific operas: Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, and Die Meister singer, together with a good overview of obsolescent words and expressions (such as Hort, Recke, Kiir, entziicken) whose use by Wagner in the semi-sacral idiom of Parsifal and in the deliberately archaic register favoured by him for other works appears to have saved them from complete oblivion. The effectof the volume as a whole on the reader is that of a somewhat hybrid Sammelsurium of Romanfiihrer, documentation, and criticism, in which one is surprised to find the most disparate pieces of information gathered together (occasionally with some overlap or even repetition). The contributors certainly cast their nets widely. The documentation foranalogues of Parsifal includes not only Wolfram von Eschenbach but Chretien de Troyes, the work of Robert de Boron, Die Krone, and even the Old Irish CattleRaidat Cooley. This already extensive list (not all of which can have formed the substance of Wagner's Lesefriichte) is then augmented by apt references to scholars such as Franz J.Mone (to whom Wagner expressed his indebtedness in for? mal terms) but also by the inclusion of a host of very late continuators of the scholarly tradition, such as the speculations about the Grail by Jessie L. Weston, Otto Rahn, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and (even) Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, whose The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (London: Cape, 1982) entered into a particularly lurid area of speculation and hence enjoyed a succes de scandale on its firstappearance. Its relevance to Wagner, however, is anything but clear. Ap? parently the editors tacitly decided to reflect something of the reception of Wagner (interpreted in the widest possible terms) in an omniumgatherum whose byways make fascinating reading but whose cumulative effectmight be to disorient some novices to the subject by a presentation of 'des Guten zuviel'. University of Durham Neil Thomas ...
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