Introduction to Evald Ilyenkov, “Notes on Wagner”
2024; Springer Nature; Volume: 76; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/s11212-023-09611-4
ISSN1573-0948
Autores Tópico(s)Eastern European Communism and Reforms
Resumois famous for his powerful analysis of Marx's dialectical method.Ilyenkov's fusion of Hegel, Marx and Spinoza rejuvenated Soviet Marxism during the Thaw period.The philosopher's interest in aesthetics is lesser-known.Presumably written in the mid-to late 1950s, "Notes on Wagner" are a testimony of Ilyenkov's passion for music, particularly Richard Wagner.However, these fragments are more than mere "notes" on Wagner: they are philosophy written in the medium of music; they reveal a thinker deeply steeped in nineteenth-century aesthetic discourse; and they provide an early example of how Ilyenkov's creative philosophy broke with the Soviet doctrine of diamat.However, why would a committed Marxist turn to the composer embraced by the Nazis only a decade earlier?How did Ilyenkov become a Wagnerite?Also, was there such a thing as a "Soviet Wagner"?Wagner's influence on Russian composers, artists and poets of the Silver Age is well-documented (Bartlett 1995;Gozenpud 1990; Muir and Belina-Johnson 2013). 1 Arguably, nowhere else did Wagner find more devotees than in fin-de-siècle Russia. 2 Wagnerism influenced, to name just a few, Aleksandr Skriabin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Vyacheslav Ivanov.Wagner's total artwork found another echo in the Symbolists' "zhiznetvorchestvo" (life-artwork).In fact, any study of the Russian avant-garde is incomplete without considering Wagnerism.However, what was the afterlife of the German composer after the Revolution?One might assume that Stalinism and Wagner's appropriation by Fascism put an end to his reception in the USSSR in the 1930s.However, that was not the case at all: the story of a "Soviet 1 It is somewhat difficult to write about a "Russian Wagner" in 2023 without considering how the Wagner Group (Gruppa Vagnera) currently appropriates the composer's name.A Russian state-funded private military company, this group of mercenaries first emerged in 2014, during the war in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea.The Wagner Group has been accused of committing war crimes and atrocities worldwide, including in Syria, Libya, Mali and Ukraine.The group's links to the composer are rather vague but its name can invoke memories of Wagner's appropriation by the Nazis during World War II (Mauceri 2023). 2 Wagner's Russian reception is entangled with the enormous popularity of Friedrich Nietzsche among the intelligentsia at the turn of the century (Rosenthal 1998).Therefore, Russian Wagnerism, and if indirectly, also engaged with Nietzsche's sharp
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