Judaism In Music

Judaism in Music DAS JUDENTHUM IN DER MUSIK by Richard Wagner Translated by William Ashton Ellis Taken from The Theatre, Richard Wagner's Prose Works, Volume 3, pages 79-100, published in 1894. Essay originally published in 1850 in Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen: Volume V, pages 6685. [01] IN THE 'NEUE ZEITSCHRIFT FüR MUSIK' not long ago, mention was made of an "Hebraic art-taste": an attack and a defence of that expression neither did, nor could, stay lacking. Now it seems to myself not unimportant, to clear up the matter lying at bottom of all this — a matter either glossed over by our critics hitherto, or touched with a certain outburst of excitement. [02] It will not be a question, however, of saying something new, but of explaining that unconscious feeling which proclaims itself among the people as a rooted dislike of the Jewish nature; thus, of speaking out a something really existent, and by no means of attempting to artfully breathe life into an unreality through the force of any sort of fancy. Criticism goes against its very essence, if, in attack or defence, it tries for anything else. Since it here is merely in respect of Art, and specially of Music, that we want to explain to ourselves the popular dislike of the Jewish nature, even at the present day, we may completely pass over any dealing with this same phenomenon in the field of Religion and Politics. In Religion the Jews have long ceased to be our hated foes, — thanks to all those who within the Christian religion itself have drawn upon themselves the people's hatred. [03] In pure Politics we have never come to actual conflict with the Jews; we have even granted them the erection of a Jerusalemitic realm, and in this respect we have rather had to regret that Herr v. Rothschild was too keen-witted to make himself King of the Jews, preferring, as is well known, to remain "the Jew of the Kings." It is another matter, where politics become a question of Society: here the isolation of the Jews has been held by us a challenge to the exercise of human justice, for just so long as in ourselves the thrust toward social liberation has woken into plainer consciousness. When we strove for emancipation of the Jews, however, we virtually were more the champions of an abstract principle, than of a concrete case: just as all our Liberalism was a not very lucid mental sport [04] — since we went for freedom of the Folk without knowledge of that Folk itself, nay, with a dislike of any genuine contact with it — so our eagerness to level up the rights of Jews was far rather stimulated by a general idea, than by any real sympathy; for, with all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them. Here, then, we touch the point that brings us closer to our main inquiry: we have to explain to ourselves the involuntary repellence possessed for us by the nature and personality of the Jews, so as to vindicate that instinctive dislike which we plainly recognise as stronger and more overpowering than our conscious zeal to rid ourselves thereof. Even to-day we only purposely belie ourselves, i