The following remarks are made on the basis of reading the Swedish original, which equally should apply to this German translation. The reader should be aware that, although where Sanskrit text is given it has been translated for our benefit, quotations from other languages, such as French and English, have not been translated.

Professor Suneson sheds light on a previously little illuminated corner of the life and work of the German composer Richard Wagner; namely, Wagner's lifelong interest in the literature and religions of India and Ceylon. As an Indologist, Professor Suneson was able to produce what can only be regarded as the definitive study of the influence of India and Ceylon on Wagner's works.

The first part of the book is a general introduction to Wagner's interest in this area. It is natural that this discussion centres on the philosopher Schopenhauer, who related his pessimistic philosophy to the ideas of Buddhism. As most people know, Schopenhauer's philosophy came to assume enormous significance for Wagner during the early 1850's, and when blended with Wagner's own ideas (such as the theme of salvation through love), this philosophy became the foundation of later works such as 'Tristan und Isolde', 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' and 'Parsifal'. As a result of Schopenhauer's interest in Buddhism, Wagner too explored the Buddhist literature of India and (where available) Ceylon.

As Carl Suneson explains, a number of authors have addressed this aspect of Wagner's life and work before, but mostly in brief articles and not without error. Suneson's review of the literature provides references for further reading.

Carl Suneson provides a highly interesting account of which Indian works Richard Wagner read, and what he might have read. This information is drawn from Wagner's letters and from other writings, such as 'Mein Leben' (My Life, Wagner's autobiography), 'Das Braune Buch' (The Brown Book, Wagner's diary 1865-1882) and Cosima's 'Tagebücher' (Cosima Wagner's diaries 1869-1882).

In the second and shortest part of the book, Suneson considers the influence of Indian writings on Wagner's thinking about music.

In the third section, Suneson considers the Indian influences in later music-dramatic works by Richard Wagner. He warns that it is only with great caution that anyone should attempt to do this for any work other than 'Die Sieger' (The Victors), which would, if completed, have been the only stage-work by Wagner based entirely on Indian sources (specifically on 'Sardulakarnavadana' from the collection 'Divya vadana').

Three of the works that Wagner did realise contain elements that seem to have been inspired by Wagner's studies of Indian and Ceylonese literature. Firstly, the ending of 'Götterdämmerung' (Twilight of the Gods). After writing what was originally entitled 'Siegfried's Tod' (Siegfried's Death), Wagner changed the ending several times, as his world-view and therefore his interpretation of his own 'Ring' changed. In two of these revisions, the words given to Brünnhilde had a Buddhist resonance, of which little or nothing remains in the final version.

Similarly, in the ending of Wagner's most Schopenhauerian work, 'Tristan und Isolde', the words of Isolde's Transfiguration have an Indian flavour, but Suneson is unable to relate this to any specific source in Indian literature.

When he comes to consider Wagner's last music-drama, 'Parsifal', however, the evidence for Buddhist influence is much stronger. Suneson explains, in my view convincingly, that at least one, and perhaps as many as three passages in the text of 'Parsifal' are primarily based on Indian texts. The most obvious connection is an indirect one, namely via Mathilde Wesendonck's poem about Buddha and the wounded swan. Other connections explain more of the text in the swan incident in the first act of the opera, and several passages in the second act: for example, the temptation of Parsifal by Klingsor's magic maidens can be related to the similar temptation of the future Buddha by women conjured up by Mara, Lord Death. Exploring the Parsifal-Buddha and Klingsor-Mara parallels further, we begin to see a Buddhist (or pseudo-Buddhist) dimension underlying a work in which the Christian symbols have been more obvious.

Besides "The Ride of the Valkyries," (from Die Walkuere, 1856) this volume contains these other orchestral highlights from Wagner's Ring: Entry of the Gods into Valhalla (from Das Rheingold, 1854); Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire Music (from Die Walkuere, 1856); Forest Murmers (from Siegfried, 1869); Siegfried's Rhine Journey (from Goetterdaemmerung, 1874); Siegfried's Funeral Music (from Goetterdaemmerung, 1874). From Dover's Bibliographical Note: "This Dover edition, first published in 1996, is a new compilation of six scores originally published separately. B. Schott's Soehne, Mainz, originally published Der Ritt der Walkueren aus dem Musik-Drama Die Walkuere von R. Wagner/fuer Orchester zum Conzertvortrag eingerichtet, edition No. 22139, n.d.; and Trauermarsch beim Tode Siegfried's aus dem Musik-Drama Goetterdaemmerung/fuer grosses Orchester von Richard Wagner, edition No. 21998, n.d. The other scores in this compilation were originally published in early authoritative editions, n.d., including: Einzug der Goetter in Walhall (from Das Rheingold); Wotans Abschied und Feuerzauber (from Die Walkuere); Waldweben (from Siegfried); and Siegfrieds Rheinfahrt (from Goetterdaemmerung), transcribed by Engelbert Humperdinck. The Dover edition adds lists of contents and instrumentation, a glossary of German terms and English translations of four footnotes. A few errors in the scores have been corrected, including incorrect pitches in "Wotan's Farewell," p. 123, and missing accidentals throughout the timpani part of that work. We are grateful to the Duke University Music Library for the loan of several scores."

Meir Wagner's The Righteous Of Switzerland: Heroes Of The Holocaust focuses on one of the aspects of the Holocaust that is as heroic as the atrocities of the Third Reich were horrific. Non-jews of Switzerland who risked their opposition, hardship, danger, and even death because they refused to remain neutral in the face of Nazi crimes against humanity. Their combined and determined efforts were to result in the saving of thousands of Jewish lives from Nazi pogroms and death camps. While some of these courageous figures are known, most are relatively obscure and "unsung" -- but their lives and deeds must not be forgotten. In addition to their individual stories, Meir Wagner's The Righteous Of Switzerland is enhanced with the recorded speeches of Yitzhak Mayer; Andre von Moos; and Federal Councilor Joseph Deiss. A notable memorial to individual and collective heroism in service to humanity, The Righteous Of Switzerland is a welcome and ardently recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library Holocaust Studies reference collections and reading lists.

At a controversial Israel Festival concert on 7 July 2000, the Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra under the baton of Daniel Barenboim played music by a passionate antisemite with Fascist tendencies.

After that they played some Wagner.

Ironies abounded that night. The concert was planned as an all-Wagner night: a Jewish conductor leading a German orchestra playing German music in Jerusalem would provide fine symbolism for a night of reconciliation. Instead rightwing Israeli politicians intervened: threats were made to Festival funding, pressure was applied. The result? The music of one antisemitic composer was replaced with the music of two antisemitic composers, Schumann and Stravinsky. Schumann, like Wagner, died long before Nazism existed. But the antisemitic Stravinsky met privately with Mussolini, calling him "the hope of Italy and of Europe", wrote to assure the Nazis that he was of pure Aryan stock, and abandoned dealings with Jewish conductors and musicians in order to conform to Nazi sensibilities. Still, it was only when Barenboim played Wagner, after the Stravinsky, that controversy erupted.

Na'ama Sheffi's _The Ring of Myths: The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis_ provides a guide through some of these ironies and puzzles. How, for example, can politicians think that imposing political control on what artists can play is an anti-Nazi act? And why did they select a composer who died long before Nazism existed but despised Nazism's political ancestors, who became a pacifist opposing German military spending and writing that Germany loses its soul when it tries to rule other nations, who condemned slavery and the exploitation of one "race" by another, who wrote works showing that the pursuit of power leads to evil and self-destruction, whose opera _Parsifal_ was banned by the Nazis, who also asked that the _Ring_ not be performed as a cycle, and performances of whose works actually declined under the Nazis?

Sheffi reveals that the ban was a historical accident: in 1938 the Palestine Orchestra (principally made up of Jews from Eastern Europe) protested against Kristallnacht by dropping the _Meistersinger_ overture from their next concert. The gesture was hurried but not unreasonable: the Nazis used _Die Meistersinger_ for propaganda purposes, as they misappropriated other German music and art, Beethoven, Bruckner, Goethe and Rembrandt in particular. But the scheduled concert after Kristalnacht had had Wagner on the program, so it was against Wagner in particular that the gesture was made. The Palestine Orchestra played Wagner again after that one-off cancellation (though in Cairo, not Jerusalem), but with the war's end and the creation of the state of Israel, the precedent of a musical boycott had been set.

Since then, Sheffi argues, Wagner has been built, in Israel, into a symbol of the holocaust, a symbol with little relationship to the actual historical personage, who, she observes, "did not devote his life to denigrating Jews and certainly not to annihilating them." The Israeli ban endorses the Nazi's malicious misreadings of Wagner; thus it remains a homage rather than a repudiation of Nazi cultural thought. A genuine rejection of Nazi ideas necessarily involves dismissing their claim to Wagner, just as the Nazi uses and misreadings of Goethe's _Faust_ (Faust as the German soul; Mephistopheles as corrupting Jew) are now remembered only to be dismissed with contempt.

Sheffi argues that the danger in using Wagner as Holocaust symbol and shorthand for Nazism is not only that it perpetuates a falsehood. Worse, it directs attention away from the individuals, political groups and social forces that really created and operated the Holocaust. The ban on Wagner "facilitated the obliteration of the true essence of the Holocaust from the Israeli collective memory ... From a man of culture and learning, problematic though his views were, [Wagner] became a man identified with the Holocaust; whereas the real threats of the past - not only extremist nationalism, racism, and systematic murder, but the enormous inherent danger to democracy - all became slogans, at best."

The real Wagner and his works, Sheffi argues, is being inappropriately used as a weapon in a cultural war within Israel. "Eventually the musical dispute proved to be only part of the general cultural clash in Israel, a clash reflected primarily in a fierce controversy over the cultural character of the state. Certain sectors - the Orthodox and national-religious Jews - began to perceive the desire to play Wagner's music as an attempt to Westernize Israeli culture while obliterating its original Hebrew Jewish identity."

Sheffi's explication of these themes, and her tracing of the history of this debate, ranges through 60-odd years of Israeli cultural and political history, and is considerably more subtle and nuanced than this review's brief outline can reveal. Israeli politics are both labyrinth and minefield, and the clarity of Sheffi's guidance through the twists and turns is something the reader can both admire and be grateful for.

Sheffi does not know her Wagner quite as well as she knows Israel, however. For example she is too credulous in relation to the various readings of antisemitic meanings into Wagner works, the Wagnerian equivalent of proofs that Bacon wrote Shakespeare. She also commits occasional solecisms like, "Wagner had been on close terms with his son-in-law." That "son-in-law" is Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a man who once saw Wagner from a distance, but who Wagner never met or even heard of. Chamberlain's involvement with Wagner's pathetic offspring began well after Wagner's death. Here Sheffi has fallen into the trap of trusting some of the makers of the "Ring of Myths" of her title, who tend to fudge the distance between Wagner and Chamberlain because Chamberlain really did contribute to Nazi ideology, which makes it tempting to place Chamberlain, falsely, in Wagner's Bayreuth circle. Obviously Sheffi sometimes relied on secondary sources, and in Wagner studies, where certain secondary sources are not exactly committed to truth and accuracy, that's fatal.

But those are quibbles. This is a thoughtful, generally well-researched and referenced book, clearly written, and showing alertness to nuances of meaning in a field where attention to nuance is a rare commodity.

Cheers!

Laon

This is the very best Conan the barbarian Book. Too bad it is out of print.

Modern poetry often becomes so nostalgic that it loses perspective and quite often sounds like self emulation. When one is fortunate enough to encounter a contemporary poet who gathers memories and plants them for all of us to share, without being so general that there is no connection to past or present, it is illuminating to know that readers can identify with those same experiences, even though they may be distant from our own. Mary frances Wagner ties us to the experince of being a daughter, a cousin, a friend, and enables us to share the immigrant's daughter's love of nationality, of race and of gender. In "Thanksgiving Dinner" the writer's technique of capturing through what is not said the essence of what is becomes so artisitc that very few writers will ever do it better. The absence of comment is paralleled by the structure and development of the poem. Such technique is very rare in today's poetry. This book of poetry is a salute to a presence that will always be evident in her life. Through the use of the senses Maryfrances enables the reader to experience the loss and the love that prompted this book..."Yesterday I packed/a dozen black sacks/set them by the curb,/one heartload at a time." captures the loss of a loved one. "Of a thousand hands/I would know my father's/long fingers shaped like oars,/the index scar/the flat, grooved nails,/hands that fixed the doll's arm,/meded Whisker's ear, checked homework." are lines from the poem "Hands" that capture the life of the loved one. This excellent collection of poems is for those who have loved a family, have shared a loss, have retained the love. As poetry it is excellent in form, style, and development.Those who read for enlightenment will enjoy this book. Those who read for illumination into the art of excellent poetry will learn. Enjoy.

. . . A brief kudo for this seminal work by a major American cultural geographer and philosopher of human-environment interaction. For over 50 years Phil Wagner has been a leading thinker in the so-called "Berkeley school of Cultural Geography". His 1960's book on "Human Use of the Earth" prefigured much of today's environmental ethos. Earlier, Wagner & Marvin Mikesell edited "Readings in Cultural Geography" which has provided four decades of students and lay readers with the quintessential collection of critical thoughts from pivotal writers in this field. PLW's long time exploration into human communication has brought him to a hypothesis that the desire for recognition and status drives human behaviour. Hence, access to venues for such expression and feedback affect spatial organization of human performance, and render the built environment a stage for enactment of "geltung" or status seeking behaviour. The process of following Wagner's line of reasoning offers an additional range of directions for readers to explore their own understanding of communicative behaviour. Like Thorsten Veblen's 1920's work on elites and conspicuous consumption, or Vance Packard's 1950's work on the Status Seekers, or C. Wright Mills' 1960's querry into power relations, this little book and the Geltung hypothesis has the power to influence thinkers and students for generations to come. It also points to new interpretations of Hegel's question of the master-slave dialectic. Aside from a poor title, weak cover, and equally inept marketing, the book's major fault lies in too much editing intended to reach a pseudo - popular market. Hence the final thin volume leaves out much of the meat found in earlier drafts. Nevertheless, it is well written, easy to read, and bereft of jargon, which Wagner has translated into ordinary language, a hallmark of his down-to-earth erudition and scholarship.

The Simple Life is an outstanding book that reminds you of the importance of simplicity in life. There is no way I could give justice to Charles Wagner in this review, for the eloquent way in which he desrcibes a way of life that trascends the years and is worth working towards.

This book not only describes and helps the new teacher in the English classroom, but any high school classroom. It illustrates many common classroom problems, then helps identify solutions. Some of the situations they accentuate are defending a grade, mandated testing and especially for the English teacher-problems with student interpretation, what to do when the students have read the book before, and numerous others. As a pre-service teacher in college, I can honestly say that after all the droll books on theory and pedagogy, this book can teach you so much more in a real-life approach.

SPADA is a journal that contains some of most current ideas on historical swordsmanship by a number of the field's leading researchers. As a student of historical swordsmanship myself, I think it is an excellent step in the right direction for the progression of this school of study.

As far as the contents of the book are concerned, my hat goes off to the editor, Stephen Hand, for distilling such a diverse, and yet interesting range of papers from the vast array of excellent treatises available.

The book also features some interesting reports on some of the most recent activities undertaken in the WMA community. This provides the reader with a very good 'big picture' perspective into what advances are being made in what fields, and an appreciation for the vast range of people who are now interested in historical swordsmanship.

With regards to it's practicality, the book caters for many different tastes - whether you are interested in the finesse of renaissance fencing, or simply a medieval re-enactor using the trusty 'sword and shield' method. SPADA provides useful insights and a greater understanding of historical methods of fighting.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining a greater appreciation of historical swordsmanship, and anyone who is curious to know what the swordmanship community out there is doing. I rate it as a 'must have' item, and I look forward to more SPADA releases in the future.

cheers

Matt Partridge
Secretary
Order of the White Stag