The title of this review is perhaps appropriate, as only one with the approximate intelligence of Elmer Fudd would give any merit to this convoluted, highly questionable stab at serious scholarship. And no, I'm not a hopeless Wagnerian who tailgates at the elitist festival at Bayreuth or who owns 50 different copies of Die Feen on CD. Wagner's anti-Semitism was real enough, but this book goes so far over the deep end that in the end it actually comes close to redeeming the accused (to a certain extent).

While not as obviously venomous as Paul Lawrence Rose's Wagner: Race, Revolution & Redemption, RW & the Anti-Semitic Imagination is just as questionable. Weiner's thesis is that all of the unpleasant characters in Wagner's later operas, with their appearance, smells & voices, are clandestine Jews. Weiner uses such airtight evidence as using another composer's (Mussorgsky) alleged anti-Semitic work to prove that Wagner was doing the same. I hope Mr. Weiner is never my attorney.

One of Weiner's favorite examples in trying to prove his thesis is The Ring's Alberich. Alberich is short, ugly, greedy, manipulative, and cruel to his own race. According to Weiner, this is proof positive that this character is a metaphor for Jewish people. Well....the Nibelungen, the race that Alberich enslaves with the ring & is a member of, were peaceful & not portayed by Wagner in a bad light before Alberich used the nasty little trinket. I suppose it never occurred to Weiner that the Nibelungen were depicted as dwarves in the saga centuries before Wagner even set the tale to music. Of the Nibelungen, only Alberich, Mime, and Hagen are shown as ruthless. The rest are downtrodden. Incidentally, Alberich is the only major character to survive the whole Ring cycle. If Wagner had truly genocidal feelings towards this metaphor, surely he would have had Wotan spear him in Rheingold.

Secondly, Weiner claims that Wagner had Hegelian notions of "the East" being a place of degeneracy and fear, while "the West" was enlightened. However, anyone who knows even a little about Wagner knows that Schopenhauer was a much bigger influence on his thinking than Hegel ever was. What were those statues of Buddha doing at Wahnfried? Why exactly did Wagner become a vegetarian? What is the entire premise of Tristan und Isolde? It was Schopenhauer's love of Eastern thought (primarily Buddhism) that motivated Wagner to formulate such things. Buddhist resignation, rather than any Teutonic drive to conquer, is at the heart of Wagner's later masterpieces.

If you want some good books that deal specifically with Wagner's anti-Semitism, I suggest Ring of Myths and/or The Darker Side of Genius. Unfortunately, both of these books are a little over Elmer's head.

Wagner's art is too profound and rich to be viewed as Marc Weiner desperately tries to convince us it should, ie, a tool of hate propaganda. Taking Weiner too serioulsly would only impoverish our experience of Wagner's operas. Weiner is so bigoted that he can only see hate in every note of Wagner's operas. Do not let it diminish the rich experience there is in Wagner's works awating for those who want to really explore them.

The most naked flaw of the book is that its rather simple themes are described in graduate school vocabulary of the most indulgent kind. Often, complex ideas require complex language. But here, there is little complexity beyond word choice. For example, instead of 'walk' Weiner consistently chooses 'perambulate'. Is MW's tongue in his cheek? Is he punishing us for all his years of educational drudgery? Is he (un)consciously emulating Wagner's steriotype of Jewish intellectuals being little more than stuffed shirts spouting flashy, showy, yet ultimately shallow knowledge? Other examples:

perambulatory peregrination

topoi, gustatory, mephitic

(he uses vouchafe at least 4 times!)

A big diction (my penis may be small but I have a huge diction...) is an asset, but MW continually trips over it. Obsfucation, like sloppy handwriting, is an aid to the inept--it forces the confused reader to assume that the writer has made some sort of profound point when in fact there is little beyond the vocabulary. But this style is endemic to academia, and it contributes to no one 'in the real world' taking academics seriously. More odiously, an anti-semite could take such an observation, combine it with the disproportionate representation of Jews in the academy vis a vis general population, and conclude that MW's book is evidence of the deleterious effect of Jewish thinking on higher education [pretentious word choice deliberate]. In this light, MW's book becomes fodder for high-brow anti-semites--and I assume that this was not his point. But again, this is a style problem, and there are much worse examples out there, I just can't think of one right now.

The content is simple. But even more simple than MW realizes. In the 19th c. Jews were often associated with 'bad' or evil attributes. So much so, that if one were to make an opera with an evil character, then the attributes of that character could be construed as Jewish. Furthermore, there any fool can find anti-semitism in a Wagner opera, particularly if one looks for it. But that is the beauty of Wagner. There is such a degree of complexity to his work, so many levels of interpretation, that one can find a myriad of meanings. I believe MW is on to something. But it is not profound, it is overdone, and it misses much more profound and meaningful levels of interpretation. The book would make a nice thesis, especially if it was shortened to about 100pp. But the book oversimplifies Wagner's operas, and it has the potential to ruin a reader's couriosity in Wagnerian opera, especially if that reader is sensitive and Jewish. And if you want to hate Wagner as a person, which I do, or if you think you like him, read 'Köhler's Nietsche and Wagner, A Lesson in Subjugation'. Here is a book that gives you more than you thought possible. And if you want some high-brow-dirt on Wagner or Nietzsche, its here.