The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy.(Brief Article)

by Bryan Magee Metropolitan Books, 397 pp. $24.50

In an essay published this past January in The New Republic, historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen expresses astonishment that anti-Semitism continues to be "minimized" and "cordoned off" in discussions of "subjects to which it is centrally relevant." Alas -- for it is a book with many strengths, dealing with an inherently fascinating topic -- Bryan Magee's The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy is a painful example of this tendency. Magee, a distinguished scholar and broadcaster, author of the acclaimed Aspects of Wagner, allows his study to come undone by his worshipful attitude toward Wagner and his works, and by his sometimes simplistic handling of complex historical and cultural issues.

The Tristan Chord's table of contents warns of trouble to come, with "Wagner and Anti-Semitism" lopped off and relegated to an appendix. Magee draws a sharp distinction between the composer's personal loathing of Jews and any possible anti-Semitism in his works, maintaining that "there is not really anything anti-Semitic to see" in Wagner's operas. Though few, I think, would reject his contentions out of hand, Magee's shoddy way of defending them undercuts their credibility. He resorts to ad hominem attacks, dismissing the writings of an unnamed member of the Wagner family (great-grandson Gottfried, presumably) as analogous to "the emotional outbursts of teenagers." He makes the desperate argument that since Wagner was "the most compulsively self-explanatory" of artists but never described any of his characters as examples of Jewish treachery, they cannot possibly be construed as such. (Magee, who earlier writes of "the divergence between Wagner's conscious intentions and his artistic achievement" in the Ring, knows better than to invoke the intentional fallacy.) Similarly, he scolds his ...