Richard Wagner and the Education by Bad Example : Instead of an Introduction

Abstract

The essay deals with the assessment of Wagner's work through the prism of Kleist's dialectic of the bad example. Accordingly, the interpretation of a work is a matter of the broader whole, in which one distinguishes its "real" parts from the "apparent" ones.

The model here is Stravinsky's (but also Berlin's or Werfel's) contrasting of Wagner with Verdi, precisely in terms of what is real and what is not.

Keywords

• Richard Wagner
• anti-Semitism
• Heinrich von Kleist
• whole and part
• Hegel