Richard Wagner Zitate

Lohengrin in: Lohengrin, Erster Aufzug, Dritte Scene, 1850, zitiert nach: Richard Wagner, Lohengrin, Romantische Oper in drei Akten, Druck und Verlag von Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig, o.J., S.12,

Isolde in: Tristan und Isolde, Erster Aufzug, 1857, zitiert nach: Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen von Richard Wagner, Siebenter Band, Verlag von E. W. Fritzsch, Leipzig 1873, S.7,

Sachs in: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Zweiter Aufzug, 1862, zitiert nach: Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen von Richard Wagner, Siebenter Band, Verlag von E. W. Fritzsch, Leipzig 1873, S. 271,

Die Walküre: Erster Tag Aus Dem Bühnenfestspiel "Der Ring Des Nibelungen"

Helmwige in: Die Walküre, 3. Akt, 1. Szene, zeno.org http://www.zeno.org/nid/20005855446

Tristan et Isolde

The Ring of the Nibelung

Die Walküre/Siegmund, 1. Akt, 1. Szene. Die Musikdramen, Hamburg 1971. S. 587

Der Virtuose und der Künstler

An Franz Liszt, 30. Januar 1852, zitiert nach: Briefwechsel zwischen Wagner und Liszt, Erster Band, Druck und Verlag von Breitkopf und Härtel, 1887, S.164,

13. Februar 1883, letzte Notiz

Isolde in: Tristan und Isolde, Erster Aufzug, 1857, zitiert nach: Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen von Richard Wagner, Siebenter Band, Verlag von E. W. Fritzsch, Leipzig 1873, S.5,

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Lohengrin

Lohengrins Bedingung an Elsa in: Lohengrin, Erster Aufzug, Dritte Scene, 1850, zitiert nach: Richard Wagner, Lohengrin, Romantische Oper in drei Akten, Druck und Verlag von Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig, o.J., S.13,

21 June 1880
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)
Kontext: Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion's mane and shake at us... It's as if they avoid melodies, for fear of having perhaps stolen them from someone else.

Know Thyself (1881)
Kontext: What "Conservatives," "Liberals" and "Conservative-liberals," and finally "Democrats," "Socialists," or even "Social-democrats" etc., have lately uttered on the Jewish Question, must seem to us a trifle foolish; for none of these parties would think of testing that "Know thyself" upon themselves, not even the most indefinite and therefore the only one that styles itself in German, the "Progress"-party. There we see nothing but a clash of interests, whose object is common to all the disputants, common and ignoble: plainly the side most strongly organised, i. e. the most unscrupulous, will bear away the prize. With all our comprehensive State- and National-Economy, it would seem that we are victims to a dream now flattering, now terrifying, and finally asphyxiating: all are panting to awake therefrom; but it is the dream's peculiarity that, so long as it enmeshes us, we take it for real life, and fight against our wakening as though we fought with death. At last one crowning horror gives the tortured wretch the needful strength: he wakes, and what he held most real was but a figment of the dæmon of distraught mankind.
We who belong to none of all those parties, but seek our welfare solely in man's wakening to his simple hallowed dignity; we who are excluded from these parties as useless persons, and yet are sympathetically troubled for them, — we can only stand and watch the spasms of the dreamer, since no cry of ours can pierce to him. So let us save and tend and brace our best of forces, to bear a noble cordial to the sleeper when he wakes, as of himself he must at last.

Know Thyself (1881)
Kontext: What "Conservatives," "Liberals" and "Conservative-liberals," and finally "Democrats," "Socialists," or even "Social-democrats" etc., have lately uttered on the Jewish Question, must seem to us a trifle foolish; for none of these parties would think of testing that "Know thyself" upon themselves, not even the most indefinite and therefore the only one that styles itself in German, the "Progress"-party. There we see nothing but a clash of interests, whose object is common to all the disputants, common and ignoble: plainly the side most strongly organised, i. e. the most unscrupulous, will bear away the prize. With all our comprehensive State- and National-Economy, it would seem that we are victims to a dream now flattering, now terrifying, and finally asphyxiating: all are panting to awake therefrom; but it is the dream's peculiarity that, so long as it enmeshes us, we take it for real life, and fight against our wakening as though we fought with death. At last one crowning horror gives the tortured wretch the needful strength: he wakes, and what he held most real was but a figment of the dæmon of distraught mankind.
We who belong to none of all those parties, but seek our welfare solely in man's wakening to his simple hallowed dignity; we who are excluded from these parties as useless persons, and yet are sympathetically troubled for them, — we can only stand and watch the spasms of the dreamer, since no cry of ours can pierce to him. So let us save and tend and brace our best of forces, to bear a noble cordial to the sleeper when he wakes, as of himself he must at last.

Know Thyself (1881)
Kontext: What "Conservatives," "Liberals" and "Conservative-liberals," and finally "Democrats," "Socialists," or even "Social-democrats" etc., have lately uttered on the Jewish Question, must seem to us a trifle foolish; for none of these parties would think of testing that "Know thyself" upon themselves, not even the most indefinite and therefore the only one that styles itself in German, the "Progress"-party. There we see nothing but a clash of interests, whose object is common to all the disputants, common and ignoble: plainly the side most strongly organised, i. e. the most unscrupulous, will bear away the prize. With all our comprehensive State- and National-Economy, it would seem that we are victims to a dream now flattering, now terrifying, and finally asphyxiating: all are panting to awake therefrom; but it is the dream's peculiarity that, so long as it enmeshes us, we take it for real life, and fight against our wakening as though we fought with death. At last one crowning horror gives the tortured wretch the needful strength: he wakes, and what he held most real was but a figment of the dæmon of distraught mankind.
We who belong to none of all those parties, but seek our welfare solely in man's wakening to his simple hallowed dignity; we who are excluded from these parties as useless persons, and yet are sympathetically troubled for them, — we can only stand and watch the spasms of the dreamer, since no cry of ours can pierce to him. So let us save and tend and brace our best of forces, to bear a noble cordial to the sleeper when he wakes, as of himself he must at last.

Autobiographical Sketch (1843)
Kontext: The July Revolution took place; with one bound I became a revolutionist, and acquired the conviction that every decently active being ought to occupy himself with politics exclusively. I was only happy in the company of political writers, and I commenced an Overture upon a political theme. Thus was I minded, when I left school and went to the university: not, indeed, to devote myself to studying for any profession — for my musical career was now resolved on — but to attend lectures on philosophy and aesthetics. By this opportunity of improving my mind I profited as good as nothing, but gave myself up to all the excesses of student life; and that with such reckless levity, that they very soon revolted me.

Autobiographical Sketch (1843)
Kontext: The utter childishness of our provincial public's verdict upon any art-manifestation that may chance to make its first appearance in their own theatre — for they are only accustomed to witness performances of works already judged and accredited by the greater world outside — brought me to the decision, at no price to produce for the first time a largish work at a minor theatre. When, therefore, I felt again the instinctive need of undertaking a major work, I renounced all idea of obtaining a speedy representation of it in my immediate neighbourhood: I fixed my mind upon some theatre of first rank, that would some day produce it, and troubled myself but little as to where and when that theatre would be found.

Know Thyself (1881)
Kontext: Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about the invention of money and its enormous value as a civiliser, against such praises should be set the curse to which it has always been doomed in song and legend. If gold here figures as the demon strangling manhood's innocence, our greatest poet shews at last the goblin's game of paper money. The Nibelung's fateful ring become a pocket-book, might well complete the eerie picture of the spectral world-controller. By the advocates of our Progressive Civilisation this rulership is indeed regarded as a spiritual, nay, a moral power; for vanished Faith is now replaced by "Credit," that fiction of our mutual honesty kept upright by the most elaborate safeguards against loss and trickery. What comes to pass beneath the benedictions of this Credit we now are witnessing, and seem inclined to lay all blame upon the Jews. They certainly are virtuosi in an art which we but bungle: only, the coinage of money out of nil was invented by our Civilisation itself; or if the Jews are blamable for that, it is because our entire civilisation is a barbaro-judaic medley, in nowise a Christian creation.

2 December 1877
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)

Autobiographical Sketch (1843)

14 November 1878
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)

Know Thyself (1881)

Know Thyself (1881)

Part III
Religion and Art (1880)

Part III
Religion and Art (1880)

23 September 1878
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)

Last words of the hero in "The Life's End of a German Musician in Paris" (1840), a short story written for the Gazette Musicale, as quoted in Autobiographical Sketch (1843) http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagauto.htm

Part II
Religion and Art (1880)

Autobiographical Sketch (1843)

Part II
Religion and Art (1880)

Opera and Drama (1851)

Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, translated by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 422-424 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/wagner02.htm

Part II
Religion and Art (1880)

25 May 1877, quoting Richard's impressions of London
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)

26 February 1878
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)

Judaism in Music (1850)

Opera and Drama (1851)

Original: (de) "Die schwache Stunde kommt für jeden, da wird er dumm und lässt mit sich reden."
Quelle: Quotes from his operas, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Hans Sachs, Act 3 Scene 3

Original: (de) "Glaubt mir, des Menschen wahrster Wahn
wird ihm im Traume aufgetan:
all' Dichtkunst und Poeterei
ist nichts als Wahrtraumdeuterei."
Quelle: Quotes from his operas, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Hans Sachs, Act 3, Scene 2