Derek Hughes, ‘There Was No Need To Spell It Out’: Early Wagner Criticism and the Question of Anti-Semitism. Part 1: ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’

The 1907 volume of the Bayreuther Blätter included the first of a number of articles by Felix Gross, Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s half-Jewish private secretary: ‘Philosophische Deutungen des Wagner’schen Mythos’ (Philosophical Interpretations of Wagnerian Myth). It was followed by seven further articles, all concentrating on the Ring. All eight were subsequently revised as a book.

In the first article, Gross differentiates the kinds of reading demanded by non- mythological and mythological works. Two very young women of his acquaintance were puzzled by Kundry’s non-realistic transformations: why was she ugly in the realm of the Grail, yet seductively beautiful in that of Klingsor? Gross told them to go away and work out the answer. They did so. Kundry, they proudly announced, was Judaism, which is ugly beside Christianity yet beautiful in comparison with paganism.