The Perfect Wagnerite
The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring (originally published London, 1898) is a philosophical commentary on Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, by the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw offered it to those enthusiastic admirers of Wagner who "were unable to follow his ideas, and do not in the least understand the dilemma of Wotan." According to Shaw:
"I write this pamphlet for the assistance of those who wish to be introduced to the work on equal terms with that inner circle of adepts...The reason is that its dramatic moments lie quite outside the consciousness of people whose joys and sorrows are all domestic and personal, and whose religions and political ideas are purely conventional and superstitious. To them it is a struggle between half a dozen fairytale personages for a ring, involving hours of scolding and cheating, and one long scene in a dark gruesome mine, with gloomy, ugly music, and not a glimpse of a handsome young man or pretty woman. Only those of wider consciousness can follow it breathlessly, seeing in it the whole tragedy of human history and the whole horror of the dilemmas from which the world is shrinking today."
Podcasts:
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by The
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by The Killing Tree
Perfect
by: TheIt's a chilly English winter,
And solitude is never easy to maintain,
Except when it rains.
So I hang an empty smile beneath my empty eyes,
And go out for a walk.
The wet morning sun reflects off the paving-stones,
While a little dog barks its head off,
In the distance.
CHORUS (x2)
Oh, what a perfect day,
To think about my silly world.
My feet are firmly screwed to the floor.
What is there to fear from such a regular world?
Passing by a cemetery,
I think of all the little hopes and dreams,
That lie lifeless and unfilled beneath the soil.
I see an old man fingering his perishing flesh.
He tells himself he was a good man and did good things.
Amused and confused by life's little ironies,
He swallows his bottle of distilled damnation.
People turn around with unseeing eyes.
They're looking for something that doesn't exist.
The world you once knew is being eaten up by rust.
No-one has time for the past, but still, in God they trust.
The future is now, but it's all going wrong.
Bodies good for nothing, but it's to nothing they belong.
People say prayers and some work hard.
If you give them all your money, they'll give you their hearts.
This town ain't going like a ghost town.
It's going like hell....