[Wagner alludes here to the curse represented by man’s irrevocable subjection to egoism, which ultimately makes a truly supernatural redemption impossible]: the redemption of Ahasuerus – Going under!” [461W-{8/50} Judaism In Music: PW Vol. III, p. 100]
See also 1069W, and 1086W for further evidence that Wagner’s racism was primarily a subliminal projection of his suspicion that mankind is irrevocably irredeemable, and that therefore his fear of racial taint was a testament to his reluctance to acknowledge that mankind is inherently and universally driven by egoism, even in his longing for redemption from it. And, strange to say, given Wagner’s reputation for racism, Wagner once (See 1069W) declared that German resentment against the Jews stemmed from the German’s instinctive abhorrence of racism, as practiced by the Jews, whom Wagner accused of a narrowness of spirit, an excessive focus on the well-being of their own people, which made them ill-equipped to express what Wagner described as the “purely-human,” i.e., man’s essential self purified of all cultural and historical corrupting influences (as found in Wotan’s ideal self, Siegfried).
In the face of the impossibility of attaining supernatural liberation from one’s egoistic self, to become a new self, the only redemption possible is to attain the feeling of transcendence, and to remain unconscious of the knowledge that one is incapable of transcendence.
The free, fearless hero Wotan seeks is the Feuerbachian hero of art, who, according to Feuerbach and Wagner, has the privilege of freedom of expression not bound to any particular, practical claim, such as religion’s offer of redemption in an eternal, painless bliss in heaven, a false promise which assuages man’s fear of death and satisfies his unnaturally excessive desire for eternal bliss. The artist can enjoy this privilege because, unlike the claims of the religiously faithful that their beliefs are truth, the artist stakes no claim on the truth and its power (i.e., Siegfried, unlike Wotan, will stake no claim on the power of Alberich’s Ring). For these reasons Feuerbach suggests that while religion’s basis is existential fear, the artist is freed from it. Hence we find in Feuerbach the origin of our free hero, the fearless Siegfried:
[P. 180] “ … a God is an imaginary being, a product of fantasy; and because fantasy is the essential form or organ of poetry, it may also be said that religion is poetry, that a God is a poetic being. If religion is taken as poetry, may it not be inferred that to abolish religion, to break it down into its basic components, is to do away with poetry and all art? (…) My adversaries throw up their hands in horror at the hideous desolation to [P. 181] which my doctrine would reduce human life, since in their opinion it would destroy poetry along with religion and so deprive mankind of all poetic drive. (…)
(…) Far from annulling art, poetry, imagination, I deny religion only insofar as it is not poetry [i.e., not Wotan’s ideal self, Siegfried], but common prose [i.e., Wotan’s prosaic, practical self, which he loathes, represented by Mime]. And this brings us to an essential limitation of the statement that religion is poetry. In a sense it is poetry, but with one important difference: poetry and art in general do not represent their creations as anything but what they are, namely products of art, whereas religion represents its imaginary beings as real beings.” [261F-LER: p. 180-181]
“… unless religion enters in, an artist merely expects his images to be faithful and beautiful; he does not claim that a semblance of reality is reality itself. Religion, on the other hand, deceives people, or rather people deceive themselves in religion; for it does claim that the semblance of
