Nietzsche, Wagner, Primo Levi and the legacy of Bayreuth

• Grant number: 22/05427-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 01, 2024
• End date: June 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Henry Martin Burnett Junior
• Grantee: Henry Martin Burnett Junior
• Host Investigator: Joao Manuel Pardana Constancio
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract

This research project aims to discuss the broader meaning of the first Bayreuth Festival, organized by the Wagners in 1876, both from an aesthetic and an ethical point of view. By proposing a close link between music, culture, politics and society, Wagnerism proposes a nationalist revival of Germany from a redemptive program that sought in the sources of mythical narratives, and in a vigorous advance of musical language, a justification to transform the Festival in a concentrated core of power. Nietzsche, who at first unrestrictedly adhered to the program, noticed a profound contradiction when he noticed that Wagner approached historical Christianity and anti-Semitism in an integrated way. A few decades later, Leni-Riefensthal ethically and aesthetically incorporates devices born from the Bayreuth project: concentration of power, isolation, nationalism, monumentality and redemption. In Primo Levi's work, all these elements will be reviewed in the light of a singular ethics, within which the concept of eternal return implodes for the first time, since everything was possible, unless Auschwitz was repeated. How to think about Wagnerism today detached from its assimilation to National Socialism and to the ideals of Nazism? Is Nietzsche's critique in the IV Extemporaneous Consideration still capable of helping us to think of Wagnerism as one of the great achievements of German culture? How does Primo Levi's work create a Gordian knot in the discussion about the connections between ethics and aesthetics in the 20th century? (AU)