The Coming of the Third Reich by Sir Richard J. Evans.
This book, which narrates the story of the background to the rise of National Socialist Germany, first appeared back in 2004. My excuse for reading it only now was that a Kindle eBook edition came out. I have little space on my shelves for such large tomes. In my background reading around the social and historical background to National Socialism for my Köhler thread, I had found myself reading a lot of Sir Ian Kershaw as well as John Toland. This is the first substantial book I have read by Sir Richard J. Evans, from whom I had only previously read articles by, and looked forward greatly to the chance to read something more lengthy.
Firstly, I must say I greatly sympathise with the task faced by the author of such a massive undertaking. The author needs to be able to grasp such an enormous range of topics ranging from artistic, philosophical, social, political, economic, to religious, covering so many decades. In this volume Sir Richard covers the years 1848-1935.
I make no claims to being a historian, and have never formally studied history as a discipline. This present review—more accurately a critique—of The Coming of the Third Reich, comes from a musicological and socio-philosophical perspective. The raison d'être of this review is that, invariably, when you try to cover so many areas all at once, someone with a more specialised knowledge of a particular area is going to take you to task for the generalisations you make on a specialised topic while necessarily summarising a complex area, in trying to squeeze it into the limited space of a single overarching volume. As such, summative books like this unavoidably do some violence to the sheer complexity of the subject matter.
In a sense, an undertaking like this is a necessary evil—I suspect, the author well knows that himself without me having to rail on about it. By "evil", I mean that it is impossible to do justice to something so vast by condensing it down into the space of a book. However, despite such reservations, my overall impression remains quite positive. Evans seems to have redeemed himself well, which is to say that however "evil" it is have to simplify things so much, one feels that the undertaking has been a necessary one, and certainly far from superfluous.
Right from the word go, I found myself nodding in agreement to a great many things. In particular, I totally agree with the translation of German words into the English language such as Führer into Leader or Mein Kampf into My Struggle. You may have noticed that when I do my own translating, that I may avoid using untranslated German political terms associated with National Socialism, mostly because these have taken on emotionally charged meaning in English they never had in the original language. For example, Evans points out that Gauleiter in English just means a "Nazi tyrant" and he so he renders it as "regional leader". Evans puts it well:
Where I disagree with Sir Richard is in his failure to translate Reich into "empire". The term 'Third Reich' is a bit of a pet peeve of mine—leaving the phrase only half translated like this is, in my view, terrible. It should be called either das Dritte Reich or the Third Empire. After all, "the British Empire" in German is das Britische Reich. If you are going to say Third Reich, you might as well also say 'British Reich'. If you laughed on reading that, it is because in English, the German word Reich has taken on pejorative meanings quite different to the original German language word.
I also think that for formal print publication purposes, the term 'Nazi' should be avoided, as it has acquired too much emotional baggage far detached from its historical context. It was originally a colloquial street term anyway. In their running street brawls, National Socialists were called Nazi, and socialists called Sozi. There is another fact, which Evans surprisingly neglects to mention, that the name Nazi is the diminutive form of "Ignatius" (as Bob is the diminutive of Robert), a common Bavarian name of the period. The diminutive form Nazi tended to be mean something like "simple Joe", implying someone who was a simpleton or peasant. Nazi was also a clever play on "National Socialism", suggesting they were a bunch of Lederhosen wearing, Bavarian beer-hall peasants, hardly to be taken seriously—their movement, of course, originated in Bavaria. Germans tend to poke fun at the Bavarians, as Europeans do at the Belgians, and English speaking people do at the Irish.
One fundamental principle that dictates the core tone of Evans' book is that:
This is certainly extremely laudable. It is too easy for writers who write with a wagging finger with the benefit of hindsight from the comfort of their armchair. In general, I should say that Evans succeeds highly admirably. However, there are notable exceptions to this, and this is what will drive much of the critique here. Nonetheless, these remain exceptions and I do not wish to give the impression of unduly jumping all over them.
Right from the word go, I found myself nodding in agreement to a great many things. In particular, I totally agree with the translation of German words into the English language such as Führer into Leader or Mein Kampf into My Struggle. You may have noticed that when I do my own translating, that I may avoid using untranslated German political terms associated with National Socialism, mostly because these have taken on emotionally charged meaning in English they never had in the original language. For example, Evans points out that Gauleiter in English just means a "Nazi tyrant" and he so he renders it as "regional leader". Evans puts it well:
Retaining the German is a form of mystification, even romanticization, which should be avoided.
Where I disagree with Sir Richard is in his failure to translate Reich into "empire". The term 'Third Reich' is a bit of a pet peeve of mine—leaving the phrase only half translated like this is, in my view, terrible. It should be called either das Dritte Reich or the Third Empire. After all, "the British Empire" in German is das Britische Reich. If you are going to say Third Reich, you might as well also say 'British Reich'. If you laughed on reading that, it is because in English, the German word Reich has taken on pejorative meanings quite different to the original German language word.
I also think that for formal print publication purposes, the term 'Nazi' should be avoided, as it has acquired too much emotional baggage far detached from its historical context. It was originally a colloquial street term anyway. In their running street brawls, National Socialists were called Nazi, and socialists called Sozi. There is another fact, which Evans surprisingly neglects to mention, that the name Nazi is the diminutive form of "Ignatius" (as Bob is the diminutive of Robert), a common Bavarian name of the period. The diminutive form Nazi tended to be mean something like "simple Joe", implying someone who was a simpleton or peasant. Nazi was also a clever play on "National Socialism", suggesting they were a bunch of Lederhosen wearing, Bavarian beer-hall peasants, hardly to be taken seriously—their movement, of course, originated in Bavaria. Germans tend to poke fun at the Bavarians, as Europeans do at the Belgians, and English speaking people do at the Irish.
One fundamental principle that dictates the core tone of Evans' book is that:
It seems to me inappropriate for a work of history to indulge in the luxury of moral judgment. For one thing, it is unhistorical; for another, it is arrogant and presumptuous.
This is certainly extremely laudable. It is too easy for writers who write with a wagging finger with the benefit of hindsight from the comfort of their armchair. In general, I should say that Evans succeeds highly admirably. However, there are notable exceptions to this, and this is what will drive much of the critique here. Nonetheless, these remain exceptions and I do not wish to give the impression of unduly jumping all over them.
Perhaps the most impressive thing of all about the book was the quality of the overall narrative. In fact, I had a lot of trouble putting the book down. The story of the Machiavellian scheming of the National Socialists to systematically subvert and systematically break down democracy in the Weimar Republic was breathtaking in its the sheer cynicism and utter ruthlessness on display. No novelist could ever come up with a narrative so utterly frightful. I simply found myself unable to put the book down.
I especially agreed wholeheartedly about the phoniness of the National "Socialist" usurpation of the term "revolution", when in fact their nostalgia for the old Germanic order, and contempt for any socially progressive ideal clearly made them profoundly reactionary and conservative. It is the same phoniness as the "socialism" in National Socialism. Evans clearly narrates the story of how of how they crushed the union movement and in turn effectively set themselves up as the new ersatz union—the phoney "socialists" falsely claiming to represent the workers' best interests. The claim that they represented the working class is clearly similar to the sort of claims by right-wing groups today to the effect that lowering minimal wages is in the "best interests" of the workers because it reduces unemployment: "we are looking after you". What utterly paternalistic and pretentious nonsense.
Another good point in recounting the background to anti-Semitism in turn of the century Europe is how Evans tells us that:
All of these positives aside, the thing I really wish to focus on during the course of this critique is the handling of musicological and philosophical issues.
The elephant in the room is that Wagner took part in the 1849 pro-democratic movement risking his life to take up musket for the cause. Wagner's friends were all imprisoned and given the death sentence (though never carried out), and Wagner was forced into exile for ten years. No composer in the history of music has risked his life as much as Wagner in the fight for freedom and democracy. The outcome? Yes, you guessed it, Evans suggests that Wagner intellectually contributed to the foundation of German fascism and the Holocaust!
This is a chaotic mixture of extremely enlightened insight with a whole lot of confused statements made without a proper study of the extensive primary texts written by Wagner himself. The most curious thing of all is that, considering that Evan is a historian, the views put forward by Wagner fail to be placed in proper historical context, and there is a complete lack of reference to quality primary source material—namely, what was written by Wagner himself, unfiltered by Cosima. Nor, it should be mentioned, were Wagner comments about Nathan the Wise ever published during either his or Cosima's lifetimes. Cosima's diaries were first published in 1976, making any suggestion a private joke recorded there could have contributed intellectually to the rise of the Dritte Reich thoroughly ridiculous.
The quip about Nathan the Wise is clearly stated by Cosima as being a private joke, never intended to even be published like a collection of private letters. She describes it as being said "im heftigen Scherz": "as a severe joke". If you are going to base the whole of the interpretation of The Ring on a joke, as being a story of the annihilation of the Jewish Nibelung by the Aryan gods, we should ask ourselves what might become of Karl Marx, who once wrote in a private letter concerning Ferdinand Lassalle:
If you are going to interpret Wagner in this absurdly reductionistic manner, then you should be consistent and read Marx the same way too. Then you could run the full right-wing polemic about National Socialism allegedly being a socialist, left-wing movement, rather than a reactionary ultra right-wing movement. In truth, the National Socialist formed the right-wing opposition in the Weimar Reichstag, the effective Tory or Republican bulwark against the Social Democrats and Communists to their left. It is a very disingenuous trick to try to flip the blame onto the political left, based on little more than a rubber ducky argument.
Admittedly though, Sir Richard, to his immense credit, does correctly mention the fact that Judaism in Music is a pro-assimilationist doctrine. We know that simply because Wagner said so:
That one is easy—despite the selective blindness indulged in by the most hysterical of polemicists. The problem is that Evans literally bases his claims on Wagner's alleged mutation into a proto-Nazi völkisch racist-nationalism on just one private joke, never intended for public airing. Not only that but the joke has been relayed to us via the filter of Cosima, and we do not have Wagner's version of the same conversation. It must always be kept in mind that Cosima was raised with a vicious anti-Semitism that came from her pious Catholic upbringing, which taught that the Jews were the offspring of Judah. Hitler too was Catholic and sang as choirboy in his church. In other words, one must always read the Cosima diaries with a pinch of salt and question to what extent it is a reflection of Cosima's own views, projected onto Wagner, rather than those of Wagner himself. As for Karl Marx, when he used the word "nigger" he was not joking. Yet, ultimately, like Marx, Wagner also welcomed the social justice of the fight against slavery brought about by the American civil war:
In Part II of this series reviewing The Coming of the Third Reich, we will examine in greater detail the intellectual and socio-political background to the anti-Semitic movements of Wagner's own day. Needless to say this is probably something that Evans himself ought to have done. Evans knows better than anyone that Wagner's views on the Jewish questions need to be understood in the socio-political background of his own century rather than of the century after Wagner's death. Indeed, it was none other than Evans himself who wrote in his scathing review of Joachim Köhler's Wagner's Hitler:
Yet, when it comes down to it, Evan himself fails to fully investigate the socio-political background to Wagner's own views on the so-called Jewish question, and ends up committing similar errors to Köhler, causing him to "indulge in the luxury of moral judgment" in precisely the manner that he claims to staunchly avoid. Sadly, it appears that even the finest historians are helplessly reduced to effectively writing salacious Nazi UFO conspiracy theories at the very mention of Wagner's name—even those who really should know better. It is such a shame to see an otherwise fine book so seriously marred like this, as the seriousness of the methodological lapse—indeed collapse may be a better description—potentially casts doubt on the credibility of the entire project. I guess, when it comes to writing about the German Third Empire, one must merely count one's blessings and give gratitude for not being subjected to unduly long accounts reducing it all to Hitler's missing testicle.
However, in his defence, I must also state that a historian writing an overarching summative account like this will inevitably be reliant on secondary literature. The problems that Sir Richard is encountering is perhaps more a reflection of the woeful state of Wagner studies in general.
I especially agreed wholeheartedly about the phoniness of the National "Socialist" usurpation of the term "revolution", when in fact their nostalgia for the old Germanic order, and contempt for any socially progressive ideal clearly made them profoundly reactionary and conservative. It is the same phoniness as the "socialism" in National Socialism. Evans clearly narrates the story of how of how they crushed the union movement and in turn effectively set themselves up as the new ersatz union—the phoney "socialists" falsely claiming to represent the workers' best interests. The claim that they represented the working class is clearly similar to the sort of claims by right-wing groups today to the effect that lowering minimal wages is in the "best interests" of the workers because it reduces unemployment: "we are looking after you". What utterly paternalistic and pretentious nonsense.
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| "Works Sets You Free" (Arbeit Macht Frei): the phoney "socialist" motto over the entrance of Auschwitz |
Another good point in recounting the background to anti-Semitism in turn of the century Europe is how Evans tells us that:
A historian once speculated on what would happen if a time-traveller from 1945 arrived back in Europe just before the First World War, and told an intelligent and well-informed contemporary that within thirty years a European nation would make a systematic attempt to kill all the Jews of Europe and exterminate nearly six million in the process. If the time-traveller invited the contemporary to guess which nation it would be, the chances were that he would have pointed to France, where the Dreyfus affair had recently led to a massive outbreak of virulent popular antisemitism. Or it might be Russia, where the Tsarist ‘Black Hundreds’ had been massacring large numbers of Jews in the wake of the failed Revolution of 1905. That Germany, with its highly acculturated Jewish community and its comparative lack of overt or violent political antisemitism, would be the nation to launch this exterminatory campaign would hardly have occurred to him.
All of these positives aside, the thing I really wish to focus on during the course of this critique is the handling of musicological and philosophical issues.
Wagner himself had already been a cultural antisemite in the early 1850s, arguing in his notorious book Judaism in Music that the ‘Jewish spirit’ was inimical to musical profundity. His remedy was for the complete assimilation of Jews into German culture, and the replacement of the Jewish religion, indeed all religion, by secular aesthetic impulses of the sort he poured into his own music-dramas. But towards the end of his life his views took on an increasingly racist tone under the influence of his second wife, Cosima, daughter of the composer Franz Liszt. By the end of the 1875 she was recording in her diaries that Wagner, whose outlook on civilization was distinctly pessimistic by this time, had read Wilhelm Marr’s antisemitic tract of 1873 and broadly agreed with it. As a consequence of this shift in his position, Wagner no longer desired the assimilation of the Jews into German society, but their exclusion from it. In 1881, discussing Lessing’s classic play Nathan the Wise and a disastrous tire in the Vienna Ring Theatre, in which more than four hundred people, many of them Jewish, had died, Cosima noted that her husband said ‘in a vehement quip that all Jews should burn in a performance of “Nathan”’
This is a chaotic mixture of extremely enlightened insight with a whole lot of confused statements made without a proper study of the extensive primary texts written by Wagner himself. The most curious thing of all is that, considering that Evan is a historian, the views put forward by Wagner fail to be placed in proper historical context, and there is a complete lack of reference to quality primary source material—namely, what was written by Wagner himself, unfiltered by Cosima. Nor, it should be mentioned, were Wagner comments about Nathan the Wise ever published during either his or Cosima's lifetimes. Cosima's diaries were first published in 1976, making any suggestion a private joke recorded there could have contributed intellectually to the rise of the Dritte Reich thoroughly ridiculous.
The quip about Nathan the Wise is clearly stated by Cosima as being a private joke, never intended to even be published like a collection of private letters. She describes it as being said "im heftigen Scherz": "as a severe joke". If you are going to base the whole of the interpretation of The Ring on a joke, as being a story of the annihilation of the Jewish Nibelung by the Aryan gods, we should ask ourselves what might become of Karl Marx, who once wrote in a private letter concerning Ferdinand Lassalle:
It is now quite plain to me — as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify — that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses' flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow's importunity is also nigger-like.
London, 30 July 1862; in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 41, p. 388 (my emphasis)Take this together with Marx's polemics against Judaism in Zur Judenfrage:
The monotheism of the Jew, therefore, is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and as such appears in pure form as soon as civil society has fully given birth to the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money.Does this mean Marx is a rabid völkisch racist and that the whole of Das Kapital is now to be read, along with Wagner's Ring, as an advocacy of the extermination of the Jews (capitalists), and other inferior races, by the Aryans (proletariate) destined to inherit the earth? You could follow by pointing out that Nazis called themselves National Socialists—just like Marx, the polemicist would say.
If you are going to interpret Wagner in this absurdly reductionistic manner, then you should be consistent and read Marx the same way too. Then you could run the full right-wing polemic about National Socialism allegedly being a socialist, left-wing movement, rather than a reactionary ultra right-wing movement. In truth, the National Socialist formed the right-wing opposition in the Weimar Reichstag, the effective Tory or Republican bulwark against the Social Democrats and Communists to their left. It is a very disingenuous trick to try to flip the blame onto the political left, based on little more than a rubber ducky argument.
Admittedly though, Sir Richard, to his immense credit, does correctly mention the fact that Judaism in Music is a pro-assimilationist doctrine. We know that simply because Wagner said so:
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| Wagner called for the "Assimilation" of the Jews: scan from original German printing of Judaism in Music. |
That one is easy—despite the selective blindness indulged in by the most hysterical of polemicists. The problem is that Evans literally bases his claims on Wagner's alleged mutation into a proto-Nazi völkisch racist-nationalism on just one private joke, never intended for public airing. Not only that but the joke has been relayed to us via the filter of Cosima, and we do not have Wagner's version of the same conversation. It must always be kept in mind that Cosima was raised with a vicious anti-Semitism that came from her pious Catholic upbringing, which taught that the Jews were the offspring of Judah. Hitler too was Catholic and sang as choirboy in his church. In other words, one must always read the Cosima diaries with a pinch of salt and question to what extent it is a reflection of Cosima's own views, projected onto Wagner, rather than those of Wagner himself. As for Karl Marx, when he used the word "nigger" he was not joking. Yet, ultimately, like Marx, Wagner also welcomed the social justice of the fight against slavery brought about by the American civil war:
Vol II p382 15th July 1879 Cosima Diary: In the evening R. talks about America and the American war with admiration as the only war with a humane purpose.
Vol II p382 15th July 1879 Cosimas Tagebuch: Abends spricht R. über Amerika und den amerikanischen Krieg mit Bewunderung als des einzingen Krieges zu einem humanen Zweck.
The next thing that simply must be examined in greater detail is the statement by Evans that:
"[b]y the end of the 1875 ... Wagner['s] ... outlook on civilization was distinctly pessimistic by this time". [my emphasis]
The philosophical term "pessimistic" is being used extremely sloppily. If he is suggesting that his adoption of Schopenhauer's "pessimism" is de facto a wholesale acceptance of proto-Nazi ideology, Evans fails to even attempt to demonstrate in what way Schopenhauerian idealism represents anything remotely resembling fascist ideology. One could say that the pessimism of Schopenhauer is a result of his acceptance of the Buddhist idea that suffering is the most basic condition of humanity. On the basis of that you could accuse the Dalai Lama of being a Nazi "pessimist". You could also say that because Freud's pessimistic idea of the Id driving the human mind is essentially the same as the Schopenhauerian Blind Will, that therefore Freud is a Nazi too. Evans has also failed to read what Wagner himself wrote on the subject of the so-called pessimism of Schopenhauer's philosophy:
However, as he himself is alone is that which strives against himself, so his rage expresses itself as a nothing other than its self-negation. The only thing that can finally bring him to his realisation of that which can neutralise suffering is compassion, which as the abolition [Aufhebung] of the Will expresses the negation of a negation, which we understand by the rule of logic as an affirmation.
Da er aber doch selbst wiederum allein nur dieses sich Entgegenstrebende ist, so drückt sein Wüten nichts Anderes als sein Selbst-Verneinung aus, und hierüber zur Selbstbesinnung zu gelangen darf endlich nur das dem Leiden entkeimende Mitleiden ermöglichen, welches dann als Aufhebung des Willens die Negation einer Negation ausdrückt, die wir nach Regeln der Logik als Affirmation verstehen.
Religion und Kunst (1880) Band X Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen
In other words, Wagner saw Schopenhauer's philosophy as an Aufhebung that was ultimately affirmative.
If, on the other hand, Evans is insinuating that Wagner had adopted Gobineau's "pessimistic" outlook on the degeneration of humanity through racial intermixing, once again, he needed to have produced an argument to that effect, rather than merely insinuating that Schopenhauer and Gobineau were ideologically united by their "pessimism". However, here too Evans is deeply mistaken:
The blood of the Saviour flowing from his head, from his wounds on the cross — who would commit such an outrage as to ask whether it might belong to the white or any other race?
From Heldentum und Christentum (my translation)
In the same text Wagner welcomes:
Another polemical use of the term "pessimist" is to as an insult to hurl against anyone who refuses to believe in the imminent coming of the Marxist Utopia. In this usage, Marxists are seen as "idealists" and non-believers as "pessimists". It is certainly true that Wagner rejected Marxism and Communism. Some would see Wagner's pro-democratic ideals as representing an attitude "pessimistic" towards Marxist "idealism", and use this as evidence of Wagner being being a "pessimistic" bourgeois proto-Nazi. However, once you start a crusade condemning all "pessimists" as Nazis, you can end up damning almost anyone as a Nazi, ripe for the Gulag—including any fellow supporter of democracy. One sincerely hopes that Evans is not condescending to using the term "pessimist" in quite such an inflammatory and outrageously polemic way à la Köhler, especially while claiming to write a non-judgemental narrative of history. Or to recapitulate Evans' very own words:
. . . the possibility that everyone will become the same through the intermixing of increasingly similar becoming races . . . only conceivable through a commonly agreed moral ground, just as we must think that the True Christianity calls us to carry out.
Heldentum und Christentum. My translationThis clearly demonstrates Wagner hopes for a future unified humanity that had overcome the ethnic and religious divisions that continue to plague it to this day.
Another polemical use of the term "pessimist" is to as an insult to hurl against anyone who refuses to believe in the imminent coming of the Marxist Utopia. In this usage, Marxists are seen as "idealists" and non-believers as "pessimists". It is certainly true that Wagner rejected Marxism and Communism. Some would see Wagner's pro-democratic ideals as representing an attitude "pessimistic" towards Marxist "idealism", and use this as evidence of Wagner being being a "pessimistic" bourgeois proto-Nazi. However, once you start a crusade condemning all "pessimists" as Nazis, you can end up damning almost anyone as a Nazi, ripe for the Gulag—including any fellow supporter of democracy. One sincerely hopes that Evans is not condescending to using the term "pessimist" in quite such an inflammatory and outrageously polemic way à la Köhler, especially while claiming to write a non-judgemental narrative of history. Or to recapitulate Evans' very own words:
It seems to me inappropriate for a work of history to indulge in the luxury of moral judgment. For one thing, it is unhistorical; for another, it is arrogant and presumptuous.
In Part II of this series reviewing The Coming of the Third Reich, we will examine in greater detail the intellectual and socio-political background to the anti-Semitic movements of Wagner's own day. Needless to say this is probably something that Evans himself ought to have done. Evans knows better than anyone that Wagner's views on the Jewish questions need to be understood in the socio-political background of his own century rather than of the century after Wagner's death. Indeed, it was none other than Evans himself who wrote in his scathing review of Joachim Köhler's Wagner's Hitler:
Hitler saw in Wagner what he wanted to see and took from his writings and his music dramas what he wanted to take. His own antisemitism had very different roots and was of a very different kind from that of Wagner.
Evans: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 147-152. Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180752
Yet, when it comes down to it, Evan himself fails to fully investigate the socio-political background to Wagner's own views on the so-called Jewish question, and ends up committing similar errors to Köhler, causing him to "indulge in the luxury of moral judgment" in precisely the manner that he claims to staunchly avoid. Sadly, it appears that even the finest historians are helplessly reduced to effectively writing salacious Nazi UFO conspiracy theories at the very mention of Wagner's name—even those who really should know better. It is such a shame to see an otherwise fine book so seriously marred like this, as the seriousness of the methodological lapse—indeed collapse may be a better description—potentially casts doubt on the credibility of the entire project. I guess, when it comes to writing about the German Third Empire, one must merely count one's blessings and give gratitude for not being subjected to unduly long accounts reducing it all to Hitler's missing testicle.
However, in his defence, I must also state that a historian writing an overarching summative account like this will inevitably be reliant on secondary literature. The problems that Sir Richard is encountering is perhaps more a reflection of the woeful state of Wagner studies in general.
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