Staging the Absolute: The Total Work of Art from Wagner to Mallarmé

David Roberts

doi:10.1177/0725513606066241

Staging the Absolute: The Total Work of Art from Wagner to Mallarmé

David Roberts

German Studies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review

Abstract

Heidegger places Wagner's will to the total work of art at the centre of the long 19th century. Nietzsche's and Mallarmé's responses to Wagner reflect all the ambiguities of modernism's myth of absolute creation: the dreams of a new mythology and a new community are shadowed by the knowledge that the gods are nothing more than our fictions. Nietzsche and Mallarmé continue and critically interrogate the two distinct lineages of the total work of art deriving from German romanticism and the French Revolution respectively, at the same time as they anticipate the contrary constructions of the sacred in society in Le Bon and Durkheim.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	90-106
Number of pages	17
Journal	Thesis Eleven
Volume	86
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513606066241
Publication status	Published - 1 Jan 2006

Keywords

aesthetic illusion
art
Gesamtkunstwerk
myth
religion
total work of art

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10.1177/0725513606066241

Cite this

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Staging the Absolute: The Total Work of Art from Wagner to Mallarmé

Abstract

Keywords

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