Wagner's Prose Works

Art, drama and redemption; a lifelong critique of modernity

While Wagner's prose covers many topics, through every turn runs one conviction: that art, rightly made, is not entertainment but the place where a people comes to understand itself, and that the commercial opera house had betrayed this. What changes is his account of why art matters. It is first dramatic truth set against operatic convention, then the communal artwork of a liberated humanity, then, after Schopenhauer, the voice of the world's inner essence, and finally the keeper of a spiritual truth he believed the churches had lost.

Clicking a title opens an AI-generated overview of the work, to help you decide what rewards closer reading, and for most works, beside it, the full text in William Ashton Ellis's English translation. Ellis, a Theosophist who devoted himself to translating Wagner's complete prose between 1892 and 1907, preserves the rhetorical grandeur at the cost of readability, and his Victorian diction can be demanding.

The apprentice years. The earliest essays, written in Leipzig, Magdeburg and Riga, are those of a working theatre musician. On German Opera, Pasticcio and the note on Bellini scorn German composers' learned heaviness and praise Italian song and French dramatic sense, asking for a composer who would be neither Italian, French, nor merely German. In Paris, poor and unperformed, Wagner turned to fiction and journalism. A Pilgrimage to Beethoven, An End in Paris, The Artist and Publicity and A Happy Evening set the idealist against the marketplace and make Beethoven a tutelary figure: music begins where words stop, and the Beethoven of the Pilgrimage already imagines joining voice to orchestra. The dying musician's creed, "I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven," is half a joke and half a confession of faith in art.

Revolution and theory. In Dresden around 1848 Wagner looked to myth for the meaning of history. The Wibelungen reads the Nibelung Hoard as the symbol of worldly power, rising into the ideal of the Grail and sinking into mere property, and The Nibelungen-Myth sketches the drama that would become the Ring. After his flight into exile, the Zurich writings turned critique into programme. Art and Revolution sets the Athenian festival, where a whole free people gathered before tragedy, against a modern theatre that serves money. The Artwork of the Future imagines dance, music and poetry, separated since the Greeks, reunited in drama by a fellowship of artists. Opera and Drama works out the method, with myth as subject, verse-melody born of the words, and an orchestra that carries remembrance and foreboding. A Communication to My Friends recasts his own operas as stages toward this goal.

From theory back to the stage. The practical writings show how much of Wagner's thinking was about performance itself. The Tannhäuser and Dutchman pamphlets demand reading rehearsals, gestures timed to the bar, and an end to cuts. The Music of the Future looks back on the theoretical years as an "abnormal state," says that Tristan went beyond his own system, and offers instead the image of "infinite melody." On Conducting, A Glance at the German Operatic Stage and the later essays on opera poetry and on the application of music to drama return again and again to tempo, singing and the coherence of the whole. In The Destiny of Opera and On the Name "Musikdrama" music is no longer the servant of drama but its mother.

Schopenhauer and the late essays. Reading Schopenhauer changed the framework. On State and Religion, written for King Ludwig, treats the state as a necessary illusion and art as an illusion one knowingly accepts. Beethoven holds that music reveals the inner essence of the world directly, like a prophetic dream. In the Bayreuth years the reformer of the stage became a critic of civilisation. The regeneration essays, beginning with Religion and Art and continued in What Boots This Knowledge?, Know Thyself and Hero-dom and Christendom, turn from the theatre to the decline and possible renewal of humanity, and On the Womanly breaks off mid-thought.

Spirituality. Wagner believed throughout his life that art served a sacred purpose, though what he meant by "sacred" changed with his thought. In the Paris stories it is a personal, half-ironic faith: the dying musician's creed in "God, Mozart and Beethoven." In the Zurich writings it is communal rather than supernatural. Greek tragedy, in Art and Revolution, was a religious festival in which a free people beheld its own nature, and the essay ends by calling for an altar to both Jesus and Apollo. The myths of these years point the same way: in The Wibelungen the Hoard of worldly power rises into the Grail, and in The Nibelungen-Myth the gods' guilt is redeemed only by a free human deed and Brünnhild's sacrifice.

Schopenhauer gave this intuition a metaphysics, and with it an Indian dimension. Through him Wagner came to read Christianity alongside Buddhism and the Vedantic teaching he called Brahminism. Religion and Art calls Brahminism, with its offshoot Buddhism, and Christianity "the two sublimest of religions," united in teaching renunciation of the world and its passions. He takes from the Brahmin the words "This is thyself!", spoken before the whole of living creation, as the root of compassion for all that lives, praises the Buddha's example of renunciation and meekness, and in Know Thyself sets the Brahmin's "all of this art thou" beside the Delphic oracle. Christ remains the centre, "not wise, but divine," valued for his deed of willing suffering, but Wagner's Christianity is a compound one, in which the Gospel of compassion and the Eastern teaching of the oneness of life and denial of the will express the same truth. It is a heterodox faith, reverent toward Christ and indifferent or hostile to the doctrine and authority of the Church.

Art, in this scheme, does not replace religion but rescues it. On State and Religion describes art as an illusion knowingly embraced, which lifts us above life and shows it as a play. Religion and Art argues that when religion hardens into dogma, art can take up its symbols and reveal their hidden truth, because the artist presents his work openly as invention and seeks to move us rather than to be believed. Music is the purest voice of this spirit, and Beethoven treats it as a direct revelation of the world's inner essence. Around it Wagner builds a vision of regeneration through compassion and the renunciation of violence, and Bayreuth was to be a Bühnenfestspiel, a stage festival, not an evening's amusement.

He was specific about the response he hoped to awaken. Drama must speak to feeling, not intellect: in The Music of the Future the spectator, absorbed in the action, forgets the restless question "Why?", and the music works on him like a forest at night whose many voices merge into one melody that disposes him to devotion. The performance essays ask for the audience's deepest pity and fellow-suffering, and Beethoven speaks of music raising us to "the highest ecstasy of consciousness of the infinite," a rapture second only to the saint's. What Wagner sought was not conversion to a creed but something like an awakening, a moment in which the listener is drawn out of self-concern into compassion and a glimpse of the world's inner meaning.

Antisemitism. Wagner's hostility to Jews recurs throughout the prose and is closely tied to his attack on commerce, the press and what he saw as rootless modern culture. It appears openly in Judaism in Music, first published under a pseudonym in 1850 and reissued under his own name in 1869, in Modern and Know Thyself, and in passing in On Conducting. The early writings frame it mainly in cultural terms, but the late essays, influenced by Gobineau, adopt explicitly racial language, even as Wagner set Christian redemption against strict racial determinism.

Title	Original Title	Year	Subject
Pasticcio	Pasticcio	1834	An early essay, published under the pseudonym “Canto Spianato” (“smooth singing”), defending the art of song. The young Wagner laments the decline of German solo singing, attacks composers who bury the voice under heavy orchestration and write against its nature, and urges them to learn from the Italian cantabile, Gluck’s declamation and Mozart’s melody to create a new dramatic art.
On German Opera	Die deutsche Oper	1834	Wagner’s first published essay, written when he was twenty-one. Declaring that Germany has fine instrumental music but no German opera, he blames German composers’ love of learning and erudition, praises the beauty of Italian song and the dramatic truth of French opera, criticises Weber’s Euryanthe, and calls for a new kind of composer who writes neither Italian, nor French, nor even German.
Bellini: A Word in Season	Bellini. Ein Wort zu seiner Zeit	1837	A brief article written in Riga to announce a performance of Bellini’s Norma for Wagner’s benefit. The young Wagner urges learned German musicians to set aside their prejudices and enjoy Bellini’s simple, noble melody, calls on German composers to cultivate “Song, Song, and a third time Song,” and praises Norma as rising to the tragic grandeur of the Greeks.
A Pilgrimage to Beethoven	Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven	1840	A comic novella written in Paris, presented as the journal of a poor young German musician, R., who walks all the way to Vienna to meet his idol Beethoven, is constantly thwarted by a rich, persistent Englishman with the same goal, and finally hears Beethoven himself outline the idea of uniting instruments and voice that would become the Ninth Symphony, and, in Wagner’s hands, the music drama.
The Virtuoso and the Artist	Der Virtuos und der Künstler	1840	A humorous article written in Paris on the relationship between composer and performer. Through the fable of a magic jewel buried in a mine and two lost miners, standing for Mozart and Beethoven, Wagner argues that the performer’s duty is faithful reproduction of the composer’s intentions, and illustrates how virtuosity betrays art with a satirical account of Don Giovanni at the Théâtre-Italien, where the audience waited all evening for Rubini’s famous high note.
Pergolesi's “Stabat Mater”	"Stabat Mater" de Pergolèse	1840	A review written for the Paris Gazette musicale of Alexis Lvov’s arrangement of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater for full orchestra and chorus. Wagner defends the careful modernisation of old masterpieces, taking Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s Messiah as the model, and praises Lvov’s restraint while pointing out a few passages where he went astray.
On German Music	Über deutsches Musikwesen	1840	Wagner’s first article for the Paris Gazette musicale, written to explain German music to French readers. He describes the German as the true “musician” who loves music for itself, traces German music’s roots in modest family life, praises its instrumental music, the Protestant chorale and Bach’s Passions, presents Mozart’s Magic Flute and Weber’s Freischütz as the summits of German opera, and ends by hoping for an artistic union of Germany and France.
Rossini's Stabat Mater	Rossini's "Stabat Mater"	1841	A satirical report from Paris, sent under the pseudonym “H. Valentino” to Robert Schumann’s Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Wagner mocks the fashionable piety of Parisian high society, its ladies who swooned at Mozart’s Requiem only to find its fugues “taste like physic,” and the farcical legal battle among publishers over Rossini’s newly surfaced Stabat Mater.
A Happy Evening	Ein glücklicher Abend	1841	A dialogue written in Paris, in which the narrator and his friend R., the musician of “An End in Paris,” discuss music over a bowl of punch after an open-air concert of Mozart’s E flat and Beethoven’s A major symphonies. R. argues that music begins where words stop, rejects tone painting and literary programmes, and explains how Beethoven’s “Eroica,” though inspired by Bonaparte, is a purely musical creation.
The Artist and Publicity	Der Künstler und die Öffentlichkeit	1841	A short reflective piece written in Paris, presented as a page from the journal of the dead musician of “An End in Paris.” Wagner asks why a genius, whose highest joy lies in solitary creation, feels driven to court a bored and uncomprehending public, and finds the answer in his longing for the freedom to share his gift, a longing that drags him into humiliation in the marketplace of art.
An End in Paris	Ein Ende in Paris	1841	A tragicomic novella written in Paris as a sequel to “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven.” The narrator recounts the fate of his friend R., an idealistic German musician who came to Paris with his Newfoundland dog hoping to win fame through merit alone, and who, after a year of waiting in theatre antechambers, lost his dog to a wealthy Englishman and died of hunger, leaving a famous artistic creed: “I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven.”
On the Overture	Über die Ouvertüre	1841	An essay for the Paris Gazette musicale on the history and purpose of the operatic overture. Wagner traces the overture from a mere signal that singing will begin to the masterpieces of Gluck, Mozart, Cherubini, Beethoven and Weber, contrasts the Don Giovanni Overture with the Leonore Overture, and concludes that the ideal overture should express the drama’s leading idea through purely musical means, as Gluck’s overture to Iphigénie en Aulide does.
Autobiographic Sketch	Autobiographische Skizze	1842	Wagner’s account of his early life, written at the request of Heinrich Laube for the Zeitung für die elegante Welt. It describes his childhood in Leipzig and Dresden, his early passions for Weber, Shakespeare and Beethoven, his studies with Weinlig, his first operas and conducting posts, his stormy voyage to Paris, his years of poverty there, and his return to Germany with Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman accepted for performance.
The Nibelungen-Myth	Der Nibelungen-Mythus: Als Entwurf zu einem Drama	1848	Wagner’s prose sketch of the whole Nibelung story, written as the basis for the drama Siegfried’s Tod, which later became Götterdämmerung. It tells of Alberich’s theft of the Rhinegold and forging of the Ring, the guilt the Gods incur in seizing it, their hope for a free human hero to redeem them, the births of Siegmund and Siegfried, Siegfried’s betrayal and murder at the Gibichung court, and Brünnhild’s self-sacrifice, which returns the Ring to the Rhine and frees the Nibelungs. Its ending differs from the finished Ring: the Gods are redeemed rather than destroyed.
The Wibelungen	Die Wiebelungen	1848	Written while Wagner was researching a drama on Frederick Barbarossa, this speculative essay reads medieval German history through myth. Wagner argues that the Frankish royal house regarded itself as the heir of the Nibelungen and of a primeval priest-kingship, that the “Ghibelline” emperors were really “Wibelungen” or Nibelungs, and that the Nibelung Hoard, the symbol of world rule, passed into the spiritual ideal of the Holy Grail and finally sank into mere real property.
Art and Revolution	Die Kunst und die Revolution	1849	Wagner’s revolutionary essay, written in Zurich after his flight from Dresden. Contrasting the tragedy of ancient Athens, the religious festival of a whole free people, with the modern theatre as a commercial industry serving the god of money, he argues that true art can only be reborn through a social revolution that frees humanity from wage slavery, and ends by calling for an altar to both Jesus and Apollo.
The Artwork of the Future	Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft	1849	Wagner’s Zurich treatise, the first full statement of his ideal of the united artwork. Arguing that art, like life, should spring from necessity and the “Folk” rather than from abstract thought and fashion, he traces how dance, music and poetry, once united in Greek tragedy, fell apart into isolated and egoistic arts, how architecture, sculpture and painting decayed with them, and how all must be reunited in the drama of the future, created by a free fellowship of artists.
Art and Climate	Kunst und Klima	1850	A short essay answering critics who claimed that the cold northern climate made a new flowering of art impossible in modern Europe. Wagner argues that art has never been a direct product of climate, that it was born not in the lush tropics but on the bare rocks of Greece where man had to struggle against nature, and that modern art has been crippled not by northern skies but by a civilisation imposed from above. The true “climate” of art, he concludes, is human nature itself.
Judaism in Music	Das Judenthum in der Musik	1850	Wagner’s notorious antisemitic tract, first published under the pseudonym K. Freigedank. He sets out to justify what he calls the instinctive popular dislike of Jews, argues that Jews speak European languages only as foreigners and so cannot create true art, and attacks Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer as proof that modern music has lost its inner life. It ends by telling Jews that their only redemption lies in “going under.”
A Communication to My Friends	Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde	1851	Wagner’s long autobiographical essay, written in Zurich as a preface to the poems of The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. Addressed to the friends who understand him as man as well as artist, it traces his development from his early operas through Paris and Dresden to revolution and exile, explains how each work grew from the moods of his life, and ends by announcing the plan for a cycle of Nibelung dramas to be performed at a special festival.
On the Performing of “Tannhäuser”	Über die Aufführung des "Tannhäuser"	1852	A pamphlet sent privately to theatres that had applied to stage Tannhäuser while Wagner was in exile and could not attend rehearsals. Addressed to conductors, stage directors, scene painters and singers, it insists that stage and music be coordinated, that the cast first read the poem aloud as a play, and that most of the cuts made at Dresden be restored. It gives detailed instructions on the overture, orchestra, processions, Venusberg scene and scenery, and closes with an analysis of Tannhäuser as a man who feels everything fully, together with notes on the other roles.
Remarks on performing the opera “The Flying Dutchman”	Bemerkungen zur Aufführung der Oper "Der fliegende Holländer"	1852	Written as a companion to his advice on Tannhäuser, these practical notes tell conductors, stage directors and singers how to perform The Flying Dutchman. Wagner insists on close agreement between stage and orchestra, describes the Dutchman’s movements bar by bar in his opening monologue and his first meeting with Senta, and warns against sentimental or comic misreadings of Senta, Erik and Daland.
Opera and Drama	Oper und Drama	1852	Wagner’s central theoretical treatise, written in Zurich. Part One traces the history of opera to show its basic error: that music, a means of expression, has been made the end, while drama, the true end, has been made a means. Part Two examines spoken drama and argues that myth, not history or the novel, is the proper subject of the drama of the future. Part Three describes the new art in detail, from alliterative verse and melody born of the words to an orchestra that carries foreboding and remembrance through recurring motives.
Overture to “Tannhäuser”	Ouvertüre zu "Tannhäuser"	1853	Wagner’s programme note for the Tannhäuser overture, written for a performance in Zurich after the orchestra asked him to explain its content. It describes the overture as a poetic sequence: the Pilgrims’ Chant, the night-time enchantments of the Venusberg, Tannhäuser’s song to Venus, and the dawn in which the pilgrims’ hymn and the redeemed music of the Venusberg unite soul and senses in hallowed love.
“The Music of the Future”	"Zukunftsmusik"	1860	An open letter to Frédéric Villot, curator at the Louvre, written as a preface to French prose translations of Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde before the Paris Tannhäuser. Wagner explains how the poor state of German opera drove him to theory, summarises the ideas of Art and Revolution, The Art-Work of the Future and Opera and Drama, describes the union of poetry and symphonic music in drama, and introduces his idea of “infinite melody,” while rejecting the label “music of the future.”
A Report on the Production of “Tannhäuser” in Paris	Bericht über die Aufführung des "Tannhäuser" in Paris	1861	An open letter written from Paris in which Wagner gives his own account of the famous Tannhäuser fiasco at the Paris Opéra. He explains why he went to Paris, how the Emperor’s command gave him unlimited resources, how the production nonetheless fell short of his hopes, and how organised disruption by critics and the aristocratic Jockey Club, angered by the lack of a second-act ballet, drove him to withdraw the work after three performances, despite the support of the general public.
On State and Religion	Über Staat und Religion	1864	A private essay written for the young King Ludwig II of Bavaria, explaining how Wagner’s views had changed since his revolutionary writings. Drawing on Schopenhauer, he describes the state as a contract for stability among blind, self-seeking individuals, held together by the illusion he calls “Wahn” in the form of patriotism and embodied in the king. True religion stands above the state, and art offers a final, consciously acknowledged illusion that lifts us above life.
On Conducting	Über das Dirigieren	1869	Wagner’s treatise on conducting, drawn from his practical experience in the concert hall and the theatre. He argues that the conductor’s whole duty is to find the right tempo, that the right tempo comes only from understanding the melody (melos) as something to be sung, and that Beethoven’s music needs constant, subtle modification of tempo. He illustrates this with Beethoven, Mozart and Weber, attacks the hurried, smoothed-over style he traces to Mendelssohn and his followers, and mocks the “elegant” conductors of the day, in passages that include antisemitic insinuations. He ends with the mutilation of his own Meistersinger by conductors.
Some Explanations Concerning “Judaism in Music”	Aufklärungen über "Das Judenthum in der Musik"	1869	An open letter to Marie Muchanoff, written to accompany the republication of “Judaism in Music” under Wagner’s own name. Wagner claims that the hostility he faces in the press is a coordinated Jewish campaign of revenge for his original essay, blames it for the attacks on Liszt and the decline of Schumann, and argues that open discussion of the “Jewish question” is the only path to assimilation.
Beethoven	Beethoven	1870	Wagner’s centenary tribute to Beethoven, written during the Franco-Prussian War. Building on Schopenhauer, he argues that music is not a copy of the world’s appearances but a direct revelation of its inner essence, comparable to a prophetic dream. He presents Beethoven as the archetype of the musician, who broke music free from mere pleasing forms, compares him to Shakespeare, and claims his legacy as the German spirit’s gift to the world.
Das Liebesverbot: Account of a first Operatic Performance	"Das Liebesverbot": Bericht über eine erste Opernaufführung	1871	Wagner’s account, taken from his memoirs, of his second opera, Das Liebesverbot, a free adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. He explains how the youthful work celebrated the “liberated senses” against puritanical hypocrisy, summarises its plot, and describes its single chaotic performance at Magdeburg and the backstage brawl that cancelled the second.
The Destiny of Opera	Über die Bestimmung der Oper	1871	Wagner’s lecture for his admission to the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin. He argues that opera, though blamed for the decline of the spoken theatre, is the only form that can lift it to the ideal: Goethe and Schiller sensed this in Gluck and Mozart, Shakespeare’s plays are best understood as “fixed mimetic improvisation,” and Beethoven’s music is their counterpart, pointing toward a musically conceived drama that would fulfil the destiny of opera.
On the name “Musikdrama”	Über die Benennung "Musikdrama"	1872	A short essay in which Wagner rejects the term “Musikdrama,” which others had begun applying to his later works. Picking apart the word’s grammar and history, he argues that music is not a part of drama but its mother, advises other composers to keep calling their works operas, and explains why he settled on “Bühnenfestspiel,” a stage festival play, for what he planned at Bayreuth.
Prologue to a reading of the “Götterdämmerung” before a select audience in Berlin	Einleitung zu einer Vorlesung der "Götterdämmerung" vor einem ausgewählten Zuhörerkreise in Berlin	1873	A short address Wagner gave in Berlin before reading the poem of Götterdämmerung to an invited audience. He explains that his chief aim has been to make dramatic dialogue itself the main subject of musical treatment, so that the poem can stand as a spoken drama, and that this is why he is presenting the complete work to educated Germans rather than to ordinary opera-goers.
A glance at the German operatic stage of today	Ein Einblick in das heutige deutsche Opernwesen	1873	Written after a tour of theatres in western Germany in search of singers for his planned Bayreuth festival, this report describes the state of German opera performance. Wagner blames incompetent conductors for wrong tempi and heavy cuts, shows how singers, left without a model, fall back on Meyerbeer-style closing effects, mocks careless staging and an apathetic public, gives practical advice to several conductors, and ends by praising a model performance of Gluck’s Orpheus at Dessau.
The Public in Time and Space	Das Publikum in Zeit und Raum	1878	A Bayreuther Blätter article on the tragic relationship between great creative minds and the audiences of their time and place. Wagner shows how Plato, Dante and Calderon were burdened by the ideas of their age, how Mozart’s operas, especially The Magic Flute, cannot be truly revived outside their original setting, and how Liszt’s Dante Symphony was written for an ideal public that no longer exists.
Modern	Modern	1878	A short, sarcastic antisemitic article from the Bayreuther Blätter. Responding to a quoted “important Jewish voice” boasting that the free-thinking Jewish press would defeat the “old world of orthodoxy,” Wagner mocks the idea of a “modern world,” accuses Jewish journalism of corrupting the German language, and ends with a pun on the German verb “modern,” meaning “to rot.”
What is German?	Was ist deutsch?	1878	An earlier manuscript, published with a bitter postscript, in which Wagner tries to define the German spirit. He traces it through history to its rebirth in Bach, Goethe and German philosophy, defines it as doing the beautiful and noble for its own sake rather than for profit, and blames the princes, foreign imitation and Jewish influence for its betrayal. The postscript voices his disillusionment with the new German Reich.
On Poetry and Composition	Über das Dichten und Komponieren	1879	A satirical Bayreuther Blätter article on the state of German poetry and music. Wagner mocks a literary and musical market driven by publishers, novelists writing for newspapers, and composers who “compose even though nothing occur to you,” contrasts them with Homer the blind seer and the musician who first made all art, and singles out Brahms as the masked “Prince of Serious Music.”
On Opera Poetry and Composition in particular	Über das Opern-Dichten und Komponieren im Besonderen	1879	A Bayreuther Blätter article on the failings of German opera libretti and composition. Wagner shows how German audiences rarely understand an opera’s plot, how imported Italian aria forms and poor verse led composers to mangle words and pile on empty “melody,” praises Mozart and Weber while criticising Marschner, Spohr and Schumann, and ends with half-ironic advice to young composers to wait until their characters themselves give them a musical idea.
On the Application of Music to the Drama	Über die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama	1879	A Bayreuther Blätter article distinguishing the musical style of the symphony from that of the music drama. Wagner argues that the classical symphony, rooted in the dance, excludes dramatic pathos, that later composers who imported dramatic effects into instrumental music produced confusion, and that only in drama do bold harmonic changes and the endless transformation of motives become natural, using examples from the Ring and Lohengrin.
“What Boots This Knowledge?”	"Was nützt diese Erkenntniss?"	1880	A supplement to “Religion and Art.” Wagner answers the question of what use it is to know that humanity has fallen, arguing that only this knowledge makes regeneration possible. He dismisses statesmen and their pursuit of power, recommends Schopenhauer’s philosophy as the foundation for all moral culture, and proposes rebuilding Christianity around love, faith and hope rather than the commandments of the Old Testament.
Religion and Art	Religion und Kunst	1880	Wagner’s major late essay, written under the influence of Schopenhauer. He argues that art can save the true kernel of religion once the Church has buried it under literal dogma, traces the “fall” of humanity to violence and the eating of flesh, and imagines a regeneration through vegetarianism, compassion and peace, crowned by music as the purest voice of the Christian spirit.
Hero-dom and Christendom	Heldenthum und Christenthum	1881	A continuation of “Religion and Art” in which Wagner engages with Gobineau’s theory of racial decline. He accepts that the mixing of races has corrupted the “noblest” white race and its heroic virtues of pride and truthfulness, but argues that the Christian saint is a higher form of hero, and that the blood of Christ, offered to all humanity, could purify even the lowest races and lead to an equality grounded in Christian morality.
Know Thyself	Erkenne dich selbst	1881	A continuation of “Religion and Art,” written amid the antisemitic agitation in Germany. Wagner urges Germans to turn the ancient command “Know thyself” on their own Church, their worship of property and money, and their lost racial instinct, presents the Jews in hostile terms as the most racially consistent people in history, and ends with his notorious hope that once Germans awaken there will no longer be “any Jews.”
Introduction to a work of Count Gobineau's	Zur Einführung der Arbeit des Grafen Gobineau	1881	Wagner’s short preface, written for the Bayreuther Blätter, introducing Count Gobineau’s survey of the present state of the world. He praises Gobineau’s racial theory for explaining why great minds grow ever lonelier in modern society, but suggests that, as with Schopenhauer’s pessimism, a grim diagnosis may still point toward redemption, which Wagner hears in the “sigh of deepest pity” from the Cross.
On the Womanly in the Human Race	Über das Weibliche im Menschlichen	1883	The unfinished fragment Wagner was writing in Venice at the time of his death, intended as the conclusion to “Religion and Art.” He argues that marriage founded on love lifts humanity above the animals, that marriages of convenience help explain the decline of races, and that the ideal of monogamy raises woman above the natural law of sex.