Editing Richard Wagner (section)

=== Influence on literature, philosophy and the visual arts ===
[[File:Nietzsche1882.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.8|Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882|alt=A moustachioed man in his late thirties looks to the left of the photo. His head rests on his far hand.]]
Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant. Millington has commented:<blockquote>[Wagner's] protean abundance meant that he could inspire the use of literary motif in many a novel employing interior [[monologue]];&nbsp;... the [[symbolism (arts)|Symbolists]] saw him as a mystic hierophant; the [[Decadent movement|Decadents]] found many a frisson in his work.{{sfn|Millington|2001a|p=396}}</blockquote>[[Friedrich Nietzsche]] was a member of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870s. Nietzsche's first published work, ''[[The Birth of Tragedy]]'', proposed Wagner's music as the [[Dionysian]] "rebirth" of European culture in opposition to [[Apollonian and Dionysian|Apollonian]] rationalist "decadence". Nietzsche broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties and a surrender to the new [[German Empire|German Reich]].{{sfn|Magee|1988|p=52}} Nevertheless, in ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]]'', Nietzsche alluded to Wagner as the "old sorcerer", a reference to the captivating power of Wagner's music.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Penrose |first=James F. |date=September 2020 |title=The "old sorcerer" |url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2020/9/the-old-sorcerer |magazine=[[The New Criterion]] |location=New York |publisher=Foundation for Cultural Review |volume=39 |issue=1 |page=63 |access-date=16 June 2023}}</ref> Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the later Wagner in ''[[The Case of Wagner]]'' and ''[[Nietzsche contra Wagner]]''.{{sfn|Magee|1988|p=52}}

The poets [[Charles Baudelaire]], [[Stéphane Mallarmé]] and [[Paul Verlaine]] worshipped Wagner.{{sfn|Magee|1988|pp=49–50}} [[Édouard Dujardin]], whose influential novel ''[[Les Lauriers sont coupés]]'' is in the form of an interior monologue inspired by Wagnerian music, founded a journal dedicated to Wagner, ''[[La Revue wagnérienne]]'', to which [[J. K. Huysmans]] and [[Téodor de Wyzewa]] contributed.{{sfn|Grey|2008|pp=372–387}} In a list of major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, [[Bryan Magee]] includes [[D. H. Lawrence]], [[Aubrey Beardsley]], [[Romain Rolland]], [[Gérard de Nerval]], [[Pierre-Auguste Renoir]], [[Rainer Maria Rilke]] and several others.{{sfn|Magee|1988|pp=47–56}}

In the 20th century, [[W. H. Auden]] once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived",<ref>Cited in {{harvnb|Magee|1988|p=48}}</ref> while [[Thomas Mann]]{{sfn|Magee|1988|p=52}} and [[Marcel Proust]]{{sfn|Painter|1983|p=163}} were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is also discussed in some of the works of [[James Joyce]],{{sfn|Martin|1992|loc=''passim''}} as well as [[W. E. B. Du Bois]], who featured ''Lohengrin'' in ''[[The Souls of Black Folk]]''.{{sfn|Ross|2008|p=136}} Wagnerian themes inhabit [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]'', which contains lines from ''Tristan und Isolde'' and ''Götterdämmerung''; and Verlaine's poem on ''Parsifal''.{{sfn|Magee|1988|p=47}}

Many of Wagner's concepts, including his speculation about dreams, predated their investigation by [[Sigmund Freud]].{{sfn|Horton|1999}} Wagner had publicly analysed the Oedipus myth before Freud was born in terms of its psychological significance, insisting that incestuous desires are natural and normal, and perceptively exhibiting the relationship between sexuality and anxiety.{{sfn|Magee|2000|p=85}} [[Georg Groddeck]] considered the ''Ring'' as the first manual of psychoanalysis.{{sfn|Picard|2010|p=759}}