By Dilip Roy FRAS
“In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death.” (SHOPENHAUER)
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860) was a German philosopher and a contemporary of Hegel and Kant. Schopenhauer was the first European to have profoundly attracted to Hindu thought specially the UPANISHADS. This German sage foretold that “The world is about to see a revolution in thought more extensive and more powerful than that witnessed by the Renaissance of Greek Literature” and today his predictions are coming true. Those who understand the workings in the minds of different nations of the West, those who are thinkers and study the different nations will find immense change in the procedure, in the methods, and in the literature of the world by this never ceasing permeation of Indian thought.
During the period of Schopenhauer’s final stay with his mother in 1813-1814, he came in contact Friedrich Majer the orientalist, who introduced him to Hinduism and Buddhism. The Latin translation by French Indologist Anquetil-Duperron’s Opnek’hat was published in 1802 and was widely available in Europe which Schopenhauer came across and upon reading it he called it a greatest gift to mankind and opening up of Sanskrit literature to the modern world. It is of key importance in the context of the development of European philosophical awareness of Indian thought. The extent of Indian thought on Schopenhauer, is clearly evident in his first edition of “The World as Will and Representation” (1818) and he admitted that it would have been impossible for him to have formed his own ideas without the ability to draw upon the UPANISHADS.
For Schopenhauer the writers of ancient Indian texts were concerned to answer the same questions which preoccupied Kant and himself. He equated the “Upanishadic Brahman”(ultimate reality) with the Kantian (Thing-in-itself) and the Upanishadic teaching “Tat tvam asi” (That art thou) on this view Schopenhauer could rediscover his philosophical achievements in another context the realm of Buddhist and Vedantic thought. Although Schopenhauer in his later years he was deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy. Schopenhauer went on to influence whole generation of Artists, Thinkers, Writers and Scientists. The year 1814 was of great significance to Schopenhauer since he came in contact with German polymath Wolfgang Goethe and he cherished his friendship for the rest of his life. In India too there were intellectual admirers like Rabindranath Tagore and Swamy Vivekananda.
RICHARD WAGNER (1813-1883) One thing that can probably be said of Wagner that he was the only composer of the highest order who was in any significant sense an intellectual. He had interests and ideas not only to do with music and theatre but across a wide range of subjects which included literature, philosophy, politics and history. Not only was he a consumer in these fields, he published books, pamphlets, articles, short stories, poems and other published communications of every kind. The standard edition of his collected writings, which does not include his letters, extends to sixteen volumes. Most important of all this interest in ideas had a shaping influence on both the form and the content of his greatest works of art. Nonetheless Wagner was a polymath. The special significance of Schopenhauer for Wagner lies in the fact that when Wagner first read “The World as Will and Representation,” he could not believe for everything that he was thinking was all there, in total he read it four times before writing to his friend Franz Liszt expressing his joy that he had found in the book the answer that he had been looking for.
At the time he was composing operatic masterpieces in a form which he had elaborated intellectually to a highly sophisticated degree, that Schopenhauer’s ideas were compatible and central to his approach, that he came under Schopenhaurien influence and that his development as a creative artist, and there after all his subsequent work, was changed as a consequence. Schopenhauer’s ideas were interpreted in Wagner’s later operas such as Tristan and Isolde, Lohengrin, Tannhauser, Parsifal, The Mastersinger of Nuremberg and above all the four part epic “The Ring of the Nibelungs.” Towards the end of 1854 Wagner became more Schopenhauerian. Even a decade later no evening would pass without a discussion of the master’s philosophy events recorded in Cosima Wagner’s diary Dec 1874.
Wagner says although thunderstorms are frightening events, our serenity is not disrupted because we find our primary identity to be in that of the “world- creator Brahma.” As Brahma we exist beyond all fear of natural occurrences, given that the first sentence of The World as Will and Representation tell us, “The World is our Representation.” According to Wagnerian hypothesis, the first humans were peaceful , vegetarian herdsmen. Since they lived in the warm and plentiful climate of India, the home of our oldest religions, they had no need to hunt and kill for what their vegetarian practice embodied was the Hindu and Buddhist belief in the “unity of all living things,” a belief that receives allegorical expression in the doctrines of KARMA and reincarnation. Richard Wagner in all his prose works cited India as the cradle of civilization from where all races have emerged including that of the West. Schopenhauer’s aesthetics, which elevated music above all the arts, also made considerable impact on Richard Wagner.
“The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes it’s being , is the human voice.”-Richard Wagner
(Dilip Roy is a Wagner aficionado and a Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society UK )
