Wagner’s Journey with Buddhism to the Present

·      Introduction

          It is undeniable to say that Richard Wagner’s works are strongly associated with Western and German art and music. Especially, many of his stage-works achieved some of the important innovations in the theatrical world in music. His obsession with the spirit of ancient Greek and Greek mythology is clearly illustrated through his early works and Ring of the Nibelung, from which his German nationalism was inspired as he completed two editions of “Was ist Deutsch?” (“What is German?”). Then, why should oriental practices and Buddhist ideas from far East have anything to do with Wagner’s works and life?

          In September 1854, when Wagner encountered Schopenhauer’s monumental work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation), the philosophical approach in Wagner’s creative activities came to one of the major turning points in his life. Some of the revisions he made for ongoing projects and new projects, such as Tristan und Isolde, The Victor, and Parsifal support the theory that Wagner’s interest in Schopenhauerian thinking and Buddhism introduced through his work influenced a shift in Wagner’s dramatic works in comparison with his earlier works. Additionally, Wagner’s letters and interactions with his lover, Mathilde Wesendonck are clear evidence of Buddhist ideas in his works and philosophy surrounding his art. In one of his letters to Mathilde, he remarked, “What a shameful place our entire learning takes confronted with these purest revelations of most noble humanity in the old orient.”[1] In this paper, I would like to explore a thread of Wagner’s inspiration, interpretation, and application of Buddhist ideas in three major breaking points: the discovery of Buddhism and its relevance with his art through Schopenhauer, the unfinished Buddhist opera, The Victor and its vision until the moment of his death, and Jonathan Harvey’s opera, Wagner Dream, which integrates Wagner’s unfinished Buddhist opera project into the day of his death. The essay focuses on the trajectory of how Buddhism influences Wagner as a human being and a creator over time through the present day.

·      Discovering Buddhism through Schopenhauer

          The root of Wagner’s interest in Buddhism can be traced back to his family origin. Wagner’s brother-in-law, Hermann Brockhaus, who was the husband of Wagner’s sister Ottilie, was an orientalist and a scholar of ancient languages and literature, specializing in Persian and Sanskrit.[2] Although there are not any exchanges between Wagner and Brockhaus specifically on the topic of Buddhism, it is likely that Wagner became aware of the existence of the ancient religion from the east in his earlier time. In late 1854, Wagner learned of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation for the first time through his friend the poet Georg Herwegh.[3] This encounter with the less-known German philosopher at that time gave Wagner a new perspective on his art and metaphysical philosophy for the rest of his life. Before investigating Wagner’s interpretation and manipulation of Buddhist ideas, we will briefly explore the origin of the Schopenhauerian view of Buddhism and the prevalence of the religion in Germany in the 19th century.

          In 1813, the same year of Wagner’s birth, young Schopenhauer encountered the journal, Das Asiatische Magazin, Germany’s first scholarly journal about Asian Studies that included the history of Buddhism, distinguishing from the religion of the Brahmans – what we today call Hinduism. The journal introduced the 25-year-old Schopenhauer the basic doctrines of Buddhism, which are the transmigration of souls and the “teaching of emptiness and bareness.”[4] These principles are based on the doctrine of Mahayana-Buddhism, which also provides a basic understanding of Wagner’s Buddhist belief. Schopenhauer realized that these ideas perfectly matched his dualistic philosophical idea that is influenced by Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism. The dualism between an empirical consciousness caught up in space, time, and causality, and things-in-themselves, free of such constrictions played an important role in the creation of his major work, The World as Will and Representation.[5] One of the significant influences of the Buddhist view in Schopenhauer’s philosophy is the metaphysics of will that is apart from the illusionary representation of the world. As we will see, this dualistic symbolism is present in Tristan’s “day” and “night” and The Victors’ Prakriti’s desire for love. Another important Schopenhauerian interpretation of Buddhism is a focus on philosophical pessimism: Schopenhauer sees the central factor of human existence as suffering within the fundamental desire and illusion of ego.[6] As he sees it, the only escape from this suffering cycle is the negation of the “will-to-live.”[7]

          In fact, Wagner initially did not believe Schopenhauer’s discussion about Buddhism’s characterization of the end of the universe as a total renunciation of the will that would bring true redemption. He was stuck with his idea of the Grecian self-asserting human being for a while until Herwegh described to Wagner that all tragic events occur as a result of the futility of the world of phenomena.[8] In his autobiography, Wagner wrote how Schopenhauer’s philosophy overturned his “cheerful Greek view of the world,” and made him realize “the voidness of the world of phenomena” through the fundamental principle of tragedy in his art.[9] In the letter to a German composer August Röckel, he clearly stated that Schopenhauer’s “terrible” truths guided him in a different direction than before:

The book is of immeasurable significance: but in a sense that indeed must be very uncomfortable to many. I confess that in my own life-experience I had just arrived at the point where nothing other than Schopenhauer’s philosophy could be wholly appropriate and determining… though he gave me a direction that substantially diverges from my former one, this turning corresponded uniquely to my profoundly suffering feeling of the essence of this world. (to August Röckel, Zürich, 4 Feb. 1855)[10]

          One of the important life events relating to Wagner’s idea of “redemption” is the affair with Mathilde Wesendonck after his exile to Zürich in 1849. In the fall of 1854. Wagner fell in love with Mathilde, and their intimate relationship has begun.[11] In 1858, Wagner traveled to Venice to be apart from Mathilde and wrote a letter with overwhelmed feelings to Mathilde:

The tremendous struggles which we endured, how could they end but with victory over all desire and endless craving? Did we not know, in the warmest moments of intimate meeting, that this was our goal? Because it was so unprecedented and difficult, could it be achieved only after the most severe struggles... I am longing for peace, and an end to all ardent yearnings! Appeasement to every craving! Noble, worthy victory! Living for others... Let us consecrate ourselves to this serene death which shelters and stills all our yearning and craving! Let us die blissfully, with peacefully transfigured countenance and the holy smile of a beautiful sublimation! And - no one shall lose, if we - conquer.[12]

          Wagner’s desire for this unreachable love is depicted in this letter parallel to the Liebestod in Tristan und Isolde. Here, Schopenhauerian “will” can be unfolded to reveal its many aspects through inner struggles and sufferings, such as longing, desiring, yearning, craving.[13] In the climax of the opera, the Liebestod scene brings the Buddhistic notions of the suffering of earthly existence and the impulse of world renunciation through redemptive love, free love, or sexual love between Tristan and Isolde, or Wagner and Mathilde. In fact, Wagner did not completely agree with the idea of the negation of life Schopenhauer stated. Wagner partly developed his own concept of love where true redemption occurs not in the direct path through denial of sensual love, but rather in an indirect path through the affirmation of sensual love.[14] This idea seems to originate from his earlier operas, such as The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin as “salvation through love” through the ultimate fulfillment of will, or an optimistic-Feuerbachian view’s “love” as the saving force.[15] Wagner wrote to Mathilde in 1858:

What is at stake is a way of salvation leading to the total appeasement of the will, a way that has so far been ignored by all philosophers, notable also by Schopenhauer. The task is to show that this way of salvation does not consist in some kind of abstract love of mankind but rather in the very love that grows from the root of sexual love, that is, from the love that emerges through the attraction between man and woman. (to Mathilde Wesendonck, December 1, 1858)[16]

          However, this concept of affirmative love causes a confusing discrepancy with Wagner’s other works, such as The Victors, Parsifal, and some revisions he made in the Ring’s ending. These works are largely based on a pessimistic Schopenhauerian-Buddhist renunciation of will. While former statements from Tristan take “love” as a healer of sufferings, the other Wagner’s approach to his manipulation of Buddhist ideas views “love” as the fundamental problem as seem om Schopenhauer’s “will” and in the “thirst” or “craving” of Buddhism.[17] In another letter in 1858, Wagner wrote to Mathilde “We shall be victorious - we are already in the midst of victory.” In The Victors, the idea of victory in life is to win only sacrifice as the renunciation of all sensual love which, in this case, is considered as a sin.[18] In the earlier version of the closing scene of Götterdämmerung, Brünnhide declares “Selig in Lust und Leid / läßt – die Liebe nur sein” (“Only love can let one be / Blissful in joy and pain”)[19] This line emphasizes the all-healing power of love and the triumph of love over wealth and power. However, the revised version completed four years later, the ultimate ending was no longer redemption through love, rather redemption through renunciation as Brünnhilde claims “…the goal of life’s journey on earth, released from transmigration, the Knowing One now departs.” Urs App points out that these lines contain multiple Buddhism-influenced themes, such as nirvana, transmigration of souls, wisdom, and prajna.”[20]

          Another important aspect to unfold in Wagner’s interpretation of Buddhism is to explore some of the major misunderstandings of the religion in which he learned from the initial misunderstanding by Schopenhauer. First of all, Schopenhauer and his followers, including Wagner interpreted the Buddhist state of existence, nirvana as no-more-being or nothingness in its final transfiguration and highest perfection. Although nirvana is essentially an undefinable state in Buddhism, it is still dharma, and it is a “something,” rather than “nothing.”[21] According to Derrick Everett, it is because the Pali texts that explained the philosophy of dharma were not translated into western languages until the end of the 19th century. Without a proper understanding of nirvana, Wagner incorporated the invented idea of nothingness into his dramatic tool in his operas as he jotted down the following equation in 1868:

Truth = Nirvana = Night

Music = Brama = Twilight

Poetry = Samsara = Day[22]

          The state of nirvana is misused as “the land of non-being” which was associated with the romantic concept of death-wish, as we can observe in the final scene of Tristan.

          Another confusion led by Schopenhauer and Wagner is between the Buddhist teaching that Schopenhauer referred to as palingenesis and the Hindu (Brahmin) belief in metempsychosis.[23] Because of the unavailability of dharma philosophy, false connections were made in Schopenhauer’s interpretation between Buddhist nirvana and the Vedantic Brahman. Schopenhauerian will-to-live does not distinguish two ideas and makes the origin of two concepts ambiguous. There is a significant distinction between theistic Brahminism where deliverance (moksha) occurs by absorption into the supreme being Brahman, and atheistic Buddhism, in which deliverance occurs by transforming to the state of nirvana.

          To conclude Wagner’s interpretation of the oriental religion, his notions of Buddhism were expressed in the context of European narratives and settings, largely Schopenhauer.[24] Wagner learned the ideas of Buddhist from the German intellectual achievements with ancient India and incorporated the philosophy of the religion that was introduced through German lenses to his operas. After Wagner exiled from Dresden, he wrote several important philosophical essays and sketches of the largest project in his life, The Ring. It might be fair to say that Buddhism was a clue for Wagner to build his fundamental principles of Germanness, German art, and German religion.

·      Unfinished Buddhist opera, The Victors

          Another important source of Buddhism in Wagner’s life is Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien (Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism) by Frenchman Eugène Burnouf published in 1844. It is known as one of the first European scholarly sources that demonstrated a comprehensive account of Buddhism and contained the legend which Wagner gained inspiration for his unfinished opera, The Victors.[25] The surviving documents on this opera are merely short prose sketches that show gradual developments of the libretto of the opera. In 1856, Wagner remarked in his diary:

Buddhism: Introduction to the history of B. – Conceived the ‘Sieger,’ [Victors] after a Buddhist legend in Burnouf. Conception of a new ending to the Twilight of the Gods on the sick-bed.[26]

As we can see from this diary, Wagner was beginning the Buddhist opera project as he revised the end of Götterdämmerung with the conception of The Victors.[27] The title Die Sieger (The Victors) comes from the word Jina, which in Sanskrit means ‘Victor,’ indicating the one who is victorious in the quest for enlightenment in a Buddhist sense.[28]

          According to Wagner’s draft of the plot of the opera on May 16, 1856, his drama is set at the time of the last journey of the Buddha before his final enlightenment with his disciple, Ananda, who was offered a drink of water at a well by Prakriti, Chandala maiden. She immediately falls in love with Ananda. Her mother brings Ananda to her house, but he withstands all temptations. Prakriti, who does not give up her love for the young monk, decides to go to Buddha and plead for union with Ananda under the tree at the city’s gate. Buddha asks if she is willing to accept all the conditions of this union. Prakriti interests Buddha’s speech as a punishment for her desire for a passionate love union and agrees to everything. However, Buddha’s utterances were different than what she thought; his blessing depends on her acceptance of Ananda’s vow of chastity on renunciation. She sinks horrified and sobbing to the ground. Then, Buddha shares her former life that she was a daughter of Brahmin, who rejected a young man’s passionate love in her pride and arrogance. Thus, she is now to expiate, reborn as the Chandala maiden in the present life who must experience the torment of helpless love to renounce love based on desire. This will ultimately lead her to be a member of the Buddha’s community and toward full redemption. Prakriti answers Buddha’s final question with a joyous Yea, and Ananda welcomes her as a sister in the community of the Buddha’s followers.[29]

          In the original legend, Prakriti was not the sinful one, but her father was the one who refused his daughter’s hand to the son of the Chandala’s king whom Prakriti’s father ridiculed him. In Wagner’s drama, he took out the Brahmin father, and instead, his daughter mocks the son of the Chandala’s king who was in love with her when she realizes how unhappy he is. It becomes her fate to be reborn as a Chandala maiden.[30] As Wagner told Cosima later in his life, “…only music can convey the mysteries of reincarnation,” Wagner was attracted to the idea of reincarnation in Burnouf’s legend being expressed through his own compositional technique of emotional reminiscence.[31] It is possible to anticipate that Wagner would have expanded his prose into depicting the former life of Prakriti. As Wagner was fully aware of the alternation of the original legend from his sketch, it is clear that he proceeded writing the drama in the spirit of the Buddhist myth by transforming it poetically.[32] Less than one year later from the first sketch, Wagner mentioned the change of the name of the Chandala maiden from Prakriti to Savitri:

… in the Victors what will happen in as follows: the girl (presumably Savitri) who, while waiting for Ananda in the second act, rolls in the flowers in utter ecstasy, absorbing the sun, the woods, the birds and the water – everything – the whole of nature in her wanton pleasure, is challenged by Shakya (Buddha), after she has taken her fateful vow [in the third act], to look around her and above her, and is then asked what she thinks of it all? – Not very beautiful – she then says gravely and sadly, for she now sees the other side of the world. (Letter from Wagner to Marie Sayn-Wittgenstein, 4 March 1857)

This letter implied Wagner’s shift of the idea of “salvation” from salvation through desire-driven love in Tristan und Isolde to salvation through total renunciation that Prakriti (Savitri) aspires. As Wagner feminizes “Nature” in his prose work, “Art and Revolution” (1894)[33] by referring to as “she,” “beauty,” and “pure,” Wagner sees that women are more closely linked to the universal force that Schopenhauer called “will” than man.[34] Thus, the forceful affirmation of life or “will-to-life” is depicted through Prakriti’s passionate union with Ananda in The Victors.

          In the following years, Wagner makes some revisions and addition to his Buddhist drama. Some details of these modifications in The Victors can be found in his letter to his lover, Mathilde Wesendonck:

Buddha was initially opposed to the idea of admitting women into the community of saints. He repeatedly expressed the view of them that, by nature, women are far too subject to their sexual identity, and hence to whim and caprice, and far too attached to world existence to be able to achieve the composure... It was his favorite pupil, Ananda, - that same Ananda to whom I have already allotted a part in my The Victors - who was finally able to persuade the master to relent and open up the community to women… The difficulty here was to make the Buddha himself – a figure totally liberated and above all passion – suitable for dramatic and, more especially, musical treatment. But I have now solved the problem by having him reach one last remaining stage in his development whereby he is seen to acquire a new insight, which – like every insight – is conveyed not by abstract associations of ideas but by intuitive emotional experience… as a result, this insight reveals him in his final progress towards a state of supreme enlightenment. (Letter from Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, 5 October 1858)[35]

 This letter suggests that Wagner dramatized the end of the opera by giving Buddha a “flaw” and leaving room to attain his final development for the ultimate enlightenment. This “one last remaining stage in his development” in Wagner’s poetic sense is “durch Mitleid wissend” (“insight through compassion”), which is also one of the most significant concepts in Parsifal.[36] In the margin of the essay, “About the Feminine in Humanity,” which Wagner was working on until his sudden death in Venice on February 13, he wrote: “Ideality of man – naturalness of woman – Buddha.”[37] In the same essay, the very final words he wrote in his life find the direct reference to the context of his opera, The Victors:

It is a beautiful feature in the legend, that shows the Victoriously Perfect at last determined to admit the woman. Love – Tragedy.[38]

          Glasenapp writes in his essay, Das Leben Richard Wagners that whenever the topic of the conversation with Wagner turned into India, he would always bring up his ongoing project, The Victors, providing some of the key narrations in the opera. He said that he would complete writing this work at his advanced age.[39] Even though his final opera was Parsifal, it is clear that his mind was also in completing The Victors, or part of the elements from The Victors might have been integrated into Parsifal as the opera contains some religious influences. Cosima Wagner wrote in her diary in 1882:

We now speak almost constantly of Buddha; recently, R[ichard] remarked that it would have been impossible for him to compose it [The Victors] if he had to deal with mango trees, lotus flowers, etc.[40]

Since Wagner’s exposure to India and Buddhism was limited to the Western Sanskrit scholars, such as Schopenhauer and Burnouf, who also did not have any direct connections with India or the language, his conception of India was abstracted and idealized.[41] None of these scholars, including Wagner, have never been to the land of India, it was hard for them to imagine more specific culture, atmosphere, people of the birth country of Buddhism. Wagner often expressed his vision with The Victors that he will complete it as a drama without music, and his son, Siegfried will set it to music.[42] Because the mango trees and the lotus flowers were unfamiliar to Wagner, it is clear that he would avoid making his poetry artificially expressed with music.

·      Wagner’s passion for Buddhism to the present day “Wagner Dream” 

          This unfinished opera project, The Victors and the final day of Wagner’s life on February 13, 1883, in Venice became one single stage work in a hand of a British composer, Jonathan Harvey, and a librettist Jean-Claude Carrière. The work was commissioned by De Nederlandse Opera and Holland Festival, Amsterdam, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, IRCAM Paris and premiered at the Grand Théâtre, Luxembourg in April 2007.[43] As the opera is also referred to as “an opera in nine scenes for soloists, actors, chorus, large ensemble, and electronics,” the performance force consists of untraditional operatic casts and instrumentations. Harvey wrote the opera for instruments, including an 88-note electronic sampler keyboard with 5-octave keyboard placed above, the actors which consist of the cast, including Wagner, Cosima, and Carrie Pringle who only speak on the stage, and the singers who play in the roles of Wagner’s unfinished opera, The Victor and chorus. The stage presentation is structured in a way to demonstrate the dualism from multiple angles in the simultaneous progression of two stages between fact and fiction, speech and music, acoustic and electro-acoustic, and German Romanticism and Buddhism.[44]

          Before exploring some of the key elements in this opera to unfold Harvey’s interpretation of Wagner and Buddhism, I would like to offer the overall synopsis of the opera. The opera starts on the morning of Wagner's death in Venice. Wagner was angry at his wife Cosima about the distraction from the constant visitors, except the singer, Carrie Pringle, who was a leading singer in Parsifal and possibly a lover in the affair. He begins to consider finishing his 28-year-old Buddhist opera project as he suffers a heart attack. The mysterious Wagner’s “guide,” Vairochana appears remarking to Wagner that the state of mind at the moment of death, which is the most important mind of one’s whole life. Then Wagner decides that his failure to compose The Victors must be remedied. From time to time Wagner interacts with Vairochana, intervenes, and reacts to the show that is happening at the moment, which only he can see. In this illusionary stage, Wagner’s unfinished opera is played by singers (I abbreviate the plot of the opera as I already describe above). After the opera reaches the ending, Wagner weakens and doubts that the work was really his choice. Finally, he is reconciled with Cosima and asks her forgiveness. Under Vairochana’s guidance, Wagner peacefully passes away.[45]

          Harvey remarks about the very first note of the opera in his essay:

This note [E flat played by the horn] is a realistic boat siren evoking the Grand Canal on the gloomy, misty morning of Wagner’s death in Venice… This E flat reminded me, as I wrote it, of my mentor Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, itself inspired by Wagner’s death.[46]

In this opening, a thunder striking is heard through the thunderclap, which makes references to Der Ring and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Even Vairochana’s guidance to Wagner is represented by the spatialized thunder recordings, treated by progressive filtering.[47] After the intense quarrel between Wagner and Cosima in spoken dialog, Cosima is forced to leave the room and play Schubert’s Lob der Tränen (Praise of tears) on an off-stage piano. According to Harvey, he created five-pitch collections which he seems to use in the manner of Leitmotif.  A “Wagner space” consists of 19 pitches which contain the “Tristan chord” and three E flats from the opening siren (Example 1).

Example 1 - “Wagner Space”[48]

Another harmonic field is called a “Buddha Space,” which, in contrast with “Wagner Space,” has a certain character of pure spirit or soul. To create such a sound, Harvey creates the pith collection by combining multiple pentatonic-based fields and uses when the Buddha character sings to this space (Example 2).

Example 2 - “Buddha Space”[49]

The other three-pitch collections function as a mediation between “Wagner Space” and “Buddha Space.” The clear demonstration of the conversation between these two “Spaces” can be found in Scene 2. When Wagner is expressing his agitation that he must finish his Buddhist opera before his upcoming death, the underline music is dissonant and chromatic in which the tonal center is not clear. In contrast, when Vairochana and the chorus sing about the choice making and the affirmation of life, the music is more diatonic and pure sounds. This “Wagner Space” brings the cycle of life-suffering as Wagner askes Vairochana, “Shall I be born again? Suffering, desire, sickness, death… again and again?” Yet, Vairochana calmly answers that the only thing that is left for Wagner to make a “choice.”

          Scene 3 begins with the opening scene of The Victors where Prakriti and Ananda encounter and fell in love with each other. Here, Harvey makes Vairochana one of the characters on the stage of The Victor, implying that his role is a bridge between fact and fiction of the narrative direction. Scene 4 introduces Doctor Keppler who came to see Wagner’s situation and diagnose his symptom as a heart attack. While Wagner talks to himself about the opera, the music continues in the background followed by Vairochana’s entrance describing what is happening in the opera. Scene 5 begins with the scene Prakriti’s mother invites Ananda to the house, and Prakriti made a reunion with Ananda. Prakriti asks about Buddha, and Ananda explaining “He [Buddha] understood why we suffer. He understood why suffering is our condition” in their duet. For Wagner, he learned the nature of suffering as human existence through Schopenhauer. Thus, it is worth noting that the representations of each character could be paired up with Buddha as Schopenhauer, Ananda as Wagner himself, and Prakriti as Mathilde Wesendonck whom Wagner was having an affair with when he launched the project.[50]

          Buddha finally makes the first appearance in Scene 6 and turned Prakriti into her former figure as a daughter of Brahmin that leads Ananda to leave the house. Scene 7 brings back to the day of Wagner’s death where Carrie Pringle makes her first appearance who seems to be knowledgeable with the legend Wagner mumbles by himself. In Scene 8, Buddha reveals Prakriti’s former life to hear as she prepares her acceptance of the vow. The opera reaches the climax where she takes the vows of the order and renounces her love. As the final scene begins, all the Indian characters except for Buddha and Vairochana leave the stage. After he dedicated his illusionary The Victor that he has seen as a complete in his dream to Cosima, he peacefully dies and walks away with Buddha and Vairochana. The music attempts the final growth in intensity through the canonic lines by the chorus and the remaining actors with the realization of the Dharma.

·      Conclusion

          It is undeniable to say that Wagner has a remarkable interest in Buddhism, and his passion for the religion and its influence remains until the final day of his life. His journey with oriental idealism is passed from Schopenhauer to his unfinished Buddhist opera project, The Victors, and Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream inherits this powerful thread of Wagner’s passion for Buddhism to the present day. It is up to our imagination that if Wagner did not discover Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation and did not inquire any knowledge about Buddhism, what is the difference in his later work since 1854 from the ones we know today. How much Wagner’s interpretation and adaptation of Buddhism and Eastern legend changed Western art history might be one of the key questions to consider as we explore the universality of mankind.

[1] Bassett, Peter. “The Use of Buddhist and Hindu Concepts in Wagner's Stage Works - Peter Bassett.” The Wagnerian, January 1, 2014.

[2] Bassett, “The Use of Buddhist and Hindu Concepts in Wagner’s Stage Works.”

[3] Gregor-Dellin, Martin (1983). Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century. London: William Collins, 256.

[4] App, Urs. Richard Wagner and Buddhism. Rorschach: UniversityMedia, 2011, 17.

[5] Abelsen, Peter. "Schopenhauer and Buddhism." Philosophy East and West 43, no. 2 (1993): 258.

[6] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 19.

[7] Abelsen, “Schopenhauer and Buddhism,” 268.

[8] Dauer, Dorothea Watanabe. "Richard Wagner and Buddhism: "Tristan and Isolde" and "The Victors"." The Eastern Buddhist, NEW SERIES, 9, no. 2 (1976): 118.

[9] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 22.

[10] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 63.

[11] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 16.

[12] Dauer, “Richard Wagner and Buddhism,” 121.

[13] Vayenas, Christos. “Wagner and Desire.” Autumn Salon. Autumn Salon, March 15, 2021.

[14] Dauer, “Richard Wagner and Buddhism,” 122.

[15] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 27.

[16] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 29.

[17] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 27.

[18] Dauer, “Richard Wagner and Buddhism,” 122.

[19] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 24.

[20] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 26.

[21] Everett, Derrick. “Wagner, Buddhism and Parsifal.” Wagner, Buddhism and Parsifal -- Wagner's interest in India, February 24, 2021

[22] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 39.

[23] Everett, “Wagner, Buddhism and Parsifal.”

[24] Bassett, “The Use of Buddhist and Hindu Concepts in Wagner’s Stage Works.”

[25] Bassett, “The Use of Buddhist and Hindu Concepts in Wagner’s Stage Works.”

[26] Wagner, Richard. Das Braune Buch, ed. by Joachim Bergfeld. Zürich: Atlantis, 1975, p. 125.

[27] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 33.

[28] Bassett, “The Use of Buddhist and Hindu Concepts in Wagner’s Stage Works.”

[29] Burnouf Eugène. Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. 205.

[30] Dauer, “Richard Wagner and Buddhism,” 123-124.

[31] Bassett, “The Use of Buddhist and Hindu Concepts in Wagner’s Stage Works.”

[32] Everett, Derrick. “Jesus of Nazareth - Buddha (The Victors) - Parsifal - Continued.” Jesus of Nazareth - Buddha (The Victors) - Parsifal - 2/2, April 16, 2021

[33] Wagner, Richard. “Art and Revolution.” Translated by William Ashton Ellis, 1849

[34] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 35.

[35] Everett, “Wagner, Buddhism and Parsifal.”

[36] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 43.

[37] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 43.

[38] Everett, “Wagner, Buddhism and Parsifal.”

[39] Dauer, “Richard Wagner and Buddhism,” 126.

[40] App, Richard Wagner and Buddhism, 44.

[41] Bassett, “The Use of Buddhist and Hindu Concepts in Wagner’s Stage Works.”

[42] Everett, “Wagner, Buddhism and Parsifal.”

[43] Harvey, Jonathan. Wagner Dream. Opera in nine scenes for soloists, actors, chorus and ensemble of 22 players with electronics: Faber Music Ltd, 2006

[44] Whittall, Arnold. "Wagner and 21st-Century Opera." The Musical Times 149, no. 1903 (2008):6

[45] Harvey, “Wagner Dream - Opera in Nine Scenes,” Faber Music.

[46] Harvey, Jonathan “How do I compose? (Reflections on Wagner Dream)”. Circuit 18, no 1 (2008): 38.

[47] Harvey, “How do I compose? (Reflections on Wagner Dream),” 41.

[48] Harvey, “How do I compose? (Reflections on Wagner Dream),” 40.

[49] Harvey, “How do I compose? (Reflections on Wagner Dream),” 40.

[50] Welbon, Guy Richard. The Buddhist nirvāna and Its Western Interpreters. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1975. 181.