VAN Magazine
“I want radiance as much as the next person, and the Festival is splendidly capable of providing it. What troubles me is my persistent yearning for a radiance that can be pure and simple at all. Art emerges only from and with our world, including the ugliest aspects of history, contemporary conflict, and the suppression of human dignity. What’s ridiculous—inhumane—is to come to Bayreuth and to expect not to feel this. To exempt the Festival from being taken seriously in a living, breathing, suffering, beauty-making world. To expect an innocent, purged, cleansed Bayreuth that has nothing to do with the world at all, that doesn’t matter, like an indigestible lump that passes through the body and comes out unchanged and unchanging. “
Back to Essays & Stories
