Ring of Truth

The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung by Roger Scruton, 308 pages

In this book, written near the end of his life, philosopher and aesthete (and occasional composer) Roger Scruton celebrates Richard Wagner's masterpiece, the four-opera stage festival The Ring of the Nibelung.  In the process, he describes how out of the bones of ancient (yet timeless) myths Wagner constructed his own modern (yet timeless) myth, itself set in a primordial time-before-time yet reenacted again and again within history. 

From the outset, Scruton acknowledges that the Ring cycle is greater than any attempt to explain it, and therefore a rebuke to any system which would make an attempt.  Instead, he presents the philosophical themes of the cycle as a synthesis of the most powerful thinkers of nineteenth century Germany - bringing together Hegel's political theory, Schopenhauer's tragic account of the will, and Feuerbach's attempt to explain the rise and decline of religions into a unity which is more than the sum of its parts.  Scruton does this without losing sight of Wagner's intention that the music not serve as a mere accompaniment of the drama, nor the drama as an excuse for musical virtuosity, but that the music carry the weight of the drama.  The result is both an excellent introduction to the nineteenth century's greatest tragedy - and it is significant that Wagner's epic story of a conquering self-made hero who smashes through every restraint is ultimately, inevitably, a tragedy - and a fitting capstone to Scruton's own life's work, reminding us once again that "everything we hold as precious, including both love and law, rests upon a thin crust above a seething magma of resentment."