>   WAGNER - AN IRISH PERSPECTIVE
>
>   The stage looked set for a Weill/Brecht
collaborationist piece, I sat beside an American who
alternately twisted on the hams of his buttocks, in
front of me two perfectly blonde girls (perfect Aryan
types - with a nod to Herr Hitler´s racialist agenda -
I chortled to myself).  The opera was ´Der Fliegende
Höllander´ (The Flying Dutchman), Wagner´s first
´hit´, following a string of flops, his three early
operas, ´Die Feen´(The Fairies),
´Liebesverbot´(Forbidden Love) and ´Rienzi´.  The
first two are rarely seen in public today, ´Der
Fliegende Höllander´essentially began the composers
career.  Surprisingly, it is thought that the earlier
opera ´Rienzi´(after a novel by Bulwer Lyton - I once
owned an antique copy of this book, but never read
it....) exercised most influence over the Führer,
although Hitler was also known to be partial to ´The
Merry Widow´, a schmalzy alternative to the epic
grandeur of ´Rienzi´, a tragedy set in Renaissance
Italy, the Renaissance Prince was a role model for
Hitler, combining qualitiesof Machiavellian cynicism
and Bismarckian realpolitik.  In ´Der Fliegende
Höllander´Senta, to be saved from a life of wandering
the seas in his ghostship replete with ghostly crew
(perhaps not the best partying atmosphere) must be
redeemed by the love of a ´pure woman´(it is a nice
thought that such a thing might once have existed, I
chucked to myself....).  Sounded eerilyy biographical,
somehow echoing the composers tribulations and
wanderings.  As the opera scores magnificence
resounded through Freiburg´s operahouse, my own
nagging pains began to become more transparent than
those onstage.  My pains, Wagner´s pains, and the
uplifting - I could hardly say lietmotif, this
technical term was not introduced until the writing of
´The Ring der Nibulungen´- crescendo of the orchestra
somehow synthesised feelings, pain, and the
overwhelming thirst that afflicted me, it was a balmy
night in the hottest of all German cities - Freiburg
im Breisgau.
>
>   The only other German vity that I had had any
experience of was Hannover, in the German Bundesland
of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony - I always puzzled at
this, because Lower Saxony is more Northerly than the
other Saxony, which lies in the former GDR, and whose
capital is Dresden).  Hannover (Hahnoovver, to the
locals) is a business centre, Freiburg an attractive
university town, also essentially turistic,  First,
the Gothic Münster (Cathedral, in Northern Germany the
word for Cathedral is Dom)attracted my attention, the
Madonna on the frontespiece more than a nod to the
Mariolatry which dominates the ethos of Catholicism
(within the Protestant Church, idols, Pantheism and
Mariolatry - adoration of the Virgin Mary as another
´God´ - are strictly forbidden, there is only - and
this is anther Pantheon (Pantheistic religions have
more than one God) - what is called the three in one,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as contrasted
to the strict Monotheism of Judaism.  My forebears
were Irish Anglicans, possibly also tainted with dour
Lutheranism, and, of course, the Protestant work
ethic.
>
>   I come from a village in Ireland, now absorbed
into the greater Belfast area.  Ballyhackamore
(literally, town of the big horse shit in Gaelic) is a
quiet and affluent area, populated by a majority of
Protestants who are largely tolerant and only wish to
get on with their business and their lives.  The
village has a Catholc Chapel and a Primary School,
there had been trouble in the past, however.  The
problem of Sectarianism multiplied in an exponential
fashion as one followed the Upper Newtownards Road
down the hill towards Ballymacarrat, for this is a
predominantly working-class area, and the
working-classes in Belfast are mainly preoccupied with
Sectarian hatred and bigotry, the Middle-Classes
prefering to turn a blind eye to it all, and get on
with their lives of getting and spending.
>
>   It is 1972 and I am in the large front room of my
families house in Cyprus Park, across the street a
green van, a number of soldiers climb out and slam
doors shut.  This time not a sectarian incident, but a
real German bomb in the backgarden of our neighbours
house, buried in the garden for almost 30 years
(Belfast was blitzed, its importance as a shipping
centre - Harland & Woolf is the biggest shipyard in
the world, it was there that the Titanic was
launched).  Apart from this incident some suggestions
that Britain and Ireland were not actually the world,
but that there was a bigger world across the English
Channel, and an even bigger one across the Atlantic.
>
>   Summer is the marching season in Ulster, and one
of the most important marches goes through
Ballyhackamore, an explanation of its significance
might exhaust pages of expostulation.  This is on the
1st of July, the anniversary of the 1st day of the
battle of the Somme, when the 36th Ulster Division was
largely decimated by German machinegun and artillery
fire.  (The 36th Ulster Division was formed by Lord
Edward Carson - was also incidentally Prosection
Barrister at the Trial of Oscar Wilde - as a private
army which would be used in the case of an uprising or
insurrection in Dublin by the IRA - forever afterwards
Protestants and Loyalists - those loyal to the Crown,
but not to the British Government, which is
perpetually supposed to be ´selling out´ Ulster -
believed in a conspiracy by the British Highcommand to
annhilate the Division).  My only personal connection
with this event in Loyalist History was my
Grandfather, a mountaingunner in India, and on the
Western Front, wounded by shrapnel at the Battle of
the Somme, and died ten years after the war in a
nursing home in Portadown.  Of course, the 2nd major
march in the marching season is the 12th of July (all
those Orangemen, Orange Sashes, Flutes, Drums and
Bowler Hats), which celebrates the defeat of King
James the Catholic Pretender to the British Throne by
the forces of William of Orange at the Battle of the
Boyne, in the Boyne Valley, near Dublin.  Forever
afterwards the British Succession would be Protestant.
 King Billy is always depicted in Protestant lore on a
white charger, laying into various ´Teagues´and
´Fenians´(slang words for Catholics, the Fenian
Brotherhood fought for a Free State in the 1860s, with
various terrorist bombings on the Mainland, and a
proposed but defeated coup in Ireland, and Teagues, as
far as I can ascertain, dates back to the Renaissance,
and is mentioned in the Protestant jngle of the era,
Lullibelero - Lullibelerlo bullen a law, Ho Brother
Teague..etc, etc...).
>
>   So, German bombs, the Battle of the Somme, King
Billy, and possibly all three, King Billy on his white
charger, galloping through the neighbours backgarden
to the crescendo of bomb, splintered bullet, scattered
sandbags, the shriek of Stukas, the pitch and moan of
AA Flak, and of course, the Overture to The Flying
Dutchman boombing as well in the background.  Across
the street  lived the Lambes (Paddy Lambe owned the
pub in the village, he is still seen knocking about
the place, and greets me courteously, with a ýer
putting on a bit of beef now, Paul...), but we had
famous neighbours too, Big Ian (Ian Paisley of the
Democratic Unionist Party, founder of three private
armies, former Terrorist, and preacher for his Free
Presbyterian Church - he completed his dimploma at the
University of Bob Jones in the Bible Belt - the
Southern Mid-West section of the US of A - mostly
regarded as a crowd of fanatics by the majority - or
minority in all probability - of people).  Down at
Bloomfield we had Van the Man Morrison (Ivan as my
mother knew him in the 1960s).
>
>   I am possibly too busy telling my German readers
about East Belfast to adequately describe an
aüslanders (foreigners) view of Freiburg.  I think a
great problem with British people is still a certain
anti-German racism, and the tendency is to identify
all Germans with the Nazis, people view the Germans as
discipline oriented, and in need of an Authoritarian
Leader, who they follow with a doglike
incredulousness.  Of course, memories of the war are
fading, the war generation is rapidly ageing, I am
part of the younger generation too, that never took
part in the two conflicts that mark (or scar) the
Twentieth Century.  I have happily been saved the
experience of military service, until the question
came up again with the attack on the WTC by
(supposedly) Osama Bin Laden.  German society is
perhaps a model of reconstruction, and this is now
completed with the fall of the Berlin and wall and
reunification.  But Germany´s economic miracle was
floated on American money, the Dawes Plan which
refloated the ´hole in the system´which had appeared
after the Wall Street Crash in America, and the
economic devestation which was its result.
>
>   As I write this it is late afternoon.  The sky is
grey, the rain falls, the dead fall of rain and
leaves, trees scowl....
>
>   Paul Murphy teaches Creative Writing at the
University of Freiburg in the Schwarzwald, if you are
interested in sharing poems, short stories or any
other kinds of fiction, you can e-amil him at
[log in to unmask] or contact him by writing to
Englische Literaturwissenschaft, University of
Breiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-W, Germany.
>
>   Hope this is okay, hope to hear from you soon,
>   All best wishes,
>   Paul Murphy
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month.
http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1