creator from the creation. A person may be a complete arsehole but that shouldn't influence how we perceive their art. In Wagner's case (and perhaps in Hanif Kureishi's case as well!), however, people seem to find this separation too difficult to perform. And although Nietzsche has probably been rescued from Nazi distortion and so rendered as fit for consumption as he'll ever be, there is still that anti-Semitic streak in Wagner's work which means the association with Nazi Germany will never quite go away. Not until 1993 was Wagner's music first performed in Israel, whereupon questions were asked in the Israeli parliament. Perhaps the term I've used a couple of times, "unfashionable", might be viewed as somewhat inappropriate and/or flippant given the conclusion that anti-Semitism was pushed to in the middle parts of this tiresome century, but I'll stand by it. After all, I think political views and opinions are in many ways subject to certain fashions, especially with what we now call "political correctness" and just as a show of one's political correctness has been a fashion in itself for better and for worse, so too has political incorrectness been prized by some. It all depends where you stand. The dominant direction of political correctness in trendy European intellectual circles, at least for the past couple of centuries, has been leftwards, towards more liberal ideas. Germany by the early 20th century was a different matter; William Shirer claims that the nationalistic thinking of early 19th century German philosophers like Fichte and Hegel worked eventually to set German political fashion in a rightwards direction, thereby isolating it somewhat from the rest of Europe. Ironically, of course, Hegel's dialectical methods also inspired that ber-Leftie Karl Marx, who was also German by birthand also something of an anti-Semite. At least that sort of thinking wasn't necessarily unique to Right-thinkers. (The greatest irony of all wa...
