effort to resist it. It could be argued that my views on Wagner have been too strongly influenced by Nietzsche, but I'm not a hundred percent sure of that. I discovered both Wagner and Nietzsche in 1993, but didn't get much into Nietzsche until a couple of years after thatI started with Zarathustra, of course, but don't recall reading anything else by Nietzsche or exploring him any more deeply for some while afterwardsby which time I'd made more progress with Wagner, heard half of the Ring as well as Tannhuser and a few other items, and hadn't really been swept away by them. I'm not even sure if I knew at that stage that Nietzsche was an anti-Wagnerian; if I did then I'd certainly never read any of his specifically anti-Wagner statements. I think I'd probably concur with many things Nietzsche does say against Wagner, but whether he influenced my opinions or whether he just reflected something I already felt is certainly questionable. And yet, does the fact that I like Nietzsche mean I can't also like Wagner as well? Of course not. Anyone who says otherwise is operating on an untenable idea, that a person's political, aesthetic, religious etc. opinions should all unite harmoniously and be of a coherent piece, so that the person becomes a coherent and easily classifiable unit. In other words, the idea that if you like something then by rights you should not like something else which is unlike that first thing. There are things which you are not allowed to like. Wagner represented the way of the future to the nineteenth century's forward-thinkers, while Johannes Brahms became the figurehead for the more conservative element. Since the two were thus opposed, by rights I should not be allowed to like them both. But people aren't coherent in that way, or if they are then they must be exceedingly boring. Brahms doesn't usually pose a problem for me, I must say. I like most of what I've heard by him. But I like Wagner as wellat least, for all ...
