Table of Contents

Introduction Part I: The Artwork of the Future 1. Refounding Society Ancients and Moderns: Rousseau's Civil Religion The Festivals of the French Revolution Revolution and Representation The Abyss of Political Foundation 2. The Destination of Art The Secularization of Art: Quatremere de Quincy Aesthetic Education: Schiller Aesthetic Revolution: Holderlin The Destiny of Art: Hegel 3. Prophets and Precursors: Paris 1830-1848 Organic and Critical Epochs: Saint-Simon Musical Palingenesis: Mazzini and Balzac The Musical City: Berlioz Ancients and Moderns: Wagner 4. Staging the Absolute Modernism or the Long Nineteenth Century The Birth of Tragedy: Nietzsche The Great Work: Mallarme Dialectic of Enlightenment: From the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century Part II: The Spiritual in Art 5. Religion and Art: Parsifal as Paradigm The Idea of Return Religion and Art The Profoundest Symbol: The Grail The Theater to Come 6. The Symbolist Mystery Homage to the Gesamtkunstwerk The Ultimate Fiction: Mallarme's Book The Last Ecstasy: Scriabin's Mysterium Gnosis and Ecstasy 7. Gesamtkunstwerk and Avant-Garde The Avant-Garde: Analysis and Synthesis From Dionysus to Apollo: Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes The Spiritual in Art: Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter The Crystal Cathedral: Bruno Taut and the Bauhaus 8. The Promised Land: Toward a Retotalized Theatre The Theatre Reform Movement World Theatre: Hofmannsthal and Claudel Theatre of Cruelty: Brecht and Artaud Synthesis of the Arts: A Typology Part III: The Sublime in Politics 9. National Regeneration The Community to Come Romain Rolland: Le theatre du peuple Gabriele d'Annunzio: Il fuoco The Nietzschean Sublime 10. Art and Revolution: The Soviet Union The Birth of the New Man Festivals of the Revolution From Art to Life: The Russian Avant-Garde Stalin's Total Work of Art 11. The Will to Power as Art: The Third Reich The Avant-Garde and the Breakthrough to Totality Benjamin and the Aestheticization of Politics The State as Work of Art: Junger's Der Arbeiter Hitler's Triumph of the Will Conclusion Bibliography Index

About the Author

David Roberts is Professor Emeritus of German at Monash University. He is the author of Art and Enlightenment: Aesthetic Theory after Adorno and coauthor of Dialectic of Romanticism. A Critique of Modernism, among many other books.

Reviews

"With this volume, Roberts completes a trilogy devoted to European modernism. Art and Enlightenment (1991) offered a critical assessment of Adorno's theory of modern music, while Dialectic of Romanticism proposed a 'civil' alternative to Romantic nostalgia and Enlightenment progressivism. This new book, on the tangled legacy of Richard Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk ('total work of art'), is equally original, in approach and detailed readings... The author traces its origins to the French Revolution and German Romanticism, and then monitors the cultural resonance of Wagner's Parsifal, via Nietzsche and Mallarme, which extends to the 20th-century avant-garde-particularly its odd mix of differentiation/synthesis of the arts, and its theatrical fusion of art and life. Finally he surveys the 'sublime' politics of Fascist spectacle, which Walter Benjamin famously reduced to the 'aestheticization of politics.' If the Nazis seem finally to have discredited the entire tradition, it nevertheless finds a spectral afterlife in contemporary theme parks and cyberspace. Ambitious, densely written, yet rewarding, this volume caps a remarkable achievement. Summing Up: Highly recommended."-Choice (1 September 2012) "There is much to admire in Roberts' study of the total work of art and he convincingly makes the case for its importance... Roberts' book provides a hugely insightful study of the total work of art. Most helpfully he uses this recurring motif as a way of breaking down conventional narratives about modernist politics, spirituality and aesthetic technique."-Claire Warden, Consciousness, Spirituality and the Arts (August 2013) "Roberts portrays the total work of art not simply as a particular and peripheral genre of modern culture but rather as a fundamental idea that responded to the experience of desacralization in modernity ... This book is impressive in sweep, thought-provoking in its challenges to accepted cultural schemas, and fascinating in the details it uncovers along the way. In short: a grand synthetic account that truly holds together. It represents an important contribution to the re-thinking of modernism." -Peter Zusi, University College London,Monatshefte(2014)