Word: weltschmerz
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...interpretations, on Shakespeare, his life, his medium, his work, what it means - and doesn't mean - and how it is acted. Where there are no facts he makes no effort to invent any. His own remarks are distinguished by unusual common sense. The common sense changes Hamlet from Weltschmerz in tights to a gallant and proficient Renaissance prince; proclaims that Shylock cannot be whitewashed but is a definitely anti-Semitic creation ; underestimates such dull-acting but extraordinary poems as Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus; insists the plays should be read aloud, staged with a minimum of scenery and business. There...
...stand the wear & tear of Siegfried's "Forge Song" and Siegmund's stentorian "Wälse Wälse" without straining a capillary. But what impresses Wagnerites is his ability to color Wagner's mystical, mountain-glade poetry with just the right shade of Teutonic Weltschmerz, his solemn evocation of all the Nibelungenlied's nature-nourished gnomes and demigods. When Melchior sings, Wagnerites forget the Metropolitan's tattered backdrops and seem to see the green Rhine and the doom-cragged, primeval mountains of Gothic legend...