I like the work of Wagner as an example of the production of historical knowledge, that is to say how we take literature as a sort of recieved wisdom and how that literature is altered over time. This is sort of a double question. First i am wondering if you could begin by letting us know how you think Schopenhauer understood pessimism? then I would like you to show how Wagner took this understanding of pessimism into the work of writing his opera. If we look at some of his opera as an attempt to take the subject back before its Cristianization how would losing its connection to Christianity be an introductio to a religion without God?

Scruton, R. (2003). Wagner and religion. In Death-Devoted heart: Sex and the sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com/corp/