It was a fascinating detour in the Pope’s gob-smacking interview yesterday: he is a fan of Wagner, specifically the Furtwängler La Scala Ring and the 1962 Knappertsbusch Parsifal. The peerless music critic for the New Yorker, Alex Ross, has some thoughts:
If I’m not mistaken, Pope Francis is comparing “decadent Thomist commentaries” to Klingsor’s magic garden — a seductive illusion covering a wasteland. Could the Pope’s emergent philosophy of unadorned compassion have been influenced in some small way by Parsifal, that attempted renovation of religious thought through musical ritual? “Through pity, knowing”? “Redemption to the Redeemer”? Possibly, but there are limits to his aestheticism: “Our life is not given to us like an opera libretto, in which all is written down; but it means going, walking, doing, searching, seeing.” This is a remarkable man.
And also a remarkable mind. We were constantly reminded of Benedict’s intellect, and it was and is impressive. But it was also a desiccated variety, crammed with fear, obsessed with order and precision, closed at times to the surprises of life and of God in its attempt to dot every i and cross every t. Francis? A profound intellect, yet also a living, breathing, open-ended one.
The Dish 