Heroes and Hero-Worship
RICHARD STRAUSS’ tone-poem A Hero's Life burst forth from 3YA this week, arousing sentiments of a lively
distrust in at least one listener. The peak of the composition is an extremely vivid and energetic rendering of the idea of strife and battle, and according to the introductory remarks it is uncertain whether the battle is taking place between the hero and his foes or within his own inner self. But the discouraging truth is that with this type of hero there is no difference between the two. This is the hero as imagined by Thomas Carlyle and sundry Germans-he who sums up and expresses in his own personality the conflicting tendencies of his age. What does it matter then whether the battle is external or internal? He is the battle which rages outside. Finally, having ended the strife and solved by the transcendent quality of his self the contradictions that gave it birth, "the hero," says the introduction, "withdraws from the world." which no doubt applauds discreetly. The trouble with all this is not only that it leads German historians into strange excesses, not only that such a Hero can never be a human being (indeed, he never existed), but that he can so easily turn into the Fuhrer, who incarnates not an age, but a race.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19451214.2.18.7
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 338, 14 December 1945, Page 9
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220Heroes and Hero-Worship New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 338, 14 December 1945, Page 9
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