Richard Wagner and Hunter S. Thompson: Parallel Lives a Century Apart Part 1

Now for something completely different…

Though I don’t believe in reincarnation—unlike Wagner—there are such uncanny parallels between the two that I like to imagine Richard Wagner came back as Hunter S. Thompson. And boy, was he pissed.

I first noticed the similarities when I happened to read their letters around the same time, about ten years ago. They were both obsessed with the same themes—and in much the same way. That led me down the rabbit hole, digging deeper into Thompson’s life (and Wagner’s, of course). The parallels only became more striking.

To capture a few of them, I put together the chart below. I couldn’t figure out how to format it properly in the blog, so I’m posting screenshots of the original document—apologies for the slight blur.

Take a look this week. I’ll save the narrative—the why this matters—for the next post.

In the chart, the color highlights mark their differences; everything else is the same.-

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End Notes

1 I will probably not ever write about Wagner’s religious or philosophical beliefs in any depth, but he was very attracted intellectually to Buddhism, which aligns closely with the beliefs of his greatest influence, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. That said, he also was greatly attracted to the symbols, though not dogma, of Christianity. He had planned a explicit Buddhist-themed opera, The Victors, but he ran out of steam, plus he decided Parsifal covered the ground adequately. An interesting book that covers Wagner’s Buddhist (and Christian) beliefs is The Redeemer Reborn, Parsifal as the Fifth Opera of Wagner’s Ring, by Paul Schofield (a former Zen monk). He makes the case that all the major characters in the Ring are reincarnated in Parsifal to work through their remaining negative karma. It’s really well written and a rather fascinating take on the opera.