A Revolução Faz-se Sem Wagner

Wagner is a classic example of someone who, when young, is a passionately committed and active left-wing revolutionary, but then becomes disillusioned with politics and turns away from it altogether in middle age. Former comrades who retain their left-wing commitment usually see such a person as 'moving to the right', and of course some do, they become conservatives. But in most cases this is an uncomprehending way of seeing what is happening. For most such people are not switching from one political allegiance to another, they are becoming disillusioned with politics as such. They are acquiring a different sort of outlook on life, one that does not see politico-social issues as primary. And this is what happened to Wagner.He did not 'move to the right' in the sense of becoming a conservative: never at any time in his life was he conservative in his views or attitudes: to the end of his days he remained radically critical of the society he knew, and never from a right-wing point of view. But he became disillusioned, and bitterly so, with the possibilities of idealistic change. The unforgiving bitterness of the disappointed left-winger is a quite different phenomenon psychologically from the curmudgeonliness of the reactionary, even if in elderly people the two often show some of the same symptoms. One is bitterness at the loss of a past, the other bitterness at the loss of a future. What they have in common is dislike of the present, but in one case this is based on traditional values and in the other on the pain of having relinquised hopes for a radically different future. Be all this as it may, Wagner certainly ceased to be a revolutionary, or a socialist, or anything other than a spasmodic and atavistic devotee of the residual values of failed leftism in the later part of his life, without becoming conservative or right-wing or reactionary — none of the last three epithets ever applied to him. His significant movement was not from left to right but from politics to metaphysics.

Bryan Magee, The Tristan Chord. Metropolitan Books. (2000)

Gary Lehman enquanto Tristão, daqui.