Thoughts out of Season, Part I / David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.

A sequence of incisive essays examines confessional writing, cultural complacency, and artistic reception, arguing that society often masks weakness as health while misreading serious art. The author critiques literary and religious self-exposure, analyzes translators’ and editors’ attitudes toward style and biblical diction, and reflects on the public response to a prominent musical figure and festival as symptomatic of broader philistinism. Combining pointed literary criticism, cultural diagnosis, and rhetorical provocation, the pieces explore tensions between aesthetic greatness and social mediocrity, the masquerade of respectability, and the consequences of mistaking conformity for strength.