THE VALKYRIES
BY
E. F. BENSON
Author of "Limitations," "Dodo," etc.
T. FISHER UNWIN
LONDON LEIPZIG PARIS
1903
[Illustration: The Flight of the Valkyries]
[Illustration: Brunnhilde]
[Illustration: Siegmund The Wolsung]
[Illustration: Waltraute]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: THE HOUSE OF HUNDING
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE STRANGER
CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF THE STRANGER
CHAPTER IV
THE RECOGNITION
CHAPTER V
THE STRIFE OF WOTAN AND FRICKA
CHAPTER VI
SIEGMUND'S LOT IS CAST
CHAPTER VII
THE FIGHT OF SIEGMUND
CHAPTER VIII
THE FLIGHT OF BRUNNHILDE
CHAPTER IX
THE SENTENCE OF BRUNNHILDE
CHAPTER X
THE SLEEP OF BRUNNHILDE.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FLIGHT OF THE VALKYRIES Frontispiece
OFTEN HAD SHE SAT THERE
"LADY, I THANK THEE"
"TO-NIGHT WE ARE HOST AND GUEST"
AT THAT HE WRENCHED AT THE SWORD-HILT
"I GIVE THEE MINE OATH!" SAID HE
VERY SLOWLY SHE ARMED HERSELF
"WOTAN'S SPEAR IS STRETCHED AGAINST THEE, SIEGMUND"
BRUNNHILDE BRINGS SIEGLINDE TO THE VALKYRIES' MEETING-PLACE
CROUCHING AMONG HER SISTERS
THEN TENDERLY HE RAISED HER FROM WHERE SHE KNELT
PREFACE
In the following pages an attempt has been made to render as closely
as possible into English narrative prose the libretto of Wagner's
"Valkyrie". The story is one little known to English readers, and even
those who are familiar with the gigantic music may find in the story
something which, even when rendered into homely prose, will reveal to
them some new greatness of the master-mind of its author. It is in this
hope that I have attempted this version.
Whether I have attempted a task either absolutely impossible, or
impossible to my capacity, I cannot tell, for so huge is the scale of
the original, so big with passion, so set in the riot of storm-clouds
and elemental forces, that perhaps it can only be conveyed to the mind
as Wagner conveyed it, through such sonorous musical interpretations
as he alone was capable of giving to it. Yet even because the theme is
so great, rather than in spite of it, any interpretation, even that
of halting prose, may be unable to miss certain of the force of the
original.
The drama itself comes second in the tetralogy of the Ring, being
preceded by the Rheingold. But this latter is more properly to be
considered as the overture to a trilogy than as the first drama of
a tetralogy. In it the stage is set, and Heaven above, rainbow-girt
Walhalla, and the dark stir of the forces beneath the earth, Alberich
and the Niebelungs, enter the arena waiting for the puny and momentous
sons of men to assert their rightful lordship over the earth, at the
arising of whom the gods grow grey and the everlasting foundations of
Walhalla crumble. From the strange loves of Siegmund and Sieglinde,
love not of mortal passion, but of primeval and elemental need, the
drama starts; this is the first casting of the shuttle across the
woof of destiny. From that point, through the present drama, through
Siegfried, through the dusk of the gods the eternal grinding of the
mills continues. Once set going the gods themselves are powerless
to stop them, for the stream that turns them is stronger than the
thunderings of Wotan, for the stream is "That which shall be."
In storm the drama begins, in storm of thunder and all the range of
passion and of death it works its inevitable way, till for a moment
there is calm, when on the mountain-top Brunnhilde sleeps, waiting for
the coming of him whose she is, for the awakening to the joy of human
life. And there till Siegfried leaps the barrier of flame we leave her.
E. F. BENSON.
THE VALKYRIES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
THE HOUSE OF HUNDING
Never before in the memory of man had spring been so late in
coming, and into mid-May had lasted the hurricanes and tempests of
winter. Not even yet was the armoury of its storms and squalls wholly
spent, and men, as they huddled by the fire and heard night by night,
and day by day the bugling of the wind, and the hiss of rain and the
patter of the hailstones, wondered what this subversion and stay of the
wholesome seasons should portend. For now for many years had strange
omens and forebodings shadowed and oppressed the earth. Some said that
the earth itself and Erda the spirit of earth were growing old; some
even had seen the great mother, not as of old she had appeared from
time to time, vigorous and young, clad in the fresh green of growing
things, but old and heavy-eyed, and her mantle was frosted over with
rime, for the chill of the unremitting years had fallen on her. Others
again said that in Walhalla, which Wotan the father of gods and men had
builded by the might of giants, all was not well; that shadows crowded
in places where no shadows should be, and that their companies grew
ever greater, and that dim voices of wailing and of warning sounded
in the ears and in the high places of the gods. Others said that the
gods themselves were growing old; that Wotan feared the spirits of
the earth, and of the places beneath the earth, for he was no longer
certain of his strength, and that age and the grey shadow of death
itself looked over his shoulder when he sat alone, and when he slept
with Fricka his wife visions of ill portent would trouble his dreams
so that often he rose at dead of night from his couch, and would look
from the walls of Walhalla over the still sleeping earth, wondering
from which quarter danger would come, and from where he would first see
the red light of war. Night by night he would commune with himself,
wondering how it was that the strength and the merriment of old days
had departed, wondering, yet in himself knowing. For he knew the Book
of Fate and of that which should be, as a man still dreaming knows that
he is in bed, and the night-hag rides him, and yet is powerless either
to fully sleep or fully wake. Certain also it was that day by day he
sent his daughters, whom he begat by Erda the spirit of the earth,
to slay and bring into Walhalla heroes of the sons of men, into whom
he breathed the spirit of eternal life so that for ever they should
guard those walls that once he thought impregnable; and day by day did
the eight Valkyries, led by Brunnhilde, the fairest and the strongest
of them all, go on their quests. She it was in whom above all Wotan
delighted, for so at one with him was the swift strength and fearless
will of the maid; it was to her he told all his intentions and his
purposes, and not to Fricka his wife, so that often when he talked with
Brunnhilde he scarcely knew whether he spoke to her or whether his own
soul but communed with itself. Yet though he thus guarded Walhalla,
thinking to make it safe, he knew that there was one thing in the world
which was stronger than he, and that was Fate. What Should Be, would
be, and What Should Be recked of Wotan as lightly as it recked of the
falling of a sparrow, or the passing of a spring shower.
Now these omens of gloom and fate which lay heavy on Walhalla,
troubled also the minds of men. If death came to the gods, should not
death come also to the earth and the children of the earth? When the
Master fell should not the servant fall also? Yet because the race of
men were yet but young on the earth, and vigorous, flourishing in stony
places like a creeping plant that shall soon cover the desert with its
stems, there were men, and those wise ones, who held that after the
fall of the gods the kingdoms of the world and all the sovereignty of
the earth should soon be given to the sons of men. And they looked for
the coming of one who should challenge the gods themselves, before whom
the everlasting foundations of Walhalla should crumble. He it was, they
said, whom Wotan feared, he who was free and owed nothing to the lords
of Walhalla, for Wotan knew that before him his own god-like strength
would crumble as a dead leaf, and as a dead leaf be borne away on the
winds. And in this long continuance of winter, when already spring
should have awakened the earth with its glad shout, they saw in figure
the winter of the gods; and when winter should cease and spring come,
even so would come in the fulness of time now nigh the upspringing
of men, in which should be forgotten the winter of the gods. For the
finger of fate pointed to the new time, when Walhalla should be shaken
and fall, and men should be slaves no longer to the early outworn gods,
but possess the earth in peace and plenty.
Yet still in mid-May the storms of winter were not spent; still the
sap of growing things stayed and stirred not in the barren branches
of the forest trees. And winter still froze and hardened in the heart
of Sieglinde the wife of Hunding. Though she had been long his wife,
yet she was still young, and her woman's heart hungered for love, and
starved for a man she could love, but froze again ever into ice at the
sight of her lord. Unwittingly and by compulsion of her kindred and his
she had married him; hate blossomed in her heart where the flower of
love should have made fragrance, and in all but deed she was unfaithful
to him. Day by day she did the work of a wife; she made his food for
him before he went out to the hunt, whether it was the deer he hunted
to make venison, or man that he hunted for vengeance, for he was of the
tribe of the Niedings, who wooed by sword and violence, and from the
slaughter of her kindred had often borne away a maid to her wedding
feast Then after she had given him his food, she would give him his
spear and sword and shield, a service which but earned her a curse or a
blow, and watch him stride off into the forest, with bitter loathing in
her heart And truly if hate could kill, Hunding would have died by his
wife's hand a hundred deaths a day.
But the hours when he was out were more tolerable, for after she had
cleaned the house, and made all ready for his return, she would be free
of the man she so hated till night came. Then, maybe, if suns were
fair, she would sit outside, the house, listening to the sounds of the
forest at noonday, little knowing how in the years that were coming,
one, her first-born and only son, of a stranger union than ever gods or
men had dreamed of, would listen in like manner to the murmurs of the
forest, till the song of the bird spoke to him not with unintelligible
twitterings, but with a voice as clear as the tones of a friend. Or
she would let down her mane of golden hair, loving it because it
was beautiful, and hating it because it was Hunding's, his to twine
passionate hands in, his to cut off and throw on to the hearth if so he
wished. Thus she both hated and loved her own beauty; loved it because
she longed to give it to a man she loved, hated it because it belonged
to a man she hated.
At other times she would walk down through the pine-trees to where
the mountain brook fell into the black lake, that lay deeper, it was
said, than line could plumb. Often she had sat there, wondering how
it was that she of the Wolsung breed, daughter of the god Wotan, when
in form of a man he wooed and won the forest maid who was her mother,
yet lacked the courage to plunge in and be done with Hunding and her
woe for ever. Yet had she known it, it was courage not cowardice that
held her back from the leap, courage and that firm and strong belief
that burned like a little flame, so clear, and yet so tiny within her,
that there was something more written for her in the Book of Fate, to
which even Wotan bowed, than that she should end all in one moment of
unwomanly despair. Then, maybe, she would creep to the edge of the
water, where the lake lay still and windless, and behold in that mirror
the wonder and glory of her face, warm and red with the flow of her
strong blood, with the great grey eyes all wildness and all fierce
passion for the man she had never seen, whose coming her heart welcomed.
[Illustration: Often had she sat there.]
"Surely I bring him a gift which not many would despise," she would
say to herself; "and O, when he comes, the love which is in my heart
will make me more beautiful than ever!" Then, maybe, if the spring
stirred in her blood, she would lie there imagining him. Dark men she
hated, because Hunding was dark. Dark was he and swarthy, of great
stature, but so broad of build that he seemed not tall. Dark eyes
looked from out of the eaves of his overhanging brows, a cavern fringed
with long growth of eyebrows, and dark and mirthless and cruel was
his heart. Not so should her lover be; he, the man for whom fate had
predestined her, for whose sake fate held her back from the lake that
was as black as Hunding. No, he should be tall, but slight, strong
with the strength of speed and lightness, not strong with the knotted
strength of the oak-tree. Hunding was black, so he should be fair, his
hair of the colour of honey when it is drained fresh from the nest of
the wild bee, and the sun strikes it.
"Yes, yes," she would say, "the colour, the colour;" and then a braid
of her own hair would stray over her shoulder; "yes, that colour,"
she would say; and indeed it was beyond compare, for fresh honey was
lustreless beside it. Grey should his eyes be, for Hunding was dark,
grey with a reflected blueness lying deep therein, even as her own eyes
were grey like thin skeins of cloud suffused with the inimitable blue
of the heaven behind them. Then she would picture him, and lo! when
the picture was complete, the man whom she desired, for whom her heart
waited, was of the same glorious mould as herself, such a man as Wotan
might have begotten by the forest maiden who bore Sieglinde herself.
Then when evening approached and the shadows of the pines began to
lengthen across the lake, and the twittering of birds began to be
hushed in the bushes, she would turn homewards again, and get ready
the supper for her lord, and wait, his return. Sometimes even when she
gazed into the lake, his image would cross her mind, and at that the
reflection of her face froze and sickened. And every evening when she
heard his step it froze and sickened, and her heart sickened also, and
Sieglinde was Sieglinde no longer, but his wife, faithless in all but
deed. Sometimes if the day and work had not gone well, he would speak
no word to her, and again a curse or a blow might be her only traffic
with him till next day he went forth again into the forest. But if the
day had prospered with him, if he had slain much game, be it man or
beast, he would be well pleased with her, and laugh to see her hatred
of him, for that but seemed to kindle his love for her beauty. But
Sieglinde was better pleased if he cursed her, for since he was hateful
to her, his displeasure was almost sweet to her, but his pleasure made
her sometimes hot with hatred against him, and she could have killed
him, sometimes cold with hatred, when she could have killed herself.
Nevertheless, between her and death stood ever the image of one who
should come with outpouring of love, at sight of whom her own love long
frozen and pent within her, nor even yet come to birth, should also be
outpoured as the sap in a tree is called forth by the spring and the
sun, and must follow that sweet bidding. But as yet it was winter with
her and the world, and for sun the chill rain hissed on the roof-tree,
and among the trees of the forest the winter wind sighed in the bitter
air.
The house of Hunding, Sieglinde's house of hate, stood high in the
forest, and all round it grew great trees of stately growth, where in
this May-time the birds should have been already mated, the male with
throatfuls of song to while his mate's hour of patient brooding, she
busy with the cares of motherhood. But so long had winter lingered,
that the branches and boughs were still scarcely green with the buds
that, herald spring, and as yet their feathered citizens were silent.
On the hill-side the pine forest came down to the borders of the stream
which fed the lake into which Sieglinde used so often to look, and
from year's end to year's end this was never wholly silent because of
the breezes that even in the depth of summer made music in the pines,
so high and open to the clear winds of heaven was the place set, and
by night and day low moaning as of a distant sea sounded ever through
the chambers of the house of Hunding. Four-square was the house;
the door opened straight from the wood of beech and oak in which it
stood, into the dwelling-place, and on one side was the open hearth
with seats right and left of it When sitting there Sieglinde could
see through the smoke-hole the sky outside, and on clear nights would
notice how the stars looked down through the curling wood-smoke, even
as that which she knew would come to her shone steadfastly, though
often obscured through the troubled clouds of her life. In front
stood the table at which Hunding ate, and at which, when her lord had
finished, she ate also. In the very centre of the hall grew a great
tree, in the branches of which rested the beams of the roof. This was
the work of Hunding, which he had prepared before ever he went on his
violent wooing; and cunningly was it contrived, so that the strength
and stability of the tree passed into the house itself, and not all
the winds of heaven could move the house unless the tree itself was
uprooted. Often did Sieglinde gaze at the mighty trunk, but not for
pleasure at the workmanship of the house, but because in her day-dreams
she ever saw her deliverance from the hated yoke of Hunding bound up
with the tree. For on the day of her abhorred wedlock, when the kith
and kin of Hunding made merry at his marriage feast, while she, whom
he had carried off, sat apart with downcast eyes, and heart in which
hatred of her husband already had flowered, there strode into the hall
one whom neither she nor Hunding, nor any of those who sat at meat with
him, knew. But as he came into the hall, a hush fell on the din of
merry-making, and none durst ask him who he was, or what his business
there might be. First one and then another started up to ask him what
he did there, for he came unbidden by any, but at the flash of his eye,
each in turn fell back abashed, but Sieglinde met his gaze undismayed,
and found there no tremor nor fear, but a sudden spring of hope. The
stranger was clad in a long cloak of blue, and on his head was a hat of
so wide a brim that one of his eyes only was seen. Yet that was enough
to put fear into the hearts of all except Sieglinde; and she found
there hope and the promise of delivery. Still in silence he drew the
sword he wore, and with one movement buried it up to the hilt in the
stem of the ash. Then said the stranger: "Whoso can pull out the sword,
his shall it be," and without more words strode out as he had come.
Then one after the other, beginning from Hunding, all tried to draw out
the sword, yet none with his utmost might could stir it an inch from
the place where the stranger had so lightly thrust it. But ever, since
the stranger's glance had fallen on her, Sieglinde knew in her heart
that the man who would draw it out would be her deliverer from the
house of hate. And thus she often cast her eyes to where the hilt of
the sword still gleamed against the dark trunk of the ash, and waited
for one to come.
For the rest, curtains of woven wool, the work of Sieglinde's years
of loveless marriage, hung on the walls, and on the floor were strewn
bear-skins, the spoils of Hunding's hunting. Beside the hearth a
stairway of few steps led to the store-house, and in the wall opposite
was the door that led to the bed-chamber. Little recked Hunding when in
the house of aught but his food and his sleep; and the table at which
he ate, the stool on which he sat, and the bed in which he slept were
furniture enough for him. And since to Sieglinde the house was a house
of hate, she cared not to make it fair as women do whose heart is at
home. Clean was the house and bare; the roof kept out the rain, and
Hunding's hunting made a fat table.