In the second scene of the prologue, then, we find Wotan and Fricka

before the completed castle of Walhalla, which Wotan salutes in a

speech of majestic dignity. Fricka at once reminds him of the price

to be paid. When Freia enters, calling upon Wotan to release her

from the giants, we quickly learn that it was Loge who devised the

bargain and who is depended upon by Wotan to find a way out of it.

The giants demand their pay. Wotan tells them they cannot have Freia.

Then even the "stupid giant," as he calls himself, warns the god

of the consequences of violating the faith by which he rules. Loge

arrives in the height of the discussion and at once shows the evil,

cunning, flickering nature of his character. The arch-enemy of the

gods, trusted only by Wotan who confesses to a lack of cunning, Loge

has planned a temptation to work the downfall of the Aesir. He tells

the story of his wanderings. In all the earth none values aught more

than the worth of woman--save one, black Alberich alone, who has

forsworn love, stolen the Rhine gold and made from it a ring to give

him the mastery of the world. Donner exclaims that such a ring may

make Alberich master of the gods themselves, and Wotan cries that he

must have the ring. But the giants have also heard, and they offer

to accept the Nibelung hoard, the stolen Rhine gold, in ransom for

Freia, whom they carry off till such time as Wotan is ready to pay.

Here we see that Wagner has followed none of the original material

exactly. In the Eddas the giant is not allowed to complete the burg,

and the hoard does not enter into the matter at all. In the Volsunga

Saga the gold is paid in ransom for the gods held by Hreidmar for the

murder of Otter. The connection of the Rhine gold with the entry of

sin among the gods, as narrated in the Eddas, is Wagner's own work,

and it adds immeasurably to the strength and poetic beauty of the

drama.

Wotan and Loge in Nibelheim, the abode of the Nibelungs, is the next

picture. Alberich has welded the ring and is the master of his race.

Mime has made for him the Tarnhelm, which is to be the instrument

of much evil. He prates of the power which is yet to be his, and

even threatens the gods. The dwarfs and the giants are alike hostile

to the Aesir. Tempted by Loge's cunning to show the magic of the

Tarnhelm, Alberich changes himself first to a serpent and then to a

toad, and in the latter form the gods make him a captive and drag him

away to the surface of the earth before Walhalla. Then they demand of

him as ransom the Nibelung hoard. He gives it, for with his ring he

can get more. They call for the Tarnhelm. He gives that, too. Then

they demand the ring. Alberich warns Wotan not to rob him of it.

"Say I have sinned;

The sin on myself but falls:

But on all things that were,

Are, and will be,

Strikes this evil of thine,

If rashly thou seizest my ring."

The dwarf, like the giant, knows what must be the consequence of the

infraction by the presiding god of the law above all gods. But Wotan

tears the ring from his finger. Then Alberich curses the ring. It

shall deal out death, not power. It shall bring misery, not gladness.

But this curse is, after all, only a piece of stage property. It

makes a theatrical effect, and it marks a climax for the auditor. The

real curse already exists the moment Wotan stains himself with crime.

The thought of the Norse mythology, as set forth in the Eddas, but

lost by the maker of Volsunga Saga, is preserved by Wagner in the

prophecy of Alberich. The law will do its own work; but the curse has

an external and incidental value in the construction of the drama.

Alberich puts into words the inevitable operation of the law.

The prologue now moves swiftly to its end. The giants return with

Freia, and it is arranged that they are to receive for her enough

gold to hide her. This is Wagner's adaptation of the incident of the

filling of the otter skin in the Volsunga Saga. The hoard proves

insufficient, and the Tarnhelm goes to swell the heap. Fasolt, the

giant who is smitten by the charms of the goddess, still sees the

glorious glance of her eye, and demands that Wotan put the ring on

the pile to stop this last cranny. Compare Hreidmar's discovery of

the muzzle-hair with this poetic idea! The haughty god refuses. The

giants declare the bargain off, and start away again with Freia.

Loge's plan is working perfectly. He never loses any opportunity to

fasten more firmly upon Wotan his burden of guilt. When the giants

demand the ring, Loge interposes, saying that the gods must retain

that because Wotan means to restore it to the Rhine maidens. Wotan at

once falls into the trap, and says:

"What pratest thou there?

The prize so hardly come by

I shall keep, unawed, for myself."

When Wotan has flatly refused to give the ring to the giants, Erda,

the embodiment of the earth itself, the impersonation of primeval

elements, arises in pale light and mystery. She warns Wotan to flee

the curse of the ring. She declares herself to be the all-knowing

prophetess, and says:

"Alles was ist, endet.

Ein düsterer Tag

dämmert den Göttern."

"All that exists, endeth.

A dismal day

Dawns for the Aesir."

This brief scene, so charged with dramatic and musical potency, is

Wagner's use of the prophecy of the Wala, as contained in the Elder

Edda. That prophecy foretells the end of the gods, but its situation

in the story is similar to that of the Erda scene in "Siegfried."

It comes near the end of the tragedy. Nevertheless from it Wagner

obtained the character of Erda and the prediction made by her in

"Das Rheingold." The prophecy of the Wala in the Edda does not touch

upon the sin of the gods, but it sets forth in detail the story of

Ragnarök, as I have already given it. Wagner, however, connects

the Wala's utterance with the ethical basis of his tragedy. Wotan,

impressed by the prediction, gives up the ring and ransoms Freia.

The curse at once begins to operate. The giants quarrel over the

division of the hoard and Fafner kills Fasolt. In the Volsunga Saga,

from which this incident is adapted, Fafner slays his father, while

his brother Regin plays the part allotted by Wagner to Mime in

"Siegfried," as we shall presently see. Fafner goes off to the forest

with his hoard, and there, as in the saga, becomes a dragon, by the

aid of the Tarnhelm, and lies guarding the hoard, which he does not

know how to use, for he is too stupid to employ the power of the ring.

Donner raises a thunderstorm to clear the air after the murder,

and when the rain is gone a rainbow is seen spanning the valley

of the Rhine. The new castle stands forth in all its glory, and

Wotan, inviting Fricka to enter with him, for the first time calls

it Walhalla. The goddess asks the meaning of the name, and Wotan

replies:

"What might 'gainst our fears

My mind may have found,

If proved a success

Soon shall explain the name."

The thought in Wotan's mind is that of raising up a race of free

heroes who shall perform vicariously the expiation denied to him.

One of them shall of his own volition rescue the ring and restore it

to its rightful owners, thus satisfying the demands of the law and

removing the curse. The conception of the hero in the mind of Wotan

is made known to us only by the orchestra, which intones the Sword

motive here for the first time. In recent years, with the sanction

of Mme. Wagner, a new idea has been introduced into this scene. In

the hoard is the sword, which is discarded by Fafner as valueless.

When Wotan conceives the hero-thought, he picks up this sword and

raises it aloft while the trumpet peals out the motive. This was

not Wagner's idea, but it is not an unpardonable concession to the

demands of the theatre. It was just a little too much for Wagner to

expect that his auditors would carry the Sword motive in their minds

from "Das Rheingold" to the first act of "Die Walküre," and remember

when hearing it in the latter how it was used in the former and thus

find out what it meant there.

Over the rainbow--Bifröst, as it is called in the Eddas--the gods

enter Walhalla, the Rhine maidens vainly pleading from the valley

below for the return of their ring, and Loge gloating over the end to

which, as he says, the Aesir are even now hastening. And thus ends

the prologue, to which I have devoted much space because it contains

the foundation of the tragedy. It presents to us the hero foredoomed

to destruction, the crime, and the certainty of its inevitable

punishment. That is the subject-matter of the propositional part of a

classic tragedy. We are now ready to observe the workings of Wotan's

futile plans.

With the passage from "Das Rheingold" to "Die Walküre" we enter upon

the struggles of the innocent human beings who have been created by

Wotan to work his will. The beautiful drama in which Wagner sets

forth the events leading to the birth of Siegfried and the slumber of

Brünnhilde on the mountain is built from mere hints in the Volsunga

Saga. Volsung is no longer the great-grandson of Wotan, but is Wotan

himself. Siegmund and Sieglinde are Sigmund and Signy of the saga,

twin children of Wotan. The name Sieglinde is that of Siegfried's

mother, according to the "Nibelungen Lied." It is Hunding, not

Siggeir, who marries Sieglinde. The fight between Hunding and

Siegmund takes place, not because of the former's rejection by the

maid, but because of the latter's flight with her. The mysterious

one-eyed man strikes the sword into the tree at the wedding-feast,

and on his spear the sword of Siegmund is broken in the fight.

Siegmund Wagner substitutes for the warrior whom Brünnhilde in the

saga once struck down, contrary to Wotan's wishes, and when she is

put to sleep on the mountain it is for protecting, not slaying, the

wrong man. We find that she is surrounded by fire at her own request,

that Wotan rules that she shall marry only the hero who will know

no fear and can pierce the fire, and that this hero is to be the

offspring of Siegmund and Sieglinde--Siegfried, the full-blooded

Volsung, in whose veins flows the blood and in whose heart, freely

and unconsciously, works the impulse of Wotan. Let the reader review

the story of the saga, and compare it with that of "Die Walküre."

The first act of the drama is taken up with the mutual recognition

of Siegmund and Sieglinde, their strange love for one another, the

reception of the sword by the hero for whom it was struck into the

tree, and the flight of the lovers. Then comes the deeply significant

opening scene of the second act. The Valkyr Brünnhilde, revealed to

us in all the glory of her divine beauty and strength, starting to

the field, is warned not to carry Hunding to Walhalla. To Wotan now

comes Fricka, stirred to the bottom of her nature by the deep affront

in the action of Siegmund and Sieglinde to her dignity as the goddess

of marriage. She demands the punishment of the erring pair. Wotan

vainly pleads that the gods need the aid of a hero working of his own

free will in their defence. Fricka brushes aside this plea with the

declaration that heroes have no powers which are denied to gods. She

tells Wotan that it is he who breathes courage into Siegmund, that

it was he who struck the sword into the tree, devised the need into

which Siegmund should fall, and guided him to the house of Hunding.

She stands upon her dignity as the celestial queen and demands that

the outrage of her especial laws shall be punished. Wotan must not

protect Siegmund in the coming fight and he must forbid Brünnhilde's

doing so. By hard-wrung oath she binds her spouse to abandon his own

plan and submit to the demands of the inexorable moral law.

Brünnhilde returns to his side only to learn the story of her sire's

grief. He tells her the history of the rape of the gold, of the

endless scheming of Alberich for the downfall of the gods, of his own

plan to fill Walhalla with defenders, of his search for Erda, and her

becoming Brünnhilde's mother. If Alberich recovers the ring Walhalla

is lost, for only he who forswore love can work evil with the circlet

of Rhine gold. The ring must be taken from Fafner, but Wotan dare not

take it himself because to do so would be a violation of faith and

bring more suffering upon him. Only the free hero can accomplish this

end. But Fricka has unmasked the truth. Siegmund is but the slave of

Wotan's will. And in his final outburst of grief and impotent rage

the god sums up his misery:

"I have wrested Alberich's ring,

Grasped the coveted gold!

The curse I incurred

Doth cling to me yet:--

What I love best I must relinquish,

Slay him I hold most sacred;

Trusting belief

Foully betray!

Glory and fame

Fade from my sight!

Heavenly splendour,

Smiling disgrace!

Be laid in ruins

All I have reared!

Over is my work:

But one thing waits me now--

The ending,

The ending!

And for that ending

Looks Alberich!

Now I measure

The meaning mute

Of what the witch spake in wisdom:--

"When that love's defiant foe

Grimly getteth a son,

The sway of the gods

Full soon shall end!"

The Nibelung dwarf

I now understand

To have won him a woman,

By gold gaining his hopes.

In lust she bears,

Loveless, a babe,

And hatred's fruit

From her draws life.

The love-scorner well

Can work such wonders;

But he I long for fondly--

The free one--doth lack me yet!

Then now take my blessing,

Nibelung's babe!

What thus I fling from me

Hold as thy fortune:

Walhalla's sumptuous halls

Shall sate thy unhallowed desires!"

How Wagner builds upon his material! Hagen, the hatred-born son of

Alberich, offspring of gold, shall cause the downfall of the gods.

He, the child of evil, shall be the instrument of law! And all this

is original with Wagner. To mere hints in the sources he adds the

details of a complete poetic story, and always the development of the

fundamental ethical thought on which the whole tragedy rests is his.

Yet these scenes, in which the god is revealed to us as so intensely

human, are the ones to which the average attendant at Wagner

performances give the least thought. Wagner was much concerned about

this scene, and indeed about the whole act. On October 3, 1855, he

sent the first two acts to Liszt and wrote to him thus:

"I am anxious for the weighty second act; it contains

two catastrophes, so important and powerful that there

would be sufficient matter for two acts; but then they

are so interdependent and the one implies the other so

immediately, that it was impossible to separate them. If it

is represented exactly as I intend, and if my intentions

are perfectly understood, the effect must be beyond

anything that has hitherto been in existence. Of course

it is written only for people who can stand something

(perhaps in reality for nobody). That incapable and weak

persons will complain cannot in any way move me. You must

decide whether everything has succeeded according to my

own intentions. I cannot do it otherwise. At times, when

I was timid and sobered down, I was chiefly anxious about

the great scene of Wotan, especially when he discloses the

decrees of Fate to Brünnhilde, and in London I was once on

the point of rejecting the whole scene. In order to come to

a decision I took up the sketch and recited the scene with

proper expression, when fortunately I discovered that my

spleen was unjustified, and that, if properly represented,

the scene would have a grand effect even in a purely

musical sense."

The remainder of the drama is taken up with the development of

what has been prepared. Brünnhilde's mind is distracted. She feels

that Wotan, against his own inclinations, is about to sacrifice

Siegmund to the wrath of Fricka. Presently the fleeing and guilty

lovers approach. Sieglinde, overcome with shame and terrified at

the prospect of Hunding's attack, sinks senseless in the arms of

Siegmund. Brünnhilde appears, and in the beautiful scene, usually

named by its German title, the "Todesverkündigung," announces to

Siegmund his coming death. He passionately refuses to die or to go

to Walhalla without his bride, and Brünnhilde, overcome by his

pleading, promises to aid him in the fight. She does so, and Wotan

thrusts his spear between the combatants, so that Siegmund's sword is

shattered upon it. Hunding slays Siegmund and is himself stricken to

death by the sword of Wotan. Brünnhilde flees to the Valkyr's rock

with Sieglinde, gives her the pieces of the broken sword, foretells

the birth of a son, whom she names Siegfried, and sends Sieglinde

to secrete herself in the forest to the eastward, where Fafner

lies brooding on the hoard. Wotan arrives in hot pursuit of his

disobedient daughter, drives off her frightened, pleading sisters,

and sentences her, as already told. And all this Wagner has evolved

from a few scattered lines in the saga. The marvellous beauty of the

scene between Wotan and his beloved child cannot be described.

But let the reader remember that the punishment inflicted on her is

not solely because of her disobedience of a command, but also and

chiefly because the salvation of Siegmund would have violated Wotan's

oath to Fricka and thus have increased the burden of guilt already

upon the conscience of this unfortunate and very human god. Again the

ethical basis of the tragedy comes to the front, and the moral law,

operating as Fate, demands a victim. Brünnhilde becomes the Sleeping

Beauty, so familiar to us in the fairy tales, and waits for her

prince to wake her, a prince who shall be without fear, and who shall

see no terrors in the point of All-Father's dread spear. This hero

will be free, "freer than I, the god," as Wotan tells us, while the

majestic pealing of the young hero's motive by the orchestra reveals,

what the text does not, that Siegfried will be the awakener.

None of the sagas or legends in any way connect Brünnhilde

with the fate of Siegfried's parents or the birth of the hero.

Wagner's invention is here truly dramatic. He has welded separate

incidents into a sequence of beautiful poetry and immense dramatic

significance. In doing so he has greatly increased the splendour

of the character of Brünnhilde. He has enlarged the aspect of her

divinity, and has painted with the hand of a master the strange

commingling in her of godhood and womanhood. Her sympathy with the

doomed pair is wholly womanly, and it leads to her becoming entirely

a woman when Wotan, in the enforcement of the demands of law, kisses

the godhood from her. None of the old poems suggest such a Brünnhilde

as Wagner's. She is a creation as distinct as Shakespeare's Juliet,

as great as his Hamlet. In all dramatic literature there is no more

majestic female figure than the Brünnhilde of "Die Walküre" and

"Siegfried." In the final drama she diminishes in stature, by reason

of the loss of her virginity. Then she is only a weak woman, except

in the last scene, when she rises once more on the wings of grief to

the proudest heights of self-sacrifice.

And so we pass to the next drama of the trilogy, the second act of

the tragedy. The story of this is simple. Few ethical questions

arise. All is concerned with the acts of the free hero, working

without knowledge of Wotan, while the Nibelungs vainly strive to

divert the results of the action to their own benefit. Again we meet

with the warring forces,--gods, giants, and dwarfs,--but the gods

are passive. Wotan, disguised as a wanderer, watches the progress of

events, but does not interfere in it. The first act takes place in

the cavern occupied as home and smithy by Mime,[43] no longer subject

to his crafty brother, but now in business for himself and scheming

to make the young Siegfried his instrument for the recovery of the

gold and the ring. Sieglinde died in childbirth in Mime's cavern,

and the dwarf, knowing well who she was, has taken good care of her

son. Mime is an infinitely more picturesque character than the Regin

of the saga, and the cavern a far more romantic home for the nurture

of a forest hero than the Court of the Danish King. Wagner keeps

clear of historical surroundings and conventionalities and presents

to us a primal, elementary youth, a being whom we cannot fail to

love. For Siegfried is the free, untrammelled youth of all time, the

young man rejoicing in the strength of his youth, and arriving at

the fundamental laws of life and love by observation, introspection,

and the mighty workings of natural passion. He is a type, freed

from every convention of clothes-philosophy and custom, from every

condition of time or place. Siegfried is Young Manhood. His every

utterance demands of the impersonator a largeness of conception far

and away beyond the requirements of the ordinary operatic rôles.

These are the petty puppets of libretto machinists, who cut and fit

more or less dramatic stories according to the specifications of the

Meyerbeerian plan. But Siegfried must be conceived along the lines of

Brünnhilde's apostrophe:

"O Siegfried! Herrlicher!

Hort der Welt!

Leben der Erde,

Lachender Held!"

[Footnote 43: Wagner obtained the name of Mime from the Thidrek Saga,

in which Mimir is a cunning smith, the brother of Regin. In this

saga Regin is the name of the dragon. A naked child comes to Mimir,

and because a hind runs out of the wood and licks the child, Mimir

knows that it is a stray which the animal has cared for. He takes the

child and rears it and calls it Sigfrid. This youth slays the dragon,

and then the tale proceeds along the same lines as the other sagas

connected with Siegfried.]

"O Siegfried! Lordly one! Shield of the world! Life of the earth!

Smiling hero!" He must be big in every way--big in the brawn of his

brandished limbs, big in the bursts of his blithesome enthusiasm,

and big in the beauty and bloom of his song. For Wagner, in his

"Communication," tells us how, in the endeavour to discover what it

was that drew him to the heart of the sagas, he drove into the deeper

regions of antiquity,

"where, at last, to my delight and truly in the utmost

reaches of old time, I was to light upon the fair young

form of Man in all the freshness of his force. My studies

thus bore me through the legends of the Middle Ages right

down to their foundation in the old Germanic Mythos; one

swathing after another, which the later legendary lore had

bound around it, I was able to unloose, and thus, at last,

to gaze upon it in its chastest beauty. What here I saw was

no longer the figure of conventional history, whose garment

claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside,

but the real, naked Man, in whom I might spy each throbbing

of his pulses, each stir within his mighty muscles, in

uncramped, freest motion; the type of the true human being."

It was the recognition of Siegfried in his perfection, not as

belittled in the "Nibelungen Lied," that made Wagner conceive him as

the hero of his drama. That conception, once formed, was not lost in

the subsequent development which made Wotan the real protagonist.

Siegfried, in the first drama in which he appears, stands as the

type of the utmost freedom of human impulse and action, the complete

foil to the far-seeing, law-constrained god. He represents the

complementary element in the ethical basis of the tragedy. He is the

pure one, over whom Fate, in the shape of the inexorable moral law,

has yet no control. He is himself. He makes his own deeds. He is the

free agent for whom the despairing god has yearned.

Thus, then, we see him in the first act of the drama,--an impulsive,

discontented youth, eager for larger fields of action, moved by

strange emotions which he does not comprehend, and for whose meaning

he vainly questions the cunning dwarf. A sword he needs, but none

which the dwarf makes will bear the force of his blow. At last he

wrings from Mime the true story of his birth, and the pieces of the

broken sword, which Siegmund in his hour of need christened "Nothung"

("Needful"), are produced as evidence. These shall Mime weld,

declares Siegfried, and then the free youth will make his home in the

wide world. But weld that particular sword, the sword which Wotan

struck into the tree Branstock, is just what Mime cannot do. Wotan,

in his wanderer's guise, comes to prophesy to Mime that only one who

never knew fear shall accomplish the task. To him is forfeit the head

which Mime has staked on answering Wotan's questions.

The scene of the questions between Wotan and Mime was probably

suggested to Wagner by the "Vafthrudnersmal," one of the poems of

the Elder Edda, which shows Odin holding a similar conversation with

the omniscient giant, Vafthrudner. Odin appears as a poor traveller

named Gangrader, and engages in a contest of knowledge with the

giant. Gangrader, in answer to Vafthrudner's questions, tells the

names of the horses that carry Day and Night across the sky and

of the river which divides Asgard from Jotunheim (Riesenheim, the

giant's land) and the field where the last battle is to be fought.

The giant tells the origin of the earth, the story of the creation

of the gods, what the heroes do in Walhalla, what was the origin of

the Norns, who will rule after the world had been destroyed and what

will be the end of the father of the gods. Finally the god asks:

"What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son before he ascended the

funeral pile?" The giant recognises Odin by this question, and says,

"Who can tell what thou didst whisper of old in the ear of thy son?

I have called down my fate upon my own head when I dared to enter on

a strife of knowledge with Odin. All-Father, thou wilt ever be the

wisest." We are not told whether the giant lost his head, but we are

led to believe that the whispered word was "Resurrection."

When Siegfried returns, Mime vainly endeavours to teach him the

meaning of fear, for he would save his head. Siegfried laughs at the

conception, and forthwith forges anew the broken blade of Nothung,

cleaving in twain the anvil and shouting in the joy of his strength.

As for Mime, he now sees that Siegfried will surely slay Fafner,

of whom he has told the youth. Yet the dwarf is in terror, for if

Siegfried does not learn fear from the dragon, then the dwarf dies;

and if he does learn it, who is to rescue the hoard from Fafner's

grasp?

To the forest, then, in the second act, we follow the youth and

his scheming preceptor.[44] Alberich lies in watch outside Fafner's

cave, and Wotan comes to warn the giant that his fate draws near.

Alberich listens, wondering, while Wotan addresses the dragon in his

lair. Anon Mime conducts Siegfried to the spot and leaves him. Alone

the hero muses on his life, his birth, his mother's death, his own

lack of a mate. He hears the song of a forest bird and thinks, could

he but understand it, it might tell him of his needs. He fashions a

reed pipe wherewith to talk to the bird, but his effort is futile.

The scene is one of strange beauty, the orchestra imitating the

weaving of the forest leaves and shadows in a wondrous tone-poem, the

"Waldweben." Despairing of success with the reed, Siegfried winds

a blast upon his horn, and Fafner, the dragon, emerges from his

concealment.

[Footnote 44: In the locale of this scene Wagner follows the Thidrek,

not the Volsunga Saga. The latter makes the place a heath.]

Siegfried attacks and slays the monster. Dying, the giant tells

him to beware of Mime. Plucking his sword from the beast's heart,

the youth wets his finger with the blood and cleanses it with his

lips. At once he understands the language of the bird. And here

we meet with one of Wagner's dramatic makeshifts, which has often

been ridiculed. Before the hero understands the bird its tones are

represented by the clarionet; afterward it sings German text in a

soprano voice. This is Wagner's plan for conveying the language of

the bird to the audience. It is awkward, but there was plainly no

other way to let the hearer into the secret. One needs the help of

his imagination here, and must bear ever in mind that he is listening

to one of the world's fairy tales. The bird sends Siegfried to get

the helm and the ring and warns the youth to be wary, for Mime is

treacherous.

And now comes another makeshift. Mime approaches, knowing that

Siegfried has slain the dragon and obtained the helm and the ring.

The dwarf plans to sink the youth in sleep by a potion, slay him,

and secure the treasure. But as he would prattle of his love and

fidelity, he unconsciously reveals the inner workings of his mind,

and to do this he has to utter them aloud. Siegfried and the

audience hear them. It is clumsy, but again there seemed no other

way. Siegfried slays Mime, and again lays himself down under the

linden tree. The "Waldweben" is heard again, and once more the bird

sings to the hero, this time to tell him that Brünnhilde sleeps on

the fire-girt rock, where only he who knows not fear can reach her.

Siegfried springs forward on the path, the bird showing him the way.

The whole structure and fancy of this beautiful act are original with

Wagner. The saga gave the dramatist only the facts of the slaying of

the dragon and the understanding of the language of the birds, which

warned the hero of the dwarf's treachery and told him of the sleeping

beauty. The treatment and development in the drama are infinitely

more poetic than in the original story.

The third act opens with an interview, suggested by the Elder Edda,

between Wotan and Erda at the foot of the Valkyr's mountain. Wotan

once more consults the Wala, but she tells him naught of value. The

god, now ready to resign the empire of the world and prepared for

the ending of the Aesir, awaits the hero's coming. Siegfried, led

by the bird, confronts him, and with the sword Nothung smites the

opposing spear in twain. I have seen it asked why this sword, which

was shattered upon the spear in "Die Walküre," now cleaves the runic

haft. The ethical basis of the tragedy explains this. Siegmund was

doomed to expiate his crime, a victim to Fricka, the avenger, and to

the law behind her. But, welded anew by the hand of a spotless hero,

the sword is resistless.[45] The law has no hold upon it. Crying "In

vain! I cannot stop thee," Wotan disappears from the tragedy. We hear

of him, but see him no more till the flames of Walhalla reveal him to

us in the blazing sky.

[Footnote 45: Rassmann holds that the name "Gram" ("Wrath") was given

to the sword in the Volsunga Saga because only Odin's wrath could

break it. See Rassmann's "Heldensage," vol. i.]

Siegfried penetrates the fire, and finds the sleeping beauty. He

cuts the byrny from her bosom, as in the saga, and wakes her with a

kiss. She sings her hymn to the sun and the light and the earth, and

proclaims herself Siegfried's from the beginning. One last struggle

for her maidenhood, and she yields herself. The union is made. The

old order is done. The new race is to come and rule the world. The

drama closes with a duo of passionate beauty, and we are ready for

"Götterdämmerung," the last act of "Der Ring des Nibelungen."

No doubt the legend of Sigurd's penetration of the flames was taken

from the old story of Freyr, the sun-god, who rode through a hedge,

guarded by fierce dogs, and a flame-circle within it, to win Gerda

for his bride. In the later form of the legend, as told in the

Elder Edda, Freyr once saw Gerda afar off and fell in love with

her. He pined, and his son told Skirnir, his faithful servant, of

this. Skirnir took Freyr's horse and magic sword, rode through the

flames, and conquered the unwilling Gerda by means of runes. Among

the things she refused before he employed the runes was the magic

ring which the dwarfs had made. From it eight new ones dropped each

ninth night. Thus we see that the myth is related to both of Sigurd's

exploits,--that in which he penetrated the flames for himself, and

that in which he represented Gunnar. The ring made by the dwarfs, of

course, became in the saga tale the ring of Andvari, carrying its

curse, and was given to Brünnhilde after the hero had won her.

The last drama of the series opens with a scene taken directly from

the Norse mythology. On the Valkyr's rock sit the three Norns,

weaving their rope of runes and peering into the events of the past,

the present, and the future. For such is their vocation. They are

the Fates of older legend. In the Scandinavian mythology they were

called Urd, who looked into the past; Verdandi, who surveyed the

present, and Skuld, the youngest, who gazed into the future. Wagner

does not use the names, nor does he discriminate in the occupations

of the three. Indeed, the scene has no close dramatic relation to

the drama about to be enacted, but is rather a pictorial and musical

mood tableau, designed to fill the mind of the auditor with portents.

In the narrative of the first Norn we hear how Wotan lost his eye,

selling it for a draught from the fountain of knowledge, and how

he broke a limb from the great ash Yggdrasil itself to fashion his

spear. These are incidents in the old mythology. The ash tree was

watered daily from Urd's fountain, and it could not wither till the

last battle was about to be fought. From the first Norn's tale we

learn that the tree has withered and the fountain dried. This is a

portent of the end.

From the stories of the other Norns we learn that as soon as

Siegfried had broken Wotan's spear the god summoned his heroes to

the world's ash tree and cut it down. From it were hewn fagots, and

these were piled high in Walhalla. Wotan and the heroes sit in state,

waiting for the flames which shall consume their abode. The dusk of

the gods is at hand. While the Norns are trying to fathom the outcome

of the curse on the ring, their rope breaks. With frightened cries

they sink into the earth, declaring that the world shall no more hear

their wisdom.

Siegfried and Brünnhilde, in the dawn of the new day, come forth

from their cavern home. The young hero has matured into a man. He

is clad in Brünnhilde's armor and wears her cloak. How long they

were together on the mountain no one knows. It was long enough for

the youth to become a man, and to learn all Brünnhilde's wisdom.

She is sending him forth to new exploits, fearing only that she may

not hold his heart in absence. She has taught him all her runes,

and surrendered to him her maidenhood's strength. What these runes

were we can learn from the Lay of Sigdrifa in the Elder Edda, but

they have no bearing upon the story of Wagner. The statement that

Brünnhilde has lost her maiden strength is of importance, for it

helps to explain why Siegfried is afterward able to snatch the ring

from her. With her maidenhood, departed the last vestige of her

divinity, her strength. Henceforth she is all woman. The decree of

Wotan is fulfilled. She says:

"My wisdom fails,

But good-will remains;

So full of love

But failing in strength,

Thou wilt despise

Perchance the poor one,

Who, having giv'n all,

Can grant thee no more."

Siegfried gives her the ring with a casual and insignificant remark

that he owes all his strength to it. Brünnhilde gives him her steed,

Grani, which has lost its magic powers together with her. Compare

this with the saga story of Sigurd's choice of a horse. The hero

now sets forth, and as the scene changes we hear his horn echoing

down the Rhine valley, and the orchestra paints his journey. The

second scene shows us the interior of the home of Gunther, the son of

Gibich, who is seated at a table with his sister, Gutrune, and his

half-brother, Hagen. Gunther is the Gunnar of the saga, but Wagner

uses the name from the "Nibelungen Lied" because it is German. The

name of Gibich is obtained from the "Lex Burgundionum" of Gundohar,

a Burgundian king of the fifth century, who in it names, as one of

his ancestors, Gibica. The word is derived from the same root as

Giuki, the name used in the Volsunga Saga. Wagner gets the character

of Gunther from the "Nibelungen Lied," where he is represented as

a weak person, usually under the influence of others. Gutrune is

the Gudrun of the saga, the daughter of Grimhild, who employs magic

to win Siegfried for her child's spouse. In the "Nibelungen Lied"

Chriemhild is Gutrune; the two personages have been moulded into one

and the magic eliminated. Wagner, as we shall see, identifies the

characters of Gutrune and Chriemhild as the Lied does, but retains

the magic, which is wielded by Hagen in furtherance of the Nibelung's

plan to recover the ring. He also retains the fact that Grimhild

was Gunther's mother. She was also the mother of Hagen, having been

overcome by an elf--an idea which Wagner borrowed from the Thidrek

Saga.

This idea was essential to his plan of making Hagen appear in the

drama as the son of Alberich. It does not consist with Wotan's

statement that the Nibelung had won a woman with gold, but that

discrepancy is unimportant. The point is that Gunther's half-brother

is a Nibelung, and has been entrusted by his father with the task of

bringing about the downfall of Siegfried. Wagner has developed the

character of Hagen according to this idea, and not according to the

original sources. In the Thidrek Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied" Hagen

is represented as a crafty villain, while in the Volsunga Saga he

is of noble nature and will have naught to do with the plot against

Siegfried. In the other two poems he has no motive but malice, while

Wagner raises the character to a high tragic plane by giving Hagen

the purpose of the Nibelungs' revenge.

The second scene opens, then, with Hagen telling Gunther that he is

too long unwed, and that there sleeps on a mountain surrounded by

fire the woman who should be his bride. But she is to be reached only

by him who never knew fear. This leads to a narration of the exploits

of Siegfried, suggested by the narrative of Hagen in the "Nibelungen

Lied," when he sees Siegfried approaching the Court of Gunther.

Neither Gunther nor Gutrune learns what Hagen has already been told

by Alberich, that Siegfried has wed Brünnhilde; and so they readily

fall in with his suggestion that Gutrune administer a magic potion

to bind this great hero's heart to her. Siegfried arrives at the

castle, and is welcomed by Gunther, who in the mediæval style says

in effect: "All that I have and am is yours." Siegfried answers that

he has nothing but his good limbs and his home-made sword to offer

in return. Hagen immediately asks him where the Nibelungs' hoard is.

The hero replies that he deemed it worthless and left it in the cave,

except the Tarnhelm, which he has with him, but does not know how to

use. Hagen thereupon explains the virtue of it, and inquires where

the ring is. Siegfried says it is worn by a woman, and Hagen mutters,

"Brünnhilde." Gutrune proffers the magic draught. Siegfried drinks

to Brünnhilde and--forgets her. For the drink, artfully prepared by

Hagen, was one of forgetfulness. And here we come upon a weak spot in

the drama. The drink does not, as we shall see, make Siegfried forget

all the incidents leading up to his winning of Brünnhilde, but only

their relations. The only plea that can be entered here is that if we

accept a magic drink at all, we must not put logical limitations on

its powers.

Siegfried now falls in with Hagen's plan. He agrees to go through the

fire and get Brünnhilde for Gunther, provided he, in return for the

service, receives the hand of Gutrune. There is no talk of a futile

attempt on the part of Gunther to penetrate the flames. Siegfried and

Gunther swear blood-brotherhood, and the two start for the Valkyr's

rock, where, with the help of the Tarnhelm, they are to exchange

shapes, as in the saga. Hagen, left alone, gloats over the fact that

Siegfried will bring him the ring. Once more the scene changes to

the Valkyr's rock, and we meet with an episode in the story entirely

original with Wagner, an episode of great beauty and significance.

Brünnhilde hears once again the sounds of the passage of a

wind-horse, a Valkyr steed. A moment later her sister, Waltraute, is

clasped in her embrace. Why has she broken Wotan's command against

visiting Brünnhilde? Waltraute says she has fled hither from Walhalla

in anguish. "What has befallen the eternal gods?" asks Brünnhilde,

in fear. Then Waltraute gives a majestic description of the last

gathering of the gods in Walhalla, as already narrated in the Norns'

scene. Deep dismay has fallen on the gods. Wotan has sent his ravens

out to seek for tidings. This, according to the Eddas, he did daily.

Waltraute, weeping on her father's breast, has heard him say:

"The day the Rhine's three daughters

Gain by surrender from her the ring,

From the curse's load

Released are gods and men."

This is why Waltraute has come. Wotan dare not act, does not dream

of doing so; for the atonement must be the work of a free agent.

But a Valkyr is a wish-maiden, Wotan's will, and so Waltraute, like

Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre," strives to realise her father's wish.

Will Brünnhilde give back the ring? But Brünnhilde is no more a

virgin Valkyr, a mere daughter of the gods. She is a beloved and

loving woman. The ring is Siegfried's bridal gift. Perish the

world; perish the eternal gods; but the ring shall not leave her

finger where love kissed it into place. Even as Brünnhilde speaks,

the orchestra sings the motive of Renunciation, for, as Waltraute

flees in despair, the fire springs up in defence of Brünnhilde and

the beguiled Siegfried comes in the Tarnhelm, wearing the face

and form of Gunther, to wrest the ring from her and make her the

bride of the son of Gibich. This is tremendous tragedy; tenfold

more tremendous than anything that entered the minds of the sagamen

or the fashioners of the "Nibelungen Lied." The Waltraute scene,

accentuating, as it does, Wagner's connection of the Nibelung ring

with the burden of guilt resting on the gods, presents in a powerful

light the human tragedy leading to the restoration of the ring

to its rightful owners. Furthermore, the scene is essential to a

complete understanding of the character of Brünnhilde in the final

drama of the series. The last despairing appeal of Waltraute for the

Aesir meets with an answer which fully exhibits the change wrought

in Brünnhilde. When Wotan put her to sleep, saying, "So küsst er

die Gottheit von dir," he was the familiar Wotan of the trilogy,

planning, but seeing only half the issue of his plan. When Siegfried

laid the kiss of human love upon the virgin lips of the Valkyr, he it

was who truly kissed the godhood from her, and left her with a wholly

human disregard for the fading Aesir. All she has given for love, and

now comes a second claimant for her. Stricken with horror and shame,

she is driven into the cavern. Siegfried, following, announces that

his sword shall lie between them.

The second act brings us back to the castle of Gunther. Hagen, still

watching, is visited by Alberich, who urges him to persistence.

Alberich's speeches impress upon us two important points, namely:

that the curse cannot fall upon Siegfried, because he is ignorant

of the powers of the ring, and therefore does not use them; and,

secondly, that if he should give the ring back to the Rhine maidens

no art could fashion a new one. Both of these ideas are Wagner's.

The first is a natural outgrowth of the ethical basis of the drama;

the second was doubtless suggested by the old legends, which always

finish the story of the hoard by returning it to the waters.

Siegfried returns and announces his success, quieting the fears of

Gutrune by telling her that his sword lay between him and Brünnhilde.

Here we have an alteration of the original stories to suit modern

taste. In the legends there was no question of the relations of

the disguised Siegfried and Brünnhilde, and they existed with the

consent of Gunther. But in Wagner's drama it is made plain to us that

Siegfried was loyal in the modern sense, though he used an ancient

symbol of honour, the sword.

Gunther arrives with Brünnhilde, and she, seeing Siegfried there

with Gutrune, at once suspects treachery. She perceives the ring on

Siegfried's finger, and demands an explanation as to how he came by

the circlet which Gunther had wrenched from her hand the previous

night. This episode of the ring is entirely different, as the reader

will note, from those of the Volsunga Saga and the "Nibelungen Lied."

But it had to be so, because Wagner had already omitted the incident

which, in the sources of his story, led to Siegfried's presenting

the ring to his wife. Brünnhilde's questions about the ring evoke no

satisfactory answers, and she bursts out with the charge that not

Gunther, but Siegfried married her. "He forced delights of love from

me!" she cries. Siegfried avows that his sword lay between them. But

Brünnhilde is talking of a night long previous to that just passed,

a night of which only she and Siegfried should know, but which he,

under the influence of the drink, has forgotten. Brünnhilde knows

that her hearers are ignorant of that night, but she is bent upon

implicating Siegfried, and she lets the assembly believe that she is

speaking of the night just passed. Much good ink has been spilled

over this scene, one party contending that Brünnhilde was guilty of

deceit, and the other that Siegfried had been false to his trust. The

intent of the scene is, it seems to me, perfectly plain, but to quiet

all doubts we may go to Wagner's own sketch, "The Nibelung Myth as

Sketch for a Drama." He describes this point thus:

"Siegfried charges her with shamelessness: faithful had he been

to this blood brothership,--his sword he laid between Brünnhilde

and himself:--he calls on her to bear him witness. Purposely, and

thinking only of his ruin, she will not understand him."

In a speech of double meaning, she declares that the sword hung in

its scabbard on the wall on the night when its master gained him a

true love. Siegfried swears to his truth on the point of Hagen's

spear, calling upon it to pierce him if he is false. This is a purely

theatric touch. This spear does pierce him, yet was he not false.

Brünnhilde swears upon the same spear that Siegfried has committed

perjury. Thereupon Siegfried lightly says that she is daft, and bids

the guests to let the festivities proceed. Brünnhilde now suspects

some deviltry, but her runic wisdom is gone and she cannot fathom

it. But she can and does confide to Hagen that she had made her hero

invulnerable, except in the back. Gunther discerns that he has been

dishonoured, yet he is loath, for his sister's sake, to be revenged

upon Siegfried. This makes Brünnhilde all the more furious, and she

readily assents to Hagen's proposition that Siegfried must die. The

vacillating Gunther is overcome. Hagen shouts in triumph; the ring

and the power will soon be his.

The last act shows the Rhine maidens sporting on the surface of the

water in a little cove of the river. Siegfried, hunting and strayed

from his party, appears on the rocks above them. They beg him to

return the ring, and he is almost on the point of doing so when

they warn him of its curse. He refuses to be scared into parting

with it. This meeting with the Rhine maidens is not found in any

of the old stories, because the ring which causes the trouble in

"Götterdämmerung" is not in any way associated in the legends with

the end of the gods. In both the Thidrek Saga and the "Nibelungen

Lied," Hagen is warned of an evil by mermaids, and this may barely

have suggested this scene, which so accentuates the immediately

succeeding tragedy of Siegfried's death.

The hunting party arrives, and to cheer the gloomy Gunther Siegfried

volunteers to tell the story of his youth. All this is original with

Wagner. The hero narrates the incidents of the drama "Siegfried" to

a wonderful epitome of its music, up to the slaying of Mime. Then

Hagen administers an antidote to the drink of forgetfulness, and the

hero reveals his discovery of Brünnhilde. Gunther is shocked as he

realises Hagen's perfidy. Wotan's ravens fly past, and Hagen calls on

Siegfried to interpret their tones. As the hero turns his back, Hagen

drives the spear into it. Siegfried dies apostrophising his Valkyr

love. To the strains of the great funeral march, the body is borne

back to the home of the Gibichs, and laid at the feet of Gutrune, who

is told, as in the Thidrek Saga, that a wild boar slew her lord. She

accuses Gunther, who promptly denounces Hagen. The Nibelung demands

the ring; Gunther opposes him; they fight, and Gunther is slain.

Hagen reaches for the ring, but the dead hand of Siegfried rises in

solemn warning, and sends him staggering back in terror. At this

juncture Brünnhilde, who, as we vaguely learn from the text, has

heard the truth from the Rhine maidens, enters the hall, a picture of

outraged majesty.

After informing Gutrune that she was never the real wife of

Siegfried, Brünnhilde sums up the dénouement of the entire tragedy

in a speech which must be carefully read by anyone desiring

thoroughly to understand Wagner's design. She perceives the whole

of Wotan's plan, and upbraids him for throwing on a guiltless man

the curse of his own crime. Let the ravens tell Wotan that his

plan is accomplished. And let the weary god have rest. She takes

the ring from Siegfried's finger, and places it upon her own. When

she is burned with him on the funeral pyre, the Rhine maidens may

get the ring again. And now fly home, ravens. Pass by the Valkyr's

rock and bid the flickering Loge once more visit Walhalla, for the

dusk of the gods is at hand, and with this torch will the bride of

Siegfried fire the towers of Asgard. Then she addresses the wondering

retainers and bids them, when she is gone, to put aside treaties and

treacherous bonds as laws of life, and in their place to let Love

rule alone. With her steed, Grani, she mounts Siegfried's funeral

pyre. The flames rise to heaven. Upon the Rhine are seen the three

maidens, one of them holding aloft the ring. Hagen madly springs

into the water after the accursed bauble, and is drawn under by the

maidens and drowned. The sky blazes and we see the assembled gods, as

described by Waltraute, sitting in the burning Walhalla. It is the

"Götterdämmerung."

So ends the tragedy. Nothing in the final scenes closely resembles

the original legends except the burning of Walhalla. In the legends

the gods are destroyed in battle with the powers of evil. Here

they die in solemn atonement for sin. And their punishment, which

is their release, is accomplished by the voluntary sacrifice of a

woman through love. Brünnhilde, wiser in the end than Wotan himself,

perfects and completes his plan. The death of the hero, innocent and

unoffending, was not enough. The intentional sacrifice, hallowed by

love, accomplishes what all Wotan's schemes failed to achieve. The

ethical plot of the drama is finished. "The eternal feminine leadeth

us upward and on."

This glorious Brünnhilde of Wagner is a grander figure than any

conceived by the sagamen. Dimly, indeed, may her sacrifice be

connected with the death of Nanna, the wife of Baldur, the bright

one, who could not outlive her husband. But that death was merely

from a broken heart. This one is a magnificent atonement.

Baldur's horse, fully caparisoned, was led to his master's pyre.

Wotan placed on the pile his ring, Draupner, which every ninth night

produced eight other rings. But none of these incidents have the

enormous significance of Wagner's final scene. His reconstruction of

the story of the end of the gods, of their release from the burden

of sin by a voluntary, vicarious sacrifice, raises the poetic issue

of his drama to a plane far above the conceptions of the old Norse

and Teutonic skalds. With "Der Ring des Nibelungen," in spite of its

defects, Wagner set himself beside the Greek dramatists.

III.--The Music of the Trilogy

In "Der Ring des Nibelungen" the leitmotiv system is found at its

best. In this gigantic and complex drama it provides a musical

aid to an understanding of the intent of the dramatist. It is a

running commentary on the action, a ceaseless revealer of inner

thoughts and motives. And, owing to the development of plot and

character, the musical device of thematic development is employed

with admirable effect in this work. Unfortunately for the credit of

Wagner, the typical handbook of these dramas, and the fashionable

"Wagner Lecture," which consists of telling the story and playing

the principal motives on a piano, have gone far to convey wholly

erroneous ideas of this unique musical system. The hearer of the

lecture and the reader of the handbook are led to suppose that the

score consists of a string of disconnected phrases, arbitrarily

formed and capriciously titled, and that this is the whole result of

the system.

The truth is that the score becomes symphonic in scope. The various

motives are invented with a profound insight into the philosophy of

musical expression and are repeated or developed according to the

principles of musico-dramatic art formulated in the mind of Wagner

when he had fully elaborated his theory of the organic union of the

text and the music. Reading the handbooks or hearing the lectures

and afterward recognising the motives as they appear in the dramas,

even when their significance is known, is not all that Wagner asks of

one who attempts to understand his system. It is necessary to study

the scores very thoroughly, to note the intimate union of text and

music, to observe the changes which motives undergo when new shades

of meaning are to be expressed, to grasp the treatment of rhythm and

tonality and the formation and expansion of themes, and generally to

follow the composer through the various ramifications of the most

elaborate plan for dramatic expression in music ever invented.

On the other hand, none of this study is essential to a mere

enjoyment of these dramas. For that, only a perfect comprehension of

the text is necessary; if you know what the characters are saying and

doing, the music will do its own work. It will create the right mood

for you, though you do not know the name of a single leading theme.

But the thematic system is there, and to understand it will add

enormously to your intellectual and artistic pleasure and give Wagner

a far higher position in your estimation than he would otherwise

occupy. Only, if you intend to study it, do not treat it as if it

were nothing more than a thematic catalogue. What I am about to put

before the reader cannot claim to be more than some pertinent hints.

An exhaustive study of these scores would fill a volume.

Let the reader refer to the classification of motives given in

Chapter III. of "The Artistic Aims of Wagner" (page 193), and apply

it to the themes now to be considered. He will find in these scores

all the classes there enumerated and will note that they are used and

developed with extraordinary skill.

After the preliminary measures of the introduction to "Das

Rheingold," we hear the first guiding theme of the drama, the motive

of the Primeval Elements:

[Music: PRIMEVAL ELEMENTS.]

This motive plays an important part in the trilogy. When Erda rises

from the earth in the last scene of the prologue we hear this same

theme in the minor mode, and we at once perceive that by this

simple process of musical development Wagner associates her with

the primeval elements (earth, air, and water), but emphasises the

sadness of her character and her peculiar office in the tragedy as

a prophetess of woe. When she utters the words, "Ein düst'rer Tag

dämmert den Göttern" ("A dismal day dawns for the Aesir"), we hear

her motive first in its natural form, and then inverted, and we then

learn that this inversion has an especial meaning, the end of the

gods, the "Götterdämmerung":

[Music: A--ERDA. B--GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.

Ein düst'rer Tag dämmert den Göttern]

Now let us turn to the scene in which Waltraute comes to tell

Brünnhilde how Wotan has had the ash cut down, hewn into faggots,

and assembled the gods to wait for the end. In the accompaniment to

her words appears the Erda theme, originally that of the Primeval

Elements which surrounded the Rhinegold, transformed into a stately

progression of octaves. Presently over these we hear the Walhalla

theme, and then the octaves descend in a new development of the

"Götterdämmerung" theme:

[Music: WALTRAUTE.

The stem in sticks he bade them to stack

and arrange in a bulk, 'round the Aesir's sanctified seat.

The Gods he called unto the council;]

Turn next to the last scene of all, to the entrance of Brünnhilde. We

find that the music is this:

[Music]

Brünnhilde has come to fulfil the prophecy of Erda; the dusk of the

gods is at hand. And so when she commands the retainers to erect the

funeral pyre, which is kindled at Walhalla, we hear once again the

"Götterdämmerung" theme as it was introduced to us in the Waltraute

scene:

[Music]

This is an excellent demonstration of the leitmotiv system in its

fullest expansion, and it should warn the reader against accepting

these themes as merely arbitrary labels. Let him always seek for

their musical philosophy and their relations to one another.

When the Rhine maidens appear swimming around the rock in which lies

the gold, they sing these cabalistic words and this melodious music:

[Music: RHINE DAUGHTERS.

Weia waga! Woge, du Welle,

walle zur Wiege! Wagala Weia!

Wallala, weiala, weia!]

Presently, as narrated in the story, the gold discloses itself, and

we hear the ascending theme of the Appearing Gold:

[Music: THE APPEARING GOLD.]

But when the maidens burst into song in its praise, they sing this:

[Music: THE GLEAMING GOLD.

Rheingold! Rheingold!

Leuchtende Lust, wie lachst du so hell und hehr!

Rheingold! Rheingold!

Lust'rous delight, thou laughest in radiance rare!]

The first measures of this melody are employed throughout the

drama to signify the gold. Examination will show that the words

"Rheingold! Rheingold!" are sung to precisely the same melodic form

as "Weia" at the beginning and the end of the phrase quoted from

the Rhine daughters' music. Here, again, we see how Wagner persists

in preserving the musical associations of allied themes, and of

deriving one from the other in the symphonic style. In the last act

of "Götterdämmerung," when the maidens warn Siegfried of coming evil,

they sing his name to the Rhinegold theme in the minor mode. The

significance of this is unmistakable.

At the first mention of the ring, we hear the Ring theme:

[Music: THE RING.]

This theme is subjected to so many developments that they cannot be

enumerated in a work of this kind. A single glance, however, will

show the reader how closely related it is to the "Götterdämmerung"

motive. In certain passages, as in the scene between Brünnhilde and

the disguised Siegfried in "Götterdämmerung" this theme and the

Walhalla theme are combined, by an ingenious use of the rhythm and

melodic sequence of the one with the melody and harmony of the

other, to identify Brünnhilde's personality with possession of the

ring. Other important motives introduced early in the "Rheingold" are

the following:

[Music: RENUNCIATION.

Nun wer der Minne Macht entsagt,

nur wer der Liebe Lust verjagt

But he who passion's power forswears,

and from delights of love forbears]

[Music: WALHALLA.]

[Music: COMPACT.]

[Music: GIANTS.]

The Renunciation theme is employed throughout the tragedy to

signify renunciation without regard to its original connection

with the ring. The Walhalla motive indicates not only the place,

but the origin of persons who come thence. In this sense it is

sometimes applied to Brünnhilde, as well as to Wotan. The next

theme of significance is that of the Tarnhelm (see page 195). Here,

again, we meet with a theme for which there is a companion closely

associated with it in form and in the action of the drama. This is

the theme of Forgetfulness, heard in "Götterdämmerung" when Siegfried

takes the drink offered him by Gutrune. The close relationship in

the meaning of these themes is best displayed in the scene of

Siegfried's arrival at the Valkyr's rock in the guise of Gunther.

Brünnhilde says: "What man art thou?" And, as Siegfried stands at

the rear and begins his answer, we hear these three motives in

succession--Forgetfulness, Gibichung, and Tarnhelm.

[Music: FORGETFULNESS. GIBICHUNG.

SIEGFRIED.

Brünnhild'! A lover comes!

TARNHELM.]

The meaning is clear, and the kinship of the Forgetfulness and

Tarnhelm themes unmistakable. Siegfried uses the Tarnhelm but this

once in the whole tragedy, and uses it because of the forgetfulness

and in the guise of a Gibichung.

When Freia has been carried off by the giants to wait for Wotan's

decision as to the ransom, Loge taunts the gods with their pallor and

failing glory. As part of the accompaniment to his speech, we hear

the motive of Departing Divinity:

[Music: DEPARTING DIVINITY.]

Now turn to the last scene of "Die Walküre," and when Wotan tells

Brünnhilde that he will plunge her into unbreaking sleep we hear this

same motive in this form:

[Music]

The theme is heard again in its fullest harmonies when the god kisses

her eyes and she sinks to sleep. Here, again, Wagner uses uncertainty

of tonality to produce an effect of mystery in his music.

At the entrance of Loge we hear another important motive, that of the

fire-god:

[Music: LOGE.]

From this is developed the magic fire music of "Die Walküre," and

the theme is heard frequently throughout the trilogy. Sometimes

it ascends, and again it descends, and at times it becomes purely

melodic in the diatonic scale and the major mode, but it never loses

its flickering, wavering character. When Wotan and Loge descend into

Nibelheim, we hear the important theme of the Nibelungs, the smiths:

[Music: NIBELUNG SMITHS.]

This is heard very often in the tragedy, and always signifies

the Nibelung race. Alberich's appearance, driving before him the

Nibelungs, who have become his slaves through the power of the ring,

introduces the theme of Alberich's mastery:

[Music: ALBERICH, MASTER OF THE NIBELUNGS.

RHINEGOLD. NIBELUNG SMITHS.]

As it was the Rhinegold which made him lord of the Nibelungs,

the theme is compounded of the Rhinegold motive and that of the

Nibelungs, the latter being brought to a firm and definite close with

a major chord. With the entrance of the dwarfs carrying the gold, we

hear the theme of the Hoard:

[Music: THE HOARD.]

The Dragon motive appears when Alberich transforms himself for the

first time:

[Music: THE DRAGON.]

This theme is employed again in "Siegfried" for the transformed

"Fafner." The motive of the Nibelung's Hate is used very often in

"Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung," as well as in the prologue:

[Music: THE NIBELUNG'S HATE.]

The instrumentation of this theme, the lower part being given to

strings and the upper to clarinets, is especially expressive. It

has a snarl and a sneer. The next important theme introduced in the

prologue is that of the Curse:

[Music: THE CURSE.

ALBERICH.--

Wie durch Fluch er mir geriet,

verflucht sei dieser Ring!

As through curse to me it came,

accursed be this ring!]

This is heard when Fafner kills Fasolt, and throughout the drama at

points where the curse is especially significant, as at the death

of Siegfried. The Sword theme (see page 195) appears when Wotan

conceives his plan. I have not given the minor themes, which are

heard only in the "Vorabend," such as those of Fricka, Froh, and

Freia. Donner's theme is of little import, being heard again only in

the storm music in "Walküre." There is a long list of minor themes,

but their significance can always be learned from the text.

In "Die Walküre" a number of significant motives not heard in the

prologue are brought forward. The first of these indicates the gentle

and sympathetic personality of Sieglinde:

[Music: SIEGLINDE'S SYMPATHY.]

Next comes the Love motive, a melody of some length, written for

celli, and full of feeling:

[Music: LOVE.]

These two motives belong particularly to this drama; they do not

figure in the other works. In the first act, however, appear two

themes which are used thereafter throughout the tragedy, the themes

of the Volsungs' sorrow and the Volsung race:

[Music: SORROW OF THE VOLSUNGS.]

[Music: THE VOLSUNG RACE.]

The reappearance of the Sword motive (see page 195) in this act

should be noted for its pregnant meaning. Siegmund calls upon his

father and says, "Where is the promised sword?" The firelight at this

instant strikes the hilt of the sword in the tree, and the orchestra

gives out the Sword theme with almost startling effect. It would be

superfluous to trace the manifold treatment of the various melodic

fragments through the score. The hearer of the works cannot fail

to become acquainted with their import. The motive of the Volsung

race is especially touching in its noble dignity and melancholy.

It epitomises in a fragment of music the nature and suffering of

the unhappy Volsungs. Much of the music of the first act is freely

composed, the love song and most of the duet being thus written.

A motive indicative of the personality of Hunding will be easily

recognised when heard. With the opening of the second act we make

the acquaintance of two motives associated with Brünnhilde in her

character of Valkyr:

[Music: THE VALKYR'S CALL.]

[Music: THE VALKYRS.]

The second of these is afterward used whenever the nature of the

Valkyr is of significance in the drama. The theme, it will be noted,

is designed rhythmically to suggest the motion of the Valkyr steed.

When Fricka imposes upon Wotan the oath to honour her rights, we hear

the theme of Wotan's Wrath, a wrath in which there is a deep note of

pathos:

[Music: WOTAN'S WRATH.]

When Wotan informs Brünnhilde that only a free hero can make the

atonement, we hear this theme beautifully combined with the Erda

theme and a suggestion of the "Götterdämmerung" motive:

[Music: WOTAN.

Nur einer könnte, was ich nicht darf:

Ein Held, dem helfend nie ich mich neigte,

But one may compass what I must leave,

A hero held by none of our number,]

It is by such wonderful combinations of the guiding themes that

the scores of these dramas become so rich in variety, beauty, and

meaning. The significance of this passage is clear and eloquent.

The plan must fail and the dusk of the gods must come. The phrase

marked A is usually designated the theme of the "Gods' Stress."

It is plainly, however, the Erda theme and a variant of the

"Götterdämmerung." When Siegmund sits on the rock with Sieglinde

fainting in his arms, we hear for the first time the motive of Fate,

often used afterward:

[Music: FATE.]

The treatment of the "Todesverkündigung" is free, the theme being

heard only in that scene. Motives already made known form the warp

of the score to the end of the act, and the third act opens with the

familiar "Ride of the Valkyrs" built on the Valkyr's Call and the

Valkyr theme. When Brünnhilde informs Sieglinde that she is to be the

mother of the "highest hero of worlds," we hear for the first time

the magnificent Siegfried theme, which is to play such an important

part in the remainder of the tragedy:

[Music]

And in response to this announcement Sieglinde sings thus:

[Music: SIEGLINDE--

O hehrstes Wunder!

Herrlichste Maid!

O glorious wonder!

Maiden divine!]

This theme is heard again at the close of the last scene of

"Götterdämmerung," and there we instantly recognise its significance

as an embodiment of the glorious divinity of Brünnhilde, the divinity

of ideal womanhood, ennobled by love and sanctified by sacrifice.

Another significant motive heard in this scene is that of Slumber:

[Music: SLUMBER.]

This, with the Fire and Siegfried themes, forms the magnificent

closing passage of this drama. The melody of Wotan's farewell, though

it can hardly be described as a leitmotiv, reappears with beautiful

effect in Waltraute's narrative, when she tells of Wotan's sadness.

In "Siegfried" we meet with a score which contains a great amount

of freely composed music. There is so much that is external and

incidental in this work that the constant employment of guiding

themes was unnecessary. The result is that we enter an atmosphere of

buoyant, jubilant out-door life, full of the vigour and sweetness of

spring and young manhood. The whole of the scene of the forging of

the sword is sung in music aglow with the flame of the forge, alive

with the rhythm of the bellows and the hammer. The forest scene

gives us the bird music and the "Waldweben," freely written, the

latter a mood picture, using only the Volsung theme as a reminder.

Wotan's splendid summons to Erda is free music, and in the matchless

scene of the awakening we hear much that is new and belongs only to

"Siegfried."

The first of the important new themes is that intoned by the young

hero's horn. It is the theme of Siegfried, the buoyant, fearless,

militant youth:

[Music: SIEGFRIED, THE YOUTH.]

Out of this theme and that of the Sword, the melodies and rhythms

being combined perfectly, is made the brilliant motive of Siegfried,

the hero who welds and wields the sword:

[Music: SIEGFRIED, THE SWORD WIELDER.]

This is heard often in the early part of the work. Wotan, disguised

as a wanderer, is indicated by a theme without tonality, which,

therefore, belongs to the same class as the Tarnhelm and Departing

Divinity motives:

[Music: WOTAN, THE WANDERER.]

In the second act, while Siegfried is alone in the forest, is heard

this beautiful and significant theme:

[Music: YEARNING FOR LOVE.]

After this, till the first scene of the third act, the listener will

not hear any motive of high import. All is either free music or the

employment of themes whose significance has been previously made

known. But in the opening of the last act appears the splendid melody

of the Heritage of the World, which is used to embody the readiness

of Wotan to resign himself to his approaching fate and to hand over

his kingdom to the new race:

[Music: THE WORLD'S HERITAGE.]

Wonderful, too, are the strains which accompany the arrival of

Siegfried at the top of the Valkyr's mountain, but most wonderful is

the music of Brünnhilde's Awakening:

[Music: BRÜNNHILDE'S AWAKENING.]

This is only a fragment of it, but it contains the pregnant phrase of

marvellous beauty which returns with such agonising eloquence in the

final speeches of the dying Siegfried in "Götterdämmerung." When the

Valkyr maid is awake and has recognised Siegfried, their voices unite

in the passionate measure of a duet, founded on the motive of Love's

Greeting:

[Music: LOVE'S GREETING.]

In "Götterdämmerung," when Siegfried raises the drink of

forgetfulness to his lips, he drinks to the memory of Brünnhilde

and intones the words to this very theme. That is one of Wagner's

most poignant strokes of musical pathos. The drama of "Siegfried"

comes to its end with a sweep of overmastering passion. The themes

are peculiar to this work, but most of them are heard in the lovely

"Siegfried Idyl," so often played in concert.

"Götterdämmerung" opens with a repetition of known themes in the Norn

scene. In the second scene we meet with two new ideas, the themes of

Brünnhilde, the woman, and Siegfried, the mature hero:

[Music: BRÜNNHILDE, THE WOMAN.]

[Music: SIEGFRIED, THE MAN.]

The first of these expresses very beautifully the loving, clinging

nature of the transformed Valkyr. The second is a thematic

development of the motive of Siegfried, the youth. The change is

chiefly one of rhythm. Siegfried, the youth, is depicted musically

in six-eighth measure, a rhythm buoyant and piquant. For Siegfried,

the mature hero, the melodic sequence is preserved, but the

rhythm is changed to a dual one. The change is one founded on the

nature of music, for the dual rhythm is firm, square, and solid.

The injection of minor harmony at the end is heard in the first

announcement of this theme and serves to indicate approaching sorrow.

This motive rises to its grandest development in the funeral march

after Siegfried's death, when the orchestra passes in review, in a

composition of wonderful beauty and power, the themes most closely

associated with him. This theme forms the climax of the march and is

pealed forth by the brass in this form:

[Music]

Two other new themes heard in "Götterdämmerung" are worthy of note.

They are that of Gutrune and that of Brünnhilde's Despair, the former

appearing in the third scene of the first act and the latter in the

second act:

[Music]

[Music: BRÜNNHILDE'S DESPAIR.]

There are also themes for Gunther, the Gibichung (already quoted),

and for Hagen. But "Götterdämmerung" is most wonderful, musically,

for the manner in which the themes of the earlier dramas are repeated

in it. The expressiveness of the system is nowhere more forcibly

illustrated than in the hero's narrative of his youthful days, when

the most significant themes of "Siegfried" pass before us, bringing

the whole story back in all its vitality. And in the death of the

hero and the wonderful apostrophe of Brünnhilde again we find that

the recapitulation or development of familiar themes knits for us

the substance of the long tragedy into a perfect texture of poetry.

And with the use of the many-voiced orchestra Wagner weaves these

motives into a glittering web of counterpoint, which cannot be copied

even faintly by the piano arrangement. Several motives are sometimes

heard at once, and by the aid of the device of instrumental colouring

their expressiveness is greatly heightened.

Thus the orchestra becomes an actor in the drama, continually

commenting on the passing action, revealing to us the hidden

well-springs of emotion, explaining thoughts to us and flooding

the whole drama with the light of its eloquence. Not by the mere

cataloguing then of these themes are we to arrive at a full

understanding of the composer's intent, but by a careful study of

their repetitions and developments. The knowledge thus gained will

add immeasurably to the intellectual pleasure of the hearer; but, as

I have already said, Wagner's music makes the right mood pictures

even for him who does not know the guiding themes. And that is one of

the most satisfying proofs of his greatness.

PARSIFAL

A Sacred Stage Festival Play in Three Acts.

First Performed at Bayreuth, July 26, 1882.

_Original Cast._

Parsifal Winkelmann.

Amfortas Reichmann.

Titurel Kindermann.

Klingsor Hill.

Gurnemanz Scaria.

Kundry Materna.

The copyright of this work is still held by the Wagner family, and

hence the drama has not yet been performed outside of the Festival

Playhouse at Bayreuth.

PARSIFAL

I.--The Original Legends

The last of the great music dramas of Richard Wagner began to

occupy his mind as early as 1857. Professor William Tappert says:

"Wagner told me (in 1877) that in the fifties, when in Zurich, he

took possession of a charming new house, and that, inspired by the

beautiful spring weather, he wrote out the sketch that very day of

the Good Friday music." A letter to the tenor Tichatschek defines

the year as 1857. The poem was completed in 1877, and on May 17

of that year was read to an assembly of Wagner's friends at the

house of Mr. Edward Dannreuther, in Orme Square, London. It was

read to the delegates of the Wagner Societies at Villa Wahnfried,

Bayreuth, on Sept. 16, and was published in December. Wagner was in

his sixty-fifth year when he set to work to write out the music.

The sketch of the first act was finished in the spring of 1878.

The second act was completed on Oct. 11, and the sketch of the

third, begun after Christmas, was finished in April, 1879. The

instrumentation was begun almost immediately afterwards, and was

completed at Palermo, Jan. 13, 1882.

As we have already seen, it was while gathering the materials for

"Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" that the character and writings of

Wolfram von Eschenbach became known to Wagner. His famous epic,

"Parzival," is the immediate source of Wagner's drama, but the origin

of such a remarkable art-product cannot be dismissed with this simple

statement. Wagner's drama opens to us the entire field of Arthurian

romance and the whole circle of legends of the Holy Grail. These old

tales have played so important a part in the literature of our own

time, as well as in that of the Middle Ages, that it seems fitting

and proper that we should seize this opportunity for a glance over

the whole ground. Wagner, as we shall find, has in this work, as in

his others, taken hints from all the sources, and has introduced

special and highly significant ideas of his own.

Wolfram's history I must recount but briefly, for little is known

of his life. We learn from his name that he was probably born

(about 1170) at Eschenbach in Bavaria, and it is certain that he

was buried there; for toward the end of the seventeenth century his

tomb, with an inscription, could be seen in the Frauen-Kirche of

Ober-Eschenbach. He tells us that he was of the knightly order and

with some humour refers often to his poverty. It does not appear,

however, that he was obliged to roam about, reciting his verse for

a living. He was extremely proud of his knighthood, and his entire

poem breathes the spirit of chivalry. It was probably written--or

dictated, for Wolfram was ignorant of writing--in the early years of

the thirteenth century, and it was published in 1477.

According to Wolfram, the source of his work was a story of the Holy

Grail by one Kiot of Provence. No such poem is now known. According

to Wolfram, Kiot found at Toledo an ancient black-letter manuscript

in Arabic, and learned from it that Flagetanis, a heathen, born

before Christ and celebrated for his acquaintance with occult arts,

had read in the stars that there would at some time appear a thing

called the Grail, and that whosoever should be its servitor would be

blest among men. Kiot set out to ascertain whether anyone had ever

been worthy of this service, and, as the house of Anjou was then

in power, he had no difficulty in discovering that one Titurel, a

very ancient king of this dynasty, had once been the keeper of the

Grail. Of course this story was invented by Kiot to do honour to

his sovereign liege. Wolfram declares that Kiot related the tale

incorrectly, and at any rate his version, so far as reported by

Wolfram, contains nothing about Parsifal. And this brings us to an

important point.

How far back the legends of the Grail go, is unknown. No matter

how far we trace them, we always find references to a source. But

it seems almost certain that in their earliest forms they had no

relation to the tale of Perceval, or Peredur, the Parsifal of later

versions. The story as it is now known to us is a union of two

originally separate legends. There is good ground, according to

all the folk-lorists, for believing that in its original form the

Celtic, or, more exactly, Kymric, legend of Peredur was independent

of the Grail stories. The latter appeared between 1170 and 1220,

and constituted a large body of literature, dealing with a talisman

not at first distinctly Christian. For half a century poets sang

this legend enthusiastically and then suddenly dropped it. A few

scattered and worthless Grail romances date from a later period,

and, with Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur," written 300 years later,--a

noble fragment, indeed,--they came to an end. Mr. David Nutt, in his

"Studies on the Legends of the Holy Grail," holds, with apparently

excellent reason, that the Grail was originally a Pagan talisman,

and that a history of the legend is the history of the development

of this talisman into a Christian symbol. He further shows that the

legends may be divided into two classes, one dealing entirely with

the talisman itself, and being largely influenced by Christian ideas,

and the other treating of the quest of the Grail. Somewhere or other

in the stories of the adventures of Peredur was found a resemblance

to some legend of the search after the Grail, and thus the Kymric

folk-hero became the protagonist of the Grail-drama.

The Arthurian legends are British; the Grail stories are French. Let

us see how they came together. Undoubtedly the former went first from

France to England, and the latter followed them. To understand this

we must bear in mind that France was ancient Gaul, and that a large

part of the ancient population was Celtic. The Celts fairly filled

all that part of France extending from the Garonne River to the Seine

and the Marne. In this land dwelt the Celtae proper, but their speech

and their influence spread beyond its confines. For these Celts in

France were but a surviving and compressed fragment of the great

vanguard of the Aryan race, which, issuing from its forest cradle in

Asia Minor, and carrying in its bosom the nursling star of empire,

swept westward toward the Atlantic. It peopled most of Europe and

the isles of the sea, and it planted among the sunny fields of the

Midi and the verdant vales of Britain the seeds of the Arthurian

legends, the Nibelung tales, the Norse Sagas, all garnered first from

some great parent stem of folk-lore in the Eastern jungles. How it

chanced that the Arthurian tales blossomed into full fancy in England

first no one knows, but it is equally inexplicable how the Grail

legends were first developed in France. For the Grail was originally

a vessel in which was offered a draught of wisdom or youth, and its

transformation into a sacred cup dates from a period considerably

later than the time of Christ.

In Gaelic chants descended from remote times we read of a vase or

basin which conferred upon its possessor superhuman power. This

basin was always placed by the legends in the hands of some famous

warrior by a giant or a dwarf, or both, emerging from the waters.

The possession of the vase caused him to be envied, and so arose

many fierce combats. Not unlike the hoard of the Nibelungs was this

famous basin. It is not difficult to see how, as Christianity spread,

the wondrous powers of the vessel were attributed to its connection

with the Saviour. Wolfram von Eschenbach does not agree with older

writers as to the origin of the Grail. He accepted the version of the

mediæval poem called the "Wartburgkrieg."

According to this, sixty thousand angels, who wished to drive God

out of Heaven, made a crown for Lucifer. When the archangel Michael

struck it from his head a stone fell to the earth, and this became

the Grail. In the latest mediæval French version the Grail was the

cup in which was received the sacred blood from the wounds of the

dying Saviour. Indeed, the etymology of the word itself has been a

subject of inquiry and dispute. In the Middle Ages it was thought

that the name "san-gral" was a corruption of the words "sang real,"

"blood royal," referring to the office of the cup. Dr. Gustave Oppert

has written a long and ingenious argument to prove that "coral"

was derived from "cor-alere," and this theory consists well with

Wolfram's story of the origin of the Grail as a precious stone. The

word, however, is most rationally derived from the Provençal word

"grial," a vessel. This derivation accords best with the finest of

the early versions of the story, that written by the remarkable

French poet, Chrétien de Troyes; and the word "grial" in its several

forms is still used in Provence to signify a vessel.

Efforts have been made by tracing the derivation of "Perceval"

to show that he was connected with the earliest forms of the

Grail legends. One writer derives the name from "perchen," a root

signifying possession, and "mail," a cup. The latter word by

inflection becomes "vail," and we get as a result "Perchen-vail" or

"Perchenval,"--whence Perceval,--a cup-holder or Grail-keeper. This

derivation is of little value in face of the undeniable fact that in

the Mabinogi version of the Peredur story he is not the holder of the

Grail. Indeed, the Grail itself appears here only in one of its early

forms, that of a charger on which lay a bleeding head. This head was

afterward decided to be that of John the Baptist. Peredur becomes a

searcher after this, and that is the foundation of his connection

with later forms of the legend.

We may now review briefly the manner in which the Grail entered the

Arthurian romances, and then take a glance at the principal versions

which were of value to Wagner. In 1154, died Geoffrey of Monmouth,

a learned Welsh monk, who is celebrated for his work entitled "The

History of the Britons." In this we find set forth in full for the

first time the account of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round

Table. Fact and fiction were, of course, curiously mingled in this

work, and historical personages were accredited with some of the

deeds narrated in the ancient legends. But here, at any rate, we find

the Arthurian cycle in its earliest recorded form. The old Welsh

collection of romances known as the Mabinogi, which is sometimes said

to be the oldest version of these tales, shows too many evidences of

influence from the Grail stories. It must be of a later date than

the work of Geoffrey, and certainly much later than the fundamental

utterance of the Perceval legend.

In the year in which Geoffrey died, Henry II. of Anjou ascended

the throne, uniting under his sceptre the sovereignty of England,

Normandy, Anjou, and a great part of Southern France. In this reign

flourished Walter Map, or Mapes, the great son of Hertfordshire,

who, under Richard I., in 1197, became Archdeacon of Oxford. His

chief work seems to have been the introduction of the Holy Grail

into the legendary romances. He systematised the Arthurian tales by

spiritualising them and making them essentially Christian. This he

accomplished largely by the employment of the Grail, an element which

he undoubtedly obtained from French sources through the unification

of the kingdoms under Henry. Map created Sir Galahad, the stainless

knight, and it is regarded as probable that he wrote the Latin

original of the "Romance of the Saint Grail." It is accepted as

certain that he wrote the original of "Lancelot of the Lake," "The

Quest of the Grail," and the "Mort Artus."

German scholars accept as the next version of the story the Provençal

poem, written by Robert Borron, a trouvère, born near Meaux. Borron's

labours consisted in introducing into the Breton Epic, as it is

called,--namely, the French version of the Arthurian tales,--the

active workings of the Holy Grail. His labour seems to have been

precisely the same as that of Geoffrey, and he has even been credited

with liberally helping himself to the Latin works of the British

writer. In his "Joseph of Arimathea" he makes the Grail the vessel

in which Joseph received the blood of Christ on the cross. This

vessel was none other than the cup used at the Last Supper, and had

been given to Joseph by our Lord himself. French savants have pretty

thoroughly proved that Borron's work was not written about 1170 or

1180, as the Germans believe, but something like forty-five years

later. It gives, in fact, one of the latest French versions of the

Grail legend and is valuable for that reason. Gaston Paris, a high

authority on French mediæval literature, has taken the ground that

this version belongs to the thirteenth century, and his views have

been supported by other French investigators. The French version

which lies nearest to the works of Geoffrey is that of Chrétien de

Troyes, who died about 1195.

Little is known of the life of Chrétien, except that he was a native

of Champagne and spent most of his time in Courts. About 1160 he

wrote his lost "Tristan," which he followed with "Erec," a Breton

legend. Then he wrote his "Cligés," on an Oriental legend dealing

with the abduction of a wife of Solomon (with her own assistance).

About 1170 he wrote his "Lancelot of the Lake," and soon afterward

"Ivain; or, The Chevalier of the Lion." About 1175 he wrote "Perceval

the Gaul; or, The Story of the Grail." This he tells us he adapted

from a book lent to him by Philip of Alsace, who, in 1172, fought in

England against Henry II. It seems altogether probable that this book

was either Geoffrey's, or one utilising its materials.

According to Chrétien, Perceval is the son of a widow, Kamuellés,

whose husband has been slain in a tournament and who therefore

is desirous that her son shall never hear of the allurements of

knighthood. She retires with him to a forest and seeks to bring him

up in ignorance of all the customs of chivalry. But one day in the

depths of the wood Perceval sees five knights, and from them learns

what knighthood and the Round Table are. He returns to his mother

and tells her what he has learned. Now he will not rest till he may

be a knight. The poor mother, knowing that it is useless to oppose

him, tells him how to be knightly and sends him forth on his travels.

Utterly ignorant, almost foolishly simple in mind, the youth makes

many errors, and at the Court of Arthur is ridiculed by the knights.

But he engages in combat with one and slays him with a single blow.

Equipped with this knight's arms, he sets out again.

He falls in with an aged and wise man, named Gonemans de Gelbert,

who for nearly a year instructs him in the use of arms and in other

matters. Then Perceval, whose foolish mind is gradually becoming

enlightened, begins to feel the emotion of pity for his mother,

and he goes forth once more, hoping that he may see her again.

His wanderings and adventures are numerous and not especially

significant. He fights with the King of Deadly Castle. He meets and

consoles Gonemans's niece, the beautiful Blanchefleur, who tells

him of her many sorrows and bids him rescue the knights and ladies

imprisoned in Gringaron. He does her bidding. He is constantly riding

on knightly errands, and his nature is expanding and his wisdom

deepening.

At length he comes to the Court of a king who is suffering from an

incurable wound. While seated at the bedside of this king, he sees

for the first time the Grail and a bleeding spear, but gazes upon

them in silent wonder, not asking their meaning. The next morning he

is ready to ask, but to his amazement he finds the castle deserted.

He departs, but as he crosses the drawbridge it is raised, and his

horse has to leap. He turns and asks who raised the bridge, what the

Grail is, and why the spear bleeds, but no one answers. After he has

travelled some distance he meets a maiden, his cousin, who tells him

of the death of his mother, and of his error in not asking about the

things he had seen. Now Perceval falls in love, with whom we are not

told, and his nature becomes tender and affectionate.

He returns to Arthur's Court, where he is visited by a strange wild

woman. She tells him that if he had asked the needed question about

the Grail, the sick king would have been healed. She also tells him

of knights and ladies imprisoned in Castle Orguellous. Perceval and

other knights swear to release them, and Perceval vows that he will

never rest till he knows what the Grail is, and finds the bleeding

lance. He goes to seek a certain wise hermit, who gives him much

advice about seeking for the Grail and the spear. A little further on

the story comes to an end unfinished. The tale of Perceval's finding

of the Grail was told by others, or it may be that Chrétien completed

his work and the latter part was lost. Chrétien's successors,

however, provided the conclusion of the story, no doubt adding many

unessential details, but preserving the vital point of the original.

For example, according to Borron, Bron, the brother-in-law of Joseph,

received the Grail into his care and became the head of the line

of Grail-warders. Bron remained on the Continent, but his son Alan

settled in Britain, and was the father of Perceval. This youth was to

see the Grail, but only after many trials. He made two journeys. On

the first he saw the sacred relics, but asked no question. The second

time he did ask, and learned the mysteries of the Grail, of which he

became the keeper. Other writers, who followed Chrétien, narrated how

Perceval found the castle of the sick king again, and asked the vital

question, thus restoring the sufferer. Out of these materials Wolfram

von Eschenbach made his version of the story, the completest and most

beautiful that has come down to us, and the direct basis of Wagner's

work.

Wolfram's first two books are introductory to the story of his

hero.[46] In the first, however, it may be noted that he devotes

some space to the praise of true womanhood as contrasted with

merely external beauty. This reminds us of the position taken by

Wagner's Wolfram in "Tannhäuser." The main portion of the first two

books is taken up with the adventures of Parzifal's father, here

called Gamuret. This knight is not slain in a tournament, but is

killed through treachery while serving in the army of the Caliph of

Bagdad. The widow, Herzeleide, tries to bring up the son, Parzifal,

in ignorance of everything pertaining to chivalry, but one day he

sees three knights and is entranced. The story now follows closely

that of Chrétien, and is filled with interesting details well worth

reading, indeed, but not germane to the subject-matter of Wagner's

drama. It is well to bear in mind, however, that in this version, as

in Chrétien's, Parzifal is so simple-minded and so ignorant as to be

fitly described as a "guileless fool." His mother in Wolfram's tale

dresses him in fool's clothes, and in these he appears at Arthur's

Court and asks to be made a knight. His immediately subsequent

adventures are the same in all the legends. He slays a knight,

obtains his armour and equipments, and reaches the castle of an

old knight named Gurnemanz, the Gonemans of Chrétien. From him he

receives much instruction, being particularly warned against asking

too many questions.

[Footnote 46: See "Parzifal," translated by Jessie L. Weston, London,

David Nutt, 1894; Book V., "Anfortas."]

Setting out again, Parzifal arrives at a city which is besieged. He

aids the besieged people, and when they have won their victory, he

marries their Queen, the beautiful Conduiramour. After a time he

leaves her to seek his mother, of whose death he is ignorant, and

to find new adventures. He comes to the bank of a lake where some

men are fishing, and asks for shelter for the night. He is taken to

a magnificent castle, and shown into a great hall where there are

four hundred knights. The master of the castle invites Parzifal to

recline beside him on a couch. A squire enters, bearing a bleeding

lance, whereupon all burst into loud wailings. Then a steel door

opens and there enters a procession of twenty-four beautiful women,

splendidly attired, bearing various articles seemingly of import

and value. Finally appears "our lady and queen," Repanse de Schoie,

bearer of the Holy Grail, for which exalted office we learn she has

been designated by the Grail itself. The Grail is placed on a table

before Parzifal and the master of the castle, Anfortas, whose face

shows that he suffers intense pain, both bodily and spiritual. There

is a feast, for which the food is provided by the power of the Grail.

Anfortas presents to Parzifal a magnificent sword, his own. Through

all the guileless fool, remembering that Gurnemanz had told him not

to be too "swift to question," asks nothing, but thinks that if he

stays there long enough he will learn without asking. Whereupon

Wolfram moralises:

"But he who his story aimeth at the ear of a fool shall find

His shaft go astray, for no dwelling it findeth within his mind."

Parzifal retires to his sleeping apartment, but in the morning he

finds no attendants, and the castle is apparently empty. He mounts

his horse and departs, but as he goes a squire scolds him for not

asking a question, on which depended the recovery of the afflicted

Anfortas and his own happiness. Still confused in mind, Parzifal

rides away. Again his adventures have no relation to the Wagnerian

drama, though they are extremely interesting. Some of the incidents

in this part of the story rise to high beauty. One of these is the

effect of a bird's blood on the snow, which so forcibly reminds

Parzifal of the red lips and fair brow of his wife that he is

overcome. Finally, however, he returns to the Court of Arthur, and

while a feast is in progress there appears a woman of dreadful

appearance, called Kondrie the Sorceress. She fiercely denounces

Parzifal for not asking the essential question at Monsalvasch, the

castle of the Grail. Parzifal renounces the Round Table, believes

himself unworthy, despairs of mercy in the hereafter, and declares

that his wife's love is henceforth his only shield.

Parzifal is now for some time relegated to the background of the

story, which occupies itself with the adventures of Gawain, another

of the Knights of the Round Table. Finally, we learn how Parzifal

meets with an aged knight and his wife, walking barefoot through

deep snow, on a pilgrimage to the dwelling of an holy hermit. They

reproach Parzifal for not remembering the season. The words of

Wolfram's poem here are nearly the same as those of Chrétien, which

are these:

"Knowest thou not the day, sweet youth?

'T is holy Friday, in good sooth,

When all bewail their guilt."

Parzifal arrives at the cell of the hermit, whose name is Trevrezent.

The hermit tells Parzifal the story of the Grail and the bleeding

spear. Anfortas had yielded to the temptation of lust, and as a

punishment he had received in combat a wound from a poisoned lance,

and this wound would not heal, while the sight of the Holy Grail kept

him from dying. A prophecy finally appeared on the Grail itself,

announcing that if a knight came and asked of his own accord the

cause of the King's sufferings, they should end, and the inquiring

knight should become the Grail king. Parzifal confesses that he once

went to the castle, but did not ask the question. Trevrezent now

gives him further instruction, absolves him of his sins, and sends

him on his way.

We now read of many struggles between the Knights of the Round Table,

as representatives of Christianity, and the agents of the evil one.

Gawain frees the maidens imprisoned by the magician Klingsor in

Chateau Merveil. But Gawain goes no further than this. Parzifal,

being the more pious of the two, is permitted after many adventures,

including a fight with Gawain, whom he does not recognise, to ride

to Monsalvasch, ask the cause of the King's suffering, free him from

his agony, and receive the crown. Now his wife arrives with his two

sons, one of whom is Lohengrin, and destined to succeed his father as

the keeper of the Grail. The story of Lohengrin and Elsa is told, and

there are other details, which, fascinating in themselves, have no

bearing on the materials used by Wagner.

II.--The Drama of Wagner

Let us now briefly review the story of the drama. According to

Wagner, the castle of Monsalvat, as he calls it, stands upon a

mountain just above the valley in which is situated the castle of

the magician, Klingsor. Monsalvat is the temple of the Holy Grail

and the dwelling of its knights. Klingsor's castle is the abode of

temptation. The magician represents the powers of evil. He rages

against the servants of the Grail, because he for his sinfulness

has been refused admission to their number. Therefore he spends his

life in trying to corrupt them and for this purpose he has a garden

of wonders, the chief of which is a company of fascinating women.

Amfortas, the keeper of the Grail, once succumbed to the allurements

of one of these, whereby he lost the sacred lance and was wounded by

it. This lance is that which was thrust into the side of the Saviour

on the cross and was placed in the keeping of the knights of the

Grail. The touch of the spear which gave the wound alone can heal it.

But the spear is in the hands of Klingsor.

All this we learn from the conversation of Gurnemanz and several

esquires in the first scene. Kundry, the strangest and most potent

character of the drama, sometimes the repentant servant of the

Grail, at others the unwilling and agonised slave of Klingsor,

appears with balsam for the King, but it can give him only temporary

relief. Gurnemanz tells us that the King will be healed through the

instrumentality of a sinless fool, enlightened by pity. This person

presently appears in the character of Parsifal. He shoots a wild swan

and when he rejoices in the accuracy of his aim Gurnemanz reproaches

him. The aged knight asks him whence he came, who is his father, who

is his mother, and what is his name, but to all of these questions

he can only reply, "I do not know." Gurnemanz, astonished at his

ignorance, questions him further, and finds that he remembers his

mother and her goodness. He tells how he saw the knights in armour,

and followed in the hope of becoming like them. Kundry, who is an

interested listener to the conversation, contributes some items of

information, and finally informs Parsifal that his mother is dead. He

flies into a rage, and attacks Kundry, but is withheld by Gurnemanz.

And now Kundry is suddenly overwhelmed by a mysterious sleep. This is

the result of a spell which has been cast upon her by the magician

Klingsor. When she is herself, she struggles always for good; but

when Klingsor's power is operating, she becomes the most seductive of

his agents. This is one of Wagner's most striking ideas. It is his

own, for although in a way Kundry is a composite of characters found

in the old epics, she is, in Wagner's drama, a new creation. But of

that I shall speak further.

Gurnemanz surmises that Parsifal may be the pure fool destined to

save Amfortas, and therefore escorts him to the castle of Monsalvat.

There he sees the ceremony of the unveiling of the Grail. Amfortas,

dreading the ordeal, prays most pitifully for release from his

sufferings, but the voice of his father Titurel, too weak to sustain

the duties of Grail-warder and living a kind of life in death, bids

him face his duty. Amfortas unveils the Grail, and the ceremony of

the Lord's Supper is performed. Gurnemanz invites Parsifal to partake

of it, but he stands dumbfounded and silent. The Grail is borne away

again, and when the knights have disappeared, Gurnemanz pushes the

still stupefied Parsifal out of the hall, saying:

"Letting in future the swans alone,

Go seek thee, thou gander, a goose."

The rising of the curtain on the second act reveals to us the chamber

of Klingsor in a tower of his castle. He is there awaiting the

arrival of Parsifal, who he knows has been cast out of Monsalvat and

is approaching his domain. He summons Kundry, calling her she-devil,

rose of hell, and Herodias, the daughter of Herod. She arises in a

cloud of vapour, apparently in the sleep into which we saw her sink

in the first act. Klingsor orders her to tempt the pure fool, whose

very foolishness makes him dangerous to the powers of evil. Kundry

struggles in vain. Her will is mastered by Klingsor, for she is not

pure. The scene changes to the magic garden. Parsifal is standing

upon the wall lost in amazement. Beautiful maidens, half clad,

changing presently to something almost like flowers, allure him with

blandishments of the most seductive kind. These are the servants

of Klingsor and they do his bidding. But the pure fool does not

understand them. Presently from a thicket comes the voice of Kundry,

calling, "Parsifal."

It is the first time the name has been uttered, and he remembers it

as in a dream. He now sees Kundry, who has changed from the wild,

dishevelled, weeping creature of the first scene to a young woman of

surpassing beauty. She tells Parsifal the story of his origin, of

his mother's woes and death, and, when his heart is touched, bids

him learn the mystery of love. She presses her lips upon his in a

long kiss. The result is startling; Parsifal springs up in terror and

appears to suffer suddenly intense pain. Then he cries: "Amfortas!

The wound, the wound!" He has received the needed enlightenment,

through the pity for his mother. His own breast is now torn with the

anguish of Amfortas, and with the terrible self-accusation of his

own failure to save the sufferer. He realises that the seductions

aimed at him are those to which Amfortas succumbed, and he bids the

accursed sorceress begone. In her rage she discloses to Parsifal

that it was Klingsor who wounded Amfortas with the sacred spear.

The magician comes to aid Kundry in her struggle with Parsifal. The

flower maidens also return. Klingsor, enraged, hurls the spear at

Parsifal to slay him, but the sacred weapon remains suspended above

his head. He grasps it, and, making with it the sign of the cross,

bids the castle disappear. At once the whole is wrecked, and, as the

curtain falls, Parsifal, standing on the ruined wall, tells Kundry

that she knows where she may find him again.

The third act shows us Gurnemanz, now very old, living as a hermit

in a little hut at the edge of a forest. It is Good Friday, and the

loveliness of spring is in the land. To Gurnemanz comes Kundry,

clothed in the garb of a penitent, and without her early wildness of

mien. She begs leave to serve, and goes about it at once. Parsifal,

clad in black armour with closed helmet visor, and bearing the holy

spear, approaches. He plants the spear in the earth, takes off his

helmet, kneels, and prays before the lance. Gurnemanz, amazed,

recognises him. Parsifal expresses his gratitude at finding the

aged man once more, and we learn from his speech that he has passed

through many experiences since he left the garden of Klingsor. Now

he has only one thought, to return to the castle of the Grail and

release Amfortas from his sufferings. Gurnemanz tells him that

Titurel has died and Amfortas has refused longer to perform his

office as Grail-warder. No more is the sacred vessel revealed, for

thus Amfortas hopes to win release by death. Parsifal is deeply

moved by the consciousness that he might have prevented all this.

He almost faints, and Kundry eagerly brings water to revive him.

She bathes his feet, and at his request Gurnemanz baptises him.

Kundry produces a phial of ointment and anoints his feet. Again at

his request, Gurnemanz anoints his head. Then Parsifal, with water

from the spring, baptises Kundry, bidding her trust in the Redeemer.

Kundry weeps. Parsifal is clad in the mantle of a knight of the

Grail, and with Gurnemanz and Kundry he goes to the great hall at

Monsalvat. The body of Titurel is borne in, followed by Amfortas on

his litter. The knights conjure him once more to reveal the Grail,

but he, in desperate agony, discloses his terrible, unhealing wound,

and beseeches the knights to bury their swords in it.

At this moment Parsifal, accompanied by Gurnemanz and Kundry,

advances. Parsifal says solemnly that but one weapon will suffice,

the spear which made the wound. With it he touches Amfortas's side,

and the wound is healed. Parsifal declares the identity of the spear

and holds it aloft, while all gaze upon it in rapture. Parsifal

commands the pages to uncover the Grail, which he takes out and

swings gently before the kneeling knights. Kundry sinks expiring to

the floor. Gurnemanz and Amfortas kneel in homage to Parsifal, while

from the dome above voices are heard singing, "O heavenly mercy's

marvel, redemption to the redeemer!"

No other drama of Wagner shows wider departures from the original

material or more condensation of it than this, the last of his

works. Here, as in other dramas, he has not rested upon any one

foundation, but, using the story of Wolfram as his chief guide, he

has selected from other versions of the Grail legend such ideas

as were in harmony with his own poetic purpose. Thus he discards

Wolfram's conception of the Grail as a stone from the crown of

Lucifer and goes back to the Provençal idea of it as the vessel

in which Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man who bought the body of

Christ from Pilate, received the precious blood from the wounds. From

Wolfram he took the idea that the knights who dwell in Monsalvat, and

who went forth to aid the needy in distress (as in "Lohengrin"), were

fed and strengthened by the Grail itself. The significance of the

bleeding spear he obtained from Chrétien de Troyes. Wolfram, it will

be remembered, made it simply a poisoned lance, with which an unknown

pagan, in the strife for the Grail, had wounded Amfortas. Chrétien

described it as the spear with which Longinus had pierced the side of

the crucified Saviour. This idea could not fail to attract Wagner,

for it gave him an opportunity to strengthen the ethical basis of his

drama. Amfortas, yielding to the seductions of Kundry, the temptress,

becomes the prey of the powers of evil, represented by Klingsor, is

robbed of the sacred lance, and wounded with it. Such a wound is more

than physical; it is a mortal hurt of the soul. The cure comes only

through the touch of the spear itself in the hands of one who is

pure. The wounded King exists in all the versions of the legend, and

is always to be made whole by the expected knight, who is to ask the

essential question.

But in Wagner's version the question is not asked. It has no

dramatic value. As Wolzogen has well noted, for an audience a visible

and symbolic act is far more effective; and so, instead of hearing

Parsifal say, as in Wolfram's epic, "What ails thee, uncle?" we

see him touch the wound with the spear and bid Amfortas "be whole,

forgiven, and absolved." By this simple change of the original

story the conclusion of the drama is infinitely improved. But the

alteration goes farther than that, for it touches the character of

Parsifal. He is, in Wagner's book, the same guileless fool as he

is in the original legends, but his enlightenment comes to him in

another way. Wagner has subjected his hero to the temptation which in

Wolfram's story is undergone by Gawain.

The psychologic plan of the garden scene is subtle, but not at all

difficult of comprehension. Parsifal has known but one love; he

remembers but one tenderness. The sorest spot in his conscience

is that where dwells the memory of the dear mother whom he left.

Kundry, acting as the agent of the evil powers, seeks to touch that

spot. She awakens in her intended victim the divine spark of pity,

akin to love, and then she strives to lead him onward to love itself

by the imprint of a passionate kiss. But the influence of pity has

enlightened the inexperienced heart of the guileless fool, and the

kiss which would draw his soul from him serves but to reveal to

him the nature of the sin for which Amfortas suffers. He cries out

with the anguish of the very wound itself, and bids the temptress

begone. This is a conception of unusual power, and for the purpose of

exposition through music it is most admirable, in that it centralises

the dramatic action entirely upon the play of emotion. Here we find

the Wagnerian theory of the music drama working in its fullest

freedom and completeness. Parsifal needs no question. He never

hears of one. His awakened soul has already given him the necessary

information, and when, after long and weary wanderings, he once more

finds the domain of the Grail he is ready to heal the sufferer by the

only means capable of performing that merciful act.

Kundry is entirely Wagner's creation. In Wolfram's story Condrie is

the messenger who upbraids Parsifal for not healing the sick King,

and Orgeluse is the beautiful woman who tempts Gawain. Wagner has

united the two, but has created a personality of his own. According

to one of the legends, Kundry was Herodias, the daughter of Herod,

and had been cursed for having laughed at the head of John the

Baptist on a charger. Wagner makes her a woman who had laughed

at the suffering Christ and had been condemned by him to endless

laughter. Thenceforward she wanders through the world in search of

her redeemer. This wandering is common to heroines of the old German

legends, and shows us that Kundry had certain traits in common with

the Valkyrs of the Northern mythology. One of the names applied to

her by Klingsor, Gundryggia, we find also in the Eddas as that of a

Valkyr, and we further recognise the Valkyr nature in the union of

hostile and helpful traits which was characteristic of the Choosers

of the Slain.

Wagner's Kundry seeks to expiate her sin by serving the Grail,

but the curse prevents her. Through it she becomes the slave of

the powers of evil, represented by Klingsor, and, when under the

spell, exercises her entire force in seducing the defenders of the

right. Not until one of the righteous resists her can the power of

the evil one be overthrown, and not till then can she be released

from the burden of her sin. In other words, through resisting her,

Parsifal becomes her redeemer, and it is thus natural and proper

that he should baptise her, and that in the scene of the baptism the

laughter-cursed woman should receive the blessing of tears.