From the bed of the river we rise into cloudy regions, and finally come
out into the clear in a meadow, where Wotan, the god of gods, and his
consort Fricka lie sleeping. Wotan, you will observe, has lost one eye;
and you will presently learn that he plucked it out voluntarily as the
price to be paid for his alliance with Fricka, who in return has brought
to him as her dowry all the powers of Law. The meadow is on the brink of
a ravine, beyond which, towering on distant heights, stands Godhome, a
mighty castle, newly built as a house of state for the one-eyed god and
his all-ruling wife. Wotan has not yet seen this castle except in his
dreams: two giants have just built it for him whilst he slept; and the
reality is before him for the first time when Fricka wakes him. In that
majestic burg he is to rule with her and through her over the humble
giants, who have eyes to gape at the glorious castles their own
hands have built from his design, but no brains to design castles for
themselves, or to comprehend divinity. As a god, he is to be great,
secure, and mighty; but he is also to be passionless, affectionless,
wholly impartial; for Godhead, if it is to live with Law, must have no
weaknesses, no respect for persons. All such sweet littlenesses must be
left to the humble stupid giants to make their toil sweet to them; and
the god must, after all, pay for Olympian power the same price the dwarf
has paid for Plutonic power.
Wotan has forgotten this in his dreams of greatness. Not so Fricka. What
she is thinking of is this price that Wotan has consented to pay,
in token whereof he has promised this day to hand over to the giants
Fricka's sister, the goddess Freia, with her golden love-apples. When
Fricka reproaches Wotan with having selfishly forgotten this, she finds
that he, like herself, is not prepared to go through with his bargain,
and that he is trusting to another great worldforce, the Lie (a European
Power, as Lassalle said), to help him to trick the giants out of their
reward. But this force does not dwell in Wotan himself, but in another,
a god over whom he has triumphed, one Loki, the god of Intellect,
Argument, Imagination, Illusion, and Reason. Loki has promised to
deliver him from his contract, and to cheat the giants for him; but he
has not arrived to keep his word: indeed, as Fricka bitterly points
out, why should not the Lie fail Wotan, since such failure is the very
essence of him?
The giants come soon enough; and Freia flies to Wotan for protection
against them. Their purposes are quite honest; and they have no doubt
of the god's faith. There stands their part of the contract fulfilled,
stone on stone, port and pinnacle all faithfully finished from Wotan's
design by their mighty labor. They have come undoubtingly for their
agreed wage. Then there happens what is to them an incredible,
inconceivable thing. The god begins to shuffle. There are no moments in
life more tragic than those in which the humble common man, the manual
worker, leaving with implicit trust all high affairs to his betters, and
reverencing them wholly as worthy of that trust, even to the extent
of accepting as his rightful function the saving of them from all
roughening and coarsening drudgeries, first discovers that they are
corrupt, greedy, unjust and treacherous. The shock drives a ray of
prophetic light into one giant's mind, and gives him a momentary
eloquence. In that moment he rises above his stupid gianthood, and
earnestly warns the Son of Light that all his power and eminence of
priesthood, godhood, and kingship must stand or fall with the unbearable
cold greatness of the incorruptible law-giver. But Wotan, whose assumed
character of law-giver is altogether false to his real passionate
nature, despises the rebuke; and the giant's ray of insight is lost in
the murk of his virtuous indignation.
In the midst of the wrangle, Loki comes at last, excusing himself
for being late on the ground that he has been detained by a matter of
importance which he has promised to lay before Wotan. When pressed to
give his mind to the business immediately in hand, and to extricate
Wotan from his dilemma, he has nothing to say except that the giants are
evidently altogether in the right. The castle has been duly built: he
has tried every stone of it, and found the work first-rate: there is
nothing to be done but pay the price agreed upon by handing over Freia
to the giants. The gods are furious; and Wotan passionately declares
that he only consented to the bargain on Loki's promise to find a way
for him out of it. But Loki says no: he has promised to find a way out
if any such way exist, but not to make a way if there is no way. He has
wandered over the whole earth in search of some treasure great enough
to buy Freia back from the giants; but in all the world he has found
nothing for which Man will give up Woman. And this, by the way, reminds
him of the matter he had promised to lay before Wotan. The Rhine maidens
have complained to him of Alberic's theft of their gold; and he mentions
it as a curious exception to his universal law of the unpurchasable
preciousness of love, that this gold-robber has forsworn love for the
sake of the fabulous riches of the Plutonic empire and the mastery of
the world through its power.
No sooner is the tale told than the giants stoop lower than the dwarf.
Alberic forswore love only when it was denied to him and made the
instrument for cruelly murdering his self-respect. But the giants,
with love within their reach, with Freia and her golden apples in their
hands, offer to give her up for the treasure of Alberic. Observe, it
is the treasure alone that they desire. They have no fierce dreams
of dominion over their superiors, or of moulding the world to any
conceptions of their own. They are neither clever nor ambitious: they
simply covet money. Alberic's gold: that is their demand, or else Freia,
as agreed upon, whom they now carry off as hostage, leaving Wotan to
consider their ultimatum.
Freia gone, the gods begin to wither and age: her golden apples, which
they so lightly bargained away, they now find to be a matter of life and
death to them; for not even the gods can live on Law and Godhead alone,
be their castles ever so splendid. Loki alone is unaffected: the Lie,
with all its cunning wonders, its glistenings and shiftings and mirages,
is a mere appearance: it has no body and needs no food. What is Wotan
to do? Loki sees the answer clearly enough: he must bluntly rob Alberic.
There is nothing to prevent him except moral scruple; for Alberic, after
all, is a poor, dim, dwarfed, credulous creature whom a god can outsee
and a lie can outwit. Down, then, Wotan and Loki plunge into the mine
where Alberic's slaves are piling up wealth for him under the invisible
whip.