To the root of the mountain comes also the Wanderer, now nearing his
doom. He calls up the First Mother from the depths of the earth, and
begs counsel from her. She bids him confer with the Norns (the Fates).
But they are of no use to him: what he seeks is some foreknowledge of
the way of the Will in its perpetual strife with these helpless Fates
who can only spin the net of circumstance and environment round the feet
of men. Why not, says Erda then, go to the daughter I bore you, and take
counsel with her? He has to explain how he has cut himself off from her,
and set the fires of Loki between the world and her counsel. In that
case the First Mother cannot help him: such a separation is part of
the bewilderment that is ever the first outcome of her eternal work
of thrusting the life energy of the world to higher and higher
organization. She can show him no way of escape from the destruction he
foresees. Then from the innermost of him breaks the confession that he
rejoices in his doom, and now himself exults in passing away with all
his ordinances and alliances, with the spear-sceptre which he has only
wielded on condition of slaying his dearest children with it, with the
kingdom, the power and the glory which will never again boast themselves
as "world without end." And so he dismisses Erda to her sleep in the
heart of the earth as the forest bird draws near, piloting the slain
son's son to his goal.
Now it is an excellent thing to triumph in the victory of the new order
and the passing away of the old; but if you happen to be part of the
old order yourself, you must none the less fight for your life. It seems
hardly possible that the British army at the battle of Waterloo did not
include at least one Englishman intelligent enough to hope, for the
sake of his country and humanity, that Napoleon might defeat the allied
sovereigns; but such an Englishman would kill a French cuirassier rather
than be killed by him just as energetically as the silliest soldier,
ever encouraged by people who ought to know better, to call his
ignorance, ferocity and folly, patriotism and duty. Outworn life may
have become mere error; but it still claims the right to die a natural
death, and will raise its hand against the millennium itself in
self-defence if it tries to come by the short cut of murder. Wotan finds
this out when he comes face to face with Siegfried, who is brought to a
standstill at the foot of the mountain by the disappearance of the bird.
Meeting the Wanderer there, he asks him the way to the mountain where
a woman sleeps surrounded by fire. The Wanderer questions him, and
extracts his story from him, breaking into fatherly delight when
Siegfried, describing the mending of the sword, remarks that all he knew
about the business was that the broken bits of Nothung would be of no
use to him unless he made a new sword out of them right over again from
the beginning. But the Wanderer's interest is by no means reciprocated
by Siegfried. His majesty and elderly dignity are thrown away on the
young anarchist, who, unwilling to waste time talking, bluntly bids
him either show him the way to the mountain, or else "shut his muzzle."
Wotan is a little hurt. "Patience, my lad," he says: "if you were an old
man I should treat you with respect." "That would be a precious notion,"
says Siegfried. "All my life long I was bothered and hampered by an
old man until I swept him out of my way. I will sweep you in the same
fashion if you don't let me pass. Why do you wear such a big hat; and
what has happened to one of your eyes? Was it knocked out by somebody
whose way you obstructed?" To which Wotan replies allegorically that the
eye that is gone--the eye that his marriage with Fricka cost him--is now
looking at him out of Siegfried's head. At this, Siegfried gives up the
Wanderer as a lunatic, and renews his threats of personal violence. Then
Wotan throws off the mask of the Wanderer; uplifts the world-governing
spear; and puts forth all his divine awe and grandeur as the guardian of
the mountain, round the crest of which the fires of Loki now break into
a red background for the majesty of the god. But all this is lost on
Siegfried Bakoonin. "Aha!" he cries, as the spear is levelled against
his breast: "I have found my father's foe"; and the spear falls in two
pieces under the stroke of Nothung. "Up then," says Wotan: "I cannot
withhold you," and disappears forever from the eye of man. The fires
roll down the mountain; but Siegfried goes at them as exultantly as
he went at the forging of the sword or the heart of the dragon, and
shoulders his way through them, joyously sounding his horn to the
accompaniment of their crackling and seething. And never a hair of his
head is singed. Those frightful flames which have scared mankind for
centuries from the Truth, have not heat enough in them to make a child
shut its eyes. They are mere phantasmagoria, highly creditable to Loki's
imaginative stage-management; but nothing ever has perished or will
perish eternally in them except the Churches which have been so poor and
faithless as to trade for their power on the lies of a romancer.