The devotion which Wagner's work inspires has been illustrated lately
in a public correspondence on this very point. A writer in The Daily
Telegraph having commented on the falsehood uttered by Brynhild in
accusing Siegfried of having betrayed Gunther with her, a correspondence
in defence of the beloved heroine was opened in The Daily Chronicle. The
imputation of falsehood to Brynhild was strongly resented and combated,
in spite of the unanswerable evidence of the text. It was contended that
Brynhild's statement must be taken as establishing the fact that she
actually was ravished by somebody whom she believed to be Siegfried,
and that since this somebody cannot have been Siegfried, he being as
incapable of treachery to Gunther as she of falsehood, it must have been
Gunther himself after a second exchange of personalities not mentioned
in the text. The reply to this--if so obviously desperate a hypothesis
needs a reply--is that the text is perfectly explicit as to Siegfried,
disguised as Gunther, passing the night with Brynhild with Nothung
dividing them, and in the morning bringing her down the mountain THROUGH
THE FIRE (an impassable obstacle to Gunther) and there transporting
himself in a single breath, by the Tarnhelm's magic, back to the hall
of the Gibichungs, leaving the real Gunther to bring Brynhild down
the river after him. One controversialist actually pleaded for the
expedition occupying two nights, on the second of which the alleged
outrage might have taken place. But the time is accounted for to the
last minute: it all takes place during the single night watch of
Hagen. There is no possible way out of the plain fact that Brynhild's
accusation is to her own knowledge false; and the impossible ways just
cited are only interesting as examples of the fanatical worship
which Wagner and his creations have been able to inspire in minds of
exceptional power and culture.
More plausible was the line taken by those who admitted the falsehood.
Their contention was that when Wotan deprived Brynhild of her Godhead,
he also deprived her of her former high moral attributes; so that
Siegfried's kiss awakened an ordinary mortal jealous woman. But a
goddess can become mortal and jealous without plunging at once into
perjury and murder. Besides, this explanation involves the sacrifice of
the whole significance of the allegory, and the reduction of The Ring to
the plane of a child's conception of The Sleeping Beauty. Whoever does
not understand that, in terms of The Ring philosophy, a change from
godhead to humanity is a step higher and not a degradation, misses the
whole point of The Ring. It is precisely because the truthfulness of
Brynhild is proof against Wotan's spells that he has to contrive the
fire palisade with Loki, to protect the fictions and conventions of
Valhalla against her.
The only tolerable view is the one supported by the known history of
The Ring, and also, for musicians of sufficiently fine judgment, by the
evidence of the scores; of which more anon. As a matter of fact Wagner
began, as I have said, with Siegfried's Death. Then, wanting to develop
the idea of Siegfried as neo-Protestant, he went on to The Young
Siegfried. As a Protestant cannot be dramatically projected without a
pontifical antagonist. The Young Siegfried led to The Valkyries, and
that again to its preface The Rhine Gold (the preface is always written
after the book is finished). Finally, of course, the whole was revised.
The revision, if carried out strictly, would have involved the cutting
out of Siegfried's Death, now become inconsistent and superfluous; and
that would have involved, in turn, the facing of the fact that The Ring
was no longer a Niblung epic, and really demanded modern costumes, tall
hats for Tarnhelms, factories for Nibelheims, villas for Valhallas, and
so on--in short, a complete confession of the extent to which the old
Niblung epic had become the merest pretext and name directory in the
course of Wagner's travail. But, as Wagner's most eminent English
interpreter once put it to me at Bayreuth between the acts of Night
Falls On The Gods, the master wanted to "Lohengrinize" again after his
long abstention from opera; and Siegfried's Death (first sketched in
1848, the year before the rising in Dresden and the subsequent events
which so deepened Wagner's sense of life and the seriousness of art)
gave him exactly the libretto he required for that outbreak of the
old operatic Adam in him. So he changed it into Die Gotterdammerung,
retaining the traditional plot of murder and jealousy, and with it,
necessarily, his original second act, in spite of the incongruity of its
Siegfried and Brynhild with the Siegfried and Brynhild of the allegory.
As to the legendary matter about the world-ash and the destruction of
Valhalla by Loki, it fitted in well enough; for though, allegorically,
the blow by which Siegfried breaks the god's spear is the end of Wotan
and of Valhalla, those who do not see the allegory, and take the story
literally, like children, are sure to ask what becomes of Wotan after
Siegfried gets past him up the mountain; and to this question the old
tale told in Night Falls On The Gods is as good an answer as another.
The very senselessness of the scenes of the Norns and of Valtrauta in
relation to the three foregoing dramas, gives them a highly effective
air of mystery; and no one ventures to challenge their consequentiality,
because we are all more apt to pretend to understand great works of art
than to confess that the meaning (if any) has escaped us. Valtrauta,
however, betrays her irrelevance by explaining that the gods can
be saved by the restoration of the ring to the Rhine maidens. This,
considered as part of the previous allegory, is nonsense; so that even
this scene, which has a more plausible air of organic connection with
The Valkyries than any other in Night Falls On The Gods, is as clearly
part of a different and earlier conception as the episode which
concludes it, in which Siegfried actually robs Brynhild of her ring,
though he has no recollection of having given it to her. Night Falls On
The Gods, in fact, was not even revised into any real coherence with the
world-poem which sprang from it; and that is the authentic solution of
all the controversies which have arisen over it.