In the beginning was the Gold,--beautiful, resplendent, its obvious
and simple part to reflect sunlight and be a joy to the eyes;
containing, however, apparently of its very nature, the following
mysterious quality: a ring fashioned from it would endow its possessor
with what is vaunted as immeasurable power, and make him master of
the world. This power shows itself afterwards undefined in some
directions and circumscribed in others, one never fully grasps
its law; one plain point of it, however, was to subject to the
owner of the ring certain inferior peoples and reveal to him the
treasures hidden in the earth, which he could force his thralls
to mine and forge and so shape that they might be used to buy and
subject the superior peoples, thus making him actually, if successful
in corruption, master of the world.
But this ring could by no possibility be fashioned except by one
who should have utterly renounced love.
For these things no reason is given: they were, like the Word.
One feels an allegory. As the poem unfolds, one is often conscious
of it. It is well to hold the thread of it lightly and let it slip
as soon as it becomes puzzling, settling down contentedly in the
joy of simple story. The author himself, very much a poet, must
be supposed to have done something of the sort. He does not follow
to any trite conclusion the thought he has started, he has small
care for minor consistencies. Large-mindedly he drops what has
become inconvenient, and prefers simply beauty, interest, the story.
Thus his personages have a body, and awaken sympathies which would
hardly attach to purely allegorical figures; a charm of livingness
invests the world he has created.
The Gold's home was in the Rhine, at the summit of a high, pointed
rock, where it caught the beams of the sun and shed them down through
the waves, brightening the dim water-world, gladdening the water-folk.
That was its sole use, but for thus making golden daylight in the
deep it was worshipped, besung, called adoring names, by nixies
swimming around it in a sort of joyous rite.
The mysterious potentiality of the gold was known to the Rhine-god;
three of his daughters had been instructed by him, and detailed
to guard the treasure. Some faculty of divination warned him of
danger to it, and of the quarter from whence this danger threatened.
But nixies--even when burdened by cares of state--are just nixies;
those three seem to have lived to laugh before all else--to laugh
and chase one another and play in the cool green element, singing
all the while a fluent, cradling song whose sweetness might well
allure boatmen and bathers.
Below the Rhine lay Nibelheim, the kingdom of mists and night,
the home of the Nibelungs,--dark gnomes, dwarfs, living in the
bowels of the earth, digging its metals, excelling in cunning as
smiths.
The Rhine did not continue flowing water quite down to its bed;
the boundary-line of Nibelheim seems to have been just above it;
the water there turned to fine mist; among the rough rocks of the
river-bed were passages down into the Under-world.
Up through one of these, one day before sunrise, while the Rhine
was melodiously thundering in its majestic course--they are the
Rhine-motifs which open the piece,--came clambering, by some chance,
the Nibelung Alberich. His night-accustomed eyes, as he blinked
upward into the green light, were caught by a silvery glinting of
scales, flashes of flesh-pink and floating hair. The Rhine-maidens,
guardians of the gold, were frolicking around it; but this did not
appear, for the sun had not yet risen to wake it into radiance.
The dwarf saw just a shimmering of young forms, was touched with
a natural desire, and called to them, asking them to come down
to him, and let him join in their play.
At the sound of the strange voice and the sight of the strange
figure, Flosshilde, a shade more sensible than her sisters, cries
out to them: "Look to the gold! Father warned us of an enemy of
the sort!" and the three rally quickly around the treasure. But it
soon appears that the stranger is but a dark, small, hairy, ugly,
harmless-seeming, amorous creature, uttering his wishes very simply.
The watch over the gold is relinquished, and a little amusement
sought in tantalizing and befooling the clumsy wooer.
Alberich, later a figure touched with terror and followed with
dislike, is likeable in this scene, almost gentle, one's sympathies
come near being with him. The music describes him awkward and heavy,
slipping on the rocks, sneezing in the wet; a note of protest is
frequent in his voice. All the music relating to him, now or later,
is joyless, whatever beside it may be.
The sisters have their fun with the poor gnome, whose innocence of
nixies' ways is apparent in the long time it is before all reliance
in their good faith leaves him. Woglinde invites him nearer. With
difficulty he climbs the slippery rocks to reach her. When he can
nearly touch her--he is saying, "Be my sweetheart, womanly child!"--she
darts from him. And the sisters laugh their delicious inhuman laugh.
Woglinde then plunges to the river-bed, calling to Alberich, "Come
down! Here you surely can grasp me!" He owns it will be easier for
him down there, and lets himself down, when the sprite rises, light
as a bubble, to the surface. He is calling her an impudent fish
and a deceitful young lady, when Wellgunde sighs, "Thou beautiful
one!" He turns quickly, inquiring naïvely, "Do you mean me?" She
says, "Have nothing to do with Woglinde. Turn sooner to me!" He is
but too willing, vows that he thinks her much the more beautiful
and gleaming, and prays she will come further down. She stops short
of arm's-length. He pours forth his elementary passion. She feigns
a wish to see her handsome gallant more closely. After a brief
comedy of scanning his face, with insulting promptness she appears
to change her mind, and with the unkindest descriptive terms slipping
from his grasp swims away. And again rings the chorus of malicious
musical laughter. Then the cruellest of the three, Flosshilde, takes
the poor swain in hand. She not only comes down, she allows herself
to be held, she wreathes her slender arms around him, presses him
tenderly and flatters him in music well calculated to daze with
delight. He is not warned by her words, as, while they sit embraced,
she says, "Thy piercing glance, thy stubborn beard, might I see
the one, feel the other, forever! The rough locks of thy prickly
hair, might they forever flow around Flosshilde! Thy toad's shape,
thy croaking voice, oh, might I, wondering and mute, see and hear
them exclusively for ever!" It is the sudden mocking laughter of
the two listening sisters which draws him from his dream--when
Flosshilde slips from his hold, and the three again swim merrily
around, and laugh, and when his angry wail rises call down to him
to be ashamed of himself! But not even then do they let him rest;
they hold forth new hopes, inviting and exciting him to chase them,
till fairly aflame with love and wrath he begins a mad pursuit,
climbing, slipping, falling to the foot of the rocks, starting
upwards again, clutching at this one and that, still eluded with
ironical laughter, until, realizing his impotence, breathless and
quaking with rage, he shakes his clenched hand at them, foaming,
"Let me catch one with this fist!"
He is glaring upward at them, speechless with fury, when his eyes
become fixed upon a brilliant point, growing in size and radiance
until the whole flood is illumined. There is an exquisite hush of
a moment. The sun has risen and kindled its reflection in the gold.
The music describes better than words the spreading of tremulous
light down through the deep. Through the wavering ripples of water
and light cuts the bright call of the gold, the call to wake up
and behold. Again and again it rings, regularly a golden voice.
The Rhine-daughters have quickly forgotten their victim. They begin
their blissful circumswimming of their idol, with a song in ecstatic
celebration of it, so penetratingly, joyously sweet, that you readily
forgive them their naughtiness: "Rhine-gold! Rhine-gold! Luminous
joy! How laugh'st thou so bright and clear!"...
Alberich cannot detach his eyes from the vision. "What is it, you
sleek ones," he asks in awed curiosity, "glancing and gleaming
up there?"
"Now where have you barbarian lived," they reply, "never to have
heard of the Rhine-gold?" They mock his ignorance; returning to
their teasing mood, they invite him to come and revel with them
in the streaming light.
"If it is no good save for you to swim around, it is of small use
to me!" is Alberich's dejected observation. As if their treasure had
been disparaged, Woglinde informs him that he would hardly despise
the gold if he knew all of its wonder! And Wellgunde follows this
part-revelation with the whole secret: The whole world would be
his inheritance who should fashion out of the Rhine-gold a magic
ring. Vainly Flosshilde tries to silence her sisters. Wellgunde
and Woglinde laugh at her prudence, reminding her of the gold's
assured safety in view of the condition attached to the creation
of the ring. This is described in a solemn phrase, serious as the
pronouncing of a vow: "Only he who forswears the power of love,
only he who casts from him the joys of love, can learn the spell
by which the gold may be forced into a ring."--Wherefore, they
hold, the gold is safe, "for all that lives wishes to love, no one
will give up love," least of all this Nibelung, the heat of whose
sentiments had come near scorching them! And they laugh and swim
around the gold with their light-hearted Wallalaleia, diversified
with mocking personalities to the gnome down in the gloom.
But they have miscalculated. Without suspecting it, they have gone
too far. The dwarf stands staring at the gold, dreaming what it
would be to own the world. He is hardly at that moment, thanks
to them, in love with love. His resolution is suddenly taken. He
springs to the rock, shouting: "Mock on! Mock on! The Nibelung is
coming!" With fearful activity, hate-inspired strength, he rapidly
climbs the rock on which he had so slipped and floundered before.
The foolish nymphs, though they see his approach, are still far
from understanding. They still believe it is themselves he seeks to
seize. They now not only laugh--they laugh, as the stage-directions
have it, "_im tollsten Uebermuth_," the craziest towering insolence
of high spirits. "Save yourselves, the gnome is raving! He has
gone mad with love!"
He has reached the summit of the rock, he has laid hands on the
gold. He cries, "You shall make love in the dark!... I quench your
light, I tear your gold from the reef. I shall forge me the ring
of vengeance, for, let the flood hear me declare it: I here curse
love!" Tearing from its socket their splendid lamp, which utters
just once its golden cry, all distorted and lamentable, he plunges
with it into the depths, leaving sudden night over the scene in
which the wild sisters, shocked at last into sobriety, with cries
of Help and Woe start in pursuit of the robber. His harsh laugh
of triumph drifts back from the caves of Nibelheim.
Then occurs a gradual transformation-scene both to the eye and
the ear. The rocks disappear, black waves flow past, the whole
all the while appearing to sink. Clouds succeed the water, mist
the clouds. This finally clears, revealing a calm and lovely scene
on the mountain-heights. The music has during this been painting
the change, too: Sounds of running water, above which hovers a
moment, a memory of the scene just past and a foreboding of its
sorrowful consequences, the strain signifying the renunciation
of love; when this dies away, the motif of the ring, to be heard
so many times after, its fateful character plainly conveyed by the
notes, which also literally describe its circular form. By what
magic of modulation the uninitiated cannot discern, the ring-motif,
as the water by degrees is translated into mist, slides by subtle
changes into a motif which seems, when it is reached, conspicuously
different from it, the motif of the Gods' Abode.
There in the distance it stands, when the mists have perfectly
cleared, bathed in fresh morning light, the tall just-completed
castle, with shimmering battlements, crowning a high rocky mountain,
at whose base, far down out of sight, flows the Rhine. For the
Rhine is the centre of the world we are occupied with: under it,
the Nibelungs; above it, the Gods; beside it, the giants and the
insignificant human race. The music itself here, while the dwelling
of the gods is coming into sight, seems to build a castle: story
above story it rises, topped with gleaming pinnacles, one, lighter
and taller than all the rest, piercing the clouds.
In the foreground lie sleeping side by side, on a flowery bank,
the god and goddess Wotan and Fricka.
He lies dreaming happily of the abode from which the world is to
be commanded by him, to the display of immeasurable power and his
eternal honour. His wife's sleep is less easy. For the situation
is not as free from complications as his untroubled slumbers might
lead one to suppose. Wotan has employed to build him this stronghold
the giants Fasolt and Fafner, formerly his enemies, but bound to
peace by treaties, and has promised them the reward stipulated
for, Freia, goddess of beauty and youth, sister of Fricka. And this
he has done without any serious thought of keeping his word. "_Nie
sann es ernstlich mein Sinn_," he assures Fricka, when, starting in
dismay from her sleep and beholding the completed burg, she reminds
him that the time is come for payment, and asks what shall they do.
Loge, he enlightens her, counselled the compact and promised to
find the means of evading it. He relies upon him to do so. This calm
frankness in the god, with its effect of personal clearness from
all sense of guilt, suggests the measure of Wotan's distinguishing
simplicity. Referring later to the dubious act which so effectually
laid the foundation of sorrows, he says, "Unknowingly deceitful, I
practised untruth. Loge artfully tempted me." He explains himself
to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge,
who has often already brought them into straits: "Where frank courage
is sufficient, I ask counsel of no one. But slyness and cunning
are needed to turn to advantage the ill-will of adversaries, and
that is the talent of Loge."
Strong and calm is Wotan; music of might and august beauty, large
music, supports everyone of his utterances. There is no departure
from this, even when his signal fallibility is in question. Waftures
of Walhalla most commonly accompany his steps; the close of his
speech is frequently marked by the sturdy motif of his spear, the
spear inseparable from him, cut by him from the World-Ash, carved
with runes establishing the bindingness of compacts, by aid of
which he had conquered the world, subdued the giants, the Nibelungs,
and Loge, the Spirit of Fire.
Athirst for power he is, before all: in this trait lie the original
seeds of his destruction; it is for the sake of the tokens of power,
the castle and later the ring, that he commits the injustices which
bring about ruin. Athirst, too, for wisdom: he has given one of his
eyes for Wisdom, in the person of Fricka, who combines in herself
law and order and domestic virtue. And athirst for love,--something
of a grievance to Fricka. "_Ehr ich die Frauen doch mehr als dich
freut_," "I honour women more than pleases you," he retorts to
her reproach of contempt for woman's love and worth, evidenced in
his light ceding of Freia.
He calls himself and all call him a god, adding "eternal" even
when the gods' end is glaringly at hand. The other gods look to
him as chief among them. But he is ever acknowledging the existence
of something outside and above himself, a law, a moral necessity,
which it is no use to contend against; through which, do what he
may, disaster finally overtakes him for having tried to disregard it.
There is a stray hint from him that the world is his very possession
and that he could at will destroy it; but this which so many facts
contradict we may regard as a dream. Yet he feels toward the world
most certainly a responsibility, such as a sovereign's toward his
people; a duty, part of which is that for its sake he must not
allow his spear to be dishonoured. Compacts it must sacredly guard.
All his personal troubles come from this necessity, this constant
check to him: he must respect covenants, his spear stands for their
integrity. Alberich in a bitter discussion declares his knowledge
of where the god is weak, and reminds him that if he should break
a covenant sanctioned by the spear in his hand, this, the symbol
of his power, would split into spray!
He is perhaps best understood, on the whole, with his remorse and
despair, the tortures of his heart and his struggle with his soul,
if one can conceive him as a sort of sublimated aristocrat; a
resplendent great personage--just imaginable in the dawn of history,
when there were giants upon earth--lifted far above the ordinary of
the race by superior gifts, "reigning through beauty," as Fasolt
describes; possessing faculties not shared by common mortals, but
these rudimentary or else in their decline: the power of divination,
not always accurate or clear; the power of miracle, not altogether
to be relied upon; remaining young indefinitely, yet not wholly
enfranchised from time and circumstance; living indefinitely, but
recognising himself as perishable, and passing at last, swallowed
in twilight.
A great warrior and leader of heroes, inciter of men to bold actions
and novel flights; some of his titles: Father of Hosts, Father
of Battles, Father of Victory; riding in the storm-clouds on his
_Luft-ross_, his air-horse, whose hoof-beats and neigh fill us with
excited delight. But his air-horse cannot overtake Brünnhilde's
air-horse, in his pursuit of her, and Grane reaching the goal falls
exhausted....
A great reveller: reference is repeatedly made to the light-minded,
light-hearted, careless humour of the gods, their glorious feasts
and joyous life in the light up there. Their tribe is qualified
as "laughing." Wotan's unshakable dignity indeed does not prevent
a quick easy laugh. And he shows the true aristocratic temper in
being little moved by the sorrows of those beneath and unrelated
to him: one of his laughs, which we witness, is for the howls of
a poor wee dwarf who had been savagely beaten.
And so this powerful clan-chief had had a fancy for a house to
live in worthy of their greatness. Fricka had fallen in with his
desire, but for reasons of her own. To him the citadel was a fresh
addition to his power. But Fricka had been "_um des Gatten Treu'
besorgt_," "ill at ease with regard to her consort's fidelity,"
and had thought the beautiful dwelling might keep him at home.
With her words, "_Herrliche Wohnung, wonniger Hausrath_," "Beautiful
dwelling, delectable household order," first occurs the winning
strain which afterward stands for Fricka in her love of domesticity,
or, separate from her, for the pure charm of home.
When the giants, however, had been subsidised for the great work
of building the house, the narrow-conscienced women had been kept
out of the way while an agreement was reached with the builders;
a grievance which Fricka remembers, and does not let her spouse
forget, when the evil consequences of his act are upon them. Fricka
constitutes something of a living reproach to her husband, though
a certain tender regard still exists between them through the
introductory Opera. A thankless part is Fricka's, like that of Reason
in opposition to Feeling and Genius.
Now Loge, who had been tamed by the conquering spear, hated his
tamer. He craved back his liberty, and, as the Norn tells us later
in _Goetterdaemmerung_, "tried to free himself by gnawing at the
runes on the shaft of the spear." He gave counsel to Wotan which
followed must create difficulties from which the god could deliver
himself only by an injustice; and this injustice Loge seems clearly
to have recognised from the first as the beginning of the end of
the strength of the gods. The subtle Loge is more widely awake than
Wotan to the "power not ourselves which makes for righteousness."
He counselled him to buy the giants' labor by the promise of Freia,
knowing that the gods could never endure to let the amiable goddess
go. He led them to believe that when the time came he would give
them further counsel by which to retain her. And his word Wotan
chose to trust, and gave his heart over to the untroubled enjoyment
of his plans' completion.
And now Freia comes running to him in terror, crying that one of
the giants has told her he is come to fetch her. With her entrance
we first hear the slender sweet phrase, delicately wandering upward,
which after for a time denoting Freia, comes to mean for us just
beauty. Wotan calms the maiden in distress, and asks, as one fancies,
a little uneasily, "Have you seen nothing of Loge?"
The arrival of the giants is one of the great comedy moments of
the play. Their colossally heavy tread, musically rendered, never
fails to call forth laughter from some corner in us of left-over
childhood. It is like the ogre's Fee-faw-fum. Fasolt is a good
giant, his shaggy hair is blond, his fur-tunic white, and his soft
big heart all given over to the touchingly lovely Freia. Fafner is
a bad giant and his hair and furs are black. He is much cleverer
than his brother. They carry as walking-sticks the trunks of trees.
They make it known that they have come for their wages. Wotan bids
them, with a sturdy aplomb worthy of his godhead, state their wishes.
What shall the wages be? Fasolt, a shade astonished, replies, "That,
of course, which we settled upon. Haye you forgotten so soon? Freia....
It is in the bond that she shall follow us home."
"Have you taken leave of your senses... with you bond?" asks Wotan,
with a quick flash. "You must think of a different recompense.
Freia is far too precious to me."
The giant is for a moment still, unable to speak for indignation;
but recovering his voice he makes to the "son of light" a series
of observations eminently to the point. Wotan to these makes no
more retort than as if the words had not been spoken; but--to gain
time till Loge shall arrive--when the giant has quite finished, he
inquires, "What, after all, can the charm of the amiable goddess
signify to you clumsy boors?" Fasolt enlarges, "You, reigning through
beauty, shimmering lightsome race, lightly you offer to barter
for stone towers woman's loveliness. We simpletons labour with
toil-hardened hands to earn a sweet woman who shall dwell with
us poor devils.... And you mean to call the bargain naught?..."
Fafner gloomily checks him: Words will not help them. And the possession
of Freia in itself is to his mind of little account. But of great
account to take her from the gods. In her garden grow golden apples,
she alone has the art of tending these. Eating this fruit maintains
her kinsmen in unwaning youth. Were Freia removed, they must age
and fade. Wherefore let Freia be seized!