A wild region at the foot of a rocky mountain, the mountain at the
summit of which Brünnhilde sleeps. In night and storm Wotan the
Wanderer comes to seek Erda, the Wise Woman, the Wala. He conjures
her up from the depths of the earth into his presence. We see her
appear, as before, rising in the gloom of a rocky hollow up to
half her height.
In all his wandering over the earth, in search of wisdom and counsel,
none has Wotan found so wise as she. The question he proposes is:
How may a rolling wheel be arrested in its course?
Erda is not willingly waked out of her sleep, nor is it her wont to
communicate directly with the upper world. In her slow and solemn
sleep-weighted tones, she tells him that the Norns spin into their
coil the visions of her illuminated sleep. Why does he not consult
them? Or why, she asks, when that counsel is rejected, why does
he not, still mote aptly, consult Brünnhilde, wise child of Wotan
and Erda?
In his reply, Wotan briefly sums Brünnhilde's offence: She defied the
Storm-compeller, where he was practising the utmost self-compulsion;
what the Leader of Battle yearned to do, but refrained from, his
own antagonist,--all too confident, the insolent maid dared to
bring about for herself.
At the indication of Brünnhilde's fate, indignation possesses the
Wala. In view of such high-handed injustice, she wishes and struggles
to return back into the earth and be merged with her wisdom in
sleep. But Wotan will not release her until she has satisfied him
"You, all-knowing one, once drove the thorn of care into Wotan's
daring heart; with the dread of an adverse ignominious ending you
filled him by your foreknowledge, so that his courage was in bondage
to fear. If you are the wisest woman in the world, tell me now:
how shall the god overcome that care?" But the injured mother is
not to be conciliated. "You are not," she startlingly announces,
"what you call yourself!"--Not a god, Wotan?--"What are you come,
wild and turbulent spirit, to disturb the Wala's sleep? Restless
one, release me! Loose the spell!" "You are not" he retorts, "what
you suppose yourself!"--Not the wisest of women! In that she has
not divined what he has really come to impart, rather than seriously
to ask counsel. For his true errand is to show her the fruits of
time in himself, the mood of patience and reconciliation he has
reached, nay, of hope for a future in which he is to have no part,
that Brünnhilde's mother may sleep the more quietly, and, untroubled,
watch the end overtake him through her dream. "Do you know what it
is Wotan wills? I speak it in your ear, unforeseeing one, that
with easy heart you may return to your eternal sleep. The thought
of the end of the gods no longer grieves me, since it is my desire
and my will! The thing which I once, in pain and conflict, torn by
despair, resolved, I now joyfully and freely carry out: in raging
disgust I once devoted the world to the ill-will of the Nibelung;
to the joyous Wälsung I now appoint my inheritance. He whom I have
chosen, but who has never known me, an intrepid boy, unaided by
counsel of mine, has conquered the Nibelung's Ring. Void of envy,
happy and loving, Alberich's curse falls away crippled when it would
light on the noble one, for fear is unknown to him. She whom you
bore to me, Brünnhilde, shall be tenderly waked by the hero; awake,
your wise child shall perform a world-delivering deed! Wherefore,
sleep! Close your eye: dreaming watch my passing! Whatever works be
theirs, to that Eternally Young One, the god in gladness yields his
place. Down, then, Erda! Ancient Fear! Original Care! To your eternal
sleep! Down! Down!..." Erda sinks into the earth, the glimmering
light fades from the cave.
A bird-note is heard, light and sharp, approaching. A bird flutters
into sight and Siegfried, following it, appears upon the scene. The
bird, as if at the recognition of danger,--the ravens of Wotan are
hovering near--in all haste flies quite away. Siegfried resolves to
go on alone. He is stopped by the Wanderer's voice: "Whither, boy,
does your way lead you?" Here is some one, thinks Siegfried, who may
show him the way. "I seek a rock," he replies; "it is surrounded
by fire; there sleeps a woman whom I wish to wake." "Who bade you
seek the rock? Who taught you to wish for the woman?" "A little
woodland bird told me about it in his singing; he gave me good
tidings." "A little bird gossips of many things, but no one can
understand him. How did you derive the meaning of his song?" "That
was the effect of the blood of a wild dragon,..." and so forth.
Wotan continues to ply the youth with questions, just as a kind
old grandfather of humankind might lead on a child to talk, for
the simple sake of hearing what he will say, for delight in his
ingenuousness. The utmost tenderness for this joyous Walsung speaks
in the tones of the greybeard. The final object of his questioning
is to lead the youth to some acknowledgment of himself as a factor
in his fortunes. Without discarding his incognito, he longs to
hear on the grandson's lips some name which stands for himself,
some reference to him. So, from the question, "Who prompted you to
attack the strong Worm?" he passes to the question: "Who shaped the
sword, so sharp and hard, that the strongest enemy should succumb
to its stroke?" and when Siegfried replies that he did this himself,
insists further: "But who shaped the strong pieces, out of which
you forged the sword?" The answer to this is, "Wälse!" It can be
nothing else. Siegfried, however, replies: "What do I know? All
I know is that the pieces could be of no use to me until I forged
the sword over again for myself." Wotan breaks out laughing: "I
agree with you!" Siegfried suspecting that he has been quizzed,
loses his patience, becomes curt and rough. "What are you laughing
at me? Old questioner, you had better stop. Do not keep me chattering
here! If you can direct me on my way, speak. If you cannot, hold
your mouth!" Deplorable are the manners learned in Mime's cave.
"Patience, you boy!" Wanderer mildly checks him; "if I seem old
to you, you should offer me reverence!" "That," jeers Siegfried,
"is a fine idea! All my life long an old man has stood in my way.
I have no more than swept him away. If you continue to stand there
stiffly opposing me, beware, I tell you, lest you fare like Mime!"
As, with this threat, he takes a stride nearer to the stranger, he
is struck by his appearance. "What makes you look like that?" he
asks, like a child; "what a great hat you have! Why does it hang
down so over your face?... One of your eyes, beneath the brim, is
missing.... It was put out, I am sure, by some one whose passage
you were stubbornly opposing. Now, take yourself off, or you might
easily lose the other!" The indulgent grandsire is still not stirred
from his patience, though this must strike a little painfully on
his heart. "I see, my son, that, unencumbered by any knowledge,
you are quick at disposing of obstacles. With the eye which is
missing from my other socket, you yourself are looking at the single
eye which I have left for sight." At this riddle, the brilliant
Walsung eyes merely flash mirth, while Siegfried laughs at the
obscure saying. Not a moment does he waste in reflection upon it,
but, with growing impatience to resume his quest, orders Wanderer
to guide him or be thrust out of his road. "If you knew me, bold
stripling," the suffering god speaks, still gently, "you would spare
me this affront. Close to my heart as you are, your threatening
strikes me painfully. Though I have ever loved your luminous race,
my anger has before this brought terror upon them. You, toward
whom I feel such kindness,--you, all-too-bright!--do not to-day
move me to anger.... It might destroy both you and me!" All that
is plain to Siegfried, mad to be off in search of his sleeper,
is that this prattling old personage neither tells him his way
nor will consent to move out of it. As he once more rudely bids
him clear the path to the sleeping woman, Wotan's anger breaks
forth: "You shall not," he exclaims, "go the way the bird pointed!"
"Hoho! You forbidder!..." cries Siegfried, amazed, "who are you,
trying to prevent me?" "Fear the Guardian of the Rock! My power
it is which holds the maid under the spell of sleep. He who awakes
her, he who wins her, makes me powerless for ever!"
Wotan, it would seem, is challenging the boy. His anger, justified
though it would be by the stalwart cub's behaviour, is half affected.
He had declared not far from this very spot, some eighteen years
earlier, that no one who feared his spear should ever cross the
barrier of fire. The hour is at hand when the spear must offer
itself to be braved by this incarnate courage bent upon that same
adventure,--when Wotan must take the chances of discovering that
this boy is freer than he--the god. He had declared himself but a
moment ago, in his communication with Erda, willing to yield his
supremacy to the Eternally Young One. Actually to do it must be a
little bitter, after enduring that Young One's cavalier treatment.
Perhaps--the text admits of the interpretation,--Wotan is sincerely
angry; at Siegfried's impertinence he has changed his mind in respect
to yielding his throne to him, and with a real intention of driving
him back from the rock describes the terrors of the mountain: "A
sea of fire surges around the woman; hot flames lick the rock;
the conflagration rages against him who would push through to the
bride. Look up toward the heights! Do you see not the light?...
It is waxing in brightness.... Scorching clouds, wavering flames,
roaring and crackling, stream down toward us. A sea of light shines
about your head, Soon the fire will catch and devour you.... Then,
back! mad child!" "Back yourself, you braggart!" cries Siegfried,
nothing deterred; "up there where the flames flicker, I must hasten
to Brünnhilde!" He is about to push past, when Wotan holds his
spear across the path: "If the fire does not frighten you, my spear
shall stop your way. My hand still holds the staff of sovereignty.
The sword which you swing was once shattered against this shaft,
again let it snap on the eternal spear!" Instead of appalling him,
the majestic threat creates in Siegfried eagerness and glee: "My
father's enemy! Do I find you here? Excellently this happens for
my revenge! Swing your spear! With my sword I will split it to
pieces!" And he immediately does as he has said. Nothing, it seems,
not the spear of the law, can stand against the sword of perfect
courage. A clap of thunder accompanies the sundering of the spear.
The broken pieces roll at the Wanderer's feet. He picks them quietly
up. With godlike calm, the hour having struck, he accepts inevitable
fate. The motif of downfall points this beginning of the end of the
gods. "Go your way! I cannot hold you!" He vanishes in darkness.
"With broken weapon the coward has fled?" says Siegfried, looking
about for his father's enemy. The magic fire, as if to force the
intruder back, has been pouring further and further down the
mountain-side. But the one whom it should frighten rejoices, glories
in the glory of the flames, jubilates. "Ha! Delightful glow! Beaming
brightness! A radiant road lies open before me! Oh, to bathe in
the fire! In the fire to find the bride! Hoho! Hoho! Hahei! Hahei!
Merrily! Merrily! This time I shall lure a dear companion!" He sets
the silver horn to his lips and gaily blowing the Lock-weise starts
up the mountain and is lost among the swirling sanguine smoke-clouds.
The fire burns bright; the merry call is heard from time to time
from the unseen climber. The fire pales--the barrier has been past,
the region above is reached, the charmed sleeper's domain. When
the veiling smoke completely clears, we see the remembered scene
of the Valkyries' rock, and Brünnhilde lying under the spreading
pine, as Wotan left her.
It is calm golden daylight. Over the brow of the mountain appears
Siegfried and stands still a moment, outlined against the cloudless
sky, wondering at the peace, the airiness, considering the "exquisite
solitude on the sunny height!" The sweet Fricka-motif speaks aloud
as it were the unconscious language of his blood, voices the vague
instinct toward nest-building which in the Spring lightly turns a
young man's fancy to thoughts of love. He has come in search of
a bride, upon the word of a little bird; but his ideas concerning
the promised "dear companion" are so few, and the novelty of all
he is seeing so takes up his mind, that when his eyes presently
fall upon the recumbent form his first thought is not that here
must be what he has come in search of.
He approaches and marvels at the bright armour. He lifts off the
great shield, again like a child, to see what it covers. A man in
suit of mail! He can see the face in part only, but warms with
instantaneous pleasure in its comeliness. The helmet, he surmises,
must press uncomfortably on the beautiful head. Very gently he
takes it off. Long curling locks, loosed from confinement, gush
abundantly forth. Siegfried is startled by the sight. But the right
words, "How beautiful!" rise to his untaught lips. He remains sunk
in contemplation of the marvel; the tresses remind him of a thing
he has often watched: shimmering clouds bounding with their ripples
a clear expanse of sky. As if drawn by a magnet, he bends lower
over the quiet form and so feels the sleeper's breath. "The breast
heaves with the swelling breath, shall I break the cramping corslet?"
Cautiously he makes the attempt, but, finding his fingers unapt at
the task, solves his difficulty by aid of Nothung. With delicate
care he cuts through the iron and lightly removes the corslet. "This
is no man!" he cries, starting away in amazement. Such emotion seizes
him, with sensations of dizziness and faintness--such a pressure on
the heart, forcing from it burning sigh upon sigh, that, with a
sense of having no resource in himself, he casts about for help
in this all so unfamiliar exquisite distress: "Whom shall I call
on that he may save me? Mother! Mother! Remember me!" Swooning, he
sinks with his forehead against Brünnhilde's breast--to be roused
again by the goad of his desire to see the eyes of the sleeper
unclose. "That she should open her eyes?" He hesitates, in tender
trouble. "Would her glance not blind me? Have I the hardihood?
Could I endure the light?..." He feels the hand trembling with
which he is trying to quiet his agitated heart. "What ails me,
coward? Is this fear? Oh, mother! Mother! Your bold child! A woman
lies folded in slumber,... she has taught him to be afraid!...
How shall I bring this fear to an end? How shall I gain back my
courage? That I may myself awake from this dream I must waken the
maid!" But awe of the so august and quiet sleeper again restrains
him. He does not touch her, but lingeringly gazes at her "blossoming
mouth," bows till the warm fragrance of her breath sweeping his face
forces forth his impulsive cry: "Awake! Awake! Sacred woman!" He
waits with suspended breath. She has not heard. She does not stir.
An infinite weakness overtaking him, a mortal coming less, "I will
drink life," he sighs, "from sweetest lips, though I should swoon
to death in the act!" With closed eyes he bends over Brünnhilde's
lips.
Twelve bars, the tempo of which is marked "_Sehr mässig,_" very
moderate, sing themselves delicately and gravely to an end. Brünnhilde
opens wide her eyes. Siegfried starts from her, not guiltily or
to move from his place, only to stand erect and, absorbed, watch
her movements.
Slowly she rises to a sitting posture and with beatific looks takes
account of the glorious world to which she has reawakened. Solemnly
she stretches her arms toward the sky: "Hail to thee, sun!" A great
pause, of drinking in further the loveliness of the scene and the
joy of life returned to, then: "Hail to thee, light!" And after
another great pause of wondering ecstasy: "Hail to thee, radiant
day!... Long was my sleep.... I am awake.... Who is the hero that
has awakened me?" Siegfried stands spell-bound, in solemn awe at
the sound of her voice and the superhuman splendour of her beauty.
He answers, in the only way he knows, childlike, direct: "I pressed
through the fire which surrounded the rock; I released you from
the close helmet; Siegfried I am called who have awakened you!"
At the sound of the name, the altogether right one, Brünnhilde
takes up again her song of praise: "Hail to you, gods! Hail to
thee, world! Hail, sumptuously blooming earth!" And Siegfried breaks
forth, in an exalted rapture which inspires his ignorance with
expression befitting the hour: "Oh, hail to the mother who bore
me, hail to the earth which nourished me, that I might behold the
eyes which now shine upon me, blessed!" Brünnhilde, joining in
his hymn of gratitude, blesses, too, the mother who bore him, and
the earth which nourished him, whose eyes alone should behold her,
for whom alone she was destined to awake. The love-scene following
leaves a singular impression of greatness. The wise daughter of
the Wala and the "most splendid hero of the world" are simple as
children, sincere as animals or angels, ardent with honest natural
fire, like stars. When their love finally reaches a perfect
understanding their song is a succession of magnificent shouts,
primitive as they are thrilling.
"Oh, if you knew, joy of the world," Brünnhilde exposes her artless
heart to the hero, "how I have loved you from all time! You were
my care, the object of my solicitude! Before you were shaped, I
nurtured you, before you were born, my shield concealed you,--so
long have I loved you, Siegfried!" He believes for a moment that
his mother has not died but has been sleeping and now speaks to
him. In correcting him, Brünnhilde shows herself tenderly feminine.
No sooner has she spoken the words which must fall with inevitable
dreariness on his ear, "Your mother will not come back to you!"
than she hastens to heal his hurt with the sweetest thing her love
has to say: "Yourself am I, if you love me, fortunate...." She
explains the meaning of her earlier words: "I have loved you from
all time, for to me alone Wotan's thought was known. That thought
which I must never speak, which I did not think, but only felt;
for which I strove, struggled, and fought; for which I braved the
one who had framed it; for which I was made to suffer and bound
in punishment; that thought--might you but grasp it!--was naught
but love for you!"
It could hardly be hoped that the young forester should at this
moment be able to grasp anything so subtle, as he helplessly confesses:
"Wonderful sounds what you winningly sing; but the sense of it is
dark to me. I see your eye beam bright; I feel your warm breath;
I hear the sweet singing of your voice; but that which in your
singing you would impart, stupefied, I understand it not! I cannot
grasp the sense of distant things, when all my senses are absorbed
in seeing and feeling only you. With anxious fear you bind me:
you alone have taught me to fear. Whom you have bound in mighty
bonds, no longer withhold from me my courage!" Brünnhilde at this,
with the touch of nature which makes the Valkyrie kin to the young
lady of drawing-rooms, turns her head away and talks of something
else. She talks of Grane, whom she sees grazing a little way off.
As her eyes fall upon the corslet, cut from her body with a sword,
the sight smites upon her saddeningly, as a symbol. A consciousness
of danger and defencelessness oppresses her, and when Siegfried,
made bold in his fear of her by the very need he feels of overcoming
that fear, impetuously seizes her in his arms, in terror she starts
away from him and wrings her hands with a woful sense of not being
any more that Brünnhilde "whom no god had ever approached, before
whom reverently the heroes had bowed, who holy had departed from
Walhalla." She feels her wisdom forsaking her, her light failing,
night and terror closing down upon her. She appeals to him at last
against himself: "Oh, Siegfried, see my distress!"
He stands so still for a time, silent, puzzled by her, unwilling
certainly to frighten her further, that her immediate fear subsides;
her countenance betrays, the stage-directions read, that "a winning
picture rises before her soul." The character of this may be divined
from the melody rippling softly forth, the motif of peaceful love.
A fresh green branch, it makes one think of, with a nest upon it,
swinging in a summer wind. More gently she addresses him, pleading
rather than repelling, winning him to give up his way for hers.
"Eternal am I,... but eternal for your weal! Oh, Siegfried, joyous
hero! Renounce me.... Approach me not with ardent approach....
Constrain me not with shattering constraint.... Have you not seen
your own image in the clear stream? Has it not gladdened you, glad
one? If you stir the water into turmoil, the smooth surface is lost,
you cannot see your own reflection any longer. Wherefore, touch me
not, trouble me not; eternally bright then shall you shine back at
yourself from me. Oh, Siegfried, luminous youth! love--yourself, and
withhold from me. Destroy not what is your own!" His robust young
love to this replies--after the simple outburst: "You I love, oh,
might you love me! No longer have I myself, oh, had I you!"--that
it matters little his image should be broken in the glorious river
before him, for, burning and thirsting, he would plunge into it
himself, that its waves might blissfully engulf him and his longing
be quenched in the flood. It is he who appeals now, with ancient
arguments, simple and telling as his blows at the dragon. When
at the end of them he clasps Brünnhilde again, she does not as
before wrest herself free, but laughs in joy as she feels her love
surging, till it, as it seems to her, more than matches his own,
and he is the one, she judges, who should feel afraid. She, indeed,
asks him, does he not fear?... But the opposite takes place. With
her love, ardent as his own, frankly given him, all his courage
comes back, "And fear, alas!" he observes, a little disconcerted
at the queerness of this new experience, "fear, which I never
learned,--fear, which you had hardly taught me,--fear, I believe,
I, dullard, have already forgotten it!" Brünnhilde laughs in
delight--all of joy and laughter is their love after this up on
the sunny height--and declares to the "mad-cap treasury of glorious
deeds" that laughing she will love him, laughing lose the light of
her eyes, laughing they will accept destruction, laughing accept
death! Let the proud world of Walhalla crumble to dust, the eternal
tribe of the gods cease in glory, the Norns rend the coil of fate,
the dusk of the gods close down,--Siegfried's star has risen, and he
shall be, to Brünnhilde, for ever, everything! In equally fine and
joyous ravings Siegfried's voice has been pouring forth alongside
of hers; reaching at last an identical sentiment and the same note,
the two rush together like flashing mountain torrents, and are
lost to us behind the descending curtain.