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Richard
Wagner
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THE WAGNERIAN ROMANCES
by GERTRUDE HALL
INTRODUCTION
The attempt has been made in the following to give an idea
of the charm and interest of the original text of the Wagner
operas, of Wagner's extraordinary power and fertility as a
dramatist. It is not critique or commentary, it is
presentation, picture, narrative; it offers nothing that is
not derived directly and exclusively from the Wagner
libretti and scores.
The stories of the operas are widely known already, of
course. As literature, however, one may almost say they are
not known at all, unless by students of German. The
translators had before them a task so tremendous, in the
necessity to fit their verse-rendering of the master's
poetry to extremely difficult music, that we respect them
for achieving it at all. None the less must the translations
included in our libretti be pronounced painfully inadequate.
To give a better, more complete knowledge of the original
poems is the object of these essays. The poems form, even
apart from the music, a whole beautiful, luminous, romantic
world. One would not lose more by dropping out of literature
the Idylls of the King than the Wagnerian romances.
CONTENTS
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The
Ring of the Nibelung
THE RHINE-GOLD
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!
Wotan frets underbreath, "Loge is long
acoming!"
Freia's cries, as the giants lay hands
upon her, bring her brothers Donner and Froh—the god of
Thunder and the god of the Fields—quickly to her side. A
combat between them and the giants is imminent, when Wotan
parts the antagonists with his spear, "Nothing by violence!"
and he adds, what it might be thought he had lost sight of,
"My spear is the protector of bargains!"
And then finally, finally, comes in sight
Loge. Wotan lets out his breath in relief: "Loge at last!"
The music has introduced Loge by a
note-painting as of fire climbing up swiftly through airiest
fuel. There is a quick flash or two, like darting tongues of
flame. A combination of swirling and bickering and pulsating
composes the commonest Loge-motif, but the variety is
endless of the fire's caprices. Fantastical, cheery, and
light it is mostly, sinister sometimes, suggestive of
treachery, but terrible never; its beauty rather than its
terror is reproduced. So characteristic are the fire-motifs
that after a single hearing a person instinctively when one
occurs looks for some sign or suggestion of Loge.
He stands now upon the rock, a vivid,
charming, disquieting apparition, with his wild red hair and
fluttering scarlet cloak. The arch-hypocrite wears always a
consummately artless air. He comes near winning us by a
bright perfect good-humour, which is as of the quality of an
intelligence without a heart. The love of mischief for its
own sake, which is one of his chief traits, might be thought
to account easily for his many enemies.
He is related to the gods, a half-god, but
is regarded coldly by his kin. Wotan is his single friend in
the family, and with Wotan he preserves the attitude of a
self-acknowledged underling. He stands in fear of his
immediate strength, while nourishing a hardly disguised
contempt for his wit, as well as that of his cousins
collectively. A secret hater of them all, and clear-minded
in estimating them. A touch of Mephistophelian there is in
the pleasure which he seems to find in the contemplation of
the canker-spot in Wotan's nature, drawing from the god over
and over again, as if the admission refreshed him, that he
has no intention of dealing justly toward the Rhine-maidens.
"Is this your manner of hastening to set
aright the evil bargain concluded by you?" Wotan chides, as
he appears from the valley.
"How? What bargain concluded by me?..."
Pinned down to accounting for himself, "I
promised," he says, "to think over the matter, and try to
find means of loosing you from the bargain.... But how
should I have promised to perform the impossible?" Under the
pressure of all their angers, he finally airily delivers
himself: "Having at heart to help you, I travelled the world
over, visiting its most recondite corners, in search of such
a substitute for Freia as might be found acceptable to the
giants. Vainly I sought, and now at last I plainly see that
nothing upon this earth is so precious that it can take the
place in man's affection of the loveliness and worth of
woman."
Struck and uplifted by this thought, the
gods, moved, look in one another's faces, and the music
expresses the sweet expansion of the heart overflowing with
thoughts of beauty and love. It is one of the memorable
moments of the Prologue.
"Everywhere," proceeds Loge, "far as life
reaches, in water, earth, and air, wherever is quickening of
germs and stirring of nature's forces, I investigated and
inquired what there might be in existence that a man should
hold dearer than woman's beauty and worth? Everywhere my
inquiry was met with derision. No creature, in water, earth,
or air, is willing to renounce love and woman."
As he pauses, the gods again gaze at one
another, with tender tearful smiles, in an exalted emotion
over the recognition of this touching truth; and the music
reexpresses that blissful expansion of the heart.
"Only one did I see," Loge says
further—the light fading out of the music—"who had renounced
love; for red gold he had forsworn the favor of woman." He
relates Alberich's theft of the gold, as it had been told
him by the Rhine-daughters, who had made him their
advocate with Wotan, to procure its restitution.
But their plea meets with a deaf ear. "You
are stupid, indeed, if not perverse," the god answers Loge,
when he delivers their appeal. "You find me in straits
myself, how should I help others?"
The giants have been listening to this
talk about Alberich, an ancient enemy of theirs. The
cleverer brother asks Loge, "What great advantage is
involved in the possession of the gold, that the Nibelung
should find it all-sufficient?" Loge explains. There drift
back to Wotan's memory runes of the Ring, and the thought
readily arises that it would be well he possessed the ring
himself.
"But how, Loge, should I learn the art to
shape it?" At the reply that he who would practise the magic
by which it could be shaped must renounce love, the god
turns away in conclusive disrelish. Loge informs him that he
would in any case have been too late: Alberich has already
successfully forged the ring.
This alters the face of things.
"But if he possesses a ring of such
power," says simple Donner, "it must be taken from him, lest
he bring us all under its compulsion!"
Wotan hesitates no more. "The ring I must
have!"
"Yes, now, as long as love need not be
renounced, it will be easy to obtain it," says simple Froh.
"Easy as mocking—child's-play!" sneers
Loge.
"Then do you tell us, how?..." Wotan's
fine majestic simplicity has no false pride.
The Serpent gleefully replies, "By theft!
What a thief stole, you steal from the thief! Could anything
be easier? Only, Alberich is on his guard, you will have to
proceed craftily if you would overreach the robber... in order
to return their treasure to the Rhine-daughters, who
earnestly entreat you."
"The Rhine-daughters?" chafes Wotan. "What
do you trouble me with them?"
And the goddess of Wisdom,—more
sympathetic on the whole in this exhibition of weakness than
in her hard justice later—exposing the core of her feminine
being, breaks in: "I wish to hear nothing whatever of that
watery brood. Many a man, greatly to my vexation, have they
lured under while he was bathing, with promises of love."
The giants have been listening and have
taken counsel together. Fafner now approaches Wotan. "Hear,
Wotan.... Keep Freia.... We have fixed upon a lesser reward.
We will take in her stead the Nibelung's gold."
Wotan comes near losing his temper. "What
I do not own, I shall bestow upon you shameless louts?"
Fafner expresses a perfect confidence in
Wotan's equipment for obtaining the gold.
"For you I shall go to this trouble?"
rails the irritated god, "For you I shall circumvent this
enemy? Out of all measure impudent and rapacious my
gratitude has made you clowns!..."
Fasolt who has only half-heartedly
accepted his brother's decision in favor of the gold, stays
to hear no more, but seizes Freia. With a warning that she
shall be regarded as a hostage till evening, but that if
when they return the Rhinegold is not on the spot as her
ransom, they will keep her forever, the giants hurry her
off.
Her cry for help rings back. Her brothers,
in the act of rushing to the rescue, look at Wotan for his
sanction. No encouragement is to be gathered from his face.
He stands motionless, steeped in perplexity, in conflict
with himself.
Loge has now a few moments' pure enjoyment in
safely tormenting his superiors. He stands, with his fresh,
ingenuous air, on a point overlooking the valley, and
describes the giants' progress, as does the music, too. "Not
happy is Freia, hanging on the back of the rough ones as
they wade through the Rhine...." Her dejected kindred wince.
The heavy footsteps die away. Loge
returning his attention to the gods, voices his amazement at
the sight which meets him: "Am I deceived by a mist? Am I
misled by a dream? How wan and fearful and faded you do
look! The glow is dead in your cheeks, the lightening
quenched in your glances. Froh, it is still early morning!
Donner, you are dropping your hammer! What ails Fricka? Is
it chagrin to see the greyness of age creeping over Wotan?"
Sounds of woe burst from all, save Wotan, who with his eyes
on the ground still stands absorbed in gloomy musing.
The solution of the puzzle suddenly, as he
feigns, flashes upon Loge: This is the result of Freia's
leaving them! They had not yet that morning tasted her
apples. Now, of necessity, those golden apples of youth in
her garden, which she alone could cultivate, will decay and
drop. "Myself," he says, "I shall be less inconvenienced
than you, because she was ever grudging to me of the
exquisite fruit, for I am only half of as good lineage as
you, Resplendent Ones. On the other hand, you depended
wholly upon the rejuvenating apples; the giants knew that
and are plainly practising against your lives. Now bethink
yourselves how to provide against this. Without the apples,
old and grey, a mock to the whole world, the dynasty of the
gods must perish!"
With sudden resolution, Wotan starts from
his dark study. "Up, Loge! Down with me to Nibelheim! I will
conquer the gold!"
"The Rhine-daughters, then," speaks wicked
Loge, "may look to have their prayer granted?"
Wotan harshly silences him. "Be still,
chatterer!... Freia the good, Freia must be ransomed!"
Loge drops the subject and offers his
services as guide. "Shall we descend through the Rhine?"
The Rhine, with its infesting nymphs?...
"Not through the Rhine!" says Wotan.
"Then through the sulphur-cleft slip down
with me!" And Loge vanishes down a cleft in the rock,
through which Wotan, after bidding his family wait for him
where they are until evening, follows.
Thick vapour pours forth from the
sulphur-cleft, dimming and shortly blotting out the scene.
We are travelling downward into the earth. A dull red glow
gradually tinges the vapour. Sounds of diminutive hammers
upon anvils become distinct. The orchestra takes up their
suggestion and turns it into a simple monotonous strongly
rhythmical air—never long silent in this scene—which comes
to mean for us the little toiling Nibelungs, the cunning
smiths. A great rocky subterranean cave running off on every
side into rough shafts, is at last clearly visible, lighted
by the ruddy reflection of forge-fires.
This is where Alberich reigns and by the
power of the ring compels his enslaved brothers to labour
for him. Renouncing love has not been good for the
disposition of Alberich. It is not only the insatiable lust
of gold and power now darkening the soul-face of the earlier
fairly gentle-natured Nibelung, it is a savage gloating
cruelty, bespeaking one unnaturally loveless; it is a
sanguinary hatred, too, of all who still can love, of love
itself, a thirst and determination to see it completely done
away with in the world, exterminated—a sort of fallen
angel's
sin against the Holy Ghost. A state, beneath the incessant
excitement of slave-driving and treasure-amassing, of
inexpressible unhappiness, lightened by moments of huge
exaltation in the sense of his new power.
We find him, when the cavern glimmers into
sight, brutally handling his crumb of a gnome brother. Mime,
like Alberich, wins some part of our heart on first
acquaintance, which he later ceases to deserve; but in the
case of Mime I think it is never wholly withdrawn, even when
he is shown to be an unmitigated wretch; he is, to begin
with, so little, and he has a funny, fetching twist or
quaver in his voice, indicated by the notes themselves of
his rather mean little sing-song melodies. Alberich's
nominal reason for indulging his present passion for
hurting—he is haling Mime by the ear—is that the latter is
overslow with certain piece of work which, with minute
instructions, he has been ordered to do. Mime, under
pressure, produces the article, which he had in truth been
trying to keep for his own, suspecting in it some mysterious
value. It is the Tarnhelm, a curious cap of linked
metal. Its uncanny character is confided to us even before
we see it at work, by the motif which first appears with its
appearance: a motif preparing for some unearthly
manifestation the mind pricked to disquieted attention by
the weirdness of the air. Alberich places it upon his head,
utters a brief incantation, and disappears from sight. A
column of vapour stands in his place.
"Do you see me?" asks Alberich's
disembodied voice. Mime looks around, astonished. "Where are
you? I see you not!" "Then feel me!" cries the power-drunken
tyrant, and Mime winces and cowers under blows from an
unseen scourge, while Alberich's voice laughs. Out of
measure exhilarated by his successful new device for
ensuring diligence and inspiring fear, he storms out of
hearing with the terrible words, "Nibelungs all,
bow to Alberich!... He can now be everywhere at once,
keeping watch over you. Rest and leisure are done and over
with for you! For him you must labour.... His conquered
slaves are you forever!" The moment of his overtaking the
Nibelungs is indicated by their sudden distant outcry.
Mime has been left crouching and
whimpering on the rocky floor. Thus Wotan and Loge find him.
Loge is in all the following scene Wotan's
very active vizier, furnishing the invention and carrying
out the stratagems. Wotan, except to the eye, takes the
background and has little to say; but as the blue of his
mantle and the fresh chaplet on his locks strike the eye
refreshingly in the fire-reddened cave, so his voice, with
echoes in it of the noble upper world, comes like gusts of
sweet air.
Loge sets the cowering dwarf on his feet
and by artful questions gets the whole story from him of the
ring and the Nibelungs' woe. About the Tarnhelm, too, Mime
tells Loge. At the recollection of the stripes he has
suffered, he rubs his back howling. The gods laugh. That
gives Mime the idea that these strangers must be of the
great. He is in his turn questioning them, when he hears
Alberich's bullying voice approaching. He runs hither and
thither in terror and calls to the strangers to look to
themselves, Alberich is coming! Wotan quietly seats himself
on a stone to await him.
Alberich enters driving before him with
his scourge a whole army of little huddling, hurrying
Nibelungs, groaning under the weight of great pieces of gold
and silver smithwork, which, while he threatens and urges
them, they heap in a duskily glimmering mound. In the fancy
that they are not obeying fast or humbly enough, he takes
the magic ring from his finger, kisses and lifts it
commandingly over them, whereupon with cries of dismay they
scramble away, scattering down the shafts, in feverish haste
to be digging and delving.
Heavy groans are in the music when it
refers to the oppression of the Nibelungs; groans so tragic
and seriously presented that they bring up the thought of
other oppressions and killing labours than those of the
Nibelungs. The music which later depicts the amassing of
riches, indicates such horror of strain, such fatigue, such
hopeless weariness of heart and soul, that the hearer must
think with sharpened sympathy of all that part of humanity
which represents the shoulder placed against the wheel.
Alberich turns an angry eye upon the
intruders: "What do you want?"
It is then most especially that the calm
notes of Wotan fall healingly upon the sense: They have
heard tales of novel events in Nibelheim, of mighty wonders
worked there by Alberich, and are come from curiosity to
witness these.
After this simple introduction from the
greater personage, his light-foot, volatile, graceful
minister takes Alberich in hand and practising confidently
upon his intoxicated conceit of power, his pride in the
cleverness which had contrived ring and wishing-cap, uses
him like a puppet of which all the strings should be in his
hand.
Alberich recognises in Loge an old enemy.
Loge's reply to Alberich's, "I know you well enough, you and
your kind!" is perhaps, with its cheerful dancing flicker,
his prettiest bit of self-description. "You know me,
childish elf? Then, say, who am I, that you should be surly?
In the cold hollow where you lay shivering, how would you
have had light and cheering warmth, if Loge had never
laughed for you?..."
But Alberich seems to remember too many
reasons for distrusting him. "I can now, however," he
boasts, "defy you all!" and he calls to their notice the heaped
riches,—the Hort.
"But," remarks Wotan, "of what use is all
that wealth in cheerless Nibelheim, where there is nothing
to buy?"
"Nibelheim," replies Alberich, "is good to
furnish treasures and to keep them safe. But when they form
a sufficient heap, I shall use them to make myself master of
the world!"
"And how, my good fellow, shall you
accomplish this?"
Alberich has apprehended in this guest one
of the immortals,—which, taken into consideration a speech
suggestive every time it resounds of calm heights and
stately circumstances, is not strange. Alberich hates him,
hates them all. This is his exposition of his plan: "You
who, lapped in balmy airs, live, laugh, and love up there,
with a golden fist I shall catch you all! Even as I
renounced love, all that lives shall renounce it! Ensnared
and netted in gold, you shall care for gold only! You
immortal revellers, cradling yourselves on blissful heights
in exquisite pastimes, you despise the black elf! Have a
care!... For when you men have come to be the servants of my
power, your sweetly adorned women, who would despise the
dwarf's love, since he cannot hope for love, shall be forced
to serve his pleasure. Ha ha! Do you hear? Have a care, have
a care, I say, of the army of the night, when the riches of
the Nibelungs once climb into the light!"
Wotan, whose Olympian self-sufficiency is
usually untroubled by what any mean other-person may say, at
this cannot contain himself, but starting to his feet cries
out a command for the blasphemous fool's annihilation!
Before Alberich, however, has caught the words—his deafness
perhaps it is which saves his life—Loge has called Wotan
back to his reason. Practising on Alberich's not completely
outlived simplicity, he by the ruse of feigning himself very
stupid and greatly impressed by his cleverness, now
induces him to show off for their greater amazement the
power of the Tarnhelm, which it appears has not only the
trick of making the wearer at will invisible, but of lending
him whatever shape he may choose. Later we find that it has
also the power to transport the wearer at pleasure to the
ends of the earth in a moment of time.
To put Loge's incredulity to shame,
Alberich, Tarnhelm on head, turns himself into a dragon,
drawing its cumbersome length across the stage to a fearsome
tune which gives all of its uncouthness, and never fails to
call forth laughter, like the giants' tread. As a further
exhibition of his power, after full measure of flattery in
Loge's pretended fright, he at the prompting of the same
changes himself into a toad, which has but time for a hop or
two, before Wotan places his calm foot upon it. Loge
snatches the Tarnhelm off its head and Alberich is seen in
his own person writhing under Wotan. Loge binds him fast,
and the gods, with their struggling prey between them, hurry
off through the pass by which they came.
Then reoccurs, but reversed, the
transformation between Nibelheim and the upper world. The
region of the stithies is passed, the little hammers are
heard. At last Wotan and Loge with Alberich reappear through
the sulphur-cleft.
"Look, beloved," says Loge to the unhappy
captive, "there lies the world which you think of conquering
for your own. Tell me now, what little corner in it do you
intend as a kennel for me?" And he dances around him,
snapping his fingers to the prettiest, heartlessly merry
fire-music.
Alberich replies with raving insult.
Wotan's cool voice reminds him of the vanity of this and
calls him to the consideration of his ransom. When Alberich,
after a time, grumblingly inquires what they will have, he
says, largely and frankly, "The treasure, your shining
gold."
If he can only retain the ring, reflects
Alberich, the loss of the treasure may be quickly repaired.
At his request they free his right hand; he touches the ring
with his lips and murmurs the spell by which after a moment
the swarm of little smoke-grimed Nibelungs arrives groaning
and straining under the weight of the Hort; again they pile
it in a heap, and at Alberich's command scurry home.
"Now I have paid, now let me go," says the
humbled Nibelung-lord, "and that helmet-like ornament which
Loge is holding, have the kindness to give it me back." But
Loge flings the Tarnhelm on the heap as part of the ransom.
Hard to bear is this, but Mime can after all forge another.
"Now you have gotten everything; now, you cruel ones, loose
the thongs." But Wotan remarks, "You have a gold ring upon
your finger; that, I think, belongs with the rest." At this,
a madness of terror seizes Alberich. "The ring?..." "You
must leave it for ransom." "My life—but not the ring!" With
that bitter coldness of the aristocrat which in time brings
about revolutions, Wotan replies, "It is the ring I ask
for—with your life do what you please!" The dull Nibelung
pleads still after that, and his words contain thorns which
he might reasonably expect to tell: "The thing which I,
anguish-harried and curse-crowned, earned through a horrible
renunciation, you are to have for your own as a pleasant
princely toy?... If I sinned, I sinned solely against
myself, but against all that has been, is, or shall be, do
you, Immortal, sin, if you wrest this ring from me...."
Wotan without further discussion stretches
out his hand and tears from Alberich's finger the ring,
which gives once more, under this violence, the golden call,
saddened and distorted. "Here, the ring!—Your chattering
does not establish your right to it!" Alberich drops to
earth, felled. Wotan places the ring on his hand
and stands in gratified contemplation of it. "I hold here
what makes me the mightiest lord of the mighty!"
Loge unties Alberich and bids him slip
home. But the Nibelung is past care or fear, and rising to
insane heights of hatred lays upon the ring such a curse as
might well shake its owner's complacency. "As it came to me
through a curse, accursed be this ring! As it lent me power
without bounds, let its magic now draw death upon the
wearer! Let no possessor of it be happy.... Let him who owns
it be gnawed by care and him who owns it not be gnawed by
envy! Let every one covet, no one enjoy it!... Appointed to
death, fear-ridden let its craven master be! While he lives,
let his living be as dying! The ring's master be the ring's
slave,—until my stolen good return to me!... Now keep it!
Guard it well! My curse you shall not escape!"
"Did you hear his affectionate greeting?"
asks Loge, when Alberich has vanished down the rocky cleft.
Wotan, absorbed in the contemplation of
the ring, has heard the curse with the same degree of
interest he might have bestowed upon the trickle of a brook.
He replies magnanimously, "Grudge him not the luxury of
railing!"
Fricka, Donner, and Froh hasten to welcome
the returning gods. The approach of Freia, whom the giants
are bringing between them, is felt before she appears, in a
subtle sweetening of the air, a simultaneous lightening of
all the hearts and return of youth to the faces, which
Froh's daintily expansive greeting describes.
Fricka is hurrying toward her. Fasolt
interposes: Not to be touched! She still belongs to them
until the ransom have been paid. Fasolt does not fall in
willingly with the arrangement which shall give them the
gold in place of the woman; he has been overpersuaded by the
black brother; his regret at losing Freia is so great, he
tells the gods, that the treasure, if she is to be
relinquished, will have to be piled so high as completely to
hide the blooming maid.
"Let it be measured according to Freia's
stature!" decrees Wotan, and the giants drive their great
staves into the earth so that they roughly frame the figure
of Freia. Helped by Loge and Froh, they begin stopping the
space between with the treasure. Wotan's fastidiousness
cannot endure the visible sordid details of his bargain; he
turns from the sight of the incarnate rose, as she stands
drooping in a noble shame, to be valued against so much
gold. "Hasten with the work!" he bids them, "it sorely goes
against me!" When Fafner's rough greed orders the measure to
be more solidly pressed down, and he ducks spying for
crevices still to be stopped with gold, Wotan turns away,
soul-sick: "Humiliation burns deep in my breast!"
The Hort is exhausted, when Fafner looking
for crannies exclaims, "I can still see the shining of her
hair," and demands, to shut it from view, the Tarnhelm which
Loge has attempted to retain. "Let it go!" commands Wotan,
when Loge hesitates.
The affair, it now would seem, must be
closed; but Fasolt, in his grief over the loss of the Fair
one, still hovers about, peering if perchance he may still
see her, and so he catches through the screen of gold the
gleam of her eye, and declares that so long as the lovely
glance is visible he will not renounce the woman.
"But can you not see, there is no more
gold?" remonstrates Loge. Fafner, who has not failed to
store in his brain what he earlier overheard, replies,
"Nothing of the kind. There is a gold ring still on Wotan's
finger. Give us that to stop the cranny."
"This ring?..." cries Wotan, like Alberich
before him.
"Be advised," Loge says to the giants, as
if in confidence. "That ring belongs to the Rhine-maidens.
Wotan intends to return it to them."
But Wotan has no subterfuges or
indirections of his own—not conscious ones; when he needs
their aid, he uses another, as he had told Fricka. "What are
you prating?" he corrects Loge; "what I have obtained with
such difficulty, I shall keep without compunction for
myself." Loge amuses himself with probing further the
grained spot in his superior. "My promise then stands in bad
case, which I made to the Rhine-daughters when they turned
to me in their trouble." Wotan, with the coldness of the
Pharisee's "Look thou to that," replies, "Your promise does
not bind me. The ring, my capture, I shall keep."
"But you will have to lay it down with the
ransom," Fafner insists.
"Ask what else you please, you shall have
it; but not for the whole world will I give up the ring."
Fasolt instantly lays hands again upon
Freia and draws her from behind the Hort. "Everything then
stands as it stood before. Freia shall come with us now for
good and all." An outcry of appeal goes up from all the gods
to Wotan. He turns from them unmoved. "Trouble me not. The
ring I will not give up." And the idleness of further
appeal, howsoever eloquent, cannot be doubted.
But now unaccountable darkness invades the
scene; from the hollow alcove in the rocks, letting down to
the interior earth, breaks a bluish light; while all,
breathless, watch the strange phenomenon, the upper half of
a woman becomes discernible in it, wrapped in smoke-coloured
veils and long black locks. It is the Spirit of the Earth,
the all-knowing Erda, whose motif describes the stately
progression of natural things, and is the same as the
Rhine-motif, which describes a natural thing in stately
progression. She lifts a warning hand to Wotan. "Desist,
Wotan, desist! Avoid the curse on the ring... The possession
of it will doom you to dark ruin...."
Wotan, struck, inquires in awe, "Who are
you, warning woman?"
The one who knows all that was, is, and
shall be, she tells him; the ancestress of the everlasting
world, older than time; the mother of the Norns who speak
with Wotan nightly. Gravest danger has brought her to seek
him in person. Let him hear and heed! The present order is
passing away. There is dawning for the gods a dark day....
At this prophesied ruin, the music reverses the motif of
ascending progression, and paints melancholy disintegration
and crumbling downfall, a strain to be heard many times in
the closing opera of the trilogy, when the prophecy comes to
pass and the gods enter their twilight. The apparition is
sinking back into the earth. Wotan beseeches it to tarry and
tell him more. But with the words, "You are warned....
Meditate in sorrow and fear!" it vanishes. The masterful god
attempts to follow, to wrest from the weird woman further
knowledge. His wife and her brothers hold him back. He
stands for a time still hesitating, uncertain, wrapped in
thought. With sudden resolve at last he tosses the ring with
the rest of the treasure, and turns heart-wholly to greet
Freia returning among them, bringing back their lost youth.
While the gods are expressing tender
rapture over the restoration of Freia, and she goes from one
to the other receiving their caresses, Fafner spreads open a
gigantic sack and in this is briskly stuffing the gold.
Fasolt, otherwise preoccupied, had not thought to
bring a sack. He attempts to stay Fafner's too active hand.
"Hold on, you grasping one, leave something for me! An
honest division will be best for us both!" Fafner objects,
"You, amorous fool, cared more for the maid than the gold.
With difficulty I persuaded you to the exchange. You would
haved wooed Freia without thought of division, wherefore in
the division of the spoil I shall still be generous if I
keep the larger half for myself." Fasolt's anger waxes
great. He calls upon the gods to judge between them and
divide the treasure justly. Wotan turns from his appeal with
characteristic contempt. Loge, the mischief-lover, whispers
to Fasolt, "Let him take the treasure, do you but reserve
the ring!" Fafner has during this not been idle, but has
sturdily filled his sack; the ring is on his hand. Fasolt
demands it in exchange for Freia's glance. He snatches at
it, Fafner defends it, and when in the wrestling which
ensues Fasolt has forced it from his brother, the latter
lifts his tree-trunk and strikes him dead. Having taken the
ring from his hand, he leisurely proceeds to finish his
packing, while the gods stand around appalled, and the air
shudderingly resounds with the notes of the curse. A long,
solemn silence follows. Fafner is seen, after a time,
shouldering the sack, into which the whole of the glimmering
Hort has disappeared, and, bowed under its weight, leaving
for home.
"Dreadful," says Wotan, deeply shaken; "I
now perceive to be the power of the curse!" Sorrow and fear
lie crushingly upon his spirit. Erda, who warned him of the
power of the curse, now proven before his eyes, warned him
likewise of worse things, of old order changing, a dark day
dawning for the gods. He must seek Erda, learn more, have
counsel what to do. He is revolving such thoughts when
Fricka, who believes all their trouble now ended, approaches
him with sweet
words, and directs his eyes to the beautiful dwelling
hospitably awaiting its masters. "An evil price I paid for
the building!" Wotan replies heavily.
Mists are still hanging over the valley,
clinging to the heights; nor have the clouds yet wholly
lifted from their spirits. Donner, to clear the atmosphere,
conjures a magnificent storm, by the blow of his hammer
bringing about thunder and lightning. When the black cloud
disperses which for a moment enveloped him and Froh on the
high rock from which he directs this festival of the
elements, a bright rainbow appears, forming a bridge between
the rock and the castle now shining in sunset light. A
bridge of music is here built, too; the tremulous weaving of
it in tender and gorgeous colours is seen through the ear,
and its vaulting the valley with an easy overarching spring.
Froh, architect of the bridge, bids the gods walk over it
fearlessly: It is light but will prove solid under their
feet.
Wotan stands sunk in contemplation of the
castle; his reflections, still upon the shameful
circumstances of his bargain, are not happy. In the midst of
them he is struck by a great thought, and recovers his
courage and hardihood. The sharp, bright, resolute motif
which represents his inspiration is afterward indissolubly
connected with the Sword,—a sword aptly embodying his idea,
which is one of defence for his castle and clan. A
suggestion of his idea is contained, too, in the word which
he gives to Fricka as the castle's name, when he now invites
her to accompany him thither: Walhalla, Hall of the Slain in
Battle, or, Hall of Heroes.
Headed by Wotan and Fricka, the gods
ascend toward the bridge. Loge looks after them in mingled
irony and contempt. "There they hasten to their end, who
fancy themselves so firmly established in being. I am almost
ashamed to have anything to do with them...." And he
revolves in his mind a
Page 68 scheme for turning into elemental fire
again and burning them all up, those blind gods. He is
nonchalantly adding himself to their train, when from the
Rhine below rises the lament of the Rhine-daughters, begging
that their gold may be given back to them. Wotan pauses with
his foot on the bridge: "What wail is that?" Loge enlightens
him, and, at Wotan's annoyed, "Accursed nixies! Stop their
importunity!" calls down to them, "You, down there in the
water, what are you complaining about? Hear what Wotan bids:
No longer having the gold to shine for you, make yourselves
happy basking in the sunshine of this new pomp of the gods!"
Loud laughter from the gods greets this sally, and they pass
over the bridge, Walhalla-ward, followed by the
water-nymphs' wail for their lost gold, closing with the
reproach, "Only in the pleasant water-depths is truth; false
and cowardly are those making merry up there!" With Walhalla
and rainbow shedding a radiance around them of which we are
made conscious through the delighted sense of hearing, the
curtain falls.
So we lose sight of them, moving into
their new house; in spite of their glory a little like the
first family of the county. But while to triumphant strains
they seek their serene stronghold, we know that the lines
have been laid for disaster. The Ring is in the world, with
its terrific power; and there is in the world one whom wrong
has turned into a deadly enemy, whose soul is undividedly
bent upon getting possession of the Ring, which Wotan may
not himself attempt to get—stopped, if not by Erda's warning
or by terror of the curse, by the fact that he finally gave
it to the giants in payment of an acknowledged debt, and
that his spear stands precisely for honor in relations of
the sort.
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STORIES OF THE WAGNER OPERA
BY
H.A. GUERBER
THE NIBELUNG'S RING.—RHEIN GOLD.
It was in 1848, after the completion of Tannhäuser, that
Wagner looked about for a subject for a new opera. Then ‘for
the last time the conflicting claims of History and Legend
presented themselves.’ He had studied the story of
Barbarossa, intending to make use of it, but discarded it in
favour of the Nibelungen Myths, which he decided to
dramatise. 1 His first effort
was an alliterative poem entitled ‘The Death of Siegfried,’
which, however, was soon set aside, a part of it only being
incorporated in ‘The Twilight [or Dusk] of the Gods.’
Wagner was then dwelling in Dresden, and planning the
organisation of a national theatre; but the political
troubles of 1849, which resulted in his banishment, soon
defeated all these hopes. After a short sojourn in Paris,
Wagner took up his abode in Zurich, where he became a
naturalised citizen, and where he first turned all his
attention to the principal work of his life,—‘The
Nibelungen Ring.’ In connection with this work Wagner
himself wrote: ‘When I tried to dramatise the most important
moment of the mythos of the Nibelungen in Siegfried's Tod, I
found it necessary to indicate a vast number of antecedent
facts, so as to put the main incidents in the proper light.
But I could only narrate these subordinate matters,
whereas I felt it imperative that they should be embodied in
the action. Thus I came to write Siegfried. But here again
the same difficulty troubled me. Finally I wrote “Die
Walküre” and “Das Rheingold,” and thus contrived to
incorporate all that was needful to make the action tell its
own tale.’ The completed poem was privately printed in 1853,
and published ‘as a literary product’ ten years later, when
the author was in his fiftieth year.
As for the score, it was begun in 1853, and Wagner says:
‘During a sleepless night at an inn at Spezzia, the music of
“Das Rheingold” occurred to me; straightway I turned
homeward and set to work.’ Such was the energy with which he
laboured that the complete score of the Rheingold was
finished in 1854. Two years later the music to the Walkyrie
was all done, and Siegfried begun. But pecuniary
difficulties now forced the master to undertake
more immediately remunerative work, and, ‘tired of heaping
one silent score upon another,’ he undertook and finished
‘Tristan and Ysolde.’ He then thought he would never be able
to finish his grand work, and wrote: ‘I can hardly expect to
find leisure to complete the music, and I have dismissed all
hope that I may live to see it performed.’
Fortunately for him, however, Ludwig II. of Bavaria had
heard ‘Lohengrin’ when only sixteen, and, a passionate lover
of music and art, he had become an enthusiastic admirer of
the great composer. One of the very first acts of his reign
was, therefore, to despatch his own private secretary to
Wagner with the message, ‘Come here and finish your work.’
As this message was backed by a small pension which would
enable the musician to keep the wolf from the door, he
hopefully went to Munich. But, in spite of the sovereign's
continued favour, Wagner found so many enemies that the
sojourn there became very unpleasant. It was then that the
architect Semper made the first plans for a theatre, in
which the king intended that ‘The Nibelungen Ring’ should be
played, as he had formally commissioned Wagner to complete
the work.
Driven away from his native land once more
by the bitterness of his enemies, Wagner, who still enjoyed
Ludwig's entire favour, withdrew in 1865 to Triebschen,
where the ‘Ring’ progressed steadily. It was there, in 1869,
that he completed the Siegfried score, and began that of
‘The Twilight of the Gods,’ which was finished only some
time later. As the King's plan for building a national
theatre for the representation of ‘The Nibelungen Ring’ had
to be abandoned, the scheme was taken up by the municipality
of the little town of Bayreuth. Wagner was cordially invited
to take up his residence there, and settled in his new home
in 1872, when he was already sixty years of age.
Thanks to munificent private subscriptions secured in
great part by the Wagner societies in various parts of the
world, the long planned theatre was finally begun. It was
finished in 1876, and the entire ‘Nibelungen Ring’ was
performed there in the month of August, the very best
singers of the day taking all the principal parts, which
they rendered to the best of their abilities. The result was
a magnificent performance, a musical triumph; but as the
venture was not a financial success, the performances were
not repeated in the following summer. Several new ventures,
however, were made, and another Wagner festival has just
taken place, of which
the real result is yet unknown, although the attendance was
very large, the audience being composed of people from all
parts of the world. Thus Wagner completed and rendered the
series of operas, which include plays ‘for three days and a
fore evening,’ whence the series is generally called a
‘trilogy,’ although it is really composed of four whole
operas.
Away down in the translucent depths of the Rhine, three
beautiful nymphs, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde,
daughters of the river-god, dart in and out among the jagged
rocks. They have been stationed there to guard the
Rhinegold, the priceless treasure of the deep, whence comes
all the warm golden light which illumines the utmost
recesses of their dark and damp abode.
The nymphs suddenly pause in their merry game, for the
wily dwarf Alberich has emerged from one of the sombre
chasms. He is a Nibelung, a spirit of night and darkness,
and slowly gropes his way to one of the upper ridges, whence
he can see the graceful forms of the nymphs, watch their
merry evolutions, and overhear them repeatedly admonish each
other to keep watch over the gleaming treasure, which their
father, the Rhinegod, has intrusted to their keeping,
warning them that just such a dark
and misshapen creature as the dwarf would try to wrest it
from their grasp:—
‘Guard the gold!
Father said
That such was the foe.’
But all Alberich's senses are fascinated by the
water-nymphs' beauty, and he soon falls madly in love with
them, and makes almost superhuman efforts to overtake the
mocking fair. Hotly he pursues them from ridge to ridge,
yielding to the blandishments of one after another, and is
beside himself with rage as they deftly escape from his
clasp just as he fancies he has at last caught them. The
fair nymphs, who know they have nothing to fear from so
infatuated a lover, swim hither and thither, tantalising him
by their nearness, and lure him up and down the rocky
river-bed.
They have just exhausted his patience, and driven him
wild with impotent rage, when the green waters are suddenly
illumined by the phosphorescent glow of the Rhinegold, the
treasure whose presence they hail with a rapturous outburst
of song, and whose secret power they extol:—
‘The realm of the
world
By him shall be won
Who from the Rhinegold
Hath wrought the ring
Imparting measureless power.’ 2
The dwarf, attracted by the brilliant light, hears their
words at first without paying any attention to them; but
when they repeat that he who is willing to forego love can
fashion a ring from this gold which will make him master of
all the world, he starts with surprise. Fascinated at last
by the glow of the treasure, and forgetting all thoughts of
love in greed, he suddenly grasps the carelessly guarded
gold and plunges with it down into the depths, leaving the
three nymphs to bewail its loss in utter darkness.
Little by little the gloom lightens, however, and instead
of the river bed the scene represents the green valley
through which the Rhine is flowing. In the gray dawn one can
descry the high hills on either side, and as the light
increases Wotan and Fricka, the principal deities of
Northern mythology, are seen lying on the flowery slopes.
As they gently awaken from their peaceful slumbers, the
morning mists entirely disappear, revealing in the
background the fairy-like beauty of a wondrous palace which
has just been
completed for their abode. This sight startles Fricka, for
she knows that the assembled gods have promised that Fasolt
and Fafnir, the gigantic builders, should have sun and moon
and the fair Freya as fee. To lose the bright luminaries of
the world were bad enough, but Fricka's dismay is still
greater at the prospect of parting forever with the fair
goddess of beauty and youth. In her sorrow she bitterly
regrets that the promise has been made and rendered
inviolable by being inscribed on her husband's spear, and
reproves him for the joy he shows in viewing the completion
of his future abode:—
‘In delight thou
revel'st
When I am alarmed?
Thou 'rt glad of the fortress,
For Freya I fear.
Bethink thee, thou thoughtless god,
Of the guerdon now to be given!
The castle is finished,
And forfeit the pledge.
Forgettest thou what is engaged?’
Thus suddenly brought to his senses, Wotan, king of the
Northern gods, protests that he never really intended to
part with the beauty, light, and sweetness of life, and
seeks to excuse himself by urging that Loge, the god of fire
and the arch-deceiver, overpersuaded him by promising
to find some way of escape from the fatal bargain:—
‘He whom I hearkened
to swore
To find a safety for Freya;
On him my hope have I set.’
They are still discussing the matter, and eagerly
wondering why Loge does not appear, when Freya comes rushing
wildly upon the stage, with fear-blanched face and trembling
limbs, breathlessly imploring the father of the gods to save
her from the two huge giants in close pursuit. In her terror
she also summons her devoted brothers, Donner and Fro. But,
in spite of the strength of these potent gods of the
sunshine and thunder, the giants boldly advance, boasting
aloud of their achievement, and demanding the fulfilment of
the stipulated contract.
The gods are almost at their wits' end with anxiety, when
Loge, god of fire, appears. They loudly clamour to him to
keep his word and release them from the consequences of
their rash bargain. In reply to this summons, Loge declares
he has wandered everywhere in search of something more
precious than youth and love, and that he has utterly failed
to find it. No one, he says, is ready to relinquish these
blessed gifts,—no one except Alberich, who has bartered
love for the gleaming treasure which he has just stolen from
the Rhine nymphs. Loge concludes his speech by delivering to
Wotan an imploring message from the defrauded maidens, who
summon him to avenge their wrongs and help them to recover
the stolen gold. The description of the gleaming treasure,
of the power of the ring which Alberich has fashioned out of
it, and especially of the immense hoard which he has amassed
by the unlimited sway which the ring enables him to wield
over all the underground folk, has so greatly fascinated the
giants, that, after a few moments' consultation, they step
forward, offering to relinquish all claim to the previously
promised reward, providing the hoard is theirs ere
nightfall. This said, they bear the shrieking and reluctant
Freya away as a hostage, and vanish in the distance.
As they depart, the light suddenly grows wan and dim. The
goddess who has just departed is the dispenser of the golden
apples of perennial youth according to Wagner, and, as she
vanishes, the gods, deprived of the substance which keeps
them ever young, suddenly lose all their vigour and bloom,
and grow visibly old and gray, to their openly expressed
dismay:—
‘Without the apples,
Old and hoar—
Hoarse and helpless—
Worth not a dread to the world,
The dying gods must grow.’
This sudden change, especially in his beloved wife
Fricka, determines Wotan to secure the gold at any price,
and he bids Loge lead the way to Alberich's realm, following
him bravely down through a deep cleft in the rock, whence
rises a dense mist, which soon blots the whole scene from
view.
In the mean while, the dwarf Alberich has conveyed the
gleaming Rhinegold to his underground dwelling, where,
mindful of the nymphs' words, he has forced his brother and
slave, the smith Mime, to fashion a ring. No sooner has
Alberich put on this trinket than he finds himself endowed
with unlimited power, which he uses to oppress all his race,
and to pile up a mighty hoard, for the greed of gold has now
filled all his thoughts. Fearful lest any one should wrest
the precious ring from him, he next directs Mime to make a
helmet of gold, the magic tarn-helm, which will render the
wearer invisible. Mime is at work at his underground forge,
and has just finished the helmet which he intends to
appropriate to his own use to escape thraldom, when Alberich
suddenly appears, snatches it from his trembling hand, and,
placing it upon his
head, becomes invisible to all. The malicious dwarf misuses
this power to torture Mime with his whip, and rushes off to
lash the dwarfs in the rear of the cave as Wotan and Loge
suddenly appear. Of course their first impulse is to inquire
the cause of Mime's writhing and bitter cries, and from him
they hear how Alberich has become lord of the Nibelungs by
the might of his ring and magic helmet. In corroboration of
this statement, the gods soon behold a long train of dwarfs
toiling across the cave, bending beneath their burdens of
gold and precious stones, and driven incessantly onward by
Alberich's whip, which he plies with merciless vigour. He is
visible now, for he has hung the magic helmet to his belt;
but he no sooner becomes aware of the gods' presence than he
strides up to them, and haughtily demands their name and
business. Disarmed a little by Wotan's answer, that they
have heard of his new might and have come to ascertain
whether the accounts were true, Alberich boasts of his power
to compel all to bow before his will, and says he can even
change his form, thanks to his magic helmet. At Loge's
urgent request, the dwarf then gives them an exhibition of
his power by changing himself first into a huge loathsome
dragon, and next into a repulsive toad. While in this shape
he is made
captive by the gods, deprived of his tarn-helm, and
compelled to surrender his hoard as the price of his
liberty. Before departing, Wotan even wrests from his grasp
the golden ring, to which he desperately clings, for he
knows that as long as it remains in his possession he will
have the power to collect more gold. In his rage at being
deprived of it, Alberich hurls his curse after the gods,
declaring the ring will ever bring death and destruction to
the possessor:—
‘As by curse I found
it first,
A curse rest on the ring!
Gave its gold
To me measureless might,
Now deal its wonder
Death where it is worn!’
This curse uttered, he disappears, and while mist invades
the place the scene changes, and Loge and Wotan stand once
more on the grassy slopes, where Fricka, Donner, and Fro
hasten to welcome them, and to inquire concerning the
success of their enterprise. Almost at the same moment, the
giants Fasolt and Fafnir also appear, leading Freya, whom
Fricka would fain embrace, but who is withheld from her
longing arms. The grim giants vow that no one shall even
touch their fair captive until they have received a pile of
gold as high as their staffs,
which they drive into the ground, and wide enough to screen
the goddess entirely. Thus admonished, Loge and Fro pile up
the gleaming treasure, which is surmounted by the glittering
helmet, whose power the giants do not know. Freya is
entirely hidden, and only a chink remains through which the
giants can catch a glimpse of her golden hair. They insist
upon having this chink closed up ere they will relinquish
Freya, so Wotan is forced to give up the magic ring. But he
draws it from his finger only when Erda, the shadowy earth
goddess, half rises out of the ground to command the
sacrifice of the treasure which Alberich stole from the
Rhine maidens.
As the stipulated ransom has all been paid, the giants
release Freya. She joyfully embraces her kin, and under her
caresses they recover all their former youth and bloom. In
the mean while the giants produce their bags, but soon begin
quarrelling together about the division of the hoard, and
appeal to the gods to decide their dispute. The gods are all
too busy to pay any heed to this request, all except the
malicious Loge, who slyly advises Fafnir to seize the ring
and pay no heed to the rest. As the ring is accursed, Fafnir
remorselessly slays his brother to obtain it; then, packing
up all the treasure
in his great bag, he triumphantly departs. To disperse the
shadow hovering over Wotan's brow ever since he has been
obliged to sacrifice the ring, Thor now beats the rocks with
his magic hammer, and conjures a brief storm. The long roll
of thunder soon dies away, and when the fitful play of the
lightning is ended Thor shows the assembled gods a
glittering rainbow bridge of quivering, changing hues, which
stretches from the valley where they are standing to the
beautiful portals of the wondrous palace Walhalla, the home
of the gods!
Fascinated by this sight, Wotan invites the gods to
follow him over its lightly swung arch, and as they trip
over the rainbow bridge, the lament of the Rhine-maidens
mourning their treasure falls in slow, pitiful cadences upon
their ears:—
‘Rhinegold!
Purest gold!
O would that thy light
Waved in the waters below!
Unfailing faith
Is found in the deep,
While above, in delight,
Faintness and falsehood abide!’
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Walkyrien by Emil Doepler
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THE VALKYRIE
(DIE WALKUERE)
I
Wotan's idea, from which the abode of the
gods received its name of Walhalla, had been to people his
halls with hordes of heroes who should defend it from
Alberich and his "army of the night."
Erda's prophecy of a dark day dawning for
the gods had destroyed Wotan's peace. The craving to know
more of this drove him to seek her in the depths of the
earth. He cast upon her the spell of love and constrained
her to speak. It does not appear that he gained from her any
clear knowledge of the future; he learned chiefly, as we
gather, what were the dangers besetting him. The end
threatened through Alberich's forces, which, however, could
not prevail against the heroic garrison of Walhalla unless
Alberich should recover the Ring; through the power of the
Ring he would be able to estrange the heroes from Wotan and,
turning their arms against him, overcome him. "When the dark
enemy of love (Alberich) in wrath shall beget a son," so ran
Erda's warning, "the end of the Blessed shall not be long
delayed!"
From Erda was born to Wotan a daughter, so
near to her father's heart that she seemed an incarnation of
his most intimate wish, his very will embodied; so part of
himself she knew his unspoken thought. This was Brünnhilde
(from Brünne, corslet). With eight other
daughters,—born to Wotan from "the tie of lawless love," as
we learn from Fricka in her tale of wrongs—Brünnhilde, the
dearest to him of all, followed her father to battle,
serving him as Valkyrie. These warlike maidens hovered over
the battle-field, directing the fortune of the day according
to Wotan's determination, protecting this combatant and
seeing his death-doom executed upon the other; they seized
the heroes as they fell, and bore them to Walhalla to form
part of Wotan's guard. From these "Slain in Battle" it was
that Walhalla had its name. To make great their number,
Wotan, who earlier had by laws and compacts tried to bind
men to peace, now breathed into them a rough, bellicose
spirit, goaded them on to quarrel and revolt.
That the end of the gods, if prophecy must
fulfill itself, should not be a contemptible or pitiful one,
that was Wotan's preoccupation,—to save, if nothing more,
the dignity of the Eternals; with this in view, to keep
Alberich from recovering the Ring, by which he might work
such really disgusting havoc. The Ring was in the possession
of Fafner, who had turned himself into a dragon, and in a
lonely forest-girt cave guarded it and the rest of the
treasure of the Nibelungen, for the sake of which he had
killed Fasolt, his brother. Wotan, as we have seen, could
not wrest from him the Ring which he himself had given in
payment for the building of Walhalla: for the honour of his
spear he must not attempt it. Alberich, not bound as he was
to keep his hands off it, must infallibly and indefatigably
be devising means to regain possession of it. It was plain
to Wotan that he must find some one to do that which he
himself could not, some one, who, unprompted by him, should
yet accomplish his purposes, some one free as he was not.
This tool who was yet not to be his tool, since a god's good
faith demanded that neither directly nor indirectly he
should meddle with the Ring, Wotan supposed he had created
for himself in Siegmund, born to him, with a twin sister,
Sieglinde, of a human mother. This boy with whom, in human
disguise, under the names of Wälse and Wolf,—Wolf for his
enemies, Wälse for his kindred,—he lived in the wild woods,
he reared in a spirit of lawlessness, wild courage,
disregard of the gods. We must suppose it to have been for
the sake of preventing association with women from softening
his disposition that, while Siegmund was a child, Wotan,
sacrificing to the hardness of fibre it was his object to
produce, permitted the catastrophe which deprived the boy of
mother and sister. Returning home from a day's wild
chase,—hunters and hunted alike human,—father and son found
their dwelling burned to the ground, the mother slain, the
sister gone. They lived for years together after that, in
the woods, always in conflict with enemies, of whom their
peculiar daring and strength raised them an infinite number.
In time, when the son was well grown, Wotan forsook him,
left him to complete his development alone, under the harsh
training of the calamities and sorrows fatally incident to
the temper and manner of viewing things which that father
had bred in him. The lad received the usage of a sword in
the forging, extremes of furnace and ice-brook. So he stood
at last, Wotan's pupil and finished instrument, an embodied
defiance of the law and the gods, proper to do the work
which the law of the gods forbade. Some defence against the
wrath which he must inevitably rouse, his father could not
but feel impelled to provide, yet could he not, without
violating the honour which in his simple-minded way he was
striving to preserve intact, give it to him directly. He
could not bestow upon him outright a Sieges-schwert—magical
sword which ensured victory. But he placed one where the
young man should find it.
The piece opens with the blustering music of a
storm, whose violence is rapidly dying down.
The curtain rises upon the interior of
Hunding's very primitive dwelling, built about a great
ash-tree whose trunk stands in view. Siegmund, predestined
to be ever at strife with his fellow-man, in circumstances
of peculiar distress seeks the shelter of Hunding's roof. We
see him burst into the empty hall, staggering and panting.
His spear and shield have splintered beneath the enemies'
strokes; deprived of arms, he has been forced to flee; he
has been so hotly pursued, so beaten by the storm, that upon
reaching this refuge he can no more than drop beside the
hearth and lie there, exhausted.
It is his sister's house to which fate has
led him, where, ill-starred and unhappy like himself, this
other child of Wälse's lives, in subjection to Hunding, her
lord, who has come by her through some obscure commerce, and
to whom she is no more than part of the household baggage.
Hearing the rustle of Siegmund's entrance,
Sieglinde hurries in, and, beholding a stranger outstretched
upon the ground, stops short to observe him. The strength of
the prostrate body cannot fail to strike her. At his gasped
call for water, she hurries to fetch it from the spring out
of doors. His perishing need is shown in the devotion with
which he drains the horn she hands him. His eyes, as he
returns it, are arrested by her face, and dwell upon it with
fearless lingering scrutiny—while the strain for the first
time trembles upon the air which, singing the love of
Siegmund and Sieglinde, is to caress our hearing so many
times more. His fatigue has magically vanished. He asks to
whom he owes the refreshment afforded him. When, at her
reply and request that he shall await Hunding's return, he
refers to himself as an unarmed and wounded guest, she
eagerly inquires of his wounds. But he jumps up, shaking off
all thought of wounds or weariness. His succinct narrative
of the circumstances which have brought him to her hearth,
he brings to a close: "But faster than I vanished from the
mob of my pursuers, my weariness has vanished from me. Night
lay across my eyelids,—the sun now smiles upon me anew!" She
offers the guest mead to drink, at his prayer tasting it
before him. As he returns the emptied horn, again his eyes
dwell upon her face, with an emotion ever increasing. Both
gaze in simple undisguised intensity of interest. There is a
long moment's silence between them. Then, at the love he
feels surging in his bosom, remembrance comes to Siegmund of
what he is,—a man so ill-fated that it may well be feared
his ill-fortune shall infect those with whom he comes into
contact. "You have relieved an ill-fated man," he warns her,
his voice unsteady with the pang of this recognition, "may
his wish turn ill-fortune from you! Sweetly have I
rested.... I will now fare further on my way!" As he turns
to the door she detains him with the quick cry: "What
pursues you, that you should thus flee?" He answers, slowly
and sadly: "Misfortune pursues me wherever I flee.
Misfortune meets me wherever I go. From you, woman, may it
remain afar! I turn from you my footsteps and my glance."
His hand is on the latch, when her sharp involuntary
exclamation stops him: "Stay, then! You cannot bring sorrow
into a house where sorrow is already at home!" Deeply shaken
by her words, he fixes his eyes questioningly upon her. She
meets them for a moment, then drops her own, sad and
half-ashamed. The motif of the Wälsungen well expresses the
nobility in misfortune of these poor children of Wälse.
Siegmund returns quietly to the hearth: "Wehwalt is my name
for myself. I will await Hunding." (Weh: woe, sorrow,
calamity, pain; wallen: to govern. Wehwalt:
lord of sorrows.) There is no further exchange of
words while they wait, but in complete unashamed absorption
they gaze at each other, and the music tells beautifully how
it is within their hearts. Hunding's horn is heard. (Hund:
hound. It was, as we learn later, this amiable personage's
custom to hunt his enemies with a pack of dogs.) Startled
from her trance, Sieglinde listens, and hastens to open.
Hunding appears in the doorway, a dark figure, in helmet,
shield and spear. At sight of the stranger, he questions his
wife with a look. "I found the man on the hearth, spent with
weariness. Necessity brings him to our house," she explains.
There is some sternness apparently in Hunding's tone as he
inquires: "Have you offered him refreshment?" for Siegmund,
rash and instantaneous in the woman's defence, speaks, hard
on the heels of her answer: "I have to thank her for shelter
and drink. Will you therefor chide your wife?" But Hunding,
at his best in this moment, without retort welcomes the
guest: "Sacred is my hearth, sacred to you be my house!" and
orders his wife to set forth food for them. Catching
Sieglinde's eyes unconsciously fixed upon Siegmund, he
glances quickly from one to the other, and is struck by the
resemblance between them; but the luminous look they have in
common he defines, with the constitutional dislike of his
kind to that freer, more generous type: "The selfsame
glittering serpent shines out of his eyes!" He inquires of
the circumstances which have brought this stranger to his
house, and finding that Siegmund has no idea whither his
wild flight has led him, introduces himself with a dignity
which commends to us, while he is doing it, the
narrow-natured, unimaginative man: "He whose roof covers you
and whose house shelters you,—Hunding your host is called.
If you should from here turn your footsteps eastward, there,
in rich courts, dwell kinsmen, protectors of Hunding's
honour!"
They seat themselves at table; the host asks for this
guest's name, and as Siegmund, plunged in thought, does not
at once reply, Hunding, remarking the interest with which
his wife waits for the stranger's words, sardonically
encourages him: "If you are in doubt about trusting me, yet
give the information to the lady here. See how eagerly she
questions you!" And Sieglinde, too deeply interested,
verily, to mind the thrust, proceeds further to give it
point: "Guest, I should be glad to know who you are!"
Whereupon Siegmund, as little constrained by the husband's
presence as the wife herself, with his eyes upon hers,
addressing her directly, tells his story: of Wolf, his
father, of the twin sister lost to him in infancy, the
enmity of the Neidingen clan, who in the absence of the men
burned down their house, slew the mother, abducted the
sister; of his life in the forest with Wolf, their
numberless foes and perpetual warfare. Hunding recalls
vaguely wild dark tales he has heard of the mighty pair, the
Wölfingen. The disappearance of his father, Siegmund further
relates, from whom he had been separated in a fight, and
whom he could never, long though he sought, find again, nor
any trace of him save an empty wolf-skin. "Then,—" follow
the strange cruel fortunes this father had arranged for him,
"then I was impelled to forsake the woods, I was impelled to
seek men and women. As many as I found, and wherever I found
them,—whether I sought for friend, or wooed for woman,
always I met with denial, ill-fortune lay upon me!" With
ingenuous wonder he describes the natural fruits of the
education bestowed on him by Wotan: "What I thought right,
others held to be wrong; what had ever seemed to me
abominable, others considered with favour. I fell into feud
wherever I was, anger fell upon me wherever I went. If I
reached out toward happiness, I never failed to bring about
calamity!
For that reason it is I named myself Wehwalt, I command
calamity alone!"
Hunding has listened attentively. His
small superstitious heart has taken alarm. "Fortune was not
fond of you, who appointed for you so miserable a lot. The
man can hardly welcome you with gladness, whom, a stranger
to him, you approach as a guest." With a vivacity which
cannot have been the common habit of her intercourse with
her husband, Sieglinde pronounces judgment aloud and at once
upon this ungenerous speech and speaker, whose prudence must
certainly, in contrast with the Wälsung's frank magnificence
of courage, seem to her unspeakably bourgeois: "Only cowards
fear one going his way unarmed and alone!" And turning again
eagerly to the guest: "Tell further, guest, how you lately
lost your arms in battle!" Siegmund as eagerly satisfies
her. The circumstances which he describes further exemplify
the disposition fostered in him by his father, his
non-recognition or acceptance of established law and custom,
however sacred, his pursuit of an ideal unattached to any
convention: He had lost his arms in the attempt to defend a
damsel against her own immediate family, bent upon marrying
her against her inclination. He had slain her brothers,
whereupon the maiden, as another perhaps would have
foreseen, had cast herself upon their bodies, sorrow
annulling her resentment. He had stood over her, shielding
her from the vengeance of her kindred pressing around. His
armour had been shattered; the girl lay dead on her dead
brothers. Wounded and weaponless, he had been chased by the
infuriate horde. "Now you know, inquiring woman," he closes
his narrative, "why I do not bear the name of Friedmund!" (Frieden:
peace.) With this simple sally, whose bitterness is not
enough to crumple the serene forehead, he rises and walks to
the hearth, striding to the noble
march-measure we know as the motif of the heroism of the
Wälsungen,—proud in its first bars, with Siegmund's pride,
tender in the last, with Sieglinde's tenderness, loftily
mournful throughout.
"I know a wild race of men," now speaks
Hunding, "to whom nothing is holy of all that is revered by
others; hated are they of all men—and of me!" He then
reveals how he himself had that day been called out for
vengeance with his clan against this officious champion of
damsels. He had arrived too late for action, and returning
home, behold, discovers the fugitive miscreant in his own
house! As he granted the stranger hospitality for the night,
his house shall shelter him for that length of time; but
"with strong weapons arm yourself to-morrow," he grimly
warns him; "it is the day I choose for combat; you shall pay
me a price for the dead!" When Sieglinde in alarm places
herself between the two men, Hunding orders her roughly:
"Out of the room! Loiter not here! Prepare my night-drink
and wait for me to go to rest!" Siegmund, smothering his
anger, stands in contemptuous composure beside the hearth;
his eyes frankly follow every movement of the woman as she
prepares Hunding's drink. On her way out of the room, she
pauses at the threshold of the inner chamber, and seeking
Siegmund's eyes with her own, tries by a long significant
glance to direct his glance to a spot in the ash-tree. The
sword-motif, distinct and sharp, accompanies her look.
Hunding, becoming aware of her lingering, with a peremptory
gesture orders her again to be gone; and gathering up his
own armour, with a warning to the Wölfing that on the morrow
he will strike home,—let him have a care!—withdraws, audibly
bolting the door behind him.
Left alone, Siegmund lies down beside the
dying fire. To remove himself during the night as far as
possible from Hunding's reach is not the
solution suggesting itself naturally to him. Yet there he
stands, pledged to meet an enemy, and not a weapon to his
hand of offence or defence. The difficulty of his position
is certainly as great as could be, and, reaching the full
consciousness of it, he recalls to mind that his father had
promised him a sword, which he should find in the hour of
his greatest need. "Unarmed I am fallen in the house of the
enemy; here I rest, devoted to his vengeance. A woman I have
seen, gloriously fair.... She to whom my longing draws me,
who with a rapturous charm constrains me, is held in
thraldom by the man who mocks my unarmed condition...."
Could need, indeed, be greater? With the whole strength of
that need, in a cry, long, urgent, fit to pierce the walls
of Walhalla, he calls upon his father for the promised
sword: "Wälse! Wälse! Where is your sword?..."
A flame leaps from the embers and
illuminates the ash-tree, bringing into view, at the spot
Sieglinde had indicated to him with her eyes, a sword-hilt.
But though his eyes are caught by the glitter, he does not
recognise it for what it is; he watches it, without moving,
as it shines in the firelight, and, lover-like, soon lapsing
into undivided dreaming of the "flower-fair woman," plays
tenderly with the conceit of the gleam on the ash-tree being
the trace of her last bright glance. Forgetting his
swordlessness and altogether unpromising plight, he goes on
weaving poetry about her until the fire is quite out and he
so nearly dozes that when a white form comes gliding through
the door bolted by Hunding, he does not stir until
addressed: "Guest, are you asleep?"
Sieglinde has mixed narcotic herbs in her
husband's drink, and bids the stranger make use of the night
to provide for his safety. "Let me advise you of a
weapon.... Oh, might you obtain it! The most splendid of
heroes I must call you, for it is destined to
the strongest alone." And she relates how at the
marriage-feast of Hunding, while the men drank, and the
woman who "unconsulted had been offered him for wife by
ignoble traffickers" sat sadly apart, a stranger appeared,
an elderly man in grey garb, whose hat-brim concealed one of
his eyes. But the brilliant beam of the other eye created
terror in the bystanders,—all save herself, in whom it
aroused an aching longing, sorrow and comfort in equal
measure. The sword in his hand he swung, and drove into the
ash-tree up to the hilt, leaving it there, a prize to
whomsoever should be able to draw it out. The men present
had all made the essay in vain; guests coming and going
since then had tried, equally without success. "There in
silence waits the sword." There in the ash-tree. "Then I
knew," Sieglinde concludes, "who it was had come to me in my
sorrow. I know, too, who it is alone can conquer the sword.
Oh, might I find him here and now, that friend; might he,
from the unknown, come to me, most wretched of women! All I
have ever suffered of cruel woe, all the shame and indignity
under which I have bowed,—sweetest amends would be made for
it all! All I ever lost, all I ever mourned, I should have
recovered it all,—if I might find that supreme friend, if my
arm might clasp that hero!" Siegmund, to whom it could not
occur for the fraction of a second to doubt his strength to
draw any sword from any tree, at these words catches her
impetuously to his breast: "The friend now clasps you,
fairest of women, for whom weapon and woman were meant! Hot
in my breast burns the oath which, noble one, weds me to
you!" and, in her very strain: "All I ever yearned for, I
met in you! In you I found all I ever lacked. If you
suffered ignominy and I endured pain, if I was outlawed and
you were dishonoured, a joyful revenge now calls to us happy
ones! I laugh aloud in a holy elation, as I hold you,
radiant one, embraced, as I feel the throbbing of your
heart!"
The great door of the hall, silently,
without apparent reason, swings wide open, like a great
curious eye unclosing to watch this beautiful marvel of
their love, expanded so suddenly, like a huge aloe-flower.
It lets in a flood of moonlight, and the glimmering vision
of the vapourous green-lit nocturnal Spring-world. "Who went
out?... Who came in?" cries Sieglinde, starting in alarm.
"No one went," Siegmund reassures her, "but some one came:
See, the Spring laughing in the room!" And he pours forth
poetry of adorable inspiration, in explanation of the
singular action of the door: Spring was outside, and Love,
his sister, inside; Spring burst open the severing door, and
now, brother and sister, Love and the Spring, are met!
It is touching, the capacity for happiness
the two have accumulated in the long, thwarted years. An
ecstatic joy marks this hour of forgetting all the world
outside themselves; the love-music is all of a fine free
sustained rapture. One poignant and subtle and profound
thing she says to him: "Foreign and unrelated to me seemed
until now everything I saw, hostile everything which
approached me. As if I had never known them were always the
things that came to me.... But you I knew at once, clearly
and distinctly; my eye no sooner beheld you, than you
belonged to me; and all that lay concealed within my breast,
the thing which I verily am, bright as the day it rose to
the surface; like a ringing sound it smote my ear, when in
the cold lonesome strange world for the first time I beheld
my Friend!"
Seated in the light of the full moon, they
have freedom at last each to pore over the other's winning
beauty. She is struck, fondly peering into his features,
with the sense of having seen him before; and
trying to think when and where reaches the assurance that it
was on the surface of the pool which reflected her own
image. Again, when he speaks, she is struck by the assurance
that she has heard his voice before. She thinks, for a
moment, that it was in childhood,... but corrects the
impression by a second: she has heard it recently, when the
echo in the woods gave back her own voice. His luminous eyes
she has seen before: thus shone the glance of the grey guest
at the wedding-feast, whom his daughter recognised by that
token. Earnestly she asks this other guest: "Is your name in
very truth Wehwalt?" "That is no longer my name since you
love me!" he replies exuberantly, "I command now the
sublimest joys!... Do you call me as you wish me to be
called: I will take my name from you!" "And was your father
indeed Wolf?" "A Wolf he was to cowardly foxes. But he whose
eye shone with as proud an effulgence as, Glorious One, does
yours, Wälse was his name!" Beside herself with joy,
Sieglinde springs up: "If Wälse was your father—if you are a
Wälsung, for you it was he drove his sword into the
tree-trunk. Let me give you the name by which I love you:
Siegmund shall you be called!" Siegmund leaps to seize the
sword-handle: "Siegmund is my name, and Siegmund am I! (Sieg:
victory.) Let this sword bear witness, which fearlessly I
seize! Wälse promised me that I should find it in my
greatest need. I grasp it now...." Very characteristically,
this greatest need, as he feels it, is not the need of a
weapon with which to defend his life against Hunding; it is,
in his soaring words: "Highest need of a holiest love,
devouring need of a love full of longing, burns bright in my
breast, drives me onward to deeds and to death.... Nothung!
Nothung! So do I name you, sword! (Noth: need.
Nothung: sword-in-need.) Nothung! Nothung! Out of the
scabbard, to me!" With a mighty tug he draws it forth and
holds it before the marvelling eyes of Sieglinde: "Siegmund
the Wälsung stands before you, woman! As a wedding-gift he
brings you this sword. Thus he wooes the fairest of women;
from the enemy's house thus he leads you forth. Far from
here follow him now, out in the laughing house of the
Spring. There Nothung, the sword, shall protect you, when
Siegmund lies overthrown, in the power of love!" "If your
are Siegmund," cries the woman, "I am Sieglinde, who have so
longed for you! Your own sister you have won at the same
time as the sword!" Siegmund is given no pause by this
revelation. At the realisation of this double dearness, the
joy flares all the higher of the lawless pupil of Wotan.
"Bride and sister are you to your brother. Let the blood of
the Wälsungen flourish!" And with arms entertwined, forth
they take their madly exulting hearts out into the "laughing
house of the Spring."
II
The rising of the curtain for the second
act reveals a wild mountain-pass where Wotan, in a vast
good-humour, is giving instructions to Brünnhilde with
regard to the impending meeting between the injured husband
and the abductor of his wife. Victory is allotted to
Siegmund; Hunding, "let them choose him to whom he belongs;
he is not wanted in Walhalla!" In Wotan's complacency the
satisfaction speaks of this thought: At last, at last, a
change of fortune,—victory to the Wälsung, after a trial of
his mettle so severe and prolonged it must have broken a
spirit less admirably tempered. The Valkyrie, in delight
over the charge to her, breaks into her jubilant war-cry,
checking herself as she perceives Fricka approaching in the
chariot drawn by rams, and judges from the goddess's
merciless
urging of the panting beasts that she comes for a Zank,
a "scold," with her husband. "The old storm!" murmurs Wotan,
at sight of his liege lady dismounting and coming toward him
with ultramajestic gait, "the old trouble! But I must stand
and face her!" The scene following has a touch of comical in
its resemblance to domestic scenes among less high-born
characters, as, for instance, when Fricka says, "Look me in
the eye! Do not think to deceive me!" or "Do you imagine
that you can deceive me, who night and day have been hard
upon your heels?" Fricka, the guardian of marriage, has come
to demand justice for Hunding, vengeance upon the
"insolently criminal couple." "What," asks Wotan, an
unguarded and tender indulgence in his tone, "what have they
done that is so evil, the couple brought into loving union
by the Spring?..." "Do you feign not to understand me?" is
in effect Fricka's return; "for the holy vow of marriage,
the deeply insulted, I raise my voice in complaint...." "I
regard that vow as unholy," says Wotan,—and the source is
flagrant from which Siegmund has drawn his unpopular rules
of conduct,—"which binds together those who do not love each
other." But the case in question, Fricka protests, is not
one simply of broken marriage-vow, "When—when was it ever
known that brother and sister might stand toward each other
in the nuptial relation?" "This day you have known it!" the
worthy teacher of Siegmund meets her; and, all his paternal
affection finding its imprudent way into his accents: "That
those two love each other is clear to you. Wherefore, take
honest advice: if blessed comfort is to reward your
blessing, do you bless, laughing with love, the union of
Siegmund and Sieglinde!" Upon this, as is hardly unnatural,
the furious storm breaks over the indiscreet god; a storm of
reproach, in part for personal wrongs, which the outraged
goddess details, in part for his failure as
ruler of the earth to maintain law and right, to observe the
boundaries established by himself. At the end of it, rather
feebly, he tells her, in defence of his position, the thing
which he had not confided to her before, plain enough
indication that the goddess, to win whom he had given an
eye, is not of his bosom's counsel any more. "This know!
There is need of a hero who without aid from the gods should
cast off the law of the gods. Such a one alone can compass
the act which, however much the gods may need it done, no
god can himself do." "And what may the great thing be," the
dull august shrew inquires, "that a hero can do which the
gods cannot, through whose grace alone a hero acts?... What
makes men brave? Through your inspiration alone they are
strong. With new falsehoods you are trying to elude me, but
this Wälsung you shall not be able to save. Through him I
strike at you, for it is through you alone he defies me!"
"In wild sorrows," Wotan ventures, with deep emotion, "he
grew up, by himself. My protection never helped him!" "Then
do not protect him to-day!" she pursues, hatefully
righteous, "take away from him the sword you gave him." "The
sword?..." Her suggestion is a very sword for Wotan's heart.
"Yes, the sword, strong with a charm, which you bestowed on
your son." "Siegmund conquered it for himself in his need."
The deep strain here shudders out its passion of repressed
resentment and grief, which after this darkly underlines
Wotan's misery. "You created the need, as you created the
sword," she follows him up with clear-sighted accusation,
almost voluble. "For him you drove it into the tree-trunk.
You promised him the goodly weapon. Will you deny that it
was your own stratagem which guided him to the spot where he
should find it?" The effect of her words upon Wotan—to whom
this mirror held up to him reveals the weakness of his
scheme to create a hero who should act for
himself, unprompted, against the gods, yet in the very
manner the case of the gods demanded—still increases his
wife's assurance. "What do you require?" asks Wotan at last,
in gloom, heart-struck. "That you should sever from the
Wälsung!" "Let him go his way!" Wotan acquiesces, smothered
by this horrible, yet so clear, necessity. "But you, protect
him not, when the avenger calls him out to fight!"
"I—protect him not!" "Turn from him the Valkyrie!" "Let the
Valkyrie determine as she will!" "Nay, she solely carries
out your wishes.... Forbid her the victory of Siegmund!" "I
cannot deal him defeat!" protests Wotan, in anguish, "he
found my sword!" "Withdraw the charm from the sword. Let it
snap in the knave's hand. Let the adversary behold him
without defence!... Here comes your warlike maid.... This
day must her shield protect the sacred honour of your wife.
My honour demands the fall of the Wälsung. Have I Wotan's
oath?" The unhappy god casts himself upon a rocky seat, in
helpless loathing, and the terrible consent falls forced
from his lips: "Take the oath!" Fricka, with proud tread
turning from him to remount her chariot, stops to address
Brünnhilde: "The Father of Armies is waiting for you. Let
him tell you how he has appointed the fortune of battle."
Wotan sits with his head in his hands,
like any humblest mortal hard put to it. It has been brought
home to him sharply enough that the thing is not to be done,
on the accomplishment of which he had so fondly built. It is
not that an angry wife has interfered; it is that her
argument has been sound, and that for the sake of his world
a god cannot trespass against the laws he has himself made
for it. It is, in fact, that kings less than others can do
as they choose; that if in this he should follow his desire,
it would, as Fricka has pointed out, "be all over with the
everlasting gods!" But, to sacrifice the Wälsung, "brought
up in wild sorrows" for this very purpose which is to be
relinquished; the Wälsung who in his young life has had but
one draught at the cup of joy!... It is no wonder that Wotan
utters his lamentation: "Oh, divine ignominy! Oh, woful
disgrace! Distress of the gods! Distress of the gods!
Immeasurable wrath! Eternal regret! The saddest am I among
all!"
The darling of his heart, Brünnhilde, torn
by his cry, casts from her all her Valkyrie accoutrements,
and, woman merely and daughter, kneels at his feet, presses
her cheek against him, begging to be trusted: "Confide in
me! I am true to you. See, Brünnhilde pleads!"
He hesitates, while sorely yearning for
the comfort. "If I utter it aloud, shall I not be loosing
the grasp of my will?" "To Wotan's will you speak in
speaking to me. Who am I, if not your will?"
With the assurance to himself: "With
myself solely I take counsel, in talking to you,..." he
relates to Brünnhilde all the events which have brought
about this intolerable position, a long story: the first
mistake in trusting Loge; the mistake in possessing himself
of the Ring; what he has since done to obviate the effect of
his mistakes, and done, as is now shown, in vain. "How did I
cunningly seek to deceive myself! So easily Fricka exposed
my fallacies! To my deepest shame she looked through me. I
must yield to her will." "You will take away then the
victory from Siegmund?" "I touched Alberich's Ring," Wotan
replies, "covetously I held the gold. The curse which I fled
from, flees not from me! What I love I must desert, murder
what from all time I have held dear, treacherously betray
him who trusts me!..." Again, it is no wonder his tormented
soul breaks forth in lamentation. The mighty groan of
Wotan has, if ever groan had, adequate cause, and his
longing for "the end! the end!" With grim comfort he recalls
at this moment that the end cannot be far,—not if there be
truth in the prophecy of Erda: "When the dark enemy of love
shall in wrath beget a son, the end of the Immortals will
not be long delayed." For the loveless Alberich, as Wotan
knows, has by means of gold won the favour of a woman, and
the "fruit of hatred" is on its way toward the light. "Take
my blessing, son of the Nibelung!" cries Wotan in his dark
mood; "the thing which sickens me with loathing, I bestow it
upon you for an inheritance: the empty splendour of the
gods!"
"Oh, tell me, what shall your child do?"
entreats the daughter, shaken by the sight of her father's
passion. "Fight straightforwardly for Fricka," he orders
her, in the excess of bitterness; "what she has chosen I
choose likewise; of what good to me is a will of my own?"
"Oh, retract that word!" she beseeches, "you love
Siegmund.... Never shall your discordant dual directions
enlist me against him. For your own sake, I know it, I will
protect the Wälsung!" At this first intimation of rebellion
in his child,—this incipient treachery of his own
will,—Wotan becomes stern, lays down his command
irrevocably, with threats of crushing retribution if this
child of his shall dare to palter with his expressed will.
"Keep a watch over yourself! Hold yourself in strong
constraint! Put forth all your valour in the fight!... Have
well in mind what I command: Siegmund is to fall! This be
the Valkyrie's task!"
Brünnhilde gazes after him in wonder and
fear as he storms up over the rocky ascent out of sight: "I
never saw Sieg-vater like that!" Sadly she resumes her
armour, woe-begone at the thought of the Wälsung, given over
to death. Becoming aware of the approach of
Siegmund and Sieglinde, she hastens from sight.
Sieglinde enters, fleeing in distraction
from Siegmund, anxious in pursuit. The presumption of those
seeing her action without understanding her words, is
commonly, I suppose, that remorse has overtaken her for her
breach of the moral law. Remorse, indeed, has assailed her,
but not for having followed the "luminous brother." It is
for having ever belonged to Hunding, whom she neither loved
nor was loved by. The new sentiment of love so completely
possessing her places her former union in the light of
unspeakable pollution, and she adjures the "noble one" to
depart from the accursed who brings him such a dowry of
shame. Siegmund with sturdy tenderness assures her that
whatever shame there is shall be washed away in the blood of
him who is responsible for it, whose heart Nothung shall
cleave. An insanity of terror seizes Sieglinde at the
thought of the meeting between the two men, the vision
besetting her of Siegmund torn by Hunding's dogs, against
the multitude of which his sword is of no use. At the
picture painted by her delirium of Siegmund's fall, shocked
as if at the actual sight of it, she sinks unconscious in
his arms.
Having ascertained that she has not ceased
to breathe, almost glad perhaps for her of this respite from
self-torment, he lets her gently down on to the ground, and
seats himself so as to make an easy resting-place for her
head.
Thus the Valkyrie finds them. At her
approach, three solemn notes are heard which intimate as if
something awful and not to be escaped—whose solemn awfulness
consists in great part of the fact that it cannot be
escaped,—like Fate. "Siegmund!" she calls him, with firm
voice, "look upon me! I am that one whom in short space you
must follow!" Siegmund lifts his eyes from the sleeping face
upon which they have been fondly brooding, and beholds the
shining apparition. "Who are you, tell me, appearing to me,
so beautiful and grave?" "Only those about to die can see my
face. He who beholds me must depart from the light of life.
On the field of battle I appear to the noble alone. He who
becomes aware of me, has been singled out for my capture!"
Siegmund gazes quietly and long and inquiringly into her
eyes, and: "The hero who must follow you, whither do you
take him?" "To the Father of Battles who has elected you, I
shall lead you. To Walhalla you shall follow me." "In the
hall of Walhalla shall I find none but the Father of
Battles?" "The glorious assemblage of departed heroes shall
gather around you companionably, with high and holy
salutation." "Shall I in Walhalla find Wälse, my own
father?" "The Wälsung shall find his father there." "Shall I
in Walhalla be greeted gladsomely by a woman?" "Divine
wish-maidens there hold sway; the daughter of Wotan shall
trustily proffer you drink." "Unearthly fair are you; I
recognise the holy child of Wotan; but one thing tell me,
you Immortal! Shall the bride and sister accompany the
brother? Shall Siegmund clasp Sieglinde there?" "The air of
earth she still must breathe. Siegmund shall not find
Sieglinde there!" The hero bends over the unconscious woman,
kisses her softly on the brow, and turns quietly again to
Brünnhilde: "Then bear my greeting to Walhalla! Greet for me
Wotan, greet for me Wälse and all the heroes; greet for me
likewise the benign wish-maidens: I will not follow you to
them!"
In this strangely impressive and moving
dialogue, the Brünnhilde-part is upborne on the stately,
high and cold Walhalla theme; the Siegmund-part gives over
and over one urgent heartful questioning phrase, filled with
human yearning and sorrow: the motif of love and death.
"Where Sieglinde lives in joy or sorrow, there will Siegmund
likewise abide,..." he pronounces. When he is informed that
he has no choice but to follow, that he is to fall through
Hunding, that its virtue has been withdrawn from his sword,
justly incensed, he declares that if this be true,—if he,
shame to him! who forged for him the sword, allotted him
ignominy in place of victory, he will not go to Walhalla,
Hella shall hold him fast!
"So little do you care for eternal joy?"
the Valkyrie asks wistfully; "all in all to you is the poor
woman who, tired and full of trouble, lies strengthless in
your lap? Nothing beside do you deem of high value?"
Inexpressibly moved at the manifestation before her of the
warmth and depth of this human affection, she begs him to
place his wife under her protection. He replies passionately
that no one while he lives shall touch the Stainless One,
that if he must indeed die, he will first slay her in her
sleep. Brünnhilde, in great emotion, begs still more
urgently, "Entrust her to me, for the sake of the pledge of
love which she took from you in joy!" But Siegmund, all the
more firmly fixed in his resolve, lifts his sword, and
grimly offering Nothung two lives at one blow, swings it
above the sleeping woman. The Valkyrie at this can no longer
keep in bounds the surging flood of her compassion: "Hold,
Wälsung!" she restrains his arm, "Sieglinde shall live, and
with her Siegmund!... I change about the doom of battle. To
you, Siegmund, I apportion blessed victory...." With
injunctions to place his trust in the sword and the
Valkyrie, bidding him farewell till they shall meet on the
field, she disappears. Siegmund, with heart restored to
gladness, bends over Sieglinde again; listens to her
breathing and studies her face, now smiling, as he sees, in
quiet sleep. "Sleep on!" he speaks to her, "till the battle
has been fought and peace shall rejoice you!"
Hunding's horn has already been heard, calling
out the adversary. Siegmund lays Sieglinde gently down, and,
Nothung in hand, rushes to the encounter. A storm has been
gathering, a cloud has settled over the mountain-tops.
Sieglinde, left alone, murmurs in her sleep. Her broken
sentences reveal her dream: She is a child again and the
scene is reenacted to her of the conflagration which ended
her life in the forest with father and mother and twin. She
starts awake in affright, calling Siegmund, and finds
herself alone. She hears her husband's horn and his call to
Wehwalt to stand and meet him. She hears Siegmund's arrogant
reply. She cannot see them for the black storm-scud, but
calls on them to stop, to kill her first. A flash of
lightning shows Hunding and Siegmund fighting on a high
point of the rocky pass. Sieglinde is rushing toward them,
when a sudden glare blinds her. In the light, Brünnhilde is
seen hard at Siegmund's side, defending him with her shield.
"Strike home, Siegmund! Trust to the victorious sword!"
Siegmund raises his sword for a deathblow to Hunding, when a
fiery beam drops through the storm-cloud; in the red glow of
it is distinguished the form of Wotan at Hunding's side,
holding his spear between the combatants. His voice is
heard, terrible: "Back from the spear! To pieces, the
sword!" Nothung snaps against the spear, and, run through
the body by his adversary, Siegmund falls. Sieglinde hears
his dying sigh—the strong heart stops on a brief snatch,
pathetic, of the motif of the heroism of the Wälsungen—She
drops to earth, stunned. In the gloom, Brünnhilde, who has
retreated before the angry father's spear, is seen lifting
Sieglinde and hurrying off: "To horse! that I may save you!"
Long and mournfully Wotan gazes upon the
fallen Siegmund—best-beloved perhaps of all the Wagner
heroes. Taking account suddenly of the presence of Hunding,
"Begone, slave!" he orders, "kneel before Fricka, inform her
that Wotan's spear has taken vengeance of that which brought
mockery upon her!... Begone!... Begone!..." But at the
gesture with which the command is emphasised, Hunding drops
dead, crushed out of life by the god's contempt.
Abruptly recalled to the thought of his
child's contumacy, Wotan starts up in terrific wrath: "But
Brünnhilde! Woe to that offender! Dreadful shall be the
punishment meted to her audacity, when my horse overtakes
her in her flight!" Amid lightning and thunder, aptly
symbolising the state of his temper, the god vanishes from
sight.
III
The third act shows the scene, a high
rocky peak rising from among great pine-trees, where the
Valkyries assemble for their return together to the hall of
Wotan. On the clouds they come riding, each with a dead
warrior laid across her steed. Over the neighing and
hoof-beats, the music develops of a lightly thundering
cavalry-charge, suggestive of the rocking in the saddle of
horsemen borne over billowing expanses—glorious with the
glory of the hosts which fancy sees among the crimson and
gold banners of the sunset. The eight are at last arrived;
their war-cries, their hard laughter, and the shrill
neighing of the battle-steeds mingle in harsh harmony. The
shrieks of an autumn gale, exulting in its freedom to drive
the waves mountain-high and scatter all the leaves of the
forest, have the same quality of wildness and force and
glee. The steel-corseleted figures clustered on the peak
make one think a little of gleaming dragon-flies seen in
summer, swarming as they do around some point of mysterious
interest. The laughter of the Valkyries is for grim jests
they exchange over the conduct of their horses, who
fall to fighting with one another, because the dead warriors
on their backs were enemies in life. Brünnhilde only is
wanting, to complete their number, but they dare not start
for Walhalla without her, lest Walvater, not seeing his
favourite, should receive them with a frown. They are
amazed, when they finally see her coming, to descry on the
back of her horse no warrior, but a woman—amazed, likewise,
at the wild speed of Grane's flight, and to see him stagger
and drop on reaching the goal. They hurry to Brünnhilde's
assistance. She comes in, breathless with terror and haste,
supporting Sieglinde. Wotan, she informs the wondering
sisters, is hot in pursuit of her. She begs one of them to
keep lookout for him from the top of the peak. The black
storm-cloud on which he rides is perceived sweeping toward
them from the north. To the questioning Valkyries Brünnhilde
gives in quick outline the story of her disobedience, and
implores their help to save Sieglinde,—for the Wälsungen all
Wotan has threatened with destruction. She conjures them,
too, to conceal herself, who has not the hardihood to face
her father in the extremity of his indignation. But the
sisters are appalled at the revelation of her misdeed, and
no less at the suggestion that they should join in her act
of rebellion. Her prayer for the loan of one of their horses
on which the woman may escape, meets with obtuse looks,
headshakes, uncompromising denial. She is appealing
urgently, hurriedly, to one after the other, when Sieglinde
who, stony, death-struck, dazed with grief, has appeared
unconscious, up to this moment, of all taking place around
her, stops her, stating dully that there is no need to
trouble about her, since her only wish is to die. She indeed
reproaches Brünnhilde for her care, and bids her now, if she
is not to curse her for their flight, to end her life by a
thrust of the sword. In the next moment the face of this
same
woman sheds the very radiance of joy: the Valkyrie has
revealed to her that of her a Wälsung shall be born. Then,
oh, "Save me, you valiant one!" she cries. "Save my child!
Protect me, you maidens, with your mightiest protection!
Save me! Save the mother!" She kneels to them. The
cool-blooded spinsters are moved by this, but not to the
point of braving Wotan's ire. "Then fly in haste, and fly
alone!" Brünnhilde with sudden resolve bids Sieglinde: "I
will remain behind and draw upon me, delaying him, Wotan's
anger." "In what direction shall I go?" asks the woman
eagerly. Eastward, one of the sisters tells her, lies a
forest. Fafner there, in the shape of a dragon, guards the
treasure of the Nibelungen. An unsuitable place for a
helpless woman, yet one where she will be safe from Wotan,
for the god, it has been observed, shuns it. "Away then to
eastward," Brünnhilde instructs Sieglinde; "with undaunted
courage bear every trial. Hunger and thirst, thorns and
stony roads—do you laugh at want and sorrow, for one thing
know, and keep it ever in mind: the most exalted hero in the
world, O woman, shall be born of you!" A great melodious
phrase describes him, the future Siegfried, as if with one
magnificent stroke outlining a form of heroic beauty and
valour. Brünnhilde gives Sieglinde the pieces of Siegmund's
sword, gathered up from the field after the ill-fated
encounter. "He who one day shall swing this sword newly
welded together, let him take his name from me: As Siegfried
let him rejoice in victory!" From the soul of Sieglinde
rises a soaring song of gratitude and praise, a song of
purest, highest joy. Her last words to Brünnhilde, as
clasping to her breast the broken sword she hastens away,
are, interpreted: "My gratitude shall one day reward you,
smiling at you in human form!... Farewell! Sieglinde in her
woe calls down blessings upon you!"
The storm-cloud has reached the rock, Wotan's
voice is heard: "Brünnhilde, stand!" At the sound of it,
Brünnhilde's heart fails her; the hearts of the sisters,
too, soften. Crowding together on the rocky peak, they let
the culprit cower out of sight among them. But Wotan is not
deceived; he addresses to the hidden daughter such sharp and
searching reproaches that, her fear for herself losing all
importance as these strike her heart, she steps forth from
among the sister-Valkyries and meekly stands before her
father, awaiting condemnation.
"Not I," he speaks, "punish you. Yourself
you have framed your punishment!" And he exposes how by
forgetting the whole duty of a Valkyrie—to deal victory or
defeat according to Wotan's decree—she had made herself in
effect no longer a Valkyrie. "No more shall I send you from
Walhalla.... No longer shall you bring warriors to my
hall.... From the tribe of the gods you are cut off,
rejected from the eternal line.... Our tie is severed....
You are banished from my face!" The sisters break into
lamentation. "Upon this mountain I banish you. In undefended
sleep I shall seal you. Let the man then capture the maid
who finds her upon his road and wakes her." The sisters
endeavour to restrain him, pointing out that their own
honour will suffer from such a scandal. He rejects this on
the ground that they have nothing more whatever to do with
the faithless sister. "A husband is to win her feminine
favor; masterful man is henceforth to have her duty. By the
fireside she shall sit and spin, an object of scorn to all
beholders!" Brünnhilde drops at his feet, overwhelmed. Cries
of horror and protest break from the others; he drives them
from his presence with the threat of a similar fate to
Brünnhilde's if they do not forthwith depart from her, and
keep afar from the rock where she suffers her sentence. In a
confusion of terror, which is not without the slightest
point of
humour, the strong girls flee like leaves in the blast
before Wotan's menace,—and Brünnhilde is left alone to plead
her poor cause with the stern incensed father.
She conjures him first to silence his
anger, and define to her the dark fault which has impelled
him to reject the most loyal of his children. "I carried out
your order," she protests. "Did I order you to fight for the
Wälsung?" he inquires. "You did," she reminds him. "But I
took back my instructions." "When Fricka had estranged you
from your own mind.... Not wise am I, but this one thing I
knew, that the Wälsung was dear to you. I was aware of the
conflict which compelled you to turn from the remembrance of
this.... I kept in sight for you that which, painfully
divided in feeling, you must turn your back upon. Thus it
was that I saw what you could not see. I saw Siegmund. I
stood before him announcing death. I met his eye, I heard
his voice, I apprehended the hero's ineffable distress.... I
witnessed that which struck the heart in my bosom with awe
and trembling. Timid and wondering I stood before him, in
shame. I could think only how I might serve him.... And
confidently counting upon an intimate understanding of him
who had bred that love in my heart,—of that will which had
attached me to the Wälsung,—I disobeyed your command!"
Wotan, in meeting this, shows how he is
not merely a father dealing with a disobedient child, but a
man in strife with himself, with his own will which has
betrayed him into following affection, inclination, when
duty called for an opposite course. "If thy right hand
offend thee, cut if off and cast it from thee." Brünnhilde
is to Wotan that offending flesh and blood, and the safety
of the future depends, it seems, upon his breaking his own
heart by cutting her off from himself. She has done what his
heart would have had him do; but for interests whose claim upon
him is in his estimation greater than that of affection (einer
Welt zu Liebe: for the sake of a world), he had elected
not to follow his heart's impulse. And this delinquent,
daughter at once and his own will, must not only be punished
for the example of all the disobedient, but cut off from
himself, to provide absolutely against any possible
repetition of the so lovable and forgivable offence.
Brünnhilde, when she has heard him out,
has no word further of argument or defence, but acquiesces
with sad submissiveness. "Certainly the foolish maiden is no
fit helpmate for you, who, confused by your amazing counsel,
did not understand your mind, when her own mind prompted one
thing only: to love that which you loved!" She accepts the
punishment as just, only: "If you are to sever that which
was bound together," she pleads, "to keep apart from
yourself the very half of yourself, that I was once
completely one with you, O god, forget it not! Your immortal
part you cannot wish to dishonour. You cannot intend an
ignominy which involves you.... Yourself you would be
degraded, if you gave me over to insult!" "You followed,
light of heart, the call of love," Wotan replies
unconcedingly: "follow now him whom you must love!" "If I
must depart from Walhalla, if I am to be your companion and
servant no more," Brünnhilde pressingly continues, "if my
obedience is to be given to masterful man, not of a coward
and braggart let me be the prize! Let him not be worthless
who shall win me!" "You cut yourself off from Walvater," he
repulses her; "he cannot choose for you!" "A noble
generation there is, having its origin in you—" Brünnhilde
suggests, still unquelled, the point is so vital to her;
"the most admirable of heroes, I know it, is to spring from
the line of the Wälsungen...." "Not a word of the
Wälsungen!" Wotan fiercely interrupts. "When I severed from
you, I severed from them. Doomed to destruction is that
line!" Sieglinde has been saved, Brünnhilde informs him, who
shall give birth to the Wälsung of whom she speaks. Wotan
sternly silences her: let her not seek to shake his
firmness. He cannot choose for her! He has loitered too long
already. He cannot stop to consider what her wishes are,
nothing further has he to do with her but to see his
sentence executed.
What has he devised for her punishment,
she asks.
He repeats his earlier sentence: "In deep
sleep I shall seal you. He who awakes the defenceless
sleeper, shall have her to wife." Brünnhilde falls on her
knees to him. "If I am to be bound in fast sleep, an easy
prey to the most ignoble of men, this one prayer you shall
grant which a noble terror lifts to you: Let the sleeper be
protected by a barrier of fright-inspiring things, that only
a fearless and great-hearted hero may be able to reach me on
my mountain-peak!" "Too much you demand! Too much of
favour!" She clasps his knees, and with the wildest
inspiration of terror: "This one prayer you must—must listen
to! At your command let a great fire spring up. Let the
summit be surrounded by fierce flames, whose tongues shall
lick up and whose teeth shall devour any caitiff venturing
near to the formidable place!" So is her whole soul heard to
cry aloud in this prayer, as she pleads for so much more
than her life, that all by which Wotan had fortified himself
against her, and which had been subjected to an assault so
prolonged, suddenly gives way, his weary heart is pierced.
Overcome by emotion, he lifts her to her feet; he gazes long
into her eyes, reading her soul there,—then amply, fully,
with the whole of his overflowing heart, grants her prayer:
"Farewell, O dauntless, glorious child! Holy pride of my
heart, farewell! Farewell! Farewell! If I must shun you, if
I am never more fondly to greet you, if you are no more to
ride at my side, or reach me the cup of mead; if I am to
lose you whom I so have loved, O laughing joy of my eyes—a
bridal bonfire shall blaze for you such as never yet blazed
for a bride! A flaming barrier shall girdle the rock; with
burning terror-signals it shall frighten away the coward.
The fainthearted shall keep afar from Brünnhilde's rock.
That one alone shall win the bride, who is freer than I—the
god!" In a speechless ecstasy of gratitude, Brünnhilde sinks
on his breast, and he holds her long silently clasped, while
there floats heavenward as if the very voice of their
relieved, pacified, uplifted hearts. Supporting her in his
arms, gazing tenderly in her upturned face, he takes his
last leave of her. There is a passage in Wotan's farewell
which seems to contain, compressed into it, all the yearning
ache of all farewells, with all the sweetness of the love
which makes parting bitter. "For the last time....
Farewell.... The last kiss...." These words occur upon it.
The motif it seems of the tragedy of last times; one wonders
could custom ever so harden him to it that he should feel no
clutch at the heart in hearing it. "For the last time I
appease myself with the last kiss of farewell.... Upon a
happier mortal the star of your eye shall beam. Upon the
unhappy Immortal it must, in parting, close. For thus does
the god turn away from you, thus does he kiss away your
divinity!" He presses a long kiss upon each of her eyes, and
the first languor of sleep falling at once upon her, she
leans, without strength, against him. He supports her to a
mossy knoll beneath a spreading pine-tree, and lays her
gently upon it; after a long brooding look at her face,
closes her helmet; after a long look at her sleeping form,
covers it with the great Valkyrie shield; places her spear
beside her, and with a last long sad look at the slumbering
motionless figure, turns away,—having effectually desolated
himself of the three dearest of his children.
Resolutely striding from the sleeper, he
summons Loge, and commands him in his original form of
elemental fire to surround the mountain-summit. At the shock
of his spear against the rock, a flame flashes and rapidly
spreads. With his spear Wotan traces the course the fire is
to follow, girdling the peak. Nimbly it leaps from point to
point, till the whole background is fringed with flame. At
Wotan's words, "Let no one who is afraid of my spear ever
break through the fiery barrier!" there falls, prophetic,
across the dream of Brünnhilde's charmed sleep, the great
shadow of the Deliverer, so distant yet in time, Siegfried,
who when the hour came of test was found to fear Wotan's
spear as little as he feared anything else.
With that firm spell placed upon his
magnificent and adequate fence, Wotan departs; and, guarded
by the singing flames, which weave into the rhythm of their
bright dance the tenderest of lullabies, Brünnhilde is left
to her long rest.
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STORIES OF THE WAGNER OPERA
BY
H.A. GUERBER
THE WALKYRIE.
Wotan—made secretly uneasy by Erda's dark prediction that
‘Nothing that is ends
not;
A day of gloom
Dawns for the gods;—
Be ruled and waive from the ring’—
relinquishes the ring which he had
wrested from Alberich, as has been seen. His restlessness
however daily increases, until at last he penetrates in
disguise into the dark underground world and woos the fair
earth goddess. So successfully does he plead his cause, that
she receives him as her spouse and bears him eight lovely
daughters. She also reveals to him the secrets of the
future, when Walhalla's strong walls shall fall, and the
gods shall perish, because they have resorted to fraud and
lent a willing ear to Loge, prince of evil.
Notwithstanding this fatal prediction Wotan remains
undismayed. Instead of yielding passively to whatever fate
may befall him, he resolves to prepare for a future
conflict, and to
defend Walhalla against every foe. As the gods are few in
number, he soon decides to summon mortals to his abode, and
in order to have men trained to every hardship and
accustomed to war, he flings his spear over the world, and
kindles unending strife between all the nations. His eight
daughters, the Walkyries, are next deputed to ride down to
earth every day and bear away the bravest among the slain.
These warriors are entertained at his table with heavenly
mead, and encouraged to keep up their strength and skill by
cutting and hewing each other, their wounds healing
magically as soon as made.
But, in spite of these preparations, Wotan is not yet
satisfied. He still remembers the all-powerful ring which he
has given to the giants, and which is still in the keeping
of Fafnir. In case this ring again falls into the hands of
the revengeful Alberich, he knows the gods cannot hope to
escape from his wrath. He himself cannot snatch back a gift
once given, so he decides to beget a son, who will
unconsciously be his emissary, and who will, moreover,
oppose the offspring which Erda has predicted that Alberich
will raise merely to help him avenge his wrongs. Disguised
as a mortal named Wälse, or Volsung, Wotan takes up his
abode upon earth, and
marries a mortal woman, who bears him twin children,
Siegmund and Sieglinde. These children are still very young
when Hunding, a hunter and lover of strife, comes upon their
hut in the woods, and burns it to the ground, after slaying
the elder woman and carrying off the younger as his captive.
On their return from the forest, Wälse and Siegmund
behold with dismay the destruction of their dwelling, and
vow constant warfare against their foes. This vow they
faithfully keep until Siegmund grows up and his father
suddenly and mysteriously disappears, leaving behind him
nothing but the wolf-skin garment to which he owes his name.
Hunding, in the mean while, has carried Sieglinde off to
his dwelling, which is built around the stem of a mighty
oak, and when she attains a marriageable age he compels her
to become his wife, although she very reluctantly submits to
his wish. The opening scene of this opera represents
Hunding's hall,—in the midst of which stands the mighty oak
whose branches overshadow the whole house,—which is dimly
illumined by the fire burning on the hearth. Suddenly the
door is flung wide open, and a stranger rushes in. He is
dusty and dishevelled, and examines the apartment with a
wild glance.
When he has ascertained that it is quite empty, he comes in,
closes the door behind him, and sinks exhausted in front of
the fire, where he soon falls asleep. A moment later
Sieglinde, Hunding's forced wife, appears. When she sees a
stranger in front of the fire, instead of her expected lord
and master, she starts back in sudden fear. But, reassured
by the motionless attitude of the stranger, she soon draws
near, and, bending over him, discovers that he has fallen
asleep:—
‘His heart still
heaves,
Though his lids be lowered,
Warlike and manful I deem him
Though wearied down he sunk.’
As she has only a very dim recollection of her past, she
fails to recognise her brother in the sleeper. He soon stirs
uneasily, and, wakening, tries to utter a few words, which
his parched lips almost refuse to articulate, until she
compassionately gives him a drink.
Gazing at Sieglinde as if fascinated by some celestial
vision, Siegmund, in answer to her questions, informs her
that he is an unhappy wight, whose footsteps misfortune
constantly dogs. He then goes on to inform her that even now
he has escaped from his enemies with
nothing but his life, and makes a movement to leave her for
fear lest he should bring ill-luck upon her too. Sieglinde,
however, implores him to remain and await the return of her
husband. Almost as she speaks Hunding enters the house, and,
allowing her to divest him of his weapons, seems dumbly to
inquire the reason of the stranger's presence at his hearth.
Sieglinde rapidly explains how she found him faint and
weary before the fire, and Hunding, mindful of the laws of
hospitality, bids the stranger welcome, and invites him to
partake of the food which Sieglinde now sets before them. As
Siegmund takes his place at the rude board, Hunding first
becomes aware of the strange resemblance he bears to his
wife, and after commenting upon it sotto voce, he
inquires his guest's name and antecedents. Siegmund then
mournfully relates his happy youth, the tragic loss of his
mother and sister, his roaming life with his father, and the
latter's mysterious disappearance. Only then does Hunding
recognize in him the foe whom he has long been seeking to
slay.
Unconscious of all this, Siegmund goes on to relate how
on that very day he had fought single-handed against
countless foes to defend a helpless maiden, running away
only when his
weapons had failed him and the maiden had been slain at his
feet. Sieglinde listens breathless to the story of his sad
life and of his brave defence of helpless virtue, while
Hunding suddenly declares that, were it not that the sacred
rights of hospitality restrained him, he would then and
there slay the man who had made so many of his kinsmen bite
the dust. He however contents himself with making an
appointment for a hostile encounter early on the morrow,
promising to supply Siegmund with a good sword, since he has
no weapons of his own:—
‘My doors ward thee,
Wölfing, to-day;
Till the dawn shelter they show;
A flawless sword
Will befit thee at sunrise,
By day be ready for fight,
And pay thy debt for the dead.’
Then Hunding angrily withdraws with his wife, taking his
weapons with him, and muttering dark threats, which fill his
guest's heart with nameless fear. Left alone, Siegmund
bitterly mourns his lack of weapons, for he fears lest he
may be treacherously attacked by his foe, and in his sorrow
he reproaches his father, who had repeatedly told him that
he would find a sword ready to his hand in case of direst
need.
‘A sword,—so promised my father—
In sorest need I should find—
Weaponless falling
In the house of the foe,
Here in pledge
To his wrath I am held.’
While he is brooding thus over his misfortunes, the
flames on the hearth flicker and burn brighter. Suddenly
their light glints upon the hilt of a sword driven deep in
the bole of the mighty oak, and, reassured by the thought
that he has a weapon within reach, Siegmund disposes himself
to sleep.
The night wears on. The fire flickers and dies out. The
deep silence is broken only by Siegmund's peaceful
breathing, when the door noiselessly opens, and Sieglinde,
all dressed in white, steals into the room. She glides up to
the sleeping guest and gently rouses him, bidding him escape
while her husband is still sound asleep under the influence
of an opiate which she has secretly administered:—
‘It is I; behold what
I say!
In heedless sleep is Hunding,
I set him a drink for his dreams,
The night for thy safety thou needest.’
Leading him to the oak, she then points out the sword,
telling him it was driven into the very
heart of the tree by a one-eyed stranger. He had come into
the hall on her wedding day, and had declared that none but
the mortal for whom the gods intended the weapon would ever
be able to pull it out. She then goes on to describe how
many strong men have tried to withdraw it, and warmly
declares it must have been intended for him who had so
generously striven to protect a helpless maiden. Her tender
solicitude fills the poor outcast's famished heart with such
love and joy that he clasps her to his breast, and, the door
swinging noiselessly open to admit a flood of silvery
moonbeams, they join in the marvellous duet known as the
‘Spring Song.’
As they gaze enraptured upon each other, they too
perceive the strong resemblance which has so struck Hunding,
but still fail to recognize each other as near of kin. To
save Sieglinde from her distasteful compulsory marriage,
Siegmund now consents to fly, providing she will accompany
him, vowing to protect her till death with the sword which
he easily draws from the oak, and which he declares he knows
his father must have placed there, as he recognizes him in
the description which Sieglinde had given of the stranger:—
‘Siegmund the
Volsung,
Seest thou beside thee!
For bridal gift
He brings thee this sword.
He woos with the blade
The blissfullest wife.
From the house of the foe
He hies with thee.
Forth from here
Follow him far,
Hence to the laughing
House of the Spring,
Where Nothung the sword defends thee,
Where Siegmund infolds thee in love!’
This passionate appeal entirely sweeps away Sieglinde's
last scruples; she yields rapturously to his wooing, and
they steal away softly, hand in hand, to go and seek their
happiness out in the wide world. Hunding, upon awaking on
the morrow, discovers the treachery of his guest and the
desertion of his wife. Almost beside himself with fury, he
prepares to overtake and punish the guilty pair.
As a fight is now imminent between Siegmund, his mortal
son, and Hunding, Wotan, who is up on a rocky mountain
overlooking the earth, summons Brunhilde the Walkyrie to his
side, bidding her saddle her steed and so direct the battle
that Siegmund may remain victor and Hunding only fall.
Chanting her Walkyrie war-cry, Brunhilde departs, laughingly
calling out to
Wotan that he had best be prepared for a call from his wife,
who is hastening toward him as fast as her rams can draw her
brazen chariot. Brunhilde has scarcely passed out of sight
when Fricka comes upon the scene. After upbraiding Wotan for
forsaking her to woo the goddess Erda and a mortal maiden,
she says that, as father of the gods and ruler of the world,
he is bound to uphold religion and morality. She then dwells
angrily upon the immorality of the just consummated union
between Siegmund and Sieglinde, who are brother and sister,
and finally forces her husband, much against his will, to
promise he will revoke his decree, give the victory to the
injured husband, Hunding, and punish Siegmund, the seducer,
by immediate death.
Wotan therefore summons Brunhilde once more, and sadly
bids her to shield Hunding in the coming fight. Brunhilde,
who realizes that the second command has been dictated by
Fricka, implores him to confide his troubles to her. She
then hears with dismay an account of the way in which Wotan
has been beguiled into wrongdoing by Loge, of his attempts
to gather an army large enough to oppose to his foes when
the last day should come, and of his long cherished hope
that Siegmund would recover the fatal ring which he feared
would again fall into
the revengeful Alberich's hands. Finally, however, Wotan
repeats his order to her to befriend Hunding, and Brunhilde,
awed by his despair, slowly departs to fulfil his commands.
The god has just vanished amid the mutterings of thunder,
expressive of his wrath if any one dare to disobey his
behests, when Siegmund and Sieglinde suddenly appear upon
the mountain side. They are fleeing from Hunding, and
Sieglinde, who has discovered when too late that Siegmund is
her brother, is so torn by remorse, love, and fear that she
soon sinks fainting to the ground. Siegmund, alarmed, bends
over her, but, having ascertained that she has only fainted,
makes no effort to revive her, deeming it better that she
should remain unconscious during the encounter which must
soon take place, for the horn of the pursuing Hunding is
already heard in the distance.
Siegmund has just pressed a tender kiss upon Sieglinde's
fair forehead, when Brunhilde, the Walkyrie, suddenly
appears before him, and solemnly warns him of his coming
defeat and death. He proudly tells her of his matchless
sword, but she informs him that his reliance upon it is
quite misplaced, for it will be wrenched from his grasp when
his need is greatest. Then she tries to comfort him by
describing the glory
which awaits him in Walhalla, whither she will convey him
after death.
Siegmund eagerly questions her, but, learning that
Sieglinde can never be admitted within its shining portals,
passionately declares he cannot leave her. He next proposes
to kill her and himself, so that they may be together in
Hela's dark abode, for he will accept no joys which she
cannot share:—
‘Then greet for me
Valhall,
Greet for me Wotan;
Hail unto Wälse,
And all the heroes!
Greet, too, the graceful
Warlike mist-maidens:
For now I follow thee not.’
Brunhilde's heart is so touched by his love for and utter
devotion to Sieglinde, and she is so anxious at the same
time to fulfil Wotan's real wish, in defiance of his orders,
that she finally allows compassion to get the better of her
reason, and impulsively promises Siegmund that she will
protect him in the coming fray. At the same moment Hunding's
horn is heard, and Brunhilde disappears, while the scene
darkens with the rapid approach of a thunderstorm. Such is
the darkness that Siegmund, who has sprung down the path in
his eagerness to meet his foe, misses
his way, while Sieglinde slowly rouses from her swoon,
muttering of the days of her happy childhood when she dwelt
with her family in the great wood. Suddenly, the lightning
flashes, and Hunding and Siegmund, meeting upon a ridge,
begin fighting, in spite of Sieglinde's frantic cries.
As the struggle begins, Brunhilde, true to her promise,
hovers over the combatants, holding her shield over Siegmund
and warding off every dangerous blow, while Sieglinde gazes
in speechless terror upon the combatants.
But in the very midst of the fray, when Siegmund is about
to pierce Hunding's heart with his glittering sword, Wotan
suddenly appears, and, extending his sacred spear to parry
the blow, he shivers the sword Nothung to pieces. Hunding
basely takes advantage of this accident to slay his
defenceless foe, while Brunhilde, fearing Wotan's wrath and
Hunding's cruelty, catches up the fainting Sieglinde and
bears her rapidly away upon her fleet-footed steed.
After gazing for a moment in speechless sorrow at his
lifeless favourite, Wotan turns a wrathful glance upon the
treacherous Hunding, who, unable to endure the divine
accusation of his unflinching gaze, falls lifeless to the
ground.
Then the god mounts his steed, and rides off on the wings of
the storm in pursuit of the disobedient Walkyrie, whom he is
obliged to punish severely for his oath's sake.
The next scene represents an elevated plateau, the
trysting spot of the eight Walkyries, on Hindarfiall, or
Walkürenfels, whither they all come hastening, bearing the
bodies of the slain across their fleet steeds. Brunhilde
appears last of all, carrying Sieglinde. She breathlessly
pours out the story of the day's adventures, and implores
her sisters to devise some means of hiding Sieglinde, and to
protect her from Wotan's dreaded wrath:—
‘The raging hunter
Behind me who rides,
He nears, he nears from the North!
Save me, sisters!
Ward this woman.’
The sound of the tempest has been growing louder and
louder while she is speaking, and as she ends her narrative
Sieglinde recovers consciousness, but only to upbraid her
for having saved her life. She wildly proposes suicide,
until Brunhilde bids her live for the sake of Siegmund's son
whom she will bring into the world, and tells her to
treasure the fragments of the sword Nothung, which she had
carried away.
Sieglinde, anxious now to live for her child's sake, hides
the broken fragments in her bosom, and, in obedience to
Brunhilde's advice, speeds into the dense forest where
Fafnir has his lair, and where Wotan will never venture lest
the curse of the ring should fall upon him.
‘Save for thy son
The broken sword!
Where his father fell
On the field I found it.
Who welds it anew
And waves it again,
His name he gains from me now—
“Siegfried” the hero be hailed.’
The noise of the storm and rushing wind has become
greater and greater, the Walkyries have anxiously been
noting Wotan's approach. As Sieglinde vanishes in the dim
recesses of the primeval forest, the wrathful god comes
striding upon the stage in search of Brunhilde, who cowers
tremblingly behind her sisters. After a scathing rebuke to
the Walkyries, who would fain shelter a culprit from his
all-seeing eye, Wotan bids Brunhilde step forth. Solemnly he
then pronounces her sentence, declaring she shall serve him
as Walkyrie no longer, but shall be banished to earth, where
she will have to live as a mere mortal, and, marrying, to
know
naught beyond the joys and sorrows of other women:—
‘Heard you not how
Her fate I have fixed?
Far from your side
Shall the faithless sister be sundered;
Her horse no more
In your midst through the breezes shall
haste her;
Her flower of maidenhood
Will falter and fade;
A husband will win
Her womanly heart,
She meekly will bend
To the mastering man
The hearth she'll heed, as she spins,
And to laughers is left for their
sport.’
Brunhilde, hearing this terrible decree, which degrades
her from the rank of a goddess to that of a mere mortal,
sinks to her knees and utters a great cry of despair. This
is echoed by the Walkyries, who, however, depart at Wotan's
command, leaving their unhappy sister alone with him.
Passionately now Brunhilde pleads with her father,
declaring she had meant to serve him best by disobeying his
commands, and imploring him not to banish her forever from
his beloved presence. But, although Wotan still loves her
dearly, he cannot revoke his decree, and repeats
to her that he will leave her on the mountain, bound in the
fetters of sleep, a prey to the first man who comes to
awaken her and claim her as his bride.
All Brunhilde's tears and passionate pleadings only wring
from him a promise that she will be hedged in by a barrier
of living flames, so that none but the very bravest among
men can ever come near her to claim her as his own.
Wotan, holding his beloved daughter in a close embrace,
then gently seals her eyes in slumber with tender kisses,
lays her softly down upon the green mound, and draws down
the visor of her helmet. Then, after covering her with her
shield to protect her from all harm, he begins a powerful
incantation, summoning Loge to surround her with an
impassable barrier of flames. As this incantation proceeds,
small flickering tongues of fire start forth on every side;
they soon rise higher and higher, roaring and crackling
until, as Wotan disappears, they form a fiery barrier all
around the sleeping Walkyrie:—
‘Loge, hear!
Hitherward listen!
As I found thee at first—
In arrowy flame
As thereafter thou fleddest—
In fluttering fire;
As I dealt with thee once,
I wield thee to-day!
Arise, billowing blaze,
And fold in thy fire the rock!
Loge! Loge! Aloft!
Who fears the spike
Of my spear to face,
He will pierce not the planted fire.’
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Siegfried und Luedegast by Otto von Leixner
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SIEGFRIED
I
Fafner, when he had become possessor of
the Nibelungen treasure, conveyed it, as we have seen, to a
cave in a lonesome forest, and there in the shape of a
dragon mounted guard over it. Mime, the dwarf, in order to
keep the same treasure under some sort of oversight, took up
his abode in the forest, at a respectful distance from the
flame-breathing monster. Alberich haunted the immediate
neighbourhood of the cave.
Thus it happened that Sieglinde, directed
by the Valkyries to that region, where she should be safest
from Wotan's anger, was overheard by Mime, out in the
lonesome wood, moaning in her trouble. He assisted her into
his cave. There Siegfried was born, and there Sieglinde
died. Mime reared the "Wälsungen-shoot" with solicitous
care, in the ulterior view that this scion of a strong race
when grown to man's size should kill Fafner for him and get
him the Ring.
At the rise of the curtain we see Mime at
his anvil, struggling with a heavy difficulty. He is
fashioning a sword for Siegfried,—still another sword, after
ever so many,—realising even as he works that no sword he
can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands. "The
best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant
would stand stiff, the insignificant stripling for whom it
was shaped he whacks and snaps it in two, as if I had made
him a child's plaything!" It is sober fact to Mime that he
cannot use Siegfried for his purposes until he have
equipped him with a sword. "A sword there is," he continues
his meditation, "which he could not break. The fragments of
Nothung he never could shatter, could I weld the strong
pieces together, which all my art cannot compass! Nothung
alone could be of use,... and I cannot weld it, Nothung, the
sword!"
Half-heartedly he has resumed his toil,
when a joyous shout is heard from the forest, of which a
sun-shot patch glimmers through the cave's mouth, and there
storms in, driving before him a tethered bear, a magnificent
youth, clad in skins, a silver horn at his side. The
splendour of Siegfried's appearance is constantly referred
to, the qualifications applied to him suggesting most
frequently an effect he shed of light. This child of the
unhappy Wälsungen seems to have been indelibly stamped with
the joy of their one golden hour. Of Siegmund's tragic
consciousness of frustration, of Sieglinde's sufferings,
there is no trace in their vigorous offspring; but the
superabundant vitality of joy which lifted them to the
lovers' seventh heaven for one triumphant hour is all in his
young blood. He is big, strong, sane, comely, fearless,
simple, ignorant of all mean passions and interests; pensive
for moments, gay for hours-nearly boisterous; frank and
outspoken to the point of brutality; unmannerly at times to
the point of ruffianism; but the dice are loaded to secure
our cherishing him right through his bright course, by that
irresistible, ingrain joyousness of his, born of strength,
balance, fearlessness.
Laughing immoderately, he urges the bear
against Mime, who flees hither and thither to elude the
fearful pair. "I am come in double force, the better to
corner you.... Brownie, ask for the sword!" When assured by
the trembling Mime that the sword is in readiness, he
releases and sends home his shaggy ally. But when Mime hands
him the newly finished sword, and he strikes
it on the anvil, it flies to bits. The angry boy expresses
his wish that he had smashed the sword on the disgraceful
bungler's skull. "Shall such a braggart go on bragging? He
prates me of giants and lusty fighting; of gallant deeds and
solid armour; he will forge weapons for me, provide me with
swords; he vaunts his art as if he could do something of
account; but let me take hold of the thing he has hammered,
with a single grip I crush flat the idle rubbish! If the
creature were not so utterly mean, I would drop him into the
forge-fire with all the stuff of his forging, the old
imbecile hobgoblin! There might be an end then to vexation!"
He casts himself fuming on a stone seat and turns his face
toward the wall. The dwarf, who has kept his distance from
the storming youth, tries to quiet him, reminds him of his
benefits, of his teachings on the subject of gratitude.
Ingratiatingly he brings him food. Siegfried without turning
dashes spit and pipkin from his hands. The little man
affects a deeply hurt sensibility. He rehearses at length
all Siegfried has to thank him for, material necessities,
education,—"With clever counsel I made you clever, with
subtle wisdom I taught you wit...." This tale of
benefactions has been gone over so often that the dwarf has
reached a fine glibness in it; the smooth air on which he
enumerates the instances of his kindness has a peculiar cast
of hypocrisy. He is so touched by the contemplation finally
of his own goodness and Siegfried's hardness of heart that
he falls to weeping. "And for all I have borne this is now
the reward, that the hot-tempered boy torments and hates
me!"
Siegfried has been calmly gazing into
Mime's eyes; trying through these to get at the truth of
him. Mime expresses surprise that after so many
unquestionable services the boy should hate him; and the boy
is not himself without a touch of wonder at the invincible
antipathy with which this creature inspires him, to whom
yet he is actually indebted for many good offices. "Much you
have taught me, Mime, and many a thing have I learned of
you; but that which you have most cared to teach me, never
have I succeeded in learning: how I could bear the sight of
you! If you bring me food and drink, disgust takes the place
of dinner; if you spread an easy couch for me, sleep on it
becomes difficult; if you endeavour to teach me wise
conversation, I prefer to be dumb and dull. Whenever I set
eyes on you, I recognise as ill-done everything you do;
whether I watch you stand, or waggle and walk, ducking,
nidnodding, blinking with your eyes, my impulse is to catch
the nidnodder by the scruff of the neck, to hurl out of the
way for good and all the odious blinker! That is my manner,
Mime, of being fond of you. Now, if you are wise, help me to
know a thing which I have vainly reflected upon: I run into
the woods to be rid of you; how does it happen that I come
back? All animals are dearer to me than you, trees and
birds, the fish in the stream, I am fonder of them all than
I am of you; then how does it happen that I still come back?
If you are wise, make clear to me this thing!" "My child,"
replies Mime, "you are informed by that circumstance how
near I lie to your heart!" "I tell you I cannot bear you!
Forget it not so soon!" Mime argues that such a thing is
impossible, is out of nature; that what to the young bird is
the old bird, which feeds it in the nest until it is
fledged, that is to Siegfried, inevitably, Mime! This simile
of Mime's suggests to Siegfried a further question. In
asking it he has one of those brief accesses of pensiveness
which endear him, disclosing the existence of a common human
tenderness, after all, under that sturdy wrapping of joy
befitting the child of demigods. "Now, since you are so
wise, tell me still another thing: When the birds were
singing so blithely in Spring, the one luring the other, you
told me, as I wished to know, that they were
male and female. They billed and cooed so engagingly, and
would not leave each other; they built a nest and brooded in
it; there was a fluttering presently of young wings, and the
two cared for the young. I saw how, in the same way, the
deer rested in the forest, in pairs; how even wild faxes and
wolves did this. The male brought food to the lair, the
female nursed the cubs. I learned from seeing this what love
is—I never robbed the mother of her young...." The music has
been heaving and falling, as if with the warm palpitation of
a vast breast, Nature's own, blissful with love and happy
creative force. "Now, where, Mime, is your loving mate, that
I may call her mother?" Mime becomes cross: "What has come
over you, mad boy? Now, what a numbskull it is! Are you a
bird or a fox?" And at Siegfried's next question he chafes:
"You are to believe what I tell you: I am your father and
mother at the same time!" But Siegfried vigorously objects:
"There you lie, unspeakable gawk! How the young resemble
their parents I have luckily observed for myself. More than
once I have come to a clear stream: I have seen the trees
and animals mirrored in it; the sun and clouds, exactly as
they are, appear repeated on the shining surface. My own
image, too, I have seen. Altogether different from you I
seemed to myself: there is as much likeness between a toad
and a gleaming fish, but never yet did a fish crawl out of a
toad!" This latter bit in its short extent gives an amusing,
characteristic illustration of Wagner's method of painting
with notes. With the first phrase, Siegfried's impatient
exclamation, comes the motif of Siegfried's impetuosity;
then, as he is describing it, a representation of the clear
stream; upon this is sketched the image of Siegfried, in the
notes of his proper motif, to which is added a bar of the
heroism-of-the-Wälsungen motif, indicating his resemblance
to the father before him. At his mention of the toad, his
metaphor for Mime, we hear the hammer of the Nibelung; and
at his mention of the gleaming fish, the swimming phrase
that accompanies the watery evolutions of the Rhine-maidens.
The ingeniousness of all this would not perhaps of itself
especially recommend the piece, were it not that the scheme
is worked out to such beautiful purpose that the whole thing
is lovely, and that, though one should know nothing whatever
of the motifs, his ear must be charmed.
Satisfied by his own logic that Mime
cannot be his progenitor, Siegfried now himself answers his
earlier question: "When I run into the woods in the thought
of forsaking you, how does it happen that I still return
home? It is because from you I am to learn who are my father
and mother!" Mime evades him: "What father! What mother!
Idle question!" But Siegfried catches him by the throat, and
the terrified dwarf communicates, grudgingly, a scant fact
or two of his history. "Oh, ungrateful and wicked child! now
hear for what it is you hate me. I am neither your father
nor any kin of yours, and yet to me you owe your life...."
Making his own part in the story as meritorious as possible,
he relates his taking into shelter the woman whom he had
found moaning out in the wild woods. Siegfried, for once
penetrated with sadness, wonder, and awe, breathes forth
softly, when the sorrowful story is ended, "My mother—died
then—of me?" He tries by questions to complete the dwarf's
bare account: "Whence am I named Siegfried?" "Thus did your
mother bid me call you." "What was my mother's name?" Mime
feigns to have forgotten, but, roughly pressed, recalls it.
"Then, I ask you, what was my father's name?" "Him I never
saw!" "But my mother spoke the name?" "She only said that he
had been slain." Siegfried is smitten with the suspicion
that Mime
may be lying to him, and demands some proof of all this
which he has heard. Mime, after a moment's resistance, in
terror of the boy's rising wrath, fetches from its hiding
and shows him the pieces of a broken sword. "This was given
me by your mother. For trouble, cost and care, she left it
as paltry remuneration. Behold it! A broken sword! Your
father, she said, carried it in the last battle, when he was
slain." Siegfried's strong good spirits have already
returned. "And these fragments," he cries, with enthusiasm,
"you are to weld together for me. Then I shall swing my
proper sword! Hurry, Mime! Quick to work!... Cheat me not
with trumpery toys! In these fragments alone I place my
faith. If I find you idle, if you join them imperfectly, if
there are flaws in the hard steel, you shall learn
burnishing from me! For this very day, I swear it, I mean to
have the sword!" "What do you want this very day of the
sword?" Mime inquires in alarm. Siegfried, his heart
inexpressibly lightened by the positive knowledge that Mime
is neither father nor any kin to him, bursts into merry
singing: "To go away, out of the woods into the world. Never
shall I come back!... As the fish gaily swims in the flood,
as the finch freely flies afar, so shall I fly, so shall I
dart... that I may never, Mime, see you more!" Off he storms
into the forest, leaving Mime shouting after him, a prey to
the utmost anxiety. The dwarf's difficulty is now twofold:
"To the old care I have a new one added!" How to retain the
wild fellow and guide him to Fafner's nest, and how to mend
those pieces of stubborn steel. "No forge is there whose
glow can soften the thorough-bred fragments. No dwarf's
hammer can compel the hard pieces...." In unmitigated
despair, void of counsel, he drops on his seat behind the
anvil and weeps.
Ushered by great calm chords, measured and
dignified as the gait of a god on his travels, a wayfarer
appears at the entrance of the cave. He wears an ample
deep-blue mantle, and for staff carries a spear. On his head
is a broad hat, the brim of which dips so as to conceal one
of his eyes. It is Wotan. Since parting from Brünnhilde he
has had no heart for warfare, no heart to ride to battle
without the "laughing joy of his eyes." Alone, unresting, he
has wandered all over the wide earth in search of counsel
and, very likely, distraction. A spectator he is in these
days and not an actor. His spirit has reached a state of
philosophic calm. He has learned better certainly than to
meddle any more with anything that concerns the accursed
Ring. He is brought into the neighbourhood of the still
interested actors in that old drama in part by curiosity; in
part, no doubt, by the wish to watch the actions of
Siegfried, his beloved children's child. But in some
faintest degree, at least, it would seem, he is brought here
by the invincible need to influence these fortunes just a
little, though it be firmly fixed that he is not to try
directly or indirectly to divert the Ring into any channel
which shall bring it eventually to himself. All else being
equal, he had a little rather strengthen Mime's chances of
getting the Ring, through Siegfried, than inactively see it
fall to the inveterate enemy, Alberich.
At the greeting he speaks from the
threshold to the "wise smith," Mime starts up in affright:
"Who is it, pursuing me into the forest wilderness?"
"Wanderer is the world's name for me. Far have I wandered,
much have I bestirred myself on the back of the earth."
"Then bestir yourself now! and do not loiter here, if
Wanderer is the world's name for you!" Mime, with his head
full of his dark little projects, has a deep dread of spies
and interference. At every step the Wanderer takes further
into his dwelling, he utters a sharper protest; and at every
protest the Wanderer calmly advances a step further.
"Through much research, much have I learned," speaks
Wanderer, "I could impart to many a one things of importance
to him; I could deliver many a one from that which troubles
him—from the gnawing care of the heart." And after still
another irritated dismissal from Mime: "Many a one has
imagined himself to be wise, but the thing which he most
needed to know, he knew not. I gave him leave to ask me what
should help him, and enlightened him by my word." And after
again being nervously shown the door: "Here I sit by the
fireside," speaks blandly Wanderer, suiting the action to
the word, "and I set my head as stake in a match of wits. My
head is yours, you have won it, if you do not, by
questioning me, succeed in learning what shall profit you;
if I do not, by my instructions, redeem the pledge."
It is plain enough that if Mime would now
expose to the Wanderer the source of the gnawing care at his
heart, and ask him how Nothung might be welded, he would
receive the information. Wotan is clearly eager to give it,
yet cannot do so directly, or he would be too crudely
meddling again in the Ring affair: he cannot press on him
his counsel, but, at his old trick of ingenuous
double-dealing, might by means of this guessing-game make
shift to convey it to him.
Mime, old and wise as he is, has yet in
certain directions a dwarfed understanding; certainly not
enough generosity to trust anybody, or conceive of a
disinterested desire to do him a good turn. His whole
concern now is how to be rid of this large tactless
personage. "I must question him in such a manner as to trap
him," he says to himself. It is agreed that he shall have
three questions. He sits brooding a moment, trying to find
something very difficult indeed. The motif of Mime's
cogitations, which has already been frequently heard in this
act, gives amusingly the unheroic colour of the sordid
little mind's workings. He fixes upon questions concerning
things which
might be supposed little known to a wanderer of human
descent, even such a much-travelled and conceited one.
First: What race reigns in the depths of the earth? Second:
What race rests upon the back of the earth? Third: What race
dwells on the cloudy heights? Wotan readily answers all
these, giving bits of the histories of the races in
question, the Nibelungen, the Giants, and the Gods. As he
describes the spear of Wotan, whose lord all must eternally
obey, he with an involuntary gesture of command brings his
spear hard down on the stone floor. Faint thunder results.
Terror falls upon Mime, who by the light shining for a
moment from his countenance, has recognised the god. "You
have solved the questions and saved your head," he says
hurriedly, without looking Wotan in the face. "Now,
Wanderer, go your way!" But the Wanderer declares that
according to custom in such contests, it is the dwarf's turn
now to answer three questions or lose his head. "It is a
long time," Mime ventures timidly, "since I left my native
place; a long time since I departed from the bosom of earth,
my mother; I once saw the gleam of Wotan's eye as he looked
into the cave; my mother-wit dwindles before him...." But
the wee fellow has no mean conceit of his wisdom, and is
really not as uneasy as might be expected of one in his
position. "Perhaps I shall be so lucky," he suggests, not
without complacency, "as, under this compulsion, to deliver
the dwarf's head!" Wotan asks him, for the first
question,—and the pain of the memories oppressing him is
translated to us by the motif of parting, the motif of "last
times," while the god's tones are infinitely tender—"What
race is it to which Wotan shows himself stern, and which yet
he loves the best of all living?" Glibly Mime answers,
showing a full acquaintance with the circumstances, "The
Wälsungen." Wotan passes on to the second question: "A wise
Nibelung keeps watch over Siegfried. He is to kill Fafner
for him, that he may get the Ring and become lord of the
Hort. What sword now must Siegfried wield, if he is to deal
death to Fafner?" Mime, delighted with himself, readily
replies: "Nothung is the name of a notable sword.... The
fragments of it are preserved by a wise smith, for he knows
that with the Wotan-sword alone an intrepid stupid boy,
Siegfried, shall destroy the dragon." He rubs his hands in
goblin glee. "Am I, dwarf, in the second instance still to
retain my head?" Wanderer, with a laugh for his antics,
felicitates him: "The most keen-witted are you among the
wise; who can equal you in acuteness? But seeing you are so
cunning as to use the boyish hero for your dwarf-purposes,
with the third question I now make bold: Tell me, wise
armourer, who, out of the strong fragments, shall forge
Nothung anew?" Consternation falls upon the dwarf. Who,
indeed? Was not that question the very hub around which
turned all his troubled reflections? Had it not been that
which was forcing tears from him at the moment of the
Wanderer's arrival? He runs hither and thither distracted,
in broken exclamations admitting that he himself cannot
forge the sword, and how should he know who can perform the
miracle? The Wanderer rises from his seat beside the hearth.
"Three questions you were free to ask. Three times I was
open to consultation. You inquired of things idle and
remote, but that which was closest to you, that which might
profit you, did not enter your mind. Now that I have guessed
it, you lose your senses with fright. I have won the witty
head. Now, brave conqueror of Fafner, hear, doomed dwarf:
Only one who has never known fear can forge Nothung anew."
On his way to the mouth of the cave, he turns for another
word to the chap-fallen Mime: "Look out for your wise head
from this day forth: I leave it in forfeit to him who has
never learned fear!" With a laugh for the double-horned
dilemma in which he leaves the "honest dwarf," he passes
forth into the woods.
As Mime gazes after him, violent trembling
seizes the poor little smith. The flashing among the leaves
of Wotan's winged horse his terror mistakes for the flaming
of Fafner's gaping jaws; and the sound of a rushing approach
for the monster crashing toward him through the underbrush.
With the cry: "The dragon is upon me! Fafner! Fafner!" he
cowers behind the anvil.
The alarming noise proves to have been
only Siegfried coming with characteristic impetuosity to ask
for his sword. "Hey, there! Lazy-bones! Have you finished?
Quick! What success with the sword?" Mime is not in sight.
His voice is heard, faint, from his hiding-place: "Is it
you, child? Are you alone?" Siegfried for some time can draw
no satisfactory answer from him, no matter how roughly
pressed. The dwarf is caught between two difficulties, and
must first of all things try to think out for himself the
safest course of action. Only by one who has never known
fear can Nothung, the indispensable, be forged. "Too wise am
I for such work!" he soliloquizes. On the other hand, his
wise head is forfeit to one who has never learned fear. Of
the two difficulties, the latter is obviously the one to be
first attended to. Siegfried fills the description
dangerously well of the foretold fatal enemy. "How shall I
contrive to teach him fear?" is Mime's nearest interest.
Siegfried, irritated by his continued hesitation, finally
catches hold of him. "Ha? Must I lend a hand? What have you
forged and furbished to-day?" "With no care but for your
welfare," answers Mime, "I was sunk in thought as to how I
should instruct you in a thing of great importance." "You
were sunk quite under the seat," laughs Siegfried; "what of
great importance did you discover there?" "I there learned
fear for your sake, that I might teach it to you,
dunce." "What about fear?" Siegfried asks. "You know nothing
about it, and you are thinking of going from the woods out
into the world? Of what use to you would be the strongest
sword, if you had no knowledge of fear?... Into the crafty
world I shall not let you fare before you have learned
fear." "If it is an art, why am I unacquainted with it? Out
with it! What about fear?" "Have you never felt,"—asks Mime,
in a voice which at the suggestion of his own words falls to
quaking, "have you never felt, in the dark woods, at
twilight,... when there are sounds in the distance of
rustling, humming and soughing, when wild muttering gusts
sweep past, disorderly fire-wisps flicker around you, a
swelling confused sound surges toward you,—have you not felt
a shuddering horror seize upon your limbs? A burning chill
shakes your frame, your senses swim and fail; the alarmed
heart trembling in your breast hammers to the point of
bursting? If you have never felt these things, fear is
unknown to you!" The music of fear is a darkened and
discoloured fire-music through which we recognise, as if
under a disguise veiling something of its beauty, the motif
of Brünnhilde's sleep. If one looks for reasons, one can
suppose the reference to be, as to a type of fearful things,
to the terror-inspiring barrier surrounding Brünnhilde; and
imagine a jesting intimation that fear, as Siegfried should
eventually learn it, is the sensation suspending the
heart-beats at sight of a beautiful woman in her sleep.
Siegfried has listened to Mime in amused
wonder: "Strange exceedingly must that be! My heart, I feel,
stands firm and hard in its place. That creeping and
shuddering, glowing and shivering, turning hot and turning
dizzy, hammering and trembling, I wish to feel the terror of
it, I long for that delight! But how can you, Mime, bring it
about?" "Just follow me. I will guide you to some purpose. I
have thought it all out. I know a dreadful
dragon; he has slain already and swallowed many; Fafner will
teach you fear, if you follow me to his lair." "Where is his
lair?" "Neidhöhle it is called. (Neid: envy;
Höhle: cavern.) Eastward it lies at the end of the
wood." "Then it is not far from the world?" "The world is
close by." "You are to take me there, and when I have
learned fear, away, into the world! So quick! Give me my
sword! I will swing it out in the world!" Mime confesses
that he neither has mended, nor ever can mend, the sword in
question. "No dwarf's strength is equal to it. More likely,"
he suggests, "one who knows no fear may discover the art!"
Siegfried, heartily weary of Mime's paltering, snatches up
the fragments of Nothung: "Here, the pieces! Away with the
bungler! My father's steel doubtless will let itself be
welded by me. Myself I will forge the sword!" And he falls
to work. "If you had taken diligent pains to learn the art,
it would now, of a truth, profit you," remarks Mime; "but
you were always lazy at the lesson. What proper work can you
do now?" "What the master cannot do," Siegfried aptly
retorts, "the apprentice might, if he had always minded him?
Take yourself off! Meddle not with this, or you may tumble
with it into the fire!" He heaps fuel on the hearth, fastens
the sword in a vice and starts filing it. Mime watches him,
and at this which looks like folly, cannot restrain the
exclamation: "What are you doing? Take the solder! You are
filing away the file!" But the disposition of the young
fellow without fear shows in his method with the sword. With
a brave thoroughness he reduces the whole blade to steel
filings. Mime follows all his movements. "Now I am as old as
this cavern and these woods, but such a thing have I never
seen! He will succeed with the sword, that I plainly
apprehend. In his fearlessness he will make it whole. The
Wanderer knew it well! How, now, shall I hide my endangered
head? It is forfeit to the intrepid boy unless Fafner shall
teach him fear—But, woe's me, poor wretch, how will he slay
the dragon, if he learns fear from him? How will he obtain
the Ring for me? Accursed dilemma! Here am I fast caught,
unless I find me wise counsel how to bring under compulsion
the fearless one himself...." "Quick, Mime!" Siegfried
interrupts Mime's meditations; "what is the name of the
sword which I have ground into filings?" "Nothung is the
name of the notable sword; your mother gave me the
information." Siegfried at work falls to lusty singing, a
song of primitive character, of a kind with what one can
suppose Tubal-cain singing at his ancient anvil. We see him
pumping the forge-bellows while the steel melts, pouring the
metal into a mould, cooling the mould in a water-trough,
breaking the plaster, heating the sword, hammering the red
blade, cooling it again, riveting the handle, polishing the
whole,—all of which actions his song celebrates: "Nothung!
Nothung! Notable sword! (Neidliches Schwert is
literally "covetable sword") Why must you of old be
shattered? To powder I have ground your sharp magnificence.
I now melt the filings in the crucible. Hoho! Hoho! Hahei!
Hahei! Blow, bellows, brighten the glow! Wild in the forest
grew a tree. I hewed it down, I burned the brown ash to
charcoal. It lies heaped now on the hearth. The coals of the
tree, how bravely they burn, how bright and clear they glow!
Upward they fly in a spray of sparks and melt the
steel-dust. Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword! Your powdered
steel is melting, in your own sweat you are swimming, soon I
shall swing you as my sword!"
Mime during this has been revolving his
own problem, and has hit upon a plan which seems to him to
meet all the difficulties of his case: Siegfried, beyond a
doubt, will forge the sword and kill Fafner. While he is tired
and heated from the encounter, Mime will offer him a drink
brewed from simples of his culling, a few drops of which
will plunge the boy into deep sleep, when, with the weapon
he is at this moment forging, Mime will clear him out of the
way and take possession of Ring and treasure. Enchanted with
his inspiration, he sets to work at once preparing the
somniferous drink.
Siegfried is singing at the top of his
lungs: "In the water flowed the stream of fire, it hissed
aloud in anger, but the cold tamed and chilled it; in the
water it flows no more, stiff and hard it is become, the
lordly steel—but hot blood will bathe it soon. Now sweat
again that I may forge you, Nothung, notable sword!" He
catches sight of Mime pottering with the cooking utensils.
"There is a wise smith come to shame," the old man answers
the youth's mocking inquiry; "the teacher receives lessons
from his pupil; all is up with art for the old one, he will
serve the young one as cook! While the young one makes iron
into broth, the old one will prepare a dish of eggs!" With
impish relish of the inwardness of the situation, he stirs
the mixture in the pot.
"Hoho! Hahei! Hoho!" Siegfried proceeds
with his work and his singing; "shape, my hammer, a hard
sword! Blood once dyed your pallid blue, its trickling red
brightened you, you laughed coldly, you cooled off the hot
liquid. Now the fire has made you glow red, your soft
hardness yields to the hammer; you dart angry sparks at me,
because I have tamed you, stubborn! The merry sparks, how
they delight me! Anger adorns the brave. You are gaily
laughing at me, though you feign to be angry and sullen.
Hoho! Hahei! By means of heat and hammer I have achieved it,
with stalwart blows I have shaped you; now let the red shame
vanish, become as hard and cold as you can...."
Mime is meanwhile revelling in dreams of the
greatness which is to follow upon his acquisition of the
Ring. He fairly skips up and down as he thinks of it all:
Brother Alberich himself reduced to subjection, the whole
world bowing at the nod of his, Mime's, head. No more toil,
others to toil for him.... "Mime is king, Prince of the
Nibelungen, lord over all! Hei, Mime! who would have thought
it of you?"
"Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword!"
harmoniously bellows Siegfried; "now you are fast in your
hilt. You were in two, I have forced you into one. No blow
after this shall break you. In the dead father's hand the
steel snapped, the living son forged it anew; now its bright
gleam flashes like laughter, its sharp edge cuts clean.
Nothung! Nothung! Young and renewed! I have brought you back
to life. You lay dead there, in fragments; now you flash
lightning, defiant and brave! Show caitiffs your gleam!
Strike the traitor! Fell the villain!" He waves over his
head the finished sword: "Look, Mime, you smith—thus cuts
Siegfried's sword!" He brings it down upon the anvil, which
falls apart, cleft from top to bottom. Mime tumbles over
with amazement.
Siegfrieds Tod by Otto von Leixner
II
The next scene shows the woods before
Fafner's cave. It is night. Alberich is dimly
distinguishable, lurking among the rocks, brooding his dark
thoughts, as he keeps covert watch over the treasure. He is
startled by what seems an untimely break of day, accompanied
by a great gust of wind. This defines itself as a galloping
gleam—a shining horse rushing through the forest. "Is it
already the slayer of the dragon?" he wonders; "is it he,
already, who shall kill Fafner?" A moonbeam breaking through
the clouds reveals the form of the Wanderer
advancing toward Neidhöhle. The enemies see and recognise
each other. Alberich, though greatly alarmed at this
inopportune presence, breaks into angry vituperation: "Out
of the way, shameless robber.... Your intrigues have done
harm enough!" "I am come to look on, not to act," Wotan
replies, grandly mild and unruffled; "who shall deny me a
wanderer's right of way?" Alberich, as if words of offence
were actually missiles, showers them thick upon the unmoved
god. He points out, virulently, the strength of his own
position compared with Wotan's, in whose hand that spear of
his must fly to pieces should he break a covenant
established as sacred by the runes carved on its shaft.
Wanderer, a shade weary of such a berating, yet losing
little of his placidity, retorts: "Not through any runes of
truth to covenants did my spear bind you, malignant, to me;
you my spear forces to bow before me by its strength; I
carefully keep it therefore for purposes of war." "How
haughtily do you threaten in your defiant strength," the
rabid Alberich continues, "yet how uneasy is all within your
breast.... Doomed to death through my curse is Fafner,
guardian of the treasure. Who will inherit from him? Will
the illustrious Hort come once more into the possession of
the Nibelung? The thought gnaws you with unsleeping care.
For, let me hold it again in this fist, far otherwise than
thick-witted giants shall I employ the power of the Ring;
then let the holy keeper of the heroes tremble; the heights
of Walhalla I shall storm with the hosts of Hella, the world
then will be mine to govern!" Tranquilly Wotan receives
this: "I know your meaning, but it creates in me no
uneasiness. He shall rule through the Ring who obtains it."
This calm of Wotan's gives Alberich the idea that the god
must, so to speak, have cards up his sleeve. "On the sons of
heroes," he suggests ironically, "you place your insolent
reliance, fond blossoms of your own blood. Good care have
you taken of a young fellow—not so?—who cunningly shall
pluck the fruit which you dare not yourself break off?" "Not
with me"—Wotan cuts short the discussion, "wrangle with
Mime. Danger threatens you through your brother. He is
bringing to this spot a youth who is to slay Fafner for him.
The boy knows nothing of me. The Nibelung uses him for his
own purposes. Wherefore, I tell you, comrade, do freely as
you choose!" Alberich can scarcely believe that he has heard
aright. "You will keep your hand from the treasure?"
Serenely and broadly, Wotan declares—a touch of that
tenderness in his tone which the thought of the Wälsungen
always has power to arouse—"Whom I love I leave to act for
himself: let him stand or fall, his own lord is he. I have
no use save for heroes!" This sounds very fair; to Alberich
almost too fair. He presses Wotan with further questions.
The answers are elusive as oracles, but satisfy Alberich of
thus much: that Wotan is himself out of the struggle for the
Ring. To point his personal disinterestedness, the god even
offers to wake the dragon, that Alberich may warn him of the
approaching danger and peradventure receive in token of
gratitude—the Ring! We suspect in this Wotan's taste for a
joke, unless it be an exhibition of that other trait of the
god's, the need to gratify his conscience with a comedy of
fairness. At this moment he is not, it is true, interfering;
but he is confidently watching the play of forces set
working by him long ago. The strong Siegfried armed with the
rejuvenated Sieges-schwert is a force having its impulse
originally from him. At this moment, perhaps because the
events immediately impending have cast their shadows across
the sensitive consciousness of an at times prophet, he is in
no uneasiness whatever with regard to the fate of the Ring.
To Alberich's mystification, he actually rouses Fafner. "Who
disturbs my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The
Fafner-motif is the old motif of the giants, slightly
altered so that instead of the ponderous tread of the
brothers it suggests the muffled ponderous beat of a
gigantic sinister heart. Wotan and Alberich explain to the
dragon his danger and indicate what may buy him safety.
Having heard them out, Fafner, unseen in the cave, gives a
long lazy comfortable yawn. "I lie and possess! Let me
sleep!" Wotan laughs. "Well, Alberich, the plan failed. But
abuse me no more, you rogue! One thing, I further enjoin
you, keep well in mind: Everything is after its kind, and
this kind you cannot alter!" The broad Erda-motif
accompanies this maxim. "Take a firm stand! Put your skill
to use with Mime, your brother. He is of the kind you
understand better. What is of a different kind, learn now to
know, too...." When Wotan disappears, the galloping is
heard, through the storm-wind that for a moment agitates the
leaves of the forest, of his rising Luft-ross. His obscure
last words have left Alberich puzzled, sorer and angrier
than ever. The air is full of curse-motif. "Laugh on, you
light-minded luxurious tribe of the gods! I shall still see
you all gone to destruction. While the gold shines in the
light there is a wise one keeping watch—His spite will
circumvent you all!" He hides himself among the tumbled
rocks near the cave-mouth from the brightening light of
dawn.
Mime enters guiding Siegfried. "This is
the spot, go no further!" Siegfried seats himself under a
great tree; they have been travelling through the woods all
night. "This is the place where I am to learn fear?" he
inquires light-heartedly. The excursion, as far as he knows,
has for its single object to teach him that art. He is not
of a suspicious turn and does not ask what interest in his
education has Mime, in whose affection he
instinctively does not believe. "Now, Mime," he instructs
the dwarf, "you are after this to avoid me. If I do not
learn here what I should learn, I shall fare further alone,
I shall finally be rid of you!" "Believe me, dear boy," says
the dwarf, "if you do not learn fear to-day and here, with
difficulty shall you learn it elsewhere and at another
time!" He directs the youth's eye to the black mouth of the
dragon-hole and describes with griesly detail the monster
inhabiting it. Siegfried listens unimpressed. Hearing, in
answer to his inquiry, that the monster has a heart and that
it is in the usual place: "I will drive Nothung into the
overweening brute's heart!" he determines lightly. He is
sceptical with regard to the lesson in fear which he has
been promised. "Just wait!" Mime warns him. "What I said was
empty sound in your ears. You must hear and see the creature
himself.... Remain where you are. When the sun climbs high,
watch for the dragon. He will come out of his cave and pass
along this way to go and drink at the spring." "Mime," says
Siegfried, with a laugh for his foolish big-boy joke, "if
you are to be at the spring I will not hinder the dragon
from going there. I will not drive Nothung into his spleen
until he has drunk you up. Wherefore, take my advice: do not
lie down to rest at the water's edge, but take yourself off
as far as ever you can, and never come back!" Mime is too
near, as he thinks, the hour of triumph, to take offence.
May he not be permitted, after the fight, to refresh the
victor with a drink? He will be near. Let Siegfried call him
if he needs advice,... or if he finds the sensation of fear
delectable!
When Siegfried has freed himself of Mime,
whose company seems to become more and more unendurable as
he is nearer parting from him for ever, he stretches out
again under the great tree, folding his arms beneath his
head. "That that fellow is not my father," he muses, "how glad
am I of that! The fresh woodland only begins to please me,
the glad daylight to smile to me, now that the offensive
wretch is out of my sight!" He drives away the thought of
him and lets sweeter reflections gradually absorb him. The
leaves rustle and waver; delicate shafts of sunshine drop
through them and play over the forest floor. The
exquisiteness of the hour, by its natural power over the
mood, turns the lonely boy's thoughts toward the only human
beings life has so far given him to love,—and in images so
vague and distant! "How did my father look?" he wonders
dreamily, and answers himself: "Like me, of course!" After a
longer spell of gazing up among the trees, while the soft
influences of the fragrant woodland world and lovely summer
day still further overmaster him: "But—how did my mother
look?... That I cannot in the least picture! Like the doe's,
I am sure, shone her limpid lustrous eyes—only, more
beautiful by far!" The thought of her death fills him with
boundless sadness, but not sharp or bitter,—dreamy and sweet
from its tenderness. "When she had born me, wherefore did
she die? Do human mothers always die of their sons? How sad
were that! Oh, might I, son, behold my mother!... My
mother—a woman of humankind!" The motif of mother-love is
but a slight, beautiful variation from the motif of love in
nature accompanying Siegfried's reference to the deer paired
in the woods, that strain like the heaving of a great heart
oppressed by its burden of love. The thought of his
never-known mother draws forth sighs from Siegfried's lips.
A long time he lies silent. The Freia-motif, the motif of
beauty, clambers upward like a dewy branch of wild clematis.
All is still around, but the little wind-stirred leaves,
which weave and weave as if a delicate green gold-shot
fabric of sound. Against this airy tapestry suddenly stands
forth like a vivid pattern the warbling of a bird.
Over and over, with pretty variations, the bird gives its
note. It catches Siegfried's attention; he listens. "You
sweet little bird," he at last addresses the singer up among
the branches, "I never heard you before. Is your home here
in the forest?..." The thought occurs to him, so natural to
the simple: "Could I but understand the sweet babbling,
certainly it would tell me something—perhaps about the dear
mother!" He remembers hearing from Mime that one might come
to understand the language of the birds. Attractive
possibility! Pricked by his desire at once to bring it
about, he springs up, cuts one of the reeds growing around
the pool where Fafner goes to drink, and fashions it into a
pipe. He tries upon it to imitate the bird-note. "If I can
sing his language," is his reasoning, "I shall understand,
no doubt, what he sings!" After repeated attempts,
charmingly comical, and much vain mending of the reed with
the edge of Nothung, he grows impatient, is ashamed of his
unsuccess before the "roguish listener." He tosses away the
silly reed and takes his silver horn. "A merry wild-wood
note, such as I can play, you shall hear! I have sounded it
as a call to draw to me some dear companion. So far, nothing
better has come than a wolf or a bear. Let us see, now, what
it attracts this time, whether a dear comrade will come to
the call?" He places the horn to his lips and sounds the
cheery Lock-weise (lure-call) over and over, with
long sustained notes between the calls, during which he
looks up at the bird, to see how he likes it. As a variation
he plays the motifs which describe himself, the large heroic
Siegfried-motif, and then the gay, rash, lesser
Nothung-Siegfried motif. He has returned to the Lock-weise,
and is repeating it with obstinate persistence, a-mind not
to stop until the companion his lonesomeness yearns for
shall have answered him when a bellowing sound behind him
makes him face about. We had been warned already by the
Wurm-motif, heard before in Nibelheim, when Alberich by
the power of the Tarnhelm turned himself into a dragon.
Siegfried at sight of Fafner, whom the loud Lock-weise has
drawn from his slumbers and his cave, laughs aloud: "My tune
has charmed forth something truly lovely! A tidy comrade you
would make for me!" "What is that?" roars Fafner, fixing the
glare of his eyes upon the shapely form of Siegfried,
insignificant in size, as he counts it. "Haha!" cries
Siegfried, enchanted to hear from an animal talk which he
can understand. "If you are an animal that can speak, you
very likely can teach me something. Here is one who does not
know fear; can he learn it from you?" "Is this insolence?"
asks the amazed brute. "Call it insolence or what you
please, but I shall fall upon you bodily, unless you teach
me fear." Fafner laughs grimly, as if he licked his chops:
"I wanted drink, I now find meat as well!" He shows the red
interior of his vast jaws fringed with teeth. There is a
brief further exchange of threats and jeers, then Fafner
bellows: "Pruh! Come on, swaggering child!" Siegfried
shouts: "Look out, bellower, the swaggerer comes!" and,
Nothung in hand, leaps to the assault. Vainly Fafner spouts
flame to blind and terrify him. The fight ends as it must.
The dragon falls beneath the Wotan-sword, wielded by the
hero without fear.
With his failing breath, in a tone
strangely void of resentment, the dragon questions his slip
of an adversary, so unexpectedly victorious: "Who are you,
intrepid boy, that have pierced my heart? Who incited the
child to the murderous deed? Your brain never conceived that
which you have done...." A motif we have come to know well
punctuates the dying speech of this still another victim of
the curse on the Ring. "I do not know much, as yet,"
Siegfried replies; "I do not know even who I am. But it was
yourself roused my temper to fight with you." The last of
the giants, his hollow voice growing fainter, tells the
"clear-eyed boy," the "rosy hero," who it is he has slain,
and warns him of the treachery surrounding the owner of the
Hort. "Tell me further from whom I am descended," speaks
Siegfried; "wise, of a truth, do you appear, wild one, in
dying. Guess it from my name. Siegfried I am called!" But
the Worm sighing, "Siegfried!..." gives up the breath.
After a moment's contemplation of the
mountainous dead, Siegfried resolutely drags from his breast
the sword which he had driven in up to the hilt. A drop of
the dragon's blood spurts against his hand. With the
exclamation: "The blood burns like fire!" he lifts his
finger to his mouth. At once his attention is arrested by
the voices of the birds. With increasing interest he
harkens: It seems to him almost as if the birds were
speaking to him; a distinct impression he receives of words.
"Is it the effect of tasting the blood?" he wonders. "That
curious little bird there, hark, what is he saying to me?"
From the tree-top come clear words on a bird's warble: "Hei,
to Siegfried belongs now the Nibelung's treasure! Oh, might
he find the Hort in the cave! If he should win the Tarnhelm
it would serve him for delightful adventures; but if he
should find the Ring it would make him sovereign of the
world!" Siegfried has listened with bated breath. "Thanks,
dear little bird, for your advice. Gladly will I do as you
bid!" He enters the cave. As he disappears, Mime crawls near
to convince himself ocularly of Fafner's death. At the same
moment, Alberich slips from his hiding-place and throws
himself across Mime's path, to bar his way to the treasure.
A bitter quarrel at once springs up between the brothers;
Alberich claims the treasure because it is rightly his, Mime
because he reared the youth who has recovered it from the
dragon. Mime, whom Alberich's violence cows still as in the
old days, offers to share, if he may have the Tarnhelm—a sly
proposition,—he will renounce the Ring; but this Alberich
hears with furious scorn, and the wrangle is at its height
when Siegfried reappears at the cave's mouth. In his hands
are Tarnhelm and Ring. Returning into sight after the angry
cat-fight between the ill-conditioned pair, he appears more
than ever large, serene, fair, noble. Mime and Alberich
betake themselves quickly back to their lurking-places.
Siegfried stands considering his odd-looking acquisitions:
"Of what use you may be to me I know not; but I took you
from the heaped gold of the treasure because a good adviser
bade me. As ornaments you shall serve, bearing witness to
this day; these baubles shall remind me that in combat I
slew Fafner, but failed still to learn fear!" He places the
ring on his finger and the Tarnhelm at his belt. In the
silence that falls, he listens again for the voice of the
bird. It suddenly drops from the tree-top: "Hei! Siegfried
possesses the Tarnhelm and Ring! Oh, let him not trust Mime
the false! If Siegfried should listen closely to the
wretch's hypocritical words, he would penetrate the true
meaning of Mime's heart; such is the virtue of the taste of
dragon's blood!" No sooner has Siegfried heard, than he sees
Mime approaching. He waits for him, leaning on his sword,
quietly watchful. The little man contorts body and face into
postures and expressions as humbly flattering and cajoling
as he can; at every few steps he scrapes and curtseys.
"Welcome, Siegfried! Tell me, you soul of courage, have you
learned fear?" "Not yet have I found the teacher!" "But the
Serpent-Worm which you slew, a fearsome fellow, was he not?"
"Grim and malignant though he were, his death verily grieves
me, since miscreants of deeper dye still live at large. The
one who bade me murder him, I hate more than the dragon!"
Mime to all appearance takes these words as if they carried
no offence. What he thinks he is saying in reply we know
not; but this is what, spoken in a voice of tenderest
affection, Siegfried hears: "Gently now! Not much longer
shall you see me. I shall soon close your eyes for their
eternal sleep. That which I needed you for you have
accomplished; all I wish, now, is to wrest from you the
treasure. I believe I shall effect this with small trouble.
You know you are not difficult to befool!" "So you are
meditating harm to me?" Siegfried asks quietly. Mime starts
in amazement. "Did I say anything of the sort?"
Then again, in accents sickly-sweet, with
the writhings and grimaces of an excessive affection:
"Siegfried, listen, my son! You and the like of you I have
always hated from my very heart. Out of love I did not rear
you, burdensome nuisance. The trouble I took was for the
sake of the treasure in Fafner's keeping. If you do not give
it to me willingly, Siegfried, my son, it must be plain even
to yourself, you will have to leave me your life!" This
formal and direct declaration of hate, proving the justice
of his instinctive dislike all along of Mime, calls forth
from Siegfried's relief even in this moment the exclamation:
"That you hate me, I gladly hear!" Mime, while giving
himself visibly all the pains in the world to disguise from
Siegfried his intentions, to each of the youth's questions
answers, in the supposition that he is telling his lies, the
exact truth. Thus Siegfried learns that the drink Mime has
prepared for his refreshment will plunge him into deep
sleep, upon which, for greater security in his enjoyment of
the treasure, Mime will with Nothung cut off his head. The
little monster chuckles genially while making these
revelations. As Mime reaches him the treacherous drink,
Siegfried, moved by an impulse of overpowering disgust, with
a sudden swift blow of Nothung strikes him down.
Alberich's laugh of glee and derision rings out from his
hiding-place.
After gazing for a moment at the body of
the repulsive little traitor,—with the after-thought, it is
possible, that the flat of Nothung would have been
sufficient for anything so small, though so venomous,—he
gives it the obsequies which seem to him the most fitting.
He throws him in the cave, that he may lie on the heaped
gold and have the coveted treasure at last for his own. He
drags Fafner to the cave's mouth, that his bulk may block
it. "Lie there, you too, dark dragon! Guard at once the
shining treasure and the treasure-loving enemy; thus have
you both found rest!"
The sun is high; heated with his
exertions, Siegfried returns to his mossy couch under the
trees, and is presently again looking overhead for the
friendly bird. "Once more, dear little bird, after such a
troublesome interruption, I should be glad to listen to your
singing. I can see you swinging happily on the bough;
brothers and sisters flutter around you, blithe and sweet,
twittering the while...." A vague sadness touches his mood,
and this pensive moment goes far toward gaining back to him
the sympathy which his overgreat sturdiness in dealing death
had perhaps forfeited. He is now a poor lonesome beautiful
boy, completely sweet-blooded and brave—the hunter that has
never robbed the mother of her young—whose heart full of
instinctive affection has never had an object on which it
could spend itself. "But I," he says envyingly to the bird,
"I am so alone! I have neither brother nor sister! My mother
vanished,—my father fell,—their son never saw them...." In
this humour he lets a shade of regret transpire for the
necessity to kill Mime. "My only companion was a loathly
dwarf; goodness never knit the bond of affection between us;
artful toils the cunning foe spread for me. I was at last
even forced
to slay him!" He stares sorrowfully at the sky through the
trees. "Friendly bird, I ask you now: will you assist my
quest for a good comrade? Will you guide me to the right
one? I have called so often and never found one; you, my
trusty one, will surely hit it better! So apt has been the
counsel given by you already! Now sing! I am listening for
your song!" Readily the bright voice from above answers in a
joyous warble: "Hei! Siegfried has slain the wicked dwarf! I
have in mind for him now the most glorious mate! On a high
rock she sleeps, a wall of flame surrounds her abode. If he
should push through the fire, if he should waken the bride,
then were Brünnhilde his own!" With an instantaneousness
touchingly significant of his hard heart-hunger, an attack
of impassioned sighing seizes the young Siegfried. "Oh,
lovely song! Oh, sweetest breath! How its message glows
within my breast, burning me! How it sets my enkindled heart
to throbbing! What is it rushing so wildly through my heart
and senses?... It drives me, exulting, out of the woods to
the mountain-rock. Speak to me again, charming singer: shall
I break through the fiery wall? Can I waken the bride?"
"Never," replies the bird, "shall the bride be won,
Brünnhilde wakened, by a faint-heart! Only by one who knows
no fear!" Siegfried shouts with delight: "The stupid boy who
knows no fear—little bird, why, that am I! This very day I
gave myself fruitless pains to learn it from Fafner. I now
burn with the desire to learn it from Brünnhilde! How shall
I find the way to her rock?" The bird forsakes the treetop,
flutters over the youth's head and flies further. Siegfried
interprets this as an invitation. "Thus is the way shown me.
Wherever you fly, I follow your flight!" We see him going
hither and thither in his attempt to follow the erratic
flight of a bird. His guide after a moment bends in a
definite direction and Siegfried disappears after him among
the trees.
Siegfried and Brunhilde by Howard David
Johnson
III
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.
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STORIES OF THE WAGNER OPERA
BY
H.A. GUERBER
SIEGFRIED.
Sieglinde, having dragged herself into the depths of the
great untrodden forest, dwelt there in utter solitude until
the time came for her son Siegfried to come into the world.
Sick and alone, the poor woman went about in search of aid,
and finally came to Mime's cavern, where, after giving birth
to her child and intrusting him to the care of the dwarf,
she gently breathed her last.
Here, in the grand old forest, young Siegfried grew up to
manhood, knowing nothing of his parentage except the lie
which Mime, the wily dwarf, chose to tell him, that he was
his own son. Strong, fearless, and unruly, the youth soon
felt the utmost contempt for the cringing dwarf, and,
instead of bending over the anvil and swinging the heavy
hammer, he preferred to range the forest, hunting the wild
beasts, climbing the tallest trees, and scaling the steepest
rocks.
As the opera opens, the curtain rises upon a sooty cave,
where the dwarf Mime is alone at
work, hammering a sword upon his anvil and complaining
bitterly of the strength and violence of young Siegfried,
who shatters every weapon he makes. In spite of repeated
disappointments, however, Mime the Nibelung works on. His
sole aim is to weld a sword which in the bold youth's hands
will avail to slay his enemy, the giant Fafnir, the owner of
the ring and magic helm, and the possessor of all the mighty
hoard.
While busy in his forge, Mime tells how the giant fled
with his treasure far away from the haunts of men, concealed
his gold in the Neidhole, a grewsome den. There, thanks to
the magic helmet, he has assumed the loathsome shape of a
great dragon, whose fiery breath and lashing tail none dares
to encounter.
As Mime finishes the sword he has been fashioning,
Siegfried, singing his merry hunting song, dashes into the
cave, holding a bear in leash. After some rough play, which
nearly drives the unhappy Mime mad with terror, Siegfried
sets the beast free, grasps the sword, and with one single
blow shatters it to pieces on the anvil, to Mime's great
chagrin. Another weapon has failed to satisfy his needs, and
the youth, after harshly upbraiding the unhappy smith,
throws himself sullenly down in front
of the fire. Mime then cringingly approaches him with
servile offers of food and drink, continually vaunting his
love and devotion. These protests of simulated affection
greatly disgust Siegfried, who is well aware of the fact
that they are nothing but the merest pretence.
In his anger against this constant deceit, he finally
resorts to violence to wring the truth from Mime, who, with
many interruptions and many attempts to resume his old
whining tone, finally reveals to him the secret of his birth
and the name of his mother. He also tells him all he gleaned
about his father, who fell in battle, and, in proof of the
veracity of his words, produces the fragments of Siegmund's
sword, which the dying Sieglinde had left for her son:—
‘Lo! what thy mother
had left me!
For my pains and worry together
She gave me this poor reward.
See! a broken sword,
Brandished, she said, by thy father,
When foiled in the last of his fights.’
Siegfried, who has listened to all this tale with
breathless attention, interrupting the dwarf only to silence
his recurring attempts at self-praise, now declares he will
fare forth into the wild world as soon as Mime has welded
together the precious fragments of the sword.
In the mean while, finding the dwarf's hated presence too
unbearable, he rushes out and vanishes in the green forest
depths. Left alone once more, Mime wistfully gazes after
him, thinking how he may detain the youth until the dragon
has been slain. At last he slowly begins to hammer the
fragments of the sword, which will not yield to his skill
and resume their former shape.
While the dwarf Mime is abandoning himself to moody
despair, Wotan has been walking through the forest. He is
disguised as a Wanderer, according to his wont, and suddenly
enters Mime's cave. The dwarf starts up in alarm at the
sight of a stranger, but after asking him who he may be, and
learning that he prides himself upon his wisdom, he bids him
begone. Wotan, however, who has come hither to ascertain
whether there is any prospect of discovering anything new,
now proposes a contest of wit, in which the loser's head
shall be at the winner's disposal. Mime reluctantly assents,
and begins by asking a question concerning the dwarfs and
their treasures. This Wotan answers by describing the
Nibelungs' gold, and the power wielded by Alberich as long
as he was owner of the magic ring.
Mime's second inquiry is relative to the
inhabitants of earth, and Wotan describes the great stature
of the giants, who, however, were no match for the dwarfs,
until they obtained possession not only of the ring, but
also of the great hoard over which Fafnir now broods in the
guise of a dragon.
Then Mime questions him concerning the gods, but only to
be told that Wotan, the most powerful of them all, holds an
invincible spear upon whose shaft are engraved powerful
runes. In speaking thus the disguised god strikes the ground
with his spear, and a long roll of thunder falls upon the
terrified Mime's ear.
The three questions have been asked and successfully
answered, and it is now Mime's turn to submit to an
interrogatory, from which he evidently shrinks, but to which
he must yield. Wotan now proceeds to ask him which race,
beloved by Wotan, is yet visited by his wrath, which sword
is the most invincible of weapons, and who will weld its
broken pieces together. Mime triumphantly answers the first
two questions by naming the Volsung race and Siegmund's
blade, Nothung; but as he has failed to weld the sword anew,
and has no idea who will be able to achieve the feat, he is
forced to acknowledge himself beaten by the third.
Scorning to take any advantage of so puny
a rival, Wotan refuses to take the forfeited head, and
departs, after telling the Nibelung that the sword can only
be restored to its pristine glory by the hand of a man who
knows no fear, and that the same man will claim it as his
lawful prize and dispose of Mime's head:—
‘Hark thou forfeited
dwarf;
None but he
Who never feared,
Nothung forges anew.
Henceforth beware!
Thy wily head
Is forfeit to him
Whose heart is free from fear.’
When Siegfried returns and finds the fire low, the dwarf
idle, and the sword unfinished, he angrily demands an
explanation. Mime then reveals to him that none but a
fearless man can ever accomplish the task. As Siegfried does
not even know the meaning of the word, Mime graphically
describes all the various phases of terror to enlighten him.
Siegfried listens to his explanations, but when they have
come to an end and he has ascertained that such a feeling
has never been harboured in his breast, he springs up and
seizes the pieces of the broken sword. He files them to
dust, melts the metal on the fire, which he blows
into an intense glow, and after moulding tempers the sword.
While hammering lustily Siegfried gaily sings the Song of
the Sword. The blade, when finished, flashes in his hand
like a streak of lightning, and possesses so keen an edge
that he cleaves the huge anvil in two with a single stroke.
While Siegfried is thus busily employed, Mime, dreading
the man who knows no fear, and to whom he has been told his
head was forfeit, concocts a poisonous draught. This he
intends to administer to the young hero as soon as the
frightful dragon is slain, for he has artfully incited the
youth to go forth and attack the monster, in hope of
learning the peculiar sensation of fear, which he has never
yet known.
In another cave, in the depths of the selfsame dense
forest, is Alberich the dwarf, Mime's brother and former
master. He mounts guard night and day over the Neidhole,
where Fafnir, the giant dragon, gloats over his gold. It is
night and the darkness is so great that the entrance to the
Neidhole only dimly appears. The storm wind rises and sweeps
through the woods, rustling all the forest leaves. It
subsides however almost as soon as it has risen, and Wotan,
still disguised as a Wanderer, appears in the moonlight, to
the great alarm of the wily dwarf.
A moment's examination suffices to enable him to recognise
his quondam foe, whom he maliciously taunts with the loss of
the ring, for well he knows the god cannot take back what he
has once given away.
Wotan, however, seems in no wise inclined to resent this
taunting speech, but warns Alberich of the approach of Mime,
accompanied by a youth who knows no fear, and whose keen
blade will slay the monster. He adds that the youth will
appropriate the hoard, ere he rouses Fafnir to foretell the
enemy's coming. Then he disappears with the usual
accompaniment of rushing winds and rumbling thunder.
The warning which Alberich would fain disbelieve is
verified, as soon as the morning breaks, by the appearance
of Siegfried and Mime. The latter is acting as guide, and
eagerly points out the mighty dragon's lair. But even then
the youth still refuses to tremble, and when Mime describes
Fafnir's fiery breath, coiling tail, and impenetrable hide,
he good-naturedly declares he will save his most telling
blow until the monster's side is exposed, and he can plunge
Nothung deep into his gigantic breast.
Thus forewarned against the dragon's various modes of
attack, Siegfried advances boldly, while Mime prudently
retires to a place of
safety. He is closely watched by Alberich, who crouches
unseen in his cave. Siegfried seats himself on the bank to
wait for the dragon's awakening, and beguiles the time by
trying to imitate the songs of the birds, which he would
fain understand quite clearly. As all his efforts result in
failure, Siegfried soon casts aside the reed with which he
had tried to reproduce their liquid notes, and, winding his
horn, boldly summons Fafnir to come forth and encounter him
in single fight.
This challenge immediately brings forth the frightful
dragon. To Siegfried's surprise he can still talk like a
man. After a few of the usual amenities, the fight begins.
Mindful of his boast, Siegfried skilfully parries every
blow, evades the fiery breath, lashing tail, and dangerous
claws, and, biding his time, thrusts his sword up to the
very hilt in the giant's heart.
With his dying breath, the monster tells the youth of the
curse which accompanies his hoard, and, rolling over, dies
in terrible convulsions. The young hero, seeing the monster
is dead, withdraws his sword from the wound; but as he does
so a drop of the fiery blood falls upon his naked hand. The
intolerable smarting sensation it produces causes him to put
it to his lips to allay the pain. No sooner has he
done so than he suddenly becomes aware that a miracle has
happened, for he can understand the songs of all the forest
birds.
Listening wonderingly, Siegfried soon hears a bird
overhead warning him to possess himself of the tarn-helmet
and magic ring, and proclaiming that the treasure of the
Nibelungs is now his own. He immediately thanks the bird for
its advice, and vanishes into the gaping Neidhole in search
of the promised treasures:—
‘Hi! Siegfried shall
have now
The Nibelungs' hoard,
For here in the hole
It awaits his hand!
Let him not turn from the tarn-helm,
It leads to tasks of delight;
But finds he a ring for his finger,
The world he will rule with his will.’
Alberich and Mime, who have been trembling with fear as
long as the conflict raged, now timidly venture out of their
respective hiding places. Then only they become aware of
each other's intention to hasten into the cave and
appropriate the treasure, and begin a violent quarrel. It is
brought to a speedy close, however, by the reappearance of
Siegfried wearing the glittering helmet, armour, and magic
ring.
The mere appearance of this martial young
figure causes both dwarfs to slink back to their hiding
places, while the birds resume their song. They warn
Siegfried to distrust Mime, who is even then approaching
with the poisonous draught. This the dwarf urges upon him
with such persistency that Siegfried, disgusted with his
fawning hypocrisy, finally draws his sword and kills him
with one blow:—
‘Taste of my sword,
Sickening talker!
Meed for hate
Nothung makes;
Work for which he was mended.’
Then, while Alberich is laughing in malicious glee over
the downfall of his rival, Siegfried flings his body into
the Neidhole, and rolls the dragon's carcass in front of the
opening to protect the gold. He next pauses again to listen
to the bird in the lime tree, which sings of a lovely maiden
surrounded by flames, who can be won as bride only by the
man who knows no fear:—
‘Ha! Siegfried has
slain
The slanderous dwarf.
O, would that the fairest
Wife he might find!
On lofty heights she sleeps,
A fire embraces her hall;
If he strides through the blaze,
And wakens the bride,
Brunhilde he wins to wife.’
This new quest sounds so alluring to Siegfried, that he
immediately sets out upon it, following the road which the
Wanderer has previously taken. The latter has gone on to the
very foot of the mountain, upon which the flickering flames
which surrounded Brunhilde are burning brightly. There he
pauses to conjure the goddess Erda to appear and reveal
future events. Slowly and reluctantly the Earth goddess
arises from her prolonged sleep. Her face is pallid as the
newly fallen snow, her head crowned with glittering icicles,
and her form enveloped in a great white winding-sheet. In
answer to the god's inquiries about the future, she bids him
question the Norns and Brunhilde. After a few obscure
prophecies he allows her to sink down into her grave once
more, for he now knows that one of the Volsung race has won
the magic ring, and is even now on his way up the mountain
to awaken Brunhilde.
In corroboration of these words, Siegfried appears a few
moments after the prophetess or Wala has again sunk into
rest. Challenged by Wotan the Wanderer, he declares he is on
the way to rouse the sleeping maiden. In answer to a few
questions, he rapidly adds that he has
slain Mime and the dragon, has tasted its blood, and
brandishes aloft the glittering sword which has done him
good service and which he has welded himself.
Wotan, wishing to test his courage, and at the same time
to fulfil his promise to Brunhilde that none should attempt
to pass the flames except the one who feared not even his
magic spear, now declares that he has slain his father,
Siegmund. Siegfried, the avenger, boldly draws his gleaming
sword, which, instead of shattering as once before against
the divine spear, cuts it to pieces. In the same instant the
Wanderer disappears, amid thunder and lightning. Siegfried,
looking about him to find Brunhilde, becomes aware of the
flickering flames of a great fire, which rise higher and
higher as he rushes joyfully into their very midst, blowing
his horn and singing his merry hunting lay.
The flames, which now invade the whole stage, soon
flicker and die out, and, as the scene becomes visible once
more, Brunhilde is seen fast asleep upon a grassy mound.
Siegfried comes, and, after commenting upon the drowsing
steed, draws nearer still. Then he perceives the sleeping
figure in armour, and bends solicitously over it. Gently he
removes the shield and helmet, cuts open the armour, and
starts back in surprise
when he sees a flood of bright golden hair fall rippling all
around the fair form of a sleeping woman:—
‘No man it is!
Hallowed rapture
Thrills through my heart;
Fiery anguish
Enfolds my eyes.
My senses wander
And waver.
Whom shall I summon
Hither to help me?
Mother! Mother!
Be mindful of me.’
His head suddenly sinks down upon her bosom, but, as her
immobility continues, he experiences for the first time a
faint sensation of fear. This is born of his love for her,
and, in a frantic endeavour to recall her to life, he bends
down and kisses her passionately. At the magic touch of his
lips, Brunhilde opens her eyes, and, overjoyed at the sight
of the rising sun, greets it with a burst of rapturous song
ere she turns to thank her deliverer. The first glimpse of
the hero in his glittering mail is enough to fill her heart
with love, and recognizing in him Siegfried, the hero whose
coming she herself has foretold, she welcomes him with joy.
Siegfried then relates how he found her, how he delivered
her from the fetters
of sleep, and, impetuously declaring his passion, claims her
love in return.
The scene between the young lovers, the personifications
of the Sun and of Spring, is one of indescribable passion
and beauty, and when they have joined in a duet of
unalterable love, Brunhilde no longer regrets past glories,
but declares the world well lost for the love she has won.
‘Away Walhall's
Lightening world!
In dust with thy seeming,
Towers lie down!
Farewell greatness
And gift of the gods!
End in bliss
Thou unwithering breed!
You, Norns, unravel
The rope of runes!
Darken upwards
Dusk of the gods!
Night of annulment,
Near in thy cloud!—
I stand in sight
Of Siegfried's star;
For me he was
And for me he will be,
Ever and always,
One and all
Lighting love
And laughing death.’
These sentiments are more than echoed by the enamoured
Siegfried, who is beside himself with rapture at the mere
thought of possessing the glorious creature, who has
forgotten all her divine state to become naught but a loving
and lovable woman.
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THE TWILIGHT OF
THE GODS
(DIE GOETTERDAEMMERUNG)
I
In the Prologue of "The Twilight of the
Gods" we learn from report the portion of Wotan's history
which belongs between the breaking of his spear and the
final events which bring about the gods' end.
At the rising of the curtain the three
Norns are dimly discerned upon the well-known scene of
Brünnhilde's sleep, before the entrance to the rocky hall
where Siegfried and she have their dwelling. The fiery
palisade around their fastness casts a faint glow upon the
night. The Norns, as it were to while away the heavy hour
before dawn, spin and sing. Their "spinning" consists in
casting a golden coil from one to the other, after some
peculiar ritual, involving fastening it to this pine-tree,
winding it about that point of rock, casting it over the
shoulder, northward. Their song is of no frivolous matter,
but as if we should entertain ourselves recounting the
Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge. Of the World-Ash they
tell, in whose shade a well flowed, murmuring runes of
wisdom; of a daring god who came to drink at the well,
paying in toll one of his eyes. From the World-Ash, he,
Wotan, broke a branch and fashioned it into the shaft of a
spear. This he carved with runes of truth to compacts, and
held it as the "haft of the world." An intrepid hero clove
it asunder. Wotan thereupon commanded the heroes of
Walhalla to hew down the World-Ash and cut it to pieces.
"High looms the castle built by giants," sings the youngest
of the Norns; "there in the hall sits Wotan amid the holy
clan of the gods and heroes. Wooden billets heaped to a
lofty pile surround the room. That was once the World-Ash!
When the wood shall burn hot and clear, when the flame shall
devour the shining hall, the day of the end of the gods
shall have dawned!" Wotan himself, when the danger is no
longer to be averted of a dishonoured end,—if Alberich, that
is, shall regain possession of the Ring,—will plunge the
splinters of his defeated spear deep into Loge's breast and
himself set the World-Ash ablaze.
As night begins to yield to dawn,
confusion falls on the minds of the Norns; their visions,
they complain, are dim. The strands of the coil become
tangled between their fingers. One of them descries an angry
face—Alberich's—floating before her; another becomes aware
of an avenging curse gnawing at the threads of the coil.
This suddenly snaps—terrific omen! Appalled, with the cry
that "eternal wisdom is at an end," they vanish in search of
their mother, Erda, in the earth's depths.
Day breaks. The reflection of Loge's
defence pales. There greets our ear suddenly a sturdy
strain, resembling something we have heard before. By
analysis, we discover in it one of the Siegfried-motifs, the
horn-call, but grown so robust and weighty, so firm, strong,
commanding, that it hardly more than reminds us of the
youthful Lock-weise, fluttering forth hopefully to find a
"dear companion." The dear companion has long been found.
Hard upon this motif of the grown-up Siegfried comes a
wholly new motif, the motif of Brünnhilde Wedded, wonderful
for its entwining tenderness, yet the elevation it combines
with its immensely feminine quality. It is
given over and over; the instruments pass it from one to the
other, like a watchword.
The two thus announced come forth into the
sunrise from their chamber in the rock, Siegfried
full-armed, Brünnhilde leading Grane. They are glorious in
this scene of parting. A nobler passion we do not remember
hearing expressed than animates them and the music which
interprets their being. It is all a little more than
life-size.
"To new exploits, beloved hero, how poor
were my love, did I not let you go! One single care
restrains me, fear of the insufficiency of all I could
bestow. What I learned from the gods I have given you, a
rich treasury of holy runes, but the maidenly staff of my
strength the hero took from me, before whom I now bow.
Despoiled of wisdom, though filled with desire to serve;
rich in love, but devoid of power, oh, despise not the poor
lover who can only wish you, not give you, more!"
But not all the wisdom of the Wala's
daughter, not the rich treasury of runes, have availed to
change Siegfried from his big incurable simplicity,—as his
answer in effect declares: "More did you give me,
wonder-woman, than I have capacity to retain! Be not angry
that your teaching should have left me still untaught. One
knowledge there is which I, none the less, hold fast: that
Brünnhilde lives and is mine; one lesson I learned with
ease: to think ever of Brünnhilde!"
The gift she asks of his love is that he
shall think of himself, think of his great deeds, increase
his glory. He bestows on her in leaving the Ring, in which
the virtue is condensed of all great deeds he ever did. In
exchange she gives him Grane. After offering each other, in
their great mood, the consolation that to part is for them
not to be parted, for where he goes there in very truth goes
she, and where she remains there does he too abide, they
call upon the gods to feed their eyes upon the dedicated
pair they are, and with jubilant appellations for each
other—Victorious light! Effulgent star! Radiant love!
Radiant life!—the last good words ever exchanged between
them!—they tear apart, without sorrow or foreboding. She
watches him out of sight. The stage-directions say: "From
her happy smile may be divined the appearance of the
cheerfully departing hero." The emphatic phrase is heard, as
he descends into the valley, in which at their first meeting
(in the opera "Siegfried") they vowed that each was to the
other "eternally and for ever, his inheritance and his
possession, his only and his all!" The curtain closes on the
Prologue.
By the music we can follow Siegfried on
his journey. We know when he comes to the fire, when he
comes to the Rhine. There floats to us, with the effect of a
folk-song, a legend, the lament of the Rhine-nymphs for
their lost gold. Sounds of warning are in the air as
Siegfried approaches the Hall of the Gibichungen, but to
such the hardy hero, no need to say, is fast sealed.
The curtain unclosing shows the interior
of the Hall of the Gibichungen, open at the further end on
the Rhine. Gunther, his sister Gutrune, and their
half-brother Hagen, sit at a table set with drinking-horns
and flagons.
This Hagen is the Nibelung's son of Erda's
prophecy: "When the dark enemy of Love shall in wrath beget
a son, the end of the gods shall not be long delayed." An
allusion of Hagen's there is to his mother, as having
succumbed to the craft of Alberich. On the other hand, a
reference of Gunther's to Frau Grimhild, his mother and
Hagen's, would seem to show that her history, whatever it
may have been, bore no outward blot.
He is early old, this "child of hate," as
Wotan long ago called him, sere and pallid, totally unglad
and hating the glad. He is the tool created
by Alberich—even as Siegmund was Wotan's tool,—to win back
for him the Ring. From his Nibelung father he has more than
human powers and knowledge. In the conversation which we
overhear between the brethren, we witness Hagen laying lines
for the recapture of the Ring and Siegfried's destruction,
for he, like Mime, understands that there can be no safety
for him who shall unrightfully get from Siegfried the Ring,
while the strong-handed fellow lives.
Gunther—whose motif betrays him, with its
little effect of shallow self-satisfaction, like a jaunty
toss of the head,—Gunther asks Hagen, is he not magnificent,
sitting beside the Rhine; to the glory of Gibich? "It is my
habit," remarks Hagen evasively, "to envy you." "Nay, for me
it is to envy you, and not you me," Gunther in his pleasant
humour rejoins; "true, I inherited the right of the
first-born, but wisdom is yours alone, and I am, in fact,
but lauding your good counsel when I inquire of my fame!" "I
blame the counsel then," speaks Hagen, "for indifferent is
as yet the fame. I know of high advantages which the
Gibichung has not yet won...." Gunther's inquiry he
satisfies: "In summer ripeness and vigour I behold the stem
of Gibich: you, Gunther, without wife,—you, Gutrune, still
unwed." Gunther and Gutrune, struck, are silent a moment.
Then Gunther inquires whom should he wed that lustre might
be added to the glory of the House? "I know a woman," Hagen
replies, "the most glorious in the world. On a high rock is
her throne; a fire surrounds her abode; only he who shall
break through the fire may proffer his suit for Brünnhilde."
Gunther's mediocrity and his sense of it stand ingenuously
confessed in his question: "Is my courage sufficient for the
test?" "The achievement is reserved for one stronger even
than you." "Who is this unparalleled champion?" "Siegfried,
the son of the Wälsungen.... He, grown in the
forest to mighty size and strength, is the man I wish
Gutrune for her lord." Gutrune's motif, sweet and shallow,
like Gunther's betrays her; an innocent admission of
mediocrity, too, is in her exclamation: "You mocker! Unkind
Hagen! How should I be able to attach Siegfried to me?" She
is unsure of her feminine charm as her brother of his manly
courage. As he finds nothing repugnant in the proposition to
win his bride through another, so she accepts to win her
love through a magic potion. Gunther, Gutrune, and Hunding
are the only plain human beings in the drama of the Ring,
and certainly they produce the effect of rampant creatures
among winged ones. Acquiescently Gutrune hears Hagen's
suggestion: "Remember the drink in the cupboard; trust me
who provided it. By means of it, the hero whom you desire
shall be bound to you by love. Were Siegfried now to enter,
were he to taste the spiced drink, that he ever saw a woman
before you, that ever a woman approached him, he must
totally forget!" Thus they have it planned: Siegfried shall
by a love-potion be won to Gutrune, and, as a task by which
to obtain her from her brother, shall be deputed to fetch
Brünnhilde for him from her flame-surrounded heights. Hagen
is alone, of the three, to know of the tie existing between
Siegfried and Brünnhilde. But, "How shall we find him?" very
pertinently asks Gunther. While storming light-heartedly
about the world in search of adventures, it can hardly be,
Hagen judges, but that he shall come too to Gibich's shore
on the Rhine. Even while he is speaking, Siegfried's horn is
heard in the distance. Hagen from the riverside describes
the figure he sees approaching: "In a boat, a hero and a
horse: he it is, so merrily blowing the horn. By an easy
stroke, as if with an idle hand, he drives the craft against
the stream." (We hear that easy stroke of the idle hand,—the
power and gaiety of Siegfried are in it; it
has a family resemblance to the horn-call.) "So vigourous a
hand at the swinging of the scull he alone can boast who
slew the dragon. It is Siegfried, surely no other!" Hagen
makes a speaking-tube of his hands: "Hoiho! Whither,
blithesome hero?" "To the strong son of Gibich!" comes
answer from the river. "Here! Here come ashore! Hail,
Siegfried, beloved hero!" The hero lands. As he stands at
the entrance, holding Grane by the bridle, with the
unconstraint of ancient manners they all quietly before
speaking take one another's measure with their eyes.
Siegfried's fame has preceded him. He is known as the slayer
of the dragon, the possessor of the Hort, and commander of
the Nibelungen. "Which is the son of Gibich?" he inquires.
Gunther presents himself. "I heard you lauded far down the
Rhine," Siegfried says; and, with the fresh directness again
of ancient manners: "Either fight with me, or be my friend!"
As we see him for the first time among common mortals, we
perceive the effect of high elegance which pertains to
Siegfried's calm, his careless perfect strength and
simplicity. Gutrune who has not removed her marvelling gaze
from him since his entrance, withdraws—to prepare the drink.
As Hagen takes his horse to stable, Siegfried charges him,
while a dear memory sings in his heart: "Take good care of
Grane for me. Never did you hold by the bridle a horse of
nobler breed!"
Magnificent is Gunther in expressions of
welcome to the great guest: "Joyfully hail, O hero, the Hall
of my fathers! The ground you tread, all you see, regard as
your own. Yours is my inheritance, yours are my land and my
people. To these add my body. I offer myself as your
vassal." Siegfried replies: "I offer neither land nor
people; no father's mansion nor court. My sole inheritance
is my own body, which I expend day by day in living. Nothing
have I but a sword, forged by myself.... This I
pledge with myself to our alliance." Hagen, overhearing,
ventures; "Yet report calls you possessor of the
Nibelungen-Hort...." And Siegfried; "I had almost forgotten
the treasure, so do I prize its idle wealth! I left it lying
in a cave where it once was guarded by a dragon." (The
reason is clear why the curse must drop away crippled,
powerless to blight this free nature, unenfeebled by
covetousness as by fear!) "And you brought away no part of
it?" "This metal-work, unaware of its use." Hagen recognises
the Tarnhelm and explains its virtues. "And you took from
the Hort nothing further?" "A ring." "You have it no doubt
in safe keeping?" "It is in the keeping of a gracious
woman," Siegfried replies dreamily.
Bashful, blushing, tremulous, as different
as is well possible from Brünnhilde, Gutrune approaches,
holding a filled drinking-horn. "Welcome, guest, in Gibich's
house! His daughter offers you drink!"
Siegfried holds the cup before him a
moment without drinking, his thoughts flying afar. The words
come back to him spoken to Brünnhilde at parting. An
infinite tenderness invades him. "Though I should forget all
you ever taught me," he murmurs, "one teaching I shall still
hold fast. My first draught, to faithful love, Brünnhilde, I
drink to you!" With which secret toast to the absent beloved
he sets the horn to his lips and drains it—to the motif of
Evil Enchantment, the motif of the Cup of Forgetfulness,
closely resembling the Tarnhelm-motif, but sweeter,—cruel as
a treacherous caress. This whole passage, surpassingly
exquisite to the ear, is painful to the heart as hardly
another in the opera, fertile as this is in tragic moments.
It marks the end of so much happiness.
When Siegfried's eyes, as he returns the
cup to Gibich's daughter, rest upon her, it is, as Hagen had
foretold, as if he had never before beheld a woman. The
inflammable heart which suffocated him of old at sight of
Brünnhilde asleep, now makes his voice falter with
instantaneous passion as he exclaims: "You, whose beauty
dazzles like lightning, wherefore do you drop your eyes
before me?" And when shyly she looks up: "Ha, fairest woman,
hide your glance! Its beam scorches the heart within my
breast—Gunther, what is your sister's name?... Gutrune!...
Are they good runes which I read in her eye?..."
Impetuously he seizes her hand; "I offered myself to your
brother as his vassal, the haughty one repelled me; will you
exhibit the same arrogance toward me, if I offer myself as
your ally?" She cannot answer, for the confusion of joy
which overwhelms her; signifying by a gesture her
unworthiness of this high honour, with unsteady step she
leaves the room. Siegfried, closely observed by the other
two, gazes lingeringly after her, fast-bewitched. Some
sketch of a project for winning her it must be prompting his
next words: "Have you, Gunther, a wife?" "Not yet have I
courted, and hardly shall I rejoice in a wife! I have set my
heart upon one whom no well-advised endeavour can win for
me!" "In what can you fail," speaks Siegfried's brisk
assurance, "if I stand by you?" "Upon a high rock is her
throne, a fire surrounds her abode," Gunther in hopeless
tone describes the forbidding circumstances. "Upon a high
rock is her throne, a fire surrounds her abode,..."
Siegfried rapidly says the words after him, which his lips
know so strangely well. "Only he who breaks through the
fire..." "Only he who breaks through the fire,..." Siegfried
is visibly making a tremendous effort to remember, to
account for the something so curiously familiar in the image
evoked. "May be Brünnhilde's suitor...." By this, the cup of
forgetfulness has completely done its work,—the name
suggests to him nothing, the effort itself to remember is
forgotten. "But not for me," sighs Gunther, "to climb the
rock; the fire will not die down for me!" "I fear no fire! I
will win the woman for you," Siegfried declares, "for your
man am I, and my valour is yours, if I may obtain Gutrune
for my wife!" Gutrune is promised him. It is Siegfried's
heated brain—for the first time fruitful in stratagem—which
throws off the plan to deceive this strange woman up in the
fire-girdled fastness of whom they tell him, by means of the
Tarnhelm, which lends the wearer any shape he wish to adopt.
The future brothers swear "blood-brotherhood," pledging
their truth in wine, into which each has let trickle a drop
of his blood. "If one of the brothers shall break the bond,
if one of the friends shall betray his faithful ally, let
that which in kindness we drink to-day by drops gush forth
in streams, sacred reparation to the friend!" They clasp
hands upon the compact, and Hagen with his sword cleaves in
two the drinking-horn. "Why," it occurs to Siegfried, "did
not you, Hagen, join in the oath?" "My blood would have
spoiled the drink," replies the joyless man; "it does not
flow noble and untroubled like yours; cold and morose it
stagnates in me, and will not colour my cheek. Wherefore I
keep afar from the fiery league." The ancient conception of
the power of a vow, as of the power of a curse, is
interestingly illustrated in this story. The effectiveness
of a vow, as we discover, has nothing to do with persons or
circumstances; an oath becomes a sort of independent
creation with a precise operation of its own. Hagen, capable
of any breach of faith, meditating nothing but treachery,
dare not join in the formality of the oath because of sure
and deadly danger in breaking it. Siegfried deceives Gunther
without intending or knowing it, yet his blood must "gush
forth in streams" as appointed, to wash out his offence.
Siegfried is for starting without delay on
the quest: "There is my skiff; it will take us quickly to the
rock; one night you shall wait in the boat on the shore,
then shall you lead home the bride."
The Hall is left in Hagen's care. Followed
by Gutrune's eyes, the heroes hurry off. Hagen places
himself with spear and shield in the doorway, and, while
sitting there sentinel-wise, reflects upon the success of
his devices: "Blown along by the wind, the son of Gibich
goes a-wooing. Helmsman to him is a strong hero, who is to
brave danger in his stead. His own bride this latter will
bring for him to the Rhine, but to me he will bring—the
Ring! You frank good fellows, light-hearted companions, sail
cheerfully on! Abject though he may seem to you, you are yet
his servants—the servants of the Nibelung's son!" The
curtain closes.
When it reopens we see the scene once more
of Siegfried's and Brünnhilde's leave-taking. Brünnhilde
sits sunk in contemplation of the Ring and the memories
attached to it. Distant thunder disturbs her dreams; her ear
seizes a familiar sound, not heard for many a day, the
gallop of an approaching air-horse. Her name comes borne on
the wind. She rushes to receive Waltraute, whose call she
has joyfully recognised. In her delight, she does not at
once take account of the Valkyrie's sorrowful and
preoccupied mien. She presses rapid questions upon her: "You
dared then for love of Brünnhilde brave Walvater's
commandment? Or—how? Oh, tell me! Has Wotan's disposition
softened toward me? When I protected Siegmund against the
god, while it was a fault, I know that I was fulfilling his
wish. I know, too, that his anger was appeased, for even
though he sealed me in slumber, left me bound on a rock, to
be the bondmaid of the man who should find and wake me, yet
he granted favour to the prayer of my terror, he surrounded
the rock with a devouring fire which should close the way to
the base. Thus was I through my punishment made
happy! The most splendid of heroes won me for wife. In the
light of his love to-day I beam and laugh!" With
uncontrolled joy she embraces the sister, unconscious of the
latter's impatience and shy attempt to repel her. "Did my
fate, sister, allure you? Have you come to pasture your
sight upon my bliss, to share that which has befallen me?"
The suggestion is verily too much! "To
share the tumult which, insensate, possesses you? A
different matter it is which impelled me, fearful, to break
Wotan's commandment...." Brünnhilde wakes to the sister's
troubled looks, but she can still think of but one reason
for them. "The stern one has not forgiven? You stand in
terror of his anger?" "Had I need to fear him—there would be
a term to my fear!" "Amazed, I do not understand you!"
"Master your agitation, listen attentively. The terror which
drove me forth from Walhalla, drives me back thither...."
"What has happened to the eternal gods?" cries Brünnhilde,
at last alarmed. Waltraute unfolds to her then the sorrowful
plight of the gods, making her even over the events in
Walhalla since her cutting off from the eternal dynasty. She
describes Walvater returning home from his wanderings with
his broken spear, the erection around the Hall of the
Blessed of the funeral pile cut from the World-Ash, the
assembling about Wotan's throne of the gods and heroes.
"There he sits, speaks no word, the splinters of the spear
clenched in his hand. Holda's (Freia's) apples he will not
touch. Fear and amazement bind the gods. His ravens both he
has sent ranging; should they return with good tidings, then
once again—for the last time!—the god would divinely smile.
Clasping his knees lie we Valkyries; he is blind to our
entreating looks. I pressed weeping against his breast, his
glance wavered—Brünnhilde, he thought of you! Deeply he
sighed; he closed his eyes and as if in dream he breathed
forth
the words: "If to the daughters of the deep Rhine she would
restore the Ring, delivered from the weight of the curse
were the gods and the world!" I bethought me then; from his
side, between the rows of silent heroes, I stole. In secret
haste I mounted my horse and rode upon the storm to you.
You, oh, my sister, I now conjure: that which lies in your
power, bravely do it,—end the misery of the Immortals!"
Brünnhilde speaks to her pityingly and
gently; it is so long since she emerged from the
vapour-dimmed atmosphere of her heavenly home that she
receives no clear impression, she owns, of the affair
related to her; but: "What, pale sister, do you crave from
me?"
"Upon your hand, the ring—that is the one!
Listen to my counsel, for Wotan's sake cast it from you!"
"The ring? Cast it from me?" "To the Rhine-daughters give it
back!" "To the Rhine-daughters, I, this ring? Siegfried's
love-token? Are you mad?"
Brünnhilde is unshaken by Waltraute's
insistence. Good or bad arguments have nothing to do with
the case, as it stands in her feeling. Indignation possesses
her at the bare notion of the exchange proposed to her, out
of all reason and proportion: Siegfried's love, of which his
ring is the symbol, for Walhalla's and the world's peace!
"Ha! do you know what the ring is to me? How should you
grasp it, unfeeling maid? More than the joys of Walhalla,
more than the glory of the Immortals, is to me this ring;
one look at its clear gold, one flash of its noble lustre, I
prize more than the eternally enduring joy of all the gods,
for it is Siegfried's love which beams at me from the ring!
Oh, might I tell you the bliss.... And that bliss is
safeguarded by the ring. Return to the holy council of the
gods; inform them, concerning my ring: Love I will never
renounce; they shall never take love from me, not though
Walhalla the radiant should crash down in ruins!" When
Waltraute with cries of "Woe!" flees to horse, she looks
after her unmoved: "Lightning-charged cloud, borne by the
wind, go your stormy way! Nevermore steer your course toward
me!" She has no regrets; the request has been in her
judgment so monstrous that it has hardened and shut her
heart toward those who made it. She gazes quietly over the
landscape. Her sense of security in Siegfried's love is no
doubt at its firmest in these moments following her fiery
defence of it, her sacrifice to it of old allegiances. The
very peace of possession is upon her.
Twilight has fallen; the guardian fire
glows more brightly as the darkness thickens. Of a sudden,
the flames leap high,—Loge's signal that some one draws
near. At the same moment Siegfried's horn is heard,
approaching. With the cry: "In my god's arm!" Brünnhilde
rushes to meet him.
A figure springs from the flames upon a
rock, a form foreign to Brünnhilde's eyes. The flames drop
back. The figure remains, dark against the dim glow of the
sky. His head and the greater part of his face are concealed
by a helmet of curious fashion; she does not, in the
uncertain light, recognise the Tarnhelm. The fact itself of
his being there is terrifying, arguing some singular
treachery somewhere. "Treason!" is Brünnhilde's first cry,
as she recoils and from a distance stares breathlessly at
the sinister intruder. He stands motionless, leaning upon
his shield and regarding her. "Who is it that has forced his
way to me?" she gasps. He is silent still; the horror of him
is increased by his silence and motionlessness and his metal
mask. The motif of evil enchantment is woven through the
whole of this scene. In a hard masterful voice he speaks at
length: "Brünnhilde! A suitor is come whom your fire does
not alarm! I seek you for my wife; follow me unresistingly."
It is all so strange, so like the agonising
impossibilities of a dream,—Brünnhilde falls to trembling.
"Who are you, dreadful one? Are you a mortal? Do you come
from Hella's army of the night?" Still watching her,
motionless on his point of vantage, he replies: "A Gibichung
am I, and Gunther is the hero's name, whom, woman, you must
follow." It flashes upon Brünnhilde that this, this must
have been the true point of Wotan's punishment. When the
figure springs from the rock and approaches her, she raises,
to hold him off, the hand with Siegfried's ring. "Stand
back! Fear this sign!... Stronger than steel I am made by
this ring; never shall you rob me of it!" "You teach me," he
replies, with his dark calm, "to detach it from you!" He
reaches for it, she defends it. They wrestle. She escapes
from him with a victorious cry. He seizes her again. The
former Valkyrie, reinforced by the Ring, is a match very
nearly for the stalwart Wälsung. A shriek is heard. He has
caught her hand, and draws the ring from her finger. As if
all her strength had been in it and were gone with its loss,
she sinks, broken, in the arms of the disguised Siegfried.
He coldly lets her down upon the seat of rock. "Now you are
mine, Brünnhilde,—Gunther's bride. Withhold not your favour
from me now!" She cowers, shattered and stupefied,
murmuring, "How could you have helped yourself, miserable
woman!" The right of the stronger she recognises, primitive
woman, as a right. Fairly vanquished, she must accept the
fate of battle,—no dignity, as no success, would pertain to
further struggle. When with a gesture of command he points
her to her stone chamber, trembling and with faltering step
she obeys. Siegfried, following, draws his sword and in his
natural voice again, smooth and happy, addresses it: "Now,
Nothung, do you bear witness to the restraint which marks my
wooing. Guarding my truth to my brother, divide me from his
bride!"
II
The Hall of the Gibichungen once more,
seen from the outside. It is night. Hagen sits as we left
him, in guard over the hall. He sleeps leaning against a
pillar of the portal. A burst of moonlight shows Alberich
crouching before him. "Are you asleep, Hagen, my son? Are
you asleep and deaf to my voice, whom sleep and rest have
forsaken?" "I hear you, harassed spirit; what message have
you for my sleep?" Remember! remember! is the burden of
Alberich's communication. Be true to the task for the
purpose of which you were created. The old enemy, Wotan, is
no longer to be feared; he has been made powerless by one of
his own race. The object now singly to be kept in view is
the destruction of this latter, and capture of the Ring in
his possession. Quickly it must be done, for "a wise woman
there is, living for love of the Wälsung; were she to bid
him restore the Ring to the Rhine-daughters, for ever and
ever lost were the gold!" "The Ring I will have!" Hagen
quiets the care-ridden Nibelung, "rest in peace!" "Do you
swear it to me, Hagen, my hero?" "I swear it to myself!"
Dawn has been creeping over the sky. The form of Alberich
fades in the growing light and his voice dies on the ear:
"Be faithful, Hagen, my son, be faithful—faithful!" Hagen
sits alone in the broadening day, seemingly asleep, yet with
eyes wide open. He starts. Flushed with the morning-red,
Siegfried strides up from the river-bank, uttering his
joyful "Hoiho!" "Siegfried, winged hero, whence do you come
so fast?" "From Brünnhilde's rock. I there took in the
breath which I put forth in calling you,—so rapid was my
journey. A couple follows me more slowly. Their journey is
by boat. Is Gutrune awake?"
"Now make we welcome, Gibich's-child!" he
greets her, as at Hagen's call she comes hurrying out to
him. "I bring good tidings!" In exuberantly good spirits he
tells them the story of his bad action. The magic draught
administered to him had more than destroyed his memory of
Brünnhilde, we must believe; the inflaming potion had
somehow blotted out, or covered over and for the time cast
into the background, his father's part in him, the part of
Siegmund, who fought to the end an unequal and losing battle
to save a girl from a marriage without love. "Across the
expiring fire," he concludes his report, "through the mists
of early dawn, she followed me from the mountain-top to the
valley. At the shore, Gunther and I, in a trice, changed
places, and by virtue of the Tarnhelm I wished myself here.
A strong wind is even at the moment driving our dear pair up
the Rhine." "Let us display all kindness in our reception of
her," Gutrune proposes, with the generosity of overflowing
happiness; "that she may be pleased and glad to sojourn with
us here! Do you, Hagen, summon the vassals to the wedding at
Gibich's court, while I will gather the women." Siegfried
fondly offers her his help; hand in hand they go within.
Hagen is conscious, presumably, of an
incongruity in the task assigned to him, the genial office
of gathering together the clans for a wedding-feast. However
that may be, he does not, to perform it, depart at all from
his character. Ascending to an eminence, he blows a
melancholy blast through a great steer-horn, and, in a voice
portending tidings the most alarming, gives the call to
arms: "Hoiho! Gibich's men! Up! Arms in the land! Danger!
Danger!" In this he persists until from all sides, singly at
first, then in groups and lastly in crowds, the vassals,
hurriedly armed, come flocking. "Why does the horn sound?
Why are we called to arms? Here we are with
our weapons.... Hagen, what danger threatens? What enemy is
near? Who attacks us? Is Gunther in need of us?" "Forthwith
prepare, and dally not, to receive Gunther returning home.
He has wooed a wife!" This still in a tone befitting the
announcement of disaster. "Is he in trouble? Is he hard
pressed by the foe?" "A formidable wife he brings home!" "Is
he pursued by the hostile kindred of the maid?" "He comes
alone, unpursued." "The danger then is past? He has come
forth victorious from the encounter?" "The dragon-slayer
succoured him in his need; Siegfried, the hero, secured his
safety." "How then shall his followers further help him?"
"Strong steers you shall slaughter and let Wotan's altar
stream with their blood." "And what, Hagen, are we to do
after that?" "A boar shall you slay for Froh, a mighty ram
for Donner; but to Fricka you shall sacrifice sheep, that
she may bless the marriage!"
The men are beginning to penetrate through
Hagen's sullen aspect to his joke; with heavy playfulness
they help it on. "And when we have slaughtered the animals,
what shall we do?" "From the hands of fair women take the
drinking-horn, pleasantly brimming with wine and mead."
"Horn in hand,—what then?" "Bravely carouse until
drunkenness overwhelm you—all to the honour of the gods,
that they may bless the marriage!" The rough warriors break
into laughter, and in uncouth jollity stamp with their feet
and spear-butts. "Great good fortune is indeed abroad on the
Rhine when Hagen the grim grows jovial!" Not the faintest
smile illumines the bleak face. At sight of Gunther's skiff
approaching, he checks the men's laughter. Moving among
them, with careful foresight he drops seed toward fruits of
trouble: "Be loyal to your sovereign mistress, serve her
faithfully; if she should suffer wrong, be swift to avenge
her!" Hagen's plan for bringing about Siegfried's
destruction is not yet at this point settled in outline. We
see him grasping at whatever can be construed into a weapon
against him. There are repeated attempts on his part in the
scene following to stir against Siegfried some fatal
demonstration of popular anger.
The skiff draws to land. The vassals greet
their lord and his bride with noisy chorus of welcome,
clashing their arms together, beating their swords against
their bucklers.
Brünnhilde stands beside Gunther in the
boat, statue-still, her eyes bent on the ground, like one
who neither sees nor hears. Without resistance she lets
Gunther take her hand to help her ashore; but a suppressed
snatch of the motif of Wotan's resentment suggests the
shudder ominous of danger overrunning his Valkyrie daughter
at the contact.
This is Gunther's hour, this for him the
supreme occasion in life; the star of his destiny rides the
heavens unclouded; he feels now magnificent indeed in his
seat on the Rhine, as he stands before his people with the
regal creature beside him whom he calls his wife. As if to
express the momentary expansion of his nature, his motif
resounds, as proudly he presents her, quite changed in
character; it has taken on a grandeur approaching pomp:
"Brünnhilde, the glory of her sex, I bring to you here on
the Rhine. A nobler wife was never won! The race of the
Gibichungen, by the grace of the gods, shall now tower to
crowning heights of fame!" Brünnhilde does not heed or hear.
When, as Gunther leads her toward the Hall, Siegfried and
Gutrune meet them, coming forth from it with strains of
marriage-music and a festal train of ladies, her eyes never
moving from the ground, she does not see them. "Hail,
beloved hero! Hail, dearest sister!" Gunther greets the
bridal pair. "Joyfully I behold at your side, sister, him
who has won you. Two happy pairs are here met—Brünnhilde and
Gunther, Gutrune and Siegfried!"
At the name, Brünnhilde looks quickly
up.... Her astonished gaze fastens upon Siegfried's face and
dwells intently upon it. Her action is so marked that
Gunther drops her hand; all watch her in wonder. A murmur
runs through the assembly: "What ails her? Is she out of her
mind?" Brünnhilde, still speechless, falls visibly to
trembling. Siegfried becomes at last aware of something out
of the common in the gaze so persistently fixed upon him. He
goes quietly to the woman and asks: "What trouble burdens
Brünnhilde's gaze?" She has hardly power to frame words,
make sounds, her emotion still further intensified by his
cool and disengaged address. "Siegfried, here!... Gutrune!"
she painfully brings forth. "Gunther's gentle sister," he
enlightens her, in his major, matter-of-fact manner, "wedded
to me, as you to Gunther!" At this she recovers her voice to
hurl at him startlingly: "I—to Gunther?... A lie!" She is
swooning with the helpless horror of all this monstrous
mystery. Siegfried, who stands nearest, receives her as she
totters, near to falling. As she lies for a moment in the
well-known arms, it seems impossible, beyond everything
impossible, that his unimaginable purpose should not break
down, that he should not be forced to drop this
incomprehensible feint of strangeness. But her dying eyes
searching the face close to them discover in it no glimmer
of feeling. Her heart-broken murmur: "Siegfried.... knows me
not?" touches no chord. The hero is for handing her over
with all convenient haste to her proper guardian. "Gunther,
your wife is ailing!" As Gunther comes, he rouses her:
"Awake, woman! Here is your husband!" Because her senses
seem clouded and she a moment before rejected the statement
that she was married to Gunther, he singles out for her
with his finger the personage he means. Her eyes, as he
makes this gesture, are caught by the Ring on his hand. Her
mind leaps, inevitably, to the conclusion that Siegfried,
who feigns not to know her, not only has cast her off, but
is in collusion with this man Gunther, her captor.
Trying by a supreme effort to govern her
agitation and anger at the revelation of this unspeakable
baseness, till she shall have sounded the affair, "A ring I
saw upon your finger," she addresses him; "not to you does
it belong; it was torn from me by this man!" indicating
Gunther. "How should you have received the ring from him?"
Siegfried looks reflectively at the ring. Since all trace of
the former Brünnhilde is wiped from his brain, he cannot
remember his parting gift to her of the Ring. Certainly, he
wrested a ring from this woman, in the twilight.... What
became of it?... But the ring on his hand is indisputably a
relic of the old days of the fight with the dragon. "I did
not receive the ring from him," he replies. She turns to
Gunther: "If you took from me the ring, by which you claimed
me for wife, declare to him your right to it, demand back
the token!" Gunther is sore perplexed. "The ring?... I gave
him none.... Are you sure that is the one?" "Where do you
conceal the ring," Brünnhilde presses him, "which you robbed
from me?" Gunther is stupidly silent, not knowing what he
should say; his confusion is so obvious and his blankness so
convincingly unassumed, that the truth is borne upon
Brünnhilde: It was not he, despite all appearances, who took
the ring from her, and if not he—"Ha!" she cries, in a burst
of furious indignation, "This is the man who tore the ring
from me; Siegfried, trickster and thief!"
Siegfried has been still gazing at the
ring on his hand, trying to puzzle out points which the
lacunæ in his memory do not permit him to make clear. The
contemplation has brought back old scenes and
distant events. He speaks, unruffled: "From no woman did I
receive the ring; nor did I take it from any woman. Full
well do I recognise the prize of battle, won by me before
Neidhöhle, when I slew the mighty dragon."
With what quiet and conviction he makes
the statement, as if verily he spoke the truth! Such
assurance is hardly imaginable, save as based upon conscious
integrity.... Hagen now, the fisher in troubled waters,
interferes, still further to increase Brünnhilde's
bewilderment: "Are you sure you recognise the ring? If it is
the one you gave to Gunther, it belongs to him, and
Siegfried obtained it by some artifice which the deceiver
shall be made to rue!"
Plainly, there is no way of help in
clearing up this desperate tangle. The goaded woman bursts
into a wild outcry, sharp as a knife by which she should
hope to cut through the coil in which she is caught:
"Deceit! Deceit! Dastardly deceit!... Treachery! Treachery!
such as never until this moment called for vengeance!"
Gutrune catches her breath: "Deceit?..."
The quickly roused suspicion of the crowd takes up
Brünnhilde's word: "Treachery?... To whom?..."
"Holy gods! Heavenly leaders!"
Brünnhilde's madness clamours to heaven: "Did you appoint
this in your councils? Do you impose upon me sufferings such
as never were suffered? Do you create ignominy for me such
as never was endured? Prompt me then to vengeance such as
never yet raged! Enkindle anger in me such as never was
quelled! Teach Brünnhilde to break her own heart that she
may shatter the one who betrayed her!" The ineffectual
Gunther tries vainly to hush her, to stop the scandalous
scene. "Away!" she thrusts him from her, "cheat!... Yourself
cheated!" and she announces ringingly to them all the one
thing which in all this confusion she knows to be
true: "Not to him (Gunther) am I married, but to that man,
there!"
"Siegfried?... Gutrune's husband?" the
murmur passes through the astonished crowd.
"Love and delight he forced from me...."
Her momentary hatred of Siegfried thus distorts the image of
the past. Siegfried's only possible interpretation of this
astonishing declaration is that the Tarnhelm did not
properly conceal his identity—but even so the woman is not
speaking the truth. What her purpose can be in thus
darkening her own fame he is at a loss to divine. He replies
to her charge directly, careless at this point that the plot
between Gunther and himself stands betrayed by his words.
"Hear, whether I have broken my faith! Blood-brotherhood I
swore to Gunther: Nothung, my worthy sword, guarded the vow
of truth; its sharp blade divided me from this unhappy
woman!" Brünnhilde hears him with a jeer. They are speaking
at cross purposes; he, as it should be remembered, of the
foregoing night alone, while she speaks of that past so
wholly blotted from his mind. "Oh, wily hero! see how you
lie! how ill-advisedly you call to witness your sword! I am
acquainted indeed with its sharpness, but acquainted, too,
with the sheath—in which, pleasantly encased, Nothung, the
faithful friend, hung against the wall, while the master
courted his dear!"
"How?... How?..." the agitated followers
are beginning to ask. "Has he broken his word? Has he
smirched Gunther's honour?" Gunther, Gutrune, the vassals,
all a little shaken in their faith in Siegfried by the
assurance of his accuser, press him to refute her charge,
clear himself, take the oath which shall silence the
disgraceful accusation. He unhesitatingly asks for a weapon
upon which to swear. Hagen craftily offers his spear.
Siegfried placing his right hand on the point, solemnly
calls upon the sacred weapon to register his oath, wording
it in the following ill-omened fashion: "Where sharpness may
pierce me, do you pierce me; where death shall strike me, do
you strike me, if yonder woman spoke the truth, if I broke
my vow to my brother!" Brünnhilde hearing, flings his hand
from the spear-point, and grasping it in her own, pronounces
the counter-oath: "Your weight I consecrate, spear, that it
may overthrow him! Your sharpness I bless, that it may
pierce him! For, having broken every vow, this man now
speaks perjury!" Siegfried and Brünnhilde each believe that
what he swears is true; but the Oath, the blind power which
takes no account of intention, of moral right or wrong,
gives right in sequence to Brünnhilde. The spear pierces the
hero who invokes it so to do "if the woman spoke true."
There is nothing more, the solemn oath
taken, that Siegfried can do, and in his stalwart fashion he
turns his back on the whole troublesome business, with the
sensible suggestion that the wild woman from the mountains
be given rest and quiet "until the impudent rage shall have
spent itself which some unholy wizardry has suscitated"
against them all.
"You men, come away!" he subjoins, all his
heroic good-humour recovered. "When the fighting is to be
done with tongues, we will willingly pass for cowards!" For
Gunther, whom he sees darkly brooding, he has a word in the
ear: "Believe me, I am more vexed than you that I should not
have more perfectly deceived her; the Tarnhelm, I could
almost believe, only half disguised me. But the anger of
women is soon appeased. The woman will beyond a doubt be
grateful hereafter that I should have won her for you!" The
winged exhilaration of the bridegroom repossessing him, he
invites them all in to the wedding-feast, and casting his
arm gaily around Gutrune draws her along with him into the
Hall—whither the people swarm after them.
The three are left outside whom no
festivity can allure. In long silence they remain, sunk in
gloomy study, each on his side. To attempt arriving at
clearness by questions does not occur to them; and, indeed,
what to each is the principal thing, known from the proof of
his eyes, no discussion could affect: for Brünnhilde,
Siegfried is estranged from her; for Gunther, his marriage
is turned to Dead-Sea apples.
The cheerful music, the summons to the
wedding, dies away. Hagen bends his black brow in reflection
as to how he shall utilise to his advantage the passions he
has aroused; covertly he watches his victims. Gunther has
cast himself down and muffled his face from the day, in the
clutch of his jealous suspicion of Siegfried and the smart
of his public shame.
Brünnhilde stands staring ahead, with set
countenance of horror and grief. In an hour she has lived
the tragedy which, spread over howsoever many years, is
still one of the hardest in human experience, the tragedy
which extorted Othello's groan: "But there, where I have
garnered up my heart, where either I must live or bear no
life—to be discarded thence!" She seeks in the void and
blackness some glimmer of light on the incredible mystery of
these events. With returning calm, a flash of the truth
illuminates her, to the extent that she suspects in the
unnatural developments of the last hour the work of sorcery.
While hardly helping the actual situation, this
interpretation frees Siegfried from the hatefulness of such
black guilt as has appeared his, and we feel from this
moment that Brünnhilde's undeterred reaching after
vengeance, her consent to Siegfried's death, is less a
personal need to make an offender pay, than the instinct to
cut short the dishonour in which the most magnificent hero
in the world is fallen. Impossible of endurance is a
world where Siegfried is false to all his vows, where
Siegfried and Brünnhilde are no longer each to the other
"for ever and ever, his only and his all!" Heartbreak much
more than resentment stamps Brünnhilde's cry: "Where is my
wisdom against this enigma? Where are my runes? Oh,
lamentation! All my wisdom I bestowed on him. In his power
he holds the bondmaid, in thongs the captive, whom, wailing
over her wrong, the rich one joyously makes gift of to
another! Where shall I find a sword with which to cut the
thongs?"
Hagen approaches her: "Place your trust in
me, deceived woman! I will avenge you on him who betrayed
you...."
"On whom?..." she inquires, hazily. Him
who betrayed you describes more than one. "On Siegfried,
who betrayed you." "On Siegfried... you?..." She laughs,
bitterly, while her unquelled pride in her faithless lord
mocks: "A single glance of his flashing eye, which even
through the lying disguise shed its radiance upon me, and
your best courage would fail you!"
"But is he not, by reason of his perjury,
reserved for my spear?"
"Perjury or none, you must fortify your
spear by something stronger, if you think of attacking that
strongest of all!" "Well I know," the subtle Hagen, with an
effect of humbleness, continues, "Siegfried's victorious
strength, and how difficult to overcome him in battle;
wherefore do you give me good counsel: by what device may
this giant be defeated by me?"
She breaks into complaint over the
shameful requital with which the love has met that, unknown
to him, by charms woven all about his body, made him
invulnerable.
"No weapon then can hurt him?" asks Hagen.
"No weapon that is borne in battle...."
But she corrects herself, remembering suddenly that he might,
in truth, be wounded in the back. "Never, I knew, would he
retreat or in flight show his back to the foe. Upon it
therefore I spared to place the spell." "And there my spear
shall strike him!" determines Hagen. Having learned from her
all that he need, he turns to Gunther: "Up, noble Gibichung!
Here stands your strong wife. Why do you hang back there in
dejection?"
Gunther breaks into passionate
exclamations over the indignity he has suffered. Close
indeed upon his hour of glory comes the hour of his
humiliation, when he must hear from the queenly woman in
whom his pride was placed such words as these: "Oh, ignoble,
false companion! Behind the hero you concealed yourself,
that he might gain for you the prize of courage! Low indeed
has your precious race sunk, when it produces such
dastards!" Gunther utters broken excuses, "while deceiving
her he was himself deceived,—betraying her, he was
betrayed—" and appeals to Hagen to stamp him out of life or
help him to wash the stain off his honour!
Hagen has them now both where, for his
purposes, he wishes them. "No brain can help you," he
replies to Gunther, "nor can any hand! There is but one
thing can help you—Siegfried's death!" The two words fall
awfully on the air, followed by a long silence. The
irresolute Gunther at the sound of the sentence writhes amid
doubts and hesitations, such as do not for a moment move his
stern fellow-sufferer. He remembers the blood-brotherhood
sworn to Siegfried; he begins to question whether the
blood-brother has in very fact been false. A returning wave
of affection and admiration for the beautiful fellow calls
forth a sigh, and then the thought of Gutrune: "Gutrune, to
whom myself I freely gave him! If we punish her husband so,
with what face shall we stand before her?" At this mention
of Gutrune, a light breaks upon Brünnhilde;
"Gutrune!... is the name of the magic charm which has
enchanted away from me my husband.... Terror smite her!" "If
the manner of his death must offend her, let the deed be
hidden from her," Hagen soothes Gunther's scruple. "We will
to-morrow fare on a merry hunting-expedition. The noble one
will, according to his impetuous wont, go ranging ahead of
us, and meet his death by a wild boar."
The three, coming to a common
determination upon the fall of Siegfried, are calling upon
the different powers to whom they refer their deeds to hear
their vows of revenge—Brünnhilde and Gunther upon Wotan,
guardian of promises, Hagen upon Alberich—who through the
happy working of this vow of vengeance will be master once
more of the Ring—when from the Hall comes pouring forth,
with music and strewing of flowers, the bridal procession.
Gutrune, rose-wreathed, is borne shoulder-high upon a gilded
and begarlanded throne. At the vision of her and the glowing
Siegfried at her side, Brünnhilde shrinks back. Hagen forces
her hand into Gunther's, and this second bridal pair falls
into the train winding up the hillside to offer the nuptial
sacrifices.
III
A rocky and wooded valley opening on the
Rhine. It is part of the region over-ranged by the
hunting-party of Hagen's devising. The horns of the hunters
are heard in the distance,—Siegfried's horn-call among them,
and Hagen's.
Our old acquaintances, the
Rhine-daughters, rise to the surface of the water. They have
warning or scent that Siegfried is not far, with the Ring,
their stolen gold. They complain in their undulating song of
the darkness now in the deep, where of old it was light,
when the gold was there to shine for them. Notwithstanding
their loss, they are little less full of their fun than
before; they splash and frolic in the water and with their
voices copy the crystal play of the river. They pray the sun
to send their way the hero who shall give them back the
gold, after which they will regard without envy the sun's
luminous eye! Siegfried's horn is heard. Recognising it as
that of the hero who interests them, they dive under to
consult together,—concerning the best method, of course, of
extracting from him the Ring.
Siegfried comes to the edge of the bank
overhanging the river, in search of tracks of his game,
mysteriously lost. He is blaming some wood-imp for playing
him a trick, when the Rhine-daughters, rising into sight,
hail him by name. They adopt with him the playful, teasing
tone of pretty girls with a likely-looking young fellow:
"What are you grumbling into the ground?.... What imp
excites your ire?... Has a water-sprite bothered you?...
Tell us, Siegfried, tell us!" He watches them, smiling, and
replies in their own vein: "Have you charmed into your
dwellings the shaggy fellow who disappeared from my sight?
If he is your sweetheart, far be it from me, you merry
ladies, to deprive you of him!" They laugh loud and long,
the Rhine-nymphs. "What will you give us, Siegfried, if we
find your game for you?" "I have so far no fruit of my
chase. You must tell me what you would like!" "A golden ring
gleams on your finger..." suggests Wellgunde, and, unable to
restrain their eagerness, the three cry out in a voice:
"Give us that!" He considers the Ring a moment. "A gigantic
dragon I slew for the ring, and I am to part with it in
exchange for the paws of a worthless bear?" "Are you so
niggardly?... So higgling at a bargain?... You should be
generous to ladies!..." they shame him one after the other.
With perfect good humour, he offers as a better
objection: "Were I to waste my property on you, my wife, I
suspect, would find fault." "She is a shrew, no doubt?... I
dare say she beats you.... The hero has a presentiment of
the weight of her hand!..." They laugh immoderately. "Laugh
away!" the hero laughs with them, but, not to be compelled
by their derision: "I shall none the less leave you to
disappointment, for the ring which you covet no teasing
shall get for you!" The wily maidens do not take this up,
but, turning from him, permit him to overhear the remarks
about him which they exchange among themselves: "So
handsome! So strong!... So fitted to inspire love!... What a
pity that he is a miser!" With shouts of laughter they duck
under.
Siegfried turns away, untroubled, and
descends further into the narrow valley. But their words
have not quite glanced off him. "Why do I suffer such a mean
report of myself? Shall I lend myself to gibes of the sort?
If they should come again to the water's edge, the ring they
might have!" Too large to feel demeaned by an inconsistency,
he shouts to them: "Hey, you lively water-beauties! Come
quickly! I make you a gift of the ring!" Taking it off, he
holds it toward them. This is the point in his fortunes
where we perceive the working of Siegfried's fate. If the
nymphs, as one would have felt safe in counting upon their
doing, had risen and caught the Ring from him with a laugh
louder than any before, all might have been well. Hagen
would have had nothing to gain by killing him. But the curse
which doomed the owner of the Ring to a bloody end would not
have it so. It had been crippled, it is true, against the
noble one; it had failed to make him suspicious, sad, and
careful. But his violent death we see provided for when, by
what seems the merest hazard, his offer of the Ring to the
Rhine-maidens is not accepted on the expected
terms. The sisters rise to his call, but instead of faces
dancing with laughter they show him grave and warning
countenances. Their subaqueous deliberations have resulted
in a most ill-inspired change of tactics. Instead of
snatching at the proffered Ring and glad to have it, they
represent to Siegfried that he will be under an obligation
to them for ridding him of it. His mood of giving is changed
by a threat into one of refusal. "Keep it, hero, and guard
it with care, until you become aware of the evil fate you
are cherishing under its shape. Then you will be glad if we
will deliver you from the curse!" He slips back the Ring on
his finger and bids them tell what they know. "Siegfried! We
know of evil threatening you! To your danger you retain the
Ring! Out of the Rhine-gold it was forged; he who shaped it
and miserably lost it, placed a curse upon it long ago, that
it should bring death upon him who wore it. As you slew the
dragon, even so shall you be slain, and this very day, of
this we warn you, unless you give us the Ring to bury in the
deep Rhine; its water alone can allay the curse!" "You
artful ladies," the hero shakes his head, "let be that
policy! If I hardly trusted your flatteries, your attempt to
alarm me deceives me still less...." When more impressively
still they reiterate their warning, protesting their truth,
urging the irresistible strength of the curse woven by the
Norns into the coil of the eternal law, he answers, and the
nature against which the curse had so long been of no effect
shows brightly forth in the brief tirade: "My sword once
cleft asunder a spear. The eternal coil of the law, whatever
wild curses they have woven into it, the Norns shall see cut
through by Nothung. A dragon once upon a time did of a truth
warn me of the curse, but he could not teach me to fear!
Though the whole world might be gained to me by a ring, for
love I would willingly cede it; you should have it if you
gave me delight. But if you threaten me in life and limb,
though the ring should not enclose the worth of a finger,
not by any force could you get it from me! For life and
limb, if I must live loveless and a slave to fear,—life and
limb, look you, like this I cast them far away from me!" He
takes up and flings a clod of earth over his shoulder. The
Rhine-daughters in agitation press him still for a moment
with warnings; but, realising the futility of these, with
the prophecy: "A proud woman will this very day inherit of
you; she will lend a more heedful ear to our warning!" they
finally swim away, as they announce: "To her! To her! To
her!"
Their singing floats back, dying away, a
long time after they have taken their leave; Siefgried
stands watching them out of sight, amused: "In water as on
land I have now learned the ways of women; if a man resist
their cajoling, they try threats with him; if he boldly
brave these, let him look for scorn and reproaches! And
yet—were it not for my truth to Gutrune, one of those dainty
water-women I should have liked to tame!"
The horns of the hunting-party are heard
approaching. Siegfried shouts in answer to their shouts.
When Hagen and Gunther come in sight, he calls to them to
join him down there where it is fresh and cool. The company
with their freight of game descend into the shady gorge, to
camp for an hour. The wine-skins and drink-horns are passed.
Siegfried, questioned by Hagen of his fortune at the chase,
jestingly gives his account: "I came forth for
forest-hunting, but water-game was all that presented
itself. Had I had a mind to it, three wild water-birds I
might have caught for you, who sang to me, there on the
Rhine, that I should be slain to-day!" Never had he spoken
with a more unclouded brow. Gunther starts at his words and
glances apprehensively at Hagen. Siegfried stretches out
contentedly between them, the ample sunshine in his
blood, and remembers that he is thirsty. Hagen treats the
evil prophecy as lightly as does Siegfried himself. In not
unnatural sequence to Siegfried's reference to the
water-birds, he remarks: "I have heard it reported,
Siegfried, that you understand the language of the birds. Is
it true?" "I have not heeded their babble this many a day—"
Siegfried is saying, when Gunther's heavy and preoccupied
mien is borne upon him; he breaks off to reach him his
drink-horn, cheerily rallying him: "Drink, Gunther, drink!
Your brother brings it to you!" Gunther, oppressed by his
dark doubt of Siegfried, is not prompt in accepting the
proffered cup. His reply obscurely conveys his sense of some
failure in their good-fellowship. Siegfried takes it up
merely to turn into occasion for one of his cordial laughs.
"You over-cheerful hero!" sighs Gunther. Something is wrong,
Siegfried cannot fail to see. He drops privately to Hagen
his interpretation of the friend's gloom: "Brünnhilde is
giving him trouble?" "If he understood her as well as you
understand the song of the birds!" Siegfried has an
inspiration. Those last words of Hagen's contain the germ of
it. "Hei! Gunther!" he calls to the blood-brother, who
appears so sorely in need of cheering: "You melancholy
fellow! If you will thank me for it, I will sing you tales
from the days of my youth!"
Gunther's reply is politely encouraging.
Hagen joins his invitation to the half-brother's. The
listeners place themselves at ease on the ground about the
narrator, seated in their midst on a mossy stump. Then
Siegfried, with his beautiful, bottomless zest in life,
recounts in vivid running sketches the story we know. One
after the other the familiar motifs pass in review. From
them alone one could reconstruct the tale. Of his childhood
in Mime's cave, the forging of Nothung, the slaying of the
dragon. Of the wonder worked by the drop of dragon's
blood on the tongue, the little bird's good counsel by which
he won Tarnhelm and Ring, the same bird's warning upon which
he slew Mime. At this point, when we are wondering how, with
Brünnhilde wiped from his memory, he can proceed, Hagen
hands him a horn filled with wine, in which he has been seen
expressing the juice of an herb; this, the Nibelung's son,
wise in the virtues of simples, tells him, will sharpen his
memory and bring close remote events.
Siegfried takes the cup, but for a moment
does not taste it, absorbed, as is evident, in the effort to
remember what came right after the point in his story at
which he just broke off. The forgetfulness-motif suggests
his baffled groping. Mechanically he sets the horn to his
lips—a strain of the tenderest and most ecstatic of the
Siegfried-Brünnhilde love-music marks the first effect of
the draught which dissolves the mists obscuring
memory,—followed close by the whole slowly unwinding
Brünnhilde-motif. We feel as if we had suddenly, with
Siegfried, waked from a bad dream. We take a trembling
breath of relief at the weight removed from our heart.
A light of fixed joy grows and grows in
Siegfried's face, as upon this recovering of his true
identity he takes up his story again: "Wistfully I listened
for the bird in the tree-tops. He sat there still, and sang;
'Hei, Siegfried has slain the wicked dwarf! I have in mind
for him now the most glorious mate! On a high rock she
sleeps, a wall of flame surrounds her abode. If he should
push through the fire, if he should waken the bride, then
were Brünnhilde his own!'" Gunther hears in growing
amazement. "Straightway, unhesitating, I hastened forth. I
reached the fire-girt rock. I crossed the flaming barrier,
and found in reward"—the memory holds his breath suspended—a
beautiful woman, asleep in a suit of gleaming armour. I
loosed the helmet from the glorious head; audaciously with a
kiss I waked the maid.... Oh, with what ardour did then the
arm of the lovely Brünnhilde enfold me!"
Gunther springs up in horrified
comprehension. Two ravens at this moment make sudden
interruption, flying out of a tree and wheeling above
Siegfried's head. He starts up, in natural interest at the
apparition of Wotan's messengers. "Can you understand, too,
the croaking of these ravens?" sneers Hagen. Siegfried,
looking after the black birds as they bend their flight
Rhine-wards, turns his back to the questioner. "They bid me
take vengeance!" Hagen grimly interprets for himself, and
with a quick thrust drives his spear through Siegfried's
body, from the back. Too late Gunther holds his arm and the
retainers spring to prevent him. Siegfried's eyes flash
wildly about for a weapon. He snatches up his great shield
and lifts it aloft to crush the perfidious enemy,—but his
strength fails, the shield drops, and he falls crashing
backwards upon it.
"Hagen, what have you done?" comes
accusingly from Gunther and the men-of-arms, while a shudder
runs through the assembly, and, as one feels at the music's
intimation, through the very heart of nature. "Taken
vengeance of perjury!" Hagen coldly replies, and, turning
from the group gathered around the dying hero, slowly
disappears in the gathering dusk. Gunther, seized with
remorseful anguish, bends over the wounded brother. Two of
the company, aiding his effort to rise, support him. It is
clear at once that immediate surroundings and recent events
are blotted from his ken by the brighter light of a
remembered scene, filling the wide-open, over-brilliant
Wälsung-eyes. The music lets us into the secret first of
what it is—so absorbingly present to him in this last hour:
the moment marvellous among all in his existence, when he
had seen the sleeping Brünnhilde return to life. It is as if
it were all
happening a second time, she having mysteriously since that
first awakening been again sunk into sleep, from which he
must now again recall her: "Brünnhilde, sacred bride...
awake!... Open your eyes.... Who sealed you again in
sleep?... Who bound you in joyless slumber? The Awakener is
come. He kisses you awake.... He rends the confining
bands... whereupon breaks forth upon him the light of
Brünnhilde's smile!... Oh, that eye, henceforth to close no
more!... Oh, the happy heaving of that breath!... Sweetest
languor, blissful darkness.... Brünnhilde welcomes me to
her!..."
So he dies as he had lived, joyous and
unafraid, the curse, while having its way with him to the
extent of securing his destruction, crippled as ever before,
when the death by which it would punish is embraced like a
bride.
For a long moment all stand motionless and
heavily silent. It really seems impossible that a
spear-thrust could extinguish that glowing,—that
superabundant,—that splendid life. Night deepens. At a sign
from Gunther, the men lift the dead, laid upon his shield,
to their shoulders, and in solemn procession start upon the
rocky path homeward.
What is called Siegfried's funeral-march
is, as it were, a funeral oration spoken over him by a great
voice, of one penetrated with the sense of what he was and
of earth's loss in him. "Listen! Listen and shudder, all
created things, and feel the shock, and measure the
magnitude, of your loss! Behold, he was brave among all
heroes, this Wälsung,—yet tender, too. He was the child of
the love of two beautiful, unhappy beings, and, a glory to
them, he became—Siegfried, the most exalted hero of the
world! Mourn for him heroically, not with tears, but
battle-shouts, in keeping with his greatness!"
The moon breaks through the clouds and
showers spectral light upon the funeral train slowly moving
up the hillside. Night-mists rise from the Rhine and gradually
blot out the scene.
When the mists disperse we find ourselves
once more in the Hall of the Gibichungen, where Gutrune,
troubled by the tardiness of the hunters in returning,
strains her hearing for Siegfried's horn. Bad dreams have
disturbed her sleep, and the wild neighing of Grane, and the
sound of Brünnhilde laughing in the solitary night. "I fear
Brünnhilde!" she confesses to herself. Yet, in need of
companionship in her anxiety, she calls at the
sister-in-law's door; receiving no answer, she looks in. The
room is empty. It must have been Brünnhilde, then, whom she
saw striding down to the bank of the Rhine, unable, like
herself, to sleep.
Hearing a stir, she again listens intently
for Siegfried's horn. Not that, but Hagen's lugubrious
Hoiho! comes to her ear: "Hoiho! Awake! Lights! Bright
torches! We bring home spoils of the chase!" He appears in
advance of the party thus announced. "Up, Gutrune! Welcome
Siegfried, the strong hero returning home!" She is
frightened—the fact is to her so significant of not having
heard his horn. As the confused train accompanying the slain
hero pours into the hall, Hagen's exultation can no longer
contain itself, and, negligent of all suitable appearance of
concern for Gutrune's sorrow, he announces the death of her
beloved with all the gloating glee he feels: "The pallid
hero, no more shall he blow the horn, no more storm forth
either to chase or to battle, nor sue ever more for fair
women!" They bring in the body, they set down the bier. "The
victim of a wild boar, Siegfried, your dead lord!" With a
shriek Gutrune falls fainting upon the inanimate form.
Gunther tries to comfort her, clearing himself, accusing
Hagen: "He is the accursed boar who slew the noble one!"
"Yes, I killed him!" boldly boasts Hagen, so near the
attainment of
his object that he is careless of all else; "I, Hagen,
struck him dead! He was reserved for my spear, by which he
swore his false oath. I have earned the sacred right to his
spoils, wherefore—I demand that Ring!" "Back!" shouts
Gunther, as Hagen approaches to take it. "What belongs to
me, you shall never touch! Dare you lay hands on Gutrune's
inheritance?" But Hagen, in his new mood, is quick of his
hands as earlier of his wits. He draws his sword and without
further parley attacks Gunther. The fight is short, Gunther
falls. He had been the claimant of the Ring but a few hours.
Hagen hurries to the bier to snatch his prey from
Siegfried's finger. The dead hand is slowly raised... and
threateningly warns off the robber. Hagen drops back.
In the stillness of horror which succeeds
the loud outcry of the women at the portent, a solemn figure
parts the crowd and strides slowly forward—Brünnhilde, to
whom the passing hours have restored calm, and to whom
meditation has brought light.
She knows now what she should think, and
what there remains to do.
Gutrune, hearing her voice, raises her own
to accuse her of all this woe overtaking them: "You—you
incited the men against him—woe that you should ever have
entered this house!" "Hush! pitiable girl!" Brünnhilde
checks her, without anger. "You never were his wedded wife;
as his paramour you ensnared his affections. The mate of his
manhood am I, to whom he vowed eternal vows, before ever he
saw you!" Gutrune upon this, apprehending all, curses Hagen
who had given her the evil drink through which Siegfried had
been made to forget his former love.
A long space Brünnhilde stands in
contemplation of Siegfried's face, gazing with changing
emotions, from passionate sorrow to solemn
exultation. She turns at length to the vassals and commands
them to build a great funeral pile. High and bright let the
flames leap which shall devour the noble body. Let them
bring Grane, that he with herself may follow the hero, whose
honours her own body yearns to share. While they are
fulfilling her wish, she falls once more into rapt study of
the dead face, her own face becoming gentler and gentler, as
clearer and clearer understanding comes to her of him and
all that had happened. Her features appear softly glorified
at last with the light of forgiveness and reconcilement—and
she speaks his praise and justification: "Clear as the sun
his light shines upon me. He was the truest of all, this one
who betrayed me!" As an instance of his truth she quotes the
incident of the sword, placed, in loyalty to his friend,
between himself and his own beloved, "alone dear to him."
"Vows more true than his were never vowed by any; no one
more faithfully than he observed a covenant; no other ever
loved with a love so unalloyed; and yet all vows, all
covenants, all obligations of love, were betrayed by him as
never by man before! Do you know how this came to be?..."
The dealing with her of Wotan she recognises in these
extreme calamities falling upon her; she must suffer all
this to be brought, blind one, to a comprehension of that
which was demanded of her, which she had so haughtily
refused to consider when Waltraute pleaded for the gods. She
bows now under his heavy hand, but not without reproach and
arraignment: "Oh you, holy guardians of vows! Turn your eyes
upon my broad-blown woe: behold your eternal guilt! Hear my
accusation, most high god! Through his bravest action,
desired by you and of use to you, you devoted him who
performed it to dark powers of destruction...." (The old
story of the Ring!) "By the truest of all men born must I be
betrayed, that a woman might grow wise!... And
have I understood at last what it is you want of me?... Aye,
of everything, of everything, everything, I have
understanding! All has in this hour become clear to me.... I
hear the rustling, too, of your ravens: with the message so
fearfully yearned for I send them both home.... Be at rest,
be at rest, you god!" The tone of these last words is that
of the old Brünnhilde once more, the tender daughter pitying
her father's sorrows. Yes, let him be at rest, for the Ring
shall go back to the Rhine, to obtain which result her
dearest happiness has been sacrificed. She takes it from
Siegfried's finger, and places it—Siegfried's love-token,
not to be yielded up while she lives—upon her own. The
Rhine-daughters, when the funeral pile has burned to the
ground, shall take it from her ashes. She has had
conversation in the night with the wise sisters of the deep;
no fear but that they will be at hand.
And is that what will be Brünnhilde's
prophesied world-delivering act? Restoring the Ring to the
Rhine, thus saving the world definitely from Alberich and
the army of the night? Or can we suppose it to be the act
which she accomplishes in the same stroke,—the act of
plunging into their twilight the whole tribe of the tired
unjust gods, so long now tremulously awaiting their end? Or,
is the latter act Brünnhilde's supreme vengeance? Or,—this
seems more likely,—an act of supreme benevolence, the result
of at last understanding "everything, everything,
everything!"?
The funeral pile decked with precious
covers and flowers stands ready, Siegfried's body upon it.
Brünnhilde seizes a torch from one of the attendants: "Fly
home, you ravens, report to your master what you have heard
here by the shore of the Rhine! Pass, on your way, near to
Brünnhilde's rock: direct Loge, who is still smouldering
there, to Walhalla. For the dawn is now breaking of the end
of the gods! Thus do I hurl a burning brand into
Walhalla's flaunting citadel!" She sets fire with these
words to the pyre, which rapidly blazes up. Wotan's ravens
are seen slowly flapping off toward the horizon. Brünnhilde
takes Grane from the young men holding him, and, with all
the joy now again in her voice, face, and words, which
illuminated the moment of her first union, long ago, with
the then so youthful and ingenuous Awakener, she rushes to
be reunited to him in death, springing with her jubilant
Valkyrie-cry upon Grane and with him plunging into the
flames.
The fire flares doubly brilliant and high;
the red glare of it fills the whole scene. It becomes
evident suddenly that the Hall of the Gibichungen is
burning. The people huddle together in terror. When the
funeral pile sinks to a heap, the Rhine is seen flooding in
upon the embers. Hagen, eagerly on the watch for his last
chance, beholds with the insanity of despair the
Rhine-daughters rise from the waves close beside the site of
the pyre. Hurling from him shield and spear, he dashes into
the water to thrust them back. "Away from the Ring!" Two of
the jocose sisters for all reply entwine their arms around
his neck and draw him away and away with them into the deep
water. The third triumphantly holds up before his eyes the
recovered Ring.
As the fire dies among the blackened ruins
of the Hall, and the Rhine recedes into its boundaries, a
red light breaks in the sky. More and more brightly it
glows, till Walhalla is discerned in its central
illumination, with its enthroned gods and heroes. Flames are
seen invading the stately hall. When the company of the
Blessed are completely wrapped in fire, the curtain falls.
The last word of the music is the exultant
phrase by which Sieglinde greeted the prophecy of
Siegfried's birth. It has been woven all through
Brünnhilde's last ardently happy salutation to
him, as if in recognition of some mystical quality—in
death—of birth.
So Wotan finds his rest, and the ill
consequences at last end of his unjust act—end with the
reparation of the injustice, the return of the gold to the
Rhine. But has not the evil act been like the Djinn of old,
let out of the insignificant-looking urn, waxing great,
looming dark, and dictating hard terms! When Wotan in pride
of being committed it, against two simpletons, how could he
have divined that by this pin-point he set inexorable
machinery moving which should bring about his confusion,
forcing him in its progress to so many injustices more,
injustices which his soul would loathe, which would blight
his best beloved, which would by far be his greatest
punishment!... The Trilogy is moral as a tract.
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STORIES OF THE WAGNER OPERA
BY
H.A. GUERBER
DUSK OF THE GODS.
The Norns, or Northern goddesses of fate, are seen in the
dim light before dawn, busily weaving the web of destiny on
the rocky hillside where the Walkyries formerly held their
tryst. As they twist their rope, which is stretched from
north to south, they sing of the age of gold. Then they sat
beneath the great world-ash, near the limpid well, where
Wotan had left an eye in pledge to win a daily draught of
wisdom.
They also sing how the god tore from the mighty ash a
limb which he fashioned into an invincible spear. This
caused the death of the tree, which withered and died in
spite of all their care. The third Norn then continues the
tale her sisters have begun, and tells how Wotan came home
with a shivered spear one day, and bade the gods cut down
the tree. Its limbs were piled like fuel all around
Walhalla, the castle which the giants had built, and since
then Wotan has sat there in moody silence, awaiting the
predicted end, which can no longer be far distant.
While they are singing, the barrier of flame in the
background burns brightly, and its light grows pale only as
dawn breaks slowly over the scene. The rope which the Norns
are weaving then suddenly parts beneath their fingers; so
they bind the fragments about them and sink slowly into the
ground, to join their mother Erda, wailing a prophecy
concerning the end of the old heathen world:—
‘Away now is our
knowledge!
The world meets
From wisdom no more;
Below to Mother, below!’
As they vanish, the day slowly breaks, and Siegfried and
Brunhilde come out of the cave. The former is in full armour
and bears a jewelled shield, the latter leads her horse,
Grane, by the bridle. Tenderly Brunhilde bids her lover
farewell, telling him that she will not restrain his ardour,
for she knows it is a hero's part to journey out into the
world and perform the noble tasks which await him. But her
strength and martial fury have entirely departed since she
has learned to love, and she repeatedly adjures him not to
forget her, promising to await his homecoming behind her
flickering barrier of flame, and to think constantly of him
while he is
away. Siegfried reminds her that she need not fear he will
forget her as long as she wears the Nibelung ring, the seal
of their troth, and gladly accepts from her in exchange the
steed Grane. Although it can no longer scurry along the
paths of air, this horse is afraid of nothing, and is ready
to rush through water and fire at his command.
As Siegfried goes down the hill leading his steed,
Brunhilde watches him out of sight, and it is only when the
last echoes of his hunting horn die away in the distance
that the curtain falls.
The next scene is played at Worms on the Rhine. Gunther
and his sister Gutrune are sitting in their ancestral hall,
with their half-brother Hagen. He is the son of Alberich,
and has been begotten with the sole hope that he will once
help his father to recover the Nibelung ring. Hagen advises
Gunther to remember the duty he owes his race, and to marry
as soon as possible, and recommends as suitable mate the
fair Brunhilde, who is fenced in by a huge barrier of living
flame.
Gunther is not at all averse to matrimony, and is anxious
to secure the peerless bride proposed, yet he knows he can
never pass through the flames, and asks how Brunhilde is to
be won.
Hagen, who as a Nibelung knows the future, foretells that
Siegfried, the dauntless hero, will soon be there, and adds
that, if they can only efface from his memory all
recollection of past love by means of a magic potion, they
can soon induce him to promise his aid in exchange for the
hand of Gutrune.
As he speaks, the sound of a horn is heard, and Hagen,
looking out, sees Siegfried crossing the river in a boat,
and goes down to the landing with Gunther to bid the hero
welcome. Hagen leads the horse away, but soon returns, while
Gunther ushers Siegfried into the hall of the Gibichungs,
and enters into conversation with him. As Siegfried's
curiosity has been roused by the strangers calling him by
name, he soon inquires how they knew him, and Hagen declares
that the mere sight of the tarn-cap had been enough. He then
reveals to Siegfried its magical properties, and asks him
what he has done with the hoard, and especially with the
ring, which he vainly seeks on his hand. Siegfried
carelessly replies that the gold is still in the Neidhole,
guarded by the body of the dragon, while the ring now adorns
a woman's fair hand. As he finishes this statement, Gutrune
timidly draws near, and offers him a drinking horn, the
draught of welcome, in which, however,
the magic potion of forgetfulness has been mixed.
Siegfried drains it eagerly, remarking to himself that he
drinks to Brunhilde alone. But no sooner has he partaken of
it than her memory leaves him, and he finds himself gazing
admiringly upon Gutrune. Gunther then proceeds to tell
Siegfried the story of Brunhilde, whom he would fain woo to
wife. Although the hero dreamily repeats his words, and
seems to be struggling hard to recall some past memory, he
does not succeed in doing so. Finally he shakes off his
abstraction, and ardently proposes to pass through the fire
and win Brunhilde for Gunther in exchange for Gutrune's
hand:—
‘Me frights not her
fire;
I'll woo for thee the maid;
For with might and mind
Am I thy man—
A wife in Gutrun' to win.’
The two heroes now decide upon swearing blood brotherhood
according to Northern custom,—an inviolable oath,—and,
charging Hagen to guard the hall of the Gibichungs, they
immediately sally forth on their quest.
Brunhilde, in the mean while, has remained on the
Walkürenfels anxiously watching for Siegfried's return, and
spending long hours in contemplating
the magic ring, her lover husband's last gift. Her solitude
is, however, soon invaded by Waltraute, one of her sister
Walkyries. She informs her that Wotan has been plunged in
melancholy thought ever since he returned home from his
wanderings with a shattered spear, and bade the gods pile
the wood of the withered world-ash all around Walhalla. This
he has decided shall be his funeral pyre, when the predicted
doom of the gods overtakes him.
Waltraute adds also that she alone has found the clue to
his sorrow, for she has overheard him mutter that, if the
ring were given back to the Rhine-daughters, the curse
spoken by Alberich would be annulled, and the gods could yet
be saved from their doom:—
‘The day the River's
daughters
Find from her finger the ring,
Will the curse's weight
Be cast from the god and the world.’
Brunhilde pays but indifferent attention to all this
account, and it is only when Waltraute informs her that it
is in her power to avert the gods' doom by restoring the
ring she wears to the mourning Rhine-daughters, that she
starts angrily from her abstraction, swearing she will never
part with Siegfried's gift, the emblem and seal of their
plighted troth.
Waltraute, seeing no prayers will avail to win the ring,
then rides sadly away, while the twilight gradually settles
down, and the barrier of flames burns on with a redder glow.
At the sound of a hunting horn, Brunhilde rushes joyously to
the back of the scene, with a rapturous cry of ‘Siegfried!’
but shrinks suddenly back in fear and dismay when, instead
of the bright beloved form, a dark man appears through the
flickering flames. It is Siegfried, who, by virtue of the
tarn-helmet, has assumed Gunther's form and voice, and
boldly claims Brunhilde as his bride, in reward for having
made his way through the barrier of fire. Brunhilde
indignantly refuses to recognize him as her master.
Passionately kissing her ring, she loudly declares that as
long as it graces her finger she will have the strength to
repulse every attack and keep her troth to the giver. This
declaration so incenses Siegfried—who, owing to the magic
potion, has entirely forgotten her and her love—that he
rushes towards her, and after a violent struggle wrenches
the ring from her finger, and places it upon his own.
Cowed by the violence of this rude wooer, and deprived of
her ring, Brunhilde no longer resists, but tacitly yields
when he claims her as wife, and both soon disappear in the
cave.
There Siegfried, mindful of his oath to marry her by proxy
only, lays his unsheathed sword between him and his friend's
bride:—
‘Now, Nothung,
witness well
That faithfully I wooed;
Lest I wane in truth to my brother,
Bar me away from his bride!’
Hagen, left alone at Worms to guard the hall of the
Gibichungs, is favored in his sleep by a visit from his
father, Alberich. The dwarf informs him that ever since the
gods touched the fatal ring their power has waned, and that
he must do all in his power to recover it from Siegfried,
who again holds it, and who little suspects its magic power.
As Alberich disappears, carrying with him Hagen's promise to
do all he can, the latter awakens just in time to welcome
the returning Siegfried. The young hero joyfully announces
the success of their expedition, and rapturously claims
Gutrune as his bride. After hearing her lover's account of
his night's adventures, the maiden leads him into the hall
in search of rest and refreshment, while Hagen, summoning
the people with repeated blasts of his horn, admonishes them
to deck the altars of Wotan, Freya, and Donner, and to
prepare to receive their master and mistress
with every demonstration of joy. The festive preparations
are barely completed, when Gunther and Brunhilde arrive. The
bride is pale and reluctant, and advances with downcast
eyes, which she raises only when she stands opposite Gutrune
and Siegfried, and hears the latter's name. Dropping
Gunther's hand, she rushes forward impetuously to throw
herself in Siegfried's arms, but, arrested by his cold
unrecognising glance, she tremblingly inquires how he came
there, and why he stands by Gutrune's side? Calmly then
Siegfried announces his coming marriage:—
‘Gunther's winsome
sister
She that I wed
As Gunther thee.’
Brunhilde indignantly denies her marriage to Gunther, and
almost swoons, but Siegfried supports her, and, although
Brunhilde softly and passionately asks him if he does not
know her, the young hero indifferently hands her over to
Gunther, bidding him look after his wife.
At a motion of his hand, Brunhilde's attention is
attracted to the ring, and she angrily demands how he dare
wear the token which Gunther wrested from her hand.
Bewildered by this question, Siegfried denies ever
having received the ring from Gunther, and declares he won
it from the dragon in the Neidhole; but Hagen, anxious to
stir up strife, interferes, and elicits from Brunhilde an
assurance that the hero can have won the ring only by guile.
A misunderstanding now ensues, for while Brunhilde in
speaking refers to their first meeting, and swears that
Siegfried had wooed and treated her as his wife, he,
recollecting only the second encounter, during which he
acted only as Gunther's proxy, denies her assertions.
Both solemnly swear to the truth of their statement upon
Hagen's spear, calling the vengeance of Heaven down upon
them in case of perjury. Then the interrupted wedding
festivities are resumed, for Gunther knows only too well by
what fraud his bride was obtained, and thinks the
transformation has not been complete enough to blind the
wise Brunhilde.
As Siegfried gently leads Gutrune away into the hall,
whither all but Hagen, Gunther, and Brunhilde follow him,
the latter gives way to her extravagant grief. Hagen
approaches her, offering to avenge all her wrongs, and even
slay Siegfried if nothing else will satisfy her, and
wipe away the foul stain upon her honour. But Brunhilde
tells him it is quite useless to challenge the hero, for she
herself had made him invulnerable to every blow by blessing
every part of his body except his back. This she deemed
useless to protect, as Siegfried, the bravest of men, never
fled from any foe:—
‘Hagen.
So wounds him nowhere
a weapon?
Brunhilde.
In battle none:—but
still
Bare to the stroke is his back
Never—I felt—
In flight he would find
A foe to be harmful behind him,
So spared I his back from the
blessing.’
Her resentment against Siegfried has reached such a
pitch, however, that she finally hails with fierce joy
Hagen's proposal to slay him in the forest on the morrow.
Even Gunther acquiesces in this crime, which will leave his
sister a widow, and they soon agree that it shall be
explained to Gutrune as a hunting casualty.
At noon on the next day Siegfried arrives alone on the
banks of the Rhine, in search of a quarry which has escaped
him. The Rhine daughters, who concealed it purposely in
hopes
of recovering their ring, rise up out of the water, and
swimming gracefully around promise to help him recover his
game if he will only give them his ring. Siegfried, who
attaches no value whatever to the trinket, but wishes to
tease them, refuses it at first; but when they change their
bantering into a prophetic tone and try to frighten him by
telling him the ring will prove his bane unless he intrust
it to their care, he proudly answers that he has never yet
learned to fear, and declares he will keep it, and see
whether their prediction will be fulfilled:—
‘My sword once
splintered a spear;—
The endless coil
Of counsel of old,
Wove they with wasting
Curses its web;
Norns shall not cover from Nothung!
One warned me beware
Of the curse a Worm;
But he failed to make me to fear,—
The World's riches
I won with a ring,
That for love's delight
Swiftly I'd leave;
I'll yield it for sweetness to you;
But for safety of limbs and of life,—
Were it not worth
Of a finger's weight,—
No ring from me you will reach!’
The Rhine maidens then bid him farewell, and swim away
repeating their ominous prophecy. After they have gone, the
hunting party appear, heralded by the merry music of their
horns. All sit down to partake of the refreshments that have
been brought, and as Siegfried has provided no game, he
tries to do his share by entertaining them with tales of his
early youth.
After telling them of his childhood spent in Mime's
forge, of the welding of Nothung and the slaying of Fafnir,
he describes how a mere taste of the dragon's blood enabled
him to understand the songs of the birds. Encouraged by
Hagen, he next relates the capture of the tarn-helm and
ring, and then, draining his horn in which Hagen has
secretly poured an antidote to the draught of forgetfulness
administered by Gutrune, he describes his departure in quest
of the sleeping Walkyrie and his first meeting with
Brunhilde. At the mere mention of her name, all the past
returns to his mind. He suddenly remembers all her beauty
and love, and starts wildly to his feet, but only to be
pierced by the spear of the treacherous Hagen, who had
stolen behind him to drive it into his heart.
The dying hero makes one last vain effort to avenge
himself, then sinks feebly to the earth,
while Hagen slips away, declaring that the perjurer had
fully deserved to be slain by the weapon upon which he had
sworn his false oath. Gunther, sorry now that it is too
late, bends sadly over the prostrate hero, who, released
from the fatal effects of Gutrune's draught, speaks once
more of his beloved Brunhilde, and fancies he is once more
clasped in her arms as of old.
Then, when he has breathed his last, the hunters place
his body upon a shield and bear it away in the rapidly
falling dusk, to the slow, mournful accompaniment of a
funeral march, whose muffled notes fall like a knell on the
listener's ear.
Gutrune, who has found the day very long indeed without
her beloved Siegfried, comes out of her room at nightfall,
and listens intently for the sound of the hunting horn which
will proclaim his welcome return. She is not the only
watcher, however, for Brunhilde has stolen down to the
river, and her apartment is quite empty.
Suddenly Hagen comes in, and Gutrune, terrified at his
unexpected appearance, anxiously inquires why she has not
heard her husband's horn. Without any preparation, roughly,
brutally, Hagen informs her the hero is dead, just as
the bearers enter and deposit his lifeless body at her feet.
Gutrune faints, but when she recovers consciousness she
indignantly refuses to credit Hagen's story, that her
husband was slain by a boar. She wildly accuses Gunther, who
frees himself from suspicion by denouncing Hagen. Without
showing the least sign of remorse, the dark son of Alberich
then acknowledges the deed, and, seeing that Gunther is
about to appropriate the fatal ring, draws his sword and
slays him also. Wildly now Hagen snatches at the ring, that
long coveted treasure; but he starts back in dismay without
having secured it, for the dead hand is threateningly
raised, to the horror of all the spectators.
Next Brunhilde comes upon the scene, singing a song of
vengeance; and when Gutrune wildly accuses her of being the
cause of her husband's murder, she declares that she alone
was Siegfried's lawful wife, and that he would always have
been true to her had not Gutrune won him by the ruse of a
magic draught. Sadly Gutrune acknowledges the truth of this
statement, and, feeling that she has no right to mourn over
the husband of another woman, she creeps over to Gunther's
corpse and bends motionless over him.
Brunhilde's anger is all forgotten now that the hero is
dead, and, after caressing him tenderly for a while, she
directs the bystanders to erect a huge funeral pyre. While
they are thus occupied she sings the hero's dirge, and draws
the ring unhindered from his dead hand. Then she announces
her decision to perish in the flames beside him, and
declares the Rhine maidens can come and reclaim their stolen
treasure from their mingled ashes:—
‘Thou guilty ring!
Running gold!
My hand gathers,
And gives thee again.
You wisely seeing
Water sisters,
The Rhine's unresting daughters,
I deem your word was of weight!
All that you ask
Now is your own;
Here from my ashes'
Heap you may have it!—
The flame as it clasps me round
Free from the curse of the ring!—
Back to its gold
Unbind it again,
And far in the flood
Withhold its fire,
The Rhine's unslumbering sun,
That for harm from him was reft.’
The curse of the ring is at an end. The ravens of Wotan,
perching aloft, fly heavily off to announce the tidings in
Walhalla, while Brunhilde, after seeing Siegfried's body
carefully deposited on the pyre with all his weapons,
kindles the fire with her own hand. Then, springing upon
Grane, she rides into the very midst of the flames, which
soon rise so high that they swallow her up and entirely hide
her from the spectators' sight.
After a short time the flames die down, the bright light
fades, the stage darkens, and the river rises and overflows
its banks, until its waves come dashing over the funeral
pyre. They bear upon their swelling crests the Rhine maidens
who have come to recover their ring, Hagen, standing
gloomily in the background, becomes suddenly aware of their
intention, wildly flings his weapons aside, and rushes
forward, crying, ‘Unhand the ring!’ But he is caught in the
twining arms of two of the Rhine maidens, who draw him down
under the water, and drown him, while the third, having
secured the Nibelung ring, returns in triumph on the ebbing
waves to her native depths, chanting the Rhinegold strain.
As she disappears, a reddish glow like the Aurora Borealis
appears in the sky. It grows brighter and brighter, until
one can discern
the shining abode of Walhalla, enveloped in lurid flames
from the burning world-ash, and in the centre the assembled
gods calmly seated upon their thrones, to submit to their
long predicted doom, the ‘Götterdämmerung.’ 3
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THE MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG
I
The "argument of The Master-singers" is
effectually given in the Overture: Art and Love. The Masters
are first—a little pompously, as befits their
pretensions,—presented to us. Then Young Love sweeps across
the scene, delicate musical gale. The themes of the two then
mingle, foreshadowing how the affairs of Walther shall
become entangled with those of the Guild.
This Walther von Stolzing, a young
Franconian noble, last of his line, had for reasons which
are not given forsaken the ancestral castle and come to
Nuremberg in the intention of becoming a citizen there. He
had brought letters to a prominent burgher of the town, Veit
Pogner, the rich goldsmith, long acquainted with his family,
and known to it, by reputation. Pogner had offered him every
courtesy, hospitality, and assistance in the business of
selling his Franconian lands.
Walther had found twenty-four hours in
Nuremberg and Pogner's house ample time to fall deeply,
transcendingly, rapturously, in love with the goldsmith's
daughter. She is very young, very feminine, even in the
respect of being little rather than large, so that she is
always called, fondly, Evchen, little Eva. Her name is
perhaps meant to indicate her quality of inveterate
femineity. The whole story goes to show that she
was pretty enough to turn heads young and old. She had been
an obedient, an exemplary daughter, up to the hour of
meeting Walther, allowing her father to think for her,
accepting demurely his views for her. How should she not
feel it best, so long as her immature heart had never spoken
a word, to let a most kind and indulgent parent, whose
wisdom it was not for her to question, dispose of her hand
in the manner he thought most fitting? When she had seen
Walther, however, a new light illumined her position.
On the second day of his acquaintance with
her, it seemed to the young lord that he could not live
through another night but he made sure of one point. He
followed his lady to vespers, in the hope of an opportunity
to exchange one private word, ask one question. It was the
eve of Saint John's day. The congregation when the curtain
rises is concluding an anthem to the "noble Baptist." Eva
and Magdalene, her nurse, are in one of the pews that fill
the nave of the church. Walther stands in the aisle, leaning
against a pillar, from which position he can watch the fair
one. He tries whenever her eyes stray his way, as,
irresistibly attracted, they frequently do, to convey to her
by glance and gesture his prayer for a moment's interview.
Magdalene feels herself repeatedly obliged to recall her
young lady's attention to the church-service. The
congregation rises at last and flocks to the church-door.
Walther steps before the two women as they are passing forth
with the rest, with the hurried demand to Eva for a word, a
single word. Magdalene, who is a step behind, has not caught
his request. Eva with quick resource sends her back to the
pew for her forgotten kerchief. But Walther has become
alarmed at his own boldness, and instead of utilising his
opportunity to utter or obtain that "single word," falls to
pouring forth many disconnected words by way of leading up
to the all-important question. He has not contrived
to get it out before Magdalene returns. But Eva then
discovers that her brooch too has been left in the pew.
Walther, because he really dreads to hear an answer which
may dash his dearest hopes, makes no better use of this
second chance than of the first; he is still leading up to
his famous question when Magdalene brings the brooch. But
upon this fortune favours him, Magdalene must run back to
the pew for her forgotten prayer-book; and in the brief
interval of her search Walther asks breathlessly of Eva: if
she be already betrothed! She does not reply by the
instantaneous negative he had hoped for, and the passionate
wish breaks from his lips that he had never crossed the
threshold of her father's house! Magdalene, who has rejoined
them, bridles indignantly at such an expression from him.
"How now, my lord, what is this you say? Scarce arrived in
Nuremberg, were you not hospitably received? Is not the best
afforded by kitchen and cellar, cupboard and store-room,
deserving of any gratitude whatever?" Eva tries to silence
her: "That is not what he meant, good Lene. But... this
information he desires of me—How am I to say it? I hardly
myself understand! I feel as if I were dreaming—He wishes to
know whether I am already betrothed?" Lene at this
recognises, of course, that here is that reprobate thing, a
lover, and remembers her first duty as a duenna, to keep off
all such from her young charge. She is for hurrying home at
once. Walther resolutely detains her. "Not till I know
all!"—"The church is empty, every one is gone!" Eva gives as
a reason for not being so punctilious. Lene sees in the very
loneliness of the place a reason the more for departing with
all speed,—but Fate again helps Walther. David, a youthful
shoe-maker's apprentice, enters the church from the vestry,
and falls to making mysterious preparations, drawing
curtains which shut off the nave of the church, measuring
distances on the pavement with a yard-rule. No sooner has
Magdalene caught sight of him than she becomes
absent-minded, and when Eva urges, "What am I to tell him?
Do you tell me what I am to say!" more good-humoured than
before, she vouchsafes: "Your lordship, the question you ask
of the damsel is not so easy to answer. As a matter of
truth, Evchen Pogner is betrothed——" "But no one," quickly
adds the girl, "has as yet see the bridegroom!" He gathers
from the two that the bridegroom shall be the victor on the
following day in a song-contest, the master-singer to whom
the other master-singers award the prize, and whom the bride
herself crowns. It all falls strangely on the ears of one
not a Nuremberger. "The master-singer?..." he falters. "Are
you not one?" Eva asks incredulously, wistfully. And when in
his effort to grasp the situation exactly he continues
asking questions, she answers his interrogative: "The bride
then chooses?..." with complete forgetfulness of every
maidenly convention, by an ardent, honest "You, or no
one!"—"Are you gone mad?" Magdalene grasps her arm, shocked
and flustered. She has, and feels no shame. "Good Lene, help
me to win him!"—"But you saw him yesterday for the first
time!" No, she became a victim so readily to love's torment,
Eva tells Lene, because she had long known him in a picture,
Albrecht Dürer's painting of David, after the slaying of
Goliath, his sword at his belt, his sling in his hand, his
head brightly encircled with fair curls.
Joyful agitation has seized the Knight at
Eva's sweet impulsive word, and, with it, bewilderment as to
what must be his course in circumstances so unprecedented.
He restlessly paces the pavement, trying to determine how he
shall deal with the strange conditions raising their barrier
between him and the object of his desire. Magdalene calls to
her the object of hers. The middle-aged
spinster has a weak spot in her heart for David. The boyish
shoe-maker's apprentice on his side adores her—and the
pleasant bits she maternally smuggles to him from Pogner's
kitchen. Questioned, he informs her that he is making the
place ready for the master-singers. There is to be directly
a song-trial: such song-apprentices as commit no offence
against the table of rules are to be promoted to mastership.
Here would be the Knight's chance, reflects Lene,—his one
chance to be made master before the fateful morrow. When, as
they are leaving, Walther offers the ladies his company to
Master Pognet's, she bids him wait rather for Pogner where
he stands: if he wishes to enter the contest for Evchen's
hand, Fortune has favoured him with respect to time and
place. "What am I to do?" asks the lover eagerly. David
shall instruct him, and Magdalene herself instructs David to
make himself useful to the Knight. "Something choice from
the kitchen I will save for you. And if the young lord here
shall to-day be made a master, you may to-morrow proffer
your requests full boldly!"
"Shall I see you again?" Eva shyly asks of
Walther, as Magdalene is hurrying her off. His answer gives
the keynote of him, characteristic outburst that it is of
his vital, vigourous, enthusiastic youth, to which all
things seem possible—beautiful youth, which has the
splendour and force of fire, with the freshness of flowers;
which flashes like a sword and trembles like a lute-string.
"Shall I see you again?" It is after vespers. "This evening,
surely!" he replies: "How shall I tell you what I would be
willing to undertake for your sake? New is my heart, new is
my mind, new to me is all this which I am entering upon. One
thing only I know, one thing only I grasp, that I will
devote soul and senses to winning you! If it may not be with
the sword, I must achieve it with song, and as a master sing
you mine!
For you, my blood and my possessions, for you, the sacred
aspiration of a poet!" Strains from this sweet and proud
profession are scattered all through the story, they are the
Walther-motifs, heard in his first sigh as he watches her
from the shadow of the church-pillar, and woven finally into
his prize-song. And the effect of youth that goes magically
with them! The fragrance that belongs to them, with the
fire! As of green things in early May, wet with the dew of
dawn,—the beams of the rising sun kindling all to a
softly-dazzling glory. The hearer feels himself young too
with an immortal youth.... But words are never so
ineffectual as when they would translate music.
When Walther and Eva part, they are
candidly lovers, for she has joined her voice to his at the
closing words of his profession, and herself warmly
professed: "My heart with its blessed ardour,—for you, its
love-consecrated kindness!" In a moment the women are gone.
Walther casts himself in a great high-backed carved seat
which apprentices have a moment before placed in the
conspicuous position it occupies, and is absorbed in the
attempt to collect himself, deal with his swarming emotions,
order his wild thoughts, scheme what to do. The excited
blood in his veins sings the song of his youth.
Apprentices in number, lively and
mischievous imps, have entered and are setting the place
aright for the meeting of the master-singers, placing seats
for these on one side and forms for themselves on the
opposite side, arranging near the centre a platform and
blackboard enclosed by curtains. David stands studying that
original who supposes one can be made a master in an hour.
The gentleman's rank and fine feathers do not impress the
youth, who feels himself rather, with respect to the
requirements of the hour, in a position to patronise.
Walther is startled to hear him suddenly shout: "Begin!"
"What is the matter?" he inquires, waking out of his dream.
"Begin! That is what the Marker calls out, and then you must
sing. Don't you know that?"—"Who is the Marker?"—"Don't you
know? Have you never been to a song-trial?"—"Never, where
the judges were artisans."—"Are you a poet?"—"Would that I
were!"—"Are you a singer?"—"Would that I knew!"—"But you
have at least been a 'school-frequenter' and a 'pupil?'"—"It
all sounds foreign to my ear!"—"And you wish to become a
master, off-hand, like that?"—"What enormous difficulty does
the matter present?"—David groans: "Oh, Lene, Lene... oh,
Magdalene!"—"What a to-do you make! Come, tell me, in good
faith, what I must do!" David has now the chance he loves.
Here is one who knows nothing whatever of the things it is
his pride to have learned at least the names of, the things
to a Nuremberger worth knowing among all. The ignoramus
shall be properly dazzled. David strikes an attitude.
"Myself," he informs Walther, "I am learning the Art from
the greatest master in Nuremberg, Hans Sachs. For a full
year I have received his instructions. Shoe-making and
poetry I learn simultaneously. When I have pounded the
leather even and smooth, I learn of vowel-sounds and of
consonance. When I have waxed the thread hard and stiff, I
apply myself to the rules of rhyme. While punching holes and
driving the awl, I commit the science of rhythm and
number...." And so forth. For a full year he has been
learning, and how far does Walther suppose he has got? The
Knight suggests, laughing: "To the making of a right good
pair of shoes!" Nay, this top-lofty aristocrat, with his
jokes, does not in the least understand! And David enlarges
further on the great and various difficulties in the way of
him who aspires to become a master-singer. A "bar," let him
know, has manifold parts and divisions, full difficult to
master the law thereof!... And then comes the "after-song,"
which must not be too short, nor yet too long, and must
contain no rhyme already used in the foregoing stanzas. But
even when a person has learned and knows all this, even then
he is not yet called a master. For there are a thousand
subtleties and refinements the aspirant must still make his
own. Whether David in showing off draws a bit upon his
fancy, or whether the master-singers really cherished these
distinctions in mode and tone, one can but wonder.
Suggestive the titles of them certainly are. Glibly,
grandly, and with a rich relish, David tells them off: The
fool's-cap, the black-ink mode; the red, blue and green
tones; the hawthorn-blossom, straw-wisp, fennel modes; the
tender, the sweet, the rose-coloured tone; the short-lived
love, the deserted-lover tones; the rosemary, the golden
lupine, the rainbow, the nightingale modes; the English tin,
the stick-cinnamon modes; the fresh orange, green
linden-blossom modes; the frogs', the calves', the goldfinch
modes; the mode—save the mark!—of the secret gormandiser;
the lark, the snail tones; the barking tone; the balsam, the
marjoram modes; the tawny lion-fell, the faithful pelican
modes; the respendent gold-galloon mode! Walther cries out
to Heaven for help. "Those," proceeds David, "are only the
names! Now learn to sing them exactly as the masters have
established, every word and tone sounding clearly, the voice
rising and falling as it should...." etc., etc., etc.; "but
if, when you have done all these things correctly, you
should make a mistake, or in any wise stumble and flounder,
whatever your success up to that moment, you would have
failed in the song-trial! In spite of great diligence and
application, myself I have not brought it to that point. Let
me be an example to you, and drop this folly of seeking to
be made a master!"
Walther, persisting in inquiry, conquers
the information at last that in order to be named a master
a man must compose an original poem and fit it to an
original air, in accordance with the many laws laid down by
his judges. "All there is for me to do then," concludes the
lover, nothing discouraged, "is to aim directly at
mastership. If I am to sing successfully, I must find, to
verses of my own, a melody of my own!" David, who has joined
the apprentices, fends off their teasing by privately
preparing them for rich diversion presently at the
song-trial. "Not I to-day, another fellow is up for trial!
He has not been a 'pupil' and is not a 'singer'; the
formality of earning the title of 'poet' he says he will
omit; for he is a gentleman of quality, and expects, with
one leap and no further difficulty, this very day to become
a master. Wherefore arrange carefully the Marker's cabinet;
the blackboard on the wall, convenient to the Marker's
hand.... The Marker, yes!" he repeats bodingly to the not
sufficiently impressed knight. "Are you not afraid? Many a
candidate already, singing before him, has met with failure.
He allows you seven errors; he marks them there with chalk;
whoever makes more than seven errors has completely and
conclusively failed!" The apprentices in their glee over the
prospective entertainment join hands and dance in a ring
around the curtained recess where the Marker shortly shall
be chronicling the slips and blunders of this self-confident
lordling.
Their play is interrupted, and they
hurriedly put on good behaviour, at the entrance of two of
the masters, Pogner and Sixtus Beckmesser, the town-clerk.
The change in the music is definite as a change of air and
scene, is like passing from the hubbub of the street into
some calm and pleasant precinct. Beckmesser is importuning
Pogner with regard to his intentions for the morrow.
Beckmesser wishes extremely to become his son-in-law,
wherefore he thinks it would be best to give the
young lady no choice, to decree simply and finally that the
winner of the prize for song should be her husband. He feels
cocksure of his superiority as a master-singer, but dubious,
it would seem, of his power to enthrall the fancy of a young
girl. "If Evchen's voice can strike out the candidate, of
what use to me is my supremacy as a master?"—"Come," replies
Pogner sensibly, "if you have no hopes of the daughter's
regard, how do you come to enter the lists as her suitor?"
Beckmesser, after this check, cannot, of course, urge
anything further in the same direction. He begs for Pogner's
influence with his child, and turns away disgusted with the
goldsmith's merely civil assent. It seems to him that a man
like Pogner ought to know as well as he knows that women
have no real taste, that they are capable of preferring the
sorriest stuff to all the poetry in the world. How shall he,
Beckmesser, avoid a disappointment, a public defeat? He
decides upon reflection to try the prize-song he has
prepared, as a serenade, and make sure beforehand that the
maiden will be pleased with it.
Walther has approached and exchanged
greetings with Pogner. He comes directly to the point, and,
with airy aplomb, "If truth must be told," he says, "the
thing which drove me from home and brought me to Nuremberg
was the love of Art, nothing else! I forgot to tell you this
yesterday—but to-day I proclaim it aloud. It is my desire to
become a master-singer. Receive me, master, in the guild!"
The masters are flocking in, bakers,
tailors, coppersmiths, grocers, weavers. Pogner turns to
them, delighted. "Hear, what a very interesting case. The
knight here, my friend, is desirous of dedicating himself to
our Art. It seems like the olden days come back!—You can
hardly think," to Walther, "how glad I am! As willingly
indeed as ever I lent you my assistance to sell your land, I
will receive you in the guild!"—"What man is that?" Beckmesser
almost barks, catching sight of Walther. Suspiciously he
observes him: "I do not like him.... What is he doing here?
How his eyes beam with laughter!... Look sharp, Sixtus, keep
an eye on that fellow!"
"And may I hope," asks Walther of Pogner,
"to have this very day an opportunity to undergo trial and
be elected master?"—"Oho!" soliloquises Beckmesser, with a
shock of surprise at audacity such as this, "on that head
stands no skittle!" There is no moss growing on him! Pogner
is no doubt surprised too, but answers kindly: "The matter
must be conducted according to rule. To-day, however, as it
happens, is song-trial. I will propose you. The masters lend
a favourable ear to requests of mine."
The masters are assembled; last of all has
entered Hans Sachs, the shoe-maker,—dear, benignantly-gazing
Hans Sachs. "Are we all here?" asks one of the members.
"Sachs is here! What more is necessary?" sneers Beckmesser.
Fritz Kothner, the baker, in the capacity
of speaker, calls the roll. As the meeting is about to pass
to the business of the day, Pogner asks for the floor, and
unfolds before the assembled guild his romantic scheme: The
following is Saint John's day, when it is customary for the
master-singers to hold a song-contest out in the open, among
the people, the victorious singer receiving a prize. "Now I,
by God's grace, am a rich man, and every one should give
according to his means. I cast about therefore for a gift to
give not unworthy of me. Hear what I determined upon. In my
extensive travels over Germany, I have often been chagrined
to find that the burgher is held cheap, is thought
close-fisted and mean-minded. Among high and low alike, I
heard the bitter reproach, till I was soul-sick of it,—that
the burgher has no aim or object above commerce and the
getting of money. That we alone in the whole kingdom of
Germany are the guardians and preservers of art, they take
into no account. To what point we place our honour in that,
with what a lofty spirit we cherish the good and beautiful,
how highly we prize art and its influence, I wished
therefore to show the world. So hear, Masters, the gift
which I have appointed for prize: To the singer who in the
song-contest shall before all the people win the prize on
Saint John's day, let him be who he may, I give, devotee of
art that I am, Veit Pogner of Nuremberg, with my whole
inheritance, even as it stands, Eva, my only child, in
marriage!"
Loud applause. "There is a man for you!...
There is talk of the right sort!... There one sees what a
Nuremberger is capable of!... Who would not wish to be a
bachelor?..." "I dare say that some," suggests Sachs, "would
not mind giving away their wives!"
But there is a postscript to Pogner's
address which qualifies the aspect of the whole: The maiden
shall have the right to reject the masters' choice. That is
what has from the first bothered Beckmesser, in Pogner's
counsel before this making public of his idea. The general
mood is changed by this revelation. "Does it strike you as
judicious?" Beckmesser privately consults Kothner;
"Dangerous I call it!"—"Do I understand aright," asks
Kothner; "that we are placed in the hands of the young lady?
If the master-singers' verdict then does not agree with
hers, how is it to operate?"—"Let the young lady choose at
once according to the inclination of her heart, and leave
master-singing out of the game!" remarks Beckmesser tartly.
"Not at all! Not at all!" Pogner strives to calm them, "Not
in the very least! You have imperfectly understood. The
maiden may refuse the one to whom you master-singers award
the prize, but she may not choose another. A master-singer
he must be. Only one crowned by yourselves may become a
suitor for her." The arrangement does seem, closely
considered, rather hard on the young lady, and one fancies
more than once, in the course of the play, a shade of
sheepishness in the father's own attitude toward
it,—momentary ripples of misgiving.
A voice of beautiful, calm, corrective
sanity is now raised in the assembly. "Your pardon!" speaks
Sachs to Pogner, "you have perhaps already gone somewhat
far. The heart of a young girl and the heart aglow for
master-art do not always burn with an identical flame.
Feminine judgment, untutored as it is, would seem to me on a
level with popular judgment. If therefore you have in mind
to show the people how highly you honour art, and if,
leaving to your daughter the right of choice, you wish her
not to repudiate the verdict, let the people be among the
judges, for the people's taste is sure to coincide with the
girl's."
Indignation upon this among the masters.
"The people?... That were fine! As well say good-bye, once
for all, to art!... Sachs, what you say is nonsense.... Are
the rules of art to be set aside for the
people?"—"Understand me aright!" Sachs meets them; "How you
take on! You will own that I know the rules thoroughly. For
many a year I have been at pains to keep the guild to a
strict observation of them. But once a year it would seem to
me wise to test the rules themselves, and see whether in the
easy grooves of habit their strength and vitality have not
been lost. And whether you are still upon the right track of
nature you can only find out from such as know nothing of
tabulated rules!" (The apprentices, who here represent the
people, and have no great love for the Tabulatur,
give evidence of joy.) "Wherefore it would seem to me
expedient that yearly, at Saint John's feast, instead of
permitting the people to come to you, you should descend out
of your
lofty mastership-cloud, and yourselves go to the people. You
wish to please the people. It would strike me as to the
point to let the people tell you itself whether you succeed
in pleasing it. You would thus secure a vital advantage,
both for the people and for art. There you have Hans Sachs's
opinion!"
No one agrees with him, of course. "You no
doubt mean well, but it would be a mistake.... If the people
is to have a voice, I, for one, shall keep my mouth shut....
If art is to run after the favour of the people, it cannot
fail to come to grief and contempt."—"His success would be
enormous, no doubt, who urges this matter so stiffly,"
Beckmesser puts in spitefully; "His compositions are nearly
all popular street-songs!"
Pogner sets Sachs's suggestion aside with
perfect civility and good humour. "The thing I am about to
do is novel already. Too much novelty at one time might
bring in its wake regret...."—"Sufficient to me," Sachs
yields the point, "is the maiden's right of refusal!"—"That
cobbler always excites my wrath!" mutters Beckmesser.
They pass to the order of the day. "Who
enters the lists as a candidate? A bachelor he must be."—"Or
perhaps a widower?" offers Beckmesser; "Ask Sachs!"—"Oh, no,
master Beckmesser," Sachs retorts; "Of younger wax than
either you or I must the suitor be, if Evchen is to bestow
the prize on him!"—"Younger than I, too?... Coarse fellow!"
At the question whether any be on the spot
who wish to take the song-trial, Pogner presents Walther von
Stolzing, as one desirous of being that same day elected
master-singer. The motif of Wather's presentation gives a
clear idea of the knight's charming appearance, his grace,
his elastic step, his hat and feathers, the delicate
haughtiness of his bearing, in keeping with his proud name.
A black suspicion enters Beckmesser's breast
at sight of him: he is the card which Pogner has all along
had up his sleeve. The town-clerk declares promptly that it
is too late now to enter the new-comer. The masters exchange
glances: "Anoble?... Is it a case for rejoicing? Or is there
danger in it?... The fact that Master Pogner speaks for him
has its weight, certainly..."—"If he is to be welcomed among
us," says Kothner, somewhat forbiddingly, "he must show
proper recommendations."—"Do not mistake me," Pogner hastens
to say; "Though I wish him good fortune, I have no thought
of waiving any rule. Put to him, gentlemen, the customary
questions." At the very first question, however, whether he
be free and honourably born, Pogner hurriedly prevents
Walther's answer by his own, making himself voucher for him
in every respect such as that. The generous Sachs, feeling
the something grudging in the attitude of the masters,
reminds them that it had long been one of the rules made by
themselves that an applicant being a lord or a peasant
should have no significance, that inquiry concerning art
alone should be made of one desiring to become a
master-singer. Kothner passes thereupon to the question: "Of
what master are you a disciple?" And then is born into the
world a new, a ravishing melody—which has all the delight in
it that can be compressed into the space. Airily,
confidently, debonairly, Walther delivers himself, in the
sweet ingenuousness of his heart, "new," as he had said,
ignorant as yet of the jealous world's ways: "Beside my
quiet hearth in winter-time, when castle and court were
buried in snow, in an ancient book, bequeathed to me by my
fathers, I was wont to read recorded the engaging beauties
of past Springs, as well as, prophesied, the beauties of the
Spring soon to reawaken. The poet, Walther von der
Vogelweid, he it is who has been my master!" Sachs has
listened with a surprised, charmed sympathy. He
nods beamingly: "A good master!"—"But long dead!" snaps
Beckmesser; "How could he learn the canons from him?"
Kothner proceeds without comment to the
next question: "In what school did you learn to sing?"—"Then
when the sward was free from frost, and summer-time was come
back, all that in the long winter-evenings I had read in the
old book was proclaimed aloud in the luxuriance of the
forest. I caught the clear sound of it there. In the forest
where the birds congregate, I learned likewise to
sing!"—"Ho, ho, from finches and tomtits you acquired the
art of master-singing?" Beckmesser jeers; "Your song no
doubt smacks of its teachers!"—"What do you think, masters,"
inquires Kothner, upon this hopeless revelation, "shall I
proceed with the questions? It strikes me his lordship's
answers are altogether wide of the mark."—"That is what will
presently be seen," Sachs interposes warmly; "If his art is
of the right sort, and he duly proves it, of what
consequence is it from whom he learned it?" Whereupon
Kothner proceeds, addressing Walther: "Are you prepared,
now, at once, to attempt an original master-song, new in
conception, original both in text and tune?" Walther answers
unhesitatingly: "All that winter-night and forest-splendour,
that book and grove have taught me; all that the magic of
poetry has secretly revealed to me; all that I have
gathered, a thoughtful listener, from ride to battle or from
dance in gay assembly,—all this, in the present hour, when
the highest prize of life may be purchased by a song, is
what must necessarily flow into my song, original in word
and note,—is what must be outpoured before you, masters, if
I succeed, as a master-song!"
"Did you gather anything from that torrent
of words?" Beckmesser asks, with his eyebrows up among his
hair, of his fellow-masters. "Now, masters, if you please,"
Kothner directs, "let the Marker take his seat. Does his
lordship," to
Walther, "choose a sacred subject?" "One that is sacred to
me!" the young man answers magnificently; "The banner of
Love I swing and I sing—and cherish good hope!" "That,"
considers Kothner, without a gleam, "comes under the head of
secular subject. And now, Master Beckmesser, pray shut
yourself in!" With a thin pose of reluctance, Beckmesser
takes his way toward the curtained cabinet. "A sour
office—and to-day especially. The chalk, I surmise, will be
troublesomely in requisition. Know, Sir Knight, Sixtus
Beckmesser is the Marker. Here in the cabinet he attends to
his stern duty. He allows you seven errors. He marks them
down in there with chalk. If you make over seven errors, Sir
Knight, you have failed in the song-trial. Keen is the
Marker's ear; that the sight of him therefore may not
disconcert you, he relieves you of his presence and
considerately shuts himself up in there—God have you in his
keeping!" He has climbed upon the platform; he sharply draws
the curtains.
Two apprentices take down from the wall
and bring forward the Leges Tabulaturœ. With pomp and
flourish Kothner reads them off to Walther. The "tabulature"
gives the straight and narrow laws upon which a song must be
constructed, to earn its singer the dignity of mastership.
"Now take your seat in the singing-chair!" Kothner orders
Walther at the close of his reading. "Here, in this chair?"
It is the tall carved chair in which he had cast himself
earlier. "As is the custom of the school!" Even so much of
restraint as the obligation to sing on a given spot is
repugnant to the spirit of the highborn youth, who yet is
undertaking to satisfy the most law-ridden assemblage he
could have met with. He murmurs, taking the seat: "For your
sake, beloved, it shall be done!"—"The singer sits!"
announces Kothner. "Begin!" shouts Beckmesser out of sight.
From Beckmesser's cry "Begin!" Walther takes
his cue, and simply vaulting into the seat of his Pegasus,
casting the bridle upon the neck of inspiration, he directly
before them all pours forth his full heart in profuse
strains of unpremeditated art. He has never committed their
canons, is ignorant of their conventions; he has genius,
that is all, and its daring; is a poet born, not made; is at
the moment, beside all the rest, uplifted by the divine fire
of his love—and his song is right as some natural object, a
crystal or a flower. Consummate as is the song, it has yet
the character perfectly of an improvisation—the ideal
improvisation, let us say—the gush, the rush, the profusion
of lovely ornament, the unrestraint,—but essentially
orderly, the unrestraint, like that of an army with banners,
swarming, in only apparent confusion, up a height, to
assured victory. The urge, the climbing effect of the song,
are owing, it is plain enough, to Walther's being really
inside of it, to his having cast his whole self into it,
with his straining after a goal, his desperate necessity to
win. In this case, verily the style is the man.
"Begin!"—runs the sense of that perfect song, "Thus shouted
Spring in the woods, till they rang again! And as the sound
died away in distant waves, in the distance a sound was
born, drawing nearer and nearer in a mighty flood. It grows,
it resounds, the woods re-echo with a multitude of sweet
voices. Loud and clear, it sweeps anear, to what a torrent
it is grown! Like clangour of bells rings the multiple voice
of Joy! The forest, how readily it responds to the call
which has wakened it anew to life, and entones the sweet
canticle of Spring!"
The Marker's chalk is not idle; a number
of workmanlike scratches have been heard. Walther has
stopped short, jarred by the sound. He resumes after a
moment: "In a thorny hedge, devoured by envy and chagrin,
Winter, in his armour of ill-will, cowers in hiding. Amid
the rustling of withered leaves, he sits spying with
watchful eye and ear for a chance to bring to grief the
happy singing...." The singer bounds to his feet. "None the
less, 'Begin!' The cry rang in my breast, when I was as yet
wholly unaware of love! And in my breast I felt a deep
stirring, which woke me as if from a dream. My heart filled
the chamber of my bosom with its trembling palpitations;
mightily surged my blood, its stream swollen by new
emotions; stormily out of the warm night pressed the host of
sighs,—increasing, in the wild tumult of joy, to the
innumerableness of the sea. My breast, with what rapture it
responds to the call which has wakened it to new life, and
entones the lovely canticle of Love!"
He has hardly ceased, when Beckmesser
thrusts apart the curtains. "Have you finished? I have quite
finished with the blackboard!" He holds up for inspection
the blackboard, overscored on both sides with great
chalk-marks. The masters break into laughter. "Have the
goodness to listen," demands Walther imperiously; "I have
only just reached the point where my song is to publish my
lady's praise!"—"Go and sing wherever else you please. Here
you have failed." Beckmesser descends from his post,
flourishing the blackboard. "I beg you will examine,
masters, this blackboard. Never since I live has such a
thing been heard of. I should not have believed it though
you had all affirmed it under oath...." Walther, in the
innocence of his youth, loudly appeals: "Do you intend to
allow him, masters, to interrupt me like this? Am I not from
any one of you to have a hearing?" Pogner's courtesy
interferes: "One word, friend Marker, are you not out of
temper?" Beckmesser excitedly proceeds to justify his
chalk-marks. No beginning or end, defective metre, defective
construction! Blind meaning! Not one proper breathing-space
anywhere! No appropriate colouring—and of melody not a
vestige! Then, what a mad medley of "modes"! A mixture of
adventure-tone, blue-knightly-spurs tone, tall-pine-trees
tone and haughty-stripling tone! (Which permits the
supposition that David, though moved by the desire to amaze,
was yet a faithful reporter of the refinements of
master-singing.) The master-singers agree readily with
Beckmesser, are really relieved to find their impressions
boldly put into form for them by him. Not one of them has
understood anything. Walther's unprecedented leaping to his
feet in the heat of inspiration has given offence to this
one; the other terms his singing "empty battering at the
ear-drums." They are about to subscribe unanimously to
Beckmesser's verdict that he has lost his case, when Sachs's
voice breaks in upon the confusion. He has listened to
Walther in complete self-forgetful absorption. The absence
of all jealousy in his large nature leaves his mind
peculiarly open for genuine first-hand impressions; his wide
understanding is not repelled by the new and strange. The
close of the young man's song has found him won, enlisted,
prepossessed. He calls the masters to halt. "Not every one
shares in your opinion! The Knight's song struck me as
novel, yet not confused; although he forsook the beaten
track, he strode along with firm, unerring step...." Sachs
nods to himself and beams at this reviewing of the intense
pleasure he has just experienced. "When you find that you
have been trying to measure by your own rules that which
does not lie within the compass of your rules, the thing to
do is to forget your rules and try to discover the rules of
that which you wish to measure!" Which sage talk is not
destined to be fruitfully heard in the agitation of
prejudice, alarm, and dislike possessing the majority of the
masters. "Oh, very well," fumes Beckmesser, "Now you have
heard him: Sachs offering a loophole to bunglers, that they
may slip in and out at will and flourish at ease. Sing to the
people as much as you please, in marketplace and street;
here no one shall gain admission save in accordance with
rule!" Sachs insists that Walther must be heard to the end.
"The guild of the masters, the whole body," chafes
Beckmesser, "are as nothing counterbalanced by Sachs!" "God
forbid," speaks Sachs, "that I should desire anything
contrary to the guild's laws; but among those very laws it
stands written that the Marker shall be so chosen that
neither love nor hate may influence his judgment. Now, if
the Marker go on lover's feet, how should he not yield to
the temptation of bringing a rival to derision before the
assembled school?" Beckmesser flares up, trembling with
rage. "What concern of Master Sachs's is it on what sort of
feet I go? Let him sooner turn his attention to making me
shoes that will not hurt my toes. But since my shoe-maker
has become a mighty poet, it's a sorry business with my
foot-wear. See there, all down at the heel, the sole half
off and shuffling! His many verses and rhymes I would
cheerfully dispense with, likewise his tales, his plays, and
his comical pieces, if he would just bring me home my new
shoes for to-morrow!" The thrust tells. Sachs scratches his
ear a little ruefully, but is not found quite without a word
to say. The excuse he advances is that while it is his
custom to write a verse on the sole of every shoe he
delivers, he has not yet found a verse worthy of the learned
town-clerk. "But," by a turn of the conversation directing
it to a use nearer his heart, "I very likely shall catch
inspiration from the Knight," he says, "when I have heard
the whole of his song! Wherefore let him sing further
undisturbed. Sing!" Slyly smiling he makes sign to Walther,
"Sing, in Master Marker's despite!"
Walther springs to the singing-chair, but
the masters cry in a voice, "An end! An end!" Walther,
undaunted, climbs to his feet upon the very seat of the sacred
chair, from which he commands the assembly by half his
height and haughtily looks down upon it. And he sings with
all his lungs and all his fire to make himself heard above
the hubbub; he sings, determined to impose the impress of
himself upon their minds, will they or not; and his tenor
pierces through and floats over the snarling chorus of
objection; and he sings his song, in spite of them all, to
the very end. "From the dark thorn-hedge rustles forth the
owl, and by his hooting rouses the hoarse choir of the
ravens; in night-black swarm they gather, and croak aloud
with their hollow voices, magpies, crows, and daws! But
thereupon soars upward on a pair of golden wings, wonderful,
a Bird: his clearly-shining plumage gleams bright aloft in
the air, rapturously he soars hither and thither, inviting
me to join him in flight. My heart expands with a delicious
pain, my longing to fly creates wings. I swing myself
heavenward in daring flight, away from that death-vault, the
city, away to the hills of home; thence to the green forest,
meeting-place of birds, where long ago Walther, the Poet,
won my allegiance. There sing I clear and loud the praise of
my dearest lady, there mounts upward, little as Master Crows
may relish it, the proud canticle of love!"
All this while the confusion of voices has
not ceased or diminished. Beckmesser has been heatedly, in
support of his chalk-marks, going over Walther's literary
misdemeanours: Defective versification, unpronounceable
words, misplaced rhymes, etc. etc. The masters have been
vociferously criticising and rejecting the new-comer. Pogner
has looked on and taken no part, a dejected spectator. He is
sorry to see the Knight defeated, and he says to himself
that he knows he will regret his toleration of this
high-handedness of the masters. For the natural thought has
risen in his mind that it would be agreeable to have this
fine fellow received in the guild, and subsequently
into his family as son-in-law. Upon which thought naturally
follows the other: "The victor whom I now must fall back
upon, who knows if my child will care for him? I confess to
a degree of uneasiness as to whether Eva will choose that
master!"
Sachs alone has listened through all the
manifold disturbance—has intently, delightedly listened; has
loved the boy's courage, and marvelled at the force of his
inspiration; has besought the masters to keep still and
listen, or at least to let others listen.... "No use! It is
labour lost! One can hardly hear his own words. The Knight
can not from one of them gain attention!... That is what I
call courage, to go on singing like that! His heart is in
the right place,—a very giant of a poet. I, Hans Sachs, make
verses and shoes, but he is a Knight and a poet on top of
it!" The apprentices, emboldened by the general disorder,
add their voices to the others, attempting to drown out the
singer so fierily, unremittingly singing from his post of
vantage. They join hands again and dance in circle around
the Marker's platform.
Through all this, over all this, the
stubborn song, not for a moment weakening or wavering, has
climbed its way, with the figurative Bird, to its
climax-point. His throat shall burst, but he will be heard!
His last note Walther holds for four bars: "Das stolze
Lie——bes Lied!"... Sung to an end it is, the lofty
canticle of love. The singer jumps down from the chair. "A
lasting farewell to you, my masters!" With a proud gesture,
which rids him of them forever and consigns them to the
dust-heap of their sordid narrowness and mediocrity, he
stalks to the door. "Versungen und verthan! Versungen und
verthan!" cry the masters, raising their hands according
to custom in giving a vote; "Versungen und verthan!"
He has failed in song, he is done with!
The song-trial is over. The apprentices in
merry tumult take apart the Marker's closet, hurry off
benches and seats, rapidly clearing the church of all signs
of the meeting. The masters leave, except Sachs. He stands
gazing abstractedly at the singing-chair, while a snatch of
Walther's song sings itself over in his memory. His
meditation is interrupted by the apprentices snatching up
and carrying off the chair. With a half-melancholy smile and
a gesture of delicate mockery at himself for the spell he
has so completely fallen under, reluctantly the last
master-singer turns to the door, and the curtain falls.
II
The second act shows the exterior of
Pogner's house and of Sachs's, his neighbour across the
street. It is the close of day; David, putting up the
shutters, is thinking of the morrow and its pleasures so
intently that he does not, for a moment, recognise Lene's
voice calling him. He mistakes it for that of some teasing
fellow-apprentice, until he turns around and beholds her, as
so often! with a promising-looking basket on her arm. "I
bring you something good. Yes, you may peep. That is for my
precious treasure, but first, quick, tell me, what success
had the Knight? Did you instruct him to some purpose? Was he
made a master?"—"Ah, Mistress Lene, it's a bad case! He
failed utterly and miserably!"—"He failed?..." "Ay,—why
should you so particularly care?" She jerks away the basket
from his outstretched hand: "Keep your hands to yourself!
Here is nothing for you! God ha' mercy, our young lord
defeated!" and hurries into the house, leaving him
crest-fallen, an object of mockery to his companions, who
have lost nothing of the interview. Goaded, he has finally
plunged
among them with punishing fist, when Sachs's arrival upon
the scene stops the disorder. The boys nimbly scatter. David
is ordered indoors. "Close the shop and make a light. Put
the new shoes on the lasts!" Both go in.
The peacefulness of evening is upon the
scene. Pogner, with his daughter on his arm, returning from
a walk, comes down the lane which divides his house from
Sachs's. He hesitates at Sachs's door. "Shall we see whether
neighbour Sachs be at home? I should be glad of a talk with
him. Shall I go in?..." But he decides against it. "Why
should I, after all? Better not! When a man undertakes a
course out of the usual, how should he accept advice?... Was
it not he who considered that I went too far? Yet, in
forsaking the beaten track, was I not doing even as he does?
Or, was I actuated peradventure—by vanity?" Pogner is not
easy in his mind, it is plain. He invites his silent and
preoccupied daughter to sit beside him a little space on the
stone seat under the linden in front of their house; he
tries to fortify his faltering heart with the review of his
plan for the morrow, held in the poetic light in which he
first saw and found it alluring. "Deliciously mild is the
evening. It presages a most beautiful day to shine upon you
to-morrow. Oh, child, does no throb of the heart tell you
what happiness awaits you to-morrow, when the whole of
Nuremberg, with its burghers and plebeians, its guilds, its
populace and high officials, is to gather in your presence
to see you award the prize, the noble laurel-wreath, to the
master of your choice and your chosen bridegroom?" But he
speaks to the Evchen of day before yesterday. So recently as
that his scheme no doubt attracted the daughter of his blood
even as it did him; she saw it with kindred eyes. Her
youthful pride rejoiced in the part she was to play of
lovely lady of romance, to know that she should become from
that day a heroine of legend,
Page 218 her name for long
years recurring in the songs of song-loving Nuremberg. As
for the practical side of the question, she felt safe. She
believed she knew which of the master-singers was sure of
election by the majority of the masters, and him she had it
in her heart to crown with a right good-will—so recently as
day before yesterday. But to-day, at her father's "the
master of your choice" she wistfully inquires, "Dear father,
must it be a master?"—"Understand me well, a
master of your choice," the uneasy parent replies.
Magdalene is making signs from the doorway
to Eva. The girl becomes absent-minded, drops the subject in
question, and suggests to her father that he go in to
supper. Vexed with himself and her, he rises from her side.
"We are not expecting any guest, are we?" he asks, a shade
querulously. "Why, surely, the Knight?"—"How is that?"—"Did
you not see him to-day?"—"No desire have I to see him!" the
troubled father mutters. Then, in a flash, two and two leap
together and make four to his startled mind. "What's
this?... Nay, thick-witted am I grown!"—"Dear little father,
go in and change your coat!" urges the pretty daughter.
"Humph!" he murmurs, now as absent-minded as she, "What is
this buzzing in my head?" and goes indoors.
Magdalene reports to Eva David's news: the
Knight has been refused admission to the guild. "God help
me! What shall I do!" cries Eva, in a sea of troubles; "Ah,
Lene, the anxiety!... Where to turn to find out
something?"—"From Sachs, perhaps?"—"Ah, yes, he is fond of
me. Certainly, I will go to him."—"Beware of arousing
suspicion. Your father will notice if we stay out any longer
at present. Wait until after supper. I shall have something
further to communicate to you then, a message which a
certain person charged me with privately."—"Who?.. The
Knight?"—"No,
Beckmesser."—"Something proper that must be!" the fair girl
scoffs as they enter the house.
Sachs, in working-clothes, is seen moving
within his shop. He orders David to place his table and
stool beside the door, and go to bed. Reluctantly David goes
off. He is troubled over Magdalene's unaccountable behaviour
to him, and this sitting up late of his master's interferes
with his slipping over to her for an explanation. Sachs
takes his seat before the work-table, sets his materials
aright, but having done it, instead of falling to work,
leans back and lets the sweetness of the evening beguile
him, dreams possess and waft him whither they will. That
haunting strain from Walther's song, repeated slowly, as by
one savouring it with pensive pleasure, again sings itself
to his inward ear; it, indeed, is partly to blame for his
mood of gentle unrest. The memory will not let him alone of
that marvellous, that unprecedented experience of the
afternoon. Unreservedly the grey-haired man's homage flies
to the youngling who so easily outstrips them all, with
their inveterate painstaking, their multitudinous canons.
Not only without a shade of bitterness but with a tender
elation, he lives over again the emotions created in him by
that passionate song. To his true poet's heart it is a
matter for exultation that just something beautiful should
have been, and he there to witness and rejoice. He
reconsiders it all with affectionate disquisition, fresh
delight in every point. If just a shade of sadness belongs
to the hour, it lies in the recognition that though the
vision of beauty has by the contagion that is proper to it
stimulated in him the impulse to be at once producing, he
too, beautiful things, not by any longing could he, after a
life of faithful effort in the service of Poesy, produce
anything to compare with the unprepared effusion of that
youth!
In the serenity of the lovely evening his
thoughts breathe themselves forth upon the scented June air:
"What fragrance—how mild, how sweet, how abundant,—exhaled
from the elder-tree! Its soft spell loosens my fibres,
solicits me to seek expression for my thoughts. To what
purpose, any expression of mine? A poor, simple fellow am I!
Little in the mood for work as I am, you had best, friend,
let me alone! Far wiser I should attend to my leather and
desist altogether from poetry!" Resolutely he falls to work.
But Friend Elder-tree does not therefore cease to shed
scent. It casts its spell over him again almost at once.
"No, there is no use in trying to work!" Sachs leans back
and listens again to the echo in his memory of Walther's
song. "I feel it," he meditates, lending ear to the
persistent voice in his brain, "and cannot understand it. I
cannot retain it—nor yet can forget it! And if for a moment
I grasp it, to measure it is beyond me. But how should I
hope to grasp that which struck me as illimitable? No rule
fitted it, and yet it had not one fault! It sounded so old,
and was yet so new,—like the song of birds in the sweet
May-time. One who should hear it, and, smitten with madness,
try to sing in imitation of that Bird, would meet with scorn
and derision.... The law of Spring,—exquisite
compulsion!—according to that were the rules of song laid in
his breast. And he sang even as he must! And as he must, the
power to do it came to him, I marked that quite
particularly.... The Bird who sang to-day, his beak is
fashioned aright! Great as was the dismay created by him
among the masters, he was much to Hans Sachs's mind!"
Evchen has come out of her house and
softly approached. Sachs looks up, joyfully surprised, at
her greeting: "Good-evening, master; still so diligent?"
There follows as pretty an exhibition of youthful feminine
arts as one could wish to see. The cajoling inflections of
the music alone would inform one of what is in action.
Eva has come to Sachs with an ulterior motive: to hear the
details of the song-trial. She has no mind, of course, to
avow her interest frankly. She must gain her end as she can,
and, as a beginning, to flatter her man and challenge his
fondness for her can never fall wholly wide of the mark.
Sachs loves her dearly, that she knows, and she has, in the
innocent presumption of her young beauty, not questioned
that he would enter the song-tournament for her; and until
yesterday she rested in placid contentment upon the
intention of crowning this affection which never since her
birth has failed her. Her narrow eighteen years have no
conception of a devotion so generous and deep it would not
dream, however fair the opportunity, of laying upon her
youth the burden of his maturity, the oppression of his
thoughtfulness. Sachs is unwilling, too, very likely, in his
wisdom, to compromise the peace of his Indian summer by
assuming the guardianship of an over-fair young wife. His
neighbour's picturesque whim, the song-contest in prospect,
has no doubt given Sachs sufficient uneasiness, but he
finally, as we heard him declare to Pogner, rests satisfied
with the maiden's privilege of refusal. Not one of the guild
of master-singers seems to him worthy of this blooming young
Eve. As for the father's "Never!" applied to her marriage if
she shall not accept the master-singers' choice, Sachs knows
his Pogner and his Eva, and is willing to entrust the matter
to Time.
And so the ingenuous seductress finds the
genial, clever, mellow neighbour's attitude toward her in
this scene more canny than she can have expected, or quite
relishes. It almost appears he had no idea of trying for
her. Perhaps an intuition of her momentary insincerity has
made him more than naturally wary. The practising upon
himself of her pretty coquetries he suffers however without
unreasonable distaste. "Ha, child, dear Evchen, out so
late? But I know—I know what brings you so late. The new
shoes?"—"You are mistaken! I have not even tried on the
shoes. They are so beautiful, so richly ornamented, I have
not yet ventured so much as to put them on my feet!"—"And
yet you are to wear them to-morrow as a bride?" She takes a
seat on the stone bench by his door and leans confidingly
close to him. "Who, then, is to be the bridegroom?"—"How
should I know?"—"How can you know then that I am to be a
bride?"—"What a question! The town knows it!"—"And if the
town knows it, friend Sachs feels that he has good
authority. I should have thought that he knew more than the
town."—"What should I know?"—"See, now, I shall be obliged
to tell him! I am certainly a fool!..."—"I did not say
so."—"It is you then who are more than common
knowing...."—"I do not know."—"You do not know!.. You have
nothing to say!..." She draws away, nettled: "Ah, friend
Sachs, I now perceive that pitch is not wax! I had supposed
you cleverer." Calmly he takes up her words and by them
guides the conversation from that ground. "Child, the
properties both of wax and pitch I am well acquainted with.
With wax I stroke the silken threads with which I stitch
your dainty shoes; the shoes I am at this moment making, I
sew with coarse cord, and use pitch to stiffen it, for the
hard-fibred customer who is to wear them."—"Who is it? Some
one of great consequence, I suppose?"—"Of consequence,
indeed! A proud master, on wooing bent, who has no doubt
whatever of coming forth victorious from to-morrow's event.
For Master Beckmesser I am making these shoes."—"Then use
pitch in plenty, that he may stick fast in them and trouble
me no more!"—"He hopes surely by his song to win you."—"What
can justify such a hope?"—"He is a bachelor, you see; there
are not many in the place." Again she draws near and bends
close
to him. "Might not a widower be successful?" In his kind,
sane, unsentimental voice he replies promptly: "My child, he
would be too old for you!"—"What do you mean, too old? The
question here is one of art. The man who has achieved
distinction in art, let him contend for me." Sachs smiles,
indulgently, paternally. "Dear little Eva, are you making a
fool of me?" (Machst mir blauen Dunst? Are you
blinding me with blue haze?)—"Not I! It is you—" she retorts
warmly, "it is you who are playing tricks on me. Confess
that you are of an inconstant nature. God knows who it is
you have now housed in your heart. And I have been supposing
for years it was I!"—"Because I used to be fond of carrying
you in my arms?"—"I see! It was only because you had no
children of your own!"—"Time was when I had a wife and
children enough," Sachs reminds her gently. "But your wife
died, and I grew up!"—"And you grew up, tall and most
fair!"—"And so I thought you would take me into your house
in place of wife and child...."—"Thus I should have a child
and a wife in one ... A pleasant pastime, indeed! Ha ha! How
beautifully you have planned it all!"—"I believe," she
pouts, and bends her brows on him in a puzzled frown, "I
believe that the master is making fun of me! In the end he
will calmly acquiesce in Beckmesser to-morrow carrying me
off, right under his nose, from him and all the rest!"—"How
could I prevent it," says Sachs, not upset apparently by the
fearful thought, "if he is successful? Your father alone
could find a remedy to that."—"Where such a master carries
his head!" cries Eva, in acute exasperation, "If I were to
come to your house, should I so much as be made at home?"
Somewhat dryly he takes up her words, as before, to steer
the conversation from these dubious borders; and by some
hazard, or intuition, turns it upon the subject nearest her
heart. "Ah, yes, you are right! My head is in
a state of confusion. I have had much care and bother
to-day. Something of it clings very probably to my
wits."—"At the singing-school, do you mean?" she asks, with
covert eagerness; "There was song-trial to-day."—"Yes,
child, I had considerable trouble over an election." She
draws close to him. "Now, Sachs! You should have said so at
once, and I would not have harassed you with senseless
questions. Tell me now who it was that sought for
election?"—"A knight, my child, wofully untaught!"—"A
knight? You do not say so! And was he admitted?"—"Far from
it, my dear. There was too much difference of
opinion."—"Well, tell me, then. Tell me how it all happened.
If it troubles you, how should it leave me untroubled? So he
stood the trial discreditably and was
defeated...."—"Hopelessly defeated, the gallant cavalier!"
Walther's failure is symbolised by a melodious groan.
"Hopelessly, you say? There was no way then by which he
might have been saved? Did he sing so badly, so faultily,
that there is no possibility more of his becoming a
master?"—"My child," Sachs broadly assevers, "for him all is
definitely lost. And never in any land will he be made a
master. For he who is a master born occupies ever among
masters the very lowest place." On the verge of tears, with
difficulty controlling her indignation, Eva continues her
questioning: "One thing more tell me. Did he not find among
the masters a single friend?" Sachs nearly laughs. "That
were not bad! To be, on top of everything, his friend! His
friend—before whom all feel themselves so small!..." (If Eva
were not so engrossed with her single idea, the gleam in
Sachs's eye, the fire in his tone, would interpret to her
this brutal-sounding speech.) "Young Lord Arrogance, let him
go his way! Let him go brawling and slashing through the
world! As for us, let us draw our breath in peaceful
enjoyment of what we have acquired with labour
and difficulty. Keep off the fiery fellow from running amuck
among us! Let fortune bloom for him elsewhere!" Trembling
with anger, and dropping all concealment, Eva springs to her
feet: "Yes, elsewhere shall fortune bloom for him than in
the neighbourhood of you repulsive envy-ridden
creatures!—elsewhere, where hearts still have some warmth in
them, in spite of all cantankerous Master Hanses!—Directly,
yes, I am coming!" (This to Magdalene, who has been calling
to her from her father's door.) "I go home much comforted!
It reeks of pitch here till God take pity on us! Kindle a
fire with it, do, Master Sachs, and get a little warmth into
you, if you can!"
"I thought so!" Sachs says to himself as
he watches her cross the street to her own door. Two and two
have leaped together in his mind, too. "The question is now
what will be the sage course to pursue." He goes within and
closes his door... all but a crack.
"Your father is asking for you," Magdalene
reports to her agitated mistress. "Go to him," weeps Eva,
"and say that I have gone to my room and to bed." But
Beckmesser—the nurse reminds her of the message from him. He
desires her to be at the window; he will sing and play to
her a beautiful composition by which he hopes on the morrow
to win her. He wishes to discover whether it be to her
taste. Eva, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her lover,
disposes of the subject by ordering Magdalene to be at the
window in her place. "That would make David jealous!"
reflects Magdalene; "His chamber is toward the lane." The
prospect tickles her spirits. Even as she is urging Eva to
go in, for her father, is calling, Walther comes down the
lane. Hopeless after that, Magdalene recognises, to attempt
dragging indoors the damsel. She hurries in by herself to
content Pogner with some discreet misrepresentation.
With passionate endearments Walther and Eva
have rushed into each other's arms. All is lost which
depended upon his winning the title of master-singer. There
is nothing further to hope from that quarter; no choice is
left, they must fly together. "Away, where liberty is!" he
cries, "That is where I belong, there where I am master in
the house!" He grows hot with anger at remembrance of the
masters' treatment of him, but, even more, with loathing at
the thought of his beloved sitting to-morrow in their midst,
looked upon by them with covetous eyes as a possible bride.
"And I would endure it, do you think? I would not fall upon
them all, sword in hand?" The night-watchman's horn breaks
across his heated outburst. He claps hand to his sword. Eva
draws him gently into the shadow of the linden-tree, to lie
concealed until the watchman have passed, and leaves him a
moment to go within.
The night-watchman, with pike, horn, and
lantern, comes down the lane, calling the hour of ten; he
bids the householders look to their fires and lights,
avoiding disaster, and so let God the Lord be praised! He
turns the corner, the sound of his horn dies away.
Sachs from behind his door has played the
eavesdropper. "Evil doings are under way! No less than an
elopement! Attention! This must not be!"
Eva creeps forth from her father's house,
disguised for the journey in Magdalene's things. "No
stopping for reflection!" she cries; "Away from here! Away!
Oh, that we were already off and afar!"—"This way, through
the lane...." Walther draws her along with him. "At the
city-gate we shall find servant and horses." But right
across the lane falls suddenly a great shaft of light,
projected from Sachs's window, cast by a lamp placed behind
a glass globe which magnifies it to intense brilliancy. The
lovers find themselves standing in a bright illumination.
Eva pulls Walther quickly back into the dark. "Woe's me, the
shoe-maker! If he were to see us!... Hide! Do not go near
that man!"—"What other road can we take?"—"The street
there—but it is a winding one, I am not well acquainted with
it, and, besides, we should run into the
night-watchman."—"Well, then, through the lane!"—"The
shoe-maker must first leave the window!"—"I will force him
to leave it!" says Walther, fiercely.—"He must not see you.
He knows you."—"The shoe-maker?..."—"Yes, it is
Sachs."—"Hans Sachs, my friend?"—"Do not believe it! He had
nothing but evil to say of you!"—"What, Sachs? He, too?... I
will put out his lamp!" She catches again at his arm, and
even at that moment both are startled into immobility by the
sound of a lute. Some one approaches, testing as he comes
the strings of a lute, if they be in tune. The light has
disappeared from the shoe-maker's window. Walther is again
for dashing down the lane toward the city-gate and the
horses. "But no! Can't you hear?"—his lady hangs back. "Some
one else has come and taken up his station there."—"I hear
it and see it. It is some street-musician. What is he doing
so late at night?"—"It is Beckmesser!"—"What, the Marker?
The Marker in my power? There is one whose loafing in the
street shall not trouble us long...." Again she catches in
terror at his arm, so ready ever to catch at the sword. "For
the love of Heaven, listen! Do you wish to waken my father?
The man will sing his song and then will go his way. Let us
hide behind the shrubs yonder." She draws her lover to the
stone seat under the linden-tree.
Sachs at the sound of the lute has drawn
in his light, become superfluous, since the road is
effectually blocked for the lovers by the musical
interloper. He overhears Eva's exclamation, "Beckmesser!"
and has an idea. Beckmesser shall be made of
use to prevent the lovers as long as possible from moving
any farther from the safe parental roof than that stone seat
under the linden, where they huddle close, whispering
together, while keeping a watchful eye on the actors of the
comedy which follows. Sachs, as one might know of him, loves
a joke. He softly opens his door, places his work-bench and
lamp right in the doorway, and sets himself at his work.
When Beckmesser, after impatiently preluding to bring to the
window the figure he is expecting, clears his throat to
begin the serenade, Sachs, vigourously hammering on his
last, prevents him by bursting forth on his own account in a
lusty ditty with much loud Ohe, Ohe, Trallalei!—a playful
ditty, sweet at the core, about Eve, the original mother,
and the first pair of shoes, ordered for her from an angel
by the Lord himself, who was sorry to see the pitiful
sinner, when turned out of Paradise, go bruising her little
feet, for which He had a tenderness, on the hard stones; and
Adam, too, stubbing his toes against the flints, the song
tells how he on the same occasion was measured for boots.
Beckmesser can hardly contain his impatience and disgust
till the first verse comes to an end. Upon the last note of
it, he addresses the shoe-maker with what sickly civility he
can summon: "How is this, master? Still up? So late at
night?" Sachs expresses an equal surprise to find the
town-clerk moving abroad: "I suppose you are concerned for
your shoes. I am at work on them, as you see; you shall have
them to-morrow."—"Devil take the shoes!" groans Beckmesser;
"What I want here is quiet!" But his words are lost amid
Sachs's hammer-blows and unmoderated voice launching forth
upon the second verse. "You are to stop at once!"
Beckmesser, in mounting anger, orders Sachs, as, hardly
pausing to take breath, the shoe-maker is attacking the
third verse. "Is it a practical joke you are playing on me?
Do you make no distinction between the night and the
day?" Sachs looks at him in innocent surprise. "What does it
matter to you that I should sing? You are anxious, are you
not, to have your shoes finished?"—"Shut yourself up indoors
then and keep quiet!"—"Nay, night-labour is burdensome; if I
am to keep cheerful at my work, I must have air and
light-hearted song. So hear how the third verse goes!" And
he attacks it with a will. There is added to Beckmesser's
other troubles the fearful thought that the maiden may
mistake this outrageous bellowing for his love-song. A
second-story window in Pogner's house has softly opened, a
form is dimly outlined within the frame of it. "I am lost
now," Beckmesser desperately reflects, "if he goes on
singing!" He resolutely steps up to Sachs: "Friend Sachs,
just listen to one word! How bent you seem upon those shoes!
I truly had forgotten all about them. As a shoe-maker, the
fact is, I hold you in great esteem, but as an artist and
critic I honour you even more highly. I beseech you
therefore to give your attention to a little song by which I
hope to-morrow to win the prize. I am eager to be told
whether you think well of it." While talking, he strums, as
if casually, upon his lute, to keep the lady from leaving
the window. "Oh, no!" Sachs replies; "You wish to catch me
by my weak side. I have no wish for another berating. Since
your shoe-maker takes himself for a poet, it fares but ill
with your footgear. I can see for myself that it is in a
deplorable condition. And so I drop verse and rhyme,
knowledge and erudition, and I make you the new shoes for
to-morrow."—"Let that be, do!" Beckmesser adjures him; "That
was only a joke. Understand now what my true sentiments are.
You stand high in honour with the people, and the daughter
of Pogner has a great opinion of you. Now, if I intend to
offer myself as a suitor for her to-morrow, can you not see
how I might be destroyed by her not taking kindly to my
song? Therefore listen to me quietly, do, and when I have
finished my song tell me what in it you like, and what not,
that I may make my dispositions accordingly."—"Go along! Let
me alone!" Sachs still excuses himself; "How should so much
honour accrue to me? My songs are but common street-songs;
let me therefore, in my common way, sing them to the
street!" He is taking up his noisy lay again about Eve and
shoes when Beckmesser's rage explodes. Quaking, the
town-clerk pours forth reproach and insult. This conduct of
the shoe-maker's has its source in envy, nothing else; envy
of the dignity of Marker which has never been bestowed upon
him, and which now never will be, not so long as Beckmesser
lives and has influence with the masters. When he stops at
last, for lack of breath, Sachs asks artlessly: "Was that
your song?... Somewhat irregular in form, but it sounded
right spirited!"
Walther, in the shadow, clasping his
troubled lady, who is unaccountably saddened by the untimely
farce, struggles with a hysterical desire to laugh—it is all
so like a fantastic dream.
At last shoe-maker and town-clerk come to
an arrangement. Beckmesser shall sing his song, and Sachs,
whose criticism he so unwontedly desires, shall act as
Marker; but Sachs, who contends that he is loath to stop
work on his shoes, instead of marking with chalk, shall mark
the singer's mistakes by blows of his hammer on the last,
and so, peradventure, while listening, forward his work. A
disgusting arrangement, but Beckmesser is in such terror
lest the lady leave her post before he have sung that he
consents. "Begin!" hollaes Sachs, and Beckmesser, after
preluding, sings, while Sachs punctuates the lines with
smart taps on the last. These at first discompose the
singer, and he stops at each tap to inquire angrily what it
is that is not right; he shortly resolves, however, to pay
no heed to the spiteful enemy, but cover over the
interruptions with his voice. Louder and louder and
ever more breathlessly he sings, a lyric that is more prosy
than prose, a piece of common statement of facts, tortured
into verse, which attains metre only by throwing the accent
continually, ludicrously, on the wrong syllables. The
melody, nasal and snuffling, is the very prose, too, of
music. A ridiculous, dead-in-earnest song, relating in three
long verses the circumstances of the song-contest and the
singer's tender hopes.
By the end of the second verse, the
teasing shoe-maker has tapped so much that the soles are
solid with the vamps. He swings the finished shoes
triumphantly before his customer, announcing that he has
thought of an appropriate verse to write on the soles, and
it is: "A good song must keep time!" But Beckmesser does not
stop for him. Beckmesser disdainfully goes on, as if he and
the lady were alone in the world, and he sang thus loud to
overpower some such thing as the sea-surf. In his
engrossment he fails to take account of various ominous
signs. He does not see David appear at his chamber-window.
In spite of Eva's clothes which she is wearing, the boy
recognises Magdalene at the casement across the way. His
jealousy is quick to suppose her cold treatment of himself
due to an inclination toward this new admirer. The
neighbours, too, begin to lean out of their windows and ask
the reason of this abominable caterwauling. A crowd collects
in the street, of persons trying to find out what is the
matter. The apprentices come flocking, mischievous
instigators to mischief, and the journeymen, little better
than they. Soon, there is difference and quarreling among
those arriving to inquire the cause of the disturbance.
Neighbours pour into the street, men and women in
night-attire; finally, the heavy burghers arrive, the
masters themselves, noisy, almost disorderly, in their
attempts to restore order. Beckmesser, singing at the top of
his lungs, does not wake to consciousness of his
surroundings until a cudgel falls across his back, wielded
by David. He flees—but is at every few steps overtaken again
and beaten. The two figures, in flight and pursuit, waving
lute and brandishing cudgel, disappear and reappear at
intervals among the swaying crowd. In vain Magdalene from
above screams to David to let the gentleman go. Pogner's
hand draws her away from the window; in the dim light he
mistakes her for Eva. Sachs, when the confusion is well
under way, draws in his work-bench and closes his door ...
again all but a crack, through which he can watch the two
figures wrapped in a single cloak beneath the linden-tree.
When the disorder is at its height, Walther clasps the girl
with his left arm, with his right bares his sword, and
attempts a rush through the crowd, toward the gates and
horses of freedom. Quick as thought, Sachs has cleared his
way to the couple; he grasps Walther by the arm. Pogner at
the same moment appears at his door, calling for Lene. Sachs
pushes toward him Eva, half-fainting, bereft by panic of all
power to withstand the impulsion. Pogner receives her in his
arms and draws her within doors, not suspecting but that she
is the faithful nurse whose garments she wears. With deft
foot Sachs propels David before him into the house; then,
forcibly drawing Walther with him across the threshold,
fastens the door,—his object happily accomplished.
The street-battle is still raging. But at
this point women pour water from the windows on the heads of
the combatants, as they would on fighting dogs.
Simultaneously, the horn of the night-watchman is heard. In
the space of a yawn the scene is deserted; all down the
street are fast-closed windows and doors; Beckmesser hobbles
off rubbing his back. The old night-watchman, reaching the
spot, rubs his eyes, clearly wondering if he have dreamed
that he heard alarming sounds from that quarter.
After looking all around, he droningly calls the hour of
eleven, enjoins the people to be on guard against phantoms
and spooks, that no evil spirit may work harm to their
souls, and so let God the Lord be praised! The full moon
rising above the housetops suddenly floods the quiet lane.
The watchman slowly goes down it. As he vanishes around the
corner, the curtain falls.
III
The interior of Sachs's workshop. The poet
sits in an ample armchair, near the window, bathed in the
morning sunshine, absorbed in a great book. The magnanimity
of his mood, the beautiful deep calm following upon certain
resolutions and sacrifices, the gently exalted melancholy of
his meditations—half remembrance, and dreamy as if violet
shades of evening softened them,—the composer has given us
to apprehend all in the introduction to the third act.
So rapt is Sachs in the perusal of his
great volume, or, as may be suspected, in images which float
between the page and his eyes, that he does not see David
enter carrying a basket of Lene's bestowal filled with
flowers and ribbons for the adornment of his person on this
festival day, as well as with cake and sausage. The
apprentice, when Sachs does not speak, or, spoken to,
answer, or make sign when he informs him that Beckmesser's
shoes have been duly delivered, believes him to be angry,
and goes into a long apology for his misconduct on the night
before, brightening finally with the relation of his
making-up this morning with Lene, who has satisfactorily
explained all. Sachs reads on, as little disturbed as by the
buzzing of a fly on the pane. Only when he has finished, and
closed his book,—the unexpected clap of the covers so
startles David that he stumbles to his
knees—Sachs looks around him, as if coming back from a
dream. His eye is caught by the bright flowers and ribbons
brought in by David. Their effect of young gayety touches
some chord in him more than usually sensitive at this
moment. "Flowers and ribbons I see over there," he muses
audibly; "Sweet and youthful they look! How come they in my
house?" David is relieved to find him in this gentle mood,
yet puzzled at the remoteness and abstraction from which the
master is but slowly drawn. He has occasion for a moment to
wonder even whether the master have perchance become hard of
hearing....
Fully returned at length to a sense of the
common surrounding world, Sachs asks David for his day's
lesson, and the apprentice briskly sings his verse, first
comically confusing the tune with that of Beckmesser's
serenade, still buzzing in his head, then, at Sachs's
gesture of astonishment, righting himself and acquitting
himself of his task without slip. The verse is a playful
bit, between psalm and street-song. It relates that when
Saint John was baptising on the banks of Jordan there came
to him a lady from Nuremberg bringing her little son for
baptism. When she got home, however, to German land, it
proved that vainly had one on the banks of Jordan been given
the name of Johannes, on the banks of the Pegnitz he became
Hans! The pronouncing of the name brings to David's mind the
remembrance suddenly that it is his master's name, that the
day is therefore his name's-day. In an impulse of
affectionate devotion he presses on him all the gay articles
just received from Lene, the flowers and ribbons, the
magnificent cake, and, but shyly, as if it were not quite
worthy of a poet, the sausage. With great gentleness, Sachs
thanks the lad and bids him keep the things for himself,
adding a request that he make himself fine with those same
flowers and ribbons to accompany him presently to the
meadow outside the city gates where the song-contest is to
be held. His stately herald he shall be. Sachs's
friendliness encourages the boy to venture a small liberty.
"May I not rather go as your groom's-man? Master, dear
master, you must marry again!"—"You would be glad of a
mistress in the house?" asks Sachs dreamily.—"It would make,
in my opinion, a much more imposing household!" There is
popular talk and expectation of it, as an outcome of the
coming song-contest, David intimates; "You will hardly have
much trouble, as I think, in singing Beckmesser out of the
field; I hardly believe he will make himself very
conspicuous to-day!"—"I hardly believe so, either," Sachs
smiles: "But go now, and be careful not to disturb his
lordship. Come back when you have made yourself fine."
Left alone, Sachs sinks into thought
again, sitting there with his book on his knees and his head
propped on his hand. We are allowed to follow his
reflections, those of a philosopher,—but not one standing
apart and watching a little scornfully the vagaries of men;
a very human being, taking part in them, without losing a
humourous sense of their character. "Illusion! Illusion!
Everywhere illusion! Whichever way I bend my inquiry,
searching the chronicles of the city and those of the world,
to discover the reason why people, in vain and frantic rage,
torment and oppress themselves and one another to the point
of bloodshed! No one has any good of it, or receives any
thanks for it. Through its working, the defeated and put to
flight fancies himself chasing the foe. He is deaf to his
own cry of pain. When he twists the knife in his own flesh,
he has an idea that he is doing himself a pleasure! Who
shall find a name for it? One name, forsooth, befits it:
Ancient Illusion it is, without which nothing happens,
nothing either goes or stands still. If it halts in its
career, it merely while slumbering gathers new force; it
presently wakes up, and then see who can master it!..." He
smiles whimsically, nodding to himself, at the contemplation
of the instance of all this uppermost in his mind, the
events of the evening before. "How peaceful, in its
adherence to good customs, approved in conduct and deed,
lies in the heart of Germany my beloved Nuremberg! But late
upon a night, a man there is found totally void of counsel
how to prevent a catastrophe, resulting from youth and hot
blood. A shoe-maker in his shop tugs gently at the threads
of illusion: how promptly up and down the lanes and streets
the thing begins to rage; men, women, boys and children,
fall upon one another like mad and blind; and the
crack-brained spirit is not to be laid until a shower fall
of blows—a shower of blows, kicks and cudgel-thwacks, to
smother the angry conflagration. God knows how it all came
about?" He smiles again, reflectively, over the recollection
of the lovely quiet evening it was, the terrific discordant
pother that arose,—the lovely and hushed night that
presently resumed her reign. The incident looks fantastic
now. "An imp must have had a hand in it!" is the poet's
fanciful induction; "A glow-worm could not find his mate, it
was he responsible for all the damage done! It was the fault
of the elder-tree—of Saint John's night! ... But now—" he
broadly dismisses the fancies and aberrations of the warm
mid-summer night, and turns his face toward the
clear-defined duty of the day: "But now it is Saint John's
Day! And now let us see how Hans Sachs shall contrive deftly
to guide Illusion to the working out of a noble purpose. For
if the spirit will not let us rest even here in Nuremberg,
let it be for such works as seldom succeed by vulgar means,
and succeed never without some grain of illusion in the
perpetrator himself!"
Walther appears at the door of an inner
chamber. Sachs rises to meet and greet his guest. They had a
good talk the night before, after the wise shoester's act of
well-meant violence. Walther was grateful, no doubt, upon
calmer reflection, to have been saved from the ruinous folly
he had projected. The two men are obviously fast friends.
There is in Sachs's attitude a touching deference toward the
younger man, the heart-wholly acknowledged superior in
talent. It is a pleasant spectacle, the grey meistersinger's
eager glorying in the golden youth's simple, abundant,
God-bestowed gift. The motif of his address to Walther has a
touch of charming courtliness. "God keep your lordship! Did
you find rest? You were up late—you did, however, finally
sleep?"—"A little," Walther answers, "but soundly and well."
There is something hushed and fixed in Walther's aspect, as
if he listened to voices no one else could hear, gazed upon
some vision invisible to others. He is still under the spell
of a recent marvellous impression. "I have had—" he tells
Sachs, when the latter genially asks is he feeling, after
his good sleep, in good form and of good courage, "I have
had a wonderfully beautiful dream...."—"A good omen, that!
Tell me your dream!"—"I hardly dare to touch it with my
thought, so do I fear to see it fade away."—"My friend," the
older poet with fine amenity takes up the part of teacher,
and his observations have a ripe, sunny, elevated wisdom,
for which one should store them carefully as one does good
fruit, "that exactly is the task of a poet, to mark dreams
and interpret them. Believe me, of all the illusions of man
the most nearly approaching truth are those he comes into
cognisance of through dreams. The whole art of poetry is but
the interpretation of true-dreaming. What if this dream now
should contain a hint how you may to-day be made a
master?"—"No, no," Walther rejects the idea with distaste;
"In the presence of the guild and its masters, scant
inspiration would animate my dream-picture!"—"But
yet, suppose your dream contained the magic spell by which
you might win over the guild?" Walther shakes his head: "How
do you cling to an illusion, if after such a rupture as you
witnessed you still cherish such a hope!"—"Nay, my hope
stands undiminished, nor has anything so far occurred to
overthrow it; if that were not so, believe me, instead of
preventing your flight, I would myself have taken flight
with you! Pray you, therefore, let your resentment die! You
are dealing with honourable men. They make mistakes and are
fairly settled in the comfortable determination to be taken
in their own way. Those who offer prizes desire after all
that one shall please them. Your song scared them, and with
reason, for, upon reflection, the like flaming poetry and
passion are adapted for the luring of daughters into mad
adventures, but the sentiment leading to the blessed married
state finds words and notes of a different sort!" Walther
grins: "I know the sort—from hearing them last night; there
was a good deal of noise out in the street." Sachs laughs
too; "Yes! yes!... You heard likewise how I beat time. But
let be all that, and follow my advice, good and short:
summon up your energies for a master-song!"—"A beautiful
song, and a master-song, how am I to seize the distinction
between them?" asks the singer of the beautiful song which
had been despised. "My friend," Sachs explains, with a
warmth as of tears and blood, "in the beautiful days of
youth, when the bosom expands high and wide with the mighty
transports of happy first love, many are they who can
achieve a beautiful song: the Spring-time it is which sings
for them! But let summer come, autumn and winter, the
sorrows and cares of life,—no dearth of wedded joys
along-side!—christenings, business, discord and
difficulties, those who still after all that can compass the
singing of a beautiful song, those, mark me, are entitled
masters!" Aye, first, as a modern poet has said, warm
natural drops of blood; later, the alchemist's laborious
spheres of chemic gold. In youth, all-sufficient
inspiration,—later, labour and rule, with meritorious
concentration substituting for impetus and fire the beauty
of careful form, and making durable in this the evanescent
dreams of youth. "Learn the master-rules in good season,"
Sachs adds, "that they may be faithful guides to you,
helping you to preserve safely that which in the gracious
years of youth spring-time and love with exquisite throes
bred in your unconscious heart, that you may store and
treasure it, and it may not be lost!"—"But who—" Walther
asks, inclined to cavil where anything is concerned which
relates to the master-singers, "Who created these rules
which stand in such high honour?"—"They were sorely-needy
masters," Sachs in his moved tones continues the charming
lesson, "spirits heavily weighted with the weariness of
life; in the wilderness of their distresses they created for
themselves an image, that they might retain vivid and
lasting the memory of young love, bearing the sign and stamp
still, and breathing the fragrance, of Spring!"—"But,"
Walther objects, suspicious of that whole tribe of snuffy
masters, for whom Sachs has the same charity of a broad
understanding which he has shown in Walter's own case,
"however can he for whom Spring is long past fix the essence
of it in an image?"—"He recreates it as well as he can,"
Sachs sums with sudden curtness, recognising perhaps the
futility of his attempt against this so lively dislike; and
passes on to the point more important at this moment, to his
thinking. "I beg you, therefore, sorely-needy man that I am,
if I am to teach you the rules, that you should renew in me
the sense of that which originally gave them rise. See, here
are ink, pen, and paper. I will be your scribe, do you
dictate."—"Hardly should I know how to begin."—"Relate to me
your
morning dream."—"Nay, as a result of your teaching of rules,
I feel as if it had faded quite away."—"The very point where
the poet's art comes into requisition! Recall your beautiful
dream of the morning, for the rest, let it be Hans Sachs's
care!"
Walther takes a moment to collect himself.
Sachs sits with quill poised over paper. Then Walther
relates his dream, meeting Sachs's request for a master-song
by casting it as he goes, with the light ease of genius,
into verse and melody,—his second astonishing improvisation,
joyous as the first, but not agitated—reflective, as if he
filled Sordello's account of himself: "I' mi son un che
quando Amore spira, noto, e quel che detta dentro vo
significando." I am one who when Love breathes, do note,
and that which he dictates within do go expressing. All
things lovely seem to have congregated in this dream of his;
it is no wonder that the lingering impression of it
enveloped him with an atmosphere of Paradise, and that he
feared almost to breathe lest it be dispelled. Just the
words he has to use, without their relations, conjure up a
flock of alluring images: Morning-shine, roseate light,
blossoms, perfume, air, joy,—unimaginable joy, a garden! The
idea that a poet's song is as much a part of him as fruit is
of the tree stands illustrated by the fact that the song
which falls on our ear as in its ensemble so fresh, is yet
composed in great part of the Walther-motifs with which we
have become familiar; his youth, his enthusiasm, his courage
and his love, all go into the making of his song. As he said
in answer to Kothner, what should be put into his song
unless the essence of all he had known and lived?
Glimmering beneath the rosy light of dawn,
the air being laden with the scent of flowers, a garden, he
sings, full of never before imagined attractions, had
invited him to enter it....
"That was a stanza." Sachs states, as
Walther pauses. "Take careful heed now that the one following
must be exactly like it."—"Why exactly alike?" the free-born
asks, ready to chafe at the shadow of a restriction. Sachs,
indulgent, makes play for this prodigious child's sake of
the to him so grave business of song-making: "That one may
see that you have selected a mate!"
In that blissful garden a magnificent tree
had proffered to his desire a sumptuous harvest of golden
fruit.... Such is the matter of the second stanza.
"You did not," Sachs critically considers,
"close on the same tone. Excruciating is that to the
masters, but Hans Sachs learns from your doing it that in
Spring-time it must perforce be so! Proceed now to the
aftersong."—"What is that?" asks Walther. "Your success in
finding a well-suited couple will appear now from their
off-spring!"
In the garden, by an exquisite miracle, he
had found suddenly standing at his side a woman, more
sweetly and graciously beautiful than any he had ever
beheld. Like a bride she had entwined her arms softly about
him, and had guided him, with eyes and hand, toward the
fruit of his desire, the fair fruit of the tree of life....
Joyfully stirred as he is by the beauty of
dream and song, Sachs controls his emotion, to secure all he
can from the young poet's momentary docility. "There's what
I call an aftersong!" he exclaims cordially; "See, now, how
rounded and fine is the whole first part. With the melody
you deal, to be sure, a bit freely. I do not say, however,
that it is a fault. But it makes the thing more difficult to
retain, and that incenses our old men. Let us have now a
second part, that we may gain a clear idea of the first. I
do not even know, so skilfully have you cast them into
rhyme, what in your song was invention and what was
dream...."
With heavenly glow of sunset-light, day had
departed, as he lay there drinking joy from her eyes, desire
the sole power in possession of his heart. Night had closed
down, baffling the eyesight, when, through the branches, the
rays of two bright stars had shed their light upon his face.
The sound of a spring upon the quiet height had reached his
ear, murmuring more musically than any spring heard
theretofore; stars had appeared in multitude, dancing among
the boughs overhead, until, instead of golden fruit, the
laurel-tree had swarmed with a host of stars....
"Friend!" cries Sachs, striving against
the full betrayal of his pleasure, lest it be an
interrupting element, "your dream was an effectual guide!
The second part is successful as the first. If now," he
ventures, "you would compose a third, it might contain the
interpretation of your dream...." But Walther jumps up from
his chair, suddenly weary of the game. "Enough of words!"
And Sachs, with sympathetic understanding of the
incalculable ways of poets, refrains from pressing him. That
overbubbling inspiration he believes can be counted upon.
"Reserve then word and deed for the proper place. And I pray
you hold fast in memory, this melody, a charming one it is
to fit with words. And, against the moment of singing it in
a more extended circle, hold fast likewise to your
dream!"—"What have you in mind?" Walther inquires. Sachs
does not directly enlighten him, but: "Your faithful servant
has, very seasonably, arrived with packs and porte-manteaux.
The garments in which you intended to make yourself brave
for wedding-ceremonials at home, he has brought here to the
house. A little dove no doubt directed him to the nest where
his master slept. Come with me therefore to your chamber.
Fitting it is we both attire ourselves splendidly, when a
splendid deed is to be dared!" Walther without question
places his hand, as if it held his whole confidence, in
Sachs's. They pass together out of the workshop.
The stage remains for a moment empty. The
air retains as if echoes, or fragrances, of the
personalities which have but just withdrawn; it is sweetened
with effluvia of Walther's youth, of Sachs's greatness of
heart. Suddenly, like a bar of bilious green across a
shimmering mother-o'-pearl fabric, harmonies of a very
different sort catch the attention, and Beckmesser's face is
seen peering in at the window. Finding the workshop empty,
he limps in. He is in holiday array, but there is little of
holiday about him, save in his gaudily beribboned clothes. A
long comedy-scene follows, in which Beckmesser says never a
word, but his thoughts are heard and his actions are
eloquent. His body is one mass of aches and pains, his soul
the battleground of anger, shame, thirst for vengeance. The
din of the evening before fills his ears; he is chased, as
if by furies, by memories of the indignities put upon him.
He is so sore he cannot sit; when he goes his joints hurt
rackingly. His restless moving about the room while he waits
for Sachs brings him to the master's writing-table: his eye
falls on the sheet of music on which Sachs has taken down
Walther's song; his attention is arrested; he reads it off
mentally with ever-increasing agitation. No mistake
possible, in his mind: Sachs, who had declared that he would
not enter the song-contest for Pogner's daughter, has
outrageously lied, and here is the proof of it, this song
which he means to sing at the tournament. "Now," bursts
forth Beckmesser, "everything becomes clear to me!" He
jumps, hearing Sachs at the door, and stuffs the paper into
his pocket. Sachs, in his handsome best-coat, meets him
pleasantly. "You surely are not having any more trouble with
the shoes?" Beckmesser's wrath holds in but a moment before
voiding itself upon Sachs in accusation and threat. "Be
sure,
friend Sachs, I know you now!... That I may not stand in
your way, you go so far even as to incite the mob to
riot.... You have always been my enemy.... Now hear, whether
I see through you. The maiden whom I have chosen, who was
verily born for me, to the frustration of all widowers there
be,—of her you are in pursuit! In order that Master Sachs
might gain the goldsmith's rich inheritance it was that at
the council of masters he stood upon minor clauses. For that
reason, fool that I was! with bawling and hammering he tried
to drown my song,—that the child might not be made aware of
another's ability! Yes, yes! Have I hit the mark? And
finally from his cobbler's shop he egged after me boys with
cudgels, that he might be rid of me.... Ouch! Ouch! Green
and blue was I beaten, made an object of derision to the
beloved woman, so drubbed and maltreated that no tailor's
flat-iron can smoothe me out! Upon my very life an attempt
was made! But I came out of it with sufficient spirit left
to reward you for the deed. Stand forth to-day and sing, do,
and see how you prosper. Beaten and bruised as I am, I shall
certainly manage to throw you out of time!" Sachs has
unperturbedly let him spend himself. "My good friend, you
are labouring under a delusion. You are free to attribute to
me what actions you please... but I have not the least
thought of competing." "Lies and deceit!" roars Beckmesser,
"I know better!" Sachs quietly repeats his statement. "What
else I have in mind is no affair of yours. But concerning
the contest you are in error."—"Not in the contest? No
competition-song?"—"Certainly not." Beckmesser produces the
piece of music. "Is that your hand?"—"Yes," Sachs owns,
amused; "Was that it?"—"I suppose you call it a biblical
lay?"—"Nay," laughs Sachs, "any one guessing it to be such
would hit wide enough of the mark."—"Well, then?"—"What is
it?"—"Do you ask me?"—"What do you mean?"—"That
you are, in all can dour, a rogue of the first magnitude!"
Sachs shrugs good-humouredly; "Maybe! I have never, however,
pocketed what I found upon another's table. That one may not
think evil of you, dear sir, keep the paper, I make you a
gift of it." Beckmesser leaps in the air with incredulous
joy: "Lord God! A poem of Sachs's!... But soft, that I may
not be led into fresh troubles. You have, no doubt," he
insinuates, "committed the thing perfectly to memory?"—"Have
no uneasiness with regard to that."—"You bestow the sheet on
me then outright?"—"To prevent you being a thief."—"And
suppose I made use of it?"—"You may do as you please."—"I
may sing it, then?"—"If it is not too difficult."—"And if I
should please my audience?"—"I should be greatly
astonished!"—Beckmesser misses the sly shoester's intention.
"You are too modest altogether," he says; and goes on to
explain in what dire need he stands of a new composition,
since the song sung the night before as a serenade can have
no chance, if sung again to-day, of charming the Pognerin,
for whom it must be associated, thanks to the cobbler's
merry jests, with every undignified circumstance. And how
can he, poor belaboured wretch, find the necessary peace of
mind to compose a new one? Yet, if he have not a new song,
he must give up the hope of marriage. But a song of Sachs's
would enable him to overcome every obstacle; if he may have
it, let all the disagreements which have kept them apart be
forgotten and buried. But,—he suddenly holds in, and puckers
his forehead,—if this were a trap? "Even so late as
yesterday," he says to Sachs, "you were my enemy. How is it
that after all the troubles between us you are to-day kindly
disposed toward me?"—"I worked on your shoes until late at
night," Sachs disingenuously replies; "is that the sort of
consideration one shows an enemy?"—"True, true. But
now give me your word. Whenever and under whatever
circumstances you hear that song, you will never by any
chance say that it is of your composing."—"I give you my
word and oath," Sachs assents, with a spice of wicked glee,
"that I will never boast of that song being
mine."—Beckmesser's spirits rise to heights of mad
exhilaration. "What more do I want? I am saved! Beckmesser
need trouble no further!"—"Friend," Sachs warns him, "in all
kindness I advise you, study that song carefully. It is of
no easy execution."—"Friend Sachs," Beckmesser waives the
warning, "you are a good poet, but in all that relates to
tones and tunes there is no one goes ahead of me. But now,
quickly home, to learn the thing by heart. Hans Sachs, my
dear fellow, I have misunderstood you. My judgment was
thrown off the track by that adventurer. Just such a one was
needed! But we masters made short work of him! Good-bye! I
must be off! Elsewhere will I show my gratitude for your
sweet friendliness. I will vote for you hereafter, I will
buy your works. I will make you Marker!" Effusively he
embraces him: "Marker, Marker, Marker Hans Sachs!"
Hans Sachs looks after the departing
figure with a meditative smile. "So entirely ill-natured
have I never yet found any one. He cannot fail to come to
grief of some sort. Many there be who squander their wits,
but they reserve enough to keep house with. The hour of
weakness comes for each one of us, when he turns fool and is
open to parley." So entirely ill-natured Beckmesser has been
found that Sachs feels no compunction at letting him run
into the pitfall gaping ahead. He is willing to win an
advantage by a deception, let him follow his head, why
should honest Sachs be tender of him? The joke is not severe
beyond his deserts. He has candidly rejoiced that short work
was made of that adventurer, Von Stolzing; why should
he not be permitted to encounter the same sort of treatment?
Why indeed should not his dishonesty be turned to use? "That
Master Beckmesser here turned thief," reflects Sachs, "falls
in excellently with my plan."
Eva appears in the doorway, Eva dazzling
in her white wedding-dress. "I was wondering," says Sachs to
himself at sight of her, "where she could be!" For, as
Walther was known to be in the house, it was thought she
must before long find some pretext to stand beneath the same
roof. She wears a little languid air; last evening was a
sore trial to young nerves. A tinge of accusing
plaintiveness is in her voice. She is markedly abstracted;
her thoughts are wandering, of course, all about the house
in search of him. She has her pretext ready, and
meets Sachs's warm compliment upon her appearance with a
reproachful: "Ah, master! So long as the tailor has done his
work successfully, who ever will divine where I suffer
inconvenience, where secretly my shoe pinches me?"—"The
wicked shoe!" Sachs is for a moment really deceived; "It was
your humour yesterday not to try it on."—"You see? I had too
much confidence. I was mistaken in the master."—"I am sorry,
indeed I am!" He is on his knee at once: "Let me look at it,
my child, that I may help you, right off, quick!"—"As soon
as I stand on it, it obliges me to go; and as soon as I go,
it obliges me to stand."—"Place your foot here on the stool,
I will remedy the evil at once. Now, what is wrong with
it?"—"You can see, it is too wide!"—"Child, that is pure
vanity. The shoe is snug."—"That is what I said, and that is
why it pinches my toes."—"Here, at the left?"—"No, the
right."—"At the instep?"—"No, the heel."—"What?" he asks
incredulously, "Something wrong too with the heel?"—"Ach,
master," she exclaims, "do you know better than I where my
shoe pinches me?"—"I can only wonder," he replies,
good-humouredly, "that your shoe should be loose and yet pinch
you everywhere!" The door of the inner room opens at this
moment, and Walther stands upon the threshold in the rich
gala costume of a young noble. Eva at sight of him in his
splendour utters a cry, and remains spell-bound, gazing. He
stops short in the doorway, spell-bound equally at sight of
her in her shimmering bride's-robe of white,—and from their
eyes, fixed unwaveringly upon each other, their hearts
travel forth on luminous beams to meet and mingle. Sachs's
back is toward Walther; he has not see him, but the
tell-tale light on Eva's face, reflection of a sun-burst,
has reported to him of the apparition. He pretends not to
see. "Aha! Here is the trouble!" he speaks, as if nothing
were; "Now I see what the matter is! Child, you were right,
the seams are stiff. Just wait and I will set the matter
aright. Stay where you are, I will take the shoe and put it
on the last for a minute. After that it will give you no
further trouble." He draws the shoe tenderly from her
childish foot, and leaves her standing, statue-still, lost
in her trance of contemplation, with her foot on the stool,
while he takes the shoe to his bench and pretends to work at
it. He cannot forbear,—while he plays his little comedy, and
those two angelically beautiful beings, saved and aided by
him, between whom he shares his big heart, stand hushed,
drinking, in oblivion of all, the heavenly nectar of each
other's glances,—he cannot forbear teasing the little lady a
bit, giving her a little lesson, taking a very mild
vengeance on her for the faintly perfidious wiles of
yesterday. So he runs on, while making himself busy with her
shoe: "Forever to be cobbling! That is my fate. Night nor
day, no deliverance for me! Child, listen! I have thought
over what shall bring my shoe-making to an end. The best
thing I can do will be after all to enter the contest for
your hand. I might thus at least win something for myself as
a poet!...
You are not listening? Yet it was yourself put the idea in
my head.... Oh, very well! I see! Attend to your shoes! If
at least," he slyly suggests, without turning, "some one
would sing to me while I work! I heard to-day a regularly
beautiful song. If just a third verse, equally successful,
might be added to it!" Like the hypnotised receiving a
suggestion, Walther, ready as a bird, breaks forth singing,
his gaze never swerving from Eva: "Did the stars come to a
pause in their charming dance? Light and clear, above the
clustering locks of the most beautiful of all women,
glittered with soft brilliancy a crown of stars..."
"Listen, child," Sachs bids Eva, in the
short pause between the verses, "that is a master-song!"
"Miracle upon miracle! A double radiance
of day now illumines me, for, even as two suns of purest
delight, two divinely beautiful eyes bend their light upon
me...."
"That," says Sachs, "is the sort of thing
you hear sung in my house nowadays!"
"Oh, gracious vision which my heart found
boldness to approach! The wreath, which in the rays of the
twin suns shows pale at once and green, tenderly and mildly
she weaves about the consort's head. Into the breast of the
poet—born erst to joy, now elect to glory,—Paradisal joy she
pours, in Love's dream!"
Sachs has been enabled to keep in hand his
emotion at the sound of the ecstatic song by diligently
busying himself with the shoe, uttering at intervals small
insignificant remarks: "Let us see, now, whether I have got
my shoe aright. I believe I have finally succeeded, eh? Try
it, now!" He has slipped it on to her foot, "Walk on it!
Tell me, does it still hurt?" But Eva, who has stood
breathlessly gazing and listening to the thrilling accents,
new to her, of her lover, when the heart-searching
voice is silent and the tension relaxes, bursts into
passionate weeping, sinks on Sachs's breast and clings to
him, sobbing. Walther with a quick stride is beside them;
impulsively he grasps the hand of the good Sachs, to whom he
dimly feels he owes so much,—to whom he owes really more
than he dreams.
For a moment not one of them can speak.
Then it becomes too much for Sachs, this soft beloved form
trembling against his breast; he gently frees himself and
allows the burden he relinquishes to slide upon the shoulder
of Walther. Like a noble dog shaking his fur, he takes
himself away and finds occupation at the further end of the
room, trying by his commonplace playful talk to dispel the
oppression of a too great emotion. Again he must, all for
her good, tease Evchen a bit. "Has not a shoe-maker his fill
of troubles?" he grumbles; "Were I not at the same time a
poet, not another shoe would I make. So much hard work, such
a perpetual calling upon you! This one's shoe is too loose,
that one's too tight, here it claps, it hangs at the heel,
there it presses, it pinches. The shoe-maker must know
everything, mend everything that is torn, and if he be in
addition a poet, then verily he is not allowed a moment's
peace. But if, on top of all, he be a widower, then he is in
all truth regarded as a very fool! The youngest of maidens,
if a husband is wanted, request him to apply for them; let
him understand them or let him not, it is all the same; let
him say yes, let him say no, in the end he is told that he
smells of pitch, and is called stupid, cantankerous, and
impertinent! I wouldn't care so much," he concludes
humourously, "but for my apprentice. He is losing all
respect for me!..."
The conscience-smitten girl flings her
arms around him again: "Oh, Sachs, my friend, oh, noble
heart, how can I ever repay you? Without your love, what
were I? What were I, without you? I should have remained a
child forever, had you not awakened me. Through you I won
the things one prizes, through you I learned what a soul is.
Through you I awoke, through you alone I learned to think
nobly, freely, courageously. You guided my growth, and
brought me to flowering. Oh, dear master, scold me, well you
may!... But yet I was on the right track. For, had I any
choice, you, no other, should be my husband. I would hold
out the prize to you alone. As it is, I myself have been
chosen—to never-before-dreamed-of torment! And if this day I
am wedded, it will be without choice of my own. Coercion I
have suffered, have suffered violence. You know, master,
that the force of it frightened even you!"—"My child," he
replies, mildly, collectedly—if feelingly and a little
sadly, to her impulsive confession, while a known, poignant
strain, like a profound sigh, holds the ear for a moment, an
echo from a different opera, "of Tristan and Isolde I know
the sorrowful story. Hans Sachs was shrewd and would have
none of King Mark's happiness!" With a return to the
lightness which is his policy of the moment, he adds, lest
emotion too far unnerve them all: "Full time it was that the
right one should appear, or I should after all have run into
the snare!... Aha! There comes Lene looking for you. Hey,
David, aren't you coming?" Nurse and apprentice enter, one
from outside and one from within, in their holiday garments.
"The witnesses are here, the sponsors
present, now quickly to the christening! Take your places!"
Sachs directs. All look at him in wonder. He lays before
them his idea of giving, with proper ceremony, a name to the
master-song born in his house. It is a poet's fancy, an act
of tender superstition on Sachs's part, a form by which he
tries to lay a helpful charm or blessing upon the new-born
creation on which so much depends; send it forth
equipped as well as possible with spiritual arms, that it
may, as he says, "grow great without harm or mishap." The
young melody's father, of course, is Walther; the Pognerin
and he, Sachs, will stand its sponsors; Lene and David shall
be witnesses. But as an apprentice is not a proper witness,
David is promoted with the rite of a smart box on the ear
from apprentice to journeyman. Sachs suggests as the name of
the new-born: Song of Interpretation of the Blissful
Morning-Dream, and the young godmother is requested to speak
appropriate words over it. The point of what follows is
hardly in Eva's words, pretty as they are; the point is that
one of the most extraordinary quintets that ever charmed
human ear serves as baptismal send-off to the infant melody.
Each of the five singing together
expresses, according to custom in concerted pieces, the
aspect which the common subject, or the hour, has for him.
And so dear Sachs, while Eva and Walther rejoice on their
side, and David and Lene—to whom the apprentice's promotion
opens vistas of mastership and marriage,—rejoice on theirs,
Sachs, adding a less glad but more serene voice to the
glorious sheaf of song, reveals his heart,—with no one to
listen, for all are singing. "Full fain"—he sighs, "Full
fain had I been to sing before the winsome child, but need
was that I should place restraint upon the sweet disorderly
motions of the heart. A lovely evening dream it was, hardly
dare I to think upon it...." But the wreath of immortal
youth shall be the poet's reward. Impertinent to pity the
sturdy Sachs, who has his poetry and his strong heart. And
he has at all moments been wiser than his lovely evening
dream. There has been really no renunciation on his part,
for he had never allowed himself any serious parleying with
the tender temptation. Not for an instant does he present
himself as a
sentimental figure; but the generosity with which he employs
himself to secure for others the happiness which, though in
his good sense he had denied it to himself, his heart had
yet caressed in its alluring evening dream, makes him a
magnanimous one.
It is time when they have finished to
start for the seat of the Saint John's Day celebration.
Sachs sends Eva home to her father, orders David to close
the shop, and starts along with Walther.
While the curtain is lowered for the
change of scene, one of those musical transformations takes
place of which there are several instances in these operas.
With elements we know, new elements begin to mingle; the old
are withdrawn, and presently, musically, as ocularly, the
scene is changed. We behold a green meadow on the banks of
the Pegnitz; in the distance, the city of Nuremberg. The
place is decorated for holiday. There is a great stand for
the master-singers and judges in the song-contest. Crowds of
holiday-makers are on the spot already, more still arrive by
the river in bright boats. The various guilds march in
procession with their respective insignia, shoe-makers,
tailors, bakers. Apprentices and young girls dance together
to a measure daintily gay as their fluttering ribbon-knots.
Conspicuous among them is David, so forgetful for the moment
of Lene and himself as to imprint a glowing kiss on his
partner's cheek. Frivolities stop short with the arrival of
the masters. These assemble to the sound of what we will
call their unofficial march; then, to their great march,
they walk to their places on the stand, Kothner waving the
banner of the guild, and the people acclaiming. Pogner
escorts Eva to the seat of honour. When all are in their
places, a corps of young apprentices, filling the function
to-day of heralds, and carrying staffs of office liberally
be flowered, call out in Latin the order for silence.
Quiet being established, Sachs, spokesman for the occasion,
rises. At once the silence is shattered by cheers for the
popular poet, cries of joy at sight of him; there is waving
of kerchiefs and hats. To show how every one knows and loves
his songs, the people entone one of them all together and
sing it jubilantly through; and "Long live Sachs!" they
shout, "Hans Sachs! Long live Nuremberg's beloved Hans
Sachs!" It is too much for poet to experience unmoved, and
Sachs's voice, when the people quiet down at last, to
listen, only gradually regains its manly firmness. "You ease
your own hearts and burden mine, in offering me, unworthy,
too great honour. If I am not to sink crushed beneath it,
let it be in the thought that it is the gift of your love.
Great honour already has fallen to my portion to-day, in
that I have been elected to the dignity of spokesman. And
the announcement which I have to make to you, believe me, is
full of high honour!" He imparts to them Pogner's project,
but with these important modifications or omissions,—and it
is they which constitute the stroke Sachs has been
preparing. No mention whatever is made of the limitations
determined upon by the masters at the last meeting: that the
singers contending must be members of the guild, and that
the masters exclusively shall be judges. So the offer
stands: A lovely girl and a rich inheritance shall be the
portion of the singer who before the assembled people shall
carry off the prize,—awarded, one naturally understands,
since nothing different is stated, by popular acclamation.
Free candidature, therefore popular election! And Sachs so
presents the thing that the masters cannot very well object,
if even they had the courage to chance the awkwardness of a
public scene; they can hardly claim it is not fair that
they, presumably superior in song to non-masters, should
accept the contest on the same terms. Sachs's peculiar
audacity
has lain in his taking the risk of a perfectly justified
revolt on the part of the masters against his high-handed
proceeding; he has counted on the restraining effect of the
public occasion; has counted on luck, which proverbially
follows the bold. High-handed, his course, undeniably, but
too much was at stake for any narrow consideration to hold
back Sachs: the happiness of Eva,—of, as he says, at the
conclusion of his announcement, "the amiable stainless one,
who must never be made to regret that Nuremberg holds in
such honour art and its professors!" Hearty applause follows
his words. Pogner grasps his hand, moved, infinitely
relieved. "Oh, Sachs, my friend, what thanks do I owe you!
How did you know what was weighing on my heart?"—"Much was
staked upon that cast," replies Sachs; "now pluck up heart!"
He catches sight of Beckmesser, who ever
since arriving with the rest of the masters has been
feverishly studying his bit of music-sheet, at intervals
wiping the desperate sweat from his brow. "Mr. Marker, how
are you getting on?"—"Oh, this song!" groans the Marker, "I
cannot make head or tail of it, and I have worked over it,
in all truth, hard enough!" Sachs shows him, if he but knew
it, a way of escape. "My friend, you are not obliged to use
it."—"What is the good? My own song, through your fault, is
done for. Now be a kind dear fellow, it would be abominable
of you to leave me in the lurch."—"It is my opinion that you
had better give it up."—"Give it up?... Well, hardly! I can
easily beat all the others, if only you will not sing. I am
certain that no one will understand the song, but I am
building upon your popularity."
Sachs abandons him to his fate, and
declares the song-contest open. Kothner summons the
contestants, "And let the oldest," he calls, "come first.
Master Beckmesser, pray begin. We are late!"
The little heralds have piled up grassy sods
into a sort of pedestal for the singers to stand on. They
lead Beckmesser to this. He stumbles in going, and can
hardly from nervousness keep his balance on the none too
secure elevation. The common people begin to titter. Murmurs
fly from one to the other: "What? That one? That is one of
the suitors? Why, he can't even walk!... Keep quiet! He is
an eminent master! He is the town-clerk.... Lord, what a
muff! He is toppling over!... Be still, and stop your jokes;
he has a seat and a voice in the committee!..."—"Silentium!
Silentium!" calls the chorus of little heralds. And
Kothner: "Begin!" Beckmesser, after bowing to the queen of
the day and to the assembly, gives forth, haltingly,
Walther's song as he remembers it, as it has become with
passing through the medium of his mind. What he utters, with
many an anxious peep at the crumpled manuscript, is nonsense
of the most ludicrous. For every word he substitutes another
of distantly the same sound, but different meaning,
betraying how he has not understood a syllable. The melody,
if so were he had mastered it, has completely dropped from
his mind, and what he sings to the eccentric words is his
own serenade, but perverted by the interference of the alien
influence.
The masters at the end of the first verse
look at one another, mystified. "What is that? Has he lost
his senses? An extraordinary case! Do our ears deceive us?"
The people giggle and make remarks, not too loud as yet.
At the end of the second verse, the
masters inquire of one another, "What does it mean? Has he
gone mad? His song is one piece of nonsense!" while the
people giggle louder and make remarks less and less
respectful.
At the end of the third verse, populace
and masters burst into peals of laughter. Beckmesser
descends from his pedestal and hurls himself
raging at Sachs. "Accursed cobbler! To you I owe this!—The
song is none of mine," he excitedly informs the rest. "Sachs
here, whom you honour so, your Sachs gave me the song. The
scandalous wretch compelled me to sing it, he foisted off
his miserable song on me!" He dashes the sorry-looking
manuscript at Sachs's feet, and rushes off like one pursued
by a nest of hornets.
Amazement reigns among master-singers and
people: "A song of Sachs's? The matter grows more and more
astonishing! The song is yours? Be so good, Sachs, as to
explain!" Sachs has picked up and smoothed out the crumpled
page. "The song, as a matter of truth, is not of my
composing. Herr Beckmesser is mistaken, in this respect as
in others. How he obtained it let him tell you himself. But
never should I be audacious to the point of boasting that so
fine a song had been written by me, Hans Sachs."—"What?...
Fine?... That crazy rubbish? Sachs is joking! He says that
in fun!"—"I declare to you, gentlemen, that the song is
beautiful. But it is obvious at a single glance that Master
Beckmesser misrepresents it. I swear to you, however, that
you would hear it with delight were one to sing it in this
circle correctly as to word and melody. And one who should
be able to do this would by that fact sufficiently prove
that he is the author of the song, and that in all justice,
if he found just judges, he would be called a master. I have
been accused and must defend myself. Let me therefore summon
a witness. If any one is present who knows that right is on
my side, let him come forward as a witness before this
assembly."
Quietly and quickly, with his
proudly-borne head and his light proud step, Walther
advances. A murmur of pleasure runs through the assembly at
sight of him, in his resplendent clothes and plumed hat. The
good populace on whom Sachs had counted do not
disappoint him: the gallant young figure finds instantaneous
favour. "A proper witness, handsome and spirited," they
comment, "from whom something proper may be expected!" The
master-singers are not slow to recognise the intruder of
yesterday, and to grasp the situation. They accept it
good-humouredly enough, with artistic appreciation, no
doubt, of Sachs's well managed coup de théâtre. "Ah,
Sachs, confess that you are a sly one! But, for this once,
have your way!"
"Masters and people are agreed to try the
worth of my witness," Sachs announces; "Herr Walther von
Stolzing, sing the song. And you, masters, see if he render
it aright." He hands them the manuscript.
Walther takes his stand on the flowery
mound and starts singing the song we know already. Presently
however, the song lifts him away, and he alters, as with
that power of inspiration behind him how could he help?—he
amplifies, makes more beautiful still. But by that time the
masters have become so interested that they withdraw their
attention from the manuscript, and follow enthralled the
voice of the singer alone.
The song is in its final effect
considerably different from the original one, being the
fruit of the moment, like Walther's other improvisations. It
preserves, however, both in text and tune, a sufficient
likeness to the first to prove it of an identical source. It
is the same dream he tells, but expressed in different
images.
In a blessed love-dream, he had been led
to a garden where, beneath a miraculous tree, he had
beheld—vision promising fulfilment to love's wildest
desire!—a woman of all-surpassing beauty: Eve, in the garden
of Paradise....
In a poet's waking dream, he had been
lured by the crystal murmur of a spring up a steep path.
There, beneath a laurel-tree, he had beheld—and from her
hand had received upon his brow water from the
sacred fount,—a woman of a beauty grave and sublime: the
Muse of Parnassus....
There is no doubt of the impression the
song produces upon the audience. As he pauses between the
verses, Walther cannot but seize their irrepressible
exclamations. "That is a very different matter! Who would
have thought it?" The people surrender heart-wholly. "How it
soars,—so sweet, so far from earth, and yet it is all as if
one had lived through it himself!"—"It is bold and unusual,
but well-rhymed and singable!" the masters admit. The
circumstances of this hearing are different enough from
yesterday's. The infection of Beckmesser's jealous spite is
wanting; softening influences are in the lovely scene, the
poetic occasion. The pure ecstasy of the song has a chance
to work its spell, to transport them outside of their
limitations. They are honourable men, as Sachs assured
Walther; they have no parti pris of bolts and
shutters against the New; on occasion they can be generous.
"Yes, yes, I see, it is quite another thing," they say,
"when it is sung aright!"
Sure of victory, already triumphant,
Walther leaps to the goal: "Oh, day most rich in blessing,
on which I awake from my dream! The Paradise I saw in sleep
lies before me in intensified splendour. The murmuring
spring lures me along the way which leads to it,—and the One
whose home is there, the elect of my heart, the loveliest of
earth, my muse and inspiration, as holy and high as she is
fair, I have boldly wooed her,—I have won, by the bright
light of day, through the victory of song, both Parnassus
and Paradise!"
Before the last note has died, all are
clamouring together, awarding to Walther the master-prize.
"Reach him the wreath! There is no lover or singer like
him!" And then Walther's exquisite morning-dream comes true.
He kneels before the woman more graciously beautiful than any
he had ever seen, while, bending upon him eyes luminous with
joy as twin suns, she places upon his head the wreath of
laurel and myrtle, the poet's and lover's crown.
Pogner wrings Sachs's hand. "Oh, Sachs, to
you I owe happiness and honour!" He draws a sigh of immense
well-being. "Lifted is the weight from my heart!"
There are congratulations and rejoicings.
In the general glow of good-humour, voices of master-singers
call out to Pogner: "Up Master Pogner, and announce to his
lordship his admission to the master-guild!" Pogner takes
the decoration of the order, the gold chain with the three
medallions, and with the words, "I receive you into the
master-guild," is casting it over the victorious singer's
head, when Walther starts back, as from something of
horridly unpleasant association, and makes a gesture of
uncompromising refusal. "Not a master, no!... I mean to be
happy without that title!"
An uncomfortable silence follows upon the
hard snub. All look toward Sachs, whose face has clouded
over with pain. He walks to Walther, and seizing him by the
hand, as one might a child, to bring it to reason,
vigorously speaks the defence of the order to which he
belongs. "Despise not the masters, but, rather, honour their
art. The great good you have this day received speaks loud
in their praise. Not to your ancestors, however great, not
to your coat of arms, your spear or sword, but to the fact
that you are a singer, that you have proved yourself a
master, you owe to-day your highest happiness. If then you
apply to the question a grateful mind: how can that art be
of no account which holds such prizes? That our masters
cared for it in their own way, that according to their
lights they were faithful to it, that is what has preserved
it. Though it no longer is aristocratic, as in the times
when it was fostered by princes and courts, yet despite the
stress of evil years it has remained German, it has remained
sincere. And if it had prospered nowhere but among us, with
our burdens and restrictions, you can see in what honour it
is held here. What more do you require of the masters?...
Have a care! Evil contingencies threaten! Should the day
come when the German people and kingdom fall asunder, its
princes, seduced by false outlandish splendours, would soon
no longer understand the language of their own people, and
outlandish error, outlandish vanities, would be sown by them
in German soil. In that day, should it come, no one would
know any longer what is German and genuine, did it not
survive by grace of the German masters! Then honour the
German masters! By that spell shall you command good genii!
And if you second them by your favour, holy Rome may pass
away in smoke: we shall still have our holy German art!"
Nobly and contritely Walther bows his
head, and Sachs hangs about his neck the collar of the
guild. Eva, fired, takes from her lover's fair curls the
laurel-wreath, and presses it upon the grisled head of the
master. He stands radiant between the two whose happiness is
his work. The populace wave their hats and kerchiefs,
cheering, "Hail, Sachs! Hans Sachs! Hail Nuremberg's beloved
Hans Sachs!"
One cannot help imagining, in
"Meistersinger," a fragment of autobiography, a recollection
of days when Wagner must have heard on all sides concerning
his work what we still occasionally hear, such words as he
puts into the mouth of Beckmesser: "Kein Absatz wo, kein'
Coloratur! Von Melodei auch nicht eine Spur!" No pause
anywhere for breath! No appropriate colouring! Of melody not
the remotest trace!
No pause anywhere for breath! The headlong
rush it has of genius. No appropriate colouring! The
colouring happens merely to be new. Of melody not the
remotest trace,—when in this opera particularly the composer
casts melodies up in the air like golden balls and juggles
with them; when, like a conjurer, he goes on taking fresh
roses in absurd abundance out of a horn that should
naturally have been ten times empty!
If we may translate the personages of this
delicious play into types, Walther must stand for the poet
and singer by God's grace, fresh young Genius, winged
bringer of a new message. Beckmesser for Old School, where
it has become fossil, where forms moulded on life have
become void and dry, and rules are held sufficient without
breath of inspiration. Nay, inspiration, which jostles and
disturbs rule, is regarded with suspicion. Inspiration to
Beckmesser is as much an intruder as would be Saint Francis
coming to visit some Prior of his own order long after the
spirit animating the saint had been hardened into forms.
Hans Sachs, then, is a sort of Ideal Critic, with affection
and allegiance toward the past, but with a fair and open
mind toward the new. Walther himself could have no more
admirable attitude, more perfect temper, toward Art, than
Sachs. It is only to be hoped that in his maturity he was as
tolerant and broad-minded.
The wise, the gentle Sachs! It is a pity
that in listening to an opera one hears so little of the
words, for there fall from his genial lips precepts which it
would be really worth while to impress upon the memory,
among which could there be a more golden than his word to
critics: "When you find that you are trying to measure by
your own rules that which does not lie within the compass of
your rules, the thing to do is to forget your rules and try
to discover the rules of that which you wish to measure!".
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STORIES OF THE WAGNER OPERA
BY
H.A. GUERBER
THE MASTER SINGERS OF NUREMBERG.
When Richard Wagner was only sixteen years of age he read
with great enthusiasm one of Hoffmann's novels entitled
‘Sängerkrieg,’ giving a romantic account of the ancient
musical contests at the Wartburg in Bavaria. The impression
made upon him by this account was first utilised in his
opera of ‘Tannhäuser,’ when his attention was attracted also
to the picturesque possibilities of the guilds formed by the
burghers.
It was not until 1845, however, that he made definite use
of this material, and began the sketch for his only comic
opera. The first outline was drawn during a sojourn in the
Bohemian mountains, when he felt in an unusually light and
festive mood. But the work was soon set aside, and was not
resumed until 1862, when it was finished in Paris. The score
was then begun, and written almost entirely at Biberich on
the Rhine, and Wagner himself conducted the overture for the
first time at a concert in Leipzig.
This fragment was very well received and there was an
‘enthusiastic demand for a repetition, in which the members
of the orchestra took part as much as the audience.’ The
opera itself, however, was first performed under Von Bülow,
in 1868, at Munich. The best singers of the day took the
principal parts, and the result of their united efforts was
‘a perfect performance; the best that had hitherto been
given of any work of the master.’
The opera, at first intended as a comical pendant to
‘Tannhäuser,’ is, as we have already stated, Wagner's first
and only attempt to write in the comic vein, and the text is
full of witty and cutting allusions to the thick-headed
critics (at whose hands Wagner had suffered so sorely), who
sweepingly condemn everything that does not conform to their
fixed standard. During all the Middle Ages, and more
especially in the middle of the thirteenth century, the
quaint old city of Nuremberg was the seat of one of the most
noted musical guilds, or German training schools for poets
and musicians. The members of this fraternity were all
burghers, instead of knights like the Minnesingers, and held
different ranks according to their degree of proficiency.
They were therefore called singers when they had mastered a
certain number of tunes; poets
when they could compose verses to a given air; and Master
Singers when they could write both words and music on an
appointed theme. The musical by-laws of this guild were
called ‘Tabulatur,’ and every candidate was forced to pass
an examination, seven mistakes being the maximum allowed by
the chief examiner, who bore the title of Marker.
The opera opens in the interior of St. Catharine's church
in Nuremberg, where a closing hymn in honour of St. John is
being sung. Eva Pogner and her maid, Magdalena, have been
present at the service, and are still standing in their pew.
But, in spite of her handmaiden's energetic signs and
nudges, the young lady pays but little heed to the closing
hymn, and turns all her attention upon a handsome young
knight, Walther von Stolzenfels, who, as the last note dies
away, presses eagerly forward and enters into conversation
with her.
To secure a few moments' private interview Eva sends her
maid back to the pew, first for her forgotten kerchief, next
for a pin which she has lost, and lastly for her
prayer-book. During these temporary absences the deeply
enamoured youth implores Eva to tell him whether she is
still free, and whether her heart and hand are still at her
own disposal. Before the agitated
girl can answer, the servant comes up, and, overhearing the
question, declares that her mistress's hand has already been
promised,—a statement which Eva modifies by adding that her
future bridegroom is yet to be chosen. As these
contradictory answers greatly puzzle Walther, she hurriedly
explains that her father, the wealthiest burgher of the
town, wishing to show his veneration for music, has promised
his fortune and her hand to a Master Singer, the preference
being given to the one who will win the prize on the morrow.
The only proviso made is that the girl may remain free if
the bridegroom does not win her approval, and Eva timidly
confesses that she will either marry Walther or remain
single all her life. Magdalena, who has been carrying on a
lively flirtation of her own with David, the sexton, now
suddenly hurries her young mistress off, bidding the knight
apply to David if he would learn any more concerning the
musical test about to take place, and in the same breath she
promises her lover some choice dainties if he will only do
all in his power to enlighten and favour her mistress's
suitor.
‘Let David supply all
The facts of the trial.—
David, my dear, just heed what I say!
You must induce Sir Walther to
stay.
The larder I'll sweep,
The best for you keep;
To-morrow rewards shall fall faster
If this young knight is made Master.’
Walther, who has just passionately declared to Eva that
he knows he could become both poet and musician for her
sweet sake, since her father has vowed never to allow her to
marry any but a Master, now listens attentively to David's
exposition of the school's rules and regulations. In the
mean while the apprentices come filing in, prepare the
benches and chairs, arrange the Marker's curtained box, and
gayly chaff each other as they join in an impromptu dance.
They only subside when Pogner, Eva's father, enters with
Beckmesser, an old widower, the Marker of the guild, who
flatters himself he can easily win the prize on the morrow,
and would fain make Pogner promise that the victor should
receive the maiden's hand without her consent being asked.
He fears lest the capricious fair one may yet refuse to
marry him, and decides to make sure of her by singing a
serenade under her window that very night. But when he sees
the handsome young candidate step forward and receive the
support of Pogner, (who has already
made his acquaintance, and who evidently is inclined to
favour him,) the widower looks very glum indeed, and
vindictively resolves to prevent his entrance into the guild
by fair means or by foul.
Hans Sachs, the poet shoemaker of Nuremberg, and all the
other members of the guild, having now appeared, Beckmesser
calls the roll, and Pogner repeats his offer to give his
fortune and daughter to the winner of the prize on the
morrow, and charges the guild to select their candidates for
the contest. Of course the very first thing to be done is to
examine the new candidate. Walther, when questioned
concerning his teachers and method, boldly declares he has
learned his art from nature alone, chooses love as his theme
for a trial song, and bursts forth into an impassioned and
beautiful strain. But as his words and music are strictly
original, and therefore cannot be judged by the usual
canons, Beckmesser savagely marks down mistake after
mistake, and brusquely interrupts the song to declare the
singer is ‘outsung and outdone.’ In proof of this assertion
he exhibits his slate, which is covered with bad marks. Hans
Sachs, the only member present who has understood the beauty
of this original lay, vainly tries to interfere in Walther's
behalf, but his efforts
only call forth a rude attack on Beckmesser's part, who
advises him to reserve his opinions, stick to his last, and
finish the pair of shoes which he has promised him for the
morrow. Walther is finally allowed to finish his song, but
the prejudiced and intolerant citizens of Nuremberg utterly
refuse to receive him in their guild, and he rushes out of
the hall in despair, for he has lost his best chance to win
the hand of his lady love by competing for the prize on the
morrow. His departure is a signal for a tumultuous breaking
up of the meeting, the apprentices dancing as before, as
soon as their masters have departed.
The second act represents one of the tortuous alleys and
a long straight street of the quaint old city of Nuremberg.
On one side is Hans Sachs's modest shoemaker's shop, on the
other the entrance to Pogner's stately dwelling. It is
evening, and David, the shoemaker's apprentice, is leisurely
putting up the shutters, when his attention is suddenly
attracted by Magdalena, who appears with a basket of
dainties. She however refuses to give them to him until he
tells her the result of the musical examination. When she
hears that Walther has failed and has been refused
admittance to the guild, she pettishly snatches the basket
from his grasp and
flounces off in great displeasure. The other apprentices,
who in the mean while have slyly drawn near, now make
unmerciful fun of David, who stands stupidly in the middle
of the street gazing regretfully after her.
This rough play is soon ended by the appearance of Hans
Sachs. He orders all the apprentices to bed, and, by a
judicious application of his strap, drives David into the
house. Quiet has just been restored once more, when Pogner
and Eva come sauntering down the street, returning from
their customary evening walk, and sit down side by side on
the bench in front of their door.
Here Pogner tries to sound his daughter's feelings, and
to discover whether she has any preference among the
morrow's candidates, reiterating his decision, however, that
he will never allow her to marry any one except a man who
has publicly won the title of Master Singer. As he cannot
ascertain his daughter's feelings, he soon enters the house,
while Eva lingers outside watching for Walther's promised
visit. She is soon joined by Magdalena, who sorrowfully
tells her that Walther has been rejected; but, as she can
give no details about the examination, Eva timidly
approaches Hans Sachs's window hoping to learn more from
him. The cobbler is
sitting at work near his window, singing a song of his own
composition, and the maiden soon enters into a bantering
conversation with her old friend.
In answer to Hans Sachs's questions, she soon confides to
him that she cannot endure Beckmesser, and to flatter him
into a good humour she archly suggests that, as he too is a
widower, he ought to compete for her hand. Hans Sachs, who
is far too shrewd not to see through her girlish fencing,
now resolves to discover whether she is as indifferent to
the young knight, and in order to do so he drops a few
careless and contemptuous remarks about him, which drive the
young lady away in a very bad temper.
Smiling maliciously at the success of his ruse, the
cobbler cheerfully continues his work, while Eva rejoins
Magdalena, who informs her that Beckmesser has signified his
intention to serenade her that very night. Eva cares naught
for the widower's music, and, only intent upon securing a
private interview with the handsome young knight, refuses to
re-enter the house; so Magdalena leaves her to answer
Pogner's call.
A few moments later Walther himself comes slowly down the
street; but, in spite of Eva's
rapturous welcome, he remains plunged in melancholy, for he
has forfeited all hope of winning her on the morrow. The
sound of the watchman's horn drives the young people apart,
and while Eva vanishes into the house, Walther hides under
the shadow of the great linden tree in front of Sachs's
house.
His presence has been detected by the shoemaker, who
makes no sign, and when the night watchman has gone by,
singing the hour and admonishing all good people to go to
bed, he perceives a female form glide softly out of the
house and join the knight. This female is Eva, who has
exchanged garments with Magdalena, and has prevailed upon
her to pose at her window during the serenade, while she
tries to comfort her beloved.
Crouching in the shade, the lovers now plan to elope that
very night, but Hans Sachs overhears their conversation, and
when they are about to leave their hiding-place and depart,
he flings open his shutter so that a broad beam of light
streams across the old street. It makes such a brilliant
illumination that it is impossible for any one to pass
unseen. This ruse, which proves such a hindrance to the
lovers, is equally distasteful to Beckmesser, who has come
down the street and has taken his stand near them to
tune his lute and begin his serenade. Before he can utter
the first note, Hans Sachs, having become aware of his
presence also, and maliciously anxious to defeat his plans,
lustily entones a noisy ditty about Adam and Eve, hammering
his shoes to beat time.
Beckmesser, who has seen Eva's window open, and longs to
make himself heard, steps up to the shoemaker's window. In
answer to his testy questions why he is at his bench at such
an hour, Hans Sachs good-humouredly replies that he must
work late to finish the shoes about which he has been
twitted in public. At his wit's end to silence the shoemaker
and sing his serenade, Beckmesser artfully pretends that he
would like to have Sachs's opinion of the song he intends to
sing on the morrow, and proposes to let him hear it then.
After a little demur the shoemaker consents, upon condition
that he may give a tap with his hammer every time he hears a
mistake, and thus carry on the double office of marker and
of cobbler.
Beckmesser is, however, so angry and agitated that his
song is utterly spoiled, and he makes so many mistakes that
the cobbler's hammer keeps up an incessant clatter. These
irritating sounds make the singer more nervous still, and he
sings so loudly and so badly
that he rouses the whole neighbourhood, and heads pop out of
every window to bid him be still.
David also ventures to peer forth, and, seeing that the
serenade is directed to Magdalena, whom he recognises at the
window above, his jealous anger knows no bounds. He springs
out of the window, and begins belabouring his unlucky rival
with a stout cudgel. The Nuremberg apprentices, who are
divided up into numerous rival guilds, and who are always
quarrelling, seize this occasion to bandy words, which soon
result in bringing them all out into the street, where a
free fight takes place between the rival factions of
journeymen and apprentices.
Magdalena, seeing her beloved David in peril screams
aloud, until Pogner, deceived by her apparel, pulls her into
the room and closes the window, declaring he must go and see
that all is safe. Sachs, who has closed his shutter at the
first sounds of the fight, steals out into the street,
approaches the young lovers, and, pretending to take Eva for
Magdalena, he thrusts her quickly into Pogner's house, and
drags Walther into his own dwelling just as the sound of the
approaching night watch is heard. As if by magic the
brawlers suddenly disappear, the
windows close, the lights are extinguished, and as the
watchman turns the corner the street has resumed its wonted
peaceful aspect.
The third act opens on the morrow, in Hans Sachs's shop,
where the cobbler is absorbed in reading and oblivious of
the presence of his apprentice David, who comes sneaking in
with a basket which he has just received from Magdalena.
Taking advantage of his master's absorption, David examines
the ribbons, flowers, cakes, and sausages with which it is
stocked, starting guiltily at his master's every movement,
and finally seeking to disarm the anger he must feel at the
evening's brawl by offering him the gifts he has just
received.
Hans Sachs, however, good-naturedly refuses to receive
them, and after making his apprentice sing the song for the
day he dismisses him to don his festive attire, for he has
decided to take him with him to the festival. Left alone,
Sachs soliloquises on the follies of mankind, until Walther
appears. In reply to his host's polite inquiry how he spent
the night, Walther declares he has been visited by a
wonderful dream, which he goes on to relate. At the very
first words the cobbler discovers that it is part of a
beautiful song, conforming to all the Master Singers' rigid
rules, and he hastily jots down the words,
bidding the young knight be careful to retain the tune.
As they both leave the room to don their festive apparel,
Beckmesser comes limping in. He soon discovers the verses on
the bench, and pockets them, intending to substitute them
for his own in the coming contest. Sachs, coming in, denies
all intention of taking part in the day's programme, and
when Beckmesser jealously asks why he has been inditing a
love song if he does not intend to sue for Eva's hand, he
discovers the larceny. He, however, good-naturedly allows
Beckmesser to retain the copy of verses, and even promises
him that he will never claim the authorship of the song, a
promise which Beckmesser intends to make use of so as to
pass it off as his own.
Triumphant now and sure of victory, Beckmesser departs as
Eva enters in bridal attire. She is of course devoured by
curiosity to know what has become of her lover, but, as
excuse for her presence, she petulantly complains that her
shoe pinches. Kneeling in front of her, Sachs investigates
the matter, greatly puzzled at first by her confused and
contradictory statements and by her senseless replies to his
questions. He is turning his back to the inner door, through
which Walther has also entered
the shop, but, soon becoming aware of the cause of her
perturbation, he deftly draws the shoe from her foot, and
going to his last pretends to be very busy over it, while he
is in reality listening intently to discover whether Eva's
presence will inspire Walther with the third and last verse
of his song. His expectations are not disappointed, for the
knight, approaching the maiden softly, declares his love in
a beautiful song.
As the last notes die away, the cobbler joyfully exclaims
that Walther has composed a Master Song, calls Eva and David
(who has just entered) as witnesses that he composed it,
foretells that, if Walther will only yield to his guidance
he will yet enable him to win the prize, and, patting Eva in
a truly paternal fashion, he bids her be happy, for she will
yet be able to marry the man she loves. David, who has been
made journeyman so that he can bear witness for Walther,
greets the happy Magdalena with the tidings that they no
longer need delay, but can marry immediately.
After the four happy young people and Hans Sachs have
given vent to their rapture in a beautiful quintette, they
adjourn to the meadow outside of the town, where the musical
contest is to take place. The peasants and apprentices are
merrily dancing on the green, and cease their mirthful
gyrations only when the Master Singers appear. Hans Sachs
addresses the crowd, reads the conditions of the test,
proclaims what the prize shall be, and concludes by inviting
Beckmesser to come forth and begin his song. The young
people assembled hail this elderly candidate with veiled
scorn, and Beckmesser, painfully clambering to the eminence
where the candidates are requested to stand, hesitatingly
begins his lay. The words, with which he has had no time to
become familiar, are entirely unadapted to his tune, so he
draws them out, clips them, loses the thread of the verses,
and fails in every sense.
In his chagrin at having made himself ridiculous, and in
anger because his colleagues declare the words of his song
have no sense, he suddenly turns upon Hans Sachs, and,
hoping to humiliate him publicly, accuses him of having
written the song. Hans Sachs, of course, disowns the
authorship, but stoutly declares the song is a masterpiece,
and that he is sure every one present will agree with him if
they hear it properly rendered to its appropriate tune. As
he is a general favourite among his townsmen, he soon
prevails upon them to listen to the author and composer and
decide whether he or Beckmesser is at fault.
Walther then springs lightly up the turfy throne, and,
inspired by love, he sings with all his heart. The beautiful
words, married to an equally beautiful strain, win for him
the unanimous plaudits of the crowd, who hail him as victor,
while the blushing Eva places the laurel crown upon his
head. Pogner, openly delighted with the favourable turn of
affairs, gives him the badge of the guild, and heartily
promises him the hand of his only daughter. As for Hans
Sachs, having publicly proved that his judgment was not at
fault, and that he had been keen enough to detect genius
even when it revealed itself in a new form, he is heartily
cheered by all the Nurembergers, who are prouder than ever
of the cobbler poet who has brought about a happy marriage:—
‘Hail Sachs! Hans
Sachs!
Hail Nuremberg's darling Sachs!’
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THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
I
A Dutch sea-captain, so long before the
date of the play that his story at the time of it is an old
legend, finding himself baffled during a storm in his effort
to double certain cape, swore a great oath that he would
persist to the end of time. The Devil heard him and took him
at his word. He was doomed eternally to sail the seas. But
an angel of the Lord interposed, and obtained for him a
condition of release: Every seven years he might land and
woo a woman; if he could find one to love him faithfully
until death, the curse upon him would be defeated, he would
be saved.
The Ouverture paints a great storm at sea,
and contrasts the two ships that are drawing toward the same
bay of refuge in the coast, the phantom ship with its crew
of ghosts and their sinister sea-cry, the common substantial
other craft with its comfortable flesh-and-blood sailors.
As the curtain rises upon the turbulent
sea and black weather, the Norwegian vessel has got safely
within the haven. While the sailors furl sails, cast cables,
the captain, Daland, comes ashore and climbs upon a rock to
study the landscape. He recognises the spot, seven miles
from the harbour of home where his daughter Senta awaits his
return, whom he had thought by this hour to be clasping in
his arms. "But he who counts upon the wind," he
philosophises, "is counting upon the mercy of Satan!" There
is nothing to do but wait until the storm subsides. He
returns on board, sends the tired crew below to rest after
their long struggle with the storm, leaves the watch to the
mate, and himself retires to the cabin. The mate, alone on
deck, after going the round, seats himself at the helm. The
violence of the storm has somewhat diminished, the sky has
lightened. To keep awake, he sings,—a love-song, ingenuous
as sailors are; which does not however fulfil its purpose,
for the singer, more and more oppressed with drowsiness,
drops off before the last bar.
The storm once more gathers force, the sky
darkens. A ship appears in the distance, with blood-red
sails and black masts. It rapidly nears shore and
noiselessly turns into the bay beside Daland's. The anchor
drops with a crash. The Norwegian mate starts, but,
half-blind with sleep, discerning nothing to take alarm at,
drops off again. Without a sound the crew of the strange
ship furl their sails and coil their ropes. The captain,
singularly pale, black-bearded, in a black Spanish costume
of long-past fashion, lands alone. It is he whom ballads
call the Flying Dutchman. Seven years have passed since he
last touched land. His opportunity has returned, to reach
out for salvation. He comes ashore wearily, perfunctorily,
without hope, or doubt but that the ocean will soon be
receiving him back for continued desperate wanderings. "Your
cruelty, proud ocean," he apostrophises it, "is variable,
but my torment eternal! The salvation which I seek on land,
never shall I find it. To you, floods of the boundless main,
I shall be found faithful until your last wave break and
your last moisture dry!
"How often—" he cries, as in fixed despair
he gazes back over the past, "How often, filled with longing
to die have I cast myself into the deepest abysses of the
sea, but death, alas! I could not find! Against the reefs
where ships find dreadful burial I have driven
my ship, but it found no grave! Inciting him to rage, I have
defied the pirate—I hoped to meet with death in fierce
battle. 'Here,' I have cried, 'show your prowess! Full of
treasure are ship and boat! But the wild son of the sea
trembling hoisted the sign of the cross and fled. Nowhere a
grave! Never to die! Such is the dreadful sentence of
damnation. Oh, tell me, gentle angel of God's, who won for
me the possibility of salvation, was I, wretch, the toy of
your mockery when you showed me the means of redemption?
Vain hope! Fearful, idle illusion! There is no such thing
more upon earth as eternal fidelity, One hope alone is left
me, one hope alone which nothing can destroy. However long
the seed of earth endure, it must come to final dissolution.
Day of Judgment, end of the world! When shall you dawn upon
my night? When shall it sound, the trump of doom, at which
the earth will crumble away? When all the dead arise, then
shall I pass into nothingness. O ye worlds, a term to your
course! Eternal void, receive me!" From the hold of the
phantom-ship the unseen crew echo his prayer: "Eternal void,
receive us!"
He is leaning against a rock, absorbed in
sombre meditation, when Daland, emerging from the cabin to
take a look at the weather, becomes aware of the looming
neighbour. He rouses the sleep-drunken mate. The latter,
shocked wide-awake by the conviction of negligence, catches
up a speaking-trumpet and calls to the strange ship lying at
anchor close by, "Who is there?" There comes no sound in
reply, save from the echo. "Answer!" shouts the mate; "Your
name and colours!" Silence, as before. "It appears they are
quite as lazy as we!" Daland remarks, finding nothing
particularly noteworthy in the unresponse, since his own
crew are asleep too after their long toil. Catching sight of
the dark figure on shore which he rightly takes to be
the captain, he prevents the mate's further investigation,
and turns his questions to this one: "Halloo, seaman! Give
your name! Your country?" The answer comes after a long
pause, almost as if the speaker had lost the habit of human
intercourse and uttered himself with difficulty. "I have
come from afar. Do you, in such stress of weather, deny me
anchorage?"—"God forbid! The seaman knows the friendly
courtesies of hospitality!" cries Daland. Joining the
stranger ashore, "Who are you?" he asks. "Hollander."—"God
be with you! So you too were driven by the hurricane on to
the bare rocky coast? I had no better fate. My home is but a
few miles from here; I had nearly reached it when I was
forced to turn and sail away. Tell me, whence are you come?
Has your ship sustained damage?"—"My ship is strong, nor
likely to meet with damage," the Hollande, answers, as
drearily as mysteriously; "Driven by storms and adverse
winds I have been wandering over the face of the waters—how
long? I hardly could tell. I have long ceased to count the
years. I hardly could name all the lands I have approached.
One land alone, the one which of all I long for, I can never
find,—the land of home! Grant me for a short period the
hospitality of your house, and you shall not rue the act of
friendliness. My ship is richly laden with treasures from
every region and latitude. If you will traffic with me, you
may be sure of your advantage."—"How wonderful!" says
Daland, impressed; "Am I to take you at your word? An evil
star, it would seem, has so far pursued you. I am ready to
do what I can to serve you. But—may I ask what is the cargo
of your ship?" The Hollander makes a sign to the watch. His
sailors bring ashore a chest. "The rarest treasures you
shall see, precious pearls and noblest gems," the stranger
speaks to the wide-eyed Daland. "See for yourself, and be
convinced of the value of the price I offer
for the hospitality of your roof." The lid of the chest is
lifted. Daland stares amazed at the contents. "What? Is it
possible? These treasures?—But who is so rich as to have an
equivalent to tender?"—"Equivalent? I have told you—I offer
this for a single night's lodging. What you see, however, is
an insignificant portion of that which the hold of my ship
contains. Of what avail to me is the treasure? I have
neither wife nor child, and my home I can never find. All my
riches I will give you, if you will afford me a home with
you and yours." Daland cannot believe that he hears aright.
"Have you a daughter?" inquires the Hollander. "I have,
indeed, a most dear child."—"Let her be my wife!" Again
Daland cannot believe his ears, cannot be sure whether he is
asleep or awake. It is suggested later that he cares unduly
for wealth; but, without supposing him avaricious, we can
realise how what is offered at this moment should seem such
to his simple sailor mind that a man must be outright mad
not to grasp at it for the inconceivable happiness and
splendour of himself and house. No flesh-and-blood girl, no
daughter of the common fellow he is, can to his mind be a
reasonable equivalent, really, for the mass of riches
proposed in exchange for her. Daland nor she had probably in
all their lives owned a precious stone. And this chest is
full to the brim of jewels, and that ship contains more
still a hundred-fold, and the man asking for his daughter's
hand is clearly a hypochondriac, infinitely sea-weary, who
sees in the prospect of home and settled life the whole
desire of his heart, cloyed with riches and sick of
wandering. If he, Daland, should hesitate, the suitor might
change his mind. As for the daughter, she will either see
the thing as he sees it,—how could human woman see it
differently?—or, dutiful, will be ruled by his superior
wisdom. "Indeed, stranger, I have a lovely daughter;
devoted to me with the most faithful filial love. She is my
pride, my highest wealth, my comfort in evil days, my joy in
good."—"May her love," the Hollander exclaims with feeling,
"never fail her father! True to him, she will be true
likewise to her husband."—"You give jewels, priceless
pearls," remarks Daland, with an attempt at dignity that
does his self-respect good, no doubt, without greatly
impressing us, "but the greatest treasure of all is a
faithful wife!"—"And you will give me such a one?"—"You have
my word. Your fate moves my sympathy. Freehanded as you are,
you give assurance of magnanimity and high-mindedness. The
like of you I have ever wished for son-in-law, and even were
your fortune not so great, I would choose no other."—"My
thanks. And shall I see the daughter this very day?"—"The
next favourable wind will take us home. You shall see her,
and if she pleases you..."—"She shall be my wife.—Will she
prove to be my angel?" he sighs aside; "Do I still permit
myself the folly of an illusion that an angel's heart will
pity me? Hopeless as I am, I yet follow the lure of hope!"
"The wind is propitious, the sea is calm.
We will heave anchor at once, and speedily reach home," says
Daland. "If I may beg,—do you sail ahead," the Hollander
suggests. "The wind is fresh, but my crew is spent. I will
let them rest awhile and then will follow."—"But our
wind?"—"Will continue for some time blowing from the south.
My ship is swift and will surely overtake yours."—"You
believe so? Very well! Let it be as you wish. Farewell, and
may you meet my child before the end of day!" The sailors
have lifted the anchor and set the sails. Daland goes on
board. With the crew singing cheerily together, the
Norwegian ship starts upon the homeward course. The
Hollander returns to his silent deck.
II
The scene is next laid in the interior of
Daland's house, the large living-room, where a flock of
girls sit around the fire with their spinning-wheels. Beside
the maps and pictures of nautical interest forming the
natural decoration of a sea-captain's house, there hangs on
the wall the picture of a pale black-bearded man, dressed in
the Spanish fashion of years long gone.
The girls are spinning busily, singing
while they work. They are the sweethearts of the lads on
Daland's ship, and their song is of sailors at sea who are
thinking of maidens at home, and if diligent turning of the
spinning-wheel might influence the wind—oh, but they would
speedily be back in harbour!
One only of the young girls in the room is
not working; Senta, letting her wheel stand idle, leans back
abstractedly in a great armchair, with her eyes fixed upon
the picture of the pale man. Her old nurse, Mary, who spins
diligently herself and keeps the rest at their task, chides
her, not very severely, for her idleness. The girls in their
song have been felicitating themselves that if they are
zealous at their spinning their lovers will give them the
golden earnings they bring home from the south. "You naughty
child," Mary says to Senta, at the end of the song, "if you
do not spin, you will receive no present from your
Schatz!" Senta's companions laugh at this. "There is no
need for her to hurry. Her sweetheart is not out at Sea. He
brings home no gold, he brings home game. Everyone knows in
what the fortune of a huntsman consists!" Senta does not
stir; it is doubtful if she have heard. Without removing her
eyes from the picture of the pallid man, she hums softly to
herself certain fragment of old ballad. "Look at
her!" the nurse takes fuller account of her attitude and
abstraction; "Look at her! Always in front of that picture!
Do you intend to dream away your whole young life before
that portrait?" Senta answers gently, still without taking
her eyes from the pale face: "Why did you tell me who he is,
and relate his story?... The unhappy soul!" At the heavily
burdened sigh upon which she utters the last words, "God
have you in His care!" exclaims Mary, vaguely troubled. But
the girls, who are in merry mood, laugh again. "Why, why,
what is that we hear? She sighs for the pale man! There you
see what a picture can do. She is in love. Please Heaven no
mischief result! Erik is somewhat hot of temper. Please God
he do no damage! Say not a word, else, aflame with wrath, he
may shoot the rival from the wall!" Their chatter finally
reaching her consciousness, Senta turns to them, annoyed.
"Oh, keep still! Stop your silly laughing! Do you wish to
make me really cross?" Further to tease her, they drown her
voice with the refrain of their spinning-song: "Mutter and
hum, good little wheel, cheerily, cheerily turn! Spin, spin
a thousand threads, good little wheel, mutter and hum!"—"Do
stop that foolish song," begs Senta, "my ears are dazed with
your muttering and humming. If you wish me to attend, find
something better to do!"—"Very well," say the girls, "then
sing yourself!" As a bird to the nest, Senta returns to the
subject engrossing her mind. "Hear what I suggest: let Mary
sing us the ballad." All understand what ballad is meant.
"God forbid!" cries the nurse; "It is likely I will do it!
Children, let the Flying Dutchman rest!"—"Yet how often have
I heard the ballad from you!" sighs Senta; and, as the nurse
continues obdurate, "I will sing it myself," she decides,
"and do you girls listen. Could I but bring home to your
hearts the wretchedness of the poor soul's fate, it could
not fail to move you to compassion!" The girls accept the
offer with delight, push aside their spinning-wheels and
gather around the singer. Only the old nurse, whose instinct
has somehow caught alarm, and who has conceived a curious
dislike and fear of this pallid hero of legend, refuses her
countenance and testily goes on spinning by herself in the
chimney-corner.
"Have you met the ship on the seas," sings
Senta, "blood-red of sail and black of mast? Upon the high
deck, the pale man, the ship's master, keeps incessant
watch.—Hui! How the wind blows! Yohohey!—Hui! How it sings
in the stays! Yohohey!—Hui! Like an arrow flies the ship,
without stop, without rest! Yet might deliverance one day
come to the pale man, could he find a woman upon earth who
should love him faithfully until death. Oh, when, pale
sea-farer, when shall you find her? Pray to Heaven that a
woman soon may keep her troth to him!
"With contrary wind, in the rage of the
storm, he determined to double a cape. He cursed and swore
in mad mood: 'Not to all eternity will I desist!'—Hui! And
Satan heard it. Yohohey!—Hui! Took him at his word.
Yohohey!—Hui! And now, a lost soul, he sails the seas,
without stop, without rest. How the unhappy man, however,
might find deliverance upon earth, an angel of the Lord
showed him,—how he might earn eventual salvation. Oh, that
you might, pale sea-farer, find it! Pray to Heaven that a
woman soon may keep her troth to him!
"He casts anchor every seven years, and to
woo a woman comes ashore. But never yet has he found a
faithful one.—Hui! Spread the sails! Yohohey!—Hui! Lift the
anchor! Yohohey!—Hui! False love, false troth! Back to sea,
without stop, without rest!..." Senta who has been singing
with a spirit and expressiveness full unusual as applied to
a threadbare old ballad, has at this point reached such a
pitch of emotion that her voice fails and she sinks in her
chair exhausted. The girls, whom her earnestness has
impressed into a realisation of the facts sung by her, who
have for a moment had through her eyes the vision of that
lost soul's wretchedness, take up the ballad where she drops
it, and sing on in tones which confess the contagion of her
sympathy: "Ah, where tarries she, to whom God's angel might
guide you? Where shall you find her who will be your own
true and loyal love until death?" With an air of
illumination, Senta starts to her feet and finishes the song
with words which rise inspired to her lips: "Let me be that
woman! My truth shall work your deliverance! God's angel
guide you to me! Through me you shall reach salvation!" She
speaks so passionately, appears so strangely, that her
companions feel a sort of puzzled alarm. The old nurse,
frightened, rushes to her side with the cry: "Heaven help
us!" and all together they try to bring her to her normal
self, calling in tones of protest, "Senta! Senta!"
Unnoticed of the rest, Erik, the huntsman,
has during the last moments been standing in the doorway. He
has heard Senta's exclamation, witnessed her strange
condition, and affected by it differently from all the
others cries, heart-struck, "Senta, Senta, are you
determined to destroy me?"—"Oh, help us, Erik," the others
appeal to him; "She is out of her senses!" The nurse, who
has felt her blood unaccountably running chill, turns
angrily to the picture on the wall: "Abominable picture, out
of the house you shall go just as soon as the father comes
home!"—"The father has arrived," Erik informs them; "From
the cliff I saw his ship come in." All minds veer promptly
from the subject which had been engrossing them, to this
delightful one of the arrival. The girls are for running to
the harbour upon the instant. Mary prevents them. "Stop!
Stop! You shall remain quietly at home. The sailor-folk will
be arriving with hollow stomachs. To the kitchen and cellar!
No time to waste! Let curiosity torment you as it may, first
of all go and do your duty!" She drives them before her from
the room, and follows.
Senta is going, too, but Erik bars the
way, pleading, "Stay, Senta, stay for a moment! Release me
from this torture—or, if you will, destroy me quite!" She
affects, as the simplest girl must, not to understand.
"Erik, what is it?"—"Oh, Senta, speak, say what is to become
of me! Your father is coming home. Before starting upon a
new voyage, he is sure to wish to carry out what he so often
has spoken of..."—"And what is that?"—"To give you a
husband. My heart with its unchanging love, my humble
fortune, my hunter's luck, these things being all I have to
offer, will not your father repulse me? And if my heart
breaks with its misery, tell me, Senta, who is there will
speak a word for me?" He pleads warmly, young Erik; he is at
that age and point in life when not to obtain the woman he
has set his heart upon seems a calamity such as will
extinguish the sun, make the rest of life worthless; when
refusal signifies destruction, and he is not ashamed of this
as a weakness, but proud of it as a strength, and uses it as
the most pertinent argument, and feels no abjectness in
confessing himself at the mercy of a girl, a toy in her
frail hands. He is the only lover of this type in the
Wagnerian assortment, and, it happens, the only one who
fails. Senta, we are permitted to divine, had not always
felt as removed from him as at this moment. It is but
lately, no doubt, with the turning perhaps of her
seventeenth year, at some fuller opening into womanhood,
that her romantic dream has taken such possession of her,
and his warm-blooded urgent love become something to
withdraw from, without clearly formulated reason, by an
instinct. She tries now to silence him, to put him off with
the excuse that she must hurry to her father. But he is not
to be put off. To detain her, he reproaches. "You wish to
avoid me!"—"I must go to the harbour!"—"You shrink from
me?"—"Oh, let me go!"—"You shrink from the wound which
yourself you made, the madness of love you inspired? Oh, you
shall hear me in this hour, shall hear the last question I
will ask. When my heart is breaking with anguish, will not
Senta herself speak a word for me?" She applies herself then
to quiet and comfort such evident suffering; he is after all
flesh-and-blood and close at hand, the other a dream. Her
sentiments besides are not very clear even to herself. "Do
you doubt my heart?" she asks reassuringly; "Do you doubt
that it is full of kindness toward you? What is it, tell me,
makes you so unhappy? What suspicion darkens your
mind?"—"Oh, your father's heart is set upon riches. And you,
Senta, how should I count upon you? Do you ever grant one of
my requests? Do you not daily hurt and afflict my
heart?"—"Afflict your heart?..." she asks in wonder. "What
am I to think?" he goes on to show the jealous core of his
unhappiness; "That picture..."—"What picture?..."—"Will you
renounce your extravagant imaginings?"—"Can I keep from my
face the compassion I feel?"—"And that ballad... you sang it
again to-day."—"I am a child," she excuses herself, "and
sing I know not what! Are you afraid of a song, a
picture?"—"You are so pale!" he replies, studying her face
dubiously; "Tell me, have I no reason to be afraid?"—"Should
I not be moved by the terrible doom of that unhappiest
man?"—"But my sufferings, Senta, do they no longer move
you?"—"Oh, vaunt not your sufferings!" she cries, almost
impatiently; "What can your sufferings be? Do you know what
the fate
is of that poor soul?" She draws him before the picture, and
while indicating it to him gazes raptly at it herself; "Can
you not feel the woe, the inexpressible deep misery in the
eyes which he turns upon me? Oh, the calamity which robbed
him eternally of rest, the sense of it pierces my heart!"
Veritable alarm seizes Erik at the earnestness she exhibits,
an alarm to something more vital even than his alert
jealousy, a terrible fear for her as apart from himself.
"Woe's me!" he exclaims, "I am reminded of my ill-boding
dream! God have you in his care, Satan has cast his toils
about you!"—"What frightens you so?" she asks wearily. It is
as if excess of emotion had brought on an immense fatigue;
she sinks exhausted in the grand-sire's chair. "Let me tell
you of it, Senta. It is a dream, hear and be warned by it."
She leans back with closed eyes, and as he narrates it is as
if having fallen asleep she saw in dream what he describes.
"Upon the high cliff I lay dreaming. Beneath me I saw the
expanse of the sea; I could hear the surf where it breaks
foaming against the beach. I espied a foreign ship close to
shore, a strange ship, extraordinary. Two men drew toward
land. One of them, I saw it, was your father."—"And the
other?" she asks, like a somnambulist, without opening her
eyes. "I recognised him well enough, with his black doublet
and pale face...."—"And his mournful glance...." she adds,
still with closed eyes. Erik points at the picture: "The
sea-man there."—"And I?..." she asks. "You came out of the
house. You ran to meet your father. But hardly had you
reached the pair, when you cast yourself at the feet of the
stranger. I saw you clasp his knees...." "He lifted
me...."—"To his breast. Passionately you clung to him, and
kissed him ardently...."—"And then?" He gazes at her with a
sort of terror, as at something unnatural, in her appearance
of sleep. "I saw you fly together over the
sea." She seems to wake with a start. "He is looking for
me!" she cries in tones of extraordinary conviction, "I
shall see him! My destiny it is to perish with him!" Erik
recoils: "Horrible! Ha, I see it full plainly at last, she
is gone from me! My dream boded true!" In uncontrollable
despair he flees from the house. Senta, her excitement
gradually dying, remains gazing at the picture. She is
murmuring softly to herself the burden of the ballad: "Ah,
may you, pale sea-farer, find her! Pray to Heaven that a
woman soon may keep her troth to him!"—when the door opens
and Daland and the Hollander appear at the threshold.
Serita's eyes turn from the picture to the stranger
entering. A cry escapes her lips and her eyes fasten on his
face. His eyes, too, as he slowly steps into the room, bend
steadfastly upon hers. They gaze as if the same spell had
fallen upon both.
The father, after a moment watching from
the doorway, waiting for his daughter to run as usual to
greet him, speaks, not altogether displeased: "My child, you
see me standing at the door, and, what is this? No embrace?
No kiss? You stand in your place as if bewitched? Do I
deserve, Senta, such a welcome?"—"God be with you!" she
murmurs faintly, and, as he comes nearer, asks underbreath,
without removing her eyes from the figure—the counterpart of
the picture on the wall, "Father, speak, who is the
stranger?" The father smiles: "You are eager to know? My
child, give kind welcome to the stranger. A sea-man he is,
like myself, and solicits our hospitality. Homeless for long
years, incessantly bound on long voyages, in far-off lands
he has gathered vast treasures. An exile from home, he
offers rich compensation for a place at the fireside. Speak,
Senta, should you be sorry that the stranger should dwell
with us?" To the Hollander, while the daughter without a
word's reply continues in her fixed contemplation of
his face, he speaks aside: "Tell me, did I praise her too
highly? Now you see her in person, does she rightly please
you? Must I add more still to my overflowing praise? Confess
that she is an ornament to her sex!" The Hollander answers
by an expressive gesture, his eyes fast all the while upon
the maiden's face. The father turns anew to the daughter,
and, without further preamble: "My child, let it please you
to show favour to this man. He requests a goodly gift from
your heart. Reach him your hand, for he shall be your
bridegroom. If you are of a like mind with your father,
to-morrow he shall be your husband." She shrinks, painfully,
at this bluntness and precipitancy. The father, not
noticing, unpockets jewels to show her. "Look at this
circlet, behold these clasps. The sum of his possessions
makes these the merest trifle. How, my precious child,
should you not care for them? And it will all be yours for
the exchanging of rings with him. But... neither of you
speaks...." He looks at them in turn. They have neither
heeded nor heard, they are lost in contemplation of each
other. "Am I in the way?" They do not hear that either. "I
clearly am," he says to himself. "The best will be to leave
them alone together." With a parting private word to the
daughter: "May you win this noble man! Believe me, such good
fortune is not common!" and to the Dutchman: "I leave you to
yourselves, and betake myself away. Believe me, fair as she
is, she is no less true than fair!" he discreetly withdraws.
The strange predestined lovers stand for
long moments steadily gazing at each other, almost
unconsciously, without motion to draw nearer—or further
apart. Each of them voices his thoughts, not speaking to the
other, but, dreamily, to himself. He murmurs: "As if out of
the distance of long-past days speaks to me the semblance of
this maiden. Even such as through dread eternities I dreamed
her, I behold her now here before my eyes. From the black
depths of my night I too have ventured to raise my longing
eyes upon a woman. Satan's malice left me a living heart,
alas, that I might never lose consciousness of my torment.
The sullen glow which I feel burning in my breast, should I,
unhappy man, call it love? Ah, no, the longing it is for
redemption! Oh, might redemption be my portion through such
an angel as she is!" And she speaks, to herself, half-aloud:
"Have I sunk into a wonderful dream? Is this which I see an
illusion? Or have I until this moment lived in a world of
dream, and is this the day of awakening? He stands before
me, his features stamped with sorrow. His unparalleled
sufferings silently call to me. Can the voice of deepest
pity deceive? As I have so often beheld him he stands before
me now. This sorrow which burns within my bosom, this going
out of desire toward him, what must I call it? Oh, that the
salvation which he goes seeking without rest might reach the
unhappy man through me!"
He moves a little nearer to her at last,
and asks with the simplicity and sincerity which befit the
hour so fraught with fate, "Will you not reject your
father's choice? That which he promised—what? shall it hold
good? Could you forever give yourself to me? You could hold
out your hand to the stranger? I might, after a life of
torment, find in your truth the long craved-for peace?" She
answers upon the instant, singularly sure of her heart:
"Whoever you may be, and whatever ruin your cruel fate
reserve for you, and whatever the destiny I thereby call
upon myself, my obedient duty shall ever be to my father's
wish."—"What, so unconditionally? My sorrows, is it
possible, have moved you to such deep compassion?"—"Sorrows
how measureless!" she exclaims to herself.
"Oh, might I bring you consolation for those!" And he,
overhearing: "Oh, gentlest sound through the warring
darkness! An angel are you! The love of an angel can still
the pain even of lost souls! If I may hope for salvation,
Almighty, let it be through this angel!" But in the uplift
of hope reviving, a remembrance gives him pause,—remembrance
of the whole condition of his deliverance; and, a strain of
solemnity mingling with his grateful tenderness, he warns
her: "Could you apprehend the fate which, in belonging to
me, with me you must share, you would pause to consider the
sacrifice you bring in vowing to be true. Your youth would
flee shuddering at prospect of the fate to which you would
have doomed it, if the fairest virtues of womankind, if
sacred fidelity and truth, be not yours." She replies with
no less assurance than before, and her air of exalted
inspiration: "Well do I know the high duties of woman. Be
comforted, unhappy man! Let fate do justice of those who
defy her decree. In my soul is written the supreme law of
truth, and unto him to whom I pledge my faith this one truth
it is which I give: Truth until death!"
Like balm the words fall upon his wounded
spirit. The powers of darkness, it seems, are to be
defeated; the evil star, it seems, has set and the star of
hope arisen. "Ye angels," he calls to them, "who had quite
forsaken me, confirm her heart in its constancy!" And she,
her heavenly pity prays: "Let him have reached home at last!
Let his ship rest here eternally in port!"
Daland re-enters. "By your leave, my
people outside can hardly wait. Upon each home-coming, you
must know, we hold a merry-making. I would fain add to the
cheer of the feast, and am come, with that in mind, to ask
if it might not be I made into a betrothal feast?—As far as
I see," he turns to the Hollander, "you have wooed to your
heart's purpose?—And you, my child," to Senta, "are you
ready, too?" Senta with solemn resolution reaches her hand
to the Dutchman. "Here is my hand, and here, never to repent
it, I plight my troth until death!" The Hollander, taking
her hand, cries defiance to the mockery of Hell through this
fast truth of hers. At Daland's summons thereupon, "To the
feast, and let every one to-day make merry!" the three turn
to go and take share—even, incredibly, the Dutchman,—in
legitimate human rejoicings.
III
Close by Daland's house lies the
rock-bound bay into which his ship and the Dutchman's have
come to anchor. The two crafts are seen in the clear night,
lying at a short distance from each other, hard by the
shore. The Norwegian is brightly illuminated, the sailors
are on deck making holiday. The Hollander presents a
striking contrast: not a light does it show, not a sound
issues from it; it looms shadowy and forbidding.
"Steersman, leave the watch!" sing the
roistering Norway lads; "Furl the sails! Anchor fast! Come
along, steersman! No wind is there to fear nor adverse
coast, and we mean to be right jolly. Each of us has a
sweetheart on shore, excellent tobacco and superior
brandy-wine. Rocks and storms are far outside, we laugh at
rocks and storms! Steersman, come and drink!" They dance on
deck, marking time with their heavy boots.
From Daland's house comes the bevy of
girls we know, laden with generous baskets of food and
drink. Finding their sweethearts so merrily employed, "Just
look at them!" they say; "As we live, they are dancing! The
ladies do certainly seem superfluous!" With a playful feint
of pique they pass without further notice the lighted, noisy
ship, and go toward the Hollander, whose blood-tinted sails
and black masts form but a grim silhouette against the
star-sown sky. "Hi, girls,—stop! Where are you going?" the
simple-minded sailors cry after them. But the girls do not
abandon their small vengeance of serving the strangers
first. "You have a mind to fresh wine, have you not? And is
not your neighbour to have something too? Are the liquor and
the feast to be solely for you?" The young mate rises to the
occasion and has a fling at these suddenly-instituted
rivals: "Indeed, indeed, take something, do, to the poor
lads. They appear to be quite faint with thirst!" All turn
their attention squarely now to the foreign ship and take
account of the strangeness of its conditions. "Not a sound
on board! And see, not a light! No sign of the
crew!"—"Halloo, sea-folk!" the maidens shout, "Halloo! Do
you need lights? Where are you? We cannot see...."—"Don't
wake them," chaff the Norwegians, "they are still asleep!"
The girls go close to the ship and shout again. "Halloo,
sea-folk! Halloo, answer!" There is along silence. The
sailor-lads have the laugh now on the girls. "Ha, ha! In
very truth, they are dead. They are in no need of food and
drink." But the girls will not accept their defeat. "What?"
they continue calling to the invisible Dutch crew; "Are you
so lazy as to have gone already to bed? Is it not
holiday-time for you, too?"—"They lie fast in their lairs,"
jest the Norwegians; "like dragons they guard their
treasure!"—"Halloo, sea-folk!" persist the girls; "Do you
not wish for golden wine? Surely you are thirsty?"—"They do
not care to drink, they do not care to sing," the
sailor-lads tease; "there is no light burning in all their
ship!"—"Say," the girls continue addressing the unresponding
crew, "have you no sweethearts on land? Do you not wish to
come and dance on the friendly shore?"—"They are already
old, they are pale instead of ruddy," put in the sailors,
"and their sweethearts, they are dead!"—"Halloo!" the girls
call louder, "Seafolk, wake up! We are bringing you food and
drink to heart's content!" The sailors good-humouredly unite
in chorus: "They are bringing you food and drink to heart's
content!" Another long pause, unbroken by the faintest sound
from the Dutch ship. The girls are becoming uneasy. "It is a
fact," they speak lower, struck; "They seem to be all dead.
They do not need food and drink." But the boys feel jollier
than ever. "You have heard of the Flying Dutchman," they
cry, by way of wild joke; "His ship, big as life and true to
life, you behold there!"—"Then don't wake the crew!" say the
girls; "They are ghosts, we could swear!" The sailor-lads
take their turn now shouting questions, humourously
intended, at the sombre hull: "How many hundreds of years
have you already been at sea? Storm and rocks have no
terrors for you! Have you no letters, no commissions for
shore? We will see that they come to our
great-great-grandfathers' hands!" In the extravagance of
fun, finally, raising their voices to the very loudest,
"Halloo, sea-folk!" they cry; "Spread your sails! Give us a
specimen of the Flying Dutchman's speed!" At the prolonged
silence following, the girls shrink away, at last really
frightened. "They do not hear. It makes our flesh creep.
They do not want anything. Why do we continue to
call?"—"That is it, you girls," the sailors heartily agree,
"let the dead rest in peace! And let us who are alive be
happy!" The girls hand up to them the savoury baskets.
"There, take, since your neighbours disdain it."—"But what?
Are you not coming on board yourselves?" inquire the
sailors, when the girls do not as expected follow. It is
early still;
they will return a little later, they promise, Till then let
the boys drink and dance, but be careful not to disturb the
repose of their weary neighbours!
When the girls have returned to the house,
the sailors open the hampers and lustily fall to, casting
playful thanks to those dumb neighbours for this double
share of victuals and wine. In the lightness of their hearts
they sing, and to the verses of their rollicking "Steersman,
leave the watch!" clash their goblets noisily together.
Absorbed in their carousal, they have not
remarked a beginning of movement on the ship close by and in
the water immediately around it. This rises and falls in a
mysterious violent swell, which rocks the awakening ship,
while the rest of the sea is calm. Storm-wind whistles and
howls among the rigging, though the night elsewhere is still
and bright. Livid fire flares up in the place of the
watch-light, bringing into distinctness the black cordage
and spectral crew. The latter seem to come to life in the
weird illumination, and with hollow voices suddenly entone a
sea-song of strange intervals and cadences, disquieting to
ears of warm flesh and blood. "Yohohey! Yohohohey!—Huissa!
The storm drives us to land!—Huissa! Sail in! Anchor
loose!—Huissa! Run into the bay!—Black captain, go ashore!
Seven years are over, sue for the hand of a golden-haired
maiden. Golden-haired maiden, be true to him, be true!
Cheerily, cheerily, bridegroom, today! The storm-wind howls
wedding-music, the ocean dances to the tune.—Hui! Hark! His
whistle sounds. Captain, are you back again?—Hui! Hoist the
sail! Your bride, say, where is she?—Hui! Off, to sea!
Captain, captain, you have no luck in love! Ha, ha, ha!
Blow, storm-wind, howl away! No damage can you do to our
sails! Satan has charmed them, they will not rend in all
eternity!"
The Norwegian sailors, suspending their own
clamour, have looked and listened in an increasing wonder,
which gradually turns to horror. To overcome the
superstitious fear they frankly own to, they start singing
together with all their might, to drown their terror as well
as the voices of the rival singers. The two sharply
contrasting sea-songs strive one against the other for a few
moments, then the Norwegians, giving up the contention,
retire from deck to the last man, tremulously making the
sign of the cross. As they disappear below, the Dutchmen
break into a fearful yell of derision,—and instantly
darkness and complete silence reinvade the ship, while
perfect calm falls upon the sea. For a long interval the
scene so crowded and noisy a moment before, remains empty
and still.
Senta comes hurriedly from the house,
followed by Erik, both in great agitation. He has learned of
her betrothal to the stranger. "What have I heard?" he cries
in incredulous anguish; "O God, what have I seen? Is it a
delusion? Can it be truth? Can it be fact?"—"Ask not, Erik,"
she falters, in anguish, too; "I must not answer."—"Just
God! There can be no doubt of it. It is truth! What unholy
power swept you along? What force so quickly prevailed with
you to make you break this devoted heart? Was it your
father? Ha, he brought the bridegroom home with him. I
recognised him. I forboded what is coming to pass. But you?
Is it possible? You give your hand to the man who has hardly
more than crossed your doorstep?"—"Oh, say no more!" pleads
the girl, torn by the sight of his sorrow, and her necessity
to refuse the only possible comfort, "Be silent! I must! I
must!..."—"Oh, that docility, blind as your act!" he raves;
"You were glad, at a beck from your father, to follow. With
a blow you crush the life out of my heart!"—"No more! No
more!" she
tries to stop him; "I must not see you again, must not think
of you. High duty commands it!"—"What high duty? Is it not a
higher duty still to observe that which you once swore to
me,—eternal constancy?"—"What?..." she cries, in utmost
dismay; "You say that I swore eternal constancy to
you?"—"Oh, Senta," he goes on, subdued by her shocked
amazement, sorrowfully to explain the simple rhetoric of his
misstatement, "will you deny it? Do you refuse to remember
that day when you called me to you in the valley? When in
order to gather the upland flowers for you I endured dangers
and labours innumerable? Do you remember how from the steep
rocks on the shore we watched your father departing? He
sailed upon the white-winged ship, and confided you to my
care. When your arm encircled my neck, did you not own once
more your love for me? That which thrilled me at the
pressure of your hand, tell me, was it not the assurance of
your constancy?"
Unseen of the two, for the moment so
absorbed in each other, the Hollander has come from the
house. He has been standing near enough to overhear Erik's
last sentences; the significance of these seems scarcely
ambiguous, his inference is natural. It is a lovers' meeting
which he has chanced upon. Whatever her reasons for
accepting him, the Hollander,—it is clear that this young
huntsman has a claim on the girl who declared so glibly that
the law of truth was written in her soul.
The two are interrupted by a wail. "Lost!
Oh, lost! To all eternity lost!" They turn and start in
horror at sight of the Hollander. "Farewell, Senta," he
cries, and with the precipitation of despair is making
straight for the boundless deep. Senta throws herself across
his path. "Stay, O unfortunate!" But the Hollander pushes
past. "To sea! To sea! To sea until the end of time!—It is
at an end with your truth! At an end with your truth
and my salvation! Farewell, I would not bring about your
ruin!" Erik, catching sight of his face, the face of a lost
soul, shudders at the measureless woe in his eyes. "Stay,"
Senta implores, "stay, you shall never depart!" Disregarding
her, the Hollander blows a shrill note on his whistle and
shouts to his crew: "Hoist sail! Lift anchor! For ever and
ever bid farewell to the land!"
There is struggle for a long moment among
the three: hers to prevent the Hollander; Erik's to keep
back her, caught, as he believes, in the claws of Satan; the
Hollander's to leave. Since her faith is turned to mockery,
he, forced to doubt her, has fallen to doubting God himself.
There is no faith more on earth. Away, then, forever away!
"Learn the fate from which I save you!" he finally turns to
her, as if softened by her pleading to the point of wishing
her to know that he leaves not in hate and anger, but very
pity for her feminine frailty; and he states plainly the
threatening fate of which we heard him give but a warning
before. "Condemned am I to the most dreadful of dooms.
Tenfold death would be to me yearned-for bliss. A woman
alone can deliver me, a woman who shall keep her faith to me
even until death. You, it is true, had sworn truth to me,
but not as yet before the Almighty, and that it is which
saves you. For know, unhappy woman, the fate which overtakes
her who breaks her vow of eternal constancy to me:
Everlasting damnation is her portion. Innumerable have been
the victims already, through me, of that dread sentence. But
you—you shall be saved. Farewell, then, and farewell, to all
time, salvation!" Again he turns shoreward. "Indeed, indeed,
I know you," Senta follows still; "Full well I know your
fate. From the first moment of seeing you I knew you. The
end is at hand of your torture! I am she through whose
fidelity you shall find salvation!"
Erik, in terror for Senta, has called wildly
toward the house, toward the ship, for help to save her.
Daland, Mary, and the young girls have come hurrying from
the house, the Norwegian sailors from the ship. "No, no, you
know me not!" the Hollander is saying; "No suspicion have
you who I am! Inquire of the seas of every zone, inquire of
the seaman overscoring the main—Behold"—he points at the
ship whose blood-red sails are set and whose ghastly crew
show uncannily active in preparations for departure; "Behold
and recognise this ship, terror of every pious soul.... The
Flying Dutchman I am called!"
With lightning rapidity he has gone
aboard. Instantly the weird ship is under way and amid the
cavernous Yohohoes of its seamen making for the open sea.
Senta struggles to follow. Her father,
Erik, her nurse, all forcibly hold her back. But she is
suddenly stronger than them all. She tears herself free and
rushing from them climbs a rock projecting into the deep
water. With all her strength she calls after the departing
Hollander, "Praise be to your angel and his decree! Here am
I, faithful to you until death!" and springs into the sea.
Upon the instant, the red-sailed ship,
with all its crew, sinks. A great wave heaves high and falls
again eddying, burying the whole. Above the drifting
wreckage, in the rosy light, fore-shine of sunrise, are seen
the transfigured and glorified forms of Senta and the
Hollander rising from the sea, clasped in each others' arms,
and floating heavenward.
We are always touched in this old
world of daily wickedness and pettiness to come upon stories
which seem statements of a popular ineradicable assurance
that love has power to save. It is perhaps oftenest the love
of a woman, clinging pertinaciously to her affection; but
there are legends, too, of men,—who do not save, however,
that we remember, by long fidelity, but by ardour rather in
overcoming obstacles. They kiss the fair enchanted one in
the form of a hideous dragon and she is restored to beauty.
One sees the simple philosophy of such folk-tales. The evil
doom is usually the punishment for sin. The one who loves
the person so doomed is innocent. If then she makes the fate
of the sufferer her own, she suffers unjust punishment, and
God, who inclines to mercy, must sooner pardon the sinner
for her sake than condemn the innocent.
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STORIES OF THE WAGNER OPERA
BY
H.A. GUERBER
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
After leaving Riga, where he had accepted the position of
Music Director, which he filled acceptably for some time,
Wagner went to Pillau, where he embarked on a sailing vessel
bound for London. He was accompanied by his wife and by a
huge Newfoundland dog, and during this journey learned to
know the sea, and became familiar with the sound of the
sailors' songs, the creaking of the rigging, the whistling
of the wind, and the roar and crash of the waves. This
journey made a deep impression upon his imagination. He had
read Heine's version of the legend of the Flying Dutchman,
and questioned the sailors, who told him many similar yarns.
He himself subsequently said: ‘I shall never forget that
voyage; it lasted three weeks and a half, and was rich in
disasters. Three times we suffered from the effects of heavy
storms. The passage through the Narrows made a wondrous
impression on my fancy. The legend of the Flying Dutchman
was confirmed
by the sailors, and the circumstances gave it a distinct and
characteristic colour in my mind.’
One year later, when in Paris, Wagner submitted detailed
sketches for this work to the Director of the Opera, to whom
Meyerbeer had introduced him. The sketches were accepted,
and shortly after the Director expressed a wish to purchase
them. Wagner utterly refused at first to give up his claim
to the plot, which he had secured from Heine; but, finding
that he could not obtain possession of the sketches, which
had already been given to Foucher for versification, he
accepted the miserable sum of £20, which was all that was
offered in compensation. The stolen opera was produced in
Paris under the title of ‘Le Vaisseau Fantôme,’ in 1842, but
it was never very successful, and has been entirely eclipsed
by Wagner's version. Wagner had not, however, relinquished
the idea of writing an opera upon this theme, and he
finished the poem, which Spohr has designated as ‘a little
masterpiece,’ as quickly as possible. The score was written
at Meudon, near Paris, and completed, with the exception of
the overture, in the short space of seven weeks. When
offered in Munich and Leipsic the critics pronounced it
‘unfit for Germany,’ but, upon Meyerbeer's recommendation,
it was accepted
at Berlin, although no preparations were made for its
immediate representation.
‘The Flying Dutchman’ was first brought out at Dresden in
1843, four years after the idea of this work had first
suggested itself to the illustrious composer, who conducted
the orchestra in person, while Madame Schröder-Devrient sang
the part of Senta. The audience did not receive it very
enthusiastically, and, while some of the hearers were deeply
moved, the majority were simply astonished. No one at first
seemed to appreciate the opera at its full value except
Spohr, who in connection with it wrote: ‘Der Fliegende
Holländer interests me in the highest degree. The opera is
imaginative, of noble invention, well written for the
voices, immensely difficult, rather overdone as regards
instrumentation, but full of novel effects; at the theatre
it is sure to prove clear and intelligible.... I have come
to the conclusion that among composers for the stage, pro
tem., Wagner is the most gifted.’
The legend upon which the whole opera is based is that a
Dutch captain once tried to double the Cape of Good Hope in
the teeth of a gale, swearing he would accomplish his
purpose even if he had to plough the main forever. This rash
oath was overheard by Satan, who
condemned him to sail until the Judgment Day, unless he
could find a woman who would love him faithfully until
death. Once in every seven years only did the Devil allow
the Dutchman to land, in search of the maiden who might
effect his release.
In the first act of the opera, the seven years have just
ended, and Daland, a Norwegian captain, has been forced by a
tempest to anchor his vessel in a sheltered bay within a few
miles of his peaceful home, where Senta, his only daughter,
awaits him. All on board are sleeping, and the steersman
alone keeps watch over the anchored vessel, singing of the
maiden he loves and of the gifts he is bringing her from
foreign lands. In the midst of his song, the Flying
Dutchman's black-masted vessel with its red sails enters the
cove, and casts anchor beside the Norwegian ship, although
no one seems aware of its approach.
The Dutchman, who has not noticed the vessel at anchor so
near him, springs eagerly ashore, breathing a sigh of relief
at being allowed to land once more, although he has but
little hope of finding the faithful woman who alone can
release him from his frightful doom:—
‘The term is past,
And once again are ended the seven long
years!
The weary sea casts me upon the
land.
Ha! haughty ocean,
A little while, and thou again wilt
bear me.
Though thou art changeful,
Unchanging is my doom;
Release, which on the land I seek for,
Never shall I meet with.’
The unhappy wanderer then tells how he has braved the
dangers of every sea, sought death on every rock, challenged
every pirate, and how vain all his efforts have been to find
the death which always eludes him.
Daland, waking from his sound slumbers, suddenly
perceives the anchored vessel, and chides the drowsy
steersman, who has not warned him of its approach. He is
about to signal to the ship to ascertain its name, when he
suddenly perceives the Dutchman, whom he questions
concerning his home and destination.
The Dutchman answers his questions very briefly, and,
upon hearing that Daland's home is very near, eagerly offers
untold wealth for permission to linger a few hours by his
fireside, and to taste the joys of home.
Amazed at the sight of the treasures spread out before
him, Daland not only consents to show hospitality to this
strange homeless guest, but even promises, after a little
persuasion, to
allow him to woo and to win, if he can, the affections of
his only daughter, Senta:—
‘I give thee here my
word.
I mourn thy lot. As thou art bountiful,
Thou showest me thy good and noble
heart.
My son I wish thou wert;
And were thy wealth not half as great,
I would not choose another.’
Transported with joy at the mere prospect of winning the
love which may compass his salvation, the Flying Dutchman
proclaims in song his mingled rapture and relief, and while
he sings the storm clouds break, and the sun again shines
forth over the mysteriously calmed sea. The opportunity is
immediately seized by the Norwegian captain, who, bidding
the Dutchman follow him closely, bids the sailors raise the
anchor, and sails out of the little harbour to the merry
accompaniment of a nautical chorus:—
‘Through thunder and
storm from distant seas,
My maiden, come I near;
Over towering waves, with southern
breeze,
My maiden, am I here.
My maiden, were there no south wind,
I never could come to thee:
O fair south wind, to me be kind!
My maiden, she longs for me.
Hoho! Halloho!’
The next scene represents a room in Daland's house. The
rough walls are covered with maps and charts, and on the
farther partition there is a striking portrait of a pale,
melancholy looking man, who wears a dark beard and a foreign
dress.
The air is resonant with the continual hum of the
whirling spinning-wheels, for the maidens are all working
diligently under the direction of Maria, the housekeeper,
and soon begin their usual spinning chorus. Their hands and
feet work busily while two verses of the song are sung, and
all are remarkably diligent except Senta, who sits with her
hands in her lap, gazing in rapt attention at the portrait
of the Flying Dutchman, whose mournful fate has touched her
tender heart, and whose haunting eyes have made her indulge
in many a long day-dream. Roused from her abstraction by the
chiding voice of Mary, and by her companions, who twit her
with having fallen in love with a shadow instead of thinking
only of her lover Erik, the hunter, Senta resumes her work,
and to still their chatter sings them the ballad of the
Flying Dutchman. When she has described his aimless
wanderings and his mournful doom, which naught can change
until he finds a maiden who will pledge him her entire
faith, the girls mockingly interrupt her to
inquire whether she would have the courage to love an
outcast and to follow a spectral wooer. But when Senta
passionately declares she would do it gladly, and ends by
fervently praying that he may soon appear to put her love
and faith to the test, they are almost as much alarmed as
Erik, who enters the room in time to hear this enthusiastic
outburst.
Turning to Mary, the housekeeper, he informs her that
Daland's ship has just sailed into the harbour in company
with another vessel, whose captain and crew he doubtless
means to entertain. At these tidings the wheels are all set
aside, and the maidens hasten to help prepare the food for
the customary feast. Senta alone remains seated by her
wheel, and Erik, placing himself beside her, implores her
not to leave him for another, but to put an end to his
sorrows by promising to become his wife. His eloquent
pleading has no effect upon her, however, and when he tries
to deride her fancy for the pictured face, and to awaken her
pity for him by describing his own sufferings, she
scornfully compares them to the Dutchman's unhappy fate:—
‘Oh, vaunt it not!
What can thy sorrow be?
Know'st thou the fate of that unhappy
man?
Look, canst thou feel the pain, the
grief,
With which his gaze on me he bends?
Ah! when I think he has ne'er found
relief,
How sharp a pang my bosom rends!’
Erik, beside himself with jealousy, finally tells her
that he has had an ominous dream, in which he saw her greet
the dark stranger, embrace him tenderly, and even follow him
out to sea, where she was lost. But all this pleading only
makes Senta more obstinate in her refusal of his attentions,
and more eager to behold the object of her romantic
attachment, who at that very moment enters the house,
following her father, who greets her tenderly. The sudden
apparition of the stranger, whose resemblance to the
portrait is very striking, robs Senta of all composure, and
it is only when her father has gently reproved her for her
cold behaviour that she bids him welcome.
Daland then explains to his daughter that his guest is a
wanderer and an exile, although well provided with this
world's goods, and asks her whether she would be willing to
listen to his wooing, and would consent to ratify his
conditional promise by giving the stranger her hand:—
‘Wilt thou, my child,
accord our guest a friendly welcome,
And wilt thou also let him share thy
kindly heart?
Give him thy hand, for bridegroom
it is thine to call him,
If thou but give consent, to-morrow his
thou art.’
Wholly uninfluenced by the description of the stranger's
wealth which her father gives her, but entirely won by the
Flying Dutchman's timidly expressed hope that she will not
refuse him the blessing he has so long and so vainly sought,
Senta hesitates no longer, but generously promises to become
his wife, whatever fate may await her:—
‘Whoe'er thou art,
where'er thy curse may lead thee,
And me, when I thy lot mine own have
made,—
Whate'er the fate which I with thee may
share in,
My father's will by me shall be
obeyed.’
This promise at first fills the heart of the Flying
Dutchman with the utmost rapture, for he is thinking only of
himself, and of his release from the curse, but soon he
begins to love the innocent maiden through whom alone he can
find rest. Then he also remembers that, if she fail, she too
will be accursed, and, instead of urging her as before, he
now tries to dissuade her from becoming his wife by
depicting life at his side in the most unenticing colours,
and by warning her that she must die if her faith should
waver. Senta, undeterred by all these statements, and eager
if necessary to sacrifice herself for her beloved,
again offers to follow him, and once more a rapturous thrill
passes through his heart:—
‘Senta.
Here is my hand! I
will not rue,
But e'en to death will I be true.
The Dutchman.
She gives her hand! I
conquer you,
Dread powers of Hell, while she is
true.’
Daland returns into the room in time to
see that they have agreed to marry, and proposes that their
wedding should take place immediately, and be celebrated at
the same time as the feast which he generally gives all his
sailors at the end of a happy journey.
The third act of this opera represents both ships riding
at anchor in a rocky bay, near which rises Daland's
picturesque Norwegian cottage. All is life and animation on
board the Norwegian vessel, where the sailors are dancing
and singing in chorus, but the black-masted ship appears
deserted, and is as quiet as the tomb.
When the sailors have ended their chorus, the pretty
peasant girls come trooping down to the shore, bringing food
and drink for both crews, which they hail from the shore.
The Norwegian sailors promptly respond to their call, and,
hastening ashore, they receive their share of the feast; but
the phantom vessel remains as lifeless as before. In vain
the girls offer the provisions they have brought, in vain
the other crew taunt the sleepers, there is no answer given.
The provisions are then all bestowed upon the Norwegians,
who eat and drink most heartily ere they resume their merry
chorus. Suddenly, however, the Dutch sailors rouse
themselves, appear on deck, and prepare to depart, while
singing about their captain, who has once more gone ashore
in search of the faithful wife who alone can save him. Blue
flames hover over the phantom ship, and the sound of a
coming storm is borne upon the breeze. The Norwegian sailors
sing louder than ever to drown this ominous sound, but they
are soon too alarmed to sing, and hasten into their cabins
making the sign of the cross, which evokes a burst of
demoniac laughter from the phantom crew.
The storm and lights subside as quickly and mysteriously
as they appeared, and all is quiet once more as Senta comes
down to the shore. Erik, meeting her, implores her to listen
to his wooing, which once found favour, and to forget the
stranger whom her father has induced her to accept on such
short notice. Senta listens patiently to his plea, which
does not in the least
shake her faith in her new lover, or change her resolution
to live and die for him alone. But the Dutchman, appearing
suddenly, mistakes her patience for regret, and, almost
frantic with love and despair, he bids her a passionate
farewell and rushes off toward his ship.
‘To sea! To sea till
time is ended!
Thy sacred promise be forgot,
Thy sacred promise and my fate!
Farewell! I wish not to destroy thee!’
But Senta has not ceased to love him.
She runs after him, imploring him to remain with her,
protesting her fidelity and renewing her vows in spite of
Erik's passionate efforts to prevent her from doing so. The
Flying Dutchman at first refuses to listen to her words, and
rapidly gives his orders for departure. She is about to
embark, when he suddenly turns toward her and declares that
he is accursed, and that she has saved herself, by timely
withdrawal, from the doom which awaits all those who fail to
keep their troth:—
‘Now hear, and learn
the fate from which thou wilt be saved:
Condemned am I to bear a frightful
fortune,—
Ten times would death appear a brighter
lot.
A woman's hand alone the curse can
lighten,
If she will love me, and till death be
true.
Still to be faithful thou hast
vowed,
Yet has not God thy promise?
This rescues thee; for know, unhappy,
what a fate is theirs
Who break the troth which they to me
have plighted:
Endless damnation is their doom!
Victims untold have fallen 'neath this
curse through me.
Yet, Senta, thou shalt escape.
Farewell! All hope is fled
forevermore.’
But Senta has known from the very beginning who this dark
wooer was, and is so intent upon saving him from his fate
that she fears no danger for herself. Passionately she
clings to him, protesting her affection, and when he looses
her, and Erik would fain detain her by force, she struggles
frantically to follow him.
Erik's cry brings Daland, Mary, and the Chorus to the
rescue, and they too strive to restrain Senta, when they
hear the stranger proclaim from the deck of his phantom ship
that he is the Scourge of the Sea,—the Flying Dutchman. The
vessel sails away from the harbour. Senta escapes from her
friends, and rushes to a projecting cliff, whence she casts
herself recklessly into the seething waves, intent only upon
showing her love and saving him, and thereby proving herself
faithful unto death:—
‘Praise thou thine
angel for what he saith;
Here stand I, faithful, yea, till
death!’
As Senta sinks beneath the waves the phantom vessel
vanishes also, and as the storm abates and the rosy evening
clouds appear in the west the transfigured forms of Senta
and the Flying Dutchman hover for a moment over the wreck,
and, rising slowly, float upward and out of sight, embracing
each other, for her faithful love has indeed accomplished
his salvation, and his spirit, may now be at rest.
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