The Wagnerian Romances Part 4

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 G.o.ds.

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 G.o.ds, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 n.o.ble 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sing away. There is dawning for the G.o.ds 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 pa.s.s and the G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 st.u.r.dily filled his sack; the ring is on his hand. Fasolt demands it in exchange for Freia's glance.

He s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 G.o.ds 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 crus.h.i.+ngly 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 G.o.ds. 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 G.o.ds 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.ds 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 scheme for turning into elemental fire again and burning them all up, those blind G.o.ds. 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 s.h.i.+ne for you, make yourselves happy basking in the suns.h.i.+ne of this new pomp of the G.o.ds!" Loud laughter from the G.o.ds greets this sally, and they pa.s.s 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.

THE VALKYRIE

(DIE WALKUERE)

THE VALKYRIE

(DIE WALKUERE)

I

Wotan's idea, from which the abode of the G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 Brunnhilde (from _Brunne_, corslet). With eight other daughters,--born to Wotan from "the tie of lawless love,"

as we learn from Fricka in her tale of wrongs--Brunnhilde, 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 G.o.ds, 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 G.o.d'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 Walse and Wolf,--Wolf for his enemies, Walse for his kindred,--he lived in the wild woods, he reared in a spirit of lawlessness, wild courage, disregard of the G.o.ds. We must suppose it to have been for the sake of preventing a.s.sociation 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 G.o.ds, proper to do the work which the law of the G.o.ds 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 bl.u.s.tering 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.