It will be seen that in this act we have lost all connection with the earlier drama.Brynhild is not only not the Brynhild of The Valkyries, she is the Hiordis of Ibsen, a majestically savage woman, in whom jealousy and revenge are intensified to heroic proportions.That is the inevitable theatrical treatment of the murderous heroine of the Saga.Ibsen's aim in The Vikings was purely theatrical, and not, as in his later dramas, also philosophically symbolic.Wagner's aim in Siegfried's Death was equally theatrical, and not, as it afterwards became in the dramas of which Siegfried s antagonist Wotan is the hero, likewise philosophically symbolic.The two master-dramatists therefore produce practically the same version of Brynhild.Thus on the second evening of The Ring we see Brynhild in the character of the truth-divining instinct in religion, cast into an enchanted slumber and surrounded by the fires of hell lest she should overthrow a Church corrupted by its alliance with government.On the fourth evening, we find her swearing a malicious lie to gratify her personal jealousy, and then plotting a treacherous murder with a fool and a scoundrel.In the original draft of Siegfried's Death, the incongruity is carried still further by the conclusion, at which the dead Brynhild, restored to her godhead by Wotan, and again a Valkyrie, carries the slain Siegfried to Valhalla to live there happily ever after with its pious heroes.
As to Siegfried himself, he talks of women, both in this second act and the next, with the air of a man of the world."Their tantrums," he says, "are soon over." Such speeches do not belong to the novice of the preceding drama, but to the original Siegfried's Tod, with its leading characters sketched on the ordinary romantic lines from the old Sagas, and not yet reminted as the original creations of Wagner's genius whose acquaintance we have made on the two previous evenings.The very title "Siegfried's Death" survives as a strong theatrical point in the following passage.Gunther, in his rage and despair, cries, "Save me, Hagen: save my honor and thy mother's who bore us both.""Nothing can save thee," replies Hagen: "neither brain nor hand, but SIEGFRIED'S DEATH." And Gunther echoes with a shudder, "SIEGFRIED'S DEATH!"A WAGNERIAN NEWSPAPER CONTROVERSY
The devotion which Wagner's work inspires has been illustrated lately in a public correspondence on this very point.A writer in The Daily Telegraph having commented on the falsehood uttered by Brynhild in accusing Siegfried of having betrayed Gunther with her, a correspondence in defence of the beloved heroine was opened in The Daily Chronicle.The imputation of falsehood to Brynhild was strongly resented and combated, in spite of the unanswerable evidence of the text.It was contended that Brynhild's statement must be taken as establishing the fact that she actually was ravished by somebody whom she believed to be Siegfried, and that since this somebody cannot have been Siegfried, he being as incapable of treachery to Gunther as sheof falsehood, it must have been Gunther himself after a second exchange of personalities not mentioned in the text.The reply to this--if so obviously desperate a hypothesis needs a reply--is that the text is perfectly explicit as to Siegfried, disguised as Gunther, passing the night with Brynhild with Nothung dividing them, and in the morning bringing her down the mountain THROUGHTHE FIRE (an impassable obstacle to Gunther) and there transporting himself in a single breath, by the Tarnhelm's magic, back to the hall of the Gibichungs, leaving the real Gunther to bring Brynhild down the river after him.One controversialist actually pleaded for the expedition occupying two nights, on the second of which the alleged outrage might have taken place.But the time is accounted for to the last minute: it all takes place during the single night watch of Hagen.There is no possible way out of the plain fact that Brynhild's accusation is to her own knowledge false; and the impossible ways just cited are only interesting as examples of the fanatical worship which Wagner and his creations have been able to inspire in minds of exceptional power and culture.
More plausible was the line taken by those who admitted the falsehood.Their contention was that when Wotan deprived Brynhild of her Godhead, he also deprived her of her former high moral attributes; so that Siegfried's kiss awakened an ordinary mortal jealous woman.But a goddess can become mortal and jealous without plunging at once into perjury and murder.Besides, this explanation involves the sacrifice of the whole significance of the allegory, and the reduction of The Ring to the plane of a-child's conception of The Sleeping Beauty.Whoever does not understand that, in terms of The Ring philosophy, a change from godhead to humanity is a step higher and not a degradation, misses the whole point of The Ring.It is precisely because the truthfulness of Brynhild is proof against Wotan's spells that he has to contrive the fire palisade with Loki, to protect the fictions and conventions of Valhalla against her.
The only tolerable view is the one supported by the known history of The Ring, and also, for musicians of sufficiently fine judgment, by the evidence of the scores; of which more anon.As a matter of fact Wagner began, as I have said, with Siegfried's Death.Then, wanting to develop the idea of Siegfried as neoProtestant, he went on to The Young Siegfried.As a Protestant cannot be dramatically projected without a pontifical antagonist.
