And those same torches, flaring by her bed,Lighted her downward path among the dead.
Meleager.
(Translated byJane Minot Sedgwick.)
The drama of "Siegfried" opens with a reintroduction of one of Wagner's most subtle studies. Mime in "Rheingold" plays almost no part at all. There the local interest of Niebelheim is centred in that peevish parody of Napoleonic ambition, Alberich, whose curse is launched upon the entire succeeding series of incidents. In "Siegfried" Alberich is shown to us a helpless watcher on the outskirts of events, the complement of the wondering Wotan.
Both of the principal workers on the beginning of the web have been forced to let the threads slip from their feeble hands. Siegfried, the young, hot-blooded embodiment of humanity, and Mime, the last receptacle of underground craft and cunning, struggle for the supremacy. Alberich is absurd.
The battle of the dwarfs in the first scene of the second act is one of Wagner's pieces ofgrotesquery. Did he see the ridiculous aspect of it? One can hardly believe so. He seems to take it very seriously, but it refuses to be serious. Mime, however, is a genuine creation. Search opera from its inception to the disclosure of this extraordinary work and you will not find another such product of the imagination. Mime is the perfect type of a low cunning mind plotting to use a noble and generous nature for its own ends and then to consign that nature to destruction.
A ward politician or a Wall Street operator Mime might have been in a more advanced state of society. It was his misfortune and not his fault that he was born a cave-dweller. Wagner falls into ludicrous difficulties in his endeavors to disclose the inner workings of this nature. In the first act he has recourse to the old-fashioned operatic duet, in which two persons standing at opposite sides of the stage bellow antagonistic sentiments at the top of their lungs, yet do not hear each other.
The factitious veritism of the music drama crumbles into absurdity in the presence of this illogical scene. Wagner as frankly asks us to accept the unreal conventions of the stage as ever did Donizetti or Meyerbeer. And this, too, in the midst of his most elaborate andpretentious creation. But here again music, heavenly maid, saves the situation. The splendor of the climax of the forging episode dazzles judgment. One cannot analyze the dramatic verities when his heart is thumping under his ribs with the trip-hammer rhythm of this tremendous composition.
In the second act, when Mime is endeavoring to induce Siegfried to take the potion, we are asked to understand that the bird has warned Siegfried, and that the hero is enabled to discern behind Mime's utterances the real meanings which he strives to conceal. Wagner's conception was dramatically impracticable, and so he makes Mime utter his secret thoughts aloud, so that we, as well as Siegfried, may know them.
It is a cumbersome and feeble device. Here again, however, the music comes to the dramatist's aid. The exquisitely artistic contrast between the craft and malice of Mime and the ingenuousness of the youthful hero is expressed perfectly by the opposing natures of their musical measures, and a final touch of most eloquent suggestion is supplied by the half-whispered instrumental repetition of the bird phrase. This is dramatic music of the most potent.
The keynote of Mime is sounded in theorchestra in the beginning of Act I. with the motive of reflection,—that hollow, sinister duet of two bassoons, so devilish, so serpentine in the mockery of its descending thirds. Whoever before heard the lascivious harmony of the third made to chant a psalm of mischief? Deep reflection, far-sighted wickedness, lies in those few sinister, sepulchral notes, and as the curtain rises and shows us the shaggy little elf bent hopeless over his forging and searching his evil mind for some solution of the problem of the lost hoard, we fall with him into a frame of mind fit for treasons.
And Loge? Is the embodiment of craft absent? Not he. Loge deserts not his kind. In the flickering flame of the forge he lurks in waiting. He will weld the sword "Nothung," which was shivered on Wotan's spear, and this time it will shatter that spear and break the power of the futile and disappearing gods. Loge will answer the call of Siegfried and rise in his might. Joyously will he blaze to melt the splinters, for this forging is but another act in the drama of his triumph. How can the dotard Wotan sit by the hearthstone playing at riddles with Mime and not feel the breath of Loge on his neck?
What a new and unheard of thing is the vocalstyle of Mime! The creation of this weird recitation is one of Wagner's most notable achievements. The sharp, cackling treble staccato, which sinks ever and anon into an indescribable gurgle of subterranean low tones and again rises to a shrill and infantile falsetto,—this is something that no old-time musician, who appealed to the outward ear alone, could ever have conceived. Its importance in the expression of grotesque and grim humor cannot be overestimated. It is neither speech nor song. It is not recitative. It is not declamation. It is simply the snarling, the barking, the whining of malice, cowardice, and sneaking treachery. It is the very thing itself that Wagner sought. It was a triumph of genius.
Has it ever occurred to you, gentle reader, that up to the last act of "Siegfried" this same music of Mime supplies the only psychologic element in the play so far as the musical part is concerned? Mime is the one scheming, introspective character in the work. Every musical thought in the score which is connected with him reveals an inner life. The rest is nearly all scenic or external music.
Siegfried's entrance is bodied forth in a gust of forest freshness sweeping into the noisome air of the cavern. The famous wanderlied of theyouth is not introspective. It breathes not the yearning of the hero for a free life, but the spirit of the unbounded world itself. It is a song of the receding horizon.
The bandying of conundrums between Wotan and Mime leaves all the psychology to the dwarf. The rest is commemorative. It is a repetition of old themes to recall Siegmund and Sieglinde, the Giants and their unrequited labor, Walhall and its vanishing limelight glories. Take again the opening scene of Act II. How much introspection is there in Wotan's interesting interview with the unseen Fafner? Atmospheric, indeed, this music is, but not psychologic. It has a very suspicious resemblance to the famous scene before the tomb of Ninus in "Semiramide." But it is conducted more decorously, and instead of "Oh, horror!" we hear the more comforting "Lass't mich schlafen."
In the scene which follows we are presented with the picture of the young hero reclining under a linden tree and reflecting on his unique position in the primeval world. He hears the murmur of the wind among the branches of the trees and watches the shadows play at hide and seek. The music is purely descriptive and scenic. A bird carols among the foliage. It is a strain ofunaffected melody, and surely none would affront a cheerful birdling by charging it with psychologic intent.
The young man, seeking for some channel of cheerful communication with his own antecedents, tries to fashion a pipe on which to imitate the bird's lay. In vain. So, forth with the familiar waldhorn and therewith wind a challenging blast. How did Siegfried learn his own musical theme? There is a psychologic tangle here, but it was in the thinking of Wagner, not in that of the hero. Siegfried had no business to know that there was an orchestra and that he had a theme. But let that pass.
Behold Fafner, clad in the shapeless form of a thing that never was, lumbering out of the cavern and wagging his sapient head and bannered tail with the aid of all too visible wires. Oh, Siegfried and Fafner, Fafner and Siegfried, which of ye is the more comic? Was it not cruel to place a "treasure of the world," a "smiling hero," in such a position, to make him do combat amid hissing steam and the shock of thunderous battle music with a most disillusioning dragon of papier-maché? Again hear the external music, the sword and the vigor of the young man.
After the fight the bird sings once more, thistime in a soprano voice and with text. Mime enters and psychology reappears. After Mime's death, more external music, till the bird tells of the enchanted Princess asleep on the mountain top, and then there is a burst of hot blood, a rush of musical energy which has in it something more than mere external description. Nevertheless, in all music there is nothing else which so clearly demonstrates the ease with which the purely pictorial in the tone art may be confounded with the introspective as this second act of "Siegfried," for here the mood of nature and the mood of the chief actor, whose soul is to be laid bare, are one.
With the opening of Act III. we have the scene between Wotan and Erda. Here, again, the character of the music is chiefly descriptive. The storm is contrasted with the vague tonalities and muted voicing of Erda's music. After the spear of Wotan is shattered by the rewelded "Nothung," Loge fills the mountains with his radiance and his shimmering music. The last of the futile and disappearing gods has passed from the scene of action. The human drama which is to lead to the dusk of the high ones has begun. Loge's labor is almost completed.
With the change from the pealing music to which Siegfried ascends the mountain to thelong-drawn strains of the strings which lead him to the couch of his desire, we enter upon a scene of soul revelation. What a marvellous inspiration of genius is the awakening of Brünnhilde! She went to sleep a weeping, supplicating goddess, deprived of her divinity. She wakes to the majestic chords which announce her assumption of a grander divinity, the might and majesty of perfect womanhood. The duo between her and Siegfried is all psychologic, not subtle, for the blazing of passion is not subtle, but none the less the delineation of an inward state.
Of all the dramas of the tetralogy "Siegfried" is that in which pure beauty is most plentiful. Here is a problem for musical philosophers. Is Strauss not a maker, but a product? Is the embodiment of subtle psychologic problems in tone hostile to unaffected beauty? Must the lyric drama follow the march of symphonic music into the screaming regions of the Strauss soul analysis? "Siegfried" is quite devoid of the elements of tragedy. The death of Fafner is not tragic; on the contrary, it is comic. There is even a touch of bathos in the dying speech of the transmogrified Bottom of the Wagnerian drama. The conundrum scene is childish. The bird belongs to the world of the infantile fairy tale. But the spirit of buoyantyouth is in the work. Its music is nearly all external, and unaffectedly beautiful.
"Siegfried," revelling in purely descriptive music, devoid of mental sickness contracted from much study of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, breathes the spirit of a free world's youth.
Little is left to be said, or much, for "Götterdämmerung" must be treated as a separate drama or dismissed shortly in the light of what has already been written. In this drama we come to the drawing together of the threads, the stretto of the dream fugue. Behold Brünnhilde, who has given all her wisdom to Siegfried and hence has none left for herself, sending him out in quest of further reputation as a mighty hero. There is something pathetic in this and also pitiably modern. Must husbands have had outings in the elemental days even as now? Was the epic man inconstant of soul? Ah Brünnhilde! A wise woman would go with him. It is not good for man to be alone.
Siegfried arrives at the domicile of the desirable Gibichung family and accepts an unknown drink from a pretty girl he never saw before. His rusticity beams from his guileless countenance, and to Hagen, the experienced one, he is as the ripe pear on the low-hanging bough. Pitiable weakling Siegfried! Call ye this a hero of allthe world? Pitiable Gunther, you do well to swear blood brotherhood with him. You are a well-mated pair. Pitiable Gutrune! Siegfried was not for you, though your drink did make him forget that he remembered and dream that he forgot.
In the hands of Hagen, the only really clever person in the drama, these three are as clay in the hands of the potter. Hagen could not command success, because Loge was more powerful than he, and the ultimate ruin of the gods would have been deferred had Hagen gained possession of the accursed ring; but he deserved success, and that, as Sempronius was long ago informed, was something worthy of respect.
Two elements of this final drama remain confronting us. They are the most tremendous of all Wagner's heroines, the completed woman, Brünnhilde, and the most potent of all psychologic music outside of "Tristan und Isolde." When Siegfried, in the end of the drama bearing his name, hurls the flood of human love at the reduced Valkyr, he awakens in her that which lifts her above principalities and kingdoms.
"Indeed I love thee. Come,Yield thyself up—my hopes and thine are one:Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
"Indeed I love thee. Come,Yield thyself up—my hopes and thine are one:Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
"Indeed I love thee. Come,
Yield thyself up—my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
Almost might Tennyson have substituted his words for those of Wagner, and truly they are more graceful. In "Götterdämmerung" we find Brünnhilde with her womanhood completed. Filled full to the lips and eyes with love, she is risen to a majesty which as the laughing Valkyr she never knew. Compared with her Olympian splendor, the fumbling weakness of her sire becomes indeed pitiable. With what heroine is she to be compared? Set her for a moment over against Isolde, who also died upon her true love's body.
The philosophy of negation which saturates "Tristan und Isolde" is a deadly foe to your piping enthusiasm. The draining of the cup of death, averted by the temporizing policy of the silly Brangäne, would never have assumed the tragic proportions of Brünnhilde's terrible oath upon the spear. The wounded love of Isolde dwindles to petulance when brought to the side of the outraged majesty of the chaste and glorious Valkyr wife.
Look upon the two in the last scenes of their respective tragedies. Isolde lays her down to die of a broken heart beside her dead lover, hymning in rapt ecstatic phrase, seeing in the vision of her own dissolution the new light streaming from his eyes and his heart beating in hischilled breast. It is sweet, so sweet. It is more honeyed than the dirge of Shelley for Adonais, or the exquisitely musical "Archete, Sikelikai, to pentheon archete, Moisai," of Moschus over the ashes of Bion. It is love's threnody in the realms of eternal moonlight, where the cypress shadows of a pessimistic philosophy shelter the lemur of blank negation.
Brünnhilde, too, beholds the sunny light streaming from her hero's dead eyes, but how her apostrophe to him rings with brave and hopeful praise! There is no sweating sickness of the soul here, but the proclamation of a grand personality. And then through prayer this supreme woman passes to prophecy:
"Ye gods who guardOur gazes for ever,Turn not awayFrom my waxing distress."
"Ye gods who guardOur gazes for ever,Turn not awayFrom my waxing distress."
"Ye gods who guard
Our gazes for ever,
Turn not away
From my waxing distress."
And but a moment later that sublime passage:
"All things, all thingsAll I wot now:All at once is made clear!Even thy ravensI hear rustling:To tell the longed-for tidingsLet them return to their home.Rest thee! Rest thee, oh god!"
"All things, all thingsAll I wot now:All at once is made clear!Even thy ravensI hear rustling:To tell the longed-for tidingsLet them return to their home.Rest thee! Rest thee, oh god!"
"All things, all things
All I wot now:
All at once is made clear!
Even thy ravens
I hear rustling:
To tell the longed-for tidings
Let them return to their home.
Rest thee! Rest thee, oh god!"
And again:
"Fly home, ye ravens!Rede it in WalhallaWhat here on the Rhine ye have heard!To Brünnhilde's rockGo round about,Yet Loge burns there:Walhalla bid him revisit!Draweth near in gloomThe Dusk of the Gods.Thus, casting my torch,I kindle Walhall's towers."
"Fly home, ye ravens!Rede it in WalhallaWhat here on the Rhine ye have heard!To Brünnhilde's rockGo round about,Yet Loge burns there:Walhalla bid him revisit!Draweth near in gloomThe Dusk of the Gods.Thus, casting my torch,I kindle Walhall's towers."
"Fly home, ye ravens!
Rede it in Walhalla
What here on the Rhine ye have heard!
To Brünnhilde's rock
Go round about,
Yet Loge burns there:
Walhalla bid him revisit!
Draweth near in gloom
The Dusk of the Gods.
Thus, casting my torch,
I kindle Walhall's towers."
Ah, Isolde! How every man that has a heart can echo that marvellous phrase with which Wagner makes Tristan breathe forth his first and last sigh of love insatiable! Queen of the tawny locks and stately tread, thou art first shown to us as a woman of the old barbaric grandeur, hurling the full tide of thy passions against the inexorable advancing prow of Fate. The gates of honor thrown down, thou art but a woman loved and loving; and, mourning over thy lost chastity, art ready to sink into fathomless night with Tristan. After all, thou comest to the pale estate of chill despair and so diest, hymning a last sad canticle of love.
Isolde is beautiful, winsome, desirable. Menlove her, but she does not dominate. Brünnhilde grows from a laughing light-elf to be a stricken woman, and thence is raised by the might of love to the majestic height of abstract womanhood divine. Isolde is a diminuendo; Brünnhilde a crescendo. In her last estate she stands disclosed in overmastering splendor, and mortal man in the honesty of his secret heart knows that, in the presence of such womanhood as this, he is utterly unworthy. And so we come to the end. Brünnhilde has joined hands with Loge and the "Rheingold" prophecy of Erda is fulfilled. The spirit of evil has become the renovator of the earth and all things are purified by fire. And the music! What majestic development of the Erda theme is this we hear in the Dusk of the Gods motive? There, indeed, is a psychological development, equalled only by the extraordinary mystic effects of the combination in Act I. of the themes of forgetfulness and the tarnhelm, by the wonderful recitative of the transformed Siegfried posing as Gunther, and by that highest of all songs without words, the funeral march.
The retirement of the futile and disappearing gods forces the purely human element to the front. The tragedy steadily waxes in power as the feeble ones of Walhalla grow fainter andthe humans take the threads in their hands, till finally the one great, majestic creation of the whole trilogy is seen to be Brünnhilde, the eternal womanhood personified, the light of the world and the glory of Walhalla.