"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 onthe 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 aroundGutrune 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. Impossibleof 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 youdescribes 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 correctsherself, 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.
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 forthem. 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 betterobjection: "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 expectedterms. 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 mein 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 hisblood, 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'sblood 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 akiss 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 allhappening 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 ofhis 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 passionatesorrow 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!... Andhave 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 hurla 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 salutationto 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.
THE MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG
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 shewas 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, measuringdistances 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 lawthereof!... 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 atlast 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 theyoung 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 manis 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 kingdomof 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 becomea 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 theTabulatur, 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 yourlofty 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. Henods 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," toWalther, "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 theLeges 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 flourishat 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!"