The Wound That Will Never Heal

An Allegorical Interpretation of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung

Paul Brian Heise

• Publisher: Academica Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781680538144
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama
• Index: Literature

Paul Brian Heise’s The Wound That Will Never Heal is an original allegorical reading of Richard Wagner’s epic music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. Heise challenges the standard view that Wagner merely dramatizes the conflict between love and power and demonstrates instead that his greatest work is an allegory exploring humanity’s longing for transcendent value and that quest’s paradoxical establishment of a science-based secular society. By employing a more extensive analysis of primary evidence than any prior interpretation, The Wound That Will Never Heal is the first interpretation to propose and sustain a global and conceptually coherent account of the entire Ring.

Twilight of the Gods

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS ⸗ PROLOGUE, PART A

(BELOW BRÜNNHILDE’S ROCKY PEAK)THE NORNS

As we embark on our analysis of the last of the Ring music-dramas, it should have become apparent that it’s a hybrid masterwork which can’t be grasped under one category, such as drama, poetry, music, or philosophy. It’s, put simply, a dramatic, theatrical, poetic, musical, and philosophic meditation on the great questions which have confronted us humans since our emergence as conscious beings among the animals. The old, tired debate about whether Wagner’s music-dramas are tone poems whose music is paramount and for which Wagner employed librettos as mere scaffolding or an organizing principle, which could be ignored once Wagner had completed the music for them, or rather, dramas set to music which must be taken seriously as artworks of philosophic import, can be laid to rest by acknowledging the necessity of experiencing Wagner’s music-dramas, and the Ring in particular, as Wagner intended, with full attention to the dramatic action, the words, and the music. Some argue that only Wagner’s music is important, and that the proof of this is that he’d still be remembered as one of the great composers if we eliminated his librettos for which the music was written and merely preserved the music, but that if we only had his librettos he’d be forgotten. This ignores the fact that his music-dramas’ scores (with the exception of a few popular excerpts primarily of overtures, preludes, and orchestral intermezzos between scenes) require the drama to communicate their full meaning and emotional force. It’s in this spirit that I commend my following critique of Twilight of the Gods, the last Ring drama.

The prelude to the Prologue to the final part of the four-part Ring drama, Twilight of the Gods, begins in darkness near the base of the mountain on whose summit Siegfried joined in loving union with Brünnhilde, protected by Loge’s ring of fire. Erda’s (Nature’s) daughters, the three Norns, spokes-ladies for the past, present, and future (the world embraced by Erda’s wisdom), meditate on the ways of the world as they spin their rope of fate:

[p. 280] (Prelude: H148; H3, H2; H148; H3; H2; H148 chord [transitions into H87; [[H156 orch]] [= diminished inversion of H3] (…) The scene is the same as at the end of the second day, on the Valkyrie’s rock. Night. A fiery glow is visible … . The three norns, tall female figures in long, dark veil-like garments. The first (the oldest) is lying at the front of the stage on the left … ; the second (the younger) is reclining on a stone terrace … ; the third (the youngest) is sitting on a rocky outcrop of the mountain ridge … .)

The Prelude begins, significantly, with H148, the chord—based on H52—to which Siegfried woke Brünnhilde in S.3.3. H52 represents Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, and that whatever “is” will end. H148 eventually transforms into H87, the fate the Norns spin. Their “Spinning Motif” H156, introduced in this prelude, is based, according to Dunning, on a diminished inversion of H3, the River Rhine’s motion. Twilight Of The Gods opens with H148, in all probability, because it recounts the tragic consequences (or perhaps the redemptive consequences) which follow from Siegfried’s waking our collective unconscious Brünnhilde, which will culminate in his inadvertent sharing of her secret (Wotan’s unspoken secret) with the Folk, Wagner’s audience, who were never meant to be privy to the religious mysteries. This is the secret of how we Folk involuntarily invented the gods, and how our higher, allegedly transcendent values were originally predicated on self-deception and fear. Brünnhilde has awoken for Siegfried, ultimately destined never to sleep again: our unconscious hoard of forbidden knowledge which she guards is about to rise, as Alberich threatened, from her silent depths to the light of day.

Wotan told Erda that when her daughter waked, she’d do that deed which will redeem the world. There are two distinct redemptive deeds which Brünnhilde performs. But there’s also a third which Wagner saved for Parsifal Act Three: Parsifal’s renunciation of Brünnhilde’s reincarnate spirit, Parsifal’s potential (but never realized) muse Kundry. The first is Brünnhilde’s inspiring Siegfried to create redemptive deeds of art, which reconcile us to life in the real world by making us feel we’ve risen above its concerns. This secular art, in which our religious longing for transcendent value lives on as feeling, perpetuates Wotan’s original sin against his mother, Nature (Brünnhilde’s mother Erda), which Alberich’s Ring Curse punishes. The second and final redemptive act in the Ring Brünnhilde performs (wholly distinct from the first) is undertaken in response to the fact that if we can’t bear to live within the real world’s (Alberich’s world’s) constraints, but can no longer call on religion, ethics, or art for consolation, there’s the prospect of terminating consciousness altogether, either through personal suicide, or by ending that human consciousness per se which was the cause of our un-healing wound in the first place. This was “Das Ende” which Wotan—in his nihilistic despair, unable to accept the bitter truth, yet unable any longer to sustain the consoling illusions which he’d substituted for the truth—told Brünnhilde he fervently desired at the end of his confession in V.2.2. But Wagner explored a third option for redemption, our acknowledgment of our natural limitations and subjection to egoism, our ultimate reconciliation with our Mother Nature whom we sinned against in religious belief and unconsciously inspired art, in Parsifal.

Erda’s daughters the Norns (Fates) are discussing the question whether the gleam they see is the dawn of day, or Loge’s fire which still burns protectively round Brünnhilde’s mountaintop home:

[pp. 280–1] Second Norn: (H52 vari:; H2:) Is day already dawning (:H2; :H52 vari)? (H33 vari)

Third Norn: (H33 vari:) Loge’s host burns brightly round the fell (:H33 vari). [[H156 orch:]] Night still reigns (:H156 orch): why don’t we spin and sing? (…)

First Norn: ([[H156 orch]]; H42/H106) (…)) [[H156 orch:]] For good or ill I wind the rope and sing (:H156 orch).—(H2:; [[H157 voc:]]) At the world-ash once I wove (H156 orch:) when, tall and strong, a forest of sacred branches (:H157 voc; :H156 orch) (H18d voc:) blossomed from its bole (:H18d voc); (H156 orch:) in its cooling shade there plashed a spring, whispering wisdom … (:H156 orch): (H18d voc:) I sang then of sacred things (:H18d voc). (H18d)—A dauntless god [“ein kühner Gott”] came to drink at the spring; (H18abc vari:) one of his eyes he paid as toll for all time: (H18d) from the world-ash Wotan broke off a branch; (H19) the shaft of a spear (H19 modified by H123 rhythm:) the mighty god cut from its trunk (:H19 modified by H123 rhythm).—(H101 vari:) In the span of many seasons the wound consumed the wood (:H101 vari); (H52 & H53 vari clarinet) fallow fell the leaves (:H52 & H53 vari clarinet), (H156 orch:) barren, the tree grew rotten (:H156 orch): (H52 vari:) sadly the well-spring’s drink ran dry (:H52 vari); the sense of my singing grew troubled. [[H157 orch]] (H156 orch:) But if I no longer weave by the world-ash today, the fir must serve to fasten the rope (:H156 orch): ([[H158 voc:]]; H12 vari:) Sing, my sister,—I cast it to you (:H158 voc; :H12 vari)—(H88:) do you know what will become of it (:H88)?

The World-Ash having withered and died since Wotan broke off its most sacred branch to make his Spear from it, the Norns must attach their rope to any branch or rock which comes to hand. As they proclaim they weave (spin) the rope (of Fate) for good or ill, we hear H42/H106 (Mime’s Scheming), motifs in the family associated with man’s cunning, our gift for distorting truth (man as trickster, or self-deceiver), which includes Loge’s Motif H24 and H26. These Loge motifs convey Wotan’s intent (inspired by Loge’s cunning) to break the Social Contract he engraved on his Spear of divine authority. This cunning has tainted Nature’s innocence with the self-deceit which was the cause of Wotan’s sin against all that was, is, and will be, whose metaphor is the fatal wound Wotan made in the World-Ash (a figure for Mother Nature, Erda, and whose first motif H122 is a variant in 3/4 time of Erda’s Motif H52, and H2.). As they sing of the sacred days when they wove their rope at the living World-Ash, the Second World-Ash Motif H157 is introduced vocally by the First Norn. H157 has no musical kinship with the first World-Ash Motif H122. As they sing of these primal, sacred times we also hear H18d, a segment of the Valhalla Motif which Cooke described as lending an air of nobility to anything seen or heard while it sounds in the orchestra. Its presence here, linked with that pre-Fallen time before Wotan broke off the World-Ash’s most sacred branch to make his Spear, is somewhat mysterious, but I suspect it represents the underlying identity of the World Ash and its most sacred branch with Wotan’s Spear, which he made from it. Also, it’s noteworthy that unlike H18ab, this segment of the Valhalla Motif isn’t derived from Alberich’s Ring Motif H17ab.

We hear the first three of the Valhalla Motif’s five segments, H18abc, as the Norns recall how Wotan sacrificed one eye (which he identified earlier with Siegfried, whose eye we assumed looks inward) to gain wisdom from the sacred spring which flows from the roots of the World-Ash. Is this sacred spring the Rhine’s source? We may well ask, because the newly introduced Norns’ Spinning/Weaving Motif H156 is a diminished inversion of H3, which represents the Rhine River flowing. Wotan had to sacrifice his instinctual knowledge, aesthetic intuition, his eye which looks inward (restored to him in Siegfried’s love for Brünnhilde), to gain the power of reflective thought, just as Alberich had to renounce love to forge his Ring from the Rhinegold to obtain world-power (through acquisition of symbolic consciousness and language). Presumably Wotan’s sacrifice of one eye to obtain the sacred spring’s wisdom was also required to break off the World-Ash’s most sacred branch to make his Spear of divine authority. This makes sense: Wotan’s Spear is a symbol for the Fall (the Biblical Tree of Knowledge, figuratively derived from the Biblical Tree of Life, The World-Ash), and Siegfried’s role is to redeem us from the Fall by restoring that inward sight (aesthetic intuition) lost due to our acquisition of the power of conscious thought.

Wotan’s murder of the World-Ash is a metaphor for religious man’s status as the killer of his mother, Nature. We hear H52 (the natural necessity of change, the end of all things) and H53 (twilight of the gods) as the Norns describe how the World-Ash died due to Wotan’s abuse. Wotan’s attempt to create cultural and social institutions of allegedly divine origin regarded as sacred and unalterable was a sin against the natural necessity for change, the everlasting creativity of the cosmos. Wagner had a fascinating insight into the idea underlying his World-Ash Tree. He told Cosima how modern, cultured man seems concerned solely with dead things (referencing Wotan’s Spear), while in former, purer times we embraced living things, plants, animals, etc. (i.e., felt one with them): “… he [Wagner] says, ‘It has occurred to me that we now seem to concern ourselves only with dead things; everything around us seems lifeless, whereas previously our existence was concerned with living things, with plants, animals; Wotan carved his spear from the growing ash tree.’ When I say that … Siegfried and Brünnhilde give the appearance of sacred, living Nature, whereas the Gibichungs [Hagen, Gunther, and Gutrune, to whom we’ll be introduced in T.1.1] are already among the dead, he agrees with me.” [1114W-{1/8/82} CD Vol. II, p. 786] Though Wotan and the gods have figuratively murdered Mother Nature (Erda) by denying her truth and substituting a consoling illusion in her place, nonetheless, in the fulness of time, Erda’s laws of change (embodied by H52 and H53) will wreak Nature’s vengeance on those who’ve denied her. Feuerbach gave natural law (Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, which the Norns’ spin into their rope of fate) pride of place when he said: “Space and time are not mere forms of appearance; they are conditions of being, forms of reason, and laws of existence as well as of thought. (…) Limitation in space and time is the first virtue … .” [185F-PPF, pp. 60–61]

As the First Norn prepares to hand the rope of fate over to the Second Norn so she can spin and sing her knowledge, another new motif is introduced, H158, which is only heard in T.P.A during the Norns’ colloquy when they call on each other to sing and spin. As the First Norn casts the rope to the Second, asking her what will come of the fact that the World-Ash has died through Wotan’s sin, we hear H88, the motif generally associated with fated doom. I mention H88’s occurrence here because it’s often said that Wagner’s application of musical motifs to the drama grew far more loosely linked to the immediate passages of libretto with which they’re associated, and therefore more creative, heeding exclusively musical rather than dramatic considerations, during the final phase of his composition of the Ring music, starting with the last act of Siegfried. It’s generally argued that Wagner’s liberation of his motifs from subservience to the drama reflected Schopenhauer’s influence, whose theory of music as a direct product of the Will inspired Wagner to give pride of place to music where music and drama interact. While it’s true that his employment of his musical motifs for dramatic ends grew more complex, sophisticated, and nuanced as he neared completion of composition of the Ring’s music in 1874, I don’t find that Wagner’s employment of motifs has less dramatic relevance. Though Wagner’s employment of motifs in this scene is often cited as a primary example of the motifs’ gradual emancipation from the restrictions of Wagner’s theory of music-drama, I find no dramatic examples of motifs employed purely for musical reasons which cut against the grain of the drama. Most if not all musico-dramatic interactions seem to me to remain fluent and comprehensible right up to the very finale of the Ring. But it’s impossible to ascertain motifs’ meanings definitively: each has a penumbra of meaning (based on their dramatic profile accrued throughout the drama) which sometimes overlaps that of other motifs. Take for instance the occurrence in this passage of a variant of H101 (Brünnhilde’s Magic Sleep) heard as the First Norn says: “In the span of many seasons the wound [which Wotan inflicted on the World-Ash to make his Spear] consumed the wood.” Wotan, on taking his final leave of Erda in S.3.1, having told her that her wisdom wanes before his will (i.e., before his unconscious mind Brünnhilde), consigned Erda to the oblivion of sleep and dreaming.

This isn’t to say that from the drama’s standpoint I can account for each occurrence of every Ring motif. To affirm with such certainty, where the best we can expect is well-informed speculation and guesswork, would be suspect in any case, because, with almost any Ring interpretation, one can find plausible reasons for the occurrence of almost any motif in almost any dramatic context. The only way to speculate intelligently about the presence in different dramatic contexts of various motifs is to remain cognizant of each motif’s dramatic profile (the dramatic context of all occurrences in the Ring), and also of its family relationships, so we obtain a sense of the motif’s thematic center of gravity, to maintain consistency in interpretation. If any motif can mean anything all hope is lost. It might be said (figuratively) that Wagner’s motifs are a sort of musicodramatic version of the concept of indeterminacy in quantum physics, an ambiguity (in our perception, or in Nature?) in which a wave of probability collapses into a particle of actuality on being observed.

The Second Norn now describes how Siegfried broke Wotan’s Spear, and how Wotan then ordered his martyred Valhallan heroes to chop down the World-Ash, causing its sacred spring to dry up:

[pp. 281–2] Second Norn: (H124:) The runes of trustily counseled treaties (:H124) (H123 Definitive:) Wotan carved on the shaft of the spear: (H19) he held it as his grip on the world (:H123). (H19 vari) A dauntless hero (H19 vari:) shattered the spear in combat (:H19 vari); (H124 voc:) the contracts’ hallowed haft was smashed to whirling splinters (:H124 voc).—(H39?; H81 vari? >>:) Then Wotan bade Valhalla’s heroes hew into pieces (H156:) the world-ash’s (H53 >>:) withered boughs and bole (:H39?; :H81 vari?; :H156; :H53): the ash-tree fell; the spring ran dry for ever! (H157; H156) … (H158 voc:; H12 vari orch:) sing, my sister,—I cast it to you (:H158 voc; :H12 vari orch)—(H88:) do you know what will become of it (:H88)?

Third Norn: (H9?: catching the rope … ) Built by giants, the stronghold towers aloft; with the hallowed kin of gods and heroes (H53 vari) Wotan sits there within the hall. (H123) (H123 voc >>:) A rearing pile of rough-hewn logs towers on high around the hall (:H123 voc): (H157 voc:) this was once the world-ash tree (:H157 voc)!—(H105 accompaniment: [as heard in the finale of Twilight of the Gods as Valhalla burns—a new form of fire figura...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Key References
• Introduction by Roger Scruton
• Prologue
• The Rhinegold
• The Valkyrie
• Siegfried
• Twilight of the Gods
• Allen Dunning’s Numbered List of The Ring’s Musical Motifs, with 23 Motifs added by Paul Heise
• Guide to Motifs in Richard Wagner’s The Ring of The Nibelung
• References
• Index