In undertaking a view of Wagner's enormous Ring Cycle in this brief paper, there is a danger of resembling one of those fringe comedy acts that 'do' the complete Shakespeare in 20 minutes. I intend to avoid that pitfall by looking at the overall arch of the drama Wagner created, and examining the destiny of his characters; doing so by comparing his work with one of his chief models, The Oresteia of Aeschylus.
Before he began work on the Ring, Wagner read Greek tragedy (which was, interestingly, unpopular in his culture at that time) - particularly Aeschylus' The Oresteia. (Ewans, 1982). The most obvious link between the two is that both use a structure of three interlinked dramas, and both Aeschylus and Wagner create their drama as the outcome of a devastating moral decision which precipitates all the action of the drama. In addition, Wagner is also quite explicit in describing his eloquent orchestra as having a role, in its commentary on the action, as equivalent to that of the chorus in Greek drama.
However, the outcome of the dramas - what I might call the moral outcome' - is quite different in the two cycles. In The Oresteia, the devastating event has taken place years before the play begins -Agamemnon has sacrificed his own daughter, lphigenia, to ensure favourable winds for his journey to war with Troy. The first play concerns his return home, after the wars, to his wife, the murdered girl's mother, who takes her murderous revenge on him for murdering her daughter. In the second play, Agamemnon's children, Orestes and Electra, in turn murder their mother in revenge for her murder of their father. These two plays are redolent of blood and primitive bloody imagery. They evoke the world of Melanie Klein's paranoid- schizoid position, or of Winnicott's world of pre-ruth in which the talion principle reigns supreme. The third play is different. Now Orestes is being pursued by the Furies who demand that he must be punished (literally torn apart) for the murder of his mother. This last play in the cycle is an argument concerning the moral justification for his actions. Finally he is exonerated, and the Furies are welcomed into the City of Athens where the trial has taken place. Passionate revenge has here given way to argument and a sense of reconciliation. It is as though we have moved on to Klein's depressive position, where reparation can be made - or to Winnicott's Stage of Concern. In words that are wonderfully evocative of this psychological progression, the pitiless Furies are welcomed into the City. 'Terrible kindly ones, come to your rest,' says Athene, goddess of wisdom, who has heard the arguments on both sides, as she invites the Furies into the city. And the hope is expressed that these implacable Furies may enhance 'the fortress of (our) understanding', in the hope that the people I are made one again in the flesh.' (Ted Hughes, 1999 translation, p. 194)
In Wagner's music drama the influence of Greek drama is not only evident in the structure of the plays (a preliminary evening, followed by three dramas), but also in his use of the model of confrontations between pairs of characters. Similarly, both dramatists use themes of guilt and a curse to link scenes one to another. Externals of plot and social relationships are reduced to a minimum. Wagner has created a vast canvas and then within that made scenes of intimate drama, often with penetrating psychological insights into family relationships. The whole drama is framed in a cyclical structure by his beginning and ending with the all-powerful magical gold in the River Rhine. By the time the Ring Cycle comes to a close, a whole mythical world has been revealed to us, and then destroyed.
Richard Wagner's
The Ring of the Nibelung is describes as 'a stage festival for three days and a preliminary evening'. Its four component operas are:
1. The Rhinegold .
Wotan struggles with Alberich for possession of the gold.
2. The Valkyrie
Siegmund and Sieglinde's doomed love. Wotan's tragic dilemma. Brunnhilde's punishment.
3. Siegfried
Sieglinde's son Siegfried seeks manhood and finds Brunnhilde.
4. The Twilight of the Gods
Siegfried & Brunnhilde's doom. Downfall of the Gods.
The diagram above offers a summary of the essential relationships of major characters in the Ring. Displayed like this, it emphasises the 'dysfunctional family' element in the drama - and shows the tightly enclosed, incestuous nature of the world Wagner has created. He has taken two separate mythologies and fused them. The first concerns Wotan and the ancient Teutonic gods, who create a moral dilemma which results in their own downfall. The second concerns the Nibelung myth, which relates the story of the Germanic hero Siegfried.
What devastating moral decision influences Wagner's drama? It is the decision to forswear love in order to gain omnipotent worldly power. At the outset, Wotan, the King of the Gods, is engaged in treachery and deceit, so that he might build his giant fortress Valhalla. Wotan has contracted with the giants, Fasolt and Fafner, to build Valhalla, and has reinforced his contract with the moral authority that lies in the magic of the runes on his spear. Part of the price he has undertaken to pay the giants is to give them Freya, (the goddess of Youth and Love - and his sister-in-law). Failure to do so will compromise his moral authority. But the gods will lose their gift of eternal youth if they lose Freya. Wotan breaks his contract, thus compromising his moral authority. At the same time, Wotan's opposite number, Alberich the black dwarf, openly forsakes love in order to wield the power that is inherent in a cache of gold he has stolen from under the Rhine.
In effect, one could see Wotan's moral dilemma as concerning a decision either to deny Love and aliveness destructively, or to reinforce omnipotent defences as represented by the fortress Valhalla.
So why does Wotan need such a vast omnipotent defensive structure? As I understand the dramas, he uses primitive narcissistic defences (entitlement, omnipotent controlling of others, etc) against the force of envious hate. The audience hears this expressed clearly at the end of The Rhinegold, as Wotan leads the Gods into the newly completed Valhalla. He tells us that one of the reasons he has had it built was 'to provide shelter from the envious sway of night', (Rhinegold sc. 4). The dark destructive power of envy is represented in the drama by Alberich, and in the last of the operas, with tremendous force, by Alberich's son, Hagen. In the first opera (Rhinegold) Alberich and Wotan confront each other.
It is possible to paraphrase Alberich's verses as an envious destructive wish. 'I hate the laughter and loving of you Gods, and III destroy your loving liveliness by making you as greedy for gold as I am. 'This malignant destructive force of envy is felt throughout the four works. Wotan proceeds at once to steal all Alberich's power and wealth. Alberich's response is to curse the Ring - and this curse recurs musically and dramatically throughout the rest of the dramas - a dramatic device similar to the Greek plays.
Of course, Wagner's genius is to make Wotan an increasingly human and sympathetic figure with whom we can identify as he struggles to extricate himself from the mess he has created. His first lesson comes from Erda, the earth goddess, who lets Wotan know that it will be profoundly destructive for him if he continues on his present untruthful, illusory path of asserting a false sense of power. Erda is offering an interpretation that the manic defence is not the way to a true understanding, and Wotan must relinquish it and resume his own difficult struggle for understanding.
Wotan is powerfully attracted by the earth goddess and her wisdom. He accepts her advice and relinquishes the Ring of power, and then conceives a child with her - a child who will become Brunnhilde, the heroic female protagonist of the rest of the operas.
Wotan is a busy fellow. After the end of the first opera he also conceives, with an unnamed mortal woman, the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, who meet in the second opera, and fall into an incestuous, loving relationship, which will ultimately result in the birth of the hero, Siegfried. By now relationships and allegiances between the characters have become very complex. Wotan's wish is that the incestuous twins should bear a heroic son who will be free from the taint of the Ring's curse, and who may act out of his (the hero's) own free will. Wotan's lawful wife, Fricka, forbids this - she is outraged by disobedience to proper marriage vows and she demands the death of the incestuous twins. Wotan is caught in another dilemma. Obedience to his wife will be the end of his plans for saving the world of the Gods. Brunnhilde, now a young woman and possessed of her earth mother's wisdom, is now Wotan's best-loved daughter. In a poignant scene she acts as confidant to Wotan in his rage and despair. She offers herself as a container for his unruly feelings. Wotan commands her obedience - she must collude in the death of the twins. However, moved by the power of the human love of this sexual couple, she engages in her own decisive act of civil disobedience. She intervenes and saves the life of Sieglinde, after Siegmund has been killed in battle.
The next scene needs to be described in some detail. We find Sieglinde in suicidal despair, as a response to the death of Siegmund. At this point, Brunnhilde tells her that she has conceived a child with her brother, and that she is sheltering in her womb 'the world's greatest hero'. We will see Brunnhilde hand Sieglinde the fragments of Siegmund's sword which was shattered when he died. Sieglinde is revitalised and sings the ecstatic melody called 'Redemption by Love'. 'Sublimest wonder', she says, 'Glorious maid, I thank you for sacred solace'. Everyone who has even a passing interest in Wagner knows this theme, and yet it is only used twice in the whole fifteen hours of the music-drama. It will not return again until the final moments of the opera. It seems to me that this theme also heralds the birth of something new and different - in this case, Siegfried, who represents the next generation of mankind, mortal man, who is destined to be free of the manipulation of the gods.
Brunnhilde is punished by Wotan for her disobedience, concealed by everlasting fire from which only a true hero can rescue her. The hero is, of course, Siegfried, who is equal to the task, and becomes her ecstatic lover.
However, in the final opera, envy and destructive hate rise again and weave their melodramatic power upon these two lovers. We now meet the wicked Hagen, son of Alberich, and Hagen's half-siblings, Gunther and Gutrune. If one sets aside the magical powers that drive the plot, it seems that Siegfried is drawn by destructive forces (exemplified by Hagen) to a denial of the truth of his love for Brunnhilde, and into a confused narcissistic identification with Gunther and his sister. Siegfried forgets his BrUnnhilde and seeks to marry Gutrune. Brunnhilde hates him for betraying her. Forces of misalliance are at their peak. Now each of the main characters in this last opera (Gunther, Hagen and Brunnhilde) each for individual personal motives, wishes Siegfried dead, and they plot his death. Siegfried, who, besides being heroic, remains ineffably stupid, is totally unaware of the plot. He is killed. As a result of his death, Brunnhilde regains her former wisdom, which allows her insight into these dark deeds. She makes a funeral pyre for Siegfried and rides into it to her own death, in an ecstasy of love and philosophising about death and redemption.
Wotan has not appeared in this final opera, and we hear a report that he has gathered his gods and warriors around him and sits silent in the centre of an unlit funeral pyre, awaiting the end of the world. He has given up hope of success in his struggles. Thus, Brunnhilde's and Siegfried's pyre consumes them both, and then Valhalla and all the gods.
Wagner was pessimistic. Throughout the operas, Wotan has had opportunities to accept the wisdom of his daughter Brunnhilde and to put aside his omnipotent striving. He never does so. He never takes back the despair and rage that he projected into her before putting her into slumber in the magical fire. And our last sight of Wotan on stage is of a final brief upsurge of his old omnipotence as he attempts to bar Siegfried's way to Brunnhilde. In the final opera, Wotan's passive acceptance of his fate suggests suicidal despair rather than a move to the depressive position and an acceptance of inner reality.
Compare this with the path taken in The Oresteia, which moves from violence to an acceptance of the matricidal deed of Orestes - and in which finally, the avenging Furies are taken in by the city that they were seeking to destroy. There is something affirmative in the outcome, as some sense of inner reality is accepted.
Wagner had great difficulty in writing the final verses for Brunnhilde's immolation. He wrote six different sketches embodying different philosophical stances before settling on her ecstatic acceptance of fiery reunion in death with Siegfried. If one ignores the dubious Wagnerian ideal of the redemptive quality of woman's love and sacrifice, one is left with another suicide.
What then is uplifting in this gloomy tale? Why is it so powerfully moving? My own view is that the power lies in the music. The music is completely at odds with the despairing gloom of these final pages. Many authors attest to the affective power of music. Anthony Storr (1992, p.147) says that 'listening to music makes us aware of important aspects of ourselves which we may not ordinarily perceive; and, by putting us into touch with these aspects, music makes us whole again'. I think Wagner exploited this power to a greater extent than many other composers. It was his genius to provide us with a vast mythological structure that acts as a container for his own emotional expression. In my view, the musical themes, and the dramatic situations which they illustrate, give symbolic expression, in a transforming way, to his own unspoken, internal, affective world. The audience, too, can partake of a similar transforming experience.
So finally, it is as though Wagner leaves his characters in a state of unresolved despair, but his music carries us forward to a sense of a transformed world. The ambiguity is fascinating. In the final scene, Brunhilde ignites the pyre, and rides into it. Then Valhalla and the gods are destroyed in the flames, the Rhine floods over the whole scene, and the magical gold is returned to its rightful place under the Rhine. All this is vividly portrayed by Wagner's 'Greek chorus' orchestra. Then last of all, the theme described above is heard in the full orchestra. On its first presentation, it heralded the birth of Siegfried the new hero. Now it seems to herald the birth of a new world for humankind. It conveys a sense of hope and creative optimism quite at odds with the despair of the characters on stage.
REFERENCES
AESCHYLUS. (1999)
. The Oresteia. Ted Hughes (Trans.) Faber and Faber, London.
EWANS, M. (1982).
Wagner and Aeschylus; The Ring and The Oresteia. Faber and Faber, London.
STORR, A. (1992). Music
and the Mind. Harper Collins, London.
