The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wagnerian Romances, by Gertrude Hall

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Title: The Wagnerian Romances

Author: Gertrude Hall

Release Date: November 15, 2008 [EBook #27265]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAGNERIAN ROMANCES ***




Produced by Robert J. Hall




[Illustration: THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF RICHARD WAGNER]


THE WAGNERIAN ROMANCES


BY

GERTRUDE HALL


NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MCMVII

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD


_To_

_My Friend_

JOHN SANBURN PHILLIPS

_this book_

_is_

_gratefully dedicated._




INTRODUCTION

The attempt has been made in the following to give an idea of the
charm and interest of the original text of the Wagner operas, of
Wagner's extraordinary power and fertility as a dramatist. It is
not critique or commentary, it is presentation, picture, narrative;
it offers nothing that is not derived directly and exclusively
from the Wagner libretti and scores.

The stories of the operas are widely known already, of course.
As literature, however, one may almost say they are not known at
all, unless by students of German. The translators had before them
a task so tremendous, in the necessity to fit their verse-rendering
of the master's poetry to extremely difficult music, that we respect
them for achieving it at all. None the less must the translations
included in our libretti be pronounced painfully inadequate. To
give a better, more complete knowledge of the original poems is
the object of these essays. The poems form, even apart from the
music, a whole beautiful, luminous, romantic world. One would not
lose more by dropping out of literature the Idylls of the King
than the Wagnerian romances.




CONTENTS

PARSIFAL
THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG
  THE RHINE-GOLD
  THE VALKYRIE
  SIEGFRIED
  THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
THE MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG
TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
LOHENGRIN
TANNHAEUSER
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN


PARSIFAL


PARSIFAL

I

The story of the Holy Grail and its guardians up to the moment
of Parsifal's appearance upon the scene, is--we gather it from
Gurnemanz's rehearsal of his memories to the youthful esquires,--as
follows: At a time when the pure faith of Christ was in danger from
the power and craft of His enemies, there came to its defender,
Titurel, angelic messengers of the Saviour's, and gave into his
keeping the Chalice from which He had drunk at the Last Supper
and into which the blood had been gathered from His wounds as He
hung upon the Cross; likewise the Spear with which His side had
been pierced. Around these relics Titurel built a temple, and an
order of knighthood grew. The temple, Monsalvat, stood upon the
Northern slope of mountains overlooking Gothic Spain. No road led
to its doors, and those only could find their way to it whom the
Holy Spirit guided; and those only could hope to be so guided,
and could belong to the brotherhood, who were pure in heart and
clean of the sins of the flesh. The knights were mystically fed
and strengthened by the vision of the Chalice--which is called
the Grail; the duties of the Order were "high deeds of salvation,"
comprehending warfare upon Christ's enemies, at home and in distant
lands.

On the southern slope of the mountain, facing Moorish or heathen
Spain. Klingsor had gone into hermitage, in an attempted expiation
of evil committed down in the heathen world. What his sin had been,
Gurnemanz says, he knows not; but he aspired to become a holy man,
he wished to join the brotherhood of the Grail. Finding it impossible
to subdue sin in himself by the spirit, he sought, as it were, a
mechanical substitute for virtue, by which, however, he failed
to attain his object, for his sacrifice called forth from Titurel
only contempt, and he was rejected from the Order. He turned all
the strength of his rage then to acquiring black arts by which
to ruin the detested brotherhood. On the southward mountainside,
he created by sorcery a wonderful pleasure-palace and garden, in
which uncannily beautiful women grew. This lay in the path of the
knights of the Grail, a temptation and a trap, and one so effectual
that he who permitted himself to be lured into it was lost; there
had been no exception, safety lay singly in avoidance. Titurel
having reached so great an age that he had no longer strength to
perform the service of the Grail, invested with the kingly office
Amfortas, his son. The latter undertook at once the removal of
the standing danger to his knights, the destruction of Klingsor.
Armed with the Sacred Spear, he fared forth.... Alas! even before
the walls of the enchanted castle had been reached, his followers,
among whom Gurnemanz, missed him. A woman of dreadful beauty had
ensnared him. In her arms he forgot everything, he let the Spear drop
from his hand.... A great cry, as of one mortally hurt, Gurnemanz
relates, was suddenly heard. He rushed to the rescue, and caught
sight of Klingsor, laughing as he disappeared carrying the Spear,
with which he had wounded Amfortas. And now, possessed of the Spear,
it was Klingsor's boast that he should soon be in possession of the
Chalice likewise, the Holy Grail itself. And the wound of Amfortas
would not heal, and an apprehension was that never could it heal,
save at the touch of the Spear which made it. And this, who could
conquer it back? Yet the knights were not wholly without hope, for,
Amfortas once praying before the despoiled sanctuary, and imploring a
sign of pardon, a holy dream-face had appeared to him and delivered
the dim but comforting oracle: "Wise through compassion.... The
immaculate Fool.... Await him.... My appointed one...."

Thus matters stand when the curtain rises for us upon the forest
surrounding the Castle of the Grail. The introductory music is
wholly religious, composed principally of the so moving phrase
of the Last Communion, the Grail-motif and the Faith-music. The
latter opens with what has the effect of a grand declaration, as
if it might be understood to say: "I believe in God the Father!
I believe in God the Son! I believe in God the Holy Ghost!" and
fell to worshipping prayer.

The grey-haired Gurnemanz and two young boys of the Order are discovered
sleeping. At the clarion-call from the Castle, they start awake and
kneel at their morning devotions. The lake is near where the sick
King is carried daily for the bath. Forerunners of his cortège
pass, and are questioned by Gurnemanz concerning his condition. No,
the healing herb, obtained at such price of courage and cunning,
has not helped him. (For, though their drugs prove still and ever
useless, the devoted followers will not give up the search for
earthly relief.) This discouraged answer is hardly given, when another
appears who has been ranging afar in search of a remedy--Kundry,
arriving like the whirlwind, on a mare that staggers reaching the
goal. Spent with speed, the strange wild woman totters to Gurnemanz
and presses on him a crystal phial: Balsam! If this does not help,
Arabia holds nothing more from which health can be hoped! Felled
by fatigue, she drops on the ground, refusing any further speech.
When the king is now brought in upon a litter and halts on his
way to the lake for a moment's rest, receiving from Gurnemanz the
balsam, he thanks the woman, as one who has often before done him
such service. She rejects his thanks roughly, as if almost they
hurt: "No thanks! No thanks! What good will it do? Away! Away!
To the bath!"

The young esquires, lingering after the king has been borne onward,
eye her as she lies on the ground like a wild beast, and voice
their suspicion of her, founded, after the fashion of youth's
judgements, upon her looks. They believe those potions of hers
will finally destroy the king altogether. Gurnemanz checks them,
reminding them heatedly of her services, beyond all that any other
could perform. "Who, when we are at loss how to send tidings to
brethren warring in distant lands, we scarcely even know where,--who,
before we have come to any resolve, flies to them and returns,
having acquitted herself of the task aptly and faithfully?..."
"But," they object, "she hates us! See how malignantly she glowers
at us! She is a heathen, a sorceress!" "One she may be, perhaps,
labouring under a curse," Gurnemanz goes thus far with them; "she
lives here, it may be, a penitent, to expiate some unforgiven sin
of her earlier life." He tells how, so long ago as at the time
of the building of the temple, Titurel first found her among the
tangled growth of the forest, rigid in death-like sleep. "I myself,"
he continues, "discovered her but recently in the like condition.
It was soon after the calamity had befallen, brought upon us by
the evil one over the mountain." And turning to Kundry, as if the
thought had but just occurred: "Hey! Tell me, you! Where were you
roaming when our master lost the Spear?" The woman gazes gloomily,
and preserves a silence which we afterwards see to be significant.
"Why did you not help us at that time?" "I never help!" she exclaims
darkly, and turns away. "If she is as faithful as you say, and as
daring, and full of resource," suggests ironically one of the young
esquires, "why not send her after the lost Spear?" "That!" Gurnemanz
replies sadly, "is another matter. That nobody can achieve!" And,
the memory of the past rising strong within him, he relates to the
questioning young fellows, new in the brotherhood and ignorant of its
history, the events set down in their order a little way back. He
has repeated to them the mysterious promise of help: "Wise through
compassion.... The immaculate Fool.... Await him.... My appointed
one...." And they, impressed, are saying it after him, when, at the
words "_Der reine Thor_," the pure--the clean-lived--the immaculate
Fool, a commotion develops in the direction of the lake-side, cries
of "Woe! A pity! A shame! Who did it?" A great wild swan flies
in sight, sinks to earth hurt to death by an arrow, and the king's
esquires bring in, chiding and accusing him, a tall, innocent-eyed,
fresh-cheeked boy, armed with bow and arrows,--Parsifal. Rustic
enough is his outfit, but his bearing unmistakably that of the
high-born, as Gurnemanz does not fail to remark. A sturdy, brave,
gay-hearted strain has ushered him in, and for just a moment he
stands quite like a brother of Siegfried's, fearless, unconscious
of himself, as ignorant of the world as he is unspotted by it, but
engagingly wide-awake, serene in watching its mysterious actions.
"Are you the one who killed the swan?" Gurnemanz asks him sternly.
And he answers, unabashed, quite as Siegfried might have done:
"Certainly! Whatever flies I shoot on the wing!" But at once after
this the difference between the two is manifest. To both whole
regions of emotion are unknown, but certain emotions which are
outside the nature of one, are potentially the very strongest in
the other. Siegfried is not pitiful. The strong, radiant being
is incomplete on that side, so that the Christian heart winces
a little, here and there, at the bright resoluteness with which
he pursues his course when it involves, for instance, death to
the little foster-father, unrighteous imp though he be, or horror
to Brünnhilde, captured by violence and offered to his friend.
Whereas Parsifal, when Gurnemanz now makes plain to him the cruelty
of his thoughtless action, when he points out the glazing eye,
the blood dabbling the snowy plumage of the noble swan, faithful
familiar of the lake, killed as he circled in quest of his mate,
is seized with a passion of realizing pity, impulsively breaks
and flings from him his bow, and hides his eyes from the work of
his hands. "How--how could you commit such a wrong?" Gurnemanz
pursues unrelenting, even after these expressions of contrition.
"I did not know," Parsifal answers. Then to the amazement of all
are revealed the most extravagant ignorance and simplicity ever met.
"Where do you come from?" "I do not know." "Who is your father?"
"I do not know." "Who directed you here?" "I do not know." "What is
your name?" "I have had many, but no longer remember any of them."
"Truly," grumbles Gurnemanz, "I have so far never in my life met
with any one so stupid--except Kundry." Very sagely, he leaves off
questioning the fool; but when the others, after reverently taking
up the dead swan, have departed with it for burial, he addresses
him: "Of all I have asked you, you know nothing. Now tell me what
you do know! For it can hardly be but that you know something."
Whereupon very simply and obediently the boy begins: "I have a
mother. Her name is Herzeleide. (Heart's-sorrow.) We lived in the
woods and on the wild moor...." And it appears from his own ingenuous
narrative and the additions of Kundry, who in her rangings has
seemingly had opportunities to watch him, that he is the son of
the hero Gamuret, slain in battle before his birth, and that, in
terror of a like early death for him, his mother has reared him in
solitude, far from arms and reports of war, in absolute ignorance
of the world. One day, he tells in joyous excitement, bright-gleaming
men passed along the forest's edge, seated upon splendid animals;
his instant wish was to be like them, but they laughed and galloped
away. He ran after them, but could not overtake them. Up hill and
down dale he travelled, for days and nights. With his bow he was
compelled to defend himself against wild beasts and huge men....
"Yes!" throws in Kundry eagerly, as if at the recollection of splendid
fights witnessed, "he made his strength felt upon miscreants and
giants. They were all afraid of the truculent boy!" He turns upon
her a vaguely pleased wonder: "Who is afraid of me? ... Tell me!"
"The wicked!" He seems trying to grasp a wholly new idea presented
to him. "Those who threatened me were wicked? Who is good?" Gurnemanz
in reply reminds him of his mother, who is good, and from whom
he has run away; she no doubt is seeking him in sorrow. Kundry
brusquely interrupts: "Her sorrow is ended. His mother is dead!"
And, at his incredulous cry of horror: "I was riding past and saw
her die. She bade me take to you, fool, her last blessing." Parsifal
springs upon this bearer of evil tidings with the instinctive attempt
to shut off the breath that could frame such terrible words. Gurnemanz
forcibly disengages her, and, overpowered by the shock and weight of
his pain, Parsifal sinks in a swoon. Tenderly at once both servants
of the Grail care for him. Kundry hastens for water with which to
wet his temples, and, as he revives, offers him drink. Gurnemanz
is struck by the magnanimity of her action. "That is right," he
nods his approval, "that is in accordance with the gracious spirit
of the Grail. We banish evil when we return good for it." Kundry
turns sadly away: "I never do good! ... All I desire is rest!...
Rest!" And while Gurnemanz is still occupied with restoring Parsifal,
she slowly walks, as if powerfully drawn and intensely resisting,
toward a tangled copse. She appears struggling with inexpressible
weariness; the music gives a hint of something unnatural and evil
in the spell of sleep falling leadenly upon her, expressing at
the same time an irresistible element in it of attraction. The
dark, wild-haired messenger of the Grail, the despised subordinate,
suddenly assumes to our sense a much greater importance than up
to this moment. Her personality looms large with an unexplained
effect of tragedy. "Only rest! Rest for the weary one!" she murmurs
yearningly; "sleep! Oh, let nobody wake me!" Terror checks her for
a moment: "No! No! I must not sleep!" she shudders, "I am afraid!"
She falls to violent trembling. But whatever it is compelling her is
too strong at last. Her arms fall unnerved, her head bows languidly,
and she moves feebly whither she is drawn. "Useless resistance!
... The hour is come. Sleep.... Sleep.... I must!" Having reached
the thicket she drops on the earth among the bushes.

The sun is now high, the king is borne homeward from the bath. The
thought has struck Gurnemanz that here under his hands is surely
as exquisite a _Thor_ as could well be, and the experiment suggests
itself of taking him to the temple, where, as he tells him, if he
be pure, the Grail will be to him meat and drink. He places the
arm of the still strengthless youth about his neck, and gently
upholds him as they start on their way. "Who is the Grail?" asks
Parsifal, as they walk. "That may not be put into words," replies
Gurnemanz, "but, if you are of the chosen, you cannot fail to learn.
And, see now! I believe I know who you are. No road leads through
the land to the Grail, and no one could find the way except Itself
guided him...." "I am scarcely moving," says the wondering boy,
"yet it seems to me we have already gone a long way...."

And, indeed, the forest has been miraculously gliding past. It ends
before a granite wall in which a great portal stands open. This
gives entrance into ascending rocky galleries; sounds of clarions
come stealing to the ear; church-bells are heard--and we are presently
translated into the interior of the Castle of the Grail, the great
domed hall.

Parsifal entering with Gurnemanz stops still beside the threshold,
spell-bound in presence of all the lofty beauty: "Now watch with
attention," his guide instructs him, before leaving him where he
stands, "and let us see, if you are a simple soul and pure, what
light shall be vouchsafed you."

The scene now enacting itself before him is well calculated to
strike the imagination of the boy from the lonely moors. The knights
of the Grail, beautiful in their clear robes, enter in procession,
chanting. When they cease, the singing is taken up by younger voices,
of personages unseen up in the dome, and, after them, by children's
voices from the airy summit of the dome, floating, angelic. The
wounded king is brought in on his litter, and laid upon the high
canopied seat before the altar, upon which the shrine is placed
enclosing the Grail. The knights have ranged themselves along tables
prepared with silver goblets. In the silence of recollection which
falls upon all, a voice is heard, as if from the grave: "My son
Amfortas, are you at your post?" It is the aged Titurel, whose
resting-place is a recess behind the altar and the raised seat.
There he is kept alive solely by the contemplation of the Grail,
mystical means of life and strength. "Are you at your post? Shall I
look upon the Grail once more and live?" But long-gathering despair
to-day reaches its climax in Amfortas, at the necessity to perform
the rite required. The torture to him cannot be measured of the
vision which creates ecstasy in the others. "Woeful inheritance
fallen to me!" he complains, in his passion of revolt against this
divine infliction, "that I, the only sinner among all, should be
condemned to be keeper of holiest holies, and call down blessings
upon those purer than I!" But the worst of his anguish is still
that when the holy blood glows in the Cup, and, in sympathy, the
blood gushes forth anew from the wound in his side--the wound made
by the same Spear--the consciousness ever returns to burning life
that, whereas those holy drops were shed in a heavenly compassion
for the misery of man, these are unregenerate blood, hot with sinful
human passion and longing, which no chastening has availed to drive
out. The wretched king is praying for the mercy of deliverance
through death, when, from the high dome, the words rain softly of
the promise of redemption--through the Fool. Recovering courage,
Amfortas proceeds with the rite. While he kneels in prayer before
the Chalice, which young acolytes have taken from the shrine and
reverently uncovered, a mysterious darkness gathers over all. A
ray of light suddenly falls through this, upon the Chalice, which
begins softly to glow, and brightens to a deep luminous purple-red.
Amfortas lifts it and waves it over the kneeling people. The words
of the Last Communion are heard, sung by the soaring voices in
the dome: "Take my body--Take my blood--For the sake of our love!
Take my blood--Take my body--And remember me!"

The ceremony accomplished, Amfortas sets down the Cup, which begins
to pale; as it fades, the twilight lightens. When the common light
of day has completely returned, the knights sit down to the repast of
consecrated Bread placed for them, and Wine poured, by the acolytes.
At the end of it, they earnestly grasp one another's hands in renewal
of their bond of brotherhood.

Amfortas is perceived to be suffering from the renewed bleeding
of his wound. He is laid upon the litter once more and borne away.
The knights depart in orderly procession, the hall is gradually
deserted.

Parsifal remains standing on the same spot. He has hardly moved,
except, when Amfortas's anguished cry rang out, to clutch at his
heart. Gurnemanz, when he sat down at the table with the other
knights, signed to him to come and share in the holy feast, but
he did not stir. The impression can be apprehended of the solemn
scene upon the white page of the boy's mind. A spirit of religion
has breathed through it all, so exalted, so warm, so personal; the
passionate mediæval Christianity which expressed itself in crusades
and religious orders and knight-errantry. The cry of the Saviour
(_Erlösung's Held_, Hero of Redemption, the poet characteristically
calls him) has rung so piercingly, there seems but one answer from
a humanly constituted simple heart: "Did you indeed suffer so much
and die for love of me and my brothers? How then can I the most
quickly spend and scatter all my strength and blood in gratitude
to you?" Parsifal has brought to these things a consciousness not
blurred and overscored by worldly knowledge and desires, a native
capacity for love of others uninterfered with by the developed
consideration of self. His fresh instinct has gathered the meaning
of what he sees, novel to him as it is; "wise through compassion,"
he has gotten the measure and character perfectly of Amfortas's
sufferings, foreign as they are to his experience; he has gotten
the spirit of the facts of Christ. One especial message, over and
above the rest, he has received to himself, shot into his heart
upon a ray from the glowing Grail held before his gaze by Amfortas:
that the Saviour embodied in the Grail must be delivered from the
sin-sullied hands now holding it. He has seemed to hear the appeal
of the Saviour, poignant, to be so delivered. He is left, when
the vision fades, with the sense of this necessity--involving for
himself, though he knows not how, a duty and a quest: Amfortas
must be healed, the Sacred Treasure must be taken into keeping
by purer hands.

Gurnemanz approaches him hopefully: "Well, did you understand what
you saw?" But Parsifal, still in his trance of wonder, only shakes
his head. It is too deep for words, what he has felt.

To Gurnemanz he now seems a hopeless and unprofitable fool, who
has no place in the noble company. "You are a fool, it is a fact,
and you are nothing else!" he declares. Opening a side-door, he
without further ceremony pushes him out by the shoulders, with a
sour little joke: "Take my advice: Let the swans alone hereafter,
and, gander that you are, find yourself a goose!" As he turns from
the door, there falls from above, as if some echo of it had clung
to the high dome after all the singers had left, the strain: "Wise
through compassion.... The immaculate fool...."

II

The next change of scene shows the interior of the tower where
Klingsor practises his dark arts. A strain already known catches our
attention (the Sorcery-motif), and we become aware what influences
were at work in Kundry when her weariness succumbed to the lure of
sleep, what mesmeric call from Klingsor's hotly blooming, godless
pleasure-seat. The Klingsor-music introducing the second act stands
in picturesque contrast to the tender and thoughtful music opening
the first; curiously suggesting, as it does, lawlessness, cold evil
passions riding the soul hideously at a gallop. It has something vaguely
in common with portions of the Venus-music in Tannhäuser,--perhaps
its effect at once unbridled and joyless.

The sorcerer has from the battlements seen Parsifal approaching,
who, thrust out from the Castle of the Grail, had, by the peculiar
magic of the place, found the path to it obliterated. He had come
forth with the exalted but undefined sense of a great task to perform.
But, even as the road to the Castle of the Grail was difficult to
find, the road to Klingsor's castle was easy and overeasy; it would
seem that for the feet of a votary of the Grail all roads led to
it. Parsifal had seen it shining afar, and with childish shouts of
delight is drawing near. Klingsor, divining in him an enemy more
than usual dangerous, resorts, to make his ruin altogether sure,
to what are his supreme methods. He calls to his assistance once more
the ally by whose help the great Amfortas had been vanquished. With
mysterious passes and burning of gums, he summons that Formidable
Feminine: "Nameless one!... Most ancient of Devils!... Rose of
Hell!... Herodias!..." and amid the blue smoke-wreathes, uttering
the wail of a slave haled to the market-place, rises the form of
Kundry. She appears like one but half roused from the torpour of
sleep, and struggling with a terrible dream, or resisting some
terrible reality. All the answer she can give to his first words of
ironical congratulation, is in broken exclamations: "Oh! Oh! Deep
night.... Madness... Oh, wrath! Oh, misery!... Sleep! Sleep! Deep
sleep!... Death!..." and, in a subsequent outburst: "The curse!...
Oh, yearning!... Yearning!..."

Her history and hints of her extraordinarily complex personality
are to be gathered from the scene following and the scene later,
with Parsifal. The mysterious messenger of the Grail was anciently
Herodias, and meeting with the Man of Sorrows, she laughed. "Then,"
she herself relates, "He turned His eyes upon me...." Under the
curse involved in her action and the remorse generated by that
divine look, she cannot die, but goes, as she describes it, seeking
Him from world to world, to meet His eyes again. She tries in every
manner to expiate her sin, by service to others, by subjugation of
self, but the old nature is still not well out of her, the nature
of Herodias, and, at intervals, an infinite weariness of welldoing
overtakes her, a revival of the passions of her old life, and with
the cessation of struggle against them she falls into a death-like
sleep. In this condition, as if it represented a laying-off of the
armour of righteousness, her spirit is at the mercy of the powers
of evil. The necromancer Klingsor can conjure it up and force it
to his own uses.

In the centuries she has lived, she has borne many names. She has
but recently been the temptress of Amfortas, and at the reassumption
of the higher half of her dual nature, has, as the servant and
messenger of the Grail, striven to make amends, as far as she might,
for the mischief done by her in her other state. The curse under
which she lives has peculiar laws of its own, of which we just
vaguely feel the moral basis. In her character of temptress, while
desiring with intensity, in her Herodias part, the surrender of
the man to whose seduction she applies herself, yet with the other
side of her, the side of the penitent, which never quite slumbers,
she even more ardently and fundamentally desires his victory over
her arts, for, with her own frustration, she would be delivered from
her curse, she could die; from the enormous fatigue of centuries
of tormented earthly existence, find rest. Which is to say, perhaps,
that if once more she could meet and look into the eyes of complete
strength and purity, see an adequate approach to the Christ-spirit
shining out of whatsoever eyes, her redemption, so painfully worked
toward through centuries of alternate effort and relapse, would
be consummated; at that encounter, renewing, or confirming, faith
in the existence of perfect goodness, the evil within her, so long
vainly fought, would die, and her long trial be at end. So she
approaches every new adventure with, under her determined wiles,
the hope of failure; and when her subject is still and ever found
weak in her hands, experiences despair. And when a hero such as
Amfortas, undertaken with the undercurrent sense that he perhaps is
the unconquerable, whose resistance shall make him her deliverer,
vulgarly falls in her arms, the triumph of one side of her nature,
and the despair of the other, express themselves in terrible laughter.
The fruit of her experience with man is, as it affects the two
sides of her, a mixture of sinister cynicism and ineffable pity.
"Woe! Woe!" she laments, at Klingsor's mocking mention of Amfortas.
"Weak, he too! Weak--all of them! Through me, to my curse, all
lost as I am lost! Oh, eternal sleep, only balm, how, how shall
I win you?"

One can suppose in this Kundry, setting aside all details of personal
history, an intended personification of the
abstraction--(_Namenlose_,--Nameless One,) Eternal Feminine, with,
set in the high light, two of her broad traits, the best perhaps and
the worst: the passion for serving, tending, protecting, mothering,
and the passion for subduing man, proving herself more powerful
than the stronger, by remorseless practice upon his point of least
strength. This inveterate spirit of seduction it must be which
Klingsor apostrophises as "Most Ancient of Devils," and "Rose of
Hell."

The character of Kundry has many aspects, exhibited here and there
by a flash, but, when all is said, and before all else, what we are
watching is an upward-struggling human soul, whose storm-beaten
progress could never move us as it does did we not feel in her
simply our sister.

We saw her, forspent, crawl into the thicket to sleep. Now, Klingsor
who can command her while in that state, has compelled her to him
to accomplish the undoing of Parsifal. The idea is to her, all
heavy and clogged with sleep, the personality of the _Gralsbotin_
still in the ascendant, one of horror only. With wails of protest
at having been waked, and lamentation over what is proposed, she
refuses to obey, rejecting Klingsor's claim to be her master. Even
when he puts his request in the form of the suggestion: "He who
should defy you would set you free. Try it then with the boy at
hand!" she stubbornly refuses. "He is even now climbing the rampart!"
Klingsor persists. Kundry wrings her hands. "Woe! Woe! Have I waked
for this? Must I, indeed?... Must I?" At which first intimation
of weakening, Klingsor ceases to press his authority, and adopts
a different method of persuasion. Climbing to the battlement, he
describes the approaching figure: "Ha! He is beautiful, the boy!"
"Oh! Oh!" moans Kundry, "woe is me!"

Klingsor blows his horn, to warn the garrison of the palace--the
host of the victims of folly, the lost knights--of the approaching
enemy. A commotion is heard of arms caught up in haste and of fighting;
Klingsor from his post follows the contest, with glee in the daring
of the beautiful boy, who has snatched the sword from one of his
assailants and with it, one against the swarm, is cutting his way
through them. Kundry, ceasing from her moans, has begun to laugh,
and as Klingsor continues his report of the skirmish laughs more and
more uncontrollably. "They yield, they flee, each of them carries
home his wound! Ha! How proudly he stands upon the rampart! How the
roses bloom and smile in his cheeks, as, in childlike amazement,
he gazes down upon the solitary garden! ... Hey! Kundry!" But with
her laughter ending in a scream, Kundry has abruptly vanished.
"What? Already at work?" muses Klingsor. "Ha ha! I knew the charm
which will always bring you back into my service!" Then turning
his attention once more to the youthful intruder filling his eyes
with the unimagined glories of the garden: "You there, fledgling!
Whatever prophecy may have had to say concerning you, too young
and green you have fallen into my power. Purity wrested from you,
you will become my willing subject!"

The tower, with Klingsor, vanishes from sight; there lies outspread
before us the enchanted garden, glowing, tropical, displaying the
last luxuriance of flowers; and we see for ourselves Parsifal standing
upon the wall, calmly gazing. A swarm of beautiful young creatures,
waked by the clash of arms have, even as their lovers turned and fled
to cover, rushed forth to discover what is the matter. With confused
cries they pour from the palace and, recognising in Parsifal the
whole of the enemy, assail him with abuse scarcely more unendurable
than a pelting with thorny rose-buds. "You there! You there! Why
did you do us this injury? A curse upon you! A curse upon you!"
As Parsifal undismayed leaps down into the garden, they fall to
twittering like angry sparrows: "Ha! You bold thing! Do you dare to
brave us? Why did you beat our beloved?" And the raw boy, acquitting
himself rather neatly for such a beginner: "Ought I not to have beaten
them? They were barring my passage to you!" "You wanted to come to
us? Had you ever seen us before?" "Never had I seen anything so
pretty. I speak rightly, do I not, in calling you lovely?" A rapid
change takes place in the attitude toward him of the exceedingly
pretty persons. They adorn themselves in haste, fantastically, to
charm him, with the flowers of the garden; singing a wooing song,
of the most melting, persuasive, irresistible, they weave around
him, circling as in a child's game of ring-a-rosy, sweeping the
heady perfumes of their garlands under his nostrils. They do not
appear wholly human, but rather like strange tall-stemmed animated
flowers, swaying and jostling in the wind, and whose odor should have
turned into music; or, better still, like incarnate emanations from
the intoxicating flower-beds of this magical Garden of the Senses.
Parsifal stands in their midst, pleased and watchful, fleetingly
again like Siegfried, with his cheerful calm and poise. "How sweet
you smell! ... Are you flowers?" They close around him more and
more smotheringly, with caresses more and more pressing. He gently
pushes them away. "You wild, lovely, crowding flowers! If I am
to play with you, let me have room!" As they do not obey, and in
addition fall to quarrelling among themselves over him, half-vexed,
he repels them and is turning for retreat, when a voice is heard
from a blossoming thicket near-by: "Parsifal! Stay!..." The flowers,
startled, at once hold still. The youth stands still, too, struck.
_Parsifal_.... He remembers that as one of the names his mother
had called him by, once, as she lay asleep and dreaming. The voice
continues: "Here remain, Parsifal.... You simple light-o'-loves,
depart from him. Early withering flowers, he is destined to other
things than dalliance with you!" The flock of flowers, reluctantly,
lingering as long as they dare, withdraw, their last word one of
derision: "You beautiful one! You proud one! You... fool!" With
whispered laughter they vanish into the house, and Parsifal, in
the once more solitary garden, asks himself: "Was it all a dream?"

For the first time touched with timidity, he turns towards the
blossoming bower from which the voice had come. The branches part,
and reveal Kundry, youthful, gorgeously apparelled and superlatively
beautiful, lying upon a flowery bank. "Did you mean the name you
spoke for me, who have no name?" Parsifal asks, standing shyly
apart.

"I called you, guileless Innocent, Parsifal.... By this name your
father Gamuret, expiring in Arabian land, called his unborn son.
I have sought you here to tell you this...."

"Never had I seen," sighs Parsifal, "never dreamed, such a thing
as I now see and am filled with awe!... Are you, too, a flower
in this garden of flowers?" "No, Parsifal. Far, far away is my
home. I came here only that you might find me. I came from distant
lands where I witnessed many things...." With the calm notes of
the Arch-enchantress, perfectly sure of her power, she unfolds to
him the story of his own past further back than he can remember,
which is of the things she professes to have ocularly witnessed,--his
life with Herzeleide; she relates the death of the latter from grief
over his loss. She takes him in hand with easy masterliness in
the art of reducing a youthful heart. She does not stint to appear
to one so boyish much older and very wise. Not one discomposing
word does she utter about love,--but she brings his heart to a
state of fusion by the picture of his mother's sorrowful end, and
when, overcome by anguish and remorse, he sinks at her feet with
the cry: "What have I done?... Sweetest, loveliest mother! Your
son, your son must bring about your death!..." she gently places
her arm about his neck and administers needed comfort: "Never before
had you known sorrow, and so have not known either the sweetness of
consolation. Let sorrow and regret be washed away in the consolation
proffered to you by Love!" But Parsifal, the compassionate, cannot
so soon be diverted from the rending thought of his mother, and
continues despite the fair arm on his neck and the balmy breath in
his hair, with his passionate self-reproach: "My mother! I could
forget my mother! Ha! What else have I forgotten? What, indeed, have
I ever remembered? Naught but utter folly dwells in me!" Kundry
again attempts setting him right with himself and offers the cheer:
"Acknowledgment of your fault will place a term to remorse.
Consciousness of folly will turn folly into sense...." Then, not
quite relevantly, "Learn to know the love which enfolded Gamuret
when Herzeleide's affection burningly overflowed,..." With the
assurance that she who gave him life now sends him as a mother's
last blessing the First Kiss of Love, she bends over him and places
her lips upon his in a prolonged Wagnerian kiss. The sorcery-motif
is heard weaving its unholy snare. Of a sudden, with an abruptness
as unexpected as it is disconcerting, Parsifal tears himself from
her embrace, leaps to his feet, and pressing his hands to his heart,
as if there were the seat of an intolerable pain, "Amfortas!" he
cries, staring like one who sees ghosts, "the wound! the wound!..."
That has been the effect of her kiss upon his innocence, to give him
sudden clairvoyance into her nature, to cast a lightning flash upon
the past. He feels himself for a moment identified with Amfortas,
whom the woman had kissed as she kissed him. Amfortas's wound burns
in his own side. Not only that: the sinful, disorderly, unsubduable
passion torturing Amfortas, for a moment tortures equally Parsifal,
whose nature is thrown by it into a horror of self-hatred, and casts
itself upon frenzied prayer for deliverance and pardon. Pardon, for
although this experience can be thought an effect of mysterious
insight, Parsifal recognises as a crime that he should be in these
circumstances at all. He remembers that he had known himself as
one marked for a sacred mission. He remembers the vision of the
Grail, and that the Saviour had seemed to speak from it to his
inmost soul: "Deliver me! Save me from sin-polluted hands!" "And
I," he groans, "the fool! the coward! I could rush to the insensate
exploits of a boy!"

Kundry has been amazed and somewhat alarmed, but for a moment still,
as it appears, has not understood. She leaves her flowery couch
and approaches Parsifal, where he is kneeling in supplication to
the Lord of Mercy; with soft arts she attempts to reconquer his
attention, but with an effect wide of her expectation, for, while
she plies him with caresses, he is thinking, and we hear him think:
"Yes, that voice, even thus it fell upon his ear.... And that glance,
I recognise it clearly, which smiled away his peace.... So the
lip trembled for him. ... So the throat arched.... So the tresses
laughingly gleamed!... So the soft cheek pressed close against
his own,... and so, in league with all the sorrows, so her mouth
kissed away his soul's salvation!" As if the reinforcements from
Heaven, which he prayed, had suddenly reached him, he rises in
inspired strength, frees himself and thrusts her resolutely from
him: "Destroyer, away from me! Forever and ever away!"

From this onward he is a different Parsifal, not in the least a
boy any more. It is as if in the storm which swept him he had found
himself, his anchorage and his strength. And now we gather that
Kundry really has had an inkling of what is at work in him. She
drops at once the fairly simple methods she has up to this used, and,
it is not quite clear at first whether still as a mighty Huntress,
discarding one weapon and taking another better adapted to bring
down the quarry, or at last in true earnest, she invokes--pressing,
not to be denied--his pity. She reveals--and it is as if beauty and
splendour should lift the veil from a hidden ulcer--her strange
history, the ancient sin, the curse upon her, the despair that is
denied tears and can only voice itself in laughter. "Since your
heart is capable only of feeling the sorrows of others," she pleads,
"feel mine!" In him, as he has become within the hour, she recognises
a deliverer, but, illogically, thirsts the more for his love. From
this figure with the firm, compassionate eyes and the exalted
self-possession, something breathes which associates him to her
sense with the figure, sought by her through the centuries, of
the derided Victim. She feels herself face to face once more with
the Christ-spirit. But the blind desire of her dual personality
is that pardon should wear the form of love. Parsifal, with every
moment more firmly established in his strength and purpose, replies
to her madness with a calm homily,--his theme, how from the springs
of passion flow waters of thirst. Words of wisdom, eternal truths,
drop from the so young lips of the fool. Kundry, who has listened
in wonder, exclaims: "So it was my kiss which gave you universal
vision! The full cup of my love then would make you to a god!"
and coming back eagerly to her point: "Deliver the world, if such
is your mission. If an hour can make you to a god, let me, for
that hour, suffer damnation...." "For you, too, sinner, I will
find salvation," is Parsifal's mild reply. "Let me love you in your
godlikeness, that shall be salvation for me!" "Love and salvation
both shall reward you, if you will show me the way to Amfortas!"

It will have been remarked that Kundry in her singular rôle has
been playing fair; that, though life for her (which paradoxically
is death) depends upon failure, she has put forth her whole strength
in the temptation. But it is not at this juncture the penitent who
is in the ascendant, it is the evil side of Kundry, and at that
last request of Parsifal's, proving the vanity of her effort, a
great anger seizes her: "Never!" she cries, "never shall you find
him! The fallen king, let him perish! The wretch whom I laughed
and laughed and laughed at! Ha ha! Why--he was wounded with his
own spear.... And against yourself," she follows this, "I will
call to aid that weapon, if you give that sinner the honour of
your pity!" But, at the sound of her own words, her anger dropping:
"Ah, madness!... Pity! On me, do you have pity! One single hour
mine... and you shall be shown on your way!" With a renewal of
tenderness she attempts to clasp him; but at his abhorrent, "Unhappy
woman, away!" furious beside all bounds, she falls to shouting for
help against him, help to prevent his going. "Help! Here! Hold
the audacious one! Bar the roads against him! Bar the paths!..."
Then, addressing him in the blaze of her revengeful wrath: "And
though you should escape from here--and though you should find
all the roads in the world, the road which you seek you shall not
find! For all roads and paths which lead you away from me, I place
a curse upon them. Hopelessly--hopelessly shall you wander and
stray!..."

At her wild summoning the women have come running into the garden;
Klingsor has appeared on the threshold, armed with the Spear. This,
with the words: "The Fool shall be transfixed with his Master's
Spear!" he hurls at Parsifal. But the Spear stands miraculously
poised above the youth's head. He grasps it, with a face of ecstasy,
and draws in the air a great figure of the Cross. "By this sign
I dispel your sorceries! As this Spear shall close the wound it
made, let this lying splendour fall to wreck and desolation!" As
if shaken by an earthquake, the palace crumbles to ruin; the garden
withers away and turns to a barren waste; like broken and wilted
flowers the women are seen bestrewing the ground; Kundry falls
to earth with a great cry. And Parsifal, departing, turns on the
ruined wall for a last word to her,--painfully she lifts her head
for a last look--"You know where, only, you may see me again!"
meaning, we are left to feel, a plane sooner than a place.

III

Again the Domain of the Grail, where, on the outskirts of the forest,
beside a spring, the old-grown Gurnemanz has built himself a hermit's
cell. It is long after and much is changed. There is sadness in
the air, but it is of an unfretful gentle sort, almost sweet; the
sadness of a solitude visited by high thoughts, memories of calamity
softened in retrospect, present crosses made supportable by faith
and the light cast on the path already of an approaching event
which is to mark a new epoch in the life of the Order. A sadness
in the air and a something holy. It is Spring-time and it is
Good-Friday; the trees are in blossom and the meadow at the forest's
edge is spotted with new flowers. We are never, through the first
part of the act, left unconscious for long of the sweetness of
surrounding nature and the hour; it comes like whiffs of perfume,
every now and then, reminding us that the earth has renewed herself
and the day is holy, until at last these stray intimations have
led to a clear and rounded statement in the Good-Friday Charm.

Forth from his cell comes Gurnemanz, to be recognized as a knight
of the Grail only by the straight under-tunic of the Order. He has
heard a groan, not to be mistaken for the cry of a hurt animal.
As it is repeated, it strikes his ear as a sound known to him of
old. Anxiously searching among the matted thorn-trees, he discovers
Kundry, as once before, rigid and to all appearance dead. He chafes
and calls and brings her back to consciousness. She is the Kundry
of the first act, but so changed,--pale with the strained pallor
of one lately exorcised; the wildness and roughness all gone out
of her face, and in its place a strange rapt fixity; in her bearing
an unknown humility. In silence she recovers remembrance of the
facts of her existence; mechanically orders her hair and garments,
and without a word leaves Gurnemanz to set about the work of a
servant. As she is moving towards the hut, he asks: "Have you no
word for me? Is this my thanks for having waked you once more out
of the sleep of death?" And she brings forth brokenly the last
words she is heard to utter: "To serve!... To serve!..." the only
need now of her being. "How different her bearing is," Gurnemanz
muses, "from what it used to be! Is it the influence of the holy
day?" She brings from the cell a water-jar, and, gazing off into the
distance while it fills, sees among the trees some one approaching,
to which, by a sign, she calls Gurnemanz's attention. He marvels
at the figure in sable armour; but we, saddened and slowed as it
is, have recognized the Parsifal-motif heralding it. The sable
knight is faring slowly on his way, with closed helmet, bowed head
and lowered spear, unconscious of his observers, until, when he
drops on a grassy knoll to rest, Gurnemanz greets and addresses
him: "Have you lost your way? Shall I guide you?" Receiving no
answer to this or the questions which follow, save by signs of
the head, he with the bluffness we remember offers a reprimand:
"If your vow binds you not to speak to me, my vow obliges me to
tell you what is befitting. You are upon a consecrated spot, it
is improper here to go in armour, with closed helmet, with shield
and spear. And of all days upon this one! Do you not know what
holy day it is?" The knight gently shakes his head. "Among what
heathen have you lived, not to be aware that this is the most holy
Good-Friday? Lay down, forthwith, your arms! Do not offend the
Lord, who on this day, unarmed in very truth, offered His sacred
blood in atonement for the sins of the world!" The knight upon this,
still without a word, drives the haft of his spear into the ground,
lays down his arms and sinks upon his knees in prayer before the
Spear. The removal of his helmet has revealed the face of Parsifal,
but another Parsifal, even as Kundry is another. The stage-directions
have no word concerning it, but it must be in accordance with the
custom of Bayreuth that the latter Parsifal presents a resemblance
to the traditional representations of the Saviour; the idea being,
we must think, to indicate, stamped on the exterior man, this soul's
aspiration towards likeness with the Divine Pattern; or, perhaps,
visibly to state that here, too, is a gentle and selfless lover
of men, all of whose forces bent on a mission of deliverance.

Gurnemanz, watching him attentively, recognises the slayer, long
ago, of the swan, the stupid boy whom he had turned out of the
temple. Then he recognises, too, the Spear.

Parsifal, rising from his prayer, gazes quietly around him and
recognises Gurnemanz. To the question of the latter, how and whence
he comes, he replies: "I am come by ways of wandering and pain.
Can I believe myself at last delivered from them, since I hear
once more the rustle of this forest, and behold you, worthy elder?
Or am I still baffled in my search for the right road? Everything
looks changed...." "What road is it you seek?" Gurnemanz inquires.
"The road to him whose profound wail I heard of yore in wondering
stupidity, and the instrument of whose healing I now dare believe
myself elected to be...." All this long time he has vainly sought
the road back to the Grail, whether hindered by Kundry's curse,
or cut off by some stain left upon his nature from his brief hour
in the deadly garden, which must be cleansed by such prolonged
ordeal. He relates the desperate battle in all his wanderings to
keep safe the Sacred Spear,--which, behold, he is now bringing
home! Gurnemanz's joy bursts forth unbounded. Then he, too, makes
his friend even over the past. Since the day of his presence among
them, the trouble then revealed to him has increased to the last
point of distress. Amfortas, revolting against the torments of
his soul, and desiring naught but death, refuses to perform the
office of the Grail, by which his life would be prolonged. The
knights, deprived of their heavenly nourishment, deprived of a
leader, have lost their old strength and courage. They seek their
sustenance of herbs and roots, like the animals, in the forest. No
longer are they called to holy warfare in distant lands. Titurel,
unrenewed by the vision of the Grail, is dead.... At the relation
of these mournful events, grief assails Parsifal, who holds himself
responsible for all this wretchedness, by reason of his long-delayed
return, which he must regard as a consequence of sins and folly of
his own,--grief beyond what the human frame is fitted to endure,
and he is again swooning, as at the evil news in the first act.
Kundry hurries with water from the cell, but Gurnemanz stops her;
he has in thought larger purifications for the pilgrim in whom
his prophetic mind discerns one ordained to fulfill this very day
a sacred office. "So let him be made clean of all stain, let the
dust be washed from him of his long wandering." They ease him upon
the moss beside the consecrated spring, remove his greaves and
coat of mail. As he revives a little, he asks faintly: "Shall I
be taken to-day to Amfortas?" Gurnemanz assures him that he shall,
for on this day the burial of Titurel takes place, which Gurnemanz
must attend, and Amfortas has pledged himself, in honour of his
father, to uncover once more the Grail. Kundry during this, on
her knees, has been bathing the pilgrim's feet. He watches her,
at her devoted lowly task, in wonder: "You have washed my feet,"
he speaks; "let now the friend pour water on my head!" Gurnemanz
obeys, besprinkling him with a baptismal intention. Kundry takes
from her bosom a golden phial, and, having poured ointment on his
feet, dries them, in the custom of the day when she was Herodias,
with her long hair; by this repetition of a famous act intending
perhaps to signify that she is a sinner and that he has raised
her from sin. "You have anointed my feet," speaks Parsifal again;
"let now the brother-at-arms of Titurel anoint my head, for on this
day he shall hail me as king." Whereupon Gurnemanz anoints him
as king. Kundry has been gazing with a devout hushed face. There
is no sign that he recognises her, but, as if his soul recognised
some quality of her soul, as if some need in her called to him,
he dips water from the sacred well and sprinkles her head: "My
first ministration shall be this: I baptize thee! Have faith in the
Redeemer!" And Kundry, the curse being lifted which had dried up
in her the fountain of tears, bows to the earth abundantly weeping.

At this point it is that the vague waftures of sweetness which have
been fitfully soliciting us all through these scenes, concentrate
themselves and make their call irresistible. Parsifal becomes aware
of it. With his sense of the absolution from sin for both of them,
in baptism, invaded by deep peace, he gazes around him in soft
enchantment: "How more than usual lovely the meadows appear to
me to-day! True, I have known wonder-flowers, clasping me with
eager tendrils so high as my head; but never had I seen blades,
blossoms, flowers, so mild and tender, nor ever did, to my sense,
all nature give forth a fragrance so innocently sweet, or speak
to me with such amiable confidence!" "That," explains Gurnemanz,
"is Good-Friday's Charm...." "Alas!" wails Parsifal, "that day of
supreme agony! Ought not on this day everything which blooms and
breathes to be steeped in mourning and tears?" "You see," replies
Gurnemanz, "that it is not so. They are the sinners' tears of
repentance which today bathe meadow and plain with a holy dew; that
is why they look so fresh and fair. To-day all created things rejoice
upon the earth once trodden by the Saviour's feet, and wish to
offer Him their prayers. Beyond them it is to see Him upon the
Cross, wherefore they turn their eyes to redeemed man. Man feels
himself delivered from the burden and terror of sin, through God's
sacrifice of love made clean and whole. The grasses and flowers
become aware of this, they mark that on this day the foot of man
spares to trample them, that, even as God with a heavenly patience
bears with man and once suffered for his sake, man in pious tribute
treads softly to avoid crushing them. All creation gives thanks
for this, all the short-lived things that bloom; for to-day all
Nature, absolved from sin, regains her day of Innocence." The
exquisiteness of this passage, the Good-Friday Spell (_Charfreitag's
Zauber_), can hardly be conveyed; if one says the music is worthy
of the theme, one has but given a hint of the overearthly quality
of its sweetness.

Kundry has slowly raised her head and fixed upon Parsifal her prayerful
wet eyes. Either from his recent contemplation of the flowery lea,
or some occult association of her personality with the past, the
flowers of Klingsor's garden come into his mind. "I saw them wither
who had smiled on me. May they not also be hungering for redemption
now?... Your tears, too, are turned to blessed dew.... You weep,
and see, the meadow blooms in joy!" He stoops and kisses her gently
upon the forehead.

Bells are heard summoning the knights to the Castle. Gurnemanz
brings from the cell the mantle of a knight of the Grail, and places
it upon Parsifal's shoulders. Parsifal grasps the Spear, and the
three vanish from sight among the trees. Again, but from the opposite
direction, we approach the Castle; the sound of bells increases
as we pass through the granite portal and the vaulted corridors.
We are once more in the domed hall. All is as we left it, save
for the tables, which, become useless, are no longer there. Again
the doors open at the back and from each issues forth a company of
knights, the one bearing the bier of Titurel, the other carrying
the litter of Amfortas and the shrine of the Grail, while they chant,
in question and response, a song of reproachful tenor. "Whom do you
bring, with tokens of mourning, in the dark casket?" "The funereal
casket holds the hero into whose charge the very God entrusted
Himself. Titurel we bring." "Who slew him, whom God Himself held in
His care?" "The killing burden of age slew him, when he no longer
might behold the Grail." "Who prevented him from beholding the
glory of the Grail?" "He whom you carry, the sinful Keeper." The
latter they now urge to fulfill his promise of exposing the Grail,
and, deeply moved by the sight of his father's face and the outburst
of lamentation which follows the folding back of the pall from
it, he appears on the point of satisfying them; but, as in their
eagerness they hem him around with injunctions almost threatening,
he is seized with a revulsion once more against the task imposed on
him. He springs from his high seat and stands among them begging
that rather they will kill him. "Already I feel the night of death
closing around me, and must I be forced back into life? You demented!
Who shall compel me to live? Death alone it is in your power to
give!" He tears open his garment and offers his breast. "Forward,
heroes! Slay the sinner with his affliction! The Grail perchance
will glow for you then of Itself!"

But the knights shrink away. Then it is that Parsifal, who with
Gurnemanz and Kundry has entered unnoticed, advances and with the
point of the Sacred Spear touches Amfortas's wound. "One weapon
alone avails. The wound can be closed only by the Spear which made
it. Be whole, pardoned and absolved, for I now hold the office in
your stead!" Amfortas's countenance of holy ecstasy proclaims the
instant virtue of the remedy. As Parsifal holds up to the enraptured
gaze of the knights the Spear which he has brought back to them,
the Parsifal-motif is heard again, for the last time, triumphant,
broad, and glorious. He proceeds to perform the rite which had
been the duty of Amfortas. A glory rains upon the altar. At the
glowing of the Grail, Titurel, returning for a moment to life,
lifts himself on his bier with a gesture of benediction. As Parsifal
moves the Chalice softly above the kneeling assembly, a white dove
descends from on high and floats above his head. Kundry, with her
eyes turned toward all these luminous things, sinks softly upon
the altar-steps, the life-giving Grail having given her life too,
in the form of desired death. With the interwoven Grail and Faith
and Spear music letting down as if a curtain of silver and azure
and gold, the poem closes.

One has heard it objected, as at least strange, that when the search
after knowledge is so unquestionably meritorious, and study, as we
count it, one of the conditions of progress, and learning a lamp
to our feet, an ideal should be made of total ignorance, such as
Parsifal's. But surely the point is a different one. The point is
not Parsifal's ignorance--except, perhaps, in so far as it made
for innocence--but the qualities which he possessed, and which one
may possess, in spite of ignorance. It is a comparison of values
which is established. Through the object-lesson of Parsifal, Wagner
is saying, after his fashion and inversely, what Saint Paul says:
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels,... though I
have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all
knowledge,... and have not charity, I am nothing;... it availeth
me nothing." The supremacy of charity, love of others, is the point
illustrated.

One tributary to the mighty stream of our interest in the opera
of Parsifal has its spring in the date of its appearance. It comes
as the poet's last word. What a procession of heroes has passed
before us--beautiful, brave, romantic,--how fit, every one, to
capture the imagination! Towering a little above the rest, Siegfried,
the _Uebermensch_, the Overman. But finally, with the effect of a
conclusion reached, a judgement, the hero whose heroism differs in
quality from that of the others, the lowly of heart, whose dominant
trait is _Mitleid_, compassion, sympathy with the woes of others,
who pities swans and women and the sinful and the suffering, and
gives his strength to helping them, and sanctifies himself for
their sake.


THE RHINE-GOLD


THE RHINE-GOLD

In the beginning was the Gold,--beautiful, resplendent, its obvious
and simple part to reflect sunlight and be a joy to the eyes;
containing, however, apparently of its very nature, the following
mysterious quality: a ring fashioned from it would endow its possessor
with what is vaunted as immeasurable power, and make him master of
the world. This power shows itself afterwards undefined in some
directions and circumscribed in others, one never fully grasps
its law; one plain point of it, however, was to subject to the
owner of the ring certain inferior peoples and reveal to him the
treasures hidden in the earth, which he could force his thralls
to mine and forge and so shape that they might be used to buy and
subject the superior peoples, thus making him actually, if successful
in corruption, master of the world.

But this ring could by no possibility be fashioned except by one
who should have utterly renounced love.

For these things no reason is given: they were, like the Word.

One feels an allegory. As the poem unfolds, one is often conscious
of it. It is well to hold the thread of it lightly and let it slip
as soon as it becomes puzzling, settling down contentedly in the
joy of simple story. The author himself, very much a poet, must
be supposed to have done something of the sort. He does not follow
to any trite conclusion the thought he has started, he has small
care for minor consistencies. Large-mindedly he drops what has
become inconvenient, and prefers simply beauty, interest, the story.
Thus his personages have a body, and awaken sympathies which would
hardly attach to purely allegorical figures; a charm of livingness
invests the world he has created.

The Gold's home was in the Rhine, at the summit of a high, pointed
rock, where it caught the beams of the sun and shed them down through
the waves, brightening the dim water-world, gladdening the water-folk.
That was its sole use, but for thus making golden daylight in the
deep it was worshipped, besung, called adoring names, by nixies
swimming around it in a sort of joyous rite.

The mysterious potentiality of the gold was known to the Rhine-god;
three of his daughters had been instructed by him, and detailed
to guard the treasure. Some faculty of divination warned him of
danger to it, and of the quarter from whence this danger threatened.
But nixies--even when burdened by cares of state--are just nixies;
those three seem to have lived to laugh before all else--to laugh
and chase one another and play in the cool green element, singing
all the while a fluent, cradling song whose sweetness might well
allure boatmen and bathers.

Below the Rhine lay Nibelheim, the kingdom of mists and night,
the home of the Nibelungs,--dark gnomes, dwarfs, living in the
bowels of the earth, digging its metals, excelling in cunning as
smiths.

The Rhine did not continue flowing water quite down to its bed;
the boundary-line of Nibelheim seems to have been just above it;
the water there turned to fine mist; among the rough rocks of the
river-bed were passages down into the Under-world.

Up through one of these, one day before sunrise, while the Rhine
was melodiously thundering in its majestic course--they are the
Rhine-motifs which open the piece,--came clambering, by some chance,
the Nibelung Alberich. His night-accustomed eyes, as he blinked
upward into the green light, were caught by a silvery glinting of
scales, flashes of flesh-pink and floating hair. The Rhine-maidens,
guardians of the gold, were frolicking around it; but this did not
appear, for the sun had not yet risen to wake it into radiance.
The dwarf saw just a shimmering of young forms, was touched with
a natural desire, and called to them, asking them to come down
to him, and let him join in their play.

At the sound of the strange voice and the sight of the strange
figure, Flosshilde, a shade more sensible than her sisters, cries
out to them: "Look to the gold! Father warned us of an enemy of
the sort!" and the three rally quickly around the treasure. But it
soon appears that the stranger is but a dark, small, hairy, ugly,
harmless-seeming, amorous creature, uttering his wishes very simply.
The watch over the gold is relinquished, and a little amusement
sought in tantalizing and befooling the clumsy wooer.

Alberich, later a figure touched with terror and followed with
dislike, is likeable in this scene, almost gentle, one's sympathies
come near being with him. The music describes him awkward and heavy,
slipping on the rocks, sneezing in the wet; a note of protest is
frequent in his voice. All the music relating to him, now or later,
is joyless, whatever beside it may be.

The sisters have their fun with the poor gnome, whose innocence of
nixies' ways is apparent in the long time it is before all reliance
in their good faith leaves him. Woglinde invites him nearer. With
difficulty he climbs the slippery rocks to reach her. When he can
nearly touch her--he is saying, "Be my sweetheart, womanly child!"--she
darts from him. And the sisters laugh their delicious inhuman laugh.
Woglinde then plunges to the river-bed, calling to Alberich, "Come
down! Here you surely can grasp me!" He owns it will be easier for
him down there, and lets himself down, when the sprite rises, light
as a bubble, to the surface. He is calling her an impudent fish
and a deceitful young lady, when Wellgunde sighs, "Thou beautiful
one!" He turns quickly, inquiring naïvely, "Do you mean me?" She
says, "Have nothing to do with Woglinde. Turn sooner to me!" He is
but too willing, vows that he thinks her much the more beautiful
and gleaming, and prays she will come further down. She stops short
of arm's-length. He pours forth his elementary passion. She feigns
a wish to see her handsome gallant more closely. After a brief
comedy of scanning his face, with insulting promptness she appears
to change her mind, and with the unkindest descriptive terms slipping
from his grasp swims away. And again rings the chorus of malicious
musical laughter. Then the cruellest of the three, Flosshilde, takes
the poor swain in hand. She not only comes down, she allows herself
to be held, she wreathes her slender arms around him, presses him
tenderly and flatters him in music well calculated to daze with
delight. He is not warned by her words, as, while they sit embraced,
she says, "Thy piercing glance, thy stubborn beard, might I see
the one, feel the other, forever! The rough locks of thy prickly
hair, might they forever flow around Flosshilde! Thy toad's shape,
thy croaking voice, oh, might I, wondering and mute, see and hear
them exclusively for ever!" It is the sudden mocking laughter of
the two listening sisters which draws him from his dream--when
Flosshilde slips from his hold, and the three again swim merrily
around, and laugh, and when his angry wail rises call down to him
to be ashamed of himself! But not even then do they let him rest;
they hold forth new hopes, inviting and exciting him to chase them,
till fairly aflame with love and wrath he begins a mad pursuit,
climbing, slipping, falling to the foot of the rocks, starting
upwards again, clutching at this one and that, still eluded with
ironical laughter, until, realizing his impotence, breathless and
quaking with rage, he shakes his clenched hand at them, foaming,
"Let me catch one with this fist!"

He is glaring upward at them, speechless with fury, when his eyes
become fixed upon a brilliant point, growing in size and radiance
until the whole flood is illumined. There is an exquisite hush of
a moment. The sun has risen and kindled its reflection in the gold.
The music describes better than words the spreading of tremulous
light down through the deep. Through the wavering ripples of water
and light cuts the bright call of the gold, the call to wake up
and behold. Again and again it rings, regularly a golden voice.
The Rhine-daughters have quickly forgotten their victim. They begin
their blissful circumswimming of their idol, with a song in ecstatic
celebration of it, so penetratingly, joyously sweet, that you readily
forgive them their naughtiness: "Rhine-gold! Rhine-gold! Luminous
joy! How laugh'st thou so bright and clear!"...

Alberich cannot detach his eyes from the vision. "What is it, you
sleek ones," he asks in awed curiosity, "glancing and gleaming
up there?"

"Now where have you barbarian lived," they reply, "never to have
heard of the Rhine-gold?" They mock his ignorance; returning to
their teasing mood, they invite him to come and revel with them
in the streaming light.

"If it is no good save for you to swim around, it is of small use
to me!" is Alberich's dejected observation. As if their treasure had
been disparaged, Woglinde informs him that he would hardly despise
the gold if he knew all of its wonder! And Wellgunde follows this
part-revelation with the whole secret: The whole world would be
his inheritance who should fashion out of the Rhine-gold a magic
ring. Vainly Flosshilde tries to silence her sisters. Wellgunde
and Woglinde laugh at her prudence, reminding her of the gold's
assured safety in view of the condition attached to the creation
of the ring. This is described in a solemn phrase, serious as the
pronouncing of a vow: "Only he who forswears the power of love,
only he who casts from him the joys of love, can learn the spell
by which the gold may be forced into a ring."--Wherefore, they
hold, the gold is safe, "for all that lives wishes to love, no one
will give up love," least of all this Nibelung, the heat of whose
sentiments had come near scorching them! And they laugh and swim
around the gold with their light-hearted Wallalaleia, diversified
with mocking personalities to the gnome down in the gloom.

But they have miscalculated. Without suspecting it, they have gone
too far. The dwarf stands staring at the gold, dreaming what it
would be to own the world. He is hardly at that moment, thanks
to them, in love with love. His resolution is suddenly taken. He
springs to the rock, shouting: "Mock on! Mock on! The Nibelung is
coming!" With fearful activity, hate-inspired strength, he rapidly
climbs the rock on which he had so slipped and floundered before.
The foolish nymphs, though they see his approach, are still far
from understanding. They still believe it is themselves he seeks to
seize. They now not only laugh--they laugh, as the stage-directions
have it, "_im tollsten Uebermuth_," the craziest towering insolence
of high spirits. "Save yourselves, the gnome is raving! He has
gone mad with love!"

He has reached the summit of the rock, he has laid hands on the
gold. He cries, "You shall make love in the dark!... I quench your
light, I tear your gold from the reef. I shall forge me the ring
of vengeance, for, let the flood hear me declare it: I here curse
love!" Tearing from its socket their splendid lamp, which utters
just once its golden cry, all distorted and lamentable, he plunges
with it into the depths, leaving sudden night over the scene in
which the wild sisters, shocked at last into sobriety, with cries
of Help and Woe start in pursuit of the robber. His harsh laugh
of triumph drifts back from the caves of Nibelheim.

Then occurs a gradual transformation-scene both to the eye and
the ear. The rocks disappear, black waves flow past, the whole
all the while appearing to sink. Clouds succeed the water, mist
the clouds. This finally clears, revealing a calm and lovely scene
on the mountain-heights. The music has during this been painting
the change, too: Sounds of running water, above which hovers a
moment, a memory of the scene just past and a foreboding of its
sorrowful consequences, the strain signifying the renunciation
of love; when this dies away, the motif of the ring, to be heard
so many times after, its fateful character plainly conveyed by the
notes, which also literally describe its circular form. By what
magic of modulation the uninitiated cannot discern, the ring-motif,
as the water by degrees is translated into mist, slides by subtle
changes into a motif which seems, when it is reached, conspicuously
different from it, the motif of the Gods' Abode.

There in the distance it stands, when the mists have perfectly
cleared, bathed in fresh morning light, the tall just-completed
castle, with shimmering battlements, crowning a high rocky mountain,
at whose base, far down out of sight, flows the Rhine. For the
Rhine is the centre of the world we are occupied with: under it,
the Nibelungs; above it, the Gods; beside it, the giants and the
insignificant human race. The music itself here, while the dwelling
of the gods is coming into sight, seems to build a castle: story
above story it rises, topped with gleaming pinnacles, one, lighter
and taller than all the rest, piercing the clouds.

In the foreground lie sleeping side by side, on a flowery bank,
the god and goddess Wotan and Fricka.

He lies dreaming happily of the abode from which the world is to
be commanded by him, to the display of immeasurable power and his
eternal honour. His wife's sleep is less easy. For the situation
is not as free from complications as his untroubled slumbers might
lead one to suppose. Wotan has employed to build him this stronghold
the giants Fasolt and Fafner, formerly his enemies, but bound to
peace by treaties, and has promised them the reward stipulated
for, Freia, goddess of beauty and youth, sister of Fricka. And this
he has done without any serious thought of keeping his word. "_Nie
sann es ernstlich mein Sinn_," he assures Fricka, when, starting in
dismay from her sleep and beholding the completed burg, she reminds
him that the time is come for payment, and asks what shall they do.
Loge, he enlightens her, counselled the compact and promised to
find the means of evading it. He relies upon him to do so. This calm
frankness in the god, with its effect of personal clearness from
all sense of guilt, suggests the measure of Wotan's distinguishing
simplicity. Referring later to the dubious act which so effectually
laid the foundation of sorrows, he says, "Unknowingly deceitful, I
practised untruth. Loge artfully tempted me." He explains himself
to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge,
who has often already brought them into straits: "Where frank courage
is sufficient, I ask counsel of no one. But slyness and cunning
are needed to turn to advantage the ill-will of adversaries, and
that is the talent of Loge."

Strong and calm is Wotan; music of might and august beauty, large
music, supports everyone of his utterances. There is no departure
from this, even when his signal fallibility is in question. Waftures
of Walhalla most commonly accompany his steps; the close of his
speech is frequently marked by the sturdy motif of his spear, the
spear inseparable from him, cut by him from the World-Ash, carved
with runes establishing the bindingness of compacts, by aid of
which he had conquered the world, subdued the giants, the Nibelungs,
and Loge, the Spirit of Fire.

Athirst for power he is, before all: in this trait lie the original
seeds of his destruction; it is for the sake of the tokens of power,
the castle and later the ring, that he commits the injustices which
bring about ruin. Athirst, too, for wisdom: he has given one of his
eyes for Wisdom, in the person of Fricka, who combines in herself
law and order and domestic virtue. And athirst for love,--something
of a grievance to Fricka. "_Ehr ich die Frauen doch mehr als dich
freut_," "I honour women more than pleases you," he retorts to
her reproach of contempt for woman's love and worth, evidenced in
his light ceding of Freia.

He calls himself and all call him a god, adding "eternal" even
when the gods' end is glaringly at hand. The other gods look to
him as chief among them. But he is ever acknowledging the existence
of something outside and above himself, a law, a moral necessity,
which it is no use to contend against; through which, do what he
may, disaster finally overtakes him for having tried to disregard it.
There is a stray hint from him that the world is his very possession
and that he could at will destroy it; but this which so many facts
contradict we may regard as a dream. Yet he feels toward the world
most certainly a responsibility, such as a sovereign's toward his
people; a duty, part of which is that for its sake he must not
allow his spear to be dishonoured. Compacts it must sacredly guard.
All his personal troubles come from this necessity, this constant
check to him: he must respect covenants, his spear stands for their
integrity. Alberich in a bitter discussion declares his knowledge
of where the god is weak, and reminds him that if he should break
a covenant sanctioned by the spear in his hand, this, the symbol
of his power, would split into spray!

He is perhaps best understood, on the whole, with his remorse and
despair, the tortures of his heart and his struggle with his soul,
if one can conceive him as a sort of sublimated aristocrat; a
resplendent great personage--just imaginable in the dawn of history,
when there were giants upon earth--lifted far above the ordinary of
the race by superior gifts, "reigning through beauty," as Fasolt
describes; possessing faculties not shared by common mortals, but
these rudimentary or else in their decline: the power of divination,
not always accurate or clear; the power of miracle, not altogether
to be relied upon; remaining young indefinitely, yet not wholly
enfranchised from time and circumstance; living indefinitely, but
recognising himself as perishable, and passing at last, swallowed
in twilight.

A great warrior and leader of heroes, inciter of men to bold actions
and novel flights; some of his titles: Father of Hosts, Father
of Battles, Father of Victory; riding in the storm-clouds on his
_Luft-ross_, his air-horse, whose hoof-beats and neigh fill us with
excited delight. But his air-horse cannot overtake Brünnhilde's
air-horse, in his pursuit of her, and Grane reaching the goal falls
exhausted....

A great reveller: reference is repeatedly made to the light-minded,
light-hearted, careless humour of the gods, their glorious feasts
and joyous life in the light up there. Their tribe is qualified
as "laughing." Wotan's unshakable dignity indeed does not prevent
a quick easy laugh. And he shows the true aristocratic temper in
being little moved by the sorrows of those beneath and unrelated
to him: one of his laughs, which we witness, is for the howls of
a poor wee dwarf who had been savagely beaten.

And so this powerful clan-chief had had a fancy for a house to
live in worthy of their greatness. Fricka had fallen in with his
desire, but for reasons of her own. To him the citadel was a fresh
addition to his power. But Fricka had been "_um des Gatten Treu'
besorgt_," "ill at ease with regard to her consort's fidelity,"
and had thought the beautiful dwelling might keep him at home.
With her words, "_Herrliche Wohnung, wonniger Hausrath_," "Beautiful
dwelling, delectable household order," first occurs the winning
strain which afterward stands for Fricka in her love of domesticity,
or, separate from her, for the pure charm of home.

When the giants, however, had been subsidised for the great work
of building the house, the narrow-conscienced women had been kept
out of the way while an agreement was reached with the builders;
a grievance which Fricka remembers, and does not let her spouse
forget, when the evil consequences of his act are upon them. Fricka
constitutes something of a living reproach to her husband, though
a certain tender regard still exists between them through the
introductory Opera. A thankless part is Fricka's, like that of Reason
in opposition to Feeling and Genius.

Now Loge, who had been tamed by the conquering spear, hated his
tamer. He craved back his liberty, and, as the Norn tells us later
in _Goetterdaemmerung_, "tried to free himself by gnawing at the
runes on the shaft of the spear." He gave counsel to Wotan which
followed must create difficulties from which the god could deliver
himself only by an injustice; and this injustice Loge seems clearly
to have recognised from the first as the beginning of the end of
the strength of the gods. The subtle Loge is more widely awake than
Wotan to the "power not ourselves which makes for righteousness."
He counselled him to buy the giants' labor by the promise of Freia,
knowing that the gods could never endure to let the amiable goddess
go. He led them to believe that when the time came he would give
them further counsel by which to retain her. And his word Wotan
chose to trust, and gave his heart over to the untroubled enjoyment
of his plans' completion.

And now Freia comes running to him in terror, crying that one of
the giants has told her he is come to fetch her. With her entrance
we first hear the slender sweet phrase, delicately wandering upward,
which after for a time denoting Freia, comes to mean for us just
beauty. Wotan calms the maiden in distress, and asks, as one fancies,
a little uneasily, "Have you seen nothing of Loge?"

The arrival of the giants is one of the great comedy moments of
the play. Their colossally heavy tread, musically rendered, never
fails to call forth laughter from some corner in us of left-over
childhood. It is like the ogre's Fee-faw-fum. Fasolt is a good
giant, his shaggy hair is blond, his fur-tunic white, and his soft
big heart all given over to the touchingly lovely Freia. Fafner is
a bad giant and his hair and furs are black. He is much cleverer
than his brother. They carry as walking-sticks the trunks of trees.

They make it known that they have come for their wages. Wotan bids
them, with a sturdy aplomb worthy of his godhead, state their wishes.
What shall the wages be? Fasolt, a shade astonished, replies, "That,
of course, which we settled upon. Haye you forgotten so soon? Freia....
It is in the bond that she shall follow us home."

"Have you taken leave of your senses... with you bond?" asks Wotan,
with a quick flash. "You must think of a different recompense.
Freia is far too precious to me."

The giant is for a moment still, unable to speak for indignation;
but recovering his voice he makes to the "son of light" a series
of observations eminently to the point. Wotan to these makes no
more retort than as if the words had not been spoken; but--to gain
time till Loge shall arrive--when the giant has quite finished, he
inquires, "What, after all, can the charm of the amiable goddess
signify to you clumsy boors?" Fasolt enlarges, "You, reigning through
beauty, shimmering lightsome race, lightly you offer to barter
for stone towers woman's loveliness. We simpletons labour with
toil-hardened hands to earn a sweet woman who shall dwell with
us poor devils.... And you mean to call the bargain naught?..."

Fafner gloomily checks him: Words will not help them. And the possession
of Freia in itself is to his mind of little account. But of great
account to take her from the gods. In her garden grow golden apples,
she alone has the art of tending these. Eating this fruit maintains
her kinsmen in unwaning youth. Were Freia removed, they must age
and fade. Wherefore let Freia be seized!

Wotan frets underbreath, "Loge is long acoming!"

Freia's cries, as the giants lay hands upon her, bring her brothers
Donner and Froh--the god of Thunder and the god of the Fields--quickly
to her side. A combat between them and the giants is imminent, when
Wotan parts the antagonists with his spear, "Nothing by violence!"
and he adds, what it might be thought he had lost sight of, "My
spear is the protector of bargains!"

And then finally, finally, comes in sight Loge. Wotan lets out his
breath in relief: "Loge at last!"

The music has introduced Loge by a note-painting as of fire climbing
up swiftly through airiest fuel. There is a quick flash or two, like
darting tongues of flame. A combination of swirling and bickering
and pulsating composes the commonest Loge-motif, but the variety
is endless of the fire's caprices. Fantastical, cheery, and light
it is mostly, sinister sometimes, suggestive of treachery, but
terrible never; its beauty rather than its terror is reproduced.
So characteristic are the fire-motifs that after a single hearing a
person instinctively when one occurs looks for some sign or suggestion
of Loge.

He stands now upon the rock, a vivid, charming, disquieting apparition,
with his wild red hair and fluttering scarlet cloak. The arch-hypocrite
wears always a consummately artless air. He comes near winning
us by a bright perfect good-humour, which is as of the quality
of an intelligence without a heart. The love of mischief for its
own sake, which is one of his chief traits, might be thought to
account easily for his many enemies.

He is related to the gods, a half-god, but is regarded coldly by
his kin. Wotan is his single friend in the family, and with Wotan
he preserves the attitude of a self-acknowledged underling. He
stands in fear of his immediate strength, while nourishing a hardly
disguised contempt for his wit, as well as that of his cousins
collectively. A secret hater of them all, and clear-minded in estimating
them. A touch of Mephistophelian there is in the pleasure which he
seems to find in the contemplation of the canker-spot in Wotan's
nature, drawing from the god over and over again, as if the admission
refreshed him, that he has no intention of dealing justly toward
the Rhine-maidens.

"Is this your manner of hastening to set aright the evil bargain
concluded by you?" Wotan chides, as he appears from the valley.

"How? What bargain concluded by me?..."

Pinned down to accounting for himself, "I promised," he says, "to
think over the matter, and try to find means of loosing you from
the bargain.... But how should I have promised to perform the
impossible?" Under the pressure of all their angers, he finally
airily delivers himself: "Having at heart to help you, I travelled
the world over, visiting its most recondite corners, in search
of such a substitute for Freia as might be found acceptable to
the giants. Vainly I sought, and now at last I plainly see that
nothing upon this earth is so precious that it can take the place
in man's affection of the loveliness and worth of woman."

Struck and uplifted by this thought, the gods, moved, look in one
another's faces, and the music expresses the sweet expansion of
the heart overflowing with thoughts of beauty and love. It is one
of the memorable moments of the Prologue.

"Everywhere," proceeds Loge, "far as life reaches, in water, earth,
and air, wherever is quickening of germs and stirring of nature's
forces, I investigated and inquired what there might be in existence
that a man should hold dearer than woman's beauty and worth? Everywhere
my inquiry was met with derision. No creature, in water, earth, or
air, is willing to renounce love and woman."

As he pauses, the gods again gaze at one another, with tender tearful
smiles, in an exalted emotion over the recognition of this touching
truth; and the music reexpresses that blissful expansion of the
heart.

"Only one did I see," Loge says further--the light fading out of
the music--"who had renounced love; for red gold he had forsworn
the favor of woman." He relates Alberich's theft of the gold, as
it had been told him by the Rhine-daughters, who had made him their
advocate with Wotan, to procure its restitution.

But their plea meets with a deaf ear. "You are stupid, indeed,
if not perverse," the god answers Loge, when he delivers their
appeal. "You find me in straits myself, how should I help others?"

The giants have been listening to this talk about Alberich, an
ancient enemy of theirs. The cleverer brother asks Loge, "What
great advantage is involved in the possession of the gold, that
the Nibelung should find it all-sufficient?" Loge explains. There
drift back to Wotan's memory runes of the Ring, and the thought
readily arises that it would be well he possessed the ring himself.

"But how, Loge, should I learn the art to shape it?" At the reply
that he who would practise the magic by which it could be shaped
must renounce love, the god turns away in conclusive disrelish.
Loge informs him that he would in any case have been too late:
Alberich has already successfully forged the ring.

This alters the face of things.

"But if he possesses a ring of such power," says simple Donner, "it
must be taken from him, lest he bring us all under its compulsion!"

Wotan hesitates no more. "The ring I must have!"

"Yes, now, as long as love need not be renounced, it will be easy
to obtain it," says simple Froh.

"Easy as mocking--child's-play!" sneers Loge.

"Then do you tell us, how?..." Wotan's fine majestic simplicity
has no false pride.

The Serpent gleefully replies, "By theft! What a thief stole, you
steal from the thief! Could anything be easier? Only, Alberich
is on his guard, you will have to proceed craftily if you would
overreach the robber... in order to return their treasure to the
Rhine-daughters, who earnestly entreat you."

"The Rhine-daughters?" chafes Wotan. "What do you trouble me with
them?"

And the goddess of Wisdom,--more sympathetic on the whole in this
exhibition of weakness than in her hard justice later--exposing
the core of her feminine being, breaks in: "I wish to hear nothing
whatever of that watery brood. Many a man, greatly to my vexation,
have they lured under while he was bathing, with promises of love."

The giants have been listening and have taken counsel together.
Fafner now approaches Wotan. "Hear, Wotan.... Keep Freia.... We
have fixed upon a lesser reward. We will take in her stead the
Nibelung's gold."

Wotan comes near losing his temper. "What I do not own, I shall
bestow upon you shameless louts?"

Fafner expresses a perfect confidence in Wotan's equipment for obtaining
the gold.

"For you I shall go to this trouble?" rails the irritated god,
"For you I shall circumvent this enemy? Out of all measure impudent
and rapacious my gratitude has made you clowns!..."

Fasolt who has only half-heartedly accepted his brother's decision
in favor of the gold, stays to hear no more, but seizes Freia. With
a warning that she shall be regarded as a hostage till evening,
but that if when they return the Rhinegold is not on the spot as
her ransom, they will keep her forever, the giants hurry her off.

Her cry for help rings back. Her brothers, in the act of rushing
to the rescue, look at Wotan for his sanction. No encouragement
is to be gathered from his face. He stands motionless, steeped
in perplexity, in conflict with himself.

Loge has now a few moments' pure enjoyment in safely tormenting
his superiors. He stands, with his fresh, ingenuous air, on a point
overlooking the valley, and describes the giants' progress, as
does the music, too. "Not happy is Freia, hanging on the back of
the rough ones as they wade through the Rhine...." Her dejected
kindred wince.

The heavy footsteps die away. Loge returning his attention to the
gods, voices his amazement at the sight which meets him: "Am I
deceived by a mist? Am I misled by a dream? How wan and fearful and
faded you do look! The glow is dead in your cheeks, the lightening
quenched in your glances. Froh, it is still early morning! Donner,
you are dropping your hammer! What ails Fricka? Is it chagrin to
see the greyness of age creeping over Wotan?" Sounds of woe burst
from all, save Wotan, who with his eyes on the ground still stands
absorbed in gloomy musing.

The solution of the puzzle suddenly, as he feigns, flashes upon
Loge: This is the result of Freia's leaving them! They had not yet
that morning tasted her apples. Now, of necessity, those golden
apples of youth in her garden, which she alone could cultivate, will
decay and drop. "Myself," he says, "I shall be less inconvenienced
than you, because she was ever grudging to me of the exquisite
fruit, for I am only half of as good lineage as you, Resplendent
Ones. On the other hand, you depended wholly upon the rejuvenating
apples; the giants knew that and are plainly practising against
your lives. Now bethink yourselves how to provide against this.
Without the apples, old and grey, a mock to the whole world, the
dynasty of the gods must perish!"

With sudden resolution, Wotan starts from his dark study. "Up, Loge!
Down with me to Nibelheim! I will conquer the gold!"

"The Rhine-daughters, then," speaks wicked Loge, "may look to have
their prayer granted?"

Wotan harshly silences him. "Be still, chatterer!... Freia the good,
Freia must be ransomed!"

Loge drops the subject and offers his services as guide. "Shall
we descend through the Rhine?"

The Rhine, with its infesting nymphs?...

"Not through the Rhine!" says Wotan.

"Then through the sulphur-cleft slip down with me!" And Loge vanishes
down a cleft in the rock, through which Wotan, after bidding his
family wait for him where they are until evening, follows.

Thick vapour pours forth from the sulphur-cleft, dimming and shortly
blotting out the scene. We are travelling downward into the earth.
A dull red glow gradually tinges the vapour. Sounds of diminutive
hammers upon anvils become distinct. The orchestra takes up their
suggestion and turns it into a simple monotonous strongly rhythmical
air--never long silent in this scene--which comes to mean for us
the little toiling Nibelungs, the cunning smiths. A great rocky
subterranean cave running off on every side into rough shafts,
is at last clearly visible, lighted by the ruddy reflection of
forge-fires.

This is where Alberich reigns and by the power of the ring compels
his enslaved brothers to labour for him. Renouncing love has not been
good for the disposition of Alberich. It is not only the insatiable
lust of gold and power now darkening the soul-face of the earlier
fairly gentle-natured Nibelung, it is a savage gloating cruelty,
bespeaking one unnaturally loveless; it is a sanguinary hatred,
too, of all who still can love, of love itself, a thirst and
determination to see it completely done away with in the world,
exterminated--a sort of fallen angel's sin against the Holy Ghost.
A state, beneath the incessant excitement of slave-driving and
treasure-amassing, of inexpressible unhappiness, lightened by moments
of huge exaltation in the sense of his new power.

We find him, when the cavern glimmers into sight, brutally handling
his crumb of a gnome brother. Mime, like Alberich, wins some part of
our heart on first acquaintance, which he later ceases to deserve;
but in the case of Mime I think it is never wholly withdrawn, even
when he is shown to be an unmitigated wretch; he is, to begin with,
so little, and he has a funny, fetching twist or quaver in his
voice, indicated by the notes themselves of his rather mean little
sing-song melodies. Alberich's nominal reason for indulging his
present passion for hurting--he is haling Mime by the ear--is that
the latter is overslow with certain piece of work which, with minute
instructions, he has been ordered to do. Mime, under pressure, produces
the article, which he had in truth been trying to keep for his own,
suspecting in it some mysterious value. It is the _Tarnhelm_, a
curious cap of linked metal. Its uncanny character is confided to us
even before we see it at work, by the motif which first appears with
its appearance: a motif preparing for some unearthly manifestation
the mind pricked to disquieted attention by the weirdness of the
air. Alberich places it upon his head, utters a brief incantation,
and disappears from sight. A column of vapour stands in his place.

"Do you see me?" asks Alberich's disembodied voice. Mime looks
around, astonished. "Where are you? I see you not!" "Then feel
me!" cries the power-drunken tyrant, and Mime winces and cowers
under blows from an unseen scourge, while Alberich's voice laughs.
Out of measure exhilarated by his successful new device for ensuring
diligence and inspiring fear, he storms out of hearing with the
terrible words, "Nibelungs all, bow to Alberich!... He can now
be everywhere at once, keeping watch over you. Rest and leisure
are done and over with for you! For him you must labour.... His
conquered slaves are you forever!" The moment of his overtaking
the Nibelungs is indicated by their sudden distant outcry.

Mime has been left crouching and whimpering on the rocky floor.
Thus Wotan and Loge find him.

Loge is in all the following scene Wotan's very active vizier,
furnishing the invention and carrying out the stratagems. Wotan,
except to the eye, takes the background and has little to say;
but as the blue of his mantle and the fresh chaplet on his locks
strike the eye refreshingly in the fire-reddened cave, so his voice,
with echoes in it of the noble upper world, comes like gusts of
sweet air.

Loge sets the cowering dwarf on his feet and by artful questions
gets the whole story from him of the ring and the Nibelungs' woe.
About the Tarnhelm, too, Mime tells Loge. At the recollection of
the stripes he has suffered, he rubs his back howling. The gods
laugh. That gives Mime the idea that these strangers must be of the
great. He is in his turn questioning them, when he hears Alberich's
bullying voice approaching. He runs hither and thither in terror and
calls to the strangers to look to themselves, Alberich is coming!
Wotan quietly seats himself on a stone to await him.

Alberich enters driving before him with his scourge a whole army of
little huddling, hurrying Nibelungs, groaning under the weight of
great pieces of gold and silver smithwork, which, while he threatens
and urges them, they heap in a duskily glimmering mound. In the
fancy that they are not obeying fast or humbly enough, he takes the
magic ring from his finger, kisses and lifts it commandingly over
them, whereupon with cries of dismay they scramble away, scattering
down the shafts, in feverish haste to be digging and delving.

Heavy groans are in the music when it refers to the oppression
of the Nibelungs; groans so tragic and seriously presented that
they bring up the thought of other oppressions and killing labours
than those of the Nibelungs. The music which later depicts the
amassing of riches, indicates such horror of strain, such fatigue,
such hopeless weariness of heart and soul, that the hearer must
think with sharpened sympathy of all that part of humanity which
represents the shoulder placed against the wheel.

Alberich turns an angry eye upon the intruders: "What do you want?"

It is then most especially that the calm notes of Wotan fall healingly
upon the sense: They have heard tales of novel events in Nibelheim, of
mighty wonders worked there by Alberich, and are come from curiosity
to witness these.

After this simple introduction from the greater personage, his
light-foot, volatile, graceful minister takes Alberich in hand and
practising confidently upon his intoxicated conceit of power, his
pride in the cleverness which had contrived ring and wishing-cap,
uses him like a puppet of which all the strings should be in his
hand.

Alberich recognises in Loge an old enemy. Loge's reply to Alberich's,
"I know you well enough, you and your kind!" is perhaps, with its
cheerful dancing flicker, his prettiest bit of self-description.
"You know me, childish elf? Then, say, who am I, that you should
be surly? In the cold hollow where you lay shivering, how would
you have had light and cheering warmth, if Loge had never laughed
for you?..."

But Alberich seems to remember too many reasons for distrusting
him. "I can now, however," he boasts, "defy you all!" and he calls
to their notice the heaped riches,--the _Hort_.

"But," remarks Wotan, "of what use is all that wealth in cheerless
Nibelheim, where there is nothing to buy?"

"Nibelheim," replies Alberich, "is good to furnish treasures and
to keep them safe. But when they form a sufficient heap, I shall
use them to make myself master of the world!"

"And how, my good fellow, shall you accomplish this?"

Alberich has apprehended in this guest one of the immortals,--which,
taken into consideration a speech suggestive every time it resounds
of calm heights and stately circumstances, is not strange. Alberich
hates him, hates them all. This is his exposition of his plan:
"You who, lapped in balmy airs, live, laugh, and love up there,
with a golden fist I shall catch you all! Even as I renounced love,
all that lives shall renounce it! Ensnared and netted in gold,
you shall care for gold only! You immortal revellers, cradling
yourselves on blissful heights in exquisite pastimes, you despise
the black elf! Have a care!... For when you men have come to be
the servants of my power, your sweetly adorned women, who would
despise the dwarf's love, since he cannot hope for love, shall
be forced to serve his pleasure. Ha ha! Do you hear? Have a care,
have a care, I say, of the army of the night, when the riches of
the Nibelungs once climb into the light!"

Wotan, whose Olympian self-sufficiency is usually untroubled by what
any mean other-person may say, at this cannot contain himself, but
starting to his feet cries out a command for the blasphemous fool's
annihilation! Before Alberich, however, has caught the words--his
deafness perhaps it is which saves his life--Loge has called Wotan
back to his reason. Practising on Alberich's not completely outlived
simplicity, he by the ruse of feigning himself very stupid and
greatly impressed by his cleverness, now induces him to show off for
their greater amazement the power of the Tarnhelm, which it appears
has not only the trick of making the wearer at will invisible, but
of lending him whatever shape he may choose. Later we find that
it has also the power to transport the wearer at pleasure to the
ends of the earth in a moment of time.

To put Loge's incredulity to shame, Alberich, Tarnhelm on head,
turns himself into a dragon, drawing its cumbersome length across
the stage to a fearsome tune which gives all of its uncouthness,
and never fails to call forth laughter, like the giants' tread. As
a further exhibition of his power, after full measure of flattery
in Loge's pretended fright, he at the prompting of the same changes
himself into a toad, which has but time for a hop or two, before
Wotan places his calm foot upon it. Loge snatches the Tarnhelm
off its head and Alberich is seen in his own person writhing under
Wotan. Loge binds him fast, and the gods, with their struggling
prey between them, hurry off through the pass by which they came.

Then reoccurs, but reversed, the transformation between Nibelheim
and the upper world. The region of the stithies is passed, the little
hammers are heard. At last Wotan and Loge with Alberich reappear
through the sulphur-cleft.

"Look, beloved," says Loge to the unhappy captive, "there lies
the world which you think of conquering for your own. Tell me now,
what little corner in it do you intend as a kennel for me?" And he
dances around him, snapping his fingers to the prettiest, heartlessly
merry fire-music.

Alberich replies with raving insult. Wotan's cool voice reminds
him of the vanity of this and calls him to the consideration of
his ransom. When Alberich, after a time, grumblingly inquires what
they will have, he says, largely and frankly, "The treasure, your
shining gold."

If he can only retain the ring, reflects Alberich, the loss of
the treasure may be quickly repaired. At his request they free
his right hand; he touches the ring with his lips and murmurs the
spell by which after a moment the swarm of little smoke-grimed
Nibelungs arrives groaning and straining under the weight of the
Hort; again they pile it in a heap, and at Alberich's command scurry
home.

"Now I have paid, now let me go," says the humbled Nibelung-lord,
"and that helmet-like ornament which Loge is holding, have the
kindness to give it me back." But Loge flings the Tarnhelm on the
heap as part of the ransom. Hard to bear is this, but Mime can
after all forge another. "Now you have gotten everything; now,
you cruel ones, loose the thongs." But Wotan remarks, "You have a
gold ring upon your finger; that, I think, belongs with the rest."
At this, a madness of terror seizes Alberich. "The ring?..." "You
must leave it for ransom." "My life--but not the ring!" With that
bitter coldness of the aristocrat which in time brings about
revolutions, Wotan replies, "It is the ring I ask for--with your
life do what you please!" The dull Nibelung pleads still after
that, and his words contain thorns which he might reasonably expect
to tell: "The thing which I, anguish-harried and curse-crowned,
earned through a horrible renunciation, you are to have for your
own as a pleasant princely toy?... If I sinned, I sinned solely
against myself, but against all that has been, is, or shall be,
do you, Immortal, sin, if you wrest this ring from me...."

Wotan without further discussion stretches out his hand and tears
from Alberich's finger the ring, which gives once more, under this
violence, the golden call, saddened and distorted. "Here, the
ring!--Your chattering does not establish your right to it!" Alberich
drops to earth, felled. Wotan places the ring on his hand and stands
in gratified contemplation of it. "I hold here what makes me the
mightiest lord of the mighty!"

Loge unties Alberich and bids him slip home. But the Nibelung is
past care or fear, and rising to insane heights of hatred lays upon
the ring such a curse as might well shake its owner's complacency.
"As it came to me through a curse, accursed be this ring! As it
lent me power without bounds, let its magic now draw death upon
the wearer! Let no possessor of it be happy.... Let him who owns
it be gnawed by care and him who owns it not be gnawed by envy! Let
every one covet, no one enjoy it!... Appointed to death, fear-ridden
let its craven master be! While he lives, let his living be as
dying! The ring's master be the ring's slave,--until my stolen good
return to me!... Now keep it! Guard it well! My curse you shall
not escape!"

"Did you hear his affectionate greeting?" asks Loge, when Alberich
has vanished down the rocky cleft.

Wotan, absorbed in the contemplation of the ring, has heard the
curse with the same degree of interest he might have bestowed upon
the trickle of a brook. He replies magnanimously, "Grudge him not
the luxury of railing!"

Fricka, Donner, and Froh hasten to welcome the returning gods.
The approach of Freia, whom the giants are bringing between them,
is felt before she appears, in a subtle sweetening of the air, a
simultaneous lightening of all the hearts and return of youth to
the faces, which Froh's daintily expansive greeting describes.

Fricka is hurrying toward her. Fasolt interposes: Not to be touched!
She still belongs to them until the ransom have been paid. Fasolt
does not fall in willingly with the arrangement which shall give
them the gold in place of the woman; he has been overpersuaded
by the black brother; his regret at losing Freia is so great, he
tells the gods, that the treasure, if she is to be relinquished,
will have to be piled so high as completely to hide the blooming
maid.

"Let it be measured according to Freia's stature!" decrees Wotan,
and the giants drive their great staves into the earth so that
they roughly frame the figure of Freia. Helped by Loge and Froh,
they begin stopping the space between with the treasure. Wotan's
fastidiousness cannot endure the visible sordid details of his
bargain; he turns from the sight of the incarnate rose, as she
stands drooping in a noble shame, to be valued against so much
gold. "Hasten with the work!" he bids them, "it sorely goes against
me!" When Fafner's rough greed orders the measure to be more solidly
pressed down, and he ducks spying for crevices still to be stopped
with gold, Wotan turns away, soul-sick: "Humiliation burns deep
in my breast!"

The Hort is exhausted, when Fafner looking for crannies exclaims,
"I can still see the shining of her hair," and demands, to shut
it from view, the Tarnhelm which Loge has attempted to retain.
"Let it go!" commands Wotan, when Loge hesitates.

The affair, it now would seem, must be closed; but Fasolt, in his
grief over the loss of the Fair one, still hovers about, peering
if perchance he may still see her, and so he catches through the
screen of gold the gleam of her eye, and declares that so long
as the lovely glance is visible he will not renounce the woman.

"But can you not see, there is no more gold?" remonstrates Loge.
Fafner, who has not failed to store in his brain what he earlier
overheard, replies, "Nothing of the kind. There is a gold ring
still on Wotan's finger. Give us that to stop the cranny."

"This ring?..." cries Wotan, like Alberich before him.

"Be advised," Loge says to the giants, as if in confidence. "That
ring belongs to the Rhine-maidens. Wotan intends to return it to
them."

But Wotan has no subterfuges or indirections of his own--not conscious
ones; when he needs their aid, he uses another, as he had told
Fricka. "What are you prating?" he corrects Loge; "what I have
obtained with such difficulty, I shall keep without compunction
for myself." Loge amuses himself with probing further the grained
spot in his superior. "My promise then stands in bad case, which I
made to the Rhine-daughters when they turned to me in their trouble."
Wotan, with the coldness of the Pharisee's "Look thou to that,"
replies, "Your promise does not bind me. The ring, my capture,
I shall keep."

"But you will have to lay it down with the ransom," Fafner insists.

"Ask what else you please, you shall have it; but not for the whole
world will I give up the ring."

Fasolt instantly lays hands again upon Freia and draws her from
behind the Hort. "Everything then stands as it stood before. Freia
shall come with us now for good and all." An outcry of appeal goes
up from all the gods to Wotan. He turns from them unmoved. "Trouble
me not. The ring I will not give up." And the idleness of further
appeal, howsoever eloquent, cannot be doubted.

But now unaccountable darkness invades the scene; from the hollow
alcove in the rocks, letting down to the interior earth, breaks a
bluish light; while all, breathless, watch the strange phenomenon,
the upper half of a woman becomes discernible in it, wrapped in
smoke-coloured veils and long black locks. It is the Spirit of
the Earth, the all-knowing Erda, whose motif describes the stately
progression of natural things, and is the same as the Rhine-motif,
which describes a natural thing in stately progression. She lifts
a warning hand to Wotan. "Desist, Wotan, desist! Avoid the curse
on the ring... The possession of it will doom you to dark ruin...."

Wotan, struck, inquires in awe, "Who are you, warning woman?"

The one who knows all that was, is, and shall be, she tells him;
the ancestress of the everlasting world, older than time; the mother
of the Norns who speak with Wotan nightly. Gravest danger has brought
her to seek him in person. Let him hear and heed! The present order
is passing away. There is dawning for the gods a dark day.... At
this prophesied ruin, the music reverses the motif of ascending
progression, and paints melancholy disintegration and crumbling
downfall, a strain to be heard many times in the closing opera of
the trilogy, when the prophecy comes to pass and the gods enter
their twilight. The apparition is sinking back into the earth.
Wotan beseeches it to tarry and tell him more. But with the words,
"You are warned.... Meditate in sorrow and fear!" it vanishes. The
masterful god attempts to follow, to wrest from the weird woman
further knowledge. His wife and her brothers hold him back. He
stands for a time still hesitating, uncertain, wrapped in thought.
With sudden resolve at last he tosses the ring with the rest of the
treasure, and turns heart-wholly to greet Freia returning among
them, bringing back their lost youth.

While the gods are expressing tender rapture over the restoration of
Freia, and she goes from one to the other receiving their caresses,
Fafner spreads open a gigantic sack and in this is briskly stuffing
the gold. Fasolt, otherwise preoccupied, had not thought to bring
a sack. He attempts to stay Fafner's too active hand. "Hold on,
you grasping one, leave something for me! An honest division will
be best for us both!" Fafner objects, "You, amorous fool, cared
more for the maid than the gold. With difficulty I persuaded you
to the exchange. You would haved wooed Freia without thought of
division, wherefore in the division of the spoil I shall still
be generous if I keep the larger half for myself." Fasolt's anger
waxes great. He calls upon the gods to judge between them and divide
the treasure justly. Wotan turns from his appeal with characteristic
contempt. Loge, the mischief-lover, whispers to Fasolt, "Let him
take the treasure, do you but reserve the ring!" Fafner has during
this not been idle, but has sturdily filled his sack; the ring is
on his hand. Fasolt demands it in exchange for Freia's glance.
He snatches at it, Fafner defends it, and when in the wrestling
which ensues Fasolt has forced it from his brother, the latter
lifts his tree-trunk and strikes him dead. Having taken the ring
from his hand, he leisurely proceeds to finish his packing, while
the gods stand around appalled, and the air shudderingly resounds
with the notes of the curse. A long, solemn silence follows. Fafner
is seen, after a time, shouldering the sack, into which the whole of
the glimmering Hort has disappeared, and, bowed under its weight,
leaving for home.

"Dreadful," says Wotan, deeply shaken; "I now perceive to be the
power of the curse!" Sorrow and fear lie crushingly upon his spirit.
Erda, who warned him of the power of the curse, now proven before his
eyes, warned him likewise of worse things, of old order changing,
a dark day dawning for the gods. He must seek Erda, learn more,
have counsel what to do. He is revolving such thoughts when Fricka,
who believes all their trouble now ended, approaches him with sweet
words, and directs his eyes to the beautiful dwelling hospitably
awaiting its masters. "An evil price I paid for the building!"
Wotan replies heavily.

Mists are still hanging over the valley, clinging to the heights;
nor have the clouds yet wholly lifted from their spirits. Donner,
to clear the atmosphere, conjures a magnificent storm, by the blow
of his hammer bringing about thunder and lightning. When the black
cloud disperses which for a moment enveloped him and Froh on the
high rock from which he directs this festival of the elements,
a bright rainbow appears, forming a bridge between the rock and
the castle now shining in sunset light. A bridge of music is here
built, too; the tremulous weaving of it in tender and gorgeous
colours is seen through the ear, and its vaulting the valley with
an easy overarching spring. Froh, architect of the bridge, bids
the gods walk over it fearlessly: It is light but will prove solid
under their feet.

Wotan stands sunk in contemplation of the castle; his reflections,
still upon the shameful circumstances of his bargain, are not happy.
In the midst of them he is struck by a great thought, and recovers
his courage and hardihood. The sharp, bright, resolute motif which
represents his inspiration is afterward indissolubly connected
with the Sword,--a sword aptly embodying his idea, which is one
of defence for his castle and clan. A suggestion of his idea is
contained, too, in the word which he gives to Fricka as the castle's
name, when he now invites her to accompany him thither: Walhalla,
Hall of the Slain in Battle, or, Hall of Heroes.

Headed by Wotan and Fricka, the gods ascend toward the bridge.
Loge looks after them in mingled irony and contempt. "There they
hasten to their end, who fancy themselves so firmly established in
being. I am almost ashamed to have anything to do with them...."
And he revolves in his mind a scheme for turning into elemental fire
again and burning them all up, those blind gods. He is nonchalantly
adding himself to their train, when from the Rhine below rises
the lament of the Rhine-daughters, begging that their gold may
be given back to them. Wotan pauses with his foot on the bridge:
"What wail is that?" Loge enlightens him, and, at Wotan's annoyed,
"Accursed nixies! Stop their importunity!" calls down to them,
"You, down there in the water, what are you complaining about?
Hear what Wotan bids: No longer having the gold to shine for you,
make yourselves happy basking in the sunshine of this new pomp of
the gods!" Loud laughter from the gods greets this sally, and they
pass over the bridge, Walhalla-ward, followed by the water-nymphs'
wail for their lost gold, closing with the reproach, "Only in the
pleasant water-depths is truth; false and cowardly are those making
merry up there!" With Walhalla and rainbow shedding a radiance
around them of which we are made conscious through the delighted
sense of hearing, the curtain falls.

So we lose sight of them, moving into their new house; in spite
of their glory a little like the first family of the county. But
while to triumphant strains they seek their serene stronghold, we
know that the lines have been laid for disaster. The Ring is in the
world, with its terrific power; and there is in the world one whom
wrong has turned into a deadly enemy, whose soul is undividedly bent
upon getting possession of the Ring, which Wotan may not himself
attempt to get--stopped, if not by Erda's warning or by terror of
the curse, by the fact that he finally gave it to the giants in
payment of an acknowledged debt, and that his spear stands precisely
for honor in relations of the sort.


THE VALKYRIE

(DIE WALKUERE)


THE VALKYRIE

(DIE WALKUERE)


I

Wotan's idea, from which the abode of the gods received its name
of Walhalla, had been to people his halls with hordes of heroes
who should defend it from Alberich and his "army of the night."

Erda's prophecy of a dark day dawning for the gods had destroyed
Wotan's peace. The craving to know more of this drove him to seek
her in the depths of the earth. He cast upon her the spell of love
and constrained her to speak. It does not appear that he gained
from her any clear knowledge of the future; he learned chiefly, as
we gather, what were the dangers besetting him. The end threatened
through Alberich's forces, which, however, could not prevail against
the heroic garrison of Walhalla unless Alberich should recover the
Ring; through the power of the Ring he would be able to estrange
the heroes from Wotan and, turning their arms against him, overcome
him. "When the dark enemy of love (Alberich) in wrath shall beget
a son," so ran Erda's warning, "the end of the Blessed shall not
be long delayed!"

From Erda was born to Wotan a daughter, so near to her father's
heart that she seemed an incarnation of his most intimate wish,
his very will embodied; so part of himself she knew his unspoken
thought. This was Brünnhilde (from _Brünne_, corslet). With eight
other daughters,--born to Wotan from "the tie of lawless love,"
as we learn from Fricka in her tale of wrongs--Brünnhilde, the
dearest to him of all, followed her father to battle, serving him
as Valkyrie. These warlike maidens hovered over the battle-field,
directing the fortune of the day according to Wotan's determination,
protecting this combatant and seeing his death-doom executed upon
the other; they seized the heroes as they fell, and bore them to
Walhalla to form part of Wotan's guard. From these "Slain in Battle"
it was that Walhalla had its name. To make great their number,
Wotan, who earlier had by laws and compacts tried to bind men to
peace, now breathed into them a rough, bellicose spirit, goaded
them on to quarrel and revolt.

That the end of the gods, if prophecy must fulfill itself, should not
be a contemptible or pitiful one, that was Wotan's preoccupation,--to
save, if nothing more, the dignity of the Eternals; with this in
view, to keep Alberich from recovering the Ring, by which he might
work such really disgusting havoc. The Ring was in the possession
of Fafner, who had turned himself into a dragon, and in a lonely
forest-girt cave guarded it and the rest of the treasure of the
Nibelungen, for the sake of which he had killed Fasolt, his brother.
Wotan, as we have seen, could not wrest from him the Ring which he
himself had given in payment for the building of Walhalla: for the
honour of his spear he must not attempt it. Alberich, not bound as
he was to keep his hands off it, must infallibly and indefatigably
be devising means to regain possession of it. It was plain to Wotan
that he must find some one to do that which he himself could not,
some one, who, unprompted by him, should yet accomplish his purposes,
some one free as he was not. This tool who was yet not to be his
tool, since a god's good faith demanded that neither directly nor
indirectly he should meddle with the Ring, Wotan supposed he had
created for himself in Siegmund, born to him, with a twin sister,
Sieglinde, of a human mother. This boy with whom, in human disguise,
under the names of Wälse and Wolf,--Wolf for his enemies, Wälse for
his kindred,--he lived in the wild woods, he reared in a spirit of
lawlessness, wild courage, disregard of the gods. We must suppose
it to have been for the sake of preventing association with women
from softening his disposition that, while Siegmund was a child,
Wotan, sacrificing to the hardness of fibre it was his object to
produce, permitted the catastrophe which deprived the boy of mother
and sister. Returning home from a day's wild chase,--hunters and
hunted alike human,--father and son found their dwelling burned
to the ground, the mother slain, the sister gone. They lived for
years together after that, in the woods, always in conflict with
enemies, of whom their peculiar daring and strength raised them
an infinite number. In time, when the son was well grown, Wotan
forsook him, left him to complete his development alone, under
the harsh training of the calamities and sorrows fatally incident
to the temper and manner of viewing things which that father had
bred in him. The lad received the usage of a sword in the forging,
extremes of furnace and ice-brook. So he stood at last, Wotan's
pupil and finished instrument, an embodied defiance of the law and
the gods, proper to do the work which the law of the gods forbade.
Some defence against the wrath which he must inevitably rouse,
his father could not but feel impelled to provide, yet could he
not, without violating the honour which in his simple-minded way
he was striving to preserve intact, give it to him directly. He
could not bestow upon him outright a _Sieges-schwert_--magical
sword which ensured victory. But he placed one where the young
man should find it.

The piece opens with the blustering music of a storm, whose violence
is rapidly dying down.

The curtain rises upon the interior of Hunding's very primitive
dwelling, built about a great ash-tree whose trunk stands in view.
Siegmund, predestined to be ever at strife with his fellow-man, in
circumstances of peculiar distress seeks the shelter of Hunding's
roof. We see him burst into the empty hall, staggering and panting.
His spear and shield have splintered beneath the enemies' strokes;
deprived of arms, he has been forced to flee; he has been so hotly
pursued, so beaten by the storm, that upon reaching this refuge he
can no more than drop beside the hearth and lie there, exhausted.

It is his sister's house to which fate has led him, where, ill-starred
and unhappy like himself, this other child of Wälse's lives, in
subjection to Hunding, her lord, who has come by her through some
obscure commerce, and to whom she is no more than part of the household
baggage.

Hearing the rustle of Siegmund's entrance, Sieglinde hurries in,
and, beholding a stranger outstretched upon the ground, stops short
to observe him. The strength of the prostrate body cannot fail to
strike her. At his gasped call for water, she hurries to fetch it
from the spring out of doors. His perishing need is shown in the
devotion with which he drains the horn she hands him. His eyes, as he
returns it, are arrested by her face, and dwell upon it with fearless
lingering scrutiny--while the strain for the first time trembles
upon the air which, singing the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, is
to caress our hearing so many times more. His fatigue has magically
vanished. He asks to whom he owes the refreshment afforded him.
When, at her reply and request that he shall await Hunding's return,
he refers to himself as an unarmed and wounded guest, she eagerly
inquires of his wounds. But he jumps up, shaking off all thought
of wounds or weariness. His succinct narrative of the circumstances
which have brought him to her hearth, he brings to a close: "But
faster than I vanished from the mob of my pursuers, my weariness
has vanished from me. Night lay across my eyelids,--the sun now
smiles upon me anew!" She offers the guest mead to drink, at his
prayer tasting it before him. As he returns the emptied horn, again
his eyes dwell upon her face, with an emotion ever increasing.
Both gaze in simple undisguised intensity of interest. There is
a long moment's silence between them. Then, at the love he feels
surging in his bosom, remembrance comes to Siegmund of what he is,--a
man so ill-fated that it may well be feared his ill-fortune shall
infect those with whom he comes into contact. "You have relieved an
ill-fated man," he warns her, his voice unsteady with the pang of
this recognition, "may his wish turn ill-fortune from you! Sweetly
have I rested.... I will now fare further on my way!" As he turns
to the door she detains him with the quick cry: "What pursues you,
that you should thus flee?" He answers, slowly and sadly: "Misfortune
pursues me wherever I flee. Misfortune meets me wherever I go. From
you, woman, may it remain afar! I turn from you my footsteps and
my glance." His hand is on the latch, when her sharp involuntary
exclamation stops him: "Stay, then! You cannot bring sorrow into
a house where sorrow is already at home!" Deeply shaken by her
words, he fixes his eyes questioningly upon her. She meets them
for a moment, then drops her own, sad and half-ashamed. The motif
of the Wälsungen well expresses the nobility in misfortune of these
poor children of Wälse. Siegmund returns quietly to the hearth:
"Wehwalt is my name for myself. I will await Hunding." (_Weh_:
woe, sorrow, calamity, pain; _wallen_: to govern. _Wehwalt_: lord
of sorrows.) There is no further exchange of words while they wait,
but in complete unashamed absorption they gaze at each other, and
the music tells beautifully how it is within their hearts. Hunding's
horn is heard. (_Hund:_ hound. It was, as we learn later, this
amiable personage's custom to hunt his enemies with a pack of dogs.)
Startled from her trance, Sieglinde listens, and hastens to open.
Hunding appears in the doorway, a dark figure, in helmet, shield
and spear. At sight of the stranger, he questions his wife with a
look. "I found the man on the hearth, spent with weariness. Necessity
brings him to our house," she explains. There is some sternness
apparently in Hunding's tone as he inquires: "Have you offered him
refreshment?" for Siegmund, rash and instantaneous in the woman's
defence, speaks, hard on the heels of her answer: "I have to thank
her for shelter and drink. Will you therefor chide your wife?"
But Hunding, at his best in this moment, without retort welcomes
the guest: "Sacred is my hearth, sacred to you be my house!" and
orders his wife to set forth food for them. Catching Sieglinde's
eyes unconsciously fixed upon Siegmund, he glances quickly from
one to the other, and is struck by the resemblance between them;
but the luminous look they have in common he defines, with the
constitutional dislike of his kind to that freer, more generous
type: "The selfsame glittering serpent shines out of his eyes!" He
inquires of the circumstances which have brought this stranger to
his house, and finding that Siegmund has no idea whither his wild
flight has led him, introduces himself with a dignity which commends
to us, while he is doing it, the narrow-natured, unimaginative man:
"He whose roof covers you and whose house shelters you,--Hunding
your host is called. If you should from here turn your footsteps
eastward, there, in rich courts, dwell kinsmen, protectors of Hunding's
honour!" They seat themselves at table; the host asks for this
guest's name, and as Siegmund, plunged in thought, does not at
once reply, Hunding, remarking the interest with which his wife
waits for the stranger's words, sardonically encourages him: "If
you are in doubt about trusting me, yet give the information to
the lady here. See how eagerly she questions you!" And Sieglinde,
too deeply interested, verily, to mind the thrust, proceeds further
to give it point: "Guest, I should be glad to know who you are!"
Whereupon Siegmund, as little constrained by the husband's presence
as the wife herself, with his eyes upon hers, addressing her directly,
tells his story: of Wolf, his father, of the twin sister lost to him
in infancy, the enmity of the Neidingen clan, who in the absence
of the men burned down their house, slew the mother, abducted the
sister; of his life in the forest with Wolf, their numberless foes
and perpetual warfare. Hunding recalls vaguely wild dark tales he
has heard of the mighty pair, the Wölfingen. The disappearance of
his father, Siegmund further relates, from whom he had been separated
in a fight, and whom he could never, long though he sought, find
again, nor any trace of him save an empty wolf-skin. "Then,--"
follow the strange cruel fortunes this father had arranged for
him, "then I was impelled to forsake the woods, I was impelled
to seek men and women. As many as I found, and wherever I found
them,--whether I sought for friend, or wooed for woman, always I
met with denial, ill-fortune lay upon me!" With ingenuous wonder
he describes the natural fruits of the education bestowed on him
by Wotan: "What I thought right, others held to be wrong; what
had ever seemed to me abominable, others considered with favour.
I fell into feud wherever I was, anger fell upon me wherever I
went. If I reached out toward happiness, I never failed to bring
about calamity! For that reason it is I named myself Wehwalt, I
command calamity alone!"

Hunding has listened attentively. His small superstitious heart has
taken alarm. "Fortune was not fond of you, who appointed for you
so miserable a lot. The man can hardly welcome you with gladness,
whom, a stranger to him, you approach as a guest." With a vivacity
which cannot have been the common habit of her intercourse with
her husband, Sieglinde pronounces judgment aloud and at once upon
this ungenerous speech and speaker, whose prudence must certainly,
in contrast with the Wälsung's frank magnificence of courage, seem
to her unspeakably bourgeois: "Only cowards fear one going his way
unarmed and alone!" And turning again eagerly to the guest: "Tell
further, guest, how you lately lost your arms in battle!" Siegmund
as eagerly satisfies her. The circumstances which he describes
further exemplify the disposition fostered in him by his father,
his non-recognition or acceptance of established law and custom,
however sacred, his pursuit of an ideal unattached to any convention:
He had lost his arms in the attempt to defend a damsel against
her own immediate family, bent upon marrying her against her
inclination. He had slain her brothers, whereupon the maiden, as
another perhaps would have foreseen, had cast herself upon their
bodies, sorrow annulling her resentment. He had stood over her,
shielding her from the vengeance of her kindred pressing around. His
armour had been shattered; the girl lay dead on her dead brothers.
Wounded and weaponless, he had been chased by the infuriate horde.
"Now you know, inquiring woman," he closes his narrative, "why
I do not bear the name of Friedmund!" (_Frieden:_ peace.) With
this simple sally, whose bitterness is not enough to crumple the
serene forehead, he rises and walks to the hearth, striding to
the noble march-measure we know as the motif of the heroism of
the Wälsungen,--proud in its first bars, with Siegmund's pride,
tender in the last, with Sieglinde's tenderness, loftily mournful
throughout.

"I know a wild race of men," now speaks Hunding, "to whom nothing
is holy of all that is revered by others; hated are they of all
men--and of me!" He then reveals how he himself had that day been
called out for vengeance with his clan against this officious champion
of damsels. He had arrived too late for action, and returning home,
behold, discovers the fugitive miscreant in his own house! As he
granted the stranger hospitality for the night, his house shall
shelter him for that length of time; but "with strong weapons arm
yourself to-morrow," he grimly warns him; "it is the day I choose
for combat; you shall pay me a price for the dead!" When Sieglinde
in alarm places herself between the two men, Hunding orders her
roughly: "Out of the room! Loiter not here! Prepare my night-drink
and wait for me to go to rest!" Siegmund, smothering his anger,
stands in contemptuous composure beside the hearth; his eyes frankly
follow every movement of the woman as she prepares Hunding's drink.
On her way out of the room, she pauses at the threshold of the
inner chamber, and seeking Siegmund's eyes with her own, tries
by a long significant glance to direct his glance to a spot in
the ash-tree. The sword-motif, distinct and sharp, accompanies her
look. Hunding, becoming aware of her lingering, with a peremptory
gesture orders her again to be gone; and gathering up his own armour,
with a warning to the Wölfing that on the morrow he will strike
home,--let him have a care!--withdraws, audibly bolting the door
behind him.

Left alone, Siegmund lies down beside the dying fire. To remove
himself during the night as far as possible from Hunding's reach
is not the solution suggesting itself naturally to him. Yet there
he stands, pledged to meet an enemy, and not a weapon to his hand
of offence or defence. The difficulty of his position is certainly
as great as could be, and, reaching the full consciousness of it, he
recalls to mind that his father had promised him a sword, which he
should find in the hour of his greatest need. "Unarmed I am fallen
in the house of the enemy; here I rest, devoted to his vengeance.
A woman I have seen, gloriously fair.... She to whom my longing
draws me, who with a rapturous charm constrains me, is held in
thraldom by the man who mocks my unarmed condition...." Could need,
indeed, be greater? With the whole strength of that need, in a
cry, long, urgent, fit to pierce the walls of Walhalla, he calls
upon his father for the promised sword: "Wälse! Wälse! Where is
your sword?..."

A flame leaps from the embers and illuminates the ash-tree, bringing
into view, at the spot Sieglinde had indicated to him with her
eyes, a sword-hilt. But though his eyes are caught by the glitter,
he does not recognise it for what it is; he watches it, without
moving, as it shines in the firelight, and, lover-like, soon lapsing
into undivided dreaming of the "flower-fair woman," plays tenderly
with the conceit of the gleam on the ash-tree being the trace of
her last bright glance. Forgetting his swordlessness and altogether
unpromising plight, he goes on weaving poetry about her until the
fire is quite out and he so nearly dozes that when a white form
comes gliding through the door bolted by Hunding, he does not stir
until addressed: "Guest, are you asleep?"

Sieglinde has mixed narcotic herbs in her husband's drink, and
bids the stranger make use of the night to provide for his safety.
"Let me advise you of a weapon.... Oh, might you obtain it! The
most splendid of heroes I must call you, for it is destined to
the strongest alone." And she relates how at the marriage-feast
of Hunding, while the men drank, and the woman who "unconsulted
had been offered him for wife by ignoble traffickers" sat sadly
apart, a stranger appeared, an elderly man in grey garb, whose
hat-brim concealed one of his eyes. But the brilliant beam of the
other eye created terror in the bystanders,--all save herself, in
whom it aroused an aching longing, sorrow and comfort in equal
measure. The sword in his hand he swung, and drove into the ash-tree
up to the hilt, leaving it there, a prize to whomsoever should
be able to draw it out. The men present had all made the essay
in vain; guests coming and going since then had tried, equally
without success. "There in silence waits the sword." There in the
ash-tree. "Then I knew," Sieglinde concludes, "who it was had come
to me in my sorrow. I know, too, who it is alone can conquer the
sword. Oh, might I find him here and now, that friend; might he,
from the unknown, come to me, most wretched of women! All I have
ever suffered of cruel woe, all the shame and indignity under which
I have bowed,--sweetest amends would be made for it all! All I ever
lost, all I ever mourned, I should have recovered it all,--if I
might find that supreme friend, if my arm might clasp that hero!"
Siegmund, to whom it could not occur for the fraction of a second
to doubt his strength to draw any sword from any tree, at these
words catches her impetuously to his breast: "The friend now clasps
you, fairest of women, for whom weapon and woman were meant! Hot
in my breast burns the oath which, noble one, weds me to you!"
and, in her very strain: "All I ever yearned for, I met in you!
In you I found all I ever lacked. If you suffered ignominy and I
endured pain, if I was outlawed and you were dishonoured, a joyful
revenge now calls to us happy ones! I laugh aloud in a holy elation,
as I hold you, radiant one, embraced, as I feel the throbbing of
your heart!"

The great door of the hall, silently, without apparent reason,
swings wide open, like a great curious eye unclosing to watch this
beautiful marvel of their love, expanded so suddenly, like a huge
aloe-flower. It lets in a flood of moonlight, and the glimmering
vision of the vapourous green-lit nocturnal Spring-world. "Who
went out?... Who came in?" cries Sieglinde, starting in alarm.
"No one went," Siegmund reassures her, "but some one came: See,
the Spring laughing in the room!" And he pours forth poetry of
adorable inspiration, in explanation of the singular action of
the door: Spring was outside, and Love, his sister, inside; Spring
burst open the severing door, and now, brother and sister, Love
and the Spring, are met!

It is touching, the capacity for happiness the two have accumulated
in the long, thwarted years. An ecstatic joy marks this hour of
forgetting all the world outside themselves; the love-music is
all of a fine free sustained rapture. One poignant and subtle and
profound thing she says to him: "Foreign and unrelated to me seemed
until now everything I saw, hostile everything which approached
me. As if I had never known them were always the things that came
to me.... But you I knew at once, clearly and distinctly; my eye
no sooner beheld you, than you belonged to me; and all that lay
concealed within my breast, the thing which I verily am, bright
as the day it rose to the surface; like a ringing sound it smote
my ear, when in the cold lonesome strange world for the first time
I beheld my Friend!"

Seated in the light of the full moon, they have freedom at last
each to pore over the other's winning beauty. She is struck, fondly
peering into his features, with the sense of having seen him before;
and trying to think when and where reaches the assurance that it was
on the surface of the pool which reflected her own image. Again,
when he speaks, she is struck by the assurance that she has heard his
voice before. She thinks, for a moment, that it was in childhood,...
but corrects the impression by a second: she has heard it recently,
when the echo in the woods gave back her own voice. His luminous
eyes she has seen before: thus shone the glance of the grey guest
at the wedding-feast, whom his daughter recognised by that token.
Earnestly she asks this other guest: "Is your name in very truth
Wehwalt?" "That is no longer my name since you love me!" he replies
exuberantly, "I command now the sublimest joys!... Do you call me
as you wish me to be called: I will take my name from you!" "And
was your father indeed Wolf?" "A Wolf he was to cowardly foxes.
But he whose eye shone with as proud an effulgence as, Glorious One,
does yours, Wälse was his name!" Beside herself with joy, Sieglinde
springs up: "If Wälse was your father--if you are a Wälsung, for
you it was he drove his sword into the tree-trunk. Let me give
you the name by which I love you: Siegmund shall you be called!"
Siegmund leaps to seize the sword-handle: "Siegmund is my name,
and Siegmund am I! (_Sieg_: victory.) Let this sword bear witness,
which fearlessly I seize! Wälse promised me that I should find it
in my greatest need. I grasp it now...." Very characteristically,
this greatest need, as he feels it, is not the need of a weapon with
which to defend his life against Hunding; it is, in his soaring
words: "Highest need of a holiest love, devouring need of a love
full of longing, burns bright in my breast, drives me onward to
deeds and to death.... Nothung! Nothung! So do I name you, sword!
(_Noth_: need. _Nothung_: sword-in-need.) Nothung! Nothung! Out
of the scabbard, to me!" With a mighty tug he draws it forth and
holds it before the marvelling eyes of Sieglinde: "Siegmund the
Wälsung stands before you, woman! As a wedding-gift he brings you
this sword. Thus he wooes the fairest of women; from the enemy's
house thus he leads you forth. Far from here follow him now, out
in the laughing house of the Spring. There Nothung, the sword,
shall protect you, when Siegmund lies overthrown, in the power of
love!" "If your are Siegmund," cries the woman, "I am Sieglinde,
who have so longed for you! Your own sister you have won at the same
time as the sword!" Siegmund is given no pause by this revelation.
At the realisation of this double dearness, the joy flares all
the higher of the lawless pupil of Wotan. "Bride and sister are
you to your brother. Let the blood of the Wälsungen flourish!"
And with arms entertwined, forth they take their madly exulting
hearts out into the "laughing house of the Spring."

II

The rising of the curtain for the second act reveals a wild
mountain-pass where Wotan, in a vast good-humour, is giving instructions
to Brünnhilde with regard to the impending meeting between the injured
husband and the abductor of his wife. Victory is allotted to Siegmund;
Hunding, "let them choose him to whom he belongs; he is not wanted
in Walhalla!" In Wotan's complacency the satisfaction speaks of
this thought: At last, at last, a change of fortune,--victory to
the Wälsung, after a trial of his mettle so severe and prolonged
it must have broken a spirit less admirably tempered. The Valkyrie,
in delight over the charge to her, breaks into her jubilant war-cry,
checking herself as she perceives Fricka approaching in the chariot
drawn by rams, and judges from the goddess's merciless urging of
the panting beasts that she comes for a _Zank_, a "scold," with
her husband. "The old storm!" murmurs Wotan, at sight of his liege
lady dismounting and coming toward him with ultramajestic gait, "the
old trouble! But I must stand and face her!" The scene following
has a touch of comical in its resemblance to domestic scenes among
less high-born characters, as, for instance, when Fricka says, "Look
me in the eye! Do not think to deceive me!" or "Do you imagine that
you can deceive me, who night and day have been hard upon your
heels?" Fricka, the guardian of marriage, has come to demand justice
for Hunding, vengeance upon the "insolently criminal couple." "What,"
asks Wotan, an unguarded and tender indulgence in his tone, "what
have they done that is so evil, the couple brought into loving
union by the Spring?..." "Do you feign not to understand me?" is in
effect Fricka's return; "for the holy vow of marriage, the deeply
insulted, I raise my voice in complaint...." "I regard that vow as
unholy," says Wotan,--and the source is flagrant from which Siegmund
has drawn his unpopular rules of conduct,--"which binds together
those who do not love each other." But the case in question, Fricka
protests, is not one simply of broken marriage-vow, "When--when
was it ever known that brother and sister might stand toward each
other in the nuptial relation?" "This day you have known it!" the
worthy teacher of Siegmund meets her; and, all his paternal affection
finding its imprudent way into his accents: "That those two love each
other is clear to you. Wherefore, take honest advice: if blessed
comfort is to reward your blessing, do you bless, laughing with
love, the union of Siegmund and Sieglinde!" Upon this, as is hardly
unnatural, the furious storm breaks over the indiscreet god; a
storm of reproach, in part for personal wrongs, which the outraged
goddess details, in part for his failure as ruler of the earth to
maintain law and right, to observe the boundaries established by
himself. At the end of it, rather feebly, he tells her, in defence
of his position, the thing which he had not confided to her before,
plain enough indication that the goddess, to win whom he had given
an eye, is not of his bosom's counsel any more. "This know! There
is need of a hero who without aid from the gods should cast off
the law of the gods. Such a one alone can compass the act which,
however much the gods may need it done, no god can himself do."
"And what may the great thing be," the dull august shrew inquires,
"that a hero can do which the gods cannot, through whose grace alone
a hero acts?... What makes men brave? Through your inspiration
alone they are strong. With new falsehoods you are trying to elude
me, but this Wälsung you shall not be able to save. Through him
I strike at you, for it is through you alone he defies me!" "In
wild sorrows," Wotan ventures, with deep emotion, "he grew up,
by himself. My protection never helped him!" "Then do not protect
him to-day!" she pursues, hatefully righteous, "take away from
him the sword you gave him." "The sword?..." Her suggestion is
a very sword for Wotan's heart. "Yes, the sword, strong with a
charm, which you bestowed on your son." "Siegmund conquered it
for himself in his need." The deep strain here shudders out its
passion of repressed resentment and grief, which after this darkly
underlines Wotan's misery. "You created the need, as you created
the sword," she follows him up with clear-sighted accusation, almost
voluble. "For him you drove it into the tree-trunk. You promised
him the goodly weapon. Will you deny that it was your own stratagem
which guided him to the spot where he should find it?" The effect
of her words upon Wotan--to whom this mirror held up to him reveals
the weakness of his scheme to create a hero who should act for
himself, unprompted, against the gods, yet in the very manner the
case of the gods demanded--still increases his wife's assurance.
"What do you require?" asks Wotan at last, in gloom, heart-struck.
"That you should sever from the Wälsung!" "Let him go his way!" Wotan
acquiesces, smothered by this horrible, yet so clear, necessity.
"But you, protect him not, when the avenger calls him out to fight!"
"I--protect him not!" "Turn from him the Valkyrie!" "Let the Valkyrie
determine as she will!" "Nay, she solely carries out your wishes....
Forbid her the victory of Siegmund!" "I cannot deal him defeat!"
protests Wotan, in anguish, "he found my sword!" "Withdraw the
charm from the sword. Let it snap in the knave's hand. Let the
adversary behold him without defence!... Here comes your warlike
maid.... This day must her shield protect the sacred honour of your
wife. My honour demands the fall of the Wälsung. Have I Wotan's
oath?" The unhappy god casts himself upon a rocky seat, in helpless
loathing, and the terrible consent falls forced from his lips: "Take
the oath!" Fricka, with proud tread turning from him to remount
her chariot, stops to address Brünnhilde: "The Father of Armies is
waiting for you. Let him tell you how he has appointed the fortune
of battle."

Wotan sits with his head in his hands, like any humblest mortal
hard put to it. It has been brought home to him sharply enough
that the thing is not to be done, on the accomplishment of which he
had so fondly built. It is not that an angry wife has interfered;
it is that her argument has been sound, and that for the sake of
his world a god cannot trespass against the laws he has himself
made for it. It is, in fact, that kings less than others can do
as they choose; that if in this he should follow his desire, it
would, as Fricka has pointed out, "be all over with the everlasting
gods!" But, to sacrifice the Wälsung, "brought up in wild sorrows"
for this very purpose which is to be relinquished; the Wälsung who
in his young life has had but one draught at the cup of joy!...
It is no wonder that Wotan utters his lamentation: "Oh, divine
ignominy! Oh, woful disgrace! Distress of the gods! Distress of
the gods! Immeasurable wrath! Eternal regret! The saddest am I
among all!"

The darling of his heart, Brünnhilde, torn by his cry, casts from
her all her Valkyrie accoutrements, and, woman merely and daughter,
kneels at his feet, presses her cheek against him, begging to be
trusted: "Confide in me! I am true to you. See, Brünnhilde pleads!"

He hesitates, while sorely yearning for the comfort. "If I utter
it aloud, shall I not be loosing the grasp of my will?" "To Wotan's
will you speak in speaking to me. Who am I, if not your will?"

With the assurance to himself: "With myself solely I take counsel,
in talking to you,..." he relates to Brünnhilde all the events which
have brought about this intolerable position, a long story: the
first mistake in trusting Loge; the mistake in possessing himself
of the Ring; what he has since done to obviate the effect of his
mistakes, and done, as is now shown, in vain. "How did I cunningly
seek to deceive myself! So easily Fricka exposed my fallacies! To
my deepest shame she looked through me. I must yield to her will."
"You will take away then the victory from Siegmund?" "I touched
Alberich's Ring," Wotan replies, "covetously I held the gold. The
curse which I fled from, flees not from me! What I love I must
desert, murder what from all time I have held dear, treacherously
betray him who trusts me!..." Again, it is no wonder his tormented
soul breaks forth in lamentation. The mighty groan of Wotan has,
if ever groan had, adequate cause, and his longing for "the end!
the end!" With grim comfort he recalls at this moment that the
end cannot be far,--not if there be truth in the prophecy of Erda:
"When the dark enemy of love shall in wrath beget a son, the end of
the Immortals will not be long delayed." For the loveless Alberich,
as Wotan knows, has by means of gold won the favour of a woman,
and the "fruit of hatred" is on its way toward the light. "Take
my blessing, son of the Nibelung!" cries Wotan in his dark mood;
"the thing which sickens me with loathing, I bestow it upon you
for an inheritance: the empty splendour of the gods!"

"Oh, tell me, what shall your child do?" entreats the daughter,
shaken by the sight of her father's passion. "Fight straightforwardly
for Fricka," he orders her, in the excess of bitterness; "what
she has chosen I choose likewise; of what good to me is a will
of my own?" "Oh, retract that word!" she beseeches, "you love
Siegmund.... Never shall your discordant dual directions enlist
me against him. For your own sake, I know it, I will protect the
Wälsung!" At this first intimation of rebellion in his child,--this
incipient treachery of his own will,--Wotan becomes stern, lays
down his command irrevocably, with threats of crushing retribution
if this child of his shall dare to palter with his expressed will.
"Keep a watch over yourself! Hold yourself in strong constraint!
Put forth all your valour in the fight!... Have well in mind what
I command: Siegmund is to fall! This be the Valkyrie's task!"

Brünnhilde gazes after him in wonder and fear as he storms up over
the rocky ascent out of sight: "I never saw Sieg-vater like that!"
Sadly she resumes her armour, woe-begone at the thought of the
Wälsung, given over to death. Becoming aware of the approach of
Siegmund and Sieglinde, she hastens from sight.

Sieglinde enters, fleeing in distraction from Siegmund, anxious
in pursuit. The presumption of those seeing her action without
understanding her words, is commonly, I suppose, that remorse has
overtaken her for her breach of the moral law. Remorse, indeed, has
assailed her, but not for having followed the "luminous brother."
It is for having ever belonged to Hunding, whom she neither loved
nor was loved by. The new sentiment of love so completely possessing
her places her former union in the light of unspeakable pollution,
and she adjures the "noble one" to depart from the accursed who
brings him such a dowry of shame. Siegmund with sturdy tenderness
assures her that whatever shame there is shall be washed away in
the blood of him who is responsible for it, whose heart Nothung
shall cleave. An insanity of terror seizes Sieglinde at the thought
of the meeting between the two men, the vision besetting her of
Siegmund torn by Hunding's dogs, against the multitude of which
his sword is of no use. At the picture painted by her delirium
of Siegmund's fall, shocked as if at the actual sight of it, she
sinks unconscious in his arms.

Having ascertained that she has not ceased to breathe, almost glad
perhaps for her of this respite from self-torment, he lets her
gently down on to the ground, and seats himself so as to make an
easy resting-place for her head.

Thus the Valkyrie finds them. At her approach, three solemn notes
are heard which intimate as if something awful and not to be
escaped--whose solemn awfulness consists in great part of the fact
that it cannot be escaped,--like Fate. "Siegmund!" she calls him,
with firm voice, "look upon me! I am that one whom in short space
you must follow!" Siegmund lifts his eyes from the sleeping face
upon which they have been fondly brooding, and beholds the shining
apparition. "Who are you, tell me, appearing to me, so beautiful
and grave?" "Only those about to die can see my face. He who beholds
me must depart from the light of life. On the field of battle I
appear to the noble alone. He who becomes aware of me, has been
singled out for my capture!" Siegmund gazes quietly and long and
inquiringly into her eyes, and: "The hero who must follow you,
whither do you take him?" "To the Father of Battles who has elected
you, I shall lead you. To Walhalla you shall follow me." "In the
hall of Walhalla shall I find none but the Father of Battles?"
"The glorious assemblage of departed heroes shall gather around
you companionably, with high and holy salutation." "Shall I in
Walhalla find Wälse, my own father?" "The Wälsung shall find his
father there." "Shall I in Walhalla be greeted gladsomely by a woman?"
"Divine wish-maidens there hold sway; the daughter of Wotan shall
trustily proffer you drink." "Unearthly fair are you; I recognise
the holy child of Wotan; but one thing tell me, you Immortal! Shall
the bride and sister accompany the brother? Shall Siegmund clasp
Sieglinde there?" "The air of earth she still must breathe. Siegmund
shall not find Sieglinde there!" The hero bends over the unconscious
woman, kisses her softly on the brow, and turns quietly again to
Brünnhilde: "Then bear my greeting to Walhalla! Greet for me Wotan,
greet for me Wälse and all the heroes; greet for me likewise the
benign wish-maidens: I will not follow you to them!"

In this strangely impressive and moving dialogue, the Brünnhilde-part
is upborne on the stately, high and cold Walhalla theme; the
Siegmund-part gives over and over one urgent heartful questioning
phrase, filled with human yearning and sorrow: the motif of love
and death. "Where Sieglinde lives in joy or sorrow, there will
Siegmund likewise abide,..." he pronounces. When he is informed
that he has no choice but to follow, that he is to fall through
Hunding, that its virtue has been withdrawn from his sword, justly
incensed, he declares that if this be true,--if he, shame to him!
who forged for him the sword, allotted him ignominy in place of
victory, he will not go to Walhalla, Hella shall hold him fast!

"So little do you care for eternal joy?" the Valkyrie asks wistfully;
"all in all to you is the poor woman who, tired and full of trouble,
lies strengthless in your lap? Nothing beside do you deem of high
value?" Inexpressibly moved at the manifestation before her of the
warmth and depth of this human affection, she begs him to place
his wife under her protection. He replies passionately that no
one while he lives shall touch the Stainless One, that if he must
indeed die, he will first slay her in her sleep. Brünnhilde, in
great emotion, begs still more urgently, "Entrust her to me, for
the sake of the pledge of love which she took from you in joy!"
But Siegmund, all the more firmly fixed in his resolve, lifts his
sword, and grimly offering Nothung two lives at one blow, swings it
above the sleeping woman. The Valkyrie at this can no longer keep
in bounds the surging flood of her compassion: "Hold, Wälsung!" she
restrains his arm, "Sieglinde shall live, and with her Siegmund!...
I change about the doom of battle. To you, Siegmund, I apportion
blessed victory...." With injunctions to place his trust in the
sword and the Valkyrie, bidding him farewell till they shall meet
on the field, she disappears. Siegmund, with heart restored to
gladness, bends over Sieglinde again; listens to her breathing
and studies her face, now smiling, as he sees, in quiet sleep.
"Sleep on!" he speaks to her, "till the battle has been fought and
peace shall rejoice you!"

Hunding's horn has already been heard, calling out the adversary.
Siegmund lays Sieglinde gently down, and, Nothung in hand, rushes
to the encounter. A storm has been gathering, a cloud has settled
over the mountain-tops. Sieglinde, left alone, murmurs in her sleep.
Her broken sentences reveal her dream: She is a child again and
the scene is reenacted to her of the conflagration which ended
her life in the forest with father and mother and twin. She starts
awake in affright, calling Siegmund, and finds herself alone. She
hears her husband's horn and his call to Wehwalt to stand and meet
him. She hears Siegmund's arrogant reply. She cannot see them for
the black storm-scud, but calls on them to stop, to kill her first.
A flash of lightning shows Hunding and Siegmund fighting on a high
point of the rocky pass. Sieglinde is rushing toward them, when
a sudden glare blinds her. In the light, Brünnhilde is seen hard
at Siegmund's side, defending him with her shield. "Strike home,
Siegmund! Trust to the victorious sword!" Siegmund raises his sword
for a deathblow to Hunding, when a fiery beam drops through the
storm-cloud; in the red glow of it is distinguished the form of
Wotan at Hunding's side, holding his spear between the combatants.
His voice is heard, terrible: "Back from the spear! To pieces,
the sword!" Nothung snaps against the spear, and, run through the
body by his adversary, Siegmund falls. Sieglinde hears his dying
sigh--the strong heart stops on a brief snatch, pathetic, of the
motif of the heroism of the Wälsungen--She drops to earth, stunned.
In the gloom, Brünnhilde, who has retreated before the angry father's
spear, is seen lifting Sieglinde and hurrying off: "To horse! that
I may save you!"

Long and mournfully Wotan gazes upon the fallen Siegmund--best-beloved
perhaps of all the Wagner heroes. Taking account suddenly of the
presence of Hunding, "Begone, slave!" he orders, "kneel before
Fricka, inform her that Wotan's spear has taken vengeance of that
which brought mockery upon her!... Begone!... Begone!..." But at
the gesture with which the command is emphasised, Hunding drops
dead, crushed out of life by the god's contempt.

Abruptly recalled to the thought of his child's contumacy, Wotan
starts up in terrific wrath: "But Brünnhilde! Woe to that offender!
Dreadful shall be the punishment meted to her audacity, when my
horse overtakes her in her flight!" Amid lightning and thunder,
aptly symbolising the state of his temper, the god vanishes from
sight.

III

The third act shows the scene, a high rocky peak rising from among
great pine-trees, where the Valkyries assemble for their return
together to the hall of Wotan. On the clouds they come riding, each
with a dead warrior laid across her steed. Over the neighing and
hoof-beats, the music develops of a lightly thundering cavalry-charge,
suggestive of the rocking in the saddle of horsemen borne over
billowing expanses--glorious with the glory of the hosts which
fancy sees among the crimson and gold banners of the sunset. The
eight are at last arrived; their war-cries, their hard laughter,
and the shrill neighing of the battle-steeds mingle in harsh harmony.
The shrieks of an autumn gale, exulting in its freedom to drive
the waves mountain-high and scatter all the leaves of the forest,
have the same quality of wildness and force and glee. The
steel-corseleted figures clustered on the peak make one think a
little of gleaming dragon-flies seen in summer, swarming as they
do around some point of mysterious interest. The laughter of the
Valkyries is for grim jests they exchange over the conduct of their
horses, who fall to fighting with one another, because the dead
warriors on their backs were enemies in life. Brünnhilde only is
wanting, to complete their number, but they dare not start for
Walhalla without her, lest Walvater, not seeing his favourite,
should receive them with a frown. They are amazed, when they finally
see her coming, to descry on the back of her horse no warrior, but
a woman--amazed, likewise, at the wild speed of Grane's flight,
and to see him stagger and drop on reaching the goal. They hurry
to Brünnhilde's assistance. She comes in, breathless with terror
and haste, supporting Sieglinde. Wotan, she informs the wondering
sisters, is hot in pursuit of her. She begs one of them to keep
lookout for him from the top of the peak. The black storm-cloud on
which he rides is perceived sweeping toward them from the north.
To the questioning Valkyries Brünnhilde gives in quick outline
the story of her disobedience, and implores their help to save
Sieglinde,--for the Wälsungen all Wotan has threatened with destruction.
She conjures them, too, to conceal herself, who has not the hardihood
to face her father in the extremity of his indignation. But the
sisters are appalled at the revelation of her misdeed, and no less
at the suggestion that they should join in her act of rebellion.
Her prayer for the loan of one of their horses on which the woman
may escape, meets with obtuse looks, headshakes, uncompromising
denial. She is appealing urgently, hurriedly, to one after the
other, when Sieglinde who, stony, death-struck, dazed with grief,
has appeared unconscious, up to this moment, of all taking place
around her, stops her, stating dully that there is no need to trouble
about her, since her only wish is to die. She indeed reproaches
Brünnhilde for her care, and bids her now, if she is not to curse
her for their flight, to end her life by a thrust of the sword. In
the next moment the face of this same woman sheds the very radiance
of joy: the Valkyrie has revealed to her that of her a Wälsung shall
be born. Then, oh, "Save me, you valiant one!" she cries. "Save
my child! Protect me, you maidens, with your mightiest protection!
Save me! Save the mother!" She kneels to them. The cool-blooded
spinsters are moved by this, but not to the point of braving Wotan's
ire. "Then fly in haste, and fly alone!" Brünnhilde with sudden
resolve bids Sieglinde: "I will remain behind and draw upon me,
delaying him, Wotan's anger." "In what direction shall I go?" asks
the woman eagerly. Eastward, one of the sisters tells her, lies a
forest. Fafner there, in the shape of a dragon, guards the treasure
of the Nibelungen. An unsuitable place for a helpless woman, yet
one where she will be safe from Wotan, for the god, it has been
observed, shuns it. "Away then to eastward," Brünnhilde instructs
Sieglinde; "with undaunted courage bear every trial. Hunger and
thirst, thorns and stony roads--do you laugh at want and sorrow,
for one thing know, and keep it ever in mind: the most exalted hero
in the world, O woman, shall be born of you!" A great melodious
phrase describes him, the future Siegfried, as if with one magnificent
stroke outlining a form of heroic beauty and valour. Brünnhilde
gives Sieglinde the pieces of Siegmund's sword, gathered up from
the field after the ill-fated encounter. "He who one day shall
swing this sword newly welded together, let him take his name from
me: As Siegfried let him rejoice in victory!" From the soul of
Sieglinde rises a soaring song of gratitude and praise, a song
of purest, highest joy. Her last words to Brünnhilde, as clasping
to her breast the broken sword she hastens away, are, interpreted:
"My gratitude shall one day reward you, smiling at you in human
form!... Farewell! Sieglinde in her woe calls down blessings upon
you!"

The storm-cloud has reached the rock, Wotan's voice is heard:
"Brünnhilde, stand!" At the sound of it, Brünnhilde's heart fails
her; the hearts of the sisters, too, soften. Crowding together on
the rocky peak, they let the culprit cower out of sight among them.
But Wotan is not deceived; he addresses to the hidden daughter such
sharp and searching reproaches that, her fear for herself losing
all importance as these strike her heart, she steps forth from
among the sister-Valkyries and meekly stands before her father,
awaiting condemnation.

"Not I," he speaks, "punish you. Yourself you have framed your
punishment!" And he exposes how by forgetting the whole duty of a
Valkyrie--to deal victory or defeat according to Wotan's decree--she
had made herself in effect no longer a Valkyrie. "No more shall I
send you from Walhalla.... No longer shall you bring warriors to
my hall.... From the tribe of the gods you are cut off, rejected
from the eternal line.... Our tie is severed.... You are banished
from my face!" The sisters break into lamentation. "Upon this mountain
I banish you. In undefended sleep I shall seal you. Let the man
then capture the maid who finds her upon his road and wakes her."
The sisters endeavour to restrain him, pointing out that their
own honour will suffer from such a scandal. He rejects this on
the ground that they have nothing more whatever to do with the
faithless sister. "A husband is to win her feminine favor; masterful
man is henceforth to have her duty. By the fireside she shall sit
and spin, an object of scorn to all beholders!" Brünnhilde drops
at his feet, overwhelmed. Cries of horror and protest break from
the others; he drives them from his presence with the threat of a
similar fate to Brünnhilde's if they do not forthwith depart from
her, and keep afar from the rock where she suffers her sentence.
In a confusion of terror, which is not without the slightest point
of humour, the strong girls flee like leaves in the blast before
Wotan's menace,--and Brünnhilde is left alone to plead her poor
cause with the stern incensed father.

She conjures him first to silence his anger, and define to her
the dark fault which has impelled him to reject the most loyal
of his children. "I carried out your order," she protests. "Did
I order you to fight for the Wälsung?" he inquires. "You did,"
she reminds him. "But I took back my instructions." "When Fricka
had estranged you from your own mind.... Not wise am I, but this
one thing I knew, that the Wälsung was dear to you. I was aware of
the conflict which compelled you to turn from the remembrance of
this.... I kept in sight for you that which, painfully divided in
feeling, you must turn your back upon. Thus it was that I saw what
you could not see. I saw Siegmund. I stood before him announcing
death. I met his eye, I heard his voice, I apprehended the hero's
ineffable distress.... I witnessed that which struck the heart
in my bosom with awe and trembling. Timid and wondering I stood
before him, in shame. I could think only how I might serve him....
And confidently counting upon an intimate understanding of him who
had bred that love in my heart,--of that will which had attached
me to the Wälsung,--I disobeyed your command!"

Wotan, in meeting this, shows how he is not merely a father dealing
with a disobedient child, but a man in strife with himself, with
his own will which has betrayed him into following affection,
inclination, when duty called for an opposite course. "If thy right
hand offend thee, cut if off and cast it from thee." Brünnhilde
is to Wotan that offending flesh and blood, and the safety of the
future depends, it seems, upon his breaking his own heart by cutting
her off from himself. She has done what his heart would have had
him do; but for interests whose claim upon him is in his estimation
greater than that of affection (_einer Welt zu Liebe_: for the sake
of a world), he had elected not to follow his heart's impulse. And
this delinquent, daughter at once and his own will, must not only
be punished for the example of all the disobedient, but cut off
from himself, to provide absolutely against any possible repetition
of the so lovable and forgivable offence.

Brünnhilde, when she has heard him out, has no word further of
argument or defence, but acquiesces with sad submissiveness. "Certainly
the foolish maiden is no fit helpmate for you, who, confused by
your amazing counsel, did not understand your mind, when her own
mind prompted one thing only: to love that which you loved!" She
accepts the punishment as just, only: "If you are to sever that
which was bound together," she pleads, "to keep apart from yourself
the very half of yourself, that I was once completely one with
you, O god, forget it not! Your immortal part you cannot wish to
dishonour. You cannot intend an ignominy which involves you....
Yourself you would be degraded, if you gave me over to insult!"
"You followed, light of heart, the call of love," Wotan replies
unconcedingly: "follow now him whom you must love!" "If I must
depart from Walhalla, if I am to be your companion and servant
no more," Brünnhilde pressingly continues, "if my obedience is
to be given to masterful man, not of a coward and braggart let
me be the prize! Let him not be worthless who shall win me!" "You
cut yourself off from Walvater," he repulses her; "he cannot choose
for you!" "A noble generation there is, having its origin in you--"
Brünnhilde suggests, still unquelled, the point is so vital to her;
"the most admirable of heroes, I know it, is to spring from the
line of the Wälsungen...." "Not a word of the Wälsungen!" Wotan
fiercely interrupts. "When I severed from you, I severed from them.
Doomed to destruction is that line!" Sieglinde has been saved,
Brünnhilde informs him, who shall give birth to the Wälsung of
whom she speaks. Wotan sternly silences her: let her not seek to
shake his firmness. He cannot choose for her! He has loitered too
long already. He cannot stop to consider what her wishes are, nothing
further has he to do with her but to see his sentence executed.

What has he devised for her punishment, she asks.

He repeats his earlier sentence: "In deep sleep I shall seal you.
He who awakes the defenceless sleeper, shall have her to wife."
Brünnhilde falls on her knees to him. "If I am to be bound in fast
sleep, an easy prey to the most ignoble of men, this one prayer
you shall grant which a noble terror lifts to you: Let the sleeper
be protected by a barrier of fright-inspiring things, that only
a fearless and great-hearted hero may be able to reach me on my
mountain-peak!" "Too much you demand! Too much of favour!" She
clasps his knees, and with the wildest inspiration of terror: "This
one prayer you must--must listen to! At your command let a great
fire spring up. Let the summit be surrounded by fierce flames,
whose tongues shall lick up and whose teeth shall devour any caitiff
venturing near to the formidable place!" So is her whole soul heard
to cry aloud in this prayer, as she pleads for so much more than her
life, that all by which Wotan had fortified himself against her,
and which had been subjected to an assault so prolonged, suddenly
gives way, his weary heart is pierced. Overcome by emotion, he
lifts her to her feet; he gazes long into her eyes, reading her
soul there,--then amply, fully, with the whole of his overflowing
heart, grants her prayer: "Farewell, O dauntless, glorious child!
Holy pride of my heart, farewell! Farewell! Farewell! If I must
shun you, if I am never more fondly to greet you, if you are no
more to ride at my side, or reach me the cup of mead; if I am to
lose you whom I so have loved, O laughing joy of my eyes--a bridal
bonfire shall blaze for you such as never yet blazed for a bride! A
flaming barrier shall girdle the rock; with burning terror-signals
it shall frighten away the coward. The fainthearted shall keep afar
from Brünnhilde's rock. That one alone shall win the bride, who
is freer than I--the god!" In a speechless ecstasy of gratitude,
Brünnhilde sinks on his breast, and he holds her long silently
clasped, while there floats heavenward as if the very voice of
their relieved, pacified, uplifted hearts. Supporting her in his
arms, gazing tenderly in her upturned face, he takes his last leave
of her. There is a passage in Wotan's farewell which seems to contain,
compressed into it, all the yearning ache of all farewells, with
all the sweetness of the love which makes parting bitter. "For the
last time.... Farewell.... The last kiss...." These words occur
upon it. The motif it seems of the tragedy of last times; one wonders
could custom ever so harden him to it that he should feel no clutch
at the heart in hearing it. "For the last time I appease myself with
the last kiss of farewell.... Upon a happier mortal the star of
your eye shall beam. Upon the unhappy Immortal it must, in parting,
close. For thus does the god turn away from you, thus does he kiss
away your divinity!" He presses a long kiss upon each of her eyes,
and the first languor of sleep falling at once upon her, she leans,
without strength, against him. He supports her to a mossy knoll
beneath a spreading pine-tree, and lays her gently upon it; after
a long brooding look at her face, closes her helmet; after a long
look at her sleeping form, covers it with the great Valkyrie shield;
places her spear beside her, and with a last long sad look at the
slumbering motionless figure, turns away,--having effectually desolated
himself of the three dearest of his children.

Resolutely striding from the sleeper, he summons Loge, and commands
him in his original form of elemental fire to surround the
mountain-summit. At the shock of his spear against the rock, a
flame flashes and rapidly spreads. With his spear Wotan traces
the course the fire is to follow, girdling the peak. Nimbly it
leaps from point to point, till the whole background is fringed
with flame. At Wotan's words, "Let no one who is afraid of my spear
ever break through the fiery barrier!" there falls, prophetic,
across the dream of Brünnhilde's charmed sleep, the great shadow
of the Deliverer, so distant yet in time, Siegfried, who when the
hour came of test was found to fear Wotan's spear as little as
he feared anything else.

With that firm spell placed upon his magnificent and adequate fence,
Wotan departs; and, guarded by the singing flames, which weave
into the rhythm of their bright dance the tenderest of lullabies,
Brünnhilde is left to her long rest.


SIEGFRIED


SIEGFRIED

I

Fafner, when he had become possessor of the Nibelungen treasure,
conveyed it, as we have seen, to a cave in a lonesome forest, and
there in the shape of a dragon mounted guard over it. Mime, the dwarf,
in order to keep the same treasure under some sort of oversight,
took up his abode in the forest, at a respectful distance from the
flame-breathing monster. Alberich haunted the immediate neighbourhood
of the cave.

Thus it happened that Sieglinde, directed by the Valkyries to that
region, where she should be safest from Wotan's anger, was overheard
by Mime, out in the lonesome wood, moaning in her trouble. He assisted
her into his cave. There Siegfried was born, and there Sieglinde
died. Mime reared the "Wälsungen-shoot" with solicitous care, in
the ulterior view that this scion of a strong race when grown to
man's size should kill Fafner for him and get him the Ring.

At the rise of the curtain we see Mime at his anvil, struggling with
a heavy difficulty. He is fashioning a sword for Siegfried,--still
another sword, after ever so many,--realising even as he works that
no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands.
"The best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant would
stand stiff, the insignificant stripling for whom it was shaped
he whacks and snaps it in two, as if I had made him a child's
plaything!" It is sober fact to Mime that he cannot use Siegfried
for his purposes until he have equipped him with a sword. "A sword
there is," he continues his meditation, "which he could not break.
The fragments of Nothung he never could shatter, could I weld the
strong pieces together, which all my art cannot compass! Nothung
alone could be of use,... and I cannot weld it, Nothung, the sword!"

Half-heartedly he has resumed his toil, when a joyous shout is
heard from the forest, of which a sun-shot patch glimmers through
the cave's mouth, and there storms in, driving before him a tethered
bear, a magnificent youth, clad in skins, a silver horn at his side.
The splendour of Siegfried's appearance is constantly referred
to, the qualifications applied to him suggesting most frequently
an effect he shed of light. This child of the unhappy Wälsungen
seems to have been indelibly stamped with the joy of their one
golden hour. Of Siegmund's tragic consciousness of frustration,
of Sieglinde's sufferings, there is no trace in their vigorous
offspring; but the superabundant vitality of joy which lifted them
to the lovers' seventh heaven for one triumphant hour is all in his
young blood. He is big, strong, sane, comely, fearless, simple,
ignorant of all mean passions and interests; pensive for moments,
gay for hours-nearly boisterous; frank and outspoken to the point
of brutality; unmannerly at times to the point of ruffianism; but
the dice are loaded to secure our cherishing him right through his
bright course, by that irresistible, ingrain joyousness of his,
born of strength, balance, fearlessness.

Laughing immoderately, he urges the bear against Mime, who flees
hither and thither to elude the fearful pair. "I am come in double
force, the better to corner you.... Brownie, ask for the sword!"
When assured by the trembling Mime that the sword is in readiness,
he releases and sends home his shaggy ally. But when Mime hands him
the newly finished sword, and he strikes it on the anvil, it flies
to bits. The angry boy expresses his wish that he had smashed the
sword on the disgraceful bungler's skull. "Shall such a braggart go
on bragging? He prates me of giants and lusty fighting; of gallant
deeds and solid armour; he will forge weapons for me, provide me with
swords; he vaunts his art as if he could do something of account;
but let me take hold of the thing he has hammered, with a single
grip I crush flat the idle rubbish! If the creature were not so
utterly mean, I would drop him into the forge-fire with all the
stuff of his forging, the old imbecile hobgoblin! There might be
an end then to vexation!" He casts himself fuming on a stone seat
and turns his face toward the wall. The dwarf, who has kept his
distance from the storming youth, tries to quiet him, reminds him
of his benefits, of his teachings on the subject of gratitude.
Ingratiatingly he brings him food. Siegfried without turning dashes
spit and pipkin from his hands. The little man affects a deeply
hurt sensibility. He rehearses at length all Siegfried has to thank
him for, material necessities, education,--"With clever counsel
I made you clever, with subtle wisdom I taught you wit...." This
tale of benefactions has been gone over so often that the dwarf has
reached a fine glibness in it; the smooth air on which he enumerates
the instances of his kindness has a peculiar cast of hypocrisy. He
is so touched by the contemplation finally of his own goodness
and Siegfried's hardness of heart that he falls to weeping. "And
for all I have borne this is now the reward, that the hot-tempered
boy torments and hates me!"

Siegfried has been calmly gazing into Mime's eyes; trying through
these to get at the truth of him. Mime expresses surprise that
after so many unquestionable services the boy should hate him; and
the boy is not himself without a touch of wonder at the invincible
antipathy with which this creature inspires him, to whom yet he is
actually indebted for many good offices. "Much you have taught me,
Mime, and many a thing have I learned of you; but that which you
have most cared to teach me, never have I succeeded in learning:
how I could bear the sight of you! If you bring me food and drink,
disgust takes the place of dinner; if you spread an easy couch for
me, sleep on it becomes difficult; if you endeavour to teach me
wise conversation, I prefer to be dumb and dull. Whenever I set
eyes on you, I recognise as ill-done everything you do; whether I
watch you stand, or waggle and walk, ducking, nidnodding, blinking
with your eyes, my impulse is to catch the nidnodder by the scruff
of the neck, to hurl out of the way for good and all the odious
blinker! That is my manner, Mime, of being fond of you. Now, if
you are wise, help me to know a thing which I have vainly reflected
upon: I run into the woods to be rid of you; how does it happen
that I come back? All animals are dearer to me than you, trees
and birds, the fish in the stream, I am fonder of them all than
I am of you; then how does it happen that I still come back? If
you are wise, make clear to me this thing!" "My child," replies
Mime, "you are informed by that circumstance how near I lie to
your heart!" "I tell you I cannot bear you! Forget it not so soon!"
Mime argues that such a thing is impossible, is out of nature;
that what to the young bird is the old bird, which feeds it in the
nest until it is fledged, that is to Siegfried, inevitably, Mime!
This simile of Mime's suggests to Siegfried a further question. In
asking it he has one of those brief accesses of pensiveness which
endear him, disclosing the existence of a common human tenderness,
after all, under that sturdy wrapping of joy befitting the child
of demigods. "Now, since you are so wise, tell me still another
thing: When the birds were singing so blithely in Spring, the one
luring the other, you told me, as I wished to know, that they were
male and female. They billed and cooed so engagingly, and would not
leave each other; they built a nest and brooded in it; there was
a fluttering presently of young wings, and the two cared for the
young. I saw how, in the same way, the deer rested in the forest,
in pairs; how even wild faxes and wolves did this. The male brought
food to the lair, the female nursed the cubs. I learned from seeing
this what love is--I never robbed the mother of her young...." The
music has been heaving and falling, as if with the warm palpitation
of a vast breast, Nature's own, blissful with love and happy creative
force. "Now, where, Mime, is your loving mate, that I may call her
mother?" Mime becomes cross: "What has come over you, mad boy?
Now, what a numbskull it is! Are you a bird or a fox?" And at
Siegfried's next question he chafes: "You are to believe what I tell
you: I am your father and mother at the same time!" But Siegfried
vigorously objects: "There you lie, unspeakable gawk! How the young
resemble their parents I have luckily observed for myself. More
than once I have come to a clear stream: I have seen the trees
and animals mirrored in it; the sun and clouds, exactly as they
are, appear repeated on the shining surface. My own image, too, I
have seen. Altogether different from you I seemed to myself: there
is as much likeness between a toad and a gleaming fish, but never
yet did a fish crawl out of a toad!" This latter bit in its short
extent gives an amusing, characteristic illustration of Wagner's
method of painting with notes. With the first phrase, Siegfried's
impatient exclamation, comes the motif of Siegfried's impetuosity;
then, as he is describing it, a representation of the clear stream;
upon this is sketched the image of Siegfried, in the notes of his
proper motif, to which is added a bar of the heroism-of-the-Wälsungen
motif, indicating his resemblance to the father before him. At his
mention of the toad, his metaphor for Mime, we hear the hammer of
the Nibelung; and at his mention of the gleaming fish, the swimming
phrase that accompanies the watery evolutions of the Rhine-maidens.
The ingeniousness of all this would not perhaps of itself especially
recommend the piece, were it not that the scheme is worked out to
such beautiful purpose that the whole thing is lovely, and that,
though one should know nothing whatever of the motifs, his ear
must be charmed.

Satisfied by his own logic that Mime cannot be his progenitor,
Siegfried now himself answers his earlier question: "When I run
into the woods in the thought of forsaking you, how does it happen
that I still return home? It is because from you I am to learn who
are my father and mother!" Mime evades him: "What father! What
mother! Idle question!" But Siegfried catches him by the throat,
and the terrified dwarf communicates, grudgingly, a scant fact or
two of his history. "Oh, ungrateful and wicked child! now hear
for what it is you hate me. I am neither your father nor any kin
of yours, and yet to me you owe your life...." Making his own part
in the story as meritorious as possible, he relates his taking
into shelter the woman whom he had found moaning out in the wild
woods. Siegfried, for once penetrated with sadness, wonder, and
awe, breathes forth softly, when the sorrowful story is ended,
"My mother--died then--of me?" He tries by questions to complete
the dwarf's bare account: "Whence am I named Siegfried?" "Thus
did your mother bid me call you." "What was my mother's name?"
Mime feigns to have forgotten, but, roughly pressed, recalls it.
"Then, I ask you, what was my father's name?" "Him I never saw!"
"But my mother spoke the name?" "She only said that he had been
slain." Siegfried is smitten with the suspicion that Mime may be
lying to him, and demands some proof of all this which he has heard.
Mime, after a moment's resistance, in terror of the boy's rising
wrath, fetches from its hiding and shows him the pieces of a broken
sword. "This was given me by your mother. For trouble, cost and
care, she left it as paltry remuneration. Behold it! A broken sword!
Your father, she said, carried it in the last battle, when he was
slain." Siegfried's strong good spirits have already returned.
"And these fragments," he cries, with enthusiasm, "you are to weld
together for me. Then I shall swing my proper sword! Hurry, Mime!
Quick to work!... Cheat me not with trumpery toys! In these fragments
alone I place my faith. If I find you idle, if you join them
imperfectly, if there are flaws in the hard steel, you shall learn
burnishing from me! For this very day, I swear it, I mean to have
the sword!" "What do you want this very day of the sword?" Mime
inquires in alarm. Siegfried, his heart inexpressibly lightened
by the positive knowledge that Mime is neither father nor any kin
to him, bursts into merry singing: "To go away, out of the woods
into the world. Never shall I come back!... As the fish gaily swims
in the flood, as the finch freely flies afar, so shall I fly, so
shall I dart... that I may never, Mime, see you more!" Off he storms
into the forest, leaving Mime shouting after him, a prey to the
utmost anxiety. The dwarf's difficulty is now twofold: "To the
old care I have a new one added!" How to retain the wild fellow
and guide him to Fafner's nest, and how to mend those pieces of
stubborn steel. "No forge is there whose glow can soften the
thorough-bred fragments. No dwarf's hammer can compel the hard
pieces...." In unmitigated despair, void of counsel, he drops on
his seat behind the anvil and weeps.

Ushered by great calm chords, measured and dignified as the gait
of a god on his travels, a wayfarer appears at the entrance of the
cave. He wears an ample deep-blue mantle, and for staff carries
a spear. On his head is a broad hat, the brim of which dips so
as to conceal one of his eyes. It is Wotan. Since parting from
Brünnhilde he has had no heart for warfare, no heart to ride to
battle without the "laughing joy of his eyes." Alone, unresting,
he has wandered all over the wide earth in search of counsel and,
very likely, distraction. A spectator he is in these days and not
an actor. His spirit has reached a state of philosophic calm. He has
learned better certainly than to meddle any more with anything that
concerns the accursed Ring. He is brought into the neighbourhood of
the still interested actors in that old drama in part by curiosity;
in part, no doubt, by the wish to watch the actions of Siegfried, his
beloved children's child. But in some faintest degree, at least, it
would seem, he is brought here by the invincible need to influence
these fortunes just a little, though it be firmly fixed that he
is not to try directly or indirectly to divert the Ring into any
channel which shall bring it eventually to himself. All else being
equal, he had a little rather strengthen Mime's chances of getting
the Ring, through Siegfried, than inactively see it fall to the
inveterate enemy, Alberich.

At the greeting he speaks from the threshold to the "wise smith,"
Mime starts up in affright: "Who is it, pursuing me into the forest
wilderness?" "Wanderer is the world's name for me. Far have I wandered,
much have I bestirred myself on the back of the earth." "Then bestir
yourself now! and do not loiter here, if Wanderer is the world's name
for you!" Mime, with his head full of his dark little projects, has
a deep dread of spies and interference. At every step the Wanderer
takes further into his dwelling, he utters a sharper protest; and at
every protest the Wanderer calmly advances a step further. "Through
much research, much have I learned," speaks Wanderer, "I could
impart to many a one things of importance to him; I could deliver
many a one from that which troubles him--from the gnawing care
of the heart." And after still another irritated dismissal from
Mime: "Many a one has imagined himself to be wise, but the thing
which he most needed to know, he knew not. I gave him leave to ask
me what should help him, and enlightened him by my word." And after
again being nervously shown the door: "Here I sit by the fireside,"
speaks blandly Wanderer, suiting the action to the word, "and I
set my head as stake in a match of wits. My head is yours, you
have won it, if you do not, by questioning me, succeed in learning
what shall profit you; if I do not, by my instructions, redeem the
pledge."

It is plain enough that if Mime would now expose to the Wanderer
the source of the gnawing care at his heart, and ask him how Nothung
might be welded, he would receive the information. Wotan is clearly
eager to give it, yet cannot do so directly, or he would be too
crudely meddling again in the Ring affair: he cannot press on him
his counsel, but, at his old trick of ingenuous double-dealing,
might by means of this guessing-game make shift to convey it to
him.

Mime, old and wise as he is, has yet in certain directions a dwarfed
understanding; certainly not enough generosity to trust anybody,
or conceive of a disinterested desire to do him a good turn. His
whole concern now is how to be rid of this large tactless personage.
"I must question him in such a manner as to trap him," he says to
himself. It is agreed that he shall have three questions. He sits
brooding a moment, trying to find something very difficult indeed.
The motif of Mime's cogitations, which has already been frequently
heard in this act, gives amusingly the unheroic colour of the sordid
little mind's workings. He fixes upon questions concerning things
which might be supposed little known to a wanderer of human descent,
even such a much-travelled and conceited one. First: What race
reigns in the depths of the earth? Second: What race rests upon the
back of the earth? Third: What race dwells on the cloudy heights?
Wotan readily answers all these, giving bits of the histories of
the races in question, the Nibelungen, the Giants, and the Gods.
As he describes the spear of Wotan, whose lord all must eternally
obey, he with an involuntary gesture of command brings his spear
hard down on the stone floor. Faint thunder results. Terror falls
upon Mime, who by the light shining for a moment from his countenance,
has recognised the god. "You have solved the questions and saved your
head," he says hurriedly, without looking Wotan in the face. "Now,
Wanderer, go your way!" But the Wanderer declares that according to
custom in such contests, it is the dwarf's turn now to answer three
questions or lose his head. "It is a long time," Mime ventures timidly,
"since I left my native place; a long time since I departed from the
bosom of earth, my mother; I once saw the gleam of Wotan's eye as
he looked into the cave; my mother-wit dwindles before him...."
But the wee fellow has no mean conceit of his wisdom, and is really
not as uneasy as might be expected of one in his position. "Perhaps
I shall be so lucky," he suggests, not without complacency, "as,
under this compulsion, to deliver the dwarf's head!" Wotan asks him,
for the first question,--and the pain of the memories oppressing
him is translated to us by the motif of parting, the motif of "last
times," while the god's tones are infinitely tender--"What race is
it to which Wotan shows himself stern, and which yet he loves the
best of all living?" Glibly Mime answers, showing a full acquaintance
with the circumstances, "The Wälsungen." Wotan passes on to the
second question: "A wise Nibelung keeps watch over Siegfried. He
is to kill Fafner for him, that he may get the Ring and become
lord of the Hort. What sword now must Siegfried wield, if he is
to deal death to Fafner?" Mime, delighted with himself, readily
replies: "Nothung is the name of a notable sword.... The fragments
of it are preserved by a wise smith, for he knows that with the
Wotan-sword alone an intrepid stupid boy, Siegfried, shall destroy
the dragon." He rubs his hands in goblin glee. "Am I, dwarf, in
the second instance still to retain my head?" Wanderer, with a
laugh for his antics, felicitates him: "The most keen-witted are
you among the wise; who can equal you in acuteness? But seeing you
are so cunning as to use the boyish hero for your dwarf-purposes,
with the third question I now make bold: Tell me, wise armourer,
who, out of the strong fragments, shall forge Nothung anew?"
Consternation falls upon the dwarf. Who, indeed? Was not that question
the very hub around which turned all his troubled reflections? Had
it not been that which was forcing tears from him at the moment
of the Wanderer's arrival? He runs hither and thither distracted,
in broken exclamations admitting that he himself cannot forge the
sword, and how should he know who can perform the miracle? The
Wanderer rises from his seat beside the hearth. "Three questions
you were free to ask. Three times I was open to consultation. You
inquired of things idle and remote, but that which was closest to
you, that which might profit you, did not enter your mind. Now
that I have guessed it, you lose your senses with fright. I have
won the witty head. Now, brave conqueror of Fafner, hear, doomed
dwarf: Only one who has never known fear can forge Nothung anew."
On his way to the mouth of the cave, he turns for another word to
the chap-fallen Mime: "Look out for your wise head from this day
forth: I leave it in forfeit to him who has never learned fear!"
With a laugh for the double-horned dilemma in which he leaves the
"honest dwarf," he passes forth into the woods.

As Mime gazes after him, violent trembling seizes the poor little
smith. The flashing among the leaves of Wotan's winged horse his
terror mistakes for the flaming of Fafner's gaping jaws; and the
sound of a rushing approach for the monster crashing toward him
through the underbrush. With the cry: "The dragon is upon me! Fafner!
Fafner!" he cowers behind the anvil.

The alarming noise proves to have been only Siegfried coming with
characteristic impetuosity to ask for his sword. "Hey, there!
Lazy-bones! Have you finished? Quick! What success with the sword?"
Mime is not in sight. His voice is heard, faint, from his hiding-place:
"Is it you, child? Are you alone?" Siegfried for some time can draw
no satisfactory answer from him, no matter how roughly pressed.
The dwarf is caught between two difficulties, and must first of all
things try to think out for himself the safest course of action.
Only by one who has never known fear can Nothung, the indispensable,
be forged. "Too wise am I for such work!" he soliloquizes. On the
other hand, his wise head is forfeit to one who has never learned
fear. Of the two difficulties, the latter is obviously the one to
be first attended to. Siegfried fills the description dangerously
well of the foretold fatal enemy. "How shall I contrive to teach
him fear?" is Mime's nearest interest. Siegfried, irritated by
his continued hesitation, finally catches hold of him. "Ha? Must
I lend a hand? What have you forged and furbished to-day?" "With
no care but for your welfare," answers Mime, "I was sunk in thought
as to how I should instruct you in a thing of great importance."
"You were sunk quite under the seat," laughs Siegfried; "what of
great importance did you discover there?" "I there learned fear
for your sake, that I might teach it to you, dunce." "What about
fear?" Siegfried asks. "You know nothing about it, and you are
thinking of going from the woods out into the world? Of what use
to you would be the strongest sword, if you had no knowledge of
fear?... Into the crafty world I shall not let you fare before you
have learned fear." "If it is an art, why am I unacquainted with
it? Out with it! What about fear?" "Have you never felt,"--asks
Mime, in a voice which at the suggestion of his own words falls to
quaking, "have you never felt, in the dark woods, at twilight,... when
there are sounds in the distance of rustling, humming and soughing,
when wild muttering gusts sweep past, disorderly fire-wisps flicker
around you, a swelling confused sound surges toward you,--have
you not felt a shuddering horror seize upon your limbs? A burning
chill shakes your frame, your senses swim and fail; the alarmed
heart trembling in your breast hammers to the point of bursting?
If you have never felt these things, fear is unknown to you!" The
music of fear is a darkened and discoloured fire-music through
which we recognise, as if under a disguise veiling something of its
beauty, the motif of Brünnhilde's sleep. If one looks for reasons,
one can suppose the reference to be, as to a type of fearful things,
to the terror-inspiring barrier surrounding Brünnhilde; and imagine
a jesting intimation that fear, as Siegfried should eventually
learn it, is the sensation suspending the heart-beats at sight of
a beautiful woman in her sleep.

Siegfried has listened to Mime in amused wonder: "Strange exceedingly
must that be! My heart, I feel, stands firm and hard in its place.
That creeping and shuddering, glowing and shivering, turning hot
and turning dizzy, hammering and trembling, I wish to feel the
terror of it, I long for that delight! But how can you, Mime, bring
it about?" "Just follow me. I will guide you to some purpose. I
have thought it all out. I know a dreadful dragon; he has slain
already and swallowed many; Fafner will teach you fear, if you
follow me to his lair." "Where is his lair?" "Neidhöhle it is called.
(_Neid:_ envy; _Höhle:_ cavern.) Eastward it lies at the end of the
wood." "Then it is not far from the world?" "The world is close
by." "You are to take me there, and when I have learned fear, away,
into the world! So quick! Give me my sword! I will swing it out in
the world!" Mime confesses that he neither has mended, nor ever
can mend, the sword in question. "No dwarf's strength is equal to
it. More likely," he suggests, "one who knows no fear may discover
the art!" Siegfried, heartily weary of Mime's paltering, snatches up
the fragments of Nothung: "Here, the pieces! Away with the bungler!
My father's steel doubtless will let itself be welded by me. Myself
I will forge the sword!" And he falls to work. "If you had taken
diligent pains to learn the art, it would now, of a truth, profit
you," remarks Mime; "but you were always lazy at the lesson. What
proper work can you do now?" "What the master cannot do," Siegfried
aptly retorts, "the apprentice might, if he had always minded him?
Take yourself off! Meddle not with this, or you may tumble with it
into the fire!" He heaps fuel on the hearth, fastens the sword in
a vice and starts filing it. Mime watches him, and at this which
looks like folly, cannot restrain the exclamation: "What are you
doing? Take the solder! You are filing away the file!" But the
disposition of the young fellow without fear shows in his method
with the sword. With a brave thoroughness he reduces the whole
blade to steel filings. Mime follows all his movements. "Now I
am as old as this cavern and these woods, but such a thing have I
never seen! He will succeed with the sword, that I plainly apprehend.
In his fearlessness he will make it whole. The Wanderer knew it
well! How, now, shall I hide my endangered head? It is forfeit to
the intrepid boy unless Fafner shall teach him fear--But, woe's
me, poor wretch, how will he slay the dragon, if he learns fear from
him? How will he obtain the Ring for me? Accursed dilemma! Here
am I fast caught, unless I find me wise counsel how to bring under
compulsion the fearless one himself...." "Quick, Mime!" Siegfried
interrupts Mime's meditations; "what is the name of the sword which
I have ground into filings?" "Nothung is the name of the notable
sword; your mother gave me the information." Siegfried at work
falls to lusty singing, a song of primitive character, of a kind
with what one can suppose Tubal-cain singing at his ancient anvil.
We see him pumping the forge-bellows while the steel melts, pouring
the metal into a mould, cooling the mould in a water-trough, breaking
the plaster, heating the sword, hammering the red blade, cooling
it again, riveting the handle, polishing the whole,--all of which
actions his song celebrates: "Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword!
(_Neidliches Schwert_ is literally "covetable sword") Why must
you of old be shattered? To powder I have ground your sharp
magnificence. I now melt the filings in the crucible. Hoho! Hoho!
Hahei! Hahei! Blow, bellows, brighten the glow! Wild in the forest
grew a tree. I hewed it down, I burned the brown ash to charcoal.
It lies heaped now on the hearth. The coals of the tree, how bravely
they burn, how bright and clear they glow! Upward they fly in a
spray of sparks and melt the steel-dust. Nothung! Nothung! Notable
sword! Your powdered steel is melting, in your own sweat you are
swimming, soon I shall swing you as my sword!"

Mime during this has been revolving his own problem, and has hit
upon a plan which seems to him to meet all the difficulties of
his case: Siegfried, beyond a doubt, will forge the sword and kill
Fafner. While he is tired and heated from the encounter, Mime will
offer him a drink brewed from simples of his culling, a few drops
of which will plunge the boy into deep sleep, when, with the weapon
he is at this moment forging, Mime will clear him out of the way and
take possession of Ring and treasure. Enchanted with his inspiration,
he sets to work at once preparing the somniferous drink.

Siegfried is singing at the top of his lungs: "In the water flowed
the stream of fire, it hissed aloud in anger, but the cold tamed
and chilled it; in the water it flows no more, stiff and hard it
is become, the lordly steel--but hot blood will bathe it soon.
Now sweat again that I may forge you, Nothung, notable sword!" He
catches sight of Mime pottering with the cooking utensils. "There
is a wise smith come to shame," the old man answers the youth's
mocking inquiry; "the teacher receives lessons from his pupil;
all is up with art for the old one, he will serve the young one
as cook! While the young one makes iron into broth, the old one
will prepare a dish of eggs!" With impish relish of the inwardness
of the situation, he stirs the mixture in the pot.

"Hoho! Hahei! Hoho!" Siegfried proceeds with his work and his singing;
"shape, my hammer, a hard sword! Blood once dyed your pallid blue,
its trickling red brightened you, you laughed coldly, you cooled
off the hot liquid. Now the fire has made you glow red, your soft
hardness yields to the hammer; you dart angry sparks at me, because
I have tamed you, stubborn! The merry sparks, how they delight
me! Anger adorns the brave. You are gaily laughing at me, though
you feign to be angry and sullen. Hoho! Hahei! By means of heat
and hammer I have achieved it, with stalwart blows I have shaped
you; now let the red shame vanish, become as hard and cold as you
can...."

Mime is meanwhile revelling in dreams of the greatness which is
to follow upon his acquisition of the Ring. He fairly skips up
and down as he thinks of it all: Brother Alberich himself reduced
to subjection, the whole world bowing at the nod of his, Mime's,
head. No more toil, others to toil for him.... "Mime is king, Prince
of the Nibelungen, lord over all! Hei, Mime! who would have thought
it of you?"

"Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword!" harmoniously bellows Siegfried;
"now you are fast in your hilt. You were in two, I have forced you
into one. No blow after this shall break you. In the dead father's
hand the steel snapped, the living son forged it anew; now its
bright gleam flashes like laughter, its sharp edge cuts clean.
Nothung! Nothung! Young and renewed! I have brought you back to
life. You lay dead there, in fragments; now you flash lightning,
defiant and brave! Show caitiffs your gleam! Strike the traitor!
Fell the villain!" He waves over his head the finished sword: "Look,
Mime, you smith--thus cuts Siegfried's sword!" He brings it down
upon the anvil, which falls apart, cleft from top to bottom. Mime
tumbles over with amazement.

II

The next scene shows the woods before Fafner's cave. It is night.
Alberich is dimly distinguishable, lurking among the rocks, brooding
his dark thoughts, as he keeps covert watch over the treasure. He
is startled by what seems an untimely break of day, accompanied by
a great gust of wind. This defines itself as a galloping gleam--a
shining horse rushing through the forest. "Is it already the slayer
of the dragon?" he wonders; "is it he, already, who shall kill
Fafner?" A moonbeam breaking through the clouds reveals the form
of the Wanderer advancing toward Neidhöhle. The enemies see and
recognise each other. Alberich, though greatly alarmed at this
inopportune presence, breaks into angry vituperation: "Out of the
way, shameless robber.... Your intrigues have done harm enough!"
"I am come to look on, not to act," Wotan replies, grandly mild and
unruffled; "who shall deny me a wanderer's right of way?" Alberich,
as if words of offence were actually missiles, showers them thick
upon the unmoved god. He points out, virulently, the strength of
his own position compared with Wotan's, in whose hand that spear
of his must fly to pieces should he break a covenant established
as sacred by the runes carved on its shaft. Wanderer, a shade weary
of such a berating, yet losing little of his placidity, retorts:
"Not through any runes of truth to covenants did my spear bind
you, malignant, to me; you my spear forces to bow before me by
its strength; I carefully keep it therefore for purposes of war."
"How haughtily do you threaten in your defiant strength," the rabid
Alberich continues, "yet how uneasy is all within your breast....
Doomed to death through my curse is Fafner, guardian of the treasure.
Who will inherit from him? Will the illustrious Hort come once
more into the possession of the Nibelung? The thought gnaws you
with unsleeping care. For, let me hold it again in this fist, far
otherwise than thick-witted giants shall I employ the power of the
Ring; then let the holy keeper of the heroes tremble; the heights
of Walhalla I shall storm with the hosts of Hella, the world then
will be mine to govern!" Tranquilly Wotan receives this: "I know
your meaning, but it creates in me no uneasiness. He shall rule
through the Ring who obtains it." This calm of Wotan's gives Alberich
the idea that the god must, so to speak, have cards up his sleeve.
"On the sons of heroes," he suggests ironically, "you place your
insolent reliance, fond blossoms of your own blood. Good care have
you taken of a young fellow--not so?--who cunningly shall pluck the
fruit which you dare not yourself break off?" "Not with me"--Wotan
cuts short the discussion, "wrangle with Mime. Danger threatens you
through your brother. He is bringing to this spot a youth who is
to slay Fafner for him. The boy knows nothing of me. The Nibelung
uses him for his own purposes. Wherefore, I tell you, comrade,
do freely as you choose!" Alberich can scarcely believe that he
has heard aright. "You will keep your hand from the treasure?"
Serenely and broadly, Wotan declares--a touch of that tenderness
in his tone which the thought of the Wälsungen always has power
to arouse--"Whom I love I leave to act for himself: let him stand
or fall, his own lord is he. I have no use save for heroes!" This
sounds very fair; to Alberich almost too fair. He presses Wotan
with further questions. The answers are elusive as oracles, but
satisfy Alberich of thus much: that Wotan is himself out of the
struggle for the Ring. To point his personal disinterestedness,
the god even offers to wake the dragon, that Alberich may warn
him of the approaching danger and peradventure receive in token of
gratitude--the Ring! We suspect in this Wotan's taste for a joke,
unless it be an exhibition of that other trait of the god's, the
need to gratify his conscience with a comedy of fairness. At this
moment he is not, it is true, interfering; but he is confidently
watching the play of forces set working by him long ago. The strong
Siegfried armed with the rejuvenated Sieges-schwert is a force
having its impulse originally from him. At this moment, perhaps
because the events immediately impending have cast their shadows
across the sensitive consciousness of an at times prophet, he is
in no uneasiness whatever with regard to the fate of the Ring. To
Alberich's mystification, he actually rouses Fafner. "Who disturbs
my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The Fafner-motif
is the old motif of the giants, slightly altered so that instead
of the ponderous tread of the brothers it suggests the muffled
ponderous beat of a gigantic sinister heart. Wotan and Alberich
explain to the dragon his danger and indicate what may buy him
safety. Having heard them out, Fafner, unseen in the cave, gives
a long lazy comfortable yawn. "I lie and possess! Let me sleep!"
Wotan laughs. "Well, Alberich, the plan failed. But abuse me no
more, you rogue! One thing, I further enjoin you, keep well in
mind: Everything is after its kind, and this kind you cannot alter!"
The broad Erda-motif accompanies this maxim. "Take a firm stand! Put
your skill to use with Mime, your brother. He is of the kind you
understand better. What is of a different kind, learn now to know,
too...." When Wotan disappears, the galloping is heard, through the
storm-wind that for a moment agitates the leaves of the forest,
of his rising Luft-ross. His obscure last words have left Alberich
puzzled, sorer and angrier than ever. The air is full of curse-motif.
"Laugh on, you light-minded luxurious tribe of the gods! I shall
still see you all gone to destruction. While the gold shines in the
light there is a wise one keeping watch--His spite will circumvent
you all!" He hides himself among the tumbled rocks near the cave-mouth
from the brightening light of dawn.

Mime enters guiding Siegfried. "This is the spot, go no further!"
Siegfried seats himself under a great tree; they have been travelling
through the woods all night. "This is the place where I am to learn
fear?" he inquires light-heartedly. The excursion, as far as he
knows, has for its single object to teach him that art. He is not
of a suspicious turn and does not ask what interest in his education
has Mime, in whose affection he instinctively does not believe.
"Now, Mime," he instructs the dwarf, "you are after this to avoid
me. If I do not learn here what I should learn, I shall fare further
alone, I shall finally be rid of you!" "Believe me, dear boy,"
says the dwarf, "if you do not learn fear to-day and here, with
difficulty shall you learn it elsewhere and at another time!" He
directs the youth's eye to the black mouth of the dragon-hole and
describes with griesly detail the monster inhabiting it. Siegfried
listens unimpressed. Hearing, in answer to his inquiry, that the
monster has a heart and that it is in the usual place: "I will
drive Nothung into the overweening brute's heart!" he determines
lightly. He is sceptical with regard to the lesson in fear which
he has been promised. "Just wait!" Mime warns him. "What I said
was empty sound in your ears. You must hear and see the creature
himself.... Remain where you are. When the sun climbs high, watch
for the dragon. He will come out of his cave and pass along this
way to go and drink at the spring." "Mime," says Siegfried, with
a laugh for his foolish big-boy joke, "if you are to be at the
spring I will not hinder the dragon from going there. I will not
drive Nothung into his spleen until he has drunk you up. Wherefore,
take my advice: do not lie down to rest at the water's edge, but
take yourself off as far as ever you can, and never come back!" Mime
is too near, as he thinks, the hour of triumph, to take offence.
May he not be permitted, after the fight, to refresh the victor
with a drink? He will be near. Let Siegfried call him if he needs
advice,... or if he finds the sensation of fear delectable!

When Siegfried has freed himself of Mime, whose company seems to
become more and more unendurable as he is nearer parting from him
for ever, he stretches out again under the great tree, folding his
arms beneath his head. "That that fellow is not my father," he
muses, "how glad am I of that! The fresh woodland only begins to
please me, the glad daylight to smile to me, now that the offensive
wretch is out of my sight!" He drives away the thought of him and
lets sweeter reflections gradually absorb him. The leaves rustle
and waver; delicate shafts of sunshine drop through them and play
over the forest floor. The exquisiteness of the hour, by its natural
power over the mood, turns the lonely boy's thoughts toward the only
human beings life has so far given him to love,--and in images so
vague and distant! "How did my father look?" he wonders dreamily,
and answers himself: "Like me, of course!" After a longer spell
of gazing up among the trees, while the soft influences of the
fragrant woodland world and lovely summer day still further overmaster
him: "But--how did my mother look?... That I cannot in the least
picture! Like the doe's, I am sure, shone her limpid lustrous
eyes--only, more beautiful by far!" The thought of her death fills
him with boundless sadness, but not sharp or bitter,--dreamy and
sweet from its tenderness. "When she had born me, wherefore did
she die? Do human mothers always die of their sons? How sad were
that! Oh, might I, son, behold my mother!... My mother--a woman
of humankind!" The motif of mother-love is but a slight, beautiful
variation from the motif of love in nature accompanying Siegfried's
reference to the deer paired in the woods, that strain like the
heaving of a great heart oppressed by its burden of love. The thought
of his never-known mother draws forth sighs from Siegfried's lips.
A long time he lies silent. The Freia-motif, the motif of beauty,
clambers upward like a dewy branch of wild clematis. All is still
around, but the little wind-stirred leaves, which weave and weave
as if a delicate green gold-shot fabric of sound. Against this airy
tapestry suddenly stands forth like a vivid pattern the warbling
of a bird. Over and over, with pretty variations, the bird gives
its note. It catches Siegfried's attention; he listens. "You sweet
little bird," he at last addresses the singer up among the branches,
"I never heard you before. Is your home here in the forest?..." The
thought occurs to him, so natural to the simple: "Could I but understand
the sweet babbling, certainly it would tell me something--perhaps
about the dear mother!" He remembers hearing from Mime that one
might come to understand the language of the birds. Attractive
possibility! Pricked by his desire at once to bring it about, he
springs up, cuts one of the reeds growing around the pool where
Fafner goes to drink, and fashions it into a pipe. He tries upon
it to imitate the bird-note. "If I can sing his language," is his
reasoning, "I shall understand, no doubt, what he sings!" After
repeated attempts, charmingly comical, and much vain mending of
the reed with the edge of Nothung, he grows impatient, is ashamed
of his unsuccess before the "roguish listener." He tosses away the
silly reed and takes his silver horn. "A merry wild-wood note,
such as I can play, you shall hear! I have sounded it as a call to
draw to me some dear companion. So far, nothing better has come
than a wolf or a bear. Let us see, now, what it attracts this time,
whether a dear comrade will come to the call?" He places the horn
to his lips and sounds the cheery _Lock-weise_ (lure-call) over
and over, with long sustained notes between the calls, during which
he looks up at the bird, to see how he likes it. As a variation
he plays the motifs which describe himself, the large heroic
Siegfried-motif, and then the gay, rash, lesser Nothung-Siegfried
motif. He has returned to the Lock-weise, and is repeating it with
obstinate persistence, a-mind not to stop until the companion his
lonesomeness yearns for shall have answered him when a bellowing
sound behind him makes him face about. We had been warned already
by the _Wurm_-motif, heard before in Nibelheim, when Alberich by
the power of the Tarnhelm turned himself into a dragon. Siegfried
at sight of Fafner, whom the loud Lock-weise has drawn from his
slumbers and his cave, laughs aloud: "My tune has charmed forth
something truly lovely! A tidy comrade you would make for me!"
"What is that?" roars Fafner, fixing the glare of his eyes upon
the shapely form of Siegfried, insignificant in size, as he counts
it. "Haha!" cries Siegfried, enchanted to hear from an animal talk
which he can understand. "If you are an animal that can speak,
you very likely can teach me something. Here is one who does not
know fear; can he learn it from you?" "Is this insolence?" asks
the amazed brute. "Call it insolence or what you please, but I
shall fall upon you bodily, unless you teach me fear." Fafner laughs
grimly, as if he licked his chops: "I wanted drink, I now find
meat as well!" He shows the red interior of his vast jaws fringed
with teeth. There is a brief further exchange of threats and jeers,
then Fafner bellows: "Pruh! Come on, swaggering child!" Siegfried
shouts: "Look out, bellower, the swaggerer comes!" and, Nothung in
hand, leaps to the assault. Vainly Fafner spouts flame to blind
and terrify him. The fight ends as it must. The dragon falls beneath
the Wotan-sword, wielded by the hero without fear.

With his failing breath, in a tone strangely void of resentment,
the dragon questions his slip of an adversary, so unexpectedly
victorious: "Who are you, intrepid boy, that have pierced my heart?
Who incited the child to the murderous deed? Your brain never conceived
that which you have done...." A motif we have come to know well
punctuates the dying speech of this still another victim of the
curse on the Ring. "I do not know much, as yet," Siegfried replies;
"I do not know even who I am. But it was yourself roused my temper
to fight with you." The last of the giants, his hollow voice growing
fainter, tells the "clear-eyed boy," the "rosy hero," who it is he
has slain, and warns him of the treachery surrounding the owner
of the Hort. "Tell me further from whom I am descended," speaks
Siegfried; "wise, of a truth, do you appear, wild one, in dying.
Guess it from my name. Siegfried I am called!" But the Worm sighing,
"Siegfried!..." gives up the breath.

After a moment's contemplation of the mountainous dead, Siegfried
resolutely drags from his breast the sword which he had driven
in up to the hilt. A drop of the dragon's blood spurts against
his hand. With the exclamation: "The blood burns like fire!" he
lifts his finger to his mouth. At once his attention is arrested
by the voices of the birds. With increasing interest he harkens:
It seems to him almost as if the birds were speaking to him; a
distinct impression he receives of words. "Is it the effect of
tasting the blood?" he wonders. "That curious little bird there,
hark, what is he saying to me?" From the tree-top come clear words
on a bird's warble: "Hei, to Siegfried belongs now the Nibelung's
treasure! Oh, might he find the Hort in the cave! If he should
win the Tarnhelm it would serve him for delightful adventures;
but if he should find the Ring it would make him sovereign of the
world!" Siegfried has listened with bated breath. "Thanks, dear
little bird, for your advice. Gladly will I do as you bid!" He
enters the cave. As he disappears, Mime crawls near to convince
himself ocularly of Fafner's death. At the same moment, Alberich
slips from his hiding-place and throws himself across Mime's path,
to bar his way to the treasure. A bitter quarrel at once springs
up between the brothers; Alberich claims the treasure because it
is rightly his, Mime because he reared the youth who has recovered
it from the dragon. Mime, whom Alberich's violence cows still as
in the old days, offers to share, if he may have the Tarnhelm--a
sly proposition,--he will renounce the Ring; but this Alberich
hears with furious scorn, and the wrangle is at its height when
Siegfried reappears at the cave's mouth. In his hands are Tarnhelm
and Ring. Returning into sight after the angry cat-fight between
the ill-conditioned pair, he appears more than ever large, serene,
fair, noble. Mime and Alberich betake themselves quickly back to
their lurking-places. Siegfried stands considering his odd-looking
acquisitions: "Of what use you may be to me I know not; but I took
you from the heaped gold of the treasure because a good adviser
bade me. As ornaments you shall serve, bearing witness to this
day; these baubles shall remind me that in combat I slew Fafner,
but failed still to learn fear!" He places the ring on his finger
and the Tarnhelm at his belt. In the silence that falls, he listens
again for the voice of the bird. It suddenly drops from the tree-top:
"Hei! Siegfried possesses the Tarnhelm and Ring! Oh, let him not
trust Mime the false! If Siegfried should listen closely to the
wretch's hypocritical words, he would penetrate the true meaning of
Mime's heart; such is the virtue of the taste of dragon's blood!"
No sooner has Siegfried heard, than he sees Mime approaching. He
waits for him, leaning on his sword, quietly watchful. The little
man contorts body and face into postures and expressions as humbly
flattering and cajoling as he can; at every few steps he scrapes
and curtseys. "Welcome, Siegfried! Tell me, you soul of courage,
have you learned fear?" "Not yet have I found the teacher!" "But
the Serpent-Worm which you slew, a fearsome fellow, was he not?"
"Grim and malignant though he were, his death verily grieves me,
since miscreants of deeper dye still live at large. The one who bade
me murder him, I hate more than the dragon!" Mime to all appearance
takes these words as if they carried no offence. What he thinks
he is saying in reply we know not; but this is what, spoken in a
voice of tenderest affection, Siegfried hears: "Gently now! Not
much longer shall you see me. I shall soon close your eyes for their
eternal sleep. That which I needed you for you have accomplished;
all I wish, now, is to wrest from you the treasure. I believe I shall
effect this with small trouble. You know you are not difficult to
befool!" "So you are meditating harm to me?" Siegfried asks quietly.
Mime starts in amazement. "Did I say anything of the sort?"

Then again, in accents sickly-sweet, with the writhings and grimaces
of an excessive affection: "Siegfried, listen, my son! You and the
like of you I have always hated from my very heart. Out of love
I did not rear you, burdensome nuisance. The trouble I took was
for the sake of the treasure in Fafner's keeping. If you do not
give it to me willingly, Siegfried, my son, it must be plain even
to yourself, you will have to leave me your life!" This formal and
direct declaration of hate, proving the justice of his instinctive
dislike all along of Mime, calls forth from Siegfried's relief
even in this moment the exclamation: "That you hate me, I gladly
hear!" Mime, while giving himself visibly all the pains in the
world to disguise from Siegfried his intentions, to each of the
youth's questions answers, in the supposition that he is telling
his lies, the exact truth. Thus Siegfried learns that the drink
Mime has prepared for his refreshment will plunge him into deep
sleep, upon which, for greater security in his enjoyment of the
treasure, Mime will with Nothung cut off his head. The little monster
chuckles genially while making these revelations. As Mime reaches
him the treacherous drink, Siegfried, moved by an impulse of
overpowering disgust, with a sudden swift blow of Nothung strikes
him down. Alberich's laugh of glee and derision rings out from
his hiding-place.

After gazing for a moment at the body of the repulsive little
traitor,--with the after-thought, it is possible, that the flat of
Nothung would have been sufficient for anything so small, though
so venomous,--he gives it the obsequies which seem to him the most
fitting. He throws him in the cave, that he may lie on the heaped
gold and have the coveted treasure at last for his own. He drags
Fafner to the cave's mouth, that his bulk may block it. "Lie there,
you too, dark dragon! Guard at once the shining treasure and the
treasure-loving enemy; thus have you both found rest!"

The sun is high; heated with his exertions, Siegfried returns to
his mossy couch under the trees, and is presently again looking
overhead for the friendly bird. "Once more, dear little bird, after
such a troublesome interruption, I should be glad to listen to your
singing. I can see you swinging happily on the bough; brothers
and sisters flutter around you, blithe and sweet, twittering the
while...." A vague sadness touches his mood, and this pensive moment
goes far toward gaining back to him the sympathy which his overgreat
sturdiness in dealing death had perhaps forfeited. He is now a poor
lonesome beautiful boy, completely sweet-blooded and brave--the
hunter that has never robbed the mother of her young--whose heart
full of instinctive affection has never had an object on which
it could spend itself. "But I," he says envyingly to the bird,
"I am so alone! I have neither brother nor sister! My mother
vanished,--my father fell,--their son never saw them...." In this
humour he lets a shade of regret transpire for the necessity to
kill Mime. "My only companion was a loathly dwarf; goodness never
knit the bond of affection between us; artful toils the cunning foe
spread for me. I was at last even forced to slay him!" He stares
sorrowfully at the sky through the trees. "Friendly bird, I ask
you now: will you assist my quest for a good comrade? Will you
guide me to the right one? I have called so often and never found
one; you, my trusty one, will surely hit it better! So apt has
been the counsel given by you already! Now sing! I am listening
for your song!" Readily the bright voice from above answers in
a joyous warble: "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!" With an instantaneousness touchingly significant of his
hard heart-hunger, an attack of impassioned sighing seizes the
young Siegfried. "Oh, lovely song! Oh, sweetest breath! How its
message glows within my breast, burning me! How it sets my enkindled
heart to throbbing! What is it rushing so wildly through my heart
and senses?... It drives me, exulting, out of the woods to the
mountain-rock. Speak to me again, charming singer: shall I break
through the fiery wall? Can I waken the bride?" "Never," replies the
bird, "shall the bride be won, Brünnhilde wakened, by a faint-heart!
Only by one who knows no fear!" Siegfried shouts with delight: "The
stupid boy who knows no fear--little bird, why, that am I! This
very day I gave myself fruitless pains to learn it from Fafner. I
now burn with the desire to learn it from Brünnhilde! How shall I
find the way to her rock?" The bird forsakes the treetop, flutters
over the youth's head and flies further. Siegfried interprets this
as an invitation. "Thus is the way shown me. Wherever you fly, I
follow your flight!" We see him going hither and thither in his
attempt to follow the erratic flight of a bird. His guide after
a moment bends in a definite direction and Siegfried disappears
after him among the trees.

III

A wild region at the foot of a rocky mountain, the mountain at the
summit of which Brünnhilde sleeps. In night and storm Wotan the
Wanderer comes to seek Erda, the Wise Woman, the Wala. He conjures
her up from the depths of the earth into his presence. We see her
appear, as before, rising in the gloom of a rocky hollow up to
half her height.

In all his wandering over the earth, in search of wisdom and counsel,
none has Wotan found so wise as she. The question he proposes is:
How may a rolling wheel be arrested in its course?

Erda is not willingly waked out of her sleep, nor is it her wont to
communicate directly with the upper world. In her slow and solemn
sleep-weighted tones, she tells him that the Norns spin into their
coil the visions of her illuminated sleep. Why does he not consult
them? Or why, she asks, when that counsel is rejected, why does
he not, still mote aptly, consult Brünnhilde, wise child of Wotan
and Erda?

In his reply, Wotan briefly sums Brünnhilde's offence: She defied the
Storm-compeller, where he was practising the utmost self-compulsion;
what the Leader of Battle yearned to do, but refrained from, his
own antagonist,--all too confident, the insolent maid dared to
bring about for herself.

At the indication of Brünnhilde's fate, indignation possesses the
Wala. In view of such high-handed injustice, she wishes and struggles
to return back into the earth and be merged with her wisdom in
sleep. But Wotan will not release her until she has satisfied him
"You, all-knowing one, once drove the thorn of care into Wotan's
daring heart; with the dread of an adverse ignominious ending you
filled him by your foreknowledge, so that his courage was in bondage
to fear. If you are the wisest woman in the world, tell me now:
how shall the god overcome that care?" But the injured mother is
not to be conciliated. "You are not," she startlingly announces,
"what you call yourself!"--Not a god, Wotan?--"What are you come,
wild and turbulent spirit, to disturb the Wala's sleep? Restless
one, release me! Loose the spell!" "You are not" he retorts, "what
you suppose yourself!"--Not the wisest of women! In that she has
not divined what he has really come to impart, rather than seriously
to ask counsel. For his true errand is to show her the fruits of
time in himself, the mood of patience and reconciliation he has
reached, nay, of hope for a future in which he is to have no part,
that Brünnhilde's mother may sleep the more quietly, and, untroubled,
watch the end overtake him through her dream. "Do you know what it
is Wotan wills? I speak it in your ear, unforeseeing one, that
with easy heart you may return to your eternal sleep. The thought
of the end of the gods no longer grieves me, since it is my desire
and my will! The thing which I once, in pain and conflict, torn by
despair, resolved, I now joyfully and freely carry out: in raging
disgust I once devoted the world to the ill-will of the Nibelung;
to the joyous Wälsung I now appoint my inheritance. He whom I have
chosen, but who has never known me, an intrepid boy, unaided by
counsel of mine, has conquered the Nibelung's Ring. Void of envy,
happy and loving, Alberich's curse falls away crippled when it would
light on the noble one, for fear is unknown to him. She whom you
bore to me, Brünnhilde, shall be tenderly waked by the hero; awake,
your wise child shall perform a world-delivering deed! Wherefore,
sleep! Close your eye: dreaming watch my passing! Whatever works be
theirs, to that Eternally Young One, the god in gladness yields his
place. Down, then, Erda! Ancient Fear! Original Care! To your eternal
sleep! Down! Down!..." Erda sinks into the earth, the glimmering
light fades from the cave.

A bird-note is heard, light and sharp, approaching. A bird flutters
into sight and Siegfried, following it, appears upon the scene. The
bird, as if at the recognition of danger,--the ravens of Wotan are
hovering near--in all haste flies quite away. Siegfried resolves to
go on alone. He is stopped by the Wanderer's voice: "Whither, boy,
does your way lead you?" Here is some one, thinks Siegfried, who may
show him the way. "I seek a rock," he replies; "it is surrounded
by fire; there sleeps a woman whom I wish to wake." "Who bade you
seek the rock? Who taught you to wish for the woman?" "A little
woodland bird told me about it in his singing; he gave me good
tidings." "A little bird gossips of many things, but no one can
understand him. How did you derive the meaning of his song?" "That
was the effect of the blood of a wild dragon,..." and so forth.
Wotan continues to ply the youth with questions, just as a kind
old grandfather of humankind might lead on a child to talk, for
the simple sake of hearing what he will say, for delight in his
ingenuousness. The utmost tenderness for this joyous Walsung speaks
in the tones of the greybeard. The final object of his questioning
is to lead the youth to some acknowledgment of himself as a factor
in his fortunes. Without discarding his incognito, he longs to
hear on the grandson's lips some name which stands for himself,
some reference to him. So, from the question, "Who prompted you to
attack the strong Worm?" he passes to the question: "Who shaped the
sword, so sharp and hard, that the strongest enemy should succumb
to its stroke?" and when Siegfried replies that he did this himself,
insists further: "But who shaped the strong pieces, out of which
you forged the sword?" The answer to this is, "Wälse!" It can be
nothing else. Siegfried, however, replies: "What do I know? All
I know is that the pieces could be of no use to me until I forged
the sword over again for myself." Wotan breaks out laughing: "I
agree with you!" Siegfried suspecting that he has been quizzed,
loses his patience, becomes curt and rough. "What are you laughing
at me? Old questioner, you had better stop. Do not keep me chattering
here! If you can direct me on my way, speak. If you cannot, hold
your mouth!" Deplorable are the manners learned in Mime's cave.
"Patience, you boy!" Wanderer mildly checks him; "if I seem old
to you, you should offer me reverence!" "That," jeers Siegfried,
"is a fine idea! All my life long an old man has stood in my way.
I have no more than swept him away. If you continue to stand there
stiffly opposing me, beware, I tell you, lest you fare like Mime!"
As, with this threat, he takes a stride nearer to the stranger, he
is struck by his appearance. "What makes you look like that?" he
asks, like a child; "what a great hat you have! Why does it hang
down so over your face?... One of your eyes, beneath the brim, is
missing.... It was put out, I am sure, by some one whose passage
you were stubbornly opposing. Now, take yourself off, or you might
easily lose the other!" The indulgent grandsire is still not stirred
from his patience, though this must strike a little painfully on
his heart. "I see, my son, that, unencumbered by any knowledge,
you are quick at disposing of obstacles. With the eye which is
missing from my other socket, you yourself are looking at the single
eye which I have left for sight." At this riddle, the brilliant
Walsung eyes merely flash mirth, while Siegfried laughs at the
obscure saying. Not a moment does he waste in reflection upon it,
but, with growing impatience to resume his quest, orders Wanderer
to guide him or be thrust out of his road. "If you knew me, bold
stripling," the suffering god speaks, still gently, "you would spare
me this affront. Close to my heart as you are, your threatening
strikes me painfully. Though I have ever loved your luminous race,
my anger has before this brought terror upon them. You, toward
whom I feel such kindness,--you, all-too-bright!--do not to-day
move me to anger.... It might destroy both you and me!" All that
is plain to Siegfried, mad to be off in search of his sleeper,
is that this prattling old personage neither tells him his way
nor will consent to move out of it. As he once more rudely bids
him clear the path to the sleeping woman, Wotan's anger breaks
forth: "You shall not," he exclaims, "go the way the bird pointed!"
"Hoho! You forbidder!..." cries Siegfried, amazed, "who are you,
trying to prevent me?" "Fear the Guardian of the Rock! My power
it is which holds the maid under the spell of sleep. He who awakes
her, he who wins her, makes me powerless for ever!"

Wotan, it would seem, is challenging the boy. His anger, justified
though it would be by the stalwart cub's behaviour, is half affected.
He had declared not far from this very spot, some eighteen years
earlier, that no one who feared his spear should ever cross the
barrier of fire. The hour is at hand when the spear must offer
itself to be braved by this incarnate courage bent upon that same
adventure,--when Wotan must take the chances of discovering that
this boy is freer than he--the god. He had declared himself but a
moment ago, in his communication with Erda, willing to yield his
supremacy to the Eternally Young One. Actually to do it must be a
little bitter, after enduring that Young One's cavalier treatment.
Perhaps--the text admits of the interpretation,--Wotan is sincerely
angry; at Siegfried's impertinence he has changed his mind in respect
to yielding his throne to him, and with a real intention of driving
him back from the rock describes the terrors of the mountain: "A
sea of fire surges around the woman; hot flames lick the rock;
the conflagration rages against him who would push through to the
bride. Look up toward the heights! Do you see not the light?...
It is waxing in brightness.... Scorching clouds, wavering flames,
roaring and crackling, stream down toward us. A sea of light shines
about your head, Soon the fire will catch and devour you.... Then,
back! mad child!" "Back yourself, you braggart!" cries Siegfried,
nothing deterred; "up there where the flames flicker, I must hasten
to Brünnhilde!" He is about to push past, when Wotan holds his
spear across the path: "If the fire does not frighten you, my spear
shall stop your way. My hand still holds the staff of sovereignty.
The sword which you swing was once shattered against this shaft,
again let it snap on the eternal spear!" Instead of appalling him,
the majestic threat creates in Siegfried eagerness and glee: "My
father's enemy! Do I find you here? Excellently this happens for
my revenge! Swing your spear! With my sword I will split it to
pieces!" And he immediately does as he has said. Nothing, it seems,
not the spear of the law, can stand against the sword of perfect
courage. A clap of thunder accompanies the sundering of the spear.
The broken pieces roll at the Wanderer's feet. He picks them quietly
up. With godlike calm, the hour having struck, he accepts inevitable
fate. The motif of downfall points this beginning of the end of the
gods. "Go your way! I cannot hold you!" He vanishes in darkness.

"With broken weapon the coward has fled?" says Siegfried, looking
about for his father's enemy. The magic fire, as if to force the
intruder back, has been pouring further and further down the
mountain-side. But the one whom it should frighten rejoices, glories
in the glory of the flames, jubilates. "Ha! Delightful glow! Beaming
brightness! A radiant road lies open before me! Oh, to bathe in
the fire! In the fire to find the bride! Hoho! Hoho! Hahei! Hahei!
Merrily! Merrily! This time I shall lure a dear companion!" He sets
the silver horn to his lips and gaily blowing the Lock-weise starts
up the mountain and is lost among the swirling sanguine smoke-clouds.
The fire burns bright; the merry call is heard from time to time
from the unseen climber. The fire pales--the barrier has been past,
the region above is reached, the charmed sleeper's domain. When
the veiling smoke completely clears, we see the remembered scene
of the Valkyries' rock, and Brünnhilde lying under the spreading
pine, as Wotan left her.

It is calm golden daylight. Over the brow of the mountain appears
Siegfried and stands still a moment, outlined against the cloudless
sky, wondering at the peace, the airiness, considering the "exquisite
solitude on the sunny height!" The sweet Fricka-motif speaks aloud
as it were the unconscious language of his blood, voices the vague
instinct toward nest-building which in the Spring lightly turns a
young man's fancy to thoughts of love. He has come in search of
a bride, upon the word of a little bird; but his ideas concerning
the promised "dear companion" are so few, and the novelty of all
he is seeing so takes up his mind, that when his eyes presently
fall upon the recumbent form his first thought is not that here
must be what he has come in search of.

He approaches and marvels at the bright armour. He lifts off the
great shield, again like a child, to see what it covers. A man in
suit of mail! He can see the face in part only, but warms with
instantaneous pleasure in its comeliness. The helmet, he surmises,
must press uncomfortably on the beautiful head. Very gently he
takes it off. Long curling locks, loosed from confinement, gush
abundantly forth. Siegfried is startled by the sight. But the right
words, "How beautiful!" rise to his untaught lips. He remains sunk
in contemplation of the marvel; the tresses remind him of a thing
he has often watched: shimmering clouds bounding with their ripples
a clear expanse of sky. As if drawn by a magnet, he bends lower
over the quiet form and so feels the sleeper's breath. "The breast
heaves with the swelling breath, shall I break the cramping corslet?"
Cautiously he makes the attempt, but, finding his fingers unapt at
the task, solves his difficulty by aid of Nothung. With delicate
care he cuts through the iron and lightly removes the corslet. "This
is no man!" he cries, starting away in amazement. Such emotion seizes
him, with sensations of dizziness and faintness--such a pressure on
the heart, forcing from it burning sigh upon sigh, that, with a
sense of having no resource in himself, he casts about for help
in this all so unfamiliar exquisite distress: "Whom shall I call
on that he may save me? Mother! Mother! Remember me!" Swooning, he
sinks with his forehead against Brünnhilde's breast--to be roused
again by the goad of his desire to see the eyes of the sleeper
unclose. "That she should open her eyes?" He hesitates, in tender
trouble. "Would her glance not blind me? Have I the hardihood?
Could I endure the light?..." He feels the hand trembling with
which he is trying to quiet his agitated heart. "What ails me,
coward? Is this fear? Oh, mother! Mother! Your bold child! A woman
lies folded in slumber,... she has taught him to be afraid!...
How shall I bring this fear to an end? How shall I gain back my
courage? That I may myself awake from this dream I must waken the
maid!" But awe of the so august and quiet sleeper again restrains
him. He does not touch her, but lingeringly gazes at her "blossoming
mouth," bows till the warm fragrance of her breath sweeping his face
forces forth his impulsive cry: "Awake! Awake! Sacred woman!" He
waits with suspended breath. She has not heard. She does not stir.
An infinite weakness overtaking him, a mortal coming less, "I will
drink life," he sighs, "from sweetest lips, though I should swoon
to death in the act!" With closed eyes he bends over Brünnhilde's
lips.

Twelve bars, the tempo of which is marked "_Sehr mässig,_" very
moderate, sing themselves delicately and gravely to an end. Brünnhilde
opens wide her eyes. Siegfried starts from her, not guiltily or
to move from his place, only to stand erect and, absorbed, watch
her movements.

Slowly she rises to a sitting posture and with beatific looks takes
account of the glorious world to which she has reawakened. Solemnly
she stretches her arms toward the sky: "Hail to thee, sun!" A great
pause, of drinking in further the loveliness of the scene and the
joy of life returned to, then: "Hail to thee, light!" And after
another great pause of wondering ecstasy: "Hail to thee, radiant
day!... Long was my sleep.... I am awake.... Who is the hero that
has awakened me?" Siegfried stands spell-bound, in solemn awe at
the sound of her voice and the superhuman splendour of her beauty.
He answers, in the only way he knows, childlike, direct: "I pressed
through the fire which surrounded the rock; I released you from
the close helmet; Siegfried I am called who have awakened you!"
At the sound of the name, the altogether right one, Brünnhilde
takes up again her song of praise: "Hail to you, gods! Hail to
thee, world! Hail, sumptuously blooming earth!" And Siegfried breaks
forth, in an exalted rapture which inspires his ignorance with
expression befitting the hour: "Oh, hail to the mother who bore
me, hail to the earth which nourished me, that I might behold the
eyes which now shine upon me, blessed!" Brünnhilde, joining in
his hymn of gratitude, blesses, too, the mother who bore him, and
the earth which nourished him, whose eyes alone should behold her,
for whom alone she was destined to awake. The love-scene following
leaves a singular impression of greatness. The wise daughter of
the Wala and the "most splendid hero of the world" are simple as
children, sincere as animals or angels, ardent with honest natural
fire, like stars. When their love finally reaches a perfect
understanding their song is a succession of magnificent shouts,
primitive as they are thrilling.

"Oh, if you knew, joy of the world," Brünnhilde exposes her artless
heart to the hero, "how I have loved you from all time! You were
my care, the object of my solicitude! Before you were shaped, I
nurtured you, before you were born, my shield concealed you,--so
long have I loved you, Siegfried!" He believes for a moment that
his mother has not died but has been sleeping and now speaks to
him. In correcting him, Brünnhilde shows herself tenderly feminine.
No sooner has she spoken the words which must fall with inevitable
dreariness on his ear, "Your mother will not come back to you!"
than she hastens to heal his hurt with the sweetest thing her love
has to say: "Yourself am I, if you love me, fortunate...." She
explains the meaning of her earlier words: "I have loved you from
all time, for to me alone Wotan's thought was known. That thought
which I must never speak, which I did not think, but only felt;
for which I strove, struggled, and fought; for which I braved the
one who had framed it; for which I was made to suffer and bound
in punishment; that thought--might you but grasp it!--was naught
but love for you!"

It could hardly be hoped that the young forester should at this
moment be able to grasp anything so subtle, as he helplessly confesses:
"Wonderful sounds what you winningly sing; but the sense of it is
dark to me. I see your eye beam bright; I feel your warm breath;
I hear the sweet singing of your voice; but that which in your
singing you would impart, stupefied, I understand it not! I cannot
grasp the sense of distant things, when all my senses are absorbed
in seeing and feeling only you. With anxious fear you bind me:
you alone have taught me to fear. Whom you have bound in mighty
bonds, no longer withhold from me my courage!" Brünnhilde at this,
with the touch of nature which makes the Valkyrie kin to the young
lady of drawing-rooms, turns her head away and talks of something
else. She talks of Grane, whom she sees grazing a little way off.
As her eyes fall upon the corslet, cut from her body with a sword,
the sight smites upon her saddeningly, as a symbol. A consciousness
of danger and defencelessness oppresses her, and when Siegfried,
made bold in his fear of her by the very need he feels of overcoming
that fear, impetuously seizes her in his arms, in terror she starts
away from him and wrings her hands with a woful sense of not being
any more that Brünnhilde "whom no god had ever approached, before
whom reverently the heroes had bowed, who holy had departed from
Walhalla." She feels her wisdom forsaking her, her light failing,
night and terror closing down upon her. She appeals to him at last
against himself: "Oh, Siegfried, see my distress!"

He stands so still for a time, silent, puzzled by her, unwilling
certainly to frighten her further, that her immediate fear subsides;
her countenance betrays, the stage-directions read, that "a winning
picture rises before her soul." The character of this may be divined
from the melody rippling softly forth, the motif of peaceful love.
A fresh green branch, it makes one think of, with a nest upon it,
swinging in a summer wind. More gently she addresses him, pleading
rather than repelling, winning him to give up his way for hers.
"Eternal am I,... but eternal for your weal! Oh, Siegfried, joyous
hero! Renounce me.... Approach me not with ardent approach....
Constrain me not with shattering constraint.... Have you not seen
your own image in the clear stream? Has it not gladdened you, glad
one? If you stir the water into turmoil, the smooth surface is lost,
you cannot see your own reflection any longer. Wherefore, touch me
not, trouble me not; eternally bright then shall you shine back at
yourself from me. Oh, Siegfried, luminous youth! love--yourself, and
withhold from me. Destroy not what is your own!" His robust young
love to this replies--after the simple outburst: "You I love, oh,
might you love me! No longer have I myself, oh, had I you!"--that
it matters little his image should be broken in the glorious river
before him, for, burning and thirsting, he would plunge into it
himself, that its waves might blissfully engulf him and his longing
be quenched in the flood. It is he who appeals now, with ancient
arguments, simple and telling as his blows at the dragon. When
at the end of them he clasps Brünnhilde again, she does not as
before wrest herself free, but laughs in joy as she feels her love
surging, till it, as it seems to her, more than matches his own,
and he is the one, she judges, who should feel afraid. She, indeed,
asks him, does he not fear?... But the opposite takes place. With
her love, ardent as his own, frankly given him, all his courage
comes back, "And fear, alas!" he observes, a little disconcerted
at the queerness of this new experience, "fear, which I never
learned,--fear, which you had hardly taught me,--fear, I believe,
I, dullard, have already forgotten it!" Brünnhilde laughs in
delight--all of joy and laughter is their love after this up on
the sunny height--and declares to the "mad-cap treasury of glorious
deeds" that laughing she will love him, laughing lose the light of
her eyes, laughing they will accept destruction, laughing accept
death! Let the proud world of Walhalla crumble to dust, the eternal
tribe of the gods cease in glory, the Norns rend the coil of fate,
the dusk of the gods close down,--Siegfried's star has risen, and he
shall be, to Brünnhilde, for ever, everything! In equally fine and
joyous ravings Siegfried's voice has been pouring forth alongside
of hers; reaching at last an identical sentiment and the same note,
the two rush together like flashing mountain torrents, and are
lost to us behind the descending curtain.




THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS


THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

(DIE GOETTERDAEMMERUNG)

I

In the Prologue of "The Twilight of the Gods" we learn from report
the portion of Wotan's history which belongs between the breaking
of his spear and the final events which bring about the gods' end.

At the rising of the curtain the three Norns are dimly discerned
upon the well-known scene of Brünnhilde's sleep, before the entrance
to the rocky hall where Siegfried and she have their dwelling. The
fiery palisade around their fastness casts a faint glow upon the
night. The Norns, as it were to while away the heavy hour before
dawn, spin and sing. Their "spinning" consists in casting a golden
coil from one to the other, after some peculiar ritual, involving
fastening it to this pine-tree, winding it about that point of
rock, casting it over the shoulder, northward. Their song is of no
frivolous matter, but as if we should entertain ourselves recounting
the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge. Of the World-Ash they
tell, in whose shade a well flowed, murmuring runes of wisdom; of
a daring god who came to drink at the well, paying in toll one
of his eyes. From the World-Ash, he, Wotan, broke a branch and
fashioned it into the shaft of a spear. This he carved with runes
of truth to compacts, and held it as the "haft of the world." An
intrepid hero clove it asunder. Wotan thereupon commanded the heroes
of Walhalla to hew down the World-Ash and cut it to pieces. "High
looms the castle built by giants," sings the youngest of the Norns;
"there in the hall sits Wotan amid the holy clan of the gods and
heroes. Wooden billets heaped to a lofty pile surround the room.
That was once the World-Ash! When the wood shall burn hot and clear,
when the flame shall devour the shining hall, the day of the end
of the gods shall have dawned!" Wotan himself, when the danger
is no longer to be averted of a dishonoured end,--if Alberich,
that is, shall regain possession of the Ring,--will plunge the
splinters of his defeated spear deep into Loge's breast and himself
set the World-Ash ablaze.

As night begins to yield to dawn, confusion falls on the minds of
the Norns; their visions, they complain, are dim. The strands of
the coil become tangled between their fingers. One of them descries
an angry face--Alberich's--floating before her; another becomes
aware of an avenging curse gnawing at the threads of the coil.
This suddenly snaps--terrific omen! Appalled, with the cry that
"eternal wisdom is at an end," they vanish in search of their mother,
Erda, in the earth's depths.

Day breaks. The reflection of Loge's defence pales. There greets
our ear suddenly a sturdy strain, resembling something we have heard
before. By analysis, we discover in it one of the Siegfried-motifs,
the horn-call, but grown so robust and weighty, so firm, strong,
commanding, that it hardly more than reminds us of the youthful
Lock-weise, fluttering forth hopefully to find a "dear companion."
The dear companion has long been found. Hard upon this motif of the
grown-up Siegfried comes a wholly new motif, the motif of Brünnhilde
Wedded, wonderful for its entwining tenderness, yet the elevation
it combines with its immensely feminine quality. It is given over
and over; the instruments pass it from one to the other, like a
watchword.

The two thus announced come forth into the sunrise from their chamber
in the rock, Siegfried full-armed, Brünnhilde leading Grane. They
are glorious in this scene of parting. A nobler passion we do not
remember hearing expressed than animates them and the music which
interprets their being. It is all a little more than life-size.

"To new exploits, beloved hero, how poor were my love, did I not
let you go! One single care restrains me, fear of the insufficiency
of all I could bestow. What I learned from the gods I have given
you, a rich treasury of holy runes, but the maidenly staff of my
strength the hero took from me, before whom I now bow. Despoiled
of wisdom, though filled with desire to serve; rich in love, but
devoid of power, oh, despise not the poor lover who can only wish
you, not give you, more!"

But not all the wisdom of the Wala's daughter, not the rich treasury
of runes, have availed to change Siegfried from his big incurable
simplicity,--as his answer in effect declares: "More did you give
me, wonder-woman, than I have capacity to retain! Be not angry that
your teaching should have left me still untaught. One knowledge
there is which I, none the less, hold fast: that Brünnhilde lives
and is mine; one lesson I learned with ease: to think ever of
Brünnhilde!"

The gift she asks of his love is that he shall think of himself,
think of his great deeds, increase his glory. He bestows on her
in leaving the Ring, in which the virtue is condensed of all great
deeds he ever did. In exchange she gives him Grane. After offering
each other, in their great mood, the consolation that to part is
for them not to be parted, for where he goes there in very truth
goes she, and where she remains there does he too abide, they call
upon the gods to feed their eyes upon the dedicated pair they are,
and with jubilant appellations for each other--Victorious light!
Effulgent star! Radiant love! Radiant life!--the last good words
ever exchanged between them!--they tear apart, without sorrow or
foreboding. She watches him out of sight. The stage-directions
say: "From her happy smile may be divined the appearance of the
cheerfully departing hero." The emphatic phrase is heard, as he
descends into the valley, in which at their first meeting (in the
opera "Siegfried") they vowed that each was to the other "eternally
and for ever, his inheritance and his possession, his only and
his all!" The curtain closes on the Prologue.

By the music we can follow Siegfried on his journey. We know when
he comes to the fire, when he comes to the Rhine. There floats
to us, with the effect of a folk-song, a legend, the lament of
the Rhine-nymphs for their lost gold. Sounds of warning are in
the air as Siegfried approaches the Hall of the Gibichungen, but
to such the hardy hero, no need to say, is fast sealed.

The curtain unclosing shows the interior of the Hall of the Gibichungen,
open at the further end on the Rhine. Gunther, his sister Gutrune,
and their half-brother Hagen, sit at a table set with drinking-horns
and flagons.

This Hagen is the Nibelung's son of Erda's prophecy: "When the
dark enemy of Love shall in wrath beget a son, the end of the gods
shall not be long delayed." An allusion of Hagen's there is to
his mother, as having succumbed to the craft of Alberich. On the
other hand, a reference of Gunther's to Frau Grimhild, his mother
and Hagen's, would seem to show that her history, whatever it may
have been, bore no outward blot.

He is early old, this "child of hate," as Wotan long ago called
him, sere and pallid, totally unglad and hating the glad. He is the
tool created by Alberich--even as Siegmund was Wotan's tool,--to win
back for him the Ring. From his Nibelung father he has more than human
powers and knowledge. In the conversation which we overhear between
the brethren, we witness Hagen laying lines for the recapture of the
Ring and Siegfried's destruction, for he, like Mime, understands
that there can be no safety for him who shall unrightfully get from
Siegfried the Ring, while the strong-handed fellow lives.

Gunther--whose motif betrays him, with its little effect of shallow
self-satisfaction, like a jaunty toss of the head,--Gunther asks
Hagen, is he not magnificent, sitting beside the Rhine; to the
glory of Gibich? "It is my habit," remarks Hagen evasively, "to
envy you." "Nay, for me it is to envy you, and not you me," Gunther
in his pleasant humour rejoins; "true, I inherited the right of
the first-born, but wisdom is yours alone, and I am, in fact, but
lauding your good counsel when I inquire of my fame!" "I blame
the counsel then," speaks Hagen, "for indifferent is as yet the
fame. I know of high advantages which the Gibichung has not yet
won...." Gunther's inquiry he satisfies: "In summer ripeness and
vigour I behold the stem of Gibich: you, Gunther, without wife,--you,
Gutrune, still unwed." Gunther and Gutrune, struck, are silent a
moment. Then Gunther inquires whom should he wed that lustre might
be added to the glory of the House? "I know a woman," Hagen replies,
"the most glorious in the world. On a high rock is her throne; a
fire surrounds her abode; only he who shall break through the fire
may proffer his suit for Brünnhilde." Gunther's mediocrity and
his sense of it stand ingenuously confessed in his question: "Is my
courage sufficient for the test?" "The achievement is reserved for
one stronger even than you." "Who is this unparalleled champion?"
"Siegfried, the son of the Wälsungen.... He, grown in the forest to
mighty size and strength, is the man I wish Gutrune for her lord."
Gutrune's motif, sweet and shallow, like Gunther's betrays her; an
innocent admission of mediocrity, too, is in her exclamation: "You
mocker! Unkind Hagen! How should I be able to attach Siegfried
to me?" She is unsure of her feminine charm as her brother of his
manly courage. As he finds nothing repugnant in the proposition
to win his bride through another, so she accepts to win her love
through a magic potion. Gunther, Gutrune, and Hunding are the only
plain human beings in the drama of the Ring, and certainly they produce
the effect of rampant creatures among winged ones. Acquiescently
Gutrune hears Hagen's suggestion: "Remember the drink in the cupboard;
trust me who provided it. By means of it, the hero whom you desire
shall be bound to you by love. Were Siegfried now to enter, were
he to taste the spiced drink, that he ever saw a woman before you,
that ever a woman approached him, he must totally forget!" Thus
they have it planned: Siegfried shall by a love-potion be won to
Gutrune, and, as a task by which to obtain her from her brother,
shall be deputed to fetch Brünnhilde for him from her flame-surrounded
heights. Hagen is alone, of the three, to know of the tie existing
between Siegfried and Brünnhilde. But, "How shall we find him?"
very pertinently asks Gunther. While storming light-heartedly about
the world in search of adventures, it can hardly be, Hagen judges,
but that he shall come too to Gibich's shore on the Rhine. Even
while he is speaking, Siegfried's horn is heard in the distance.
Hagen from the riverside describes the figure he sees approaching:
"In a boat, a hero and a horse: he it is, so merrily blowing the
horn. By an easy stroke, as if with an idle hand, he drives the
craft against the stream." (We hear that easy stroke of the idle
hand,--the power and gaiety of Siegfried are in it; it has a family
resemblance to the horn-call.) "So vigourous a hand at the swinging
of the scull he alone can boast who slew the dragon. It is Siegfried,
surely no other!" Hagen makes a speaking-tube of his hands: "Hoiho!
Whither, blithesome hero?" "To the strong son of Gibich!" comes
answer from the river. "Here! Here come ashore! Hail, Siegfried,
beloved hero!" The hero lands. As he stands at the entrance, holding
Grane by the bridle, with the unconstraint of ancient manners they
all quietly before speaking take one another's measure with their
eyes. Siegfried's fame has preceded him. He is known as the slayer
of the dragon, the possessor of the Hort, and commander of the
Nibelungen. "Which is the son of Gibich?" he inquires. Gunther
presents himself. "I heard you lauded far down the Rhine," Siegfried
says; and, with the fresh directness again of ancient manners:
"Either fight with me, or be my friend!" As we see him for the
first time among common mortals, we perceive the effect of high
elegance which pertains to Siegfried's calm, his careless perfect
strength and simplicity. Gutrune who has not removed her marvelling
gaze from him since his entrance, withdraws--to prepare the drink.
As Hagen takes his horse to stable, Siegfried charges him, while
a dear memory sings in his heart: "Take good care of Grane for
me. Never did you hold by the bridle a horse of nobler breed!"

Magnificent is Gunther in expressions of welcome to the great guest:
"Joyfully hail, O hero, the Hall of my fathers! The ground you
tread, all you see, regard as your own. Yours is my inheritance,
yours are my land and my people. To these add my body. I offer
myself as your vassal." Siegfried replies: "I offer neither land
nor people; no father's mansion nor court. My sole inheritance is
my own body, which I expend day by day in living. Nothing have
I but a sword, forged by myself.... This I pledge with myself to
our alliance." Hagen, overhearing, ventures; "Yet report calls
you possessor of the Nibelungen-Hort...." And Siegfried; "I had
almost forgotten the treasure, so do I prize its idle wealth! I
left it lying in a cave where it once was guarded by a dragon." (The
reason is clear why the curse must drop away crippled, powerless
to blight this free nature, unenfeebled by covetousness as by fear!)
"And you brought away no part of it?" "This metal-work, unaware of
its use." Hagen recognises the Tarnhelm and explains its virtues.
"And you took from the Hort nothing further?" "A ring." "You have
it no doubt in safe keeping?" "It is in the keeping of a gracious
woman," Siegfried replies dreamily.

Bashful, blushing, tremulous, as different as is well possible from
Brünnhilde, Gutrune approaches, holding a filled drinking-horn.
"Welcome, guest, in Gibich's house! His daughter offers you drink!"

Siegfried holds the cup before him a moment without drinking, his
thoughts flying afar. The words come back to him spoken to Brünnhilde
at parting. An infinite tenderness invades him. "Though I should
forget all you ever taught me," he murmurs, "one teaching I shall
still hold fast. My first draught, to faithful love, Brünnhilde,
I drink to you!" With which secret toast to the absent beloved
he sets the horn to his lips and drains it--to the motif of Evil
Enchantment, the motif of the Cup of Forgetfulness, closely resembling
the Tarnhelm-motif, but sweeter,--cruel as a treacherous caress.
This whole passage, surpassingly exquisite to the ear, is painful
to the heart as hardly another in the opera, fertile as this is
in tragic moments. It marks the end of so much happiness.

When Siegfried's eyes, as he returns the cup to Gibich's daughter,
rest upon her, it is, as Hagen had foretold, as if he had never
before beheld a woman. The inflammable heart which suffocated him
of old at sight of Brünnhilde asleep, now makes his voice falter
with instantaneous passion as he exclaims: "You, whose beauty dazzles
like lightning, wherefore do you drop your eyes before me?" And
when shyly she looks up: "Ha, fairest woman, hide your glance!
Its beam scorches the heart within my breast--Gunther, what is
your sister's name?... Gutrune!... Are they _good runes_ which I
read in her eye?..." Impetuously he seizes her hand; "I offered
myself to your brother as his vassal, the haughty one repelled me;
will you exhibit the same arrogance toward me, if I offer myself
as your ally?" She cannot answer, for the confusion of joy which
overwhelms her; signifying by a gesture her unworthiness of this
high honour, with unsteady step she leaves the room. Siegfried,
closely observed by the other two, gazes lingeringly after her,
fast-bewitched. Some sketch of a project for winning her it must
be prompting his next words: "Have you, Gunther, a wife?" "Not
yet have I courted, and hardly shall I rejoice in a wife! I have
set my heart upon one whom no well-advised endeavour can win for
me!" "In what can you fail," speaks Siegfried's brisk assurance, "if
I stand by you?" "Upon a high rock is her throne, a fire surrounds
her abode," Gunther in hopeless tone describes the forbidding
circumstances. "Upon a high rock is her throne, a fire surrounds
her abode,..." Siegfried rapidly says the words after him, which
his lips know so strangely well. "Only he who breaks through the
fire..." "Only he who breaks through the fire,..." Siegfried is
visibly making a tremendous effort to remember, to account for
the something so curiously familiar in the image evoked. "May be
Brünnhilde's suitor...." By this, the cup of forgetfulness has
completely done its work,--the name suggests to him nothing, the
effort itself to remember is forgotten. "But not for me," sighs
Gunther, "to climb the rock; the fire will not die down for me!"
"I fear no fire! I will win the woman for you," Siegfried declares,
"for your man am I, and my valour is yours, if I may obtain Gutrune
for my wife!" Gutrune is promised him. It is Siegfried's heated
brain--for the first time fruitful in stratagem--which throws off
the plan to deceive this strange woman up in the fire-girdled fastness
of whom they tell him, by means of the Tarnhelm, which lends the
wearer any shape he wish to adopt. The future brothers swear
"blood-brotherhood," pledging their truth in wine, into which each
has let trickle a drop of his blood. "If one of the brothers shall
break the bond, if one of the friends shall betray his faithful
ally, let that which in kindness we drink to-day by drops gush
forth in streams, sacred reparation to the friend!" They clasp
hands upon the compact, and Hagen with his sword cleaves in two
the drinking-horn. "Why," it occurs to Siegfried, "did not you,
Hagen, join in the oath?" "My blood would have spoiled the drink,"
replies the joyless man; "it does not flow noble and untroubled
like yours; cold and morose it stagnates in me, and will not colour
my cheek. Wherefore I keep afar from the fiery league." The ancient
conception of the power of a vow, as of the power of a curse, is
interestingly illustrated in this story. The effectiveness of a vow,
as we discover, has nothing to do with persons or circumstances; an
oath becomes a sort of independent creation with a precise operation
of its own. Hagen, capable of any breach of faith, meditating nothing
but treachery, dare not join in the formality of the oath because of
sure and deadly danger in breaking it. Siegfried deceives Gunther
without intending or knowing it, yet his blood must "gush forth
in streams" as appointed, to wash out his offence.

Siegfried is for starting without delay on the quest: "There is
my skiff; it will take us quickly to the rock; one night you shall
wait in the boat on the shore, then shall you lead home the bride."

The Hall is left in Hagen's care. Followed by Gutrune's eyes, the
heroes hurry off. Hagen places himself with spear and shield in
the doorway, and, while sitting there sentinel-wise, reflects upon
the success of his devices: "Blown along by the wind, the son of
Gibich goes a-wooing. Helmsman to him is a strong hero, who is to
brave danger in his stead. His own bride this latter will bring
for him to the Rhine, but to me he will bring--the Ring! You frank
good fellows, light-hearted companions, sail cheerfully on! Abject
though he may seem to you, you are yet his servants--the servants
of the Nibelung's son!" The curtain closes.

When it reopens we see the scene once more of Siegfried's and
Brünnhilde's leave-taking. Brünnhilde sits sunk in contemplation of
the Ring and the memories attached to it. Distant thunder disturbs
her dreams; her ear seizes a familiar sound, not heard for many a
day, the gallop of an approaching air-horse. Her name comes borne
on the wind. She rushes to receive Waltraute, whose call she has
joyfully recognised. In her delight, she does not at once take
account of the Valkyrie's sorrowful and preoccupied mien. She presses
rapid questions upon her: "You dared then for love of Brünnhilde
brave Walvater's commandment? Or--how? Oh, tell me! Has Wotan's
disposition softened toward me? When I protected Siegmund against
the god, while it was a fault, I know that I was fulfilling his
wish. I know, too, that his anger was appeased, for even though he
sealed me in slumber, left me bound on a rock, to be the bondmaid
of the man who should find and wake me, yet he granted favour to
the prayer of my terror, he surrounded the rock with a devouring
fire which should close the way to the base. Thus was I through my
punishment made happy! The most splendid of heroes won me for wife.
In the light of his love to-day I beam and laugh!" With uncontrolled
joy she embraces the sister, unconscious of the latter's impatience
and shy attempt to repel her. "Did my fate, sister, allure you?
Have you come to pasture your sight upon my bliss, to share that
which has befallen me?"

The suggestion is verily too much! "To share the tumult which,
insensate, possesses you? A different matter it is which impelled
me, fearful, to break Wotan's commandment...." Brünnhilde wakes
to the sister's troubled looks, but she can still think of but
one reason for them. "The stern one has not forgiven? You stand
in terror of his anger?" "Had I need to fear him--there would be a
term to my fear!" "Amazed, I do not understand you!" "Master your
agitation, listen attentively. The terror which drove me forth
from Walhalla, drives me back thither...." "What has happened to
the eternal gods?" cries Brünnhilde, at last alarmed. Waltraute
unfolds to her then the sorrowful plight of the gods, making her
even over the events in Walhalla since her cutting off from the
eternal dynasty. She describes Walvater returning home from his
wanderings with his broken spear, the erection around the Hall
of the Blessed of the funeral pile cut from the World-Ash, the
assembling about Wotan's throne of the gods and heroes. "There he
sits, speaks no word, the splinters of the spear clenched in his
hand. Holda's (Freia's) apples he will not touch. Fear and amazement
bind the gods. His ravens both he has sent ranging; should they
return with good tidings, then once again--for the last time!--the
god would divinely smile. Clasping his knees lie we Valkyries;
he is blind to our entreating looks. I pressed weeping against
his breast, his glance wavered--Brünnhilde, he thought of you!
Deeply he sighed; he closed his eyes and as if in dream he breathed
forth the words: "If to the daughters of the deep Rhine she would
restore the Ring, delivered from the weight of the curse were the
gods and the world!" I bethought me then; from his side, between
the rows of silent heroes, I stole. In secret haste I mounted my
horse and rode upon the storm to you. You, oh, my sister, I now
conjure: that which lies in your power, bravely do it,--end the
misery of the Immortals!"

Brünnhilde speaks to her pityingly and gently; it is so long since
she emerged from the vapour-dimmed atmosphere of her heavenly home
that she receives no clear impression, she owns, of the affair
related to her; but: "What, pale sister, do you crave from me?"

"Upon your hand, the ring--that is the one! Listen to my counsel,
for Wotan's sake cast it from you!" "The ring? Cast it from me?"
"To the Rhine-daughters give it back!" "To the Rhine-daughters,
I, this ring? Siegfried's love-token? Are you mad?"

Brünnhilde is unshaken by Waltraute's insistence. Good or bad arguments
have nothing to do with the case, as it stands in her feeling.
Indignation possesses her at the bare notion of the exchange proposed
to her, out of all reason and proportion: Siegfried's love, of
which his ring is the symbol, for Walhalla's and the world's peace!
"Ha! do you know what the ring is to me? How should you grasp it,
unfeeling maid? More than the joys of Walhalla, more than the glory
of the Immortals, is to me this ring; one look at its clear gold,
one flash of its noble lustre, I prize more than the eternally
enduring joy of all the gods, for it is Siegfried's love which
beams at me from the ring! Oh, might I tell you the bliss.... And
that bliss is safeguarded by the ring. Return to the holy council
of the gods; inform them, concerning my ring: Love I will never
renounce; they shall never take love from me, not though Walhalla
the radiant should crash down in ruins!" When Waltraute with cries of
"Woe!" flees to horse, she looks after her unmoved: "Lightning-charged
cloud, borne by the wind, go your stormy way! Nevermore steer your
course toward me!" She has no regrets; the request has been in
her judgment so monstrous that it has hardened and shut her heart
toward those who made it. She gazes quietly over the landscape. Her
sense of security in Siegfried's love is no doubt at its firmest
in these moments following her fiery defence of it, her sacrifice
to it of old allegiances. The very peace of possession is upon
her.

Twilight has fallen; the guardian fire glows more brightly as the
darkness thickens. Of a sudden, the flames leap high,--Loge's signal
that some one draws near. At the same moment Siegfried's horn is
heard, approaching. With the cry: "In my god's arm!" Brünnhilde
rushes to meet him.

A figure springs from the flames upon a rock, a form foreign to
Brünnhilde's eyes. The flames drop back. The figure remains, dark
against the dim glow of the sky. His head and the greater part of
his face are concealed by a helmet of curious fashion; she does
not, in the uncertain light, recognise the Tarnhelm. The fact itself
of his being there is terrifying, arguing some singular treachery
somewhere. "Treason!" is Brünnhilde's first cry, as she recoils and
from a distance stares breathlessly at the sinister intruder. He
stands motionless, leaning upon his shield and regarding her. "Who
is it that has forced his way to me?" she gasps. He is silent still;
the horror of him is increased by his silence and motionlessness
and his metal mask. The motif of evil enchantment is woven through
the whole of this scene. In a hard masterful voice he speaks at
length: "Brünnhilde! A suitor is come whom your fire does not alarm!
I seek you for my wife; follow me unresistingly." It is all so
strange, so like the agonising impossibilities of a dream,--Brünnhilde
falls to trembling. "Who are you, dreadful one? Are you a mortal?
Do you come from Hella's army of the night?" Still watching her,
motionless on his point of vantage, he replies: "A Gibichung am
I, and Gunther is the hero's name, whom, woman, you must follow."
It flashes upon Brünnhilde that this, this must have been the true
point of Wotan's punishment. When the figure springs from the rock
and approaches her, she raises, to hold him off, the hand with
Siegfried's ring. "Stand back! Fear this sign!... Stronger than
steel I am made by this ring; never shall you rob me of it!" "You
teach me," he replies, with his dark calm, "to detach it from you!"
He reaches for it, she defends it. They wrestle. She escapes from
him with a victorious cry. He seizes her again. The former Valkyrie,
reinforced by the Ring, is a match very nearly for the stalwart
Wälsung. A shriek is heard. He has caught her hand, and draws the
ring from her finger. As if all her strength had been in it and
were gone with its loss, she sinks, broken, in the arms of the
disguised Siegfried. He coldly lets her down upon the seat of rock.
"Now you are mine, Brünnhilde,--Gunther's bride. Withhold not your
favour from me now!" She cowers, shattered and stupefied, murmuring,
"How could you have helped yourself, miserable woman!" The right of
the stronger she recognises, primitive woman, as a right. Fairly
vanquished, she must accept the fate of battle,--no dignity, as no
success, would pertain to further struggle. When with a gesture
of command he points her to her stone chamber, trembling and with
faltering step she obeys. Siegfried, following, draws his sword
and in his natural voice again, smooth and happy, addresses it:
"Now, Nothung, do you bear witness to the restraint which marks
my wooing. Guarding my truth to my brother, divide me from his
bride!"

II

The Hall of the Gibichungen once more, seen from the outside. It
is night. Hagen sits as we left him, in guard over the hall. He
sleeps leaning against a pillar of the portal. A burst of moonlight
shows Alberich crouching before him. "Are you asleep, Hagen, my
son? Are you asleep and deaf to my voice, whom sleep and rest have
forsaken?" "I hear you, harassed spirit; what message have you
for my sleep?" Remember! remember! is the burden of Alberich's
communication. Be true to the task for the purpose of which you
were created. The old enemy, Wotan, is no longer to be feared;
he has been made powerless by one of his own race. The object now
singly to be kept in view is the destruction of this latter, and
capture of the Ring in his possession. Quickly it must be done,
for "a wise woman there is, living for love of the Wälsung; were
she to bid him restore the Ring to the Rhine-daughters, for ever
and ever lost were the gold!" "The Ring I will have!" Hagen quiets
the care-ridden Nibelung, "rest in peace!" "Do you swear it to me,
Hagen, my hero?" "I swear it to myself!" Dawn has been creeping
over the sky. The form of Alberich fades in the growing light and
his voice dies on the ear: "Be faithful, Hagen, my son, be
faithful--faithful!" Hagen sits alone in the broadening day, seemingly
asleep, yet with eyes wide open. He starts. Flushed with the
morning-red, Siegfried strides up from the river-bank, uttering
his joyful "Hoiho!" "Siegfried, winged hero, whence do you come so
fast?" "From Brünnhilde's rock. I there took in the breath which I
put forth in calling you,--so rapid was my journey. A couple follows
me more slowly. Their journey is by boat. Is Gutrune awake?"

"Now make we welcome, Gibich's-child!" he greets her, as at Hagen's
call she comes hurrying out to him. "I bring good tidings!" In
exuberantly good spirits he tells them the story of his bad action.
The magic draught administered to him had more than destroyed his
memory of Brünnhilde, we must believe; the inflaming potion had
somehow blotted out, or covered over and for the time cast into
the background, his father's part in him, the part of Siegmund, who
fought to the end an unequal and losing battle to save a girl from
a marriage without love. "Across the expiring fire," he concludes
his report, "through the mists of early dawn, she followed me from
the mountain-top to the valley. At the shore, Gunther and I, in
a trice, changed places, and by virtue of the Tarnhelm I wished
myself here. A strong wind is even at the moment driving our dear
pair up the Rhine." "Let us display all kindness in our reception of
her," Gutrune proposes, with the generosity of overflowing happiness;
"that she may be pleased and glad to sojourn with us here! Do you,
Hagen, summon the vassals to the wedding at Gibich's court, while
I will gather the women." Siegfried fondly offers her his help;
hand in hand they go within.

Hagen is conscious, presumably, of an incongruity in the task assigned
to him, the genial office of gathering together the clans for a
wedding-feast. However that may be, he does not, to perform it,
depart at all from his character. Ascending to an eminence, he
blows a melancholy blast through a great steer-horn, and, in a
voice portending tidings the most alarming, gives the call to arms:
"Hoiho! Gibich's men! Up! Arms in the land! Danger! Danger!" In
this he persists until from all sides, singly at first, then in
groups and lastly in crowds, the vassals, hurriedly armed, come
flocking. "Why does the horn sound? Why are we called to arms?
Here we are with our weapons.... Hagen, what danger threatens?
What enemy is near? Who attacks us? Is Gunther in need of us?"
"Forthwith prepare, and dally not, to receive Gunther returning
home. He has wooed a wife!" This still in a tone befitting the
announcement of disaster. "Is he in trouble? Is he hard pressed
by the foe?" "A formidable wife he brings home!" "Is he pursued
by the hostile kindred of the maid?" "He comes alone, unpursued."
"The danger then is past? He has come forth victorious from the
encounter?" "The dragon-slayer succoured him in his need; Siegfried,
the hero, secured his safety." "How then shall his followers further
help him?" "Strong steers you shall slaughter and let Wotan's altar
stream with their blood." "And what, Hagen, are we to do after
that?" "A boar shall you slay for Froh, a mighty ram for Donner;
but to Fricka you shall sacrifice sheep, that she may bless the
marriage!"

The men are beginning to penetrate through Hagen's sullen aspect
to his joke; with heavy playfulness they help it on. "And when we
have slaughtered the animals, what shall we do?" "From the hands
of fair women take the drinking-horn, pleasantly brimming with
wine and mead." "Horn in hand,--what then?" "Bravely carouse until
drunkenness overwhelm you--all to the honour of the gods, that they
may bless the marriage!" The rough warriors break into laughter,
and in uncouth jollity stamp with their feet and spear-butts. "Great
good fortune is indeed abroad on the Rhine when Hagen the grim
grows jovial!" Not the faintest smile illumines the bleak face. At
sight of Gunther's skiff approaching, he checks the men's laughter.
Moving among them, with careful foresight he drops seed toward
fruits of trouble: "Be loyal to your sovereign mistress, serve
her faithfully; if she should suffer wrong, be swift to avenge
her!" Hagen's plan for bringing about Siegfried's destruction is
not yet at this point settled in outline. We see him grasping at
whatever can be construed into a weapon against him. There are
repeated attempts on his part in the scene following to stir against
Siegfried some fatal demonstration of popular anger.

The skiff draws to land. The vassals greet their lord and his bride
with noisy chorus of welcome, clashing their arms together, beating
their swords against their bucklers.

Brünnhilde stands beside Gunther in the boat, statue-still, her eyes
bent on the ground, like one who neither sees nor hears. Without
resistance she lets Gunther take her hand to help her ashore; but
a suppressed snatch of the motif of Wotan's resentment suggests
the shudder ominous of danger overrunning his Valkyrie daughter
at the contact.

This is Gunther's hour, this for him the supreme occasion in life;
the star of his destiny rides the heavens unclouded; he feels now
magnificent indeed in his seat on the Rhine, as he stands before his
people with the regal creature beside him whom he calls his wife.
As if to express the momentary expansion of his nature, his motif
resounds, as proudly he presents her, quite changed in character; it
has taken on a grandeur approaching pomp: "Brünnhilde, the glory
of her sex, I bring to you here on the Rhine. A nobler wife was
never won! The race of the Gibichungen, by the grace of the gods,
shall now tower to crowning heights of fame!" Brünnhilde does not
heed or hear. When, as Gunther leads her toward the Hall, Siegfried
and Gutrune meet them, coming forth from it with strains of
marriage-music and a festal train of ladies, her eyes never moving
from the ground, she does not see them. "Hail, beloved hero! Hail,
dearest sister!" Gunther greets the bridal pair. "Joyfully I behold
at your side, sister, him who has won you. Two happy pairs are
here met--Brünnhilde and Gunther, Gutrune and Siegfried!"

At the name, Brünnhilde looks quickly up.... Her astonished gaze
fastens upon Siegfried's face and dwells intently upon it. Her
action is so marked that Gunther drops her hand; all watch her
in wonder. A murmur runs through the assembly: "What ails her? Is
she out of her mind?" Brünnhilde, still speechless, falls visibly
to trembling. Siegfried becomes at last aware of something out of
the common in the gaze so persistently fixed upon him. He goes
quietly to the woman and asks: "What trouble burdens Brünnhilde's
gaze?" She has hardly power to frame words, make sounds, her emotion
still further intensified by his cool and disengaged address.
"Siegfried, here!... Gutrune!" she painfully brings forth. "Gunther's
gentle sister," he enlightens her, in his major, matter-of-fact
manner, "wedded to me, as you to Gunther!" At this she recovers her
voice to hurl at him startlingly: "I--to Gunther?... A lie!" She
is swooning with the helpless horror of all this monstrous mystery.
Siegfried, who stands nearest, receives her as she totters, near to
falling. As she lies for a moment in the well-known arms, it seems
impossible, beyond everything impossible, that his unimaginable
purpose should not break down, that he should not be forced to
drop this incomprehensible feint of strangeness. But her dying
eyes searching the face close to them discover in it no glimmer
of feeling. Her heart-broken murmur: "Siegfried.... knows me not?"
touches no chord. The hero is for handing her over with all convenient
haste to her proper guardian. "Gunther, your wife is ailing!" As
Gunther comes, he rouses her: "Awake, woman! Here is your husband!"
Because her senses seem clouded and she a moment before rejected
the statement that she was married to Gunther, he singles out for
her with his finger the personage he means. Her eyes, as he makes
this gesture, are caught by the Ring on his hand. Her mind leaps,
inevitably, to the conclusion that Siegfried, who feigns not to
know her, not only has cast her off, but is in collusion with this
man Gunther, her captor.

Trying by a supreme effort to govern her agitation and anger at
the revelation of this unspeakable baseness, till she shall have
sounded the affair, "A ring I saw upon your finger," she addresses
him; "not to you does it belong; it was torn from me by this man!"
indicating Gunther. "How should you have received the ring from
him?" Siegfried looks reflectively at the ring. Since all trace of
the former Brünnhilde is wiped from his brain, he cannot remember
his parting gift to her of the Ring. Certainly, he wrested a ring
from this woman, in the twilight.... What became of it?... But
the ring on his hand is indisputably a relic of the old days of
the fight with the dragon. "I did not receive the ring from him,"
he replies. She turns to Gunther: "If you took from me the ring,
by which you claimed me for wife, declare to him your right to it,
demand back the token!" Gunther is sore perplexed. "The ring?...
I gave him none.... Are you sure that is the one?" "Where do you
conceal the ring," Brünnhilde presses him, "which you robbed from
me?" Gunther is stupidly silent, not knowing what he should say; his
confusion is so obvious and his blankness so convincingly unassumed,
that the truth is borne upon Brünnhilde: It was not he, despite
all appearances, who took the ring from her, and if not he--"Ha!"
she cries, in a burst of furious indignation, "This is the man
who tore the ring from me; Siegfried, trickster and thief!"

Siegfried has been still gazing at the ring on his hand, trying
to puzzle out points which the lacunæ in his memory do not permit
him to make clear. The contemplation has brought back old scenes
and distant events. He speaks, unruffled: "From no woman did I
receive the ring; nor did I take it from any woman. Full well do
I recognise the prize of battle, won by me before Neidhöhle, when
I slew the mighty dragon."

With what quiet and conviction he makes the statement, as if verily
he spoke the truth! Such assurance is hardly imaginable, save as based
upon conscious integrity.... Hagen now, the fisher in troubled waters,
interferes, still further to increase Brünnhilde's bewilderment:
"Are you sure you recognise the ring? If it is the one you gave
to Gunther, it belongs to him, and Siegfried obtained it by some
artifice which the deceiver shall be made to rue!"

Plainly, there is no way of help in clearing up this desperate
tangle. The goaded woman bursts into a wild outcry, sharp as a
knife by which she should hope to cut through the coil in which
she is caught: "Deceit! Deceit! Dastardly deceit!... Treachery!
Treachery! such as never until this moment called for vengeance!"

Gutrune catches her breath: "Deceit?..." The quickly roused suspicion
of the crowd takes up Brünnhilde's word: "Treachery?... To whom?..."

"Holy gods! Heavenly leaders!" Brünnhilde's madness clamours to
heaven: "Did you appoint this in your councils? Do you impose upon
me sufferings such as never were suffered? Do you create ignominy
for me such as never was endured? Prompt me then to vengeance such
as never yet raged! Enkindle anger in me such as never was quelled!
Teach Brünnhilde to break her own heart that she may shatter the
one who betrayed her!" The ineffectual Gunther tries vainly to
hush her, to stop the scandalous scene. "Away!" she thrusts him
from her, "cheat!... Yourself cheated!" and she announces ringingly
to them all the one thing which in all this confusion she knows
to be true: "Not to him (Gunther) am I married, but to that man,
there!"

"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
on the 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 around Gutrune 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. Impossible of 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 you_ describes
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 corrects herself,
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.

III

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 for them. 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 better objection: "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 expected terms. 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 me in 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 his blood,
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's blood 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 a kiss 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 all happening 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 of his 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 passionate sorrow 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!...
And have 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 hurl a 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 salutation to 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 MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG

I

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 she was 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, measuring distances 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 law thereof!... 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 at last
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 the young 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 man is 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
kingdom of 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 become a 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 the _Tabulatur_,
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 your lofty 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. He nods
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," to Walther, "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 the _Leges
Tabulaturoe_. 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 flourish at 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!"

Walther springs to the singing-chair, but the masters cry in a
voice, "An end! An end!" Walther, undaunted, climbs to his feet
upon the very seat of the sacred chair, from which he commands
the assembly by half his height and haughtily looks down upon it.
And he sings with all his lungs and all his fire to make himself
heard above the hubbub; he sings, determined to impose the impress
of himself upon their minds, will they or not; and his tenor pierces
through and floats over the snarling chorus of objection; and he
sings his song, in spite of them all, to the very end. "From the
dark thorn-hedge rustles forth the owl, and by his hooting rouses
the hoarse choir of the ravens; in night-black swarm they gather,
and croak aloud with their hollow voices, magpies, crows, and daws!
But thereupon soars upward on a pair of golden wings, wonderful,
a Bird: his clearly-shining plumage gleams bright aloft in the
air, rapturously he soars hither and thither, inviting me to join
him in flight. My heart expands with a delicious pain, my longing
to fly creates wings. I swing myself heavenward in daring flight,
away from that death-vault, the city, away to the hills of home;
thence to the green forest, meeting-place of birds, where long
ago Walther, the Poet, won my allegiance. There sing I clear and
loud the praise of my dearest lady, there mounts upward, little
as Master Crows may relish it, the proud canticle of love!"

All this while the confusion of voices has not ceased or diminished.
Beckmesser has been heatedly, in support of his chalk-marks, going
over Walther's literary misdemeanours: Defective versification,
unpronounceable words, misplaced rhymes, etc. etc. The masters
have been vociferously criticising and rejecting the new-comer.
Pogner has looked on and taken no part, a dejected spectator. He
is sorry to see the Knight defeated, and he says to himself that
he knows he will regret his toleration of this high-handedness of
the masters. For the natural thought has risen in his mind that
it would be agreeable to have this fine fellow received in the
guild, and subsequently into his family as son-in-law. Upon which
thought naturally follows the other: "The victor whom I now must
fall back upon, who knows if my child will care for him? I confess
to a degree of uneasiness as to whether Eva will choose that master!"

Sachs alone has listened through all the manifold disturbance--has
intently, delightedly listened; has loved the boy's courage, and
marvelled at the force of his inspiration; has besought the masters
to keep still and listen, or at least to let others listen.... "No
use! It is labour lost! One can hardly hear his own words. The
Knight can not from one of them gain attention!... That is what
I call courage, to go on singing like that! His heart is in the
right place,--a very giant of a poet. I, Hans Sachs, make verses and
shoes, but he is a Knight and a poet on top of it!" The apprentices,
emboldened by the general disorder, add their voices to the others,
attempting to drown out the singer so fierily, unremittingly singing
from his post of vantage. They join hands again and dance in circle
around the Marker's platform.

Through all this, over all this, the stubborn song, not for a moment
weakening or wavering, has climbed its way, with the figurative
Bird, to its climax-point. His throat shall burst, but he will
be heard! His last note Walther holds for four bars: "_Das stolze
Lie----bes Lied!_"... Sung to an end it is, the lofty canticle of
love. The singer jumps down from the chair. "A lasting farewell to
you, my masters!" With a proud gesture, which rids him of them forever
and consigns them to the dust-heap of their sordid narrowness and
mediocrity, he stalks to the door. "_Versungen und verthan! Versungen
und verthan!_" cry the masters, raising their hands according to
custom in giving a vote; "_Versungen und verthan!_" He has failed
in song, he is done with!

The song-trial is over. The apprentices in merry tumult take apart
the Marker's closet, hurry off benches and seats, rapidly clearing
the church of all signs of the meeting. The masters leave, except
Sachs. He stands gazing abstractedly at the singing-chair, while
a snatch of Walther's song sings itself over in his memory. His
meditation is interrupted by the apprentices snatching up and carrying
off the chair. With a half-melancholy smile and a gesture of delicate
mockery at himself for the spell he has so completely fallen under,
reluctantly the last master-singer turns to the door, and the curtain
falls.

II

The second act shows the exterior of Pogner's house and of Sachs's,
his neighbour across the street. It is the close of day; David,
putting up the shutters, is thinking of the morrow and its pleasures
so intently that he does not, for a moment, recognise Lene's voice
calling him. He mistakes it for that of some teasing fellow-apprentice,
until he turns around and beholds her, as so often! with a
promising-looking basket on her arm. "I bring you something good.
Yes, you may peep. That is for my precious treasure, but first,
quick, tell me, what success had the Knight? Did you instruct him
to some purpose? Was he made a master?"--"Ah, Mistress Lene, it's
a bad case! He failed utterly and miserably!"--"He failed?..."
"Ay,--why should you so particularly care?" She jerks away the
basket from his outstretched hand: "Keep your hands to yourself!
Here is nothing for you! God ha' mercy, our young lord defeated!"
and hurries into the house, leaving him crest-fallen, an object of
mockery to his companions, who have lost nothing of the interview.
Goaded, he has finally plunged among them with punishing fist,
when Sachs's arrival upon the scene stops the disorder. The boys
nimbly scatter. David is ordered indoors. "Close the shop and make
a light. Put the new shoes on the lasts!" Both go in.

The peacefulness of evening is upon the scene. Pogner, with his
daughter on his arm, returning from a walk, comes down the lane
which divides his house from Sachs's. He hesitates at Sachs's door.
"Shall we see whether neighbour Sachs be at home? I should be glad
of a talk with him. Shall I go in?..." But he decides against it.
"Why should I, after all? Better not! When a man undertakes a course
out of the usual, how should he accept advice?... Was it not he who
considered that I went too far? Yet, in forsaking the beaten track,
was I not doing even as he does? Or, was I actuated peradventure--by
vanity?" Pogner is not easy in his mind, it is plain. He invites
his silent and preoccupied daughter to sit beside him a little
space on the stone seat under the linden in front of their house;
he tries to fortify his faltering heart with the review of his
plan for the morrow, held in the poetic light in which he first
saw and found it alluring. "Deliciously mild is the evening. It
presages a most beautiful day to shine upon you to-morrow. Oh,
child, does no throb of the heart tell you what happiness awaits
you to-morrow, when the whole of Nuremberg, with its burghers and
plebeians, its guilds, its populace and high officials, is to gather
in your presence to see you award the prize, the noble laurel-wreath,
to the master of your choice and your chosen bridegroom?" But he
speaks to the Evchen of day before yesterday. So recently as that
his scheme no doubt attracted the daughter of his blood even as it
did him; she saw it with kindred eyes. Her youthful pride rejoiced
in the part she was to play of lovely lady of romance, to know that
she should become from that day a heroine of legend, her name for
long years recurring in the songs of song-loving Nuremberg. As for
the practical side of the question, she felt safe. She believed
she knew which of the master-singers was sure of election by the
majority of the masters, and him she had it in her heart to crown
with a right good-will--so recently as day before yesterday. But
to-day, at her father's "the master of your choice" she wistfully
inquires, "Dear father, _must_ it be a master?"--"Understand me
well, _a master of your choice_," the uneasy parent replies.

Magdalene is making signs from the doorway to Eva. The girl becomes
absent-minded, drops the subject in question, and suggests to her
father that he go in to supper. Vexed with himself and her, he
rises from her side. "We are not expecting any guest, are we?"
he asks, a shade querulously. "Why, surely, the Knight?"--"How is
that?"--"Did you not see him to-day?"--"No desire have I to see
him!" the troubled father mutters. Then, in a flash, two and two
leap together and make four to his startled mind. "What's this?...
Nay, thick-witted am I grown!"--"Dear little father, go in and
change your coat!" urges the pretty daughter. "Humph!" he murmurs,
now as absent-minded as she, "What is this buzzing in my head?"
and goes indoors.

Magdalene reports to Eva David's news: the Knight has been refused
admission to the guild. "God help me! What shall I do!" cries Eva,
in a sea of troubles; "Ah, Lene, the anxiety!... Where to turn
to find out something?"--"From Sachs, perhaps?"--"Ah, yes, he is
fond of me. Certainly, I will go to him."--"Beware of arousing
suspicion. Your father will notice if we stay out any longer at
present. Wait until after supper. I shall have something further to
communicate to you then, a message which a certain person charged me
with privately."--"Who?.. The Knight?"--"No, Beckmesser."--"Something
proper that must be!" the fair girl scoffs as they enter the house.

Sachs, in working-clothes, is seen moving within his shop. He orders
David to place his table and stool beside the door, and go to bed.
Reluctantly David goes off. He is troubled over Magdalene's
unaccountable behaviour to him, and this sitting up late of his
master's interferes with his slipping over to her for an explanation.
Sachs takes his seat before the work-table, sets his materials
aright, but having done it, instead of falling to work, leans back
and lets the sweetness of the evening beguile him, dreams possess
and waft him whither they will. That haunting strain from Walther's
song, repeated slowly, as by one savouring it with pensive pleasure,
again sings itself to his inward ear; it, indeed, is partly to
blame for his mood of gentle unrest. The memory will not let him
alone of that marvellous, that unprecedented experience of the
afternoon. Unreservedly the grey-haired man's homage flies to the
youngling who so easily outstrips them all, with their inveterate
painstaking, their multitudinous canons. Not only without a shade
of bitterness but with a tender elation, he lives over again the
emotions created in him by that passionate song. To his true poet's
heart it is a matter for exultation that just something beautiful
should have been, and he there to witness and rejoice. He reconsiders
it all with affectionate disquisition, fresh delight in every point.
If just a shade of sadness belongs to the hour, it lies in the
recognition that though the vision of beauty has by the contagion
that is proper to it stimulated in him the impulse to be at once
producing, he too, beautiful things, not by any longing could he,
after a life of faithful effort in the service of Poesy, produce
anything to compare with the unprepared effusion of that youth!

In the serenity of the lovely evening his thoughts breathe themselves
forth upon the scented June air: "What fragrance--how mild, how
sweet, how abundant,--exhaled from the elder-tree! Its soft spell
loosens my fibres, solicits me to seek expression for my thoughts.
To what purpose, any expression of mine? A poor, simple fellow
am I! Little in the mood for work as I am, you had best, friend,
let me alone! Far wiser I should attend to my leather and desist
altogether from poetry!" Resolutely he falls to work. But Friend
Elder-tree does not therefore cease to shed scent. It casts its
spell over him again almost at once. "No, there is no use in trying
to work!" Sachs leans back and listens again to the echo in his
memory of Walther's song. "I feel it," he meditates, lending ear
to the persistent voice in his brain, "and cannot understand it.
I cannot retain it--nor yet can forget it! And if for a moment I
grasp it, to measure it is beyond me. But how should I hope to
grasp that which struck me as illimitable? No rule fitted it, and yet
it had not one fault! It sounded so old, and was yet so new,--like
the song of birds in the sweet May-time. One who should hear it,
and, smitten with madness, try to sing in imitation of that Bird,
would meet with scorn and derision.... The law of Spring,--exquisite
compulsion!--according to that were the rules of song laid in his
breast. And he sang even as he must! And as he must, the power
to do it came to him, I marked that quite particularly.... The
Bird who sang to-day, his beak is fashioned aright! Great as was
the dismay created by him among the masters, he was much to Hans
Sachs's mind!"

Evchen has come out of her house and softly approached. Sachs looks
up, joyfully surprised, at her greeting: "Good-evening, master; still
so diligent?" There follows as pretty an exhibition of youthful
feminine arts as one could wish to see. The cajoling inflections
of the music alone would inform one of what is in action. Eva has
come to Sachs with an ulterior motive: to hear the details of the
song-trial. She has no mind, of course, to avow her interest frankly.
She must gain her end as she can, and, as a beginning, to flatter
her man and challenge his fondness for her can never fall wholly
wide of the mark. Sachs loves her dearly, that she knows, and she
has, in the innocent presumption of her young beauty, not questioned
that he would enter the song-tournament for her; and until yesterday
she rested in placid contentment upon the intention of crowning this
affection which never since her birth has failed her. Her narrow
eighteen years have no conception of a devotion so generous and deep
it would not dream, however fair the opportunity, of laying upon her
youth the burden of his maturity, the oppression of his thoughtfulness.
Sachs is unwilling, too, very likely, in his wisdom, to compromise
the peace of his Indian summer by assuming the guardianship of
an over-fair young wife. His neighbour's picturesque whim, the
song-contest in prospect, has no doubt given Sachs sufficient
uneasiness, but he finally, as we heard him declare to Pogner,
rests satisfied with the maiden's privilege of refusal. Not one of
the guild of master-singers seems to him worthy of this blooming
young Eve. As for the father's "Never!" applied to her marriage
if she shall not accept the master-singers' choice, Sachs knows
his Pogner and his Eva, and is willing to entrust the matter to
Time.

And so the ingenuous seductress finds the genial, clever, mellow
neighbour's attitude toward her in this scene more canny than she
can have expected, or quite relishes. It almost appears he had
no idea of trying for her. Perhaps an intuition of her momentary
insincerity has made him more than naturally wary. The practising
upon himself of her pretty coquetries he suffers however without
unreasonable distaste. "Ha, child, dear Evchen, out so late? But
I know--I know what brings you so late. The new shoes?"--"You are
mistaken! I have not even tried on the shoes. They are so beautiful,
so richly ornamented, I have not yet ventured so much as to put them
on my feet!"--"And yet you are to wear them to-morrow as a bride?"
She takes a seat on the stone bench by his door and leans confidingly
close to him. "Who, then, is to be the bridegroom?"--"How should I
know?"--"How can you know then that I am to be a bride?"--"What a
question! The town knows it!"--"And if the town knows it, friend
Sachs feels that he has good authority. I should have thought that
he knew more than the town."--"What should I know?"--"See, now, I
shall be obliged to tell him! I am certainly a fool!..."--"I did not
say so."--"It is you then who are more than common knowing...."--"I
do not know."--"You do not know!.. You have nothing to say!..."
She draws away, nettled: "Ah, friend Sachs, I now perceive that
pitch is not wax! I had supposed you cleverer." Calmly he takes
up her words and by them guides the conversation from that ground.
"Child, the properties both of wax and pitch I am well acquainted
with. With wax I stroke the silken threads with which I stitch
your dainty shoes; the shoes I am at this moment making, I sew
with coarse cord, and use pitch to stiffen it, for the hard-fibred
customer who is to wear them."--"Who is it? Some one of great
consequence, I suppose?"--"Of consequence, indeed! A proud master,
on wooing bent, who has no doubt whatever of coming forth victorious
from to-morrow's event. For Master Beckmesser I am making these
shoes."--"Then use pitch in plenty, that he may stick fast in them
and trouble me no more!"--"He hopes surely by his song to win
you."--"What can justify such a hope?"--"He is a bachelor, you
see; there are not many in the place." Again she draws near and
bends close to him. "Might not a widower be successful?" In his
kind, sane, unsentimental voice he replies promptly: "My child, he
would be too old for you!"--"What do you mean, too old? The question
here is one of art. The man who has achieved distinction in art,
let him contend for me." Sachs smiles, indulgently, paternally.
"Dear little Eva, are you making a fool of me?" (_Machst mir blauen
Dunst?_ Are you blinding me with blue haze?)--"Not I! It is you--"
she retorts warmly, "it is you who are playing tricks on me. Confess
that you are of an inconstant nature. God knows who it is you have
now housed in your heart. And I have been supposing for years it
was I!"--"Because I used to be fond of carrying you in my arms?"--"I
see! It was only because you had no children of your own!"--"Time was
when I had a wife and children enough," Sachs reminds her gently.
"But your wife died, and I grew up!"--"And you grew up, tall and
most fair!"--"And so I thought you would take me into your house
in place of wife and child...."--"Thus I should have a child and a
wife in one ... A pleasant pastime, indeed! Ha ha! How beautifully
you have planned it all!"--"I believe," she pouts, and bends her
brows on him in a puzzled frown, "I believe that the master is
making fun of me! In the end he will calmly acquiesce in Beckmesser
to-morrow carrying me off, right under his nose, from him and all the
rest!"--"How could I prevent it," says Sachs, not upset apparently
by the fearful thought, "if he is successful? Your father alone
could find a remedy to that."--"Where such a master carries his
head!" cries Eva, in acute exasperation, "If I were to come to
your house, should I so much as be made at home?" Somewhat dryly
he takes up her words, as before, to steer the conversation from
these dubious borders; and by some hazard, or intuition, turns it
upon the subject nearest her heart. "Ah, yes, you are right! My
head is in a state of confusion. I have had much care and bother
to-day. Something of it clings very probably to my wits."--"At the
singing-school, do you mean?" she asks, with covert eagerness;
"There was song-trial to-day."--"Yes, child, I had considerable
trouble over an election." She draws close to him. "Now, Sachs!
You should have said so at once, and I would not have harassed
you with senseless questions. Tell me now who it was that sought
for election?"--"A knight, my child, wofully untaught!"--"A knight?
You do not say so! And was he admitted?"--"Far from it, my dear.
There was too much difference of opinion."--"Well, tell me, then.
Tell me how it all happened. If it troubles you, how should it
leave me untroubled? So he stood the trial discreditably and was
defeated...."--"Hopelessly defeated, the gallant cavalier!" Walther's
failure is symbolised by a melodious groan. "Hopelessly, you say?
There was no way then by which he might have been saved? Did he
sing so badly, so faultily, that there is no possibility more of
his becoming a master?"--"My child," Sachs broadly assevers, "for
him all is definitely lost. And never in any land will he be made
a master. For he who is a master born occupies ever among masters
the very lowest place." On the verge of tears, with difficulty
controlling her indignation, Eva continues her questioning: "One
thing more tell me. Did he not find among the masters a single
friend?" Sachs nearly laughs. "That were not bad! To be, on top of
everything, his friend! His friend--before whom all feel themselves
so small!..." (If Eva were not so engrossed with her single idea,
the gleam in Sachs's eye, the fire in his tone, would interpret to
her this brutal-sounding speech.) "Young Lord Arrogance, let him
go his way! Let him go brawling and slashing through the world!
As for us, let us draw our breath in peaceful enjoyment of what
we have acquired with labour and difficulty. Keep off the fiery
fellow from running amuck among us! Let fortune bloom for him
elsewhere!" Trembling with anger, and dropping all concealment,
Eva springs to her feet: "Yes, elsewhere shall fortune bloom for
him than in the neighbourhood of you repulsive envy-ridden
creatures!--elsewhere, where hearts still have some warmth in them,
in spite of all cantankerous Master Hanses!--Directly, yes, I am
coming!" (This to Magdalene, who has been calling to her from her
father's door.) "I go home much comforted! It reeks of pitch here
till God take pity on us! Kindle a fire with it, do, Master Sachs,
and get a little warmth into you, if you can!"

"I thought so!" Sachs says to himself as he watches her cross the
street to her own door. Two and two have leaped together in his
mind, too. "The question is now what will be the sage course to
pursue." He goes within and closes his door... all but a crack.

"Your father is asking for you," Magdalene reports to her agitated
mistress. "Go to him," weeps Eva, "and say that I have gone to my
room and to bed." But Beckmesser--the nurse reminds her of the
message from him. He desires her to be at the window; he will sing
and play to her a beautiful composition by which he hopes on the
morrow to win her. He wishes to discover whether it be to her taste.
Eva, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her lover, disposes of the
subject by ordering Magdalene to be at the window in her place.
"That would make David jealous!" reflects Magdalene; "His chamber
is toward the lane." The prospect tickles her spirits. Even as
she is urging Eva to go in, for her father, is calling, Walther
comes down the lane. Hopeless after that, Magdalene recognises,
to attempt dragging indoors the damsel. She hurries in by herself
to content Pogner with some discreet misrepresentation.

With passionate endearments Walther and Eva have rushed into each
other's arms. All is lost which depended upon his winning the title
of master-singer. There is nothing further to hope from that quarter;
no choice is left, they must fly together. "Away, where liberty
is!" he cries, "That is where I belong, there where I am master in
the house!" He grows hot with anger at remembrance of the masters'
treatment of him, but, even more, with loathing at the thought
of his beloved sitting to-morrow in their midst, looked upon by
them with covetous eyes as a possible bride. "And I would endure
it, do you think? I would not fall upon them all, sword in hand?"
The night-watchman's horn breaks across his heated outburst. He
claps hand to his sword. Eva draws him gently into the shadow of
the linden-tree, to lie concealed until the watchman have passed,
and leaves him a moment to go within.

The night-watchman, with pike, horn, and lantern, comes down the
lane, calling the hour of ten; he bids the householders look to
their fires and lights, avoiding disaster, and so let God the Lord
be praised! He turns the corner, the sound of his horn dies away.

Sachs from behind his door has played the eavesdropper. "Evil doings
are under way! No less than an elopement! Attention! This must
not be!"

Eva creeps forth from her father's house, disguised for the journey
in Magdalene's things. "No stopping for reflection!" she cries; "Away
from here! Away! Oh, that we were already off and afar!"--"This way,
through the lane...." Walther draws her along with him. "At the
city-gate we shall find servant and horses." But right across the
lane falls suddenly a great shaft of light, projected from Sachs's
window, cast by a lamp placed behind a glass globe which magnifies
it to intense brilliancy. The lovers find themselves standing in
a bright illumination. Eva pulls Walther quickly back into the
dark. "Woe's me, the shoe-maker! If he were to see us!... Hide! Do
not go near that man!"--"What other road can we take?"--"The street
there--but it is a winding one, I am not well acquainted with it,
and, besides, we should run into the night-watchman."--"Well, then,
through the lane!"--"The shoe-maker must first leave the window!"--"I
will force him to leave it!" says Walther, fiercely.--"He must
not see you. He knows you."--"The shoe-maker?..."--"Yes, it is
Sachs."--"Hans Sachs, my friend?"--"Do not believe it! He had nothing
but evil to say of you!"--"What, Sachs? He, too?... I will put out
his lamp!" She catches again at his arm, and even at that moment
both are startled into immobility by the sound of a lute. Some one
approaches, testing as he comes the strings of a lute, if they be
in tune. The light has disappeared from the shoe-maker's window.
Walther is again for dashing down the lane toward the city-gate and
the horses. "But no! Can't you hear?"--his lady hangs back. "Some
one else has come and taken up his station there."--"I hear it
and see it. It is some street-musician. What is he doing so late
at night?"--"It is Beckmesser!"--"What, the Marker? The Marker
in my power? There is one whose loafing in the street shall not
trouble us long...." Again she catches in terror at his arm, so
ready ever to catch at the sword. "For the love of Heaven, listen!
Do you wish to waken my father? The man will sing his song and
then will go his way. Let us hide behind the shrubs yonder." She
draws her lover to the stone seat under the linden-tree.

Sachs at the sound of the lute has drawn in his light, become
superfluous, since the road is effectually blocked for the lovers by
the musical interloper. He overhears Eva's exclamation, "Beckmesser!"
and has an idea. Beckmesser shall be made of use to prevent the
lovers as long as possible from moving any farther from the safe
parental roof than that stone seat under the linden, where they
huddle close, whispering together, while keeping a watchful eye
on the actors of the comedy which follows. Sachs, as one might
know of him, loves a joke. He softly opens his door, places his
work-bench and lamp right in the doorway, and sets himself at his
work. When Beckmesser, after impatiently preluding to bring to
the window the figure he is expecting, clears his throat to begin
the serenade, Sachs, vigourously hammering on his last, prevents
him by bursting forth on his own account in a lusty ditty with
much loud Ohe, Ohe, Trallalei!--a playful ditty, sweet at the core,
about Eve, the original mother, and the first pair of shoes, ordered
for her from an angel by the Lord himself, who was sorry to see the
pitiful sinner, when turned out of Paradise, go bruising her little
feet, for which He had a tenderness, on the hard stones; and Adam,
too, stubbing his toes against the flints, the song tells how he
on the same occasion was measured for boots. Beckmesser can hardly
contain his impatience and disgust till the first verse comes to an
end. Upon the last note of it, he addresses the shoe-maker with
what sickly civility he can summon: "How is this, master? Still
up? So late at night?" Sachs expresses an equal surprise to find
the town-clerk moving abroad: "I suppose you are concerned for
your shoes. I am at work on them, as you see; you shall have them
to-morrow."--"Devil take the shoes!" groans Beckmesser; "What I want
here is quiet!" But his words are lost amid Sachs's hammer-blows
and unmoderated voice launching forth upon the second verse. "You
are to stop at once!" Beckmesser, in mounting anger, orders Sachs,
as, hardly pausing to take breath, the shoe-maker is attacking
the third verse. "Is it a practical joke you are playing on me?
Do you make no distinction between the night and the day?" Sachs
looks at him in innocent surprise. "What does it matter to you that
I should sing? You are anxious, are you not, to have your shoes
finished?"--"Shut yourself up indoors then and keep quiet!"--"Nay,
night-labour is burdensome; if I am to keep cheerful at my work, I
must have air and light-hearted song. So hear how the third verse
goes!" And he attacks it with a will. There is added to Beckmesser's
other troubles the fearful thought that the maiden may mistake this
outrageous bellowing for his love-song. A second-story window in
Pogner's house has softly opened, a form is dimly outlined within
the frame of it. "I am lost now," Beckmesser desperately reflects,
"if he goes on singing!" He resolutely steps up to Sachs: "Friend
Sachs, just listen to one word! How bent you seem upon those shoes!
I truly had forgotten all about them. As a shoe-maker, the fact is,
I hold you in great esteem, but as an artist and critic I honour
you even more highly. I beseech you therefore to give your attention
to a little song by which I hope to-morrow to win the prize. I am
eager to be told whether you think well of it." While talking,
he strums, as if casually, upon his lute, to keep the lady from
leaving the window. "Oh, no!" Sachs replies; "You wish to catch
me by my weak side. I have no wish for another berating. Since
your shoe-maker takes himself for a poet, it fares but ill with
your footgear. I can see for myself that it is in a deplorable
condition. And so I drop verse and rhyme, knowledge and erudition,
and I make you the new shoes for to-morrow."--"Let that be, do!"
Beckmesser adjures him; "That was only a joke. Understand now what
my true sentiments are. You stand high in honour with the people,
and the daughter of Pogner has a great opinion of you. Now, if
I intend to offer myself as a suitor for her to-morrow, can you
not see how I might be destroyed by her not taking kindly to my
song? Therefore listen to me quietly, do, and when I have finished
my song tell me what in it you like, and what not, that I may make
my dispositions accordingly."--"Go along! Let me alone!" Sachs
still excuses himself; "How should so much honour accrue to me? My
songs are but common street-songs; let me therefore, in my common
way, sing them to the street!" He is taking up his noisy lay again
about Eve and shoes when Beckmesser's rage explodes. Quaking, the
town-clerk pours forth reproach and insult. This conduct of the
shoe-maker's has its source in envy, nothing else; envy of the
dignity of Marker which has never been bestowed upon him, and which
now never will be, not so long as Beckmesser lives and has influence
with the masters. When he stops at last, for lack of breath, Sachs
asks artlessly: "Was that your song?... Somewhat irregular in form,
but it sounded right spirited!"

Walther, in the shadow, clasping his troubled lady, who is unaccountably
saddened by the untimely farce, struggles with a hysterical desire
to laugh--it is all so like a fantastic dream.

At last shoe-maker and town-clerk come to an arrangement. Beckmesser
shall sing his song, and Sachs, whose criticism he so unwontedly
desires, shall act as Marker; but Sachs, who contends that he is
loath to stop work on his shoes, instead of marking with chalk,
shall mark the singer's mistakes by blows of his hammer on the
last, and so, peradventure, while listening, forward his work. A
disgusting arrangement, but Beckmesser is in such terror lest the
lady leave her post before he have sung that he consents. "Begin!"
hollaes Sachs, and Beckmesser, after preluding, sings, while Sachs
punctuates the lines with smart taps on the last. These at first
discompose the singer, and he stops at each tap to inquire angrily
what it is that is not right; he shortly resolves, however, to pay
no heed to the spiteful enemy, but cover over the interruptions with
his voice. Louder and louder and ever more breathlessly he sings,
a lyric that is more prosy than prose, a piece of common statement
of facts, tortured into verse, which attains metre only by throwing
the accent continually, ludicrously, on the wrong syllables. The
melody, nasal and snuffling, is the very prose, too, of music. A
ridiculous, dead-in-earnest song, relating in three long verses the
circumstances of the song-contest and the singer's tender hopes.

By the end of the second verse, the teasing shoe-maker has tapped
so much that the soles are solid with the vamps. He swings the
finished shoes triumphantly before his customer, announcing that
he has thought of an appropriate verse to write on the soles, and
it is: "A good song must keep time!" But Beckmesser does not stop
for him. Beckmesser disdainfully goes on, as if he and the lady
were alone in the world, and he sang thus loud to overpower some
such thing as the sea-surf. In his engrossment he fails to take
account of various ominous signs. He does not see David appear at
his chamber-window. In spite of Eva's clothes which she is wearing,
the boy recognises Magdalene at the casement across the way. His
jealousy is quick to suppose her cold treatment of himself due to
an inclination toward this new admirer. The neighbours, too, begin
to lean out of their windows and ask the reason of this abominable
caterwauling. A crowd collects in the street, of persons trying
to find out what is the matter. The apprentices come flocking,
mischievous instigators to mischief, and the journeymen, little
better than they. Soon, there is difference and quarreling among
those arriving to inquire the cause of the disturbance. Neighbours
pour into the street, men and women in night-attire; finally, the heavy
burghers arrive, the masters themselves, noisy, almost disorderly, in
their attempts to restore order. Beckmesser, singing at the top of
his lungs, does not wake to consciousness of his surroundings until
a cudgel falls across his back, wielded by David. He flees--but is
at every few steps overtaken again and beaten. The two figures, in
flight and pursuit, waving lute and brandishing cudgel, disappear
and reappear at intervals among the swaying crowd. In vain Magdalene
from above screams to David to let the gentleman go. Pogner's hand
draws her away from the window; in the dim light he mistakes her
for Eva. Sachs, when the confusion is well under way, draws in his
work-bench and closes his door ... again all but a crack, through
which he can watch the two figures wrapped in a single cloak beneath
the linden-tree. When the disorder is at its height, Walther clasps
the girl with his left arm, with his right bares his sword, and
attempts a rush through the crowd, toward the gates and horses
of freedom. Quick as thought, Sachs has cleared his way to the
couple; he grasps Walther by the arm. Pogner at the same moment
appears at his door, calling for Lene. Sachs pushes toward him
Eva, half-fainting, bereft by panic of all power to withstand the
impulsion. Pogner receives her in his arms and draws her within
doors, not suspecting but that she is the faithful nurse whose
garments she wears. With deft foot Sachs propels David before him
into the house; then, forcibly drawing Walther with him across the
threshold, fastens the door,--his object happily accomplished.

The street-battle is still raging. But at this point women pour
water from the windows on the heads of the combatants, as they would
on fighting dogs. Simultaneously, the horn of the night-watchman
is heard. In the space of a yawn the scene is deserted; all down
the street are fast-closed windows and doors; Beckmesser hobbles
off rubbing his back. The old night-watchman, reaching the spot,
rubs his eyes, clearly wondering if he have dreamed that he heard
alarming sounds from that quarter. After looking all around, he
droningly calls the hour of eleven, enjoins the people to be on
guard against phantoms and spooks, that no evil spirit may work
harm to their souls, and so let God the Lord be praised! The full
moon rising above the housetops suddenly floods the quiet lane.
The watchman slowly goes down it. As he vanishes around the corner,
the curtain falls.

III

The interior of Sachs's workshop. The poet sits in an ample armchair,
near the window, bathed in the morning sunshine, absorbed in a
great book. The magnanimity of his mood, the beautiful deep calm
following upon certain resolutions and sacrifices, the gently exalted
melancholy of his meditations--half remembrance, and dreamy as if
violet shades of evening softened them,--the composer has given
us to apprehend all in the introduction to the third act.

So rapt is Sachs in the perusal of his great volume, or, as may
be suspected, in images which float between the page and his eyes,
that he does not see David enter carrying a basket of Lene's bestowal
filled with flowers and ribbons for the adornment of his person on
this festival day, as well as with cake and sausage. The apprentice,
when Sachs does not speak, or, spoken to, answer, or make sign when
he informs him that Beckmesser's shoes have been duly delivered,
believes him to be angry, and goes into a long apology for his
misconduct on the night before, brightening finally with the relation
of his making-up this morning with Lene, who has satisfactorily
explained all. Sachs reads on, as little disturbed as by the buzzing
of a fly on the pane. Only when he has finished, and closed his
book,--the unexpected clap of the covers so startles David that he
stumbles to his knees--Sachs looks around him, as if coming back
from a dream. His eye is caught by the bright flowers and ribbons
brought in by David. Their effect of young gayety touches some chord
in him more than usually sensitive at this moment. "Flowers and
ribbons I see over there," he muses audibly; "Sweet and youthful
they look! How come they in my house?" David is relieved to find him
in this gentle mood, yet puzzled at the remoteness and abstraction
from which the master is but slowly drawn. He has occasion for a
moment to wonder even whether the master have perchance become
hard of hearing....

Fully returned at length to a sense of the common surrounding world,
Sachs asks David for his day's lesson, and the apprentice briskly
sings his verse, first comically confusing the tune with that of
Beckmesser's serenade, still buzzing in his head, then, at Sachs's
gesture of astonishment, righting himself and acquitting himself of
his task without slip. The verse is a playful bit, between psalm
and street-song. It relates that when Saint John was baptising
on the banks of Jordan there came to him a lady from Nuremberg
bringing her little son for baptism. When she got home, however, to
German land, it proved that vainly had one on the banks of Jordan
been given the name of Johannes, on the banks of the Pegnitz he
became Hans! The pronouncing of the name brings to David's mind
the remembrance suddenly that it is his master's name, that the
day is therefore his name's-day. In an impulse of affectionate
devotion he presses on him all the gay articles just received from
Lene, the flowers and ribbons, the magnificent cake, and, but shyly,
as if it were not quite worthy of a poet, the sausage. With great
gentleness, Sachs thanks the lad and bids him keep the things for
himself, adding a request that he make himself fine with those
same flowers and ribbons to accompany him presently to the meadow
outside the city gates where the song-contest is to be held. His
stately herald he shall be. Sachs's friendliness encourages the
boy to venture a small liberty. "May I not rather go as your
groom's-man? Master, dear master, you must marry again!"--"You
would be glad of a mistress in the house?" asks Sachs dreamily.--"It
would make, in my opinion, a much more imposing household!" There
is popular talk and expectation of it, as an outcome of the coming
song-contest, David intimates; "You will hardly have much trouble,
as I think, in singing Beckmesser out of the field; I hardly believe
he will make himself very conspicuous to-day!"--"I hardly believe so,
either," Sachs smiles: "But go now, and be careful not to disturb
his lordship. Come back when you have made yourself fine."

Left alone, Sachs sinks into thought again, sitting there with
his book on his knees and his head propped on his hand. We are
allowed to follow his reflections, those of a philosopher,--but not
one standing apart and watching a little scornfully the vagaries
of men; a very human being, taking part in them, without losing a
humourous sense of their character. "Illusion! Illusion! Everywhere
illusion! Whichever way I bend my inquiry, searching the chronicles
of the city and those of the world, to discover the reason why
people, in vain and frantic rage, torment and oppress themselves
and one another to the point of bloodshed! No one has any good
of it, or receives any thanks for it. Through its working, the
defeated and put to flight fancies himself chasing the foe. He
is deaf to his own cry of pain. When he twists the knife in his
own flesh, he has an idea that he is doing himself a pleasure! Who
shall find a name for it? One name, forsooth, befits it: Ancient
Illusion it is, without which nothing happens, nothing either goes or
stands still. If it halts in its career, it merely while slumbering
gathers new force; it presently wakes up, and then see who can
master it!..." He smiles whimsically, nodding to himself, at the
contemplation of the instance of all this uppermost in his mind,
the events of the evening before. "How peaceful, in its adherence
to good customs, approved in conduct and deed, lies in the heart
of Germany my beloved Nuremberg! But late upon a night, a man there
is found totally void of counsel how to prevent a catastrophe,
resulting from youth and hot blood. A shoe-maker in his shop tugs
gently at the threads of illusion: how promptly up and down the
lanes and streets the thing begins to rage; men, women, boys and
children, fall upon one another like mad and blind; and the
crack-brained spirit is not to be laid until a shower fall of blows--a
shower of blows, kicks and cudgel-thwacks, to smother the angry
conflagration. God knows how it all came about?" He smiles again,
reflectively, over the recollection of the lovely quiet evening
it was, the terrific discordant pother that arose,--the lovely
and hushed night that presently resumed her reign. The incident
looks fantastic now. "An imp must have had a hand in it!" is the
poet's fanciful induction; "A glow-worm could not find his mate,
it was he responsible for all the damage done! It was the fault of
the elder-tree--of Saint John's night! ... But now--" he broadly
dismisses the fancies and aberrations of the warm mid-summer night,
and turns his face toward the clear-defined duty of the day: "But
now it is Saint John's Day! And now let us see how Hans Sachs shall
contrive deftly to guide Illusion to the working out of a noble
purpose. For if the spirit will not let us rest even here in Nuremberg,
let it be for such works as seldom succeed by vulgar means, and
succeed never without some grain of illusion in the perpetrator
himself!"

Walther appears at the door of an inner chamber. Sachs rises to
meet and greet his guest. They had a good talk the night before,
after the wise shoester's act of well-meant violence. Walther was
grateful, no doubt, upon calmer reflection, to have been saved
from the ruinous folly he had projected. The two men are obviously
fast friends. There is in Sachs's attitude a touching deference
toward the younger man, the heart-wholly acknowledged superior
in talent. It is a pleasant spectacle, the grey meistersinger's
eager glorying in the golden youth's simple, abundant, God-bestowed
gift. The motif of his address to Walther has a touch of charming
courtliness. "God keep your lordship! Did you find rest? You were
up late--you did, however, finally sleep?"--"A little," Walther
answers, "but soundly and well." There is something hushed and
fixed in Walther's aspect, as if he listened to voices no one else
could hear, gazed upon some vision invisible to others. He is still
under the spell of a recent marvellous impression. "I have had--"
he tells Sachs, when the latter genially asks is he feeling, after
his good sleep, in good form and of good courage, "I have had a
wonderfully beautiful dream...."--"A good omen, that! Tell me your
dream!"--"I hardly dare to touch it with my thought, so do I fear
to see it fade away."--"My friend," the older poet with fine amenity
takes up the part of teacher, and his observations have a ripe,
sunny, elevated wisdom, for which one should store them carefully
as one does good fruit, "that exactly is the task of a poet, to
mark dreams and interpret them. Believe me, of all the illusions
of man the most nearly approaching truth are those he comes into
cognisance of through dreams. The whole art of poetry is but the
interpretation of true-dreaming. What if this dream now should
contain a hint how you may to-day be made a master?"--"No, no,"
Walther rejects the idea with distaste; "In the presence of the
guild and its masters, scant inspiration would animate my
dream-picture!"--"But yet, suppose your dream contained the magic
spell by which you might win over the guild?" Walther shakes his
head: "How do you cling to an illusion, if after such a rupture as
you witnessed you still cherish such a hope!"--"Nay, my hope stands
undiminished, nor has anything so far occurred to overthrow it; if
that were not so, believe me, instead of preventing your flight, I
would myself have taken flight with you! Pray you, therefore, let
your resentment die! You are dealing with honourable men. They make
mistakes and are fairly settled in the comfortable determination
to be taken in their own way. Those who offer prizes desire after
all that one shall please them. Your song scared them, and with
reason, for, upon reflection, the like flaming poetry and passion
are adapted for the luring of daughters into mad adventures, but
the sentiment leading to the blessed married state finds words and
notes of a different sort!" Walther grins: "I know the sort--from
hearing them last night; there was a good deal of noise out in the
street." Sachs laughs too; "Yes! yes!... You heard likewise how
I beat time. But let be all that, and follow my advice, good and
short: summon up your energies for a master-song!"--"A beautiful
song, and a master-song, how am I to seize the distinction between
them?" asks the singer of the beautiful song which had been despised.
"My friend," Sachs explains, with a warmth as of tears and blood,
"in the beautiful days of youth, when the bosom expands high and
wide with the mighty transports of happy first love, many are they
who can achieve a beautiful song: the Spring-time it is which sings
for them! But let summer come, autumn and winter, the sorrows and
cares of life,--no dearth of wedded joys along-side!--christenings,
business, discord and difficulties, those who still after all that
can compass the singing of a beautiful song, those, mark me, are
entitled masters!" Aye, first, as a modern poet has said, warm
natural drops of blood; later, the alchemist's laborious spheres of
chemic gold. In youth, all-sufficient inspiration,--later, labour
and rule, with meritorious concentration substituting for impetus
and fire the beauty of careful form, and making durable in this
the evanescent dreams of youth. "Learn the master-rules in good
season," Sachs adds, "that they may be faithful guides to you,
helping you to preserve safely that which in the gracious years
of youth spring-time and love with exquisite throes bred in your
unconscious heart, that you may store and treasure it, and it may
not be lost!"--"But who--" Walther asks, inclined to cavil where
anything is concerned which relates to the master-singers, "Who
created these rules which stand in such high honour?"--"They were
sorely-needy masters," Sachs in his moved tones continues the charming
lesson, "spirits heavily weighted with the weariness of life; in
the wilderness of their distresses they created for themselves
an image, that they might retain vivid and lasting the memory of
young love, bearing the sign and stamp still, and breathing the
fragrance, of Spring!"--"But," Walther objects, suspicious of that
whole tribe of snuffy masters, for whom Sachs has the same charity
of a broad understanding which he has shown in Walter's own case,
"however can he for whom Spring is long past fix the essence of it
in an image?"--"He recreates it as well as he can," Sachs sums with
sudden curtness, recognising perhaps the futility of his attempt
against this so lively dislike; and passes on to the point more
important at this moment, to his thinking. "I beg you, therefore,
sorely-needy man that I am, if I am to teach you the rules, that
you should renew in me the sense of that which originally gave them
rise. See, here are ink, pen, and paper. I will be your scribe,
do you dictate."--"Hardly should I know how to begin."--"Relate
to me your morning dream."--"Nay, as a result of your teaching
of rules, I feel as if it had faded quite away."--"The very point
where the poet's art comes into requisition! Recall your beautiful
dream of the morning, for the rest, let it be Hans Sachs's care!"

Walther takes a moment to collect himself. Sachs sits with quill
poised over paper. Then Walther relates his dream, meeting Sachs's
request for a master-song by casting it as he goes, with the light
ease of genius, into verse and melody,--his second astonishing
improvisation, joyous as the first, but not agitated--reflective,
as if he filled Sordello's account of himself: "_I' mi son un che
quando Amore spira, noto, e quel che detta dentro vo significando._"
I am one who when Love breathes, do note, and that which he dictates
within do go expressing. All things lovely seem to have congregated
in this dream of his; it is no wonder that the lingering impression
of it enveloped him with an atmosphere of Paradise, and that he
feared almost to breathe lest it be dispelled. Just the words he
has to use, without their relations, conjure up a flock of alluring
images: Morning-shine, roseate light, blossoms, perfume, air,
joy,--unimaginable joy, a garden! The idea that a poet's song is
as much a part of him as fruit is of the tree stands illustrated
by the fact that the song which falls on our ear as in its ensemble
so fresh, is yet composed in great part of the Walther-motifs with
which we have become familiar; his youth, his enthusiasm, his courage
and his love, all go into the making of his song. As he said in
answer to Kothner, what should be put into his song unless the
essence of all he had known and lived?

Glimmering beneath the rosy light of dawn, the air being laden
with the scent of flowers, a garden, he sings, full of never before
imagined attractions, had invited him to enter it....

"That was a stanza." Sachs states, as Walther pauses. "Take careful
heed now that the one following must be exactly like it."--"Why
exactly alike?" the free-born asks, ready to chafe at the shadow
of a restriction. Sachs, indulgent, makes play for this prodigious
child's sake of the to him so grave business of song-making: "That
one may see that you have selected a mate!"

In that blissful garden a magnificent tree had proffered to his
desire a sumptuous harvest of golden fruit.... Such is the matter
of the second stanza.

"You did not," Sachs critically considers, "close on the same tone.
Excruciating is that to the masters, but Hans Sachs learns from your
doing it that in Spring-time it must perforce be so! Proceed now
to the aftersong."--"What is that?" asks Walther. "Your success in
finding a well-suited couple will appear now from their off-spring!"

In the garden, by an exquisite miracle, he had found suddenly standing
at his side a woman, more sweetly and graciously beautiful than
any he had ever beheld. Like a bride she had entwined her arms
softly about him, and had guided him, with eyes and hand, toward
the fruit of his desire, the fair fruit of the tree of life....

Joyfully stirred as he is by the beauty of dream and song, Sachs
controls his emotion, to secure all he can from the young poet's
momentary docility. "There's what I call an aftersong!" he exclaims
cordially; "See, now, how rounded and fine is the whole first part.
With the melody you deal, to be sure, a bit freely. I do not say,
however, that it is a fault. But it makes the thing more difficult
to retain, and that incenses our old men. Let us have now a second
part, that we may gain a clear idea of the first. I do not even
know, so skilfully have you cast them into rhyme, what in your
song was invention and what was dream...."

With heavenly glow of sunset-light, day had departed, as he lay
there drinking joy from her eyes, desire the sole power in possession
of his heart. Night had closed down, baffling the eyesight, when,
through the branches, the rays of two bright stars had shed their
light upon his face. The sound of a spring upon the quiet height
had reached his ear, murmuring more musically than any spring heard
theretofore; stars had appeared in multitude, dancing among the
boughs overhead, until, instead of golden fruit, the laurel-tree
had swarmed with a host of stars....

"Friend!" cries Sachs, striving against the full betrayal of his
pleasure, lest it be an interrupting element, "your dream was an
effectual guide! The second part is successful as the first. If
now," he ventures, "you would compose a third, it might contain
the interpretation of your dream...." But Walther jumps up from his
chair, suddenly weary of the game. "Enough of words!" And Sachs, with
sympathetic understanding of the incalculable ways of poets, refrains
from pressing him. That overbubbling inspiration he believes can
be counted upon. "Reserve then word and deed for the proper place.
And I pray you hold fast in memory, this melody, a charming one it
is to fit with words. And, against the moment of singing it in a
more extended circle, hold fast likewise to your dream!"--"What have
you in mind?" Walther inquires. Sachs does not directly enlighten
him, but: "Your faithful servant has, very seasonably, arrived
with packs and porte-manteaux. The garments in which you intended
to make yourself brave for wedding-ceremonials at home, he has
brought here to the house. A little dove no doubt directed him to
the nest where his master slept. Come with me therefore to your
chamber. Fitting it is we both attire ourselves splendidly, when
a splendid deed is to be dared!" Walther without question places
his hand, as if it held his whole confidence, in Sachs's. They
pass together out of the workshop.

The stage remains for a moment empty. The air retains as if echoes,
or fragrances, of the personalities which have but just withdrawn; it
is sweetened with effluvia of Walther's youth, of Sachs's greatness
of heart. Suddenly, like a bar of bilious green across a shimmering
mother-o'-pearl fabric, harmonies of a very different sort catch
the attention, and Beckmesser's face is seen peering in at the
window. Finding the workshop empty, he limps in. He is in holiday
array, but there is little of holiday about him, save in his gaudily
beribboned clothes. A long comedy-scene follows, in which Beckmesser
says never a word, but his thoughts are heard and his actions are
eloquent. His body is one mass of aches and pains, his soul the
battleground of anger, shame, thirst for vengeance. The din of the
evening before fills his ears; he is chased, as if by furies, by
memories of the indignities put upon him. He is so sore he cannot
sit; when he goes his joints hurt rackingly. His restless moving
about the room while he waits for Sachs brings him to the master's
writing-table: his eye falls on the sheet of music on which Sachs
has taken down Walther's song; his attention is arrested; he reads
it off mentally with ever-increasing agitation. No mistake possible,
in his mind: Sachs, who had declared that he would not enter the
song-contest for Pogner's daughter, has outrageously lied, and
here is the proof of it, this song which he means to sing at the
tournament. "Now," bursts forth Beckmesser, "everything becomes
clear to me!" He jumps, hearing Sachs at the door, and stuffs the
paper into his pocket. Sachs, in his handsome best-coat, meets him
pleasantly. "You surely are not having any more trouble with the
shoes?" Beckmesser's wrath holds in but a moment before voiding
itself upon Sachs in accusation and threat. "Be sure, friend Sachs,
I know you now!... That I may not stand in your way, you go so
far even as to incite the mob to riot.... You have always been
my enemy.... Now hear, whether I see through you. The maiden whom
I have chosen, who was verily born for me, to the frustration of
all widowers there be,--of her you are in pursuit! In order that
Master Sachs might gain the goldsmith's rich inheritance it was
that at the council of masters he stood upon minor clauses. For
that reason, fool that I was! with bawling and hammering he tried to
drown my song,--that the child might not be made aware of another's
ability! Yes, yes! Have I hit the mark? And finally from his cobbler's
shop he egged after me boys with cudgels, that he might be rid of
me.... Ouch! Ouch! Green and blue was I beaten, made an object
of derision to the beloved woman, so drubbed and maltreated that
no tailor's flat-iron can smoothe me out! Upon my very life an
attempt was made! But I came out of it with sufficient spirit left
to reward you for the deed. Stand forth to-day and sing, do, and
see how you prosper. Beaten and bruised as I am, I shall certainly
manage to throw you out of time!" Sachs has unperturbedly let him
spend himself. "My good friend, you are labouring under a delusion.
You are free to attribute to me what actions you please... but I
have not the least thought of competing." "Lies and deceit!" roars
Beckmesser, "I know better!" Sachs quietly repeats his statement.
"What else I have in mind is no affair of yours. But concerning
the contest you are in error."--"Not in the contest? No
competition-song?"--"Certainly not." Beckmesser produces the piece
of music. "Is that your hand?"--"Yes," Sachs owns, amused; "Was
that it?"--"I suppose you call it a biblical lay?"--"Nay," laughs
Sachs, "any one guessing it to be such would hit wide enough of
the mark."--"Well, then?"--"What is it?"--"Do you ask me?"--"What
do you mean?"--"That you are, in all can dour, a rogue of the first
magnitude!" Sachs shrugs good-humouredly; "Maybe! I have never,
however, pocketed what I found upon another's table. That one may
not think evil of you, dear sir, keep the paper, I make you a gift
of it." Beckmesser leaps in the air with incredulous joy: "Lord
God! A poem of Sachs's!... But soft, that I may not be led into
fresh troubles. You have, no doubt," he insinuates, "committed the
thing perfectly to memory?"--"Have no uneasiness with regard to
that."--"You bestow the sheet on me then outright?"--"To prevent
you being a thief."--"And suppose I made use of it?"--"You may
do as you please."--"I may sing it, then?"--"If it is not too
difficult."--"And if I should please my audience?"--"I should be
greatly astonished!"--Beckmesser misses the sly shoester's intention.
"You are too modest altogether," he says; and goes on to explain in
what dire need he stands of a new composition, since the song sung
the night before as a serenade can have no chance, if sung again
to-day, of charming the Pognerin, for whom it must be associated,
thanks to the cobbler's merry jests, with every undignified
circumstance. And how can he, poor belaboured wretch, find the
necessary peace of mind to compose a new one? Yet, if he have not
a new song, he must give up the hope of marriage. But a song of
Sachs's would enable him to overcome every obstacle; if he may
have it, let all the disagreements which have kept them apart be
forgotten and buried. But,--he suddenly holds in, and puckers his
forehead,--if this were a trap? "Even so late as yesterday," he says
to Sachs, "you were my enemy. How is it that after all the troubles
between us you are to-day kindly disposed toward me?"--"I worked on
your shoes until late at night," Sachs disingenuously replies; "is
that the sort of consideration one shows an enemy?"--"True, true.
But now give me your word. Whenever and under whatever circumstances
you hear that song, you will never by any chance say that it is of
your composing."--"I give you my word and oath," Sachs assents, with
a spice of wicked glee, "that I will never boast of that song being
mine."--Beckmesser's spirits rise to heights of mad exhilaration.
"What more do I want? I am saved! Beckmesser need trouble no
further!"--"Friend," Sachs warns him, "in all kindness I advise
you, study that song carefully. It is of no easy execution."--"Friend
Sachs," Beckmesser waives the warning, "you are a good poet, but
in all that relates to tones and tunes there is no one goes ahead
of me. But now, quickly home, to learn the thing by heart. Hans
Sachs, my dear fellow, I have misunderstood you. My judgment was
thrown off the track by that adventurer. Just such a one was needed!
But we masters made short work of him! Good-bye! I must be off!
Elsewhere will I show my gratitude for your sweet friendliness. I
will vote for you hereafter, I will buy your works. I will make
you Marker!" Effusively he embraces him: "Marker, Marker, Marker
Hans Sachs!"

Hans Sachs looks after the departing figure with a meditative smile.
"So entirely ill-natured have I never yet found any one. He cannot
fail to come to grief of some sort. Many there be who squander
their wits, but they reserve enough to keep house with. The hour
of weakness comes for each one of us, when he turns fool and is
open to parley." So entirely ill-natured Beckmesser has been found
that Sachs feels no compunction at letting him run into the pitfall
gaping ahead. He is willing to win an advantage by a deception,
let him follow his head, why should honest Sachs be tender of him?
The joke is not severe beyond his deserts. He has candidly rejoiced
that short work was made of that adventurer, Von Stolzing; why
should he not be permitted to encounter the same sort of treatment?
Why indeed should not his dishonesty be turned to use? "That Master
Beckmesser here turned thief," reflects Sachs, "falls in excellently
with my plan."

Eva appears in the doorway, Eva dazzling in her white wedding-dress.
"I was wondering," says Sachs to himself at sight of her, "where
she could be!" For, as Walther was known to be in the house, it
was thought she must before long find some pretext to stand beneath
the same roof. She wears a little languid air; last evening was a
sore trial to young nerves. A tinge of accusing plaintiveness is in
her voice. She is markedly abstracted; her thoughts are wandering,
of course, all about the house in search of _him_. She has her
pretext ready, and meets Sachs's warm compliment upon her appearance
with a reproachful: "Ah, master! So long as the tailor has done
his work successfully, who ever will divine where I suffer
inconvenience, where secretly my shoe pinches me?"--"The wicked
shoe!" Sachs is for a moment really deceived; "It was your humour
yesterday not to try it on."--"You see? I had too much confidence.
I was mistaken in the master."--"I am sorry, indeed I am!" He is
on his knee at once: "Let me look at it, my child, that I may help
you, right off, quick!"--"As soon as I stand on it, it obliges
me to go; and as soon as I go, it obliges me to stand."--"Place
your foot here on the stool, I will remedy the evil at once. Now,
what is wrong with it?"--"You can see, it is too wide!"--"Child,
that is pure vanity. The shoe is snug."--"That is what I said,
and that is why it pinches my toes."--"Here, at the left?"--"No,
the right."--"At the instep?"--"No, the heel."--"What?" he asks
incredulously, "Something wrong too with the heel?"--"_Ach_, master,"
she exclaims, "do you know better than I where my shoe pinches
me?"--"I can only wonder," he replies, good-humouredly, "that your
shoe should be loose and yet pinch you everywhere!" The door of
the inner room opens at this moment, and Walther stands upon the
threshold in the rich gala costume of a young noble. Eva at sight of
him in his splendour utters a cry, and remains spell-bound, gazing.
He stops short in the doorway, spell-bound equally at sight of her
in her shimmering bride's-robe of white,--and from their eyes, fixed
unwaveringly upon each other, their hearts travel forth on luminous
beams to meet and mingle. Sachs's back is toward Walther; he has
not see him, but the tell-tale light on Eva's face, reflection
of a sun-burst, has reported to him of the apparition. He pretends
not to see. "Aha! Here is the trouble!" he speaks, as if nothing
were; "Now I see what the matter is! Child, you were right, the
seams are stiff. Just wait and I will set the matter aright. Stay
where you are, I will take the shoe and put it on the last for a
minute. After that it will give you no further trouble." He draws
the shoe tenderly from her childish foot, and leaves her standing,
statue-still, lost in her trance of contemplation, with her foot
on the stool, while he takes the shoe to his bench and pretends to
work at it. He cannot forbear,--while he plays his little comedy,
and those two angelically beautiful beings, saved and aided by him,
between whom he shares his big heart, stand hushed, drinking, in
oblivion of all, the heavenly nectar of each other's glances,--he
cannot forbear teasing the little lady a bit, giving her a little
lesson, taking a very mild vengeance on her for the faintly perfidious
wiles of yesterday. So he runs on, while making himself busy with
her shoe: "Forever to be cobbling! That is my fate. Night nor day,
no deliverance for me! Child, listen! I have thought over what
shall bring my shoe-making to an end. The best thing I can do will
be after all to enter the contest for your hand. I might thus at
least win something for myself as a poet!... You are not listening?
Yet it was yourself put the idea in my head.... Oh, very well! I
see! Attend to your shoes! If at least," he slyly suggests, without
turning, "some one would sing to me while I work! I heard to-day a
regularly beautiful song. If just a third verse, equally successful,
might be added to it!" Like the hypnotised receiving a suggestion,
Walther, ready as a bird, breaks forth singing, his gaze never
swerving from Eva: "Did the stars come to a pause in their charming
dance? Light and clear, above the clustering locks of the most
beautiful of all women, glittered with soft brilliancy a crown of
stars..."

"Listen, child," Sachs bids Eva, in the short pause between the
verses, "that is a master-song!"

"Miracle upon miracle! A double radiance of day now illumines me,
for, even as two suns of purest delight, two divinely beautiful
eyes bend their light upon me...."

"That," says Sachs, "is the sort of thing you hear sung in my house
nowadays!"

"Oh, gracious vision which my heart found boldness to approach!
The wreath, which in the rays of the twin suns shows pale at once
and green, tenderly and mildly she weaves about the consort's head.
Into the breast of the poet--born erst to joy, now elect to
glory,--Paradisal joy she pours, in Love's dream!"

Sachs has been enabled to keep in hand his emotion at the sound
of the ecstatic song by diligently busying himself with the shoe,
uttering at intervals small insignificant remarks: "Let us see,
now, whether I have got my shoe aright. I believe I have finally
succeeded, eh? Try it, now!" He has slipped it on to her foot,
"Walk on it! Tell me, does it still hurt?" But Eva, who has stood
breathlessly gazing and listening to the thrilling accents, new
to her, of her lover, when the heart-searching voice is silent
and the tension relaxes, bursts into passionate weeping, sinks on
Sachs's breast and clings to him, sobbing. Walther with a quick
stride is beside them; impulsively he grasps the hand of the good
Sachs, to whom he dimly feels he owes so much,--to whom he owes
really more than he dreams.

For a moment not one of them can speak. Then it becomes too much
for Sachs, this soft beloved form trembling against his breast;
he gently frees himself and allows the burden he relinquishes to
slide upon the shoulder of Walther. Like a noble dog shaking his
fur, he takes himself away and finds occupation at the further end
of the room, trying by his commonplace playful talk to dispel the
oppression of a too great emotion. Again he must, all for her good,
tease Evchen a bit. "Has not a shoe-maker his fill of troubles?" he
grumbles; "Were I not at the same time a poet, not another shoe
would I make. So much hard work, such a perpetual calling upon
you! This one's shoe is too loose, that one's too tight, here it
claps, it hangs at the heel, there it presses, it pinches. The
shoe-maker must know everything, mend everything that is torn,
and if he be in addition a poet, then verily he is not allowed a
moment's peace. But if, on top of all, he be a widower, then he
is in all truth regarded as a very fool! The youngest of maidens,
if a husband is wanted, request him to apply for them; let him
understand them or let him not, it is all the same; let him say
yes, let him say no, in the end he is told that he smells of pitch,
and is called stupid, cantankerous, and impertinent! I wouldn't
care so much," he concludes humourously, "but for my apprentice.
He is losing all respect for me!..."

The conscience-smitten girl flings her arms around him again: "Oh,
Sachs, my friend, oh, noble heart, how can I ever repay you? Without
your love, what were I? What were I, without you? I should have
remained a child forever, had you not awakened me. Through you I
won the things one prizes, through you I learned what a soul is.
Through you I awoke, through you alone I learned to think nobly,
freely, courageously. You guided my growth, and brought me to flowering.
Oh, dear master, scold me, well you may!... But yet I was on the
right track. For, had I any choice, you, no other, should be my
husband. I would hold out the prize to you alone. As it is, I myself
have been chosen--to never-before-dreamed-of torment! And if this
day I am wedded, it will be without choice of my own. Coercion I
have suffered, have suffered violence. You know, master, that the
force of it frightened even you!"--"My child," he replies, mildly,
collectedly--if feelingly and a little sadly, to her impulsive
confession, while a known, poignant strain, like a profound sigh,
holds the ear for a moment, an echo from a different opera, "of
Tristan and Isolde I know the sorrowful story. Hans Sachs was shrewd
and would have none of King Mark's happiness!" With a return to the
lightness which is his policy of the moment, he adds, lest emotion
too far unnerve them all: "Full time it was that the right one should
appear, or I should after all have run into the snare!... Aha!
There comes Lene looking for you. Hey, David, aren't you coming?"
Nurse and apprentice enter, one from outside and one from within,
in their holiday garments.

"The witnesses are here, the sponsors present, now quickly to the
christening! Take your places!" Sachs directs. All look at him
in wonder. He lays before them his idea of giving, with proper
ceremony, a name to the master-song born in his house. It is a
poet's fancy, an act of tender superstition on Sachs's part, a
form by which he tries to lay a helpful charm or blessing upon the
new-born creation on which so much depends; send it forth equipped
as well as possible with spiritual arms, that it may, as he says,
"grow great without harm or mishap." The young melody's father,
of course, is Walther; the Pognerin and he, Sachs, will stand its
sponsors; Lene and David shall be witnesses. But as an apprentice
is not a proper witness, David is promoted with the rite of a smart
box on the ear from apprentice to journeyman. Sachs suggests as
the name of the new-born: Song of Interpretation of the Blissful
Morning-Dream, and the young godmother is requested to speak appropriate
words over it. The point of what follows is hardly in Eva's words,
pretty as they are; the point is that one of the most extraordinary
quintets that ever charmed human ear serves as baptismal send-off
to the infant melody.

Each of the five singing together expresses, according to custom
in concerted pieces, the aspect which the common subject, or the
hour, has for him. And so dear Sachs, while Eva and Walther rejoice
on their side, and David and Lene--to whom the apprentice's promotion
opens vistas of mastership and marriage,--rejoice on theirs, Sachs,
adding a less glad but more serene voice to the glorious sheaf
of song, reveals his heart,--with no one to listen, for all are
singing. "Full fain"--he sighs, "Full fain had I been to sing before
the winsome child, but need was that I should place restraint upon
the sweet disorderly motions of the heart. A lovely evening dream it
was, hardly dare I to think upon it...." But the wreath of immortal
youth shall be the poet's reward. Impertinent to pity the sturdy
Sachs, who has his poetry and his strong heart. And he has at all
moments been wiser than his lovely evening dream. There has been
really no renunciation on his part, for he had never allowed himself
any serious parleying with the tender temptation. Not for an instant
does he present himself as a sentimental figure; but the generosity
with which he employs himself to secure for others the happiness
which, though in his good sense he had denied it to himself, his
heart had yet caressed in its alluring evening dream, makes him
a magnanimous one.

It is time when they have finished to start for the seat of the
Saint John's Day celebration. Sachs sends Eva home to her father,
orders David to close the shop, and starts along with Walther.

While the curtain is lowered for the change of scene, one of those
musical transformations takes place of which there are several
instances in these operas. With elements we know, new elements
begin to mingle; the old are withdrawn, and presently, musically,
as ocularly, the scene is changed. We behold a green meadow on
the banks of the Pegnitz; in the distance, the city of Nuremberg.
The place is decorated for holiday. There is a great stand for
the master-singers and judges in the song-contest. Crowds of
holiday-makers are on the spot already, more still arrive by the
river in bright boats. The various guilds march in procession with
their respective insignia, shoe-makers, tailors, bakers. Apprentices
and young girls dance together to a measure daintily gay as their
fluttering ribbon-knots. Conspicuous among them is David, so forgetful
for the moment of Lene and himself as to imprint a glowing kiss on
his partner's cheek. Frivolities stop short with the arrival of
the masters. These assemble to the sound of what we will call their
unofficial march; then, to their great march, they walk to their
places on the stand, Kothner waving the banner of the guild, and the
people acclaiming. Pogner escorts Eva to the seat of honour. When
all are in their places, a corps of young apprentices, filling the
function to-day of heralds, and carrying staffs of office liberally
be flowered, call out in Latin the order for silence. Quiet being
established, Sachs, spokesman for the occasion, rises. At once
the silence is shattered by cheers for the popular poet, cries
of joy at sight of him; there is waving of kerchiefs and hats. To
show how every one knows and loves his songs, the people entone
one of them all together and sing it jubilantly through; and "Long
live Sachs!" they shout, "Hans Sachs! Long live Nuremberg's beloved
Hans Sachs!" It is too much for poet to experience unmoved, and
Sachs's voice, when the people quiet down at last, to listen, only
gradually regains its manly firmness. "You ease your own hearts
and burden mine, in offering me, unworthy, too great honour. If I
am not to sink crushed beneath it, let it be in the thought that
it is the gift of your love. Great honour already has fallen to
my portion to-day, in that I have been elected to the dignity of
spokesman. And the announcement which I have to make to you, believe
me, is full of high honour!" He imparts to them Pogner's project,
but with these important modifications or omissions,--and it is they
which constitute the stroke Sachs has been preparing. No mention
whatever is made of the limitations determined upon by the masters
at the last meeting: that the singers contending must be members
of the guild, and that the masters exclusively shall be judges.
So the offer stands: A lovely girl and a rich inheritance shall
be the portion of the singer who before the assembled people shall
carry off the prize,--awarded, one naturally understands, since
nothing different is stated, by popular acclamation. Free candidature,
therefore popular election! And Sachs so presents the thing that the
masters cannot very well object, if even they had the courage to
chance the awkwardness of a public scene; they can hardly claim it
is not fair that they, presumably superior in song to non-masters,
should accept the contest on the same terms. Sachs's peculiar audacity
has lain in his taking the risk of a perfectly justified revolt on
the part of the masters against his high-handed proceeding; he
has counted on the restraining effect of the public occasion; has
counted on luck, which proverbially follows the bold. High-handed,
his course, undeniably, but too much was at stake for any narrow
consideration to hold back Sachs: the happiness of Eva,--of, as he
says, at the conclusion of his announcement, "the amiable stainless
one, who must never be made to regret that Nuremberg holds in such
honour art and its professors!" Hearty applause follows his words.
Pogner grasps his hand, moved, infinitely relieved. "Oh, Sachs,
my friend, what thanks do I owe you! How did you know what was
weighing on my heart?"--"Much was staked upon that cast," replies
Sachs; "now pluck up heart!"

He catches sight of Beckmesser, who ever since arriving with the rest
of the masters has been feverishly studying his bit of music-sheet,
at intervals wiping the desperate sweat from his brow. "Mr. Marker,
how are you getting on?"--"Oh, this song!" groans the Marker, "I
cannot make head or tail of it, and I have worked over it, in all
truth, hard enough!" Sachs shows him, if he but knew it, a way
of escape. "My friend, you are not obliged to use it."--"What is
the good? My own song, through your fault, is done for. Now be a
kind dear fellow, it would be abominable of you to leave me in the
lurch."--"It is my opinion that you had better give it up."--"Give
it up?... Well, hardly! I can easily beat all the others, if only
you will not sing. I am certain that no one will understand the
song, but I am building upon your popularity."

Sachs abandons him to his fate, and declares the song-contest open.
Kothner summons the contestants, "And let the oldest," he calls,
"come first. Master Beckmesser, pray begin. We are late!"

The little heralds have piled up grassy sods into a sort of pedestal
for the singers to stand on. They lead Beckmesser to this. He stumbles
in going, and can hardly from nervousness keep his balance on the
none too secure elevation. The common people begin to titter. Murmurs
fly from one to the other: "What? That one? That is one of the
suitors? Why, he can't even walk!... Keep quiet! He is an eminent
master! He is the town-clerk.... Lord, what a muff! He is toppling
over!... Be still, and stop your jokes; he has a seat and a voice
in the committee!..."--"_Silentium! Silentium!_" calls the chorus
of little heralds. And Kothner: "Begin!" Beckmesser, after bowing
to the queen of the day and to the assembly, gives forth, haltingly,
Walther's song as he remembers it, as it has become with passing
through the medium of his mind. What he utters, with many an anxious
peep at the crumpled manuscript, is nonsense of the most ludicrous.
For every word he substitutes another of distantly the same sound,
but different meaning, betraying how he has not understood a syllable.
The melody, if so were he had mastered it, has completely dropped
from his mind, and what he sings to the eccentric words is his own
serenade, but perverted by the interference of the alien influence.

The masters at the end of the first verse look at one another,
mystified. "What is that? Has he lost his senses? An extraordinary
case! Do our ears deceive us?" The people giggle and make remarks,
not too loud as yet.

At the end of the second verse, the masters inquire of one another,
"What does it mean? Has he gone mad? His song is one piece of nonsense!"
while the people giggle louder and make remarks less and less
respectful.

At the end of the third verse, populace and masters burst into
peals of laughter. Beckmesser descends from his pedestal and hurls
himself raging at Sachs. "Accursed cobbler! To you I owe this!--The
song is none of mine," he excitedly informs the rest. "Sachs here,
whom you honour so, your Sachs gave me the song. The scandalous
wretch compelled me to sing it, he foisted off his miserable song
on me!" He dashes the sorry-looking manuscript at Sachs's feet,
and rushes off like one pursued by a nest of hornets.

Amazement reigns among master-singers and people: "A song of Sachs's?
The matter grows more and more astonishing! The song is yours? Be
so good, Sachs, as to explain!" Sachs has picked up and smoothed
out the crumpled page. "The song, as a matter of truth, is not
of my composing. Herr Beckmesser is mistaken, in this respect as
in others. How he obtained it let him tell you himself. But never
should I be audacious to the point of boasting that so fine a song
had been written by me, Hans Sachs."--"What?... Fine?... That crazy
rubbish? Sachs is joking! He says that in fun!"--"I declare to
you, gentlemen, that the song is beautiful. But it is obvious at
a single glance that Master Beckmesser misrepresents it. I swear
to you, however, that you would hear it with delight were one to
sing it in this circle correctly as to word and melody. And one
who should be able to do this would by that fact sufficiently prove
that he is the author of the song, and that in all justice, if
he found just judges, he would be called a master. I have been
accused and must defend myself. Let me therefore summon a witness.
If any one is present who knows that right is on my side, let him
come forward as a witness before this assembly."

Quietly and quickly, with his proudly-borne head and his light
proud step, Walther advances. A murmur of pleasure runs through
the assembly at sight of him, in his resplendent clothes and plumed
hat. The good populace on whom Sachs had counted do not disappoint
him: the gallant young figure finds instantaneous favour. "A proper
witness, handsome and spirited," they comment, "from whom something
proper may be expected!" The master-singers are not slow to recognise
the intruder of yesterday, and to grasp the situation. They accept
it good-humouredly enough, with artistic appreciation, no doubt,
of Sachs's well managed _coup de théâtre_. "Ah, Sachs, confess
that you are a sly one! But, for this once, have your way!"

"Masters and people are agreed to try the worth of my witness,"
Sachs announces; "Herr Walther von Stolzing, sing the song. And you,
masters, see if he render it aright." He hands them the manuscript.

Walther takes his stand on the flowery mound and starts singing
the song we know already. Presently however, the song lifts him
away, and he alters, as with that power of inspiration behind him
how could he help?--he amplifies, makes more beautiful still. But by
that time the masters have become so interested that they withdraw
their attention from the manuscript, and follow enthralled the
voice of the singer alone.

The song is in its final effect considerably different from the
original one, being the fruit of the moment, like Walther's other
improvisations. It preserves, however, both in text and tune, a
sufficient likeness to the first to prove it of an identical source.
It is the same dream he tells, but expressed in different images.

In a blessed love-dream, he had been led to a garden where, beneath
a miraculous tree, he had beheld--vision promising fulfilment to
love's wildest desire!--a woman of all-surpassing beauty: Eve,
in the garden of Paradise....

In a poet's waking dream, he had been lured by the crystal murmur
of a spring up a steep path. There, beneath a laurel-tree, he had
beheld--and from her hand had received upon his brow water from
the sacred fount,--a woman of a beauty grave and sublime: the Muse
of Parnassus....

There is no doubt of the impression the song produces upon the
audience. As he pauses between the verses, Walther cannot but seize
their irrepressible exclamations. "That is a very different matter!
Who would have thought it?" The people surrender heart-wholly.
"How it soars,--so sweet, so far from earth, and yet it is all as
if one had lived through it himself!"--"It is bold and unusual,
but well-rhymed and singable!" the masters admit. The circumstances
of this hearing are different enough from yesterday's. The infection
of Beckmesser's jealous spite is wanting; softening influences
are in the lovely scene, the poetic occasion. The pure ecstasy of
the song has a chance to work its spell, to transport them outside
of their limitations. They are honourable men, as Sachs assured
Walther; they have no _parti pris_ of bolts and shutters against
the New; on occasion they can be generous. "Yes, yes, I see, it
is quite another thing," they say, "when it is sung aright!"

Sure of victory, already triumphant, Walther leaps to the goal:
"Oh, day most rich in blessing, on which I awake from my dream! The
Paradise I saw in sleep lies before me in intensified splendour.
The murmuring spring lures me along the way which leads to it,--and
the One whose home is there, the elect of my heart, the loveliest
of earth, my muse and inspiration, as holy and high as she is fair,
I have boldly wooed her,--I have won, by the bright light of day,
through the victory of song, both Parnassus and Paradise!"

Before the last note has died, all are clamouring together, awarding
to Walther the master-prize. "Reach him the wreath! There is no lover
or singer like him!" And then Walther's exquisite morning-dream
comes true. He kneels before the woman more graciously beautiful
than any he had ever seen, while, bending upon him eyes luminous
with joy as twin suns, she places upon his head the wreath of laurel
and myrtle, the poet's and lover's crown.

Pogner wrings Sachs's hand. "Oh, Sachs, to you I owe happiness
and honour!" He draws a sigh of immense well-being. "Lifted is the
weight from my heart!"

There are congratulations and rejoicings. In the general glow of
good-humour, voices of master-singers call out to Pogner: "Up Master
Pogner, and announce to his lordship his admission to the master-guild!"
Pogner takes the decoration of the order, the gold chain with the
three medallions, and with the words, "I receive you into the
master-guild," is casting it over the victorious singer's head,
when Walther starts back, as from something of horridly unpleasant
association, and makes a gesture of uncompromising refusal. "Not
a master, no!... I mean to be happy without that title!"

An uncomfortable silence follows upon the hard snub. All look toward
Sachs, whose face has clouded over with pain. He walks to Walther,
and seizing him by the hand, as one might a child, to bring it to
reason, vigorously speaks the defence of the order to which he
belongs. "Despise not the masters, but, rather, honour their art.
The great good you have this day received speaks loud in their
praise. Not to your ancestors, however great, not to your coat of
arms, your spear or sword, but to the fact that you are a singer,
that you have proved yourself a master, you owe to-day your highest
happiness. If then you apply to the question a grateful mind: how
can that art be of no account which holds such prizes? That our
masters cared for it in their own way, that according to their
lights they were faithful to it, that is what has preserved it.
Though it no longer is aristocratic, as in the times when it was
fostered by princes and courts, yet despite the stress of evil
years it has remained German, it has remained sincere. And if it had
prospered nowhere but among us, with our burdens and restrictions,
you can see in what honour it is held here. What more do you require
of the masters?... Have a care! Evil contingencies threaten! Should
the day come when the German people and kingdom fall asunder, its
princes, seduced by false outlandish splendours, would soon no
longer understand the language of their own people, and outlandish
error, outlandish vanities, would be sown by them in German soil.
In that day, should it come, no one would know any longer what
is German and genuine, did it not survive by grace of the German
masters! Then honour the German masters! By that spell shall you
command good genii! And if you second them by your favour, holy
Rome may pass away in smoke: we shall still have our holy German
art!"

Nobly and contritely Walther bows his head, and Sachs hangs about
his neck the collar of the guild. Eva, fired, takes from her lover's
fair curls the laurel-wreath, and presses it upon the grisled head
of the master. He stands radiant between the two whose happiness
is his work. The populace wave their hats and kerchiefs, cheering,
"Hail, Sachs! Hans Sachs! Hail Nuremberg's beloved Hans Sachs!"


One cannot help imagining, in "Meistersinger," a fragment of
autobiography, a recollection of days when Wagner must have heard
on all sides concerning his work what we still occasionally hear,
such words as he puts into the mouth of Beckmesser: "_Kein Absatz
wo, kein' Coloratur! Von Melodei auch nicht eine Spur!_" No pause
anywhere for breath! No appropriate colouring! Of melody not the
remotest trace!

No pause anywhere for breath! The headlong rush it has of genius.
No appropriate colouring! The colouring happens merely to be new.
Of melody not the remotest trace,--when in this opera particularly
the composer casts melodies up in the air like golden balls and
juggles with them; when, like a conjurer, he goes on taking fresh
roses in absurd abundance out of a horn that should naturally have
been ten times empty!

If we may translate the personages of this delicious play into
types, Walther must stand for the poet and singer by God's grace,
fresh young Genius, winged bringer of a new message. Beckmesser
for Old School, where it has become fossil, where forms moulded
on life have become void and dry, and rules are held sufficient
without breath of inspiration. Nay, inspiration, which jostles and
disturbs rule, is regarded with suspicion. Inspiration to Beckmesser
is as much an intruder as would be Saint Francis coming to visit
some Prior of his own order long after the spirit animating the
saint had been hardened into forms. Hans Sachs, then, is a sort
of Ideal Critic, with affection and allegiance toward the past,
but with a fair and open mind toward the new. Walther himself could
have no more admirable attitude, more perfect temper, toward Art,
than Sachs. It is only to be hoped that in his maturity he was
as tolerant and broad-minded.

The wise, the gentle Sachs! It is a pity that in listening to an
opera one hears so little of the words, for there fall from his
genial lips precepts which it would be really worth while to impress
upon the memory, among which could there be a more golden than his
word to critics: "When you find that you are 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!".


TRISTAN AND ISOLDE


TRISTAN AND ISOLDE

I

The Ouverture to Tristan and Isolde is singularly calculated to
create the mood in which the Opera needs to be heard. It discourses
of nothing but love. It is long, it knocks and presses upon chords
lying abysmally below thought, until these vibrate in response,--and
the curtain goes up before an almost helplessly sympathetic listener.

Chief among the emotions expressed in this harmonious setting-forth
of the argument,--rich in sighs, glances, caresses,--is certain
tragic yearning, which seems of the very essence of love, the love
in question; tragic, because it is a thirst which from the nature of
things admits of no satisfaction upon the earth we know, since its
demand is no less than fusion of one soul and flesh into another,
so that each is completely possessed and neither knows any more which
of the two he is; the condition we hear the lovers sigh for later on
their bank of flowers in the warm summer night: "I," says the man,
"shall be Isolde, you will be Tristan."--"I shall be Tristan," the
woman says, "and you Isolde." Nay, there shall be no more Tristan,
no more Isolde, but nameless, indivisible, possessed of a single
consciousness, they shall float in an eternal night of love to
ever-new recognitions, ever-new ardours....

The story belongs to the period of King Arthur and his Round Table.
At that time Cornwall, we learn, was subject to Ireland, to the
extent at least of owing tribute. But the subject country, with
increase of power, had become impatient of the tax, and, when the
Irish hero Morold was sent to collect it, a knight of the Cornish
court, Tristan, fought and slew him, and in lieu of the exacted
tribute sent back his head to Ireland.

Tristan had not come forth unhurt from the combat in which Morold
had fallen. With the peculiar daring which earned him the fame of
"hero without equal, wonder of all nations," he took the wound
of which he was dying to the country of the enemy, to the very
castle of the Irish King whose daughter Isolde's affianced he had
slain. For Isolde was renowned for her skill in the art of medicine.
The Queen, her mother, possessed even rarer secrets of magic. In a
small skiff, almost unattended, Tristan, obscuring his glory under
the name of Tantris, came to Isolde to be healed. The high-born
physician gave him faithful care. No one suspected him, until Isolde,
remarking a trifling notch in his sword, made the discovery that
a steel splinter which she had removed from the severed head of
Morold fitted it. This man, then, completely in her power, was
Tristan, the enemy of her land, the slayer of her betrothed. The
duty of a princess of the time was clear. She caught up the sword
and approached his bed with the intention of avenging Morold's
death. But the wounded man unclosed his eyes, and glancing past
the sword, past the hand which brandished it, looked into her eyes.
And, inexplicably, she could not proceed; pity moved her, she let
the sword sink. She kept the secret of his identity. She applied
herself more than ever diligently to heal him, "that he might betake
himself home, and burden her no more with the look of his eyes."
He went at last with professions of eternal gratitude. The least
he could have done, in accordance with these, so it seemed to her,
was to preserve silence as she had preserved it, to let the incident
have no more result than as if oblivion had engulfed it. Instead of
which, behold before long Tristan arriving in his own resplendent
person, with an embassy of Cornish nobles, to arrange peace between
the two countries and obtain the hand of the Irish king's daughter
for the Cornish sovereign, Mark, his uncle.

Now the Irish, being, as we gather, at a disadvantage in any match
of force with the insolent tributaries who had cast off their yoke,
could not well refuse,--could not afford to give offence by refusing.
The alliance was in truth a splendid one,--were it not for that old
unavenged affront! Even as matters stood, the proposal admitted of
being looked upon in the light of reparation,--if one did not see
in it, as did one of the principal personages involved, a second
insult more intolerable than the first.

The Cornish suit was successful. The feud was publicly declared
at an end, and peace sworn to. The heiress of the Irish crown set
sail for Cornwall under the escort of Tristan.

The curtain rising shows the rich pavilion on ship-deck where Isolde
hides her face from the light against the cushions of a day-bed.
Her attendant, Brangaene, stands gazing over the ship-side. The
voice of a young sailor is heard from the rigging out of sight.
Now, though the Cornish diplomats have comported themselves during
their mission with delicacy, the crew accompanying them take less
trouble to conceal the glee they feel over the humiliation of their
former lords, signified in this present carrying off of Ireland's
proudest jewel. Isolde, spite of all courteous forms, is regarded
by them as, in a sense, a prize of war. Some hint of this appears
in the song of the young seaman, who permits himself references
to the "wild and lovely Irish maid," and asks whether they be her
sighs which swell his sail. The words penetrate through Isolde's
absorption; she starts up in sudden fury, crying: "Who dares to
mock me?" and looks wildly around, as if she had been so engrossed
in other scenes that she did not, on returning to the light of day,
know for a moment where she was. Then she recognises Brangaene, and
remembers, and inquires where they are. "Streaks of blue are rising up
out of the West," Brangaene describes what she is watching, "softly
and swiftly sails the ship; on a calm sea before evening we surely
shall reach the land."--"What land?" Isolde asks unexpectedly. "The
verdant coast of Cornwall."--"Nevermore!" bursts from the princess,
"Not to-day! Not to-morrow!"

Brangaene hurries to her, alarmed and wondering at the hurricane
of passion she now lets loose,--calling upon the arts of magic to
restore to her the lost power of commanding sea and storm, calling
upon the winds and waves to wreck this insolent ship and drown
everyone upon it! Brangaene stands aghast. What she had but dimly
apprehended, then, was true. She clings to her mistress, endeavouring
to calm her. "What, dear heart, have you so long been concealing from
me? Not one tear did you shed at parting from father and mother.
Hardly a word of farewell did you speak to those remaining behind.
Coldly and dumbly you left the land of home; pale and silent you
have been on the voyage, taking no food, taking no sleep, deeply
troubled, rigid and wretched,--how am I to endure to see you thus,
to be nothing to you, to stand before you as a stranger? Oh, tell
me what troubles you! Tell me, make known to me what is torturing
you! If she is to think herself in any measure dear to you, confide
now in Brangaene!" The unhappy Isolde, suffocating, gasps for air:
"Air!... Air!... My heart is smothering!... Open! Open wide!" Brangaene
hurriedly draws apart the tapestries which form the wall of the
apartment at the back. The deck of the ship is seen from mainmast
to stern; sailors busy with ropes, groups of knights and their
esquires lounging. Tristan stands apart from the rest, with folded
arms, staring abstractedly over the water. His servant Kurwenal
lies idly outstretched at his feet. Isolde's eyes at once find
the half-averted figure; her absorption in it becomes equal to
his in the unknown object of the thoughts engrossing him. She does
not hear this time the sailor at the topmast singing over again
the song she had before resented; "O Irish maid, where tarriest
thou? Is it the force of thy sighs which fills my sails?" Slow,
involuntary, words drop from her lips, her inmost thoughts speaking
to herself, while her eyes brood gloomily upon the unconscious
head. "Mine elected,--lost to me! Lofty and beautiful,--brave and
craven! Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!" Starting awake
at the ring of her own words, she laughs unpleasantly and, turning
to Brangaene: "What do you think of the lackey yonder?" Brangaene's
glance follows Isolde's. She does not understand. "Whom do you
mean?"--"The hero over there who averts his glance from mine, who
in shame and embarassment gazes away from me. Tell me, how does
he impress you?"--"Are you inquiring, my dear lady," Brangaene
asks in wonder, "of Tristan, the marvel of all nations, the man
of exalted renown, the hero without equal, honour's treasure and
vaunt?" Isolde catches up her tone, to continue in scornful mimicry:
"Who terrified at his own achievement flies to refuge wherever he
can, having won for his master a corpse to bride?... Is my saying
dark to you? Go then and ask himself, the presumably free man,
whether he dare to venture near me? All forms of reverence and
considerate service he forgets toward his sovereign mistress, the
shrinking hero, that of all things her glance may not light on
him.... Oh, he no doubt knows why!" Suddenly overmastered by an
impulse of her too-long controlled rancour: "Go to the haughty
one," she orders Brangaene, "bear to him this message from his
lady: Let him come into my presence forthwith, prepared to do my
command."--"Am I to bid him come and offer his duty?" Brangaene
timidly interprets. "Nay," Isolde storms, "let the self-sufficient
one be warned to fear the mistress! That do I bid him, I, Isolde!"

Fixedly she watches the attendant moving along the deck, past the
sailors at their work, toward the solitary figure of the knight.
She watches the two fixedly while their interview lasts.

Kurwenal, catching sight of the woman approaching, tugs at his
master's mantle: "Attention, Tristan! Message from Isolde!" Tristan's
start suggests how complete his abstraction, and what the effect
of that name unexpectedly pronounced. _As Brangaene comes before
him_, the stage-directions say, _he rapidly composes himself_.
Deferently he inquires of his lady's wishes. Bragaene tells him,
barely, that her lady wishes to see him. Then begins the series of
his evasions, courteous as possible, but determined as courteous.
"If she be weary of the long voyage, that is nigh ended. Before
sunset we shall touch land. Whatsoever orders my lady have for
me shall be faithfully carried out." Brangaene repeats the order:
"Let Sir Tristan then go to her, such is our lady's will."--"Yonder
where the green meadows are still coloured blue to the eye, my
king awaits my lady. That I may escort her to him, soon will I
approach the Bright One. To none would I yield the privilege."
The maid repeats, still patiently: "Tristan, my lord, listen and
attend: My lady requests your service,--that you should betake
yourself to the place where she awaits you."--"At what place soever
I be found, faithfully do I serve her, to the greater honour of
women. If I should forsake the helm at this moment, how could I
safely guide the keel to King Mark's land?" Brangaene's temper
flashes a faint reflection of Isolde's fire. "Tristan, my lord,
are you mocking me? If the stupid handmaid cannot make her meaning
clear to you, hear my mistress's own words. This she bade me say:
Be warned, a self-sufficient one, to fear the mistress! That is
her behest,--Isolde's!" Without giving Tristan time to hesitate,
Kurwenal jumps up: "May I frame an answer?"--"What would your answer
be?" Tristan asks, for the moment at a loss. And Kurwenal, very
loud, that his words may not fail to reach Isolde's ears: "This
say to Madam Isolde: That he who made over to the maid of Ireland
the crown of Cornwall and the inheritance of England cannot be the
chattel of that same maid, presented by himself to his uncle. A
lord of the world,--Tristan, the hero! I cry it aloud and do you
report my words, though they should bring upon me the wrath of a
thousand Madam Isoldes!" Tristan has vainly tried to silence him.
As Brangaene indignantly hastens away, the irrepressible servant
sings after her at the top of his voice a mocking fragment of ballad,
popular no doubt in Cornwall: "Lord Morold came over the sea to
Cornwall to collect tribute. An island floats in a lonely sea,
there he now lies buried. His head, however, hangs in Ireland, the
tribute paid by England. Hurrah for our lord Tristan! What a one
is he to pay tribute!" Tristan drives the fellow off, orders him
below. But the whole crew have taken up the last lines of the song
and shout them with a will. Brangaene drags together the curtains,
shutting from sight the cruel rabble. Isolde, who has with difficulty
controlled herself, seems on the point of an outburst, but she
quells it, and in the restored silence asks with forced composure:
"But now, about Tristan?--I wish to be told exactly." Brangaene,
at first unwilling, reports the interview. When she has finished,
Isolde, whose anger has made room for a sorrowful intense dejection,
reveals to her what explains the humour, to her so far inexplicable,
of her mistress. Her deeply wounded feelings bleeding afresh at
their exposure, Isolde makes the relation almost tearfully. "You
have been a witness to my humiliation, hear now what brought it
about. They sing to me derisive songs. I could reply if I would!
Of a boat I could tell which, small and mean, drew to the coast
of Ireland. In it a sick and suffering man, in woful plight, at
the point of death...." She tells the story of her recognition in
this Tantris of Tristan; of her resolve to take immediate vengeance
upon him; of the look which disarmed her, her dismissal of him,
healed, that he "might go home and burden her no more with the
look of his eyes!"--"Oh, wonder!" breathes Brangaene. "Where were
my eyes? The guest whom I once helped to nurse...?"--"You heard
his praise a moment ago! 'Hurrah for our lord Tristan!' He was
that unhappy man. He swore a thousand oaths of eternal gratitude
to me, and truth. Now hear how a hero keeps his word. He whom I
dismissed unknown as Tantris, as Tristan comes boldly back. On
a proud tall ship he draws to land, and desires the heiress of
Ireland in marriage for the worn King of Cornwall, for Mark, his
uncle. In Morold's lifetime who had ventured to offer us such an
affront? To sue for the crown of Ireland for the King of the
tribute-owing Cornish!... Oh, woe is me! It was I, I, who in secret
prepared for myself this shame! Instead of smiting with the avenging
sword, weak, I let it drop. Now I am the servant of my own vassal!"
Brangaene, when all is told, does not apparently recognise in the
situation cause for so much bitterness. "When peace, reconciliation,
and friendship were sworn on all sides," she says wonderingly, "we
all rejoiced to see the day. How could I suppose it was a source
of affliction to you?" The point then appears of that bitterness,
which would hardly in reality have been a point but for a sentiment
not among those which Isolde confesses to her confidante. That
what she kept silent the other should reveal! That what he could
only know and live to report through the weakness of her woman's
heart, he should publicly make use of, to his own glory and his
relative's advantage! She paints his attitude, as she imagines him,
victory-flushed, hale and whole now, pointing at her and saying
in loud, clear tones: "There were a treasure for you, my lord and
uncle! What do you think of her as a wife? The pretty Irish-woman
I will bring to you here. By roads and by-paths well known to me,
give the sign, I fly to Ireland: Isolde is yours! I delight in
the adventure!" The picture goads her to very madness, and, with
a cry for its mingling of ferocity with anguish like the roar of a
baited and wounded lioness, she breaks into maledictions upon his
head, calling down vengeance upon him, death upon him, nay,--at the
climax of her rage and insupportable pain,--death upon them both!
With impetuous tenderness Brangaene showers words of endearment on
the exhausted friend, hushes her with caresses, heaps, as it were,
smothering flowers upon her angry coals. She forces her gently
to a seat, comforting her with word and touch. Then she holds up
all in a different light, endeavours to make her see the thing
reasonably, as it must appear to others. "What delusion is this?
What idle raving? How can you stultify yourself till you neither
can see nor hear? Whatever debt of gratitude Sir Tristan owes you,
tell me, could he better repay it than with the most magnificent of
crowns? Thus does he at the same time faithfully serve his noble
uncle and bestow upon you the world's most enviable prize. He has
renounced, generous and true-hearted, his own inheritance, and
placed it at your feet, that he may call you Queen. And if through
him you are to wed Mark, how should you find fault with the choice?
Can you fail to prize and honour the man? Of great lineage and
gentle nature, where is his equal in power and splendour? Who would
not wish to share his good fortune, as consort to tarry beside
him, whom the greatest of heroes so devotedly serves?" Isolde,
but half heeding, has fallen again to her miserable brooding.
Brangaene's last words find their way to her brain and produce an
image there which she stares at with gloomy and tragic eyes. As
before, unconscious in her perturbation that she is doing it, she
voices her inmost thoughts audibly, like a somnambulist: "Unloved by
him, to behold the unrivalled man ever near, how could I endure the
torment?" Brangaene catches the words, and innocently supposes them
applied to King Mark. She presses fondly against this unaccountably
humble-minded mistress: "What are you dreaming, perverse one? Unloved?
Where does the man live who would not love you? Who could see Isolde
and not blissfully dissolve in love for her? But, if so were that
he who has been chosen for you should be of a nature to that degree
cold, if so were that some evil magic drew him away from you, I
should know how very soon to bind the unkind one to you, the power
of love should work its spell upon him...." She draws so near to
Isolde that she can speak without fear of being overheard. "Do you
forget your mother's magic? Do you imagine that she, who ponders
all things so sagely, has sent me void of counsel along with you to
a strange land?"--"At the right moment I am reminded of my mother's
counsel," Isolde murmurs thoughtfully before her; "Her art I prize
and welcome its aid. Vengeance it affords for the betrayal, peace in
the need of the heart. Bring the casket here to me."--"It contains
what shall secure your happiness!" Brangaene joyfully hurries to
fetch the small golden coffer, lifts the lid, fingers the phials.
"In this very order were they placed by your mother, the mighty
magic potions. For hurts and wounds here is balm; here, for poison,
is counterpoison...." She takes out and holds up before Isolde
with a significant smile a small flask. "The sweetest draught of
all I hold here!" Isolde pushes aside her hand and stretches her
own to the casket. "You are mistaken. I know better which one that
is. I marked it with a deep incision. Here is the draught which
shall serve my turn!" Brangaene stares at the phial which Isolde has
taken from among the rest. "The death-potion!" she gasps, recoiling.

A sing-song shout interrupts them, the voices of the sailors hauling
at ropes, taking in sail,--a reminder to Isolde that the land, the
terrible land, is near. Kurwenal hurries in: "Up, up, you ladies!
Briskly and cheerily! Quickly prepare to land! Ready at once, nimble
and spry! And to Madam Isolde I was to say from Tristan, my master:
the pennant of joy waves merrily from the mast, making her approach
known in Mark's royal castle. Wherefore he begs Madam Isolde to
haste and make ready, that he may escort her ashore." Isolde, for
a minute convulsed with a shuddering horror at her realization of
the decisive moment so near, reconquers her composure, and replies
with contrasting dignity and calm to Kurwenal's familiar and rude
pressing of the high-born ladies to haste. "To Sir Tristan bear my
greetings and report to him what I say. If he look to have me walk
at his side and stand before King Mark, as custom and seemliness
demand, let him know that this shall in no wise happen if he have
not before sought pardon of me for an uncondoned offence. Let him
therefore cast himself upon my clemency!" As Kurwenal by a gesture
signifies his stiff-necked resistance to her command, she repeats
it, more regally peremptory than before: "Take careful heed of what
I say and carefully report it. I refuse to make ready to accompany
him to land, I refuse to walk beside him and stand before King
Mark, unless he have before, as is fit and becoming, sued for
forgiveness and forgetfulness of an unexpiated fault. Let him hope
these from my grace!"--"Be quite sure that I shall tell him!" the
bluff serving-man replies, turning to go: "Now wait and see how
he takes it!"

Isolde flings her arms around Brangaene: "Farewell, Brangaene!
Commend me to the world! Commend me to my father and mother!"--"What
is it?" the handmaid asks, not understanding, yet half frightened;
"What are you meditating? Are you planning flight? Whither must I
follow you?"--"Nay, did you not hear? I shall remain where I am.
I intend to await Tristan. Follow faithfully my command. At once
prepare the peace-draught,--you know the one I showed you."--"What
draught do you mean?" Brangaene asks, not daring to understand.
Isolde takes it out of the coffer once more and holds it up for
Brangaene to see well, the little deadly phial. "This draught!
Pour it into the golden goblet; it will contain the whole without
brimming over.--Mind you are true to me!" she adds, forcing it into
the maid's hand. "But this drink..." falters the appalled girl,
"for whom?"--"For him who betrayed me!"--"Tristan?"--"Shall drink to
our peace-making!" Brangaene falls at Isolde's feet, entreating her
to spare her. "Do you spare me, disloyal girl!" Isolde passionately
chides. What was the purpose, she asks, of that provision made by
her mother for their assistance in a strange land? For hurts and
wounds she had given balm; for poison, antidote; for deepest woe,
for utmost affliction, she had given the death-draught: thanks be
rendered to her now--by death! Brangaene still resisting, Isolde
imperiously presses her command. Their struggle is cut short by
Kurwenal announcing Tristan. Brangaene staggers to the back. Isolde
visibly summons up all her courage, all her strength, and with
queenly self-possession bids Tristan approach.

The music introducing the following scene has the effect of lifting
the story on to a plane of larger things. The proportions of the
personages, in the light of the magnifying music, are seen to be
heroic, their natures vast, their passions, in their very
tremendousness, august.

Tristan stops at the entrance and waits deferentially. Constraint
makes him into a man of chill iron. There is a long moment of
heavy-laden silence. He is first to speak: "Make known to me, lady,
your wish!" She comes to the point at once. "Do you not know my wish,
when the dread of fulfilling it has kept you afar from my glance?"
He evades her, as he had before evaded Brangaene. "Reverence laid
its compulsion upon me!"--"Small reverence have you shown me. With
overt scorn you have refused obedience to my command."--"Obedience
alone restrained me."--"Paltry cause should I have to thank your
master, if his service required of you discourtesy to his own
consort."--"Custom demands," he quietly meets this, "where I have
lived, that the escort of the bride, while bringing her home, should
keep afar from her presence."--"For what reason?"--Stiffly as he
stands, his answer resembles a shrug. "Ask of custom!"--"Since
you cherish so great a regard for custom, my lord Tristan," Isolde
mocks, "let me remind you of what likewise is a custom: to make
peace with the enemy, if he is to report you as his friend." "And
what enemy?" he questions, unmoved. "Inquire of your terror!...
Blood-guiltiness stands between us!"--"That was made good!"--"Not
between us!"--"In the open field, before the assembled people, a
solemn oath was sworn to let vengeance rest."--"Not there was it,
not in the open field, that I kept Tantris concealed, that Tristan
lay at my mercy. In the open field he stood magnificent, hale and
brave; the thing however which he swore, I fore bore to swear. I
had learned to keep silence. When he lay languishing in the hushed
chamber, and I stood silent before him with the sword, though my
mouth no made sound, though my hand refrained, yet the thing which I
had sworn with hand and mouth I silently renewed my oath to perform.
I now intend to keep it."--"What did you swear, lady?" Tristan asks
simply, without effect of defiance. "Vengeance for Morold!" she hurls
at him. He seems to wonder. A sort of numbness has been creeping over
him; an atmosphere of dream has closed around him; her neighbourhood,
her voice, no matter what words she is saying, even these angry and
cruel ones, have an effect of lulling, of making the real world seem
unreal. "Are you concerned for that?" he asks, with the sincerity of
that state of having lost grasp on things as it is agreed to pretend
they are. "Dare you to mock me?" she rages, "He was affianced to me,
the gallant Irish hero. I had consecrated his arms, for me he went
into battle. When he fell, my honour fell with him. In the heaviness
of my heart I swore an oath that if no man would take vengeance
for his murder, I, a woman, would find the hardihood for it. Why,
when sick and feeble you lay in my power, I did not strike, explain
to yourself by easy interpretation: I cared for your wound, that
a man in sound health should be struck down by the vengeful hand
of him who won Isolde. Judge for yourself now what your doom shall
be. Since the men are all your adherents, who is to smite Tristan?"
More than ever it seems like the atmosphere of a dream closing
down upon him, a dream in which they move, projecting incredible
things. But he has perfectly seized her meaning, and even in a
dream a man acts in character. Pale and self-contained, he hands
her his unsheathed sword, and his voice shows a first tinge of
emotion as he speaks the name of Morold, whom, it would almost
seem, she had loved. "If Marold was so dear to you, again take up
the sword, and drive it surely and steadfastly, that it may not
drop from your grasp!"

If she seemed somewhat like a lioness before, striding and chafing
in her regal rage, she is again, it must be confessed, a little like
one now, but presenting a different aspect of the great feline,
a sort of cruelty, a need to torment before sacrificing. "What
would King Mark say if I were to slay his best servant, the most
faithful of his retainers, who won for him crown and land? Does it
seem to you such a paltry matter, that for which he stands indebted
to you, bringing home to him the Irish bride, that he would not
chide, should I slay the envoy who so faithfully delivers into
his hands the hostage of the peace-compact?... Put up your sword!
When upon a time I brandished it, my heart hot with desire for
vengeance, at your gazing upon me with an eye that took my measure,
to see if I would answer as a wife for King Mark"--(There, there
is point of insufferable bitterness!)--"I let the sword sink. Let
us drink now to our reconciliation!"

By a sign she orders Brangaene to bring the draught. The poor creature
shrinks away shuddering. Isolde, by a gesture more peremptory still,
repeats her command, and Brangaene is seen tremulously busying herself
with the golden casket and the golden cup. Again the sing-song
chorus is heard, of the sailors hauling in the topsail. The sound
falls with a shock upon Tristan's ear. "Where are we?" he cries,
in bewilderment. "Close to our destination!" Isolde replies
significantly. They are so close indeed to the end of their voyage
that anything there is to say must be said now, and she invites, with
a first suspicion of softness, some expression from him of regret,
some explanation before they die, some attempt at justification
of his so unkind-seeming return to the woman who had nursed and
saved him. "Tristan, shall I obtain amends? What have you to say
to me?" But he is guarded now as earlier; the compulsion of honour
is no less strong upon him than before. "The lady of silence," he
replies darkly, "teaches me to be silent. I apprehend, mayhap,
what she concealed.... I conceal what she does not apprehend!"--"I
shall apprehend the reason of your silence," she exclaims angrily,
"if you mean to elude me. Do you refuse to drink to our peace-making?"

Brangaene has brought the cup. Tristan gazes rigidly into Isolde's
eyes as she approaches him bearing it. "The voyage nears its end.
In brief space we shall stand," her lip curls with irony, "before
King Mark! As you lead me to him, should you not deem it an apt
speech to make: My lord and uncle, look at her well! A meeker woman
you could never hope to win. I slew her affianced, I sent home to
her his head; the wound made by his weapon she graciously healed.
My life lay in her power; the gentle maid made me a gift of it, and
gave her consent to the dishonour and degradation of her country
that she might become your wife. In kind acknowledgment of my good
gifts to her, she mixed me a sweet peace-draught; of her grace she
tendered this to me, to make all offences forgotten!" No, Tristan
can hardly entertain a doubt of the cup's contents which the princess
holds toward him with her ambiguous smile. But her right, aside
from any other consideration, is recognised as indubitable to the
life which she saved. We have from his own lips later what his
emotions were in this moment so pregnant with fate. What we see
is that he stands like a man in a dream. A voice is heard outside
shouting orders to the sailors: "Up with the cable! Free the anchor!"
He starts awake--he rises as if with a spring to the height of
the moment. "Anchor loose!" he cries wildly. "Helm to the stream!
Sails and mast to the wind!" Ay, let go all regards and restraints
of life, since life itself is about to be tossed over. There is zest
in doing it, and then rid at once forever of the puzzling world of
duty and prudence and heart-starvation! He snatches the goblet from
Isolde's hand: "Well do I know Ireland's queen and the magic power
of her arts. I made use of the balm which she proffered, I take the
cup from her now, that I to-day may completely recover. And do you
mark the pledge with which, grateful, I drink to our peace!" It is
an answer, this enigmatic pledge, to her wistful question: "What
have you to say to me?" He cannot pass into silence, and leave her
forever with her unmingled contempt for him. By broken intimations
he flashes light upon the thing which his lips are interdicted from
revealing. Charged with emotion, the words chime slowly: "Tristan's
honour,--highest truth!... Tristan's misery,--cruellest spite!...
Lure of the heart!... Dream-intuitions!... Sole comforter of an
eternal woe, merciful draught of forgetfulness, unwaveringly I
drink!" He sets the cup to his lips and is drinking as he said,
when with the cry: "Defrauded here too! Mine, one half!" Isolde
wrests the goblet from him: "Traitor, I drink to you!" and drains
it, unwavering as he.

The empty cup drops from her hand. They stand in suspense, gazing
at each other, as defiantly they await death. The searching potion
in a moment begins to take effect; each sees in the eyes of the other
a new thing dawning, strange and beautiful; a trembling seizes upon
their limbs. They press their hands convulsively to their hearts,
the seat of an incomprehensible trouble, then to their foreheads,
within which the brain seems to have become subject to over-wild
delusions. Their eyes meet again, and are averted in a confused
terror; but, invincibly allured, again seek the other--and both
gaze with increasing, at last unconquerable, yearning. With tremulous
lips she speaks his name,--a complete confession in the one word
so spoken. Passionately he calls hers,--confession for confession.
She sinks overpowered on his breast. He clasps her ardently to
him. Brangaene wrings her hands at sight of them locked in their
long, mute embrace. Her work this, the work of her disobedient
hands which, too weak for the stern task assigned them, poured out
the love-potion in place of the death-draught. "Woe, woe," she
wails, "eternal, irredeemable woe, instead of brief death! Behold
the pernicious work of a foolish fondness blossoming heavenward
in lamentation!"

The two move apart for a moment in order better to gaze at each
other. "What was I dreaming," he falters, "of Tristan's honour?"
"What was I dreaming," she wonderingly asks, "of indignities to
Isolde?"--"You, lost to me?" Could man have imagined so wild a
thing! "You repulsing me?" Probable, it seems, as he stretches
to her those yearning arms! It has all been a malignant trick,
then, of evil sorcery! Restored at length from that delusion, they
yield themselves exultantly to the tide of passion that has caught
them away and shall carry them whither it will, scornful of the
whole world, lost in each other, conscious of a sweetness in the
surrender surpassing all that life had given them to suspect.

The peculiar action of the potion is detected from the above. It
seems less to create passion than to remove all that obscured and
controlled it, dissolve the barriers which up to the moment of
drinking stood so effectively between the two. Tristan's will crumbles
under it, the will which had kept him loyal to Mark, which had made
him, to the point of offence, shun the radius of her dangerous
magnetism. Isolde's pride melts under it, which had enabled her
to keep up with herself and him a fiction of hate for the man who
had wronged her. All that keeps love within bounds being burned
away, it towers in a sublime conflagration. Their sense of the
change is that they have awakened from a dream; but the effect
of the potion has been in truth rather more to plunge them into
a state of dream, in which while one emotion is in the ascendant
the others sleep,--reason sleeps, will sleeps, all other interests
and considerations sleep, leaving love free to reach proportions
and an intensity unknown during wakefulness.

They have not heard or heeded the cries of the crew: "Hail, hail,
King Mark!" The curtains of the pavilion are suddenly drawn wide
apart. The ship's company crowds the deck; all are gazing toward
the land. Tristan and Isolde take account of nothing, their senses
fast sealed to all but the contemplation of each other. Brangaene
and other women place on Isolde's unconscious shoulders the royal
mantle, and deck her, unaware of it, with jewels. Kurwenal comes
running to his master: "Hail, Tristan, fortunate hero! King Mark,
with rich rout of courtiers, approaches in a barge. Ha! He looks
well pleased, coming to meet the bride!" Tristan asks, dazed: "Who
approaches?"--"The King!"--"What king?"--Kurwenal points overboard.
Tristan stares landward, not comprehending. The men shout and wave
their caps. "Hail, King Mark!"--"What is it?" Isolde inquires,
reached in her trance by the clamour; "Brangaene, what cry is
that?"--"Isolde, mistress," the distraught Brangaene implores,
"self-control for this one day!"--"Where am I?" the bewildered
lady asks helplessly. "Am I alive?..." What, the question asks
itself, what is this still familiar surrounding scene, when they
ought, by true working of the drug, to be dead? If any thought had
accompanied the overmastering impulse which she had blindly followed,
it had been that before death all disguises drop, that in dying one
is sincere. But since death had not followed the drinking of the
draught--"Ha! What draught was that?" she asks in consternation.
Brangaene gives the desperate truth. "The love-draught!" Isolde's
eyes widen with horror, and turning from Brangaene fix themselves
upon Tristan. The situation flashes before her for one shocked
moment in its true colours; and as before her calling his name
had revealed all love, it reveals now her sense of an unspeakable
awfulness in what has happened to them. As he calls her name, too,
it expresses, with his boundless tenderness, pity and a tragic
recognition of the black ingredient in the cup which had lifted
them to such heights of intoxication. "Must I live?" speaks the
last glimmer of the old Isolde, provided normally with a moral
nature; and overwhelmed by the greatness of the catastrophe she
sinks fainting upon his breast. A last glimmer of the old Tristan
groans aloud: "O rapture beset with snares! Bliss on betrayal built!"

Trumpets are heard. The eager expectancy of all indicates that the
King's barge is close at hand. The curtain falls.

II

The introduction to the second act opens with the motif of the Day.
It is no tender dawn described, with tremulous lights among the
clouds; it has little of the touching _Morgenpracht_ in Parsifal.
It is a startling announcement of a fateful fact, an obtruder feared
and unloved; it is like a clash of cymbals or call of trumpets
summoning to unwelcome tasks, away from delights and dreams. It
is indeed the day as it appears to lovers when, dispelling the
gentle night which united them, with cruel golden shafts it drives
them apart. The musical rendering follows upon it of love's impatient
heart-beats, love's ungovernable eagerness for the beloved's presence,
love listening for the footsteps of the beloved. The curtain rises
upon a garden under a cloudless summer night. Beside the door of
Isolde's apartment a torch is burning. The sound is heard of
hunting-horns gradually retreating. Brangaene stands on the
castle-steps, listening to these. Isolde, all in a happy agitation,
hurries forth to ask if they still be audible. She herself cannot hear
them any more. But to Brangaene's ear the sound is still distinct.
Isolde listens again: No! Brangaene, she believes, is deceived by
her over-great anxiety, deceived by the rustling of the leaves.
"You," Brangaene retorts, "are deceived by the impetuosity of your
desire! I hear the sound of the horns." Isolde again listens. "No!"
she discourses in her over-running tender exhilaration, "the sound
of horns was never so pleasing as that! It is the soft purling of
the fountain whose music comes so sweetly borne to us; how could
I hear it, if hunting-horns were still blaring near by? In the
silence, all I hear is the murmured laughter of the fountain. The
one who is waiting for me in the hushed night, are you determined to
keep him away from me as if horns were still close at hand?"--"The
one who is waiting for you--do but listen to my warning," Brangaene
pleads, "there are spies in the night lying in wait for him! Because
you are blind, do you believe the eyes of the world dulled to your
actions and his?" Against Melot she warns her, Melot, who, when
he came aboard the ship with King Mark to receive the bride,--and
the kindly King was engrossed by anxiety for the condition of the
pale and fainting princess,--with treacherous, suspicious eye,
Brangaene had seen it, scrutinised the countenance of Tristan, to
read in it what might thereafter serve his purpose. Often since
then she has come upon him eavesdropping. Against Melot let Isolde
be warned!... Melot? Isolde rejects the idea with light scorn. Is
not he Tristan's dearest friend? When Tristan is forced to keep
afar from her, with whom does he spend the time but Sir Melot?
"The thing which makes him suspicious to me, to you endears him!"
cries Brangaene, in despair at such wilful blindness. "From Tristan
to Mark lies Melot's road. He there sows evil seed. This nocturnal
hunting-party, so hurriedly concerted, has in view a nobler quarry
than your fancy deems!"--"Melot," Isolde persists in his defence,
"invented the stratagem, out of compassion for his friend. And do
you make it into a reproach to him? He cares for me better than do
you. He opens to me that which you close. Oh, spare me the misery
of hesitation! The signal, Brangaene, give the signal! Extinguish
the light to its last flicker. Beckon to the Night, that she may
completely bend over us. Already she has poured her silence upon
grove and house. Already she has filled the heart with her happy
trepidation. Quench the light! Smother its frightening glare! Throw
open the way to my beloved!"--"Oh, let the torch of warning stand!"
Brangaene struggles with her still, "Let it stand to illumine your
danger!" And she wrings her hands anew, lamenting over this which is
the work of those unfaithful hands, in a single instance disobedient
to the mistress's will. "Your work?" Isolde smiles, with that mortal
lightness which is upon her to-night; "Oh, foolish girl! Do you not
know the Lady of Love? Do you not know her power, her miracles?
Queen of high hearts, ruler of earth's destinies, life and death
are subject to her. She weaves them out of pain and pleasure. She
can change hate into love. Presumptuous, I took in hand the work
of death. The Lady of Love wrested it from me. The death-devoted
she took into her keeping, she seized the work in her own hands.
To whatever purpose she will to turn it, however she will to end
it, whatever the doom she appoint me, I am become her own. Let
me then show myself obedient to her!" Clearly, Isolde to-night
is _fey_. A rapturous madness is upon her. Aphrodite, the Lady
of Love, possesses her indeed, and no impression is to be made
upon her great mood by anything Brangaene can say. The girl might
talk more hopefully to a gust of summer wind. Poor-spirited and
grey-hued she appears, with her anguish and forebodings, beside
the glowing, rosily-smiling queen, in her secure expectation. Still
she presses the prayer of her terror: Just this one night let Isolde
listen to her pleading! Just this one night let her not put out the
light! But the mad Queen declares bafflingly that _Frau Minne_,
Madam Love, desires that it shall become night, that she herself may
illumine the place whence Brangaene's torch banishes her. To the
watch-turret with Brangaene, whence let her keep faithful look-out.
"The torch," Isolde cries, grasping it, "were it the light of my
life, laughing, without a tremor, I would put it out!" She dashes
it to the ground, where it slowly dies. The troubled Brangaene
disappears with heavy step up the stairway to the battlements.

Then is heard the motif again of love's impatience, of love listening.
Isolde peers down the avenue of trees, strains her ear for the
sound of footsteps. She waves her veil, which glimmers white in the
darkness; she waves it, in her impatience, more and more quickly.
She has caught sight of him, as an ecstatic gesture betrays. She
hurries to the top of the stairs, the better to see him from afar
and wave welcome to him. She rushes at last to meet him and they
are gathered in each other's arms. So over-great is their joy that
neither can believe the witness of his senses; nothing so good
could be true as that this verily which can be seen and clasped
should be the so sorely desired one. They vent themselves in such
childish, fond, incredulous exclamations as: Is it you yourself?
Are they your eyes? Are they your lips? Have I here your hand?
Have I here your heart? Is it I? Is it you? Do I hold you close?
Is it no fancy? Is it no dream? And, as if finally convinced, they
burst forth in a hymn of thanksgiving and joy.

"The light! The light! Oh, that light!" the lover voices his grudge
against it. "How long ere it went out! The sun sank, day departed,
but the ill-will of the Day was still unsated. It lit a fearful
danger-signal and fastened it at the beloved's door, to prevent
me coming to her!"--"But the hand of the beloved extinguished the
light," Isolde pacifies him; "What the handmaid refused, I feared
not to do. At the command and under the protection of Great Love,
I cried defiance to the Day!"--"The Day! The Day! the malignant
Day!" he inveighs; "To that implacable enemy hate and reproach!
Oh, might I, even as you quenched the light, put out the torches
of the insolent Day, in vengeance for all the sufferings of love!"

There is a great deal in the often fanciful, yet ever earnest,
conversation between the lovers, about the Day and the Night; the
Day being devoted to their hate, the Night to their worship. It
is not only, however, that the day divides them, and their trysts
belong to the night. They make the image of Day to stand for falsehood
and evil illusion, while Night represents truth. The reason of
this is not far to seek. Their love is not like the love of other
mortals. Inevitably in the latter many elements enter. Will controls
it, at least to some extent; reason guides and bounds it; sense
of humour even qualifies it. A thousand things besides love find
room in the most enamoured human heart and brain: other persons,
pursuits, interests,--what Rossetti calls "all life's confederate
pleas, work, contest, fame." The many-sided nature of man is appealed
to by myriad things. Only for brief moments do lovers stand on the
high peaks of pure passion where Tristan and Isolde perpetually
reside. Love they never so truly, lovers who have not quaffed the
magic potion love great part of the time almost unconsciously, in
a divine under-current,--no otherwise indeed than Tristan before
the potion, when, despite the Image in his heart, he devoted thought
to his career, cherished dreams of ambition. But after the cup
Tristan and Isolde are lovers, nothing more,--or less. All the
furniture of the day which has nothing to do with their love is
therefore an impertinence, an obtrusion; all day's pageants and
activities are a vanity, and a pernicious vanity; a glaring mask
hiding from sight the only true and beautiful. Everything that
the garish daylight shows, which can never show them the depths of
the other's heart, is a false show, an ugly delusion. The night,
during which all the troublesome, battering appeals of the day
are suspended, in which everything fades from the eye, leaving
it free to fix itself upon the only reality, love,--the night is
fosterer and patroness of truth. To love the night, to yearn for
it, to wish it forever prolonged, is natural in these lovers who
have drank of the cup; and, by a natural step further, since earthly
life affords no such night, to wish for the night of death, as we
hear them presently doing, a night in which they picture themselves
eternally floating in a state of ever-renewed joy in each other,
ever fresh ardour, two and yet one. It is not in the least like
Paradise. Paradise, with its interfering light and shows and
other-souls-in-bliss, could be to them but another version of the
Day. The Paradise of their desire is an eternal twilight, and nothing
more asked for each than the heaven of the other.

Meanwhile they are talking together like commoner lovers, of the
past, of their first meeting, the beginnings of their love. How,
she asks him, very humanly, how could he do to her the thing he
did, betray her as he had done, claim her for another, give her
over to death? "It was the Day!" he explains. "The Day, shining
about me, which showed Isolde, where she stood sun-like, in the
splendour of glory and greatness, infinitely far removed. That
which so ravished my eye, weighted down my heart to the earth. How,
in the brilliant light of the Day, how could Isolde be mine?"--"Was
she not yours, whose elect you were? What falsehoods did the evil
Day tell you, that you should betray the faithful one, who had
preferred you?" The love of glory it had been, he avows, which
moved him. That sun of the Day, worldly honour, with its idle and
false rays had allured him. An Image all the while lay in the deepest
shrine of his heart, an unsleeping Image which had impressed itself
while he was hardly aware, and lived in the chaste night there,
closely shut in. Till a ray of the Day had penetrated even so deep,
and that which was so secret and sacred that his eyes scarcely
trusted themselves to look at it, that Image, smitten by Daylight,
lay brilliantly revealed. And, Day-deluded, he had vaunted before
the whole army that which seemed to him so desirable and beautiful,
the fairest King's-bride of all the earth; and to silence the envy
and hatred which had begun to make his honours heavy to him, to
maintain his glory, he had undertaken that boldest exploit, his
quest to Ireland. "Vain slave of the Day!" Isolde calls him. She
tells her part of the story, and we are enlightened concerning
the mood in which she proffered to him the death-draught: how,
deceived she too by the Day, tortured in her love for him, she
had, while ardently loving him, hated him to the bottom of her
heart. From the light of Day, which showed him an ingrate and a
traitor, she had longed to flee, to draw him along with her into the
night, where her heart foretold an end of the mistake, a dispelling
of the apprehended delusion; to drink to him eternal love and enter
death simultaneously with him.

We learn thereupon the mood in which he accepted the cup from her.
"When I recognised the sweet draught proffered by your hand, when
intuition clearly and surely told me what it was the peace-drink
promised me, there dawned in my bosom, mild and divine, the Night--my
Day had reached its close!" In other words, when he had stood facing,
as he knew, death, all the vain shows and disguises of the Day had
melted away, he had seen for the first time clearly in his own
heart. "O hail to the draught!" he exclaims, "Hail to its sublime
magic! At the portal of death, where I quaffed it, it opened wide
to me the region where I theretofore had wandered but in dream,
the wonder-kingdom of the Night! From the Face in the innermost
shrine of the heart it dispelled the deceiving glare of the Day,
that my eyes, grown accustomed to the Night, might see it in its
truth." But the Day, she carries on the conceit with gathering
sadness, had its revenge! The Day entered into league with his
sins, and that Face which the Night had vouchsafed him to see he
had been forced to surrender to the royal power of the Day, and
behold it shining lonesomely afar, in barren magnificence. "How
have I endured it?" she moans, "How do I still endure it?" Nay,
he comforts her, "We are now become the initiate of the Night.
The malevolent Day, the cruel, can divide, but no longer deceive
us. They whose eyes the Night has consecrated laugh to scorn Day's
idle splendour, his braggart brilliancy. The fugitive flashes of
his lightning cannot dazzle them more. He who has gazed longingly
into the night of death, he to whom that Night has confided her
deep secret, the lies of the Day, honour and glory, power and gain,
lovely and shining though they be, like idle star-dust he sees them
float past. Amid the vain delusions of the Day he is possessed by
a single longing, the longing for the holy Night, in which the one
thing from all eternity true, Love with its rapture, awaits him!"
He draws her gently to a flowery bank, sinks kneeling before her
and lays his head within her arm. And they breathe forth together,
with an equal dreamy devoutness, their invocation to the Night.
"Oh, close around us, night of love! Give forgetfuless of life!
Gather us up in your arms, release us from the world!..." Quenched
is the last torch, quenched all thought, all memory. In a sacred
twilight full of wondrous divinations, the dread illusions of the
world melt away, leaving free the spirit. And the sun in the breast
having set, softly shine forth the stars of joy. And when, heart
upon heart, lip against lip, breathing one breath, the lovers'
eyes are blinded with joy, the world with its dazzling deceits
fades from sight, the world which the Day had flashed before their
eyes for their delusion, and they themselves are the world, and
the world is life, is love, is joy, is a beautiful wish c