der ring des nibelungen - Fantasy Castle Books

(With merry cries they swim away from each other;
Flosshilde tries to catch first one and then the other; they
slip from her, and then together give chase to Flosshilde;
so, laughing and playing, they dart like fish from ridge to
ridge.
Meanwhile ALBERICH has come out of a dark chasm
from below, and climbs up a ridge. Still surrounded by the
darkness, he stops and observes with growing pleasure the
games of the water-maidens.)
ALBERICH.
Hi hi! You Nodders!
How neat I find you! Neighbourly folk!
From Nibelheim’s night I soon will be near,
If made I seem to your mind.
(The maidens, on hearing Alberich’s voice, stop their play)
WOGLINDE.
Hi! What is here?
WELLGUNDE.
It whispered and gleamed.
FLOSSHILDE.
Watch who gazes this way.
(They dive deeper down, and perceive the Nibelung.)
WOGLINDE and WELLGUNDE.
Fie! What frightfulness!
FLOSSHILDE (swimming swiftly up).
Guard the gold!
Father said that such was the foe.
(The two others follow her, and all three gather quickly
round the middle ridge.)
ALBERICH.
You there aloft!
THE THREE.
What leads thee below?
ALBERICH.
Spoil I your sport, if here you hold me in spell?
Dive to me deeper; with you to dance
And dabble the Nibelung yearns!
WELLGUNDE.
Our play will he join in?
WOGLINDE.
Passed he a joke?
ALBERICH.
How fast and sweetly you flash and swim!
The waist of one I would soon undauntedly wind,
Slid she dreadlessly down!
FLOSSHILDE.
Now laugh I at fear; the foe is in love.
(The laugh).
WELLGUNDE.
And look how he longs!
WOGLINDE.
Now shall we near him?
(She lets herself down to the point of the peak, whose foot
Alberich has reached.)
ALBERICH.
She lets herself low.
WOGLINDE.
Now come to me close!
ALBERICH (climbs with imp-like agility, but stopping
often on the way, towards the point of the peak).
Sleek as slime the slope of the slate is!
I slant and slide!
With foot and with fist I no safety can find
On the slippery slobber!
(He sneezes)
A sniff of wet has set me sneezing;
The cursed snivel!
(He has reached the neighbourhood of Woglinde.)
WOGLINDE (laughing).
With winning cough my wooer comes!
ALBERICH.
My choice thou wert, thou womanly child!
(He tries to embrace her.)
WOGLINDE (winding out of his way).
Here, if thy bent I heed, it must be!
(She has reached another ridge. The sisters laugh.)
ALBERICH (scratches his head).
O grief! Thou art gone! Come though again!
Large for me is the length of thy leap.
WOGLINDE (springs to a third ridge lower down).
With merry cries they swim apart. FLOSSHILDE tries to
catch first one and then the other; they elude her and then
together chase her and dart laughing and playing like fish
between the rocks.
From a dark chasm ALBERICH climbs up one of the
rocks. He remains watching the water-maidens with
increasing pleasure.
Alberich.
He he! Ye nixies!
How ye delight me, daintiest folk!
From Niebelheim’s night fain would I come,
Would ye turn but to me!
(The maidens stop playing on hearing ALBERICH’s voice)
Woglinde.
Hei! Who is there?
Wellgunde.
A voice in the dark.
Flosshilde.
Look who is below!
(They dive deeper down and see the Niblung.)
Woglinde and Wellgunde.
Fie! Thou grisly one!
Flosshilde (swimming quickly up).
Look to the gold!
Father warned us such foe to fear.
(The two others follow her, and all three gather quickly
round the middle rock.)
Alberich.
You, above there!
The Three.
What wouldst thou, below there?
Alberich.
Spoil I your sport, if still I stand here and gaze?
Dive ye but deeper, with you fain
Would a Nibelung dally and play.
Wellgunde.
Would he be our playmate?
Woglinde.
Doth he but mock?
Alberich.
How bright and fair in the light ye shine!
Fain are my arms to enfold a maiden so fair,
Would she come to me here!
Flosshilde.
I laugh at my fear: the foe is in love!
(They laugh.)
Wellgunde.
The languishing imp!
Woglinde.
Let us go near him!
(She lets herself sink to the top of the rock, the foot of
which ALBERICH has reached.)
Alberich.
One sinks down to me.
Woglinde.
Come close to me here!
Alberich (climbs with imp-like agility, but with frequent
checks, to the top of the rock).
Loathsome, slimy, slippery pebbles!
I cannot stand!
My hands and my feet cannot fasten or hold
On the treacherous smoothness!
(He sneezes.)
Water drops fill up my nostrils:
Accursed sneezing!
(He has come near WOGLINDE.)
Woglinde (laughing).
Sneezing tells of my love’s approach!
Alberich.
My sweetheart be, thou loveliest child!
(He tries to embrace her.)
Woglinde (avoiding him).
Me wouldst thou woo? Then woo me up here!
(She has reached another rock. The sisters laugh.)
Alberich (scratches his head).
Alas! Thou escap’st? Come but nearer!
Thou canst fly where I scarcely can creep.
Woglinde (swims to a third rock, deeper down).
2. The Motive of the Rhine-daughters (Rhine Maidens)
The scene shows the bed and flowing waters of the Rhine, the
light of day reaching the depths only as a greenish twilight.
The current flows on over rugged rocks and through dark
chasms. Woglinde is circling gracefully around the central
ridge of rock. To an accompaniment as wavy as the waters
through which she swims, she sings the much discussed
“Weia! Waga!...” Some of these words belong to what may be
termed the language of the Rhine-daughters. Looked at in print
they seem odd, perhaps even ridiculous. When, however, they
are sung to the MOTIVE OF THE RHINE-DAUGHTERS they have
a wavy grace which is simply entrancing. In wavy sport the
Rhine-daughters dart from cliff to cliff. (1)
Das Rheingold is the title which distinguishes the first portion of our
drama, to the remainder of which it forms a prologue wherein are
sown the seeds which hereafter, like the Colchian Dragon’s teeth,
produce so abundant a harvest of strife and discord. It is not divided,
like the three subsequent parts, into acts, but into four scenes of
considerable length, connected by the music, which is uninterrupted
from beginning to end. The first scene is laid at the bottom of the
Rhine. This famous river, with whose name is interwoven so large a
section of German legend and romance, is here employed as a
symbol of the water-element, which again, as often in the Aryan
mythology, is regarded as a type of the material universe, the sphere
of all generated life. It thus corresponds with the earth-encircling
Oceanus of the Greeks, which Homer describes as the origin of all
things (Iliad, xiv., 246). In the songs of the Edda, indeed, we meet
with a different conception of the cosmogony, but recent researches
have proved that the former idea was at one time no stranger to the
Teutonic peoples. It has been shown that a Vana-cult, i.e. a worship
of the Vaenir or water-deities, preceded, among the Teutons, the
religion of Odin and the gods of Asgarth. The Elder Edda (Völuspá)
contains a brief and obscure allusion to the fierce struggle which took
place between the two creeds, and in which the older faith finally
succumbed, yet was not wholly uprooted, a compromise being
effected by which certain of the Vanic divinities were received into the
circle of the Aesir. Of these Vaenir two have been introduced by
Wagner among the dramatis personæ of the Nibelung’s Ring—Froh
(Freyr) and Freia, the children of the sea-god Niord. Many evidences
of this ancient water-worship still survive in popular tradition. I need
but instance the well-known story of the Fisherman in the collection of
the brothers Grimm. (3)
Meanwhile Alberich has clambered from the depths up to one
of the cliffs, and watches, while standing in its shadow, the
gambols of the Rhine-daughters. As he speaks to them there is
a momentary harshness in the music, whose flowing rhythm is
broken. (1)
The clear fluency of the music is at once disturbed; minor
harmonies, short, crabbed phrases; sharp, sudden discords;
trouble its flow, as he calls to them and tries to catch them. (2)
The three Rhine-daughters are simply personifications in human form
of the Rhine, or water-element, and their names—Woglinde,
Wellgunde, and Flosshilde—contain a reference to the flow and
undulation of water. Their laughing play about the glistening treasure
may be interpreted as an indication that the opening of the drama is
laid in that Golden Age of the poets, when, as is sung in the
“Völuspá,” the Gods knew not yet the greed of gold, and possessed
the metal but as a shining toy. In the “Völuspá,” as in the “Nibelung’s
Ring,” it is the fatal thirst for gold (metaphorically speaking) which
puts an end to this period of peace and serenity, and brings war and
death into the world. But as in every individual life the whole great
world-drama is re-enacted, so to each of us the days of childhood are
the Golden Age, the Eden from which we pass, eating of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge; and thus by Wagner this golden spring-tide of
life is suggested in the childish play of the Rhine-maidens, and in
their child-like heedless chatter, betraying with innocent carelessness
the fatal secret. (3)
Characteristically descriptive of Alberich’s discomfiture is the
music when, in futile endeavours to clamber up to them, he
inveighs against the “slippery slime” which causes him to lose
his foothold. (1)
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
inconsistencies. 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