der ring des nibelungen - Fantasy Castle Books

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(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
Sink to my side, And fast thou shalt seize me! ALBERICH (climbs quickly down). Below it is better! WOGLINDE (darts quickly upwards to a high side-ridge). Aloft I must bring thee! (All the maidens laugh.) ALBERICH. How follow and catch I the crafty fish? Fly not so falsely! (He attempts to climb hastily after her.) WELLGUNDE (has sunk down to a lower reef on the other side). Heia! Thou sweetheart! Hear what I say! ALBERICH (turning round). Wantest thou me? WELLGUNDE. I mean to thee well; This way turn thyself, try not for Woglind’! ALBERICH (climbs quickly over the bottom to Wellgunde). More fair I find thee than her I followed, Who shines less sweetly and slips aside.— But glide more down, if good thou wilt do me! WELLGUNDE (sinking down still lower towards him). And now am I near? ALBERICH. Not yet enough! Thy slender arms O set me within; Feel in thy neck how my fingers shall frolic; In burying warmth Shall bear me the wave of thy bosom. WELLGUNDE. Art thou in love, and aim’st at delight? If so, thy sweetness I first must see!— Fie! How humpy and hidden in hair! Black with brimstone and hardened with burns! Seek for a lover liker thyself! ALBERICH (tries to hold her by force). Unfit though I’m found I’ll fetter thee safe! WELLGUNDE (darting quickly up to the middle peak). Quite safe, or forth I shall swim! (All three laugh.) ALBERICH (out of temper, scolding after her). Fitful child! Chafing and frosty fish! Seem I not sightly, Pretty and playful, smiling and smooth? Eels I leave thee for lovers, If at my skin thou can scold! FLOSSHILDE. What say’st thou, dwarf? So soon upset? But two thou hast asked, try for the other— With healing hope let her allay thy harm! ALBERICH. Soothing words to-wards me are sung.— How well in the end that you all are not one! To one of a number I’m welcome; Though none of one were to want me!— Let me believe thee, and draw thee below! FLOSSHILDE (dives down to Alberich). What silly fancy, foolish sisters, Fails to see he is fair? ALBERICH (quickly approaching her). Both dull and hateful here I may deem them, Since I thy sweetness behold. FLOSSHILDE (flatteringly). O sound with length thy lovely song; My sense it loftily lures! ALBERICH (touching her trustfully). My heart shakes and shrivels to hear Showered so pointed a praise. FLOSSHILDE (gently repulsing him). Thy charm besets me and cheers my sight; In thy leaping laughter my heart delights! (she draws him tenderly to her). Sorrowless man! ALBERICH. Sweetest of maids! FLOSSHILDE. Art thou my own? ALBERICH. All and for ever! FLOSSHILDE (holding him quite in her arms). I am stabbed with thy stare, With thy beard I am stuck; O let me not loose from the bliss! In the hold of thy fixed and furrowing hair Climb to the ground, Then safe wouldst thou clasp me. Alberich (clambers hastily down). ‘Tis better down lower! Woglinde (darts quickly to a high rock at the side). Now let us go higher! (All the maidens laugh.) Alberich. How catch in her flight the timid fish? Wait awhile, false one! (He tries to climb hastily after her.) Wellgunde (has sunk down to a lower rock on the other side). Heia, thou fair one! Hear’st thou me not? Alberich (turning round). Call’st thou to me? Wellgunde. I counsel thee well: To me turn thee and Woglinde heed not! Alberich (clambers hastily over the ground to WELLGUNDE). Far fairer seemest thou than that shy one, Who gleams less brightly, and looks too sleek. Yet deeper dive, if thou wouldst delight me. Wellgunde (letting herself sink down a little nearer to him). Now, am I not near? Alberich. Not near enough! Thy slender arms come fling around me; That I may touch thee and toy with thy tresses, With passionate heat On thy bosom so soft let me press me! Wellgunde. Art thou bewitched and longing for love joys? Then shew, thou fair one, what favour is thine! Fie! Thou hairy and hideous imp! Swarthy, spotted and sulphury dwarf! Seek thee a sweet-heart whom thou dost please! Alberich (tries to hold her by force). Though foul be my face,my hands hold thee fast! Wellgunde (quickly swimming up to the middle rock). Hold fast, I flow from thy hands! (All three laugh.) Alberich (calling angrily after her). Faithless thing! Bony, chilly-skinned fish! Seem I not comely, Pretty and playful, brisk and bright? Hei! Go wanton with eels, then, If so loathsome am I! Flosshilde. Why chide’st thou, elf? So soon cast down? But twain hast thou wooed: try but the third one; Sweetest balm surely her love would bring! Alberich. Soothing song comes to my ears! How good that ye are not but one! Of many some one I may win me, Alone no maiden would choose me!— If I may trust thee, then glide down to me! Flosshilde (dives down to ALBERICH). How foolish are ye, senseless sisters, If ye find him not fair! Alberich (quickly approaching her). Both dull and hideous well may I deem them, Now that the fairest I see! Flosshilde (flattering). O sing still on thy soft sweet song, Its charm enraptures mine ear! Alberich (confidently caressing her). My heart bounds and flutters and burns When such sweet praise laughs to me. Flosshilde (with gentle resistance). Thy winsome sweetness makes glad mine eyes And thy tender smile all my spirit cheers! (She draws him tenderly to her.) Dearest of men! Alberich. Sweetest of maids! Flosshilde. Wert thou but mine! Alberich. Might I e’er hold thee! Flosshilde (ardently). O, the sting of thy glance And the prick of thy beard For ever to see and to feel! Might the locks of thy hair, so shaggy and sharp, 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 riverbed 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 naively, "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 cruelest 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!" (4) In adapting the Nibelung Legend to the operatic treatment Wagner has made use of the license that is legitimately granted to the dramatist, and therein he exhibits several departures from the story as told in the Volsunga Saga. But his discriminations are never disfigured with inconsistencies. Moreover, the famous composer ever manifests critical literary judgment throughout, and a just regard for proportions and congruities in the argument upon which his trilogy is based. For it must be understood that, like all ancient and very popular tales, The Nibelungen-lied has many versions, in which while the main thread is preserved, material variations are discoverable. Wagner therefore has exercised the justified privilege of using material from not only all the several versions of the legend but also borrowed from Norse Mythology such incidents as have a bearing upon the tale and then, like a great master, he blended the whole into a harmonious story, in design, texture and color, that age nor study cannot divest of ever living interest. (5) 3. Motive of the Nibelung’s Servitude (the Menial) Flosshilde sings him a mocking love song, and finally yields herself to his embrace, till suddenly she breaks from it and joins her sisters with scornful laughter. Alberich, lamenting, breaks out in bitter rage and the Motive of the Menial is heard. The music depicts his wild chase of the three fair swimmers, his stumbling and falling over the rocks. As he finally pauses breathless, and shakes his fist at them, a chord succession is heard fortissimo, in the insistent rhythm that a little later will be completely identified with the race of the Nibelungs to which he belongs. (2)
Page 2 and 3: DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN (“The Rin
Page 6 and 7: Be Flosshild’ floated to heaven!
Page 8 and 9: (By degrees the waves change into c
Page 10 and 11: My trusty brother! Tells the blockh
Page 12 and 13: at last who had warred on love; for
Page 14 and 15: Greets she so faintly the grayness
Page 16 and 17: MIME. LOGE. MIME. LOGE. MIME. But,
Page 18 and 19: have fall'n to my might, shall your
Page 20 and 21: Wretched and ravening rogues! (To h
Page 22 and 23: FRICKA (hurrying anxiously to Wotan
Page 24 and 25: Keep not what is cursed! Soon is se
Page 26: What sense is inside it? The name t

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