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Page 33
"THE DUSK OF THE GODS"
Quite a fierce little controversy raged a little while ago in the
columns of the "Daily Chronicle," and all about the "meaning" of "The
Dusk of the Gods" and the behaviour of Br�nnhilde. Mr. Shaw played
Devil's Advocate for Wagner, declaring "The Dusk of the Gods" to be
irrelevant and operatic (as if that mattered); and Mr. Ashton Ellis
and Mr. Edward Baughan, two mad Wagnerians, rushed in to protect
Wagner from Mr. Shaw (as if he needed protection). In reading the
various letters, my soul was moved to admiration and reverent awe by
the ingenuity displayed by the various correspondents in their
endeavours to make the easy difficult, the perfectly plain crooked.
Wagner took enormous pains to make Br�nnhilde a living character--that
is to say, to show us her inmost soul so vividly that we know why she
did anything or everything without even thinking about it; he set her
on the stage, where we see her in the flesh behaving precisely as any
woman--of her period--would behave. And then these excellent gentlemen
come along and tell us that because Wagner at one time or another
thought of handling her story, and the story of Wotan and Siegfried,
in this or that way, therefore Wagner "meant" this or that, and failed
or succeeded, or changed his original plan or held fast to it. All
these things have nothing to do with the drama that is played on the
stage: by that alone, and by none of his earlier ideas, is Wagner to
be judged: he is to be judged by the effect and conviction of the
finished play. Now, it seems to me that in the finished play
Br�nnhilde is neither "a glorious woman "--_i.e._ an Adelphi
melodramatic heroine--nor "a deceitful, vindictive woman"--_i.e._ an
Adelphi melodramatic villainess. Also, while considered by itself "The
Dusk of the Gods" is interesting mainly on account of the music,
considered in association, as Wagner wished, and as one must--for,
after all, it is but the final act of a stupendous drama, and it is
unfair and foolish to consider any one act of a drama alone--with the
other minor dramas of the greater drama, "The Nibelung's Ring," it is
dramatically not only interesting, absorbing, but absolutely
indispensable, true, inevitable. It is true enough that the "Ring"
suffered somewhat through the fact that Wagner took nearly a quarter
of a century to carry out his plan, and during this period his views
on life changed greatly; yet nevertheless "The Dusk of the Gods"
stands as the noble--in fact, the only possible--conclusion to a story
which is, on the whole, splendidly told.
When seeing "The Valkyrie," one thinks of Sieglinde or Siegmund or
Br�nnhilde; when listening to "Siegfried," one thinks of Siegfried and
Br�nnhilde and no others; but when one thinks of the complete "Ring,"
the person of the drama most forcibly forced before the eye of the
imagination, the person to whom one realises that sympathy is chiefly
due, is Wotan. Wotan, not Siegfried or Siegmund, is the hero of the
"Ring." His tragedy--if it is indeed a tragedy to emerge from the
battle in the highest sense of the word triumphant--includes the
tragedy of Siegfried and Siegmund, Sieglinde and Br�nnhilde--in fact,
the tragedy of all the smaller characters of the play. "The
Rheingold," in spite of its glorious music, is entirely
superfluous--dramatically, at all events, it is superfluous--but
there, anyhow, the problem which we could easily understand without it
is stated. Wotan, who has been placed at the head of affairs by the
three blind fates, has caught the general disease of wishing to gain
the power to make others do his will. So anxious is he for that
authority that he not only makes a bargain for it with the powers of
stupidity--the giants, the brute forces of nature--which bargain is
afterwards and could never be anything but his ruin, but also he
stoops to a base subterfuge to gain it, and with the help of Loge,
fire, the final destroyer, he does gain it. So determined was Wagner
to make his point clear, that even in "The Rheingold," the superfluous
drama, he made it several times superfluously. He was not content to
let his point make itself--the humanitarian, the preacher of all that
makes for the highest humanity, was too strong in him for that: it was
a little too strong even for the artist in him: he must needs make the
powers of darkness lay a curse on power over one's fellow-beings, the
Ring standing as the emblem of that power. While Wotan takes the
power, his deepest wisdom, which is to say, his intuition--represented
by the spirit of the earth, Erda--rises against him and tells him he
is committing the fatal mistake, and he yields to the extent of
letting the giants have the supreme power. But he thinks, just as you
and I, reader, might think, that by some quaint unthinkable device he
can evade the tremendous consequence of his own act; and, instead of
at once looking at the consequence boldly and saying he will face it,
he elaborates a plan by which no one will suffer anything, while he,
Wotan, will gain the lordship of creation. From this moment his fate
becomes tragic. The complete man, full of rich humanity--for whom
Wotan stands--cannot exist, necessarily ceases to exist, if he is
compelled to deny the better part of himself, as Peter denied Jesus of
Nazareth. And in consequence of his own act Wotan has immediately to
deny the better part of himself, to make war on his own son Siegmund,
and then on his own daughter Br�nnhilde: he destroys the first and
puts away from him for ever Br�nnhilde, who is incarnate love. The
grand tragic moment of the whole cycle is the laying to sleep of
Br�nnhilde. Wotan knows that life without love is no life, and he is
compelled to part from love by the very bargain which enables him to
rule. Rather than live such a life, he deliberately, solemnly wills
his own death; and a great part of "Siegfried" and the whole of "The
Dusk of the Gods" are devoted to showing how his death, and the death
of all the gods, comes about through Wotan's first act. In "Siegfried"
and "The Dusk of the Gods" there is no tragedy--how can there be any
tragedy in the fate of the man who faithfully follows the impulse that
makes for his highest and widest satisfaction, for the fullest
exercise of his beneficent energies, for the man who says I will do
this or that because I know and feel it is the best I can do? "The
Dusk of the Gods" is Wotan's most splendid triumph; he deliberately
yields place to a new dynasty, because he knows that to keep
possession of the throne will mean the continual suppression of all
that is best in him, as he has had already to suppress it.
Incidentally there are many tragedies in the "Ring." The murder of
Siegmund by Hunding, aided by Wotan, before Sieglinde's eyes; the
hideous incident of Siegfried winning his own wife to be the wife of
his friend Gunther; the stabbing of Siegfried by Hagen; Br�nnhilde's
telling Gutrune that she, Gutrune, was never the wife of
Siegfried,--all these are terrible enough tragedies. Br�nnhilde's is
the most terrible of them all, though she too takes her fate into her
hands, and by willing the right thing, and doing it, goes victorious
out of life. What there is difficult to understand about her, why she
should be accused of deceit and have her conduct explained, I can
hardly guess. In "The Valkyrie" she is a goddess; but when she offends
Wotan by disobeying him and walking clean through all the
Commandments, he is bound, for the maintenance of his power, to punish
her. So he takes away her godhead, and she is thenceforth simply a
woman. Siegfried treats her treacherously--as she necessarily
thinks--and she very naturally takes vengeance on him. Mr. Shaw speaks
as though he wished her to be a bread-and-butter miss; but a woman of
Br�nnhilde's type, a daughter of the high gods, could scarcely be
that.
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