The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911)

He leans against the hearth. Again the eyes of the twain meet.

Hunding enters, regards the stranger with suspicion, notes the resemblance between him and Sieglinde; but he consents to harbor him for the night.

"Thy name and fortune?"

"Wehwalt," says Siegmund, "for woe still waits on my steps; Wehwalt, the son of Wolfe." And thus concealing his race, he tells a story in other respects true: how in his childhood a cruel host had laid waste his home and killed his mother and carried away the sister who was his twin, and how he and his father, the Wolf, for years had battled in the woodlands against the Neidings.

The Neidings! They are Hunding's clan.

"My house holds thee, Wölfing, to-night. To-morrow defend thee; with death thou shalt pay for this life!" And Hunding withdraws, Sieglinde with him.

Siegmund is weaponless. The firelight sends a sudden glow upon the ash tree, and a sword-hilt there sends back an answering gleam. But Siegmund knows not what it means. Clad in white, Sieglinde steals from the inner room. She has left Hunding asleep, overcome by a slumberous draft.

"Thy coming is life," cries Siegmund.

"A weapon, now, let me show thee," she replies. And she tells how, on the day of her unhappy wedding, a stranger, all in gray, low-hatted and one-eyed, had entered the Hunding hall and struck into the ash stem a sword that none but the bravest of heroes could win, and how all in turn had tried in vain to draw forth the sword. Now she knows for whom it was ordained, —

"It was for thee, my deliverer, my hero held in my arms!"

They embrace. He declares his lineage. He is son of him whose eye proudly glistened from under the low-brimmed hat, – son of Wälse, the wanderer. He is Siegmund, the Victorious. For him, the sword Nothung. – And he draws it easily forth.

"Art thou Siegmund?" she cries; "Sieglinde am I. Thine own twin sister thou winnest at once with the sword."

"Bride and sister be to thy brother; then nourish the Wälsungs for aye!"

So the twain make their compact.

In the second act we are transported to a wild and rocky place. Before Wotan, fully armed and carrying his spear, stands Brünnhilde, the warrior maid, likewise fully armed. She is one of the nine Valkyries, daughters of Wotan and Erda, fostered for battle that they might forfend the doom foretold by Erda herself, – the shameful defeat of the gods. Well have the Valkyrs, choosers of the slain, performed their task, stirring mortal hearts to battle and riding through the air above to designate the bravest for death, and with their spirits to fill the halls on Valhalla's height. Now, however, Wotan is ordering Brünnhilde to haste to the fray, – not on death's errand but on errand of life, – to shield Siegmund the Wälsung in the fight. The Valkyrie springs shouting from rock to rock, and disappears behind the mountain crags.

All seems to be arranged. But lo, Fricka, in her ram-drawn car! She descends and strides toward her scheming spouse. The goddess has heard the cry of Hunding, calling for vengeance on the twinborn pair who have rashly wrought him wrong; and as guardian of wedlock she demands the death of Siegmund in the coming conflict. Wotan tries to persuade her that Siegmund's success is needful to the gods, – the warrior band of mortal souls gathered by the Valkyries in the heights of Valhalla cannot alone suffice to avert the onslaught of the powers of darkness.

"Needed is one who, free from help of godhood, fights free of the godhead's control. Only such an one is meet for the deed which is denied to a god to achieve."

But Fricka is not to be deceived nor thwarted in her aim. She brushes aside the plea of Wotan and his subterfuge, – who has ever heard that heroes can accomplish what the gods cannot? And as for heroes unaided – none such is Siegmund.

"Who was it," she asks, "that brought him his conquering sword? and whose shield is ordained to cover him in the fight?"

"I cannot o'erthrow him," breaks out Wotan; "he has found my sword."

"Destroy its magic then," retorts the implacable queen. "Give word to thy shouting war-maid that Siegmund fall!"

Wotan is conquered. Sadly he revokes the order given to Brünnhilde.

"Then takest thou from Siegmund thy shield?" cries that one in amazement.

And the god: "Yea! though Alberich's host threaten our downfall; though again the Ring be won by the Nibelung, and Valhalla be lost forever. By bargains bound myself, I may not wrest the Ring from the foeman, from Fafner the giant. Therefore, to fulfill my purpose, I had thought to create a Free One who for me should fight. Now, with loathing, I find ever myself in all my hand has created. The Other for whom I have longed, that Other I never shall find. Himself must the Free One create him; my hand shapes nothing but slaves. For when this hand of mine touched Alberich's Ring, my heart grew greedy of gold. I fled from the curse, but the curse flies not from me. What I love best must I surrender; whom most I cherish, I must slay. One thing awaits me yet – the downfall! Yea, that portended Erda, – Erda, the all-wise.

"'When the dusky foe,' she said, —

'When the dusky foe of loveGrimly getteth a son,The doom of the godsDelays not long!'

And of late I have heard that the Nibelung has bought him a wife. Their son shall inherit, – their son, the child of spite, shall inherit the empty pomp of the gods!"

It was of Hagen, yet unborn, the baleful curse of the Volsungs, of Hagen, the traitor, that Erda had prophesied. And thus dimly is foreshadowed the Twilight of the Gods.

But Brünnhilde?

"Siegmund thou hast taught me to love," murmurs the Valkyrie. Then boldly, —

"For his sake thy wavering word I defy!"

The war-father turns in wrath upon this new rebellion, and on pain of eternal penalty enjoins upon his daughter her new duty:

"Fight truly for Fricka! Siegmund strike thou! Such be the Valkyrie's task!"

The war-maid seeks out Siegmund and announces to him his approaching death. But that hero's distress at the thought of parting from Sieglinde stirs her to the quick. And, in the moment of battle, Brünnhilde disobeys the All-father's injunction; – she shields the warrior whom she loves. Then suddenly appears Wotan, standing over Hunding and holding his spear across in front of Siegmund.

"Go back from the spear! In splinters the sword!" shouts the god.

In terror Brünnhilde sinks back. Siegmund's sword breaks on the outstretched spear, and Hunding pierces the Volsung's breast. Brünnhilde hastily gathers the bits of the broken sword, lifts Sieglinde to horse, and escapes through the gorges behind.

The scene changes to the Valkyries' rocky home. Through the drifting clouds come riding the eight sisters of Brünnhilde, in full armor each, and each bearing before her the body of some slain hero. They await Brünnhilde. She, fleeing from Wotan's pursuit, at last arrives. She implores them to shield Sieglinde from the wrath of the god, but unsuccessfully; and then she urges Sieglinde to fly. At first, benumbed by despair, the widowed woman refuses; but when Brünnhilde mentions the child that is to be born – the world's most glorious hero – she consents.

"Him thou shalt bear, thy son and Siegmund's. For him ward thou well these mighty splinters of his father's sword. He shall weld them anew and swing the victorious blade! His name from me let him take – 'Siegfried'; for Siegfried in triumph shall live!"

Comforted and hopeful, Sieglinde betakes herself to that forest far to the east, where the Nibelung's hoard had been borne by Fafner. There, in dragon's form, he guarded the gold and the Ring; and thither Wotan is not likely to pursue.

It thunders and lightens. Wotan, raging terribly, strides from crag to crag. The other Valkyries are driven from the scene. Brünnhilde hears her doom:

"The heavenly hostNo more shall know thee;Outcast art thouFrom the clan of the gods:The bond by thee has been broken;Henceforth from sight of my face art thou banned!"

Immortal, she had followed the might of love; mortal, now she shall sleep, and that sleep shall endure till one comes to awaken her; and to him, whosoe'er it may be, she shall be subject thenceforth.

The Valkyrie drops to her knees:

"Ah, let no craven awake me!" she cries. "Surround me with horrors, with fires that shall fright: that none but the most fearless of heroes may find me here on the fell!"

Wotan accedes to her petition. He kisses her on both eyes and lays her unconscious, asleep, in the shade of a broad-branching fir tree. Then, —

"Appear! Come, waving fire,And wind thee in flames round the fell!Loge, Loge, appear!"

A sea of flames encircles the spot, and Wotan proclaims:

"He who my spear-point'sSharpness fearethShall cross not this flaming fire!"

Alone, under her long steel shield, sleeps the Valkyrie.

287. Siegfried. The drama of Siegfried opens in the cavern of Mime, in the forest "far to the east" to which Sieglinde had fled. Mime, the dwarf, is he whom erstwhile his Nibelung brother, Alberich, then lord of the Ring, had held in thrall at the bottom of the Rhine. Some years before the events represented in this play, the dwarf had found Sieglinde dying in the woods, and had received from her Siegfried, her new-born son, and with him the pieces of Siegmund's broken sword, Nothung.

Young Siegfried, noble, proud, and strong, has been nurtured in ignorance of his lineage and destiny, as Mime's son. But of that lineage and destiny the cunning dwarf is well aware; and while he trains Siegfried to doughty deeds, he ceaselessly forges at the splinters of the sword, hoping to reweld them himself and through Siegfried's might to win victory over Fafner, the present lord of the Ring, and so achieve unmeasured wealth and the mastery of the world. But Siegfried despises his foster-father and seeks ever to discover the story of his own descent. The attempts of Mime to shape anew the pieces of Nothung fail; and he daily forges other swords, which Siegfried scorns and breaks at the first trial. In the course of time, however, there comes to Mime's cave a "Wanderer" – it is Wotan himself – and tells the dwarf that only one, a man who knows not fear, can remake the all-conquering sword. He tells him, too, of the mighty spear, fashioned of the world ash tree's hallowed branches, with which he, Wotan, rules the earth. But no word he says of the doom that is to befall that spear at the blow of the conquering sword, – the doom, forsooth, of the gods themselves.

Mime, after trying in vain to arouse in Siegfried the sense of fear, suggests to the youth that he try to reforge Nothung. Siegfried seizes the splinters, pounds them, and files them to powder; melts them over the charcoal of the ash tree's stem, and, singing at his work, refashions the sword. While this is doing, through the pauses of Siegfried's song can be heard the voice of Mime, muttering: "The sword will be forged … and Fafner vanquished… When Siegfried has slain that dragon … he will be athirst… I will brew him a drink… One drop will lay him in sleep… With the sword that he forges I'll kill him… Mine, then, the Ring and the hoard!"

At last the sword is shaped and sharpened. Siegfried swings it before him:

"Nothung, Nothung, conquering sword; again to life have I woke thee! Strike at the traitor, cut down the knave! See, Mime, thou smith; so sunders Siegfried's sword!" and he strikes the anvil in twain from top to bottom. It falls asunder with a great noise, and the dwarf drops with terror to the ground.

The scene changes to the forest in front of Fafner's cave. Alberich is watching gloomily by, and the Wanderer rides in to taunt him with false hope of the Ring.

"A hero nears to set free the hoard," says the Wanderer. "Fafner will fall. Perchance if Alberich warn the dragon, he may win the Ring in token of gratitude."

Alberich makes the approaches. Fafner yawns: "I have and I hold; let me slumber!"

With scornful laughter the Wanderer rides away. But "one day," snarls Alberich, – "one day shall I see you all fade, ye light-hearted eternals. The wise one keepeth his watch and surely worketh his spite!"

As the day breaks Siegfried and Mime enter, Siegfried wearing his sword hung in a girdle of rope, and blithely blowing a horn. Fafner, in the shape of a huge lizardlike dragon, comes out of his cave and forward to the stream for water. At sight of the nonchalant youth piping his wood-notes gay, the monster emits a snort that serves his need of a laugh, – "I came for drink; now, too, I find food."

The conflict is speedily joined. More than once Siegfried is well-nigh lost; but his chance comes. The dragon exposes his heart, and Siegfried sinks his sword into it up to the hilt. In the moment of death, Fafner warns the young hero to beware of him who stirred him to the fight. But Siegfried pays little heed. The blood of the dragon bespatters his hand; it burns. Siegfried involuntarily carries his hand to his lips. There is a wood bird singing. Siegfried regards him with astonishment. "Almost," he says, "it seems as wood birds were speaking to me," and he hearkens.

"Hei!" sings the wood bird; "now Siegfried owns all the Nibelung's hoard. Let him but search the cavern, and hoard, Tarnhelm, and Ring will make him the lord of the world!"

"Thanks, dearest birdling," Siegfried replies, and possesses himself of Tarnhelm and Ring. The hoard he leaves where it was.

"Hei!" sings the wood bird; "Ring and Tarnhelm Siegfried has won. Now let him not trust the treacherous tongue of the falsest of friends!"

No sooner is that warning given than Mime, who has meanwhile been wrangling with Alberich over the division of the spoils, creeps forward.

"See, thou art weary; drink of the broth I have brewed, and take rest," he says smilingly to Siegfried. But under his breath he is muttering, "Drink, and choke thee to death," as he pours the draft into the drink horn and offers it.

"Taste thou my sword, loathsome babbler!" cries the young hero, and strikes him dead at a blow; then pitches his body on top of the hoard and stops up the mouth of the cave with the grinning corpse of the dragon.

"Thanks, friendliest birdling! But happiness yet have I not. Brothers and sisters hast thou; but I – am so alone; nor brother nor sister, nor father nor mother. One comrade had I; he laid out to catch me, and now I have slain him, perforce. Ah, birdling, find me a comrade true!"

"Hei!" chatters the wood bird; "a glorious bride for Siegfried have I. On a rocky fastness she sleeps, and guarded by fire is her home. Who fighteth the flames wakens the maid; Brünnhilde, Brünnhilde, he wins for his own!"

"Where'er thou fliest, follows my foot," shouts Siegfried, bubbling with joy.

The scene changes. In a wild spot at the foot of a rocky mountain Wotan, the Wanderer, desiring the success of Siegfried and still knowing that that success involves the doom of the gods, seeks counsel from Erda. The all-wise one refuses to answer, – refers him to the Norns. "The Norns are waking, they wind the rope. The Norns will give thee answer!"

"Ah, no!" replies the Wanderer. "Their weaving is ever in thrall to fate. To thee I come that I may learn how to stay the wheel that is already rolling."

"Ask Brünnhilde!"

"In vain, All-wise One; the piercing sting of care was planted by thee. Ruin and downfall were foretold by thee. Say to me, now, how a god may conquer his care!"

"Thou art —not what thou hast said." No more will Erda vouchsafe.

Not what he has said! Then, surely, the gods are beyond redemption. But not even so shall the harvest be reaped by the Nibelungs. "Nay, to the Volsung shall be my heritage," decrees Wotan: "to him who has known me never, though chosen by me; to the lad of dauntless daring, though untaught by my counsel. Pure from greed, gladdened by love-dreams, he has won the Nibelung's Ring. Against him the curse of Alberich cannot avail."

While yet the Wanderer is speaking, Erda descends to endless sleep. Dawn illumines the scene. Siegfried's bird comes fluttering to the foreground, but, frighted by vision of the god, takes wing and disappears. Siegfried presses on.

"My birdling has flown from my eyes," he remarks. "I needs must find out the rock for myself."

"The way that the wood bird pointed," announces Wotan, encountering him, "shalt thou not pass!"

"Ho ho! Wouldst thou stay me? Who art thou, then, that here withstandest?"

"Fear the fell's defender! By my might the slumbering maid is held enchained. He who should wake her, he who should win her, mightless would make me forever. Go back, then, foolhardy boy!"

As the Wanderer speaks, the splendor spreads from the flame-girdled rock above.

"Go back thyself, thou babbler! There where the fires are blazing, – to Brünnhilde now must I hie!" And Siegfried pushes forward.

The Wanderer bars the way to the mountain: "Once already that sword of thine, Nothung, has broken on the haft of this sacred spear!"

"'Tis, then, my father's slayer!" thinks Siegfried; and nothing loath to face that foe, he raises the new-forged sword and strikes to pieces the All-father's spear!

"Fare on," says Wotan, quietly picking up the fragments, "I cannot withstand thee."

The god vanishes in darkness. The hero, light-hearted, blowing his horn, scales the cliffs, passes the fire, – wakes Brünnhilde. She, at first, with maidenly might struggles against his passion for her and her growing tenderness for him. She deplores the byrnie, shield and helm, symbols of her godhead, that he has torn from her. But, mortal now, she surrenders to a mortal's love:

"O Siegfried, Siegfried, child of delight,Love thyself, – and turn thee from me;Oh, bring not thine own to naught!"

And Siegfried:

"I – love thee: didst thou but love me!Mine am I no more: oh, would that thou wert mine!..Waken, O maid; live in laughter:Sweetest delight, be mine, be mine!"

Then she, with a joyful cry:

"Oh, child of delight! Oh, glorious hero!Thou foolish lord of loftiest deeds!Laughing must I love thee,Laughing welcome my blindness;Laughing let us be lost,With laughter go down to death…Farewell, Valhalla's light-giving world:Thy stately towers let fall in dust!Farewell, O glittering pomp of the gods!Complete your bliss, eternal host!Now rend, ye Norns, your rope of runes:Dusk of Gods in darkness arise;Night of downfall dawn in mist!"

And thus, turning their backs on Valhalla, and radiant with the light of human love, the twain, laughing, face toward death.

288. The Twilight of the Gods. The play opens with a prelude. By the Valkyrie's rock sit the three Norns and sing of past, present, and future, weaving through the night their rope of runes. As they foretell the burning of Valhalla and the end of the gods, the rope breaks, and the Norns disappear into the earth.

The sun rises, and in the first act of the play Siegfried and Brünnhilde enter from their cave. She sends him forth in quest of heroic adventures in the world, giving him her horse, Grane, and receiving from him the Ring as a pledge of his love.

The scene changes, and we behold the interior of the Gibichungs' hall on the Rhine. Gunther and Gutrune, his sister, are in converse with Hagen, their half brother, – dark and treacherous son of Grimhilde, their mother, and of Alberich the Nibelung, erstwhile owner of the Ring. Hagen alone knows, it would seem, that Siegfried has already ridden through the flames and won Brünnhilde. The others know merely that that hero has slain Fafner and is lord of the Tarnhelm, hoard, and Ring. Hagen, anxious to regain the heritage of the Nibelungs, urges marriage on Gunther, naming Brünnhilde as a fitting bride for him. As, however, Siegfried alone can pass through the fire to come at her, he proposes that Gutrune shall win Siegfried's love and induce him to serve Gunther. Siegfried's horn is heard, and he presently enters and is made welcome. Gutrune, at the instigation of Hagen, brings Siegfried a potion which causes him to love her, and drives clean out of his mind all memory of Brünnhilde. In the madness of his passion for Gutrune, Siegfried swears blood-brotherhood with Gunther, and promises by the aid of the Tarnhelm to make Brünnhilde Gunther's wife, if only in return Gutrune shall be his. The newly sworn "brothers" depart for Brünnhilde's rock.

In the next scene we are again before the home of Brünnhilde. Waltraute, a Valkyrie, comes to beg Brünnhilde to give back the Ring to the Rhine-maidens, and so avert the doom of the gods.

"What, then, aileth the immortals?" cries Brünnhilde in alarm.

"Since Wotan doomed thee, no more hath he sent us to war," replies Waltraute. "No more hath he gathered the souls of the slain about him in Valhalla. Alone he has ridden unceasing through the world. But, one day, home he came bearing his spear all splintered in his hand. Wordless, with a sign he bade Valhalla's heroes hew the world ash tree in pieces and pile it like firewood around the Hall of the Blest. And from that hour silent he sits on his throne, about him the awe-struck gods and heroes, the war-maids cowering at his knees. None tastes the apples of youth. To-day Wotan remembered thee; his eye grew soft and, as dreaming, he spake:

'If once more the daughters of RhineShould win from her finger the Ring,Of the load of the curseWere the world and immortals made free.'

Brünnhilde, yield up the Ring, and end all the grief of the world!"

"The Ring?" wails Brünnhilde. "Knowest thou what 'tis to me? One flash of its fire outvalues all heaven's delight; for the gleam of that Ring is Siegfried's love!

"From love I never shall turn;Of his love they never shall rob me,Though into ruinsValhalla's splendor should fall!"

Thus Brünnhilde refuses, and sends Waltraute away to take her defiance to Valhalla.

But retribution is swift, for on the moment Siegfried, changed to Gunther's shape by the Tarnhelm, comes and claims Brünnhilde as his bride. She resists and threatens him with the Ring. But now Siegfried, forgetful of the past, struggles for another with his own dear wife, overcomes her, and wrests the Ring from her. He then commands her to go into the cave, whither, after drawing his sword to lay between them as symbol of his loyalty to Gunther, he follows her.

The second act is outside the Gibichungs' hall. It is early morning of the next day. After a short scene in which the ever-plotting Alberich urges Hagen to get the Ring, Siegfried returns and tells Hagen and Gutrune of the winning of Brünnhilde and her approach with Gunther. Hagen calls together the vassals to welcome Gunther and his bride. The royal pair presently arrive and are received with loud acclaim. Straightway Brünnhilde recognizes Siegfried (who, however, does not know her) and, seeing the Ring on Siegfried's finger, she asks Gunther what he has done with the ring he took from her. His confusion reveals the truth to her, and she proclaims that she is wedded to Siegfried and not to Gunther. Siegfried swears on the point of Hagen's spear that her accusation is false. She repeats it, taking the same oath. Siegfried, Gutrune, and their vassals go out to prepare for the double wedding celebration; Gunther, Hagen, and Brünnhilde remaining solemnly condemn Siegfried to death for what seems treachery to one and all. Hagen, left alone, glories in the prospect of regaining the Ring.

The third act discloses an open place on the banks of the Rhine. The three Rhine-maidens pray to the sun for the return of the Rhine-gold. Siegfried, who has strayed from his companions on a hunting expedition, comes to the river bank. The maidens unsuccessfully attempt, by wiles and warnings of ill fate, to get the Ring from him, and finally swim away, foretelling his death that very day. Gunther, Hagen, and their vassals come to the place, and all sit down to rest. At Hagen's suggestion Siegfried relates the story of his life. But, lo! when he comes to the episode of his first passage through the fire, a draft given him by Hagen restores his memory, and innocently he tells of the waking and winning of Brünnhilde. All start up in amaze; Hagen stabs Siegfried in the back with his spear, and steals away. Siegfried falls, and after a few words sung to Brünnhilde, whom he sees as in a vision, he dies. His body is placed on a bier and borne away by the vassals with great pomp and state as the sun sets.

In the last scene we have the interior of the Gibichungs' hall as before. It is night. Gutrune comes from her chamber anxious for Siegfried. Presently Hagen's voice is heard calling for torches to light the returning hunters. He enters and, in reply to Gutrune's questions, tells her that Siegfried has been slain by a wild boar. Then come the vassals, bearing Siegfried's body. It is placed on a bier in the center of the hall. Hagen claims the Ring as his right for slaying Siegfried, but Gunther defies him to touch Gutrune's heritage. They fight and Gunther falls. As Hagen approaches the corpse to take the Ring, the dead Siegfried raises his arm threateningly. All start back in horror, and just then Brünnhilde enters and comes down to the bier. Here, after ordering a pyre to be built on the river bank, she sings a funeral song over Siegfried. The body, from which she has taken the Ring, is then placed on the pyre. Setting the Ring on her own finger, Brünnhilde calls on the Rhine-maidens to take it in turn from her ashes: