VI.
I am presuming, to a great extent, upon the reader's familiarity with the incidents of the dramas constituting the tragedy. It is the action which takes place where we have not been in the habit of looking for it that I am seeking to discover. "Siegfried," the second drama of the trilogy, is almost wholly devoted to preparation for the fateful outcome. To this fact is due much of its cheerfulness of tone. It is a period of comparative rest. The celestial plot has entered upon a new phase, and in this drama the new combination of characters is formed for the development of that new phase. The ethical drama which the play symbolizes might be described as follows:
The hero has been born and bred under circumstances which have developed his freedom in every direction. The representative of the evil principle seeks to direct his heroic powers towards an advancement of the sinister side of the counter-plot; but in vain. By his own efforts he endows himself with the magic sword, and in the full consciousness of his free manhood he achieves for himself the adventures and the happiness which were denied to the god. He gains the ring and tastes the delight of love.
At first Siegfried appears simply as a wild forest lad, who has grown up with no sympathetic acquaintance beyond the beasts and birds with which he is wont to associate in their haunts. In this character the composer pictures him musically by means of the merry hunting-call which he is supposed to blow on his horn (see Chapter I.). Most of the music which is associated with him in the first act of the drama, in which this horn-call enters so largely, is markedly characteristic of the impetuous nature of the forest lad, with his contempt for dissimulation and his rough, straight-forward energy. But a different side of his nature is disclosed when, having learned the story of his birth and acquired possession of his father's sword, remade by himself, he becomes a part of the sylvan picture of the second act, which lends so much charm to the "Siegfried" drama. Here, again, is scenic music of the kind which each of the dramas possesses, and which has so often set us to wondering at Wagner's marvellous faculty for juggling with the senses—making our ears to see and our eyes to hear. Siegfried has been brought before the cave—where Fafner, in the form of a dragon, is guarding the ring and the hoard—by Mime, who has planned that the lad shall kill the dragon and then himself fall a victim to treachery. Siegfried throws himself on a hillock at the foot of a tree and listens to nature's music in the forest. And such music! Music redolent of that sweet mystery which peopled the old poets' minds with the whole amiable tribe of fays and dryads and wood-nymphs. The spirit which lurks under gnarled roots and in tangled boughs, in hollow trees and haunted forest caves, breathes through it. The youth is brooding over the mystery of his childhood, and he utters his thoughts in tender phrases, while the mellow wood-wind instruments in the orchestra identify his thoughts with the dead parents whom he never knew. He wonders what his mother looked like, and pathetically asks whether all human mothers die when their children are born. Suddenly the sunlight begins to flicker along the leafy canopy; a thousand indistinct voices join in that indefinable hum, of which, when heard in reality and not in the musician's creation, one is at a loss to tell how much is actual and how much the product of imagination, both sense and fancy having been miraculously quickened by the spirit which moves through the trees.
At last all is vocal, and Siegfried's ear is caught by the song of the bird to which we too have been listening. In his longing for companionship he wishes that he might understand and converse with his feathered playmate. Might he not if he were able to whistle like the bird? Now note the naïve touch of musical humor with which Wagner, the tragedian, enlivens the scene. Siegfried cuts a reed growing beside a rivulet and fashions a rude pipe out of it. He listens, and when the bird quits singing he attempts to imitate its "wood-note wild." But his pipe is too low in pitch and out of tune. He cuts it shorter and raises its pitch half a tone. Again he cuts it, with the same result; then squeezes it impatiently, and renders it still more "out of tune and harsh." He throws it away, confesses his humiliation by the bird, then reaches for his horn. With its merry call he wakes the echoes, disturbs the sleep of the dragon, and precipitates the combat which ends in his equipment with Tarnhelm and ring, and his receipt of the injunction from the bird (which now he understands through the magic of the dragon's blood touching his lips) to slay Mime and waken Brünnhilde on the burning mountain.
We now catch our last glimpse of Wotan as a personage in the play. He has not been active in the plot since he was obliged to destroy his own handiwork. Twice he appeared in the character of a seemingly unconcerned spectator wandering over the face of the earth, and once he even offered to help Alberich recover the ring from Fafner. He aroused the dragon and suggested that Alberich warn him of threatened danger, and ask the ring as a reward. His present concern is to learn whether the danger threatening the gods is yet to be averted. By chanting of powerful runes he summons Erda, of ancient wisdom. But she refuses to speak. Now he tells her that he no longer grieves over the approaching doom of the gods; his will, newly enlightened, has decreed that the catastrophe shall overwhelm the gods, but also that the world, which in his despair he had surrendered to the hate of the Niblung, shall become instead the heritage of the Volsung who has won the ring. A single act remains to be done: the free-agency of Siegfried must be tested. The youth follows his feathered guide up the mountain to find the promised bride. Wotan bars his way with his spear. Siegfried hews the shaft through the middle. On the runes cut into that shaft rested Wotan's dominion. They were the bond by which he governed. Its destruction symbolizes the approaching end of the old order of things. The musical phrase, typical of that compact, accompanies him, in broken rhythm, as he gathers up the pieces of the spear and departs. Prophecy and fulfilment are indicated by the recurrence of the phrase of Erda and her daughters, the Nornir, and its inversion, which symbolizes the twilight of the gods.