The sun, victoriously arising, tears itself away from the embrace and clasp, from the enveloping womb of the sea, and sinks again into the maternal sea, into night, the all-enveloping and the all-reproducing, leaving behind it the heights of midday and all its glorious works. This image was the first, and was profoundly entitled to become the symbolic carrier of human destiny; in the morning of life man painfully tears himself loose from the mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle to his heights. Not seeing his worst enemy in front of him, but bearing him within himself as a deadly longing for the depths within, for drowning in his own source, for becoming absorbed into the mother, his life is a constant struggle with death, a violent and transitory delivery from the always lurking night. This death is no external enemy, but a deep personal longing for quiet and for the profound peace of non-existence, for a dreamless sleep in the ebb and flow of the sea of life. Even in his highest endeavor for harmony and equilibrium, for philosophic depths and artistic enthusiasm, he seeks death, immobility, satiety and rest. If, like Peirithoos, he tarries too long in this place of rest and peace, he is overcome by torpidity, and the poison of the serpent paralyzes him for all time. If he is to live he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past, in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday heights, he must also sacrifice the love for his own achievement, for he may not loiter. The sun also sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten onwards to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of immortality; fulfilled in children, in works, in posthumous fame, in a new order of things, all of which in their turn begin and complete the sun’s course over again.
The “Song of Hiawatha” contains, as these extracts show, a material which is very well adapted to bring into play the abundance of ancient symbolic possibilities, latent in the human mind, and to stimulate it to the creation of mythologic figures. But the products always contain the same old problems of humanity, which rise again and again in new symbolic disguise from the shadowy world of the unconscious. Thus Miss Miller is reminded through the longing of Chiwantopel, of another mythic cycle which appeared in the form of Wagner’s “Siegfried.” Especially is this shown in the passage in Chiwantopel’s monologue, where he exclaims, “There is not one who understands me, not one who resembles me, not one who has a soul sister to mine.” Miss Miller observes that the sentiment of this passage has the greatest analogy with the feelings which Siegfried experienced for Brunhilde.
This analogy causes us to cast a glance at the song of Siegfried, especially at the relation of Siegfried and Brunhilde. It is a well-recognized fact that Brunhilde, the Valkyr, gives protection to the birth (incestuous) of Siegfried, but while Sieglinde is the human mother, Brunhilde has the rôle of “spiritual mother” (mother-imago); however, unlike Hera towards Hercules, she is not a pursuer, but benevolent. This sin, in which she is an accomplice, by means of the help she renders, is the reason for her banishment by Wotan. The strange birth of Siegfried from the sister-wife distinguishes him as Horus, as the reborn son, a reincarnation of the retreating Osiris—Wotan. The birth of the young son, of the hero, results, indeed, from mankind, who, however, are merely the human bearers of the cosmic symbolism. Thus the birth is protected by the spirit mother (Hera, Lilith): she sends Sieglinde with the child in her womb (Mary’s flight) on the “night journey on the sea” to the east:
“Onward, hasten;
Turn to the East.
· · · · ·
O woman, thou cherishest
The sublimest hero of the world
In thy sheltering womb.”
The motive of dismemberment is found again in the broken sword of Siegmund, which was kept for Siegfried. From the dismemberment life is pieced together again. (The Medea wonder.) Just as a smith forges the pieces together, so is the dismembered dead again put together. (This comparison is also found in “Timaios” of Plato: the parts of the world joined together with pegs.) In the Rigveda, 10, 72, the creator of the world, Brahmanaspati, is a smith.