the scores; of which more anon. As a matter of fact Wagner
began, as I have said, with Siegfried's Death. Then, wanting to develop
the idea of Siegfried as neo-Protestant, he went on to The Young
Siegfried. As a Protestant cannot be dramatically projected without a
pontifical antagonist. The Young Siegfried led to The Valkyries, and
that again to its preface The Rhine Gold (the preface is always written
after the book is finished). Finally, of course, the whole was revised.
The revision, if carried out strictly, would have involved the cutting
out of Siegfried's Death, now become inconsistent and superfluous; and
that would have involved, in turn, the facing of the fact that The Ring
was no longer a Niblung epic, and really demanded modern costumes, tall
hats for Tarnhelms, factories for Nibelheims, villas for Valhallas, and
so on--in short, a complete confession of the extent to which the old
Niblung epic had become the merest pretext and name directory in the
course of Wagner's travail. But, as Wagner's most eminent English
interpreter once put it to me at Bayreuth between the acts of Night
Falls On The Gods, the master wanted to "Lohengrinize" again after his
long abstention from opera; and Siegfried's Death (first sketched in
1848, the year before the rising in Dresden and the subsequent events
which so deepened Wagner's sense of life and the seriousness of art)
gave him exactly the libretto he required for that outbreak of the
old operatic Adam in him. So he changed it into Die Gotterdammerung,
retaining the traditional plot of murder and jealousy, and with it,
necessarily, his original second act, in spite of the incongruity of its
Siegfried and Brynhild with the Siegfried and Brynhild of the allegory.
As to the legendary matter about the world-ash and the destruction of
Valhalla by Loki, it fitted in well enough; for though, allegorically,
the blow by which Siegfried breaks the god's spear is the end of Wotan
and of Valhalla, those who do not see the allegory, and take the story
literally, like children, are sure to ask what becomes of Wotan after
Siegfried gets past him up the mountain; and to this question the old
tale told in Night Falls On The Gods is as good an answer as another.
The very senselessness of the scenes of the Norns and of Valtrauta in
relation to the three foregoing dramas, gives them a highly effective
air of mystery; and no one ventures to challenge their consequentiality,
because we are all mo