The Ring As A Whole: Embracing Das Rheingold
By Paul Heise
Embracing Das Rheingold
Can we understand Wagner’s Ring as one coherent, unified argument? The consensus is that having taken so long to conceive, write, and compose its libretto and music, Wagner produced a work that cannot be understood as a single dramatic argument.
Wagnerian scholars generally assume that the Ring’s “meaning” is primarily subliminal, or musical, and therefore inaccessible to any reasoned discussion. Imagine what might happen, though, if someone could convincingly demonstrate that the Ring is not a haphazard assortment of Wagner’s various obsessions but a conceptually unified whole whose every detail plays a unique role in making a coherent dramatic argument.
Wagner left us hundreds of clues to the allegorical language of his canonic artworks, both in the artworks themselves and in his essays, letters, diaries, autobiography, and recorded remarks. Two clues in particular provide the key to an entirely new way of seeing Wagner’s legacy, exposing the conceptual unity underlying not only the Ring but all of his canonical artworks. The first clue is in Wagner’s letter to Mathilde Wesendonck (December 8, 1858): “there was never another who was poet and musician (in my sense), and thus to whom insight into inner processes is possible such as to none other.” The second clue is Wagner’s following remark recorded by Cosima in her diary on July 27, 1869: “he says he sometimes has the feeling that art is downright dangerous—it is as if in this great enjoyment of observing he is perhaps failing to recognize the presence of some hidden sorrow.” Wagner’s unwitting implication that he was uniquely capable of accessing not only heretofore unconscious knowledge but potentially dangerous knowledge, and therefore was at risk of involuntarily revealing it to himself and his audience, may provide the key to a coherent, unified understanding of the entire Ring and even of Wagner’s other works.
We can understand the Ring as a whole if we recognize that it is an allegory whose subject is the conflict within us between objective, practical, and scientific thought, whose concern is the actual world we live in, and religious, artistic thought, which denies our present world in favor of an imaginary alternative. Wagner associates the first type of thought, objective thought, with “power,” and thus with Alberich and Hagen, and even Wotan, and the second type of thought, religio-artistic thought, with “love,” or thought conditioned by feeling. This explains why Wotan (Light-Alberich) wishes to possess both power and love. Religio-artistic thought—evident in Wotan’s longing for redemption—is subjective, according to the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, because it is controlled by imagination and feeling rather than truth.
Robert Donington rightly suggested that Alberich’s renunciation of love for power is Wagner’s metaphor for the birth of our uniquely reflective human mind, which—in the natural process of the evolution of our species—had to rise above animal instinct to attain its true power, the power of abstract, symbolic thought. Alberich’s forging of his ring of power represents the essence of human consciousness, the impulse to complete what life experience presents to us as incomplete, the impetus to round the circle, to perfect the imperfect.
How does Alberich’s forging of the ring of consciousness produce scientific thought? As Wagner put it, when the human species evolved from animal ancestors, became conscious of itself as human, and could no longer satisfy its needs through instinct alone, it learned how to force Mother Nature to satisfy its new needs. In this way, as Wagner said, we became conscious of our “power” and our “Not” (a German word that includes “need,” “necessity,” “lack,” “privation,” “anguish,” and “danger”). In other words, we confronted the newly attained power of our conscious mind, which can discover nature’s laws and improve on nature. A byproduct of this gift, however, is that we can now foresee our own end and thus become subject to existential angst, which, according to Feuerbach, is not the product of any particular fear but infinite anxiety. This Not, or sense of a “lack” in nature, means that we are unable to accept the world as it is. Thus Not, according to F! euerbach, is the basis of cultural evolution and, according to Schopenhauer, the essence of the egoistic will, which cannot be assuaged or satisfied. For Wagner Not attains its supreme incarnation in the works of geniuses, and for Nietzsche, Wagner’s onetime protégé, in the will to power.
Wagner seems to express this metaphorically in Alberich’s frustration with the Rhinemaidens. They refuse to satisfy his need (for love), so he seeks power instead. Thanks to Donington’s clue, we can view the Rhinemaidens’ “love” as animal instinct, above which Alberich (symbolizing early humans) had to rise in order to win the power of abstract thought. As Wagner put it, when feeling, that is, instinctive drive, is thwarted, it is transformed into thinking. Thanks to Donington’s clue, we can also see Alberich’s mining of the earth in a new light. The ring, our conscious power of thought, empowers Alberich to penetrate below the surface of Mother Earth (Erda—“Erde Nabelnest”) to waken her sleeping knowledge so that he can obtain more power. Wotan’s primary impulse, by contrast, is to ensure that Erda’s knowledge of the truth (Wissen) sleeps. Alberich’s hoarding of Mother Nature’s treasure is the first of three metaphors Wagner employs to represent historical man’s ! accumulation of knowledge of himself and his world.
However, some desires we cannot satisfy no matter how much we transform the real world to conform to our wishes. Wagner also wrote that our consciousness of a lack (a Not) in nature inspires us to create art. In Wagner’s view this lack of contentment with the real world is the root of our primal religious longing to free ourselves from it. As Feuerbach and Wagner put it, our religious longing for sorrowless youth eternal (Freia’s golden apples) is the expression of an egoistic and hypocritical desire, inspired both by our fear of death (the end) and our wish to enjoy infinite bliss, to renounce the real world in favor of an imaginary alternative.
Our great sin, according to Feuerbach, is that we figuratively kill Mother Nature when we posit the existence of a transcendent, spiritual realm in which we can attain redemption from her terrors. Assuming, as Wagner did, that our present world is our only world and that there is no other, the only way to satisfy this religious impulse to redeem ourselves from harsh reality is through Wahn, the collective madness of religious belief, which Feuerbach described as involuntary self-deceit.
In Alberich’s conflict with Wotan, Wagner clarifies this distinction between the harsh reality, or Not, known to objective observers, and the illusion, or Wahn, we involuntarily create in order to redeem ourselves from Not. Alberich’s dark and dreary realm, Nibelheim, represents the bitter truth hidden behind the glittering façade of the gods’ ideal realm, Valhalla, since Alberich’s forging of the ring and accumulation of his treasure in Nibelheim are the hidden source of inspiration for Wotan’s waking dream, Valhalla. This explains why the gods sleep, and Wotan dreams, while the giants are building Valhalla, why the Ring Motif is transformed into the Valhalla Motif during the transition from scene 1 to scene 2 in Das Rheingold (when the gods are sleeping), and why Wotan names himself Light-Alberich. As Feuerbach put it, our involuntary invention of the godhead (Wotan) is a natural product of our gift for symbolic abstraction (the ring) and it! s derivative, the imagination (the Tarnhelm), which are the powers of our mind. Our mind’s capacity to imagine infinite time, infinite space, infinite satisfaction of desire, infinite power, and infinite knowledge fools us into positing the existence of a being who incarnates these powers of the mind, freed from the limitations of our bodies and from nature’s (that is, Erda’s) laws.
Loge is Wagner’s metaphor for our artistic gift of self-deceit, which is one facet of our imagination. Accordingly, Loge’s Transformation Motif is closely related to the Tarnhelm Motif. Loge’s cunning sustains the gods’ impossible dream that they can enjoy sorrowless youth eternal. The truth, however, lies in the giants’ rightful claim to Freia. The giants represent our animal instincts of desire (Fasolt) and fear (Fafner). These motives are satisfied, at least psychologically, by religion’s promise that we can enjoy sorrowless youth eternal and infinite love in paradise, that is, that we can possess Freia. The truth also lies in Alberich’s threat to end the gods’ blissful ignorance by raising his hoard of knowledge from the silent depths of Nibelheim’s night to the light of day. By co-opting Alberich’s ring of power to redeem Freia from the giants’ rightful claim, Loge kills two birds with one stone. It is no surprise that Loge is ashamed to collaborate with these so-c! alled gods, mere mortals who have deluded themselves into believing they can live forever, since it is Loge’s own gift of artistic self-deceit on which these “godlike” mortals depend for their happiness.
The idea that Alberich’s curse on the ring represents greed has done more damage to attempts to grasp the Ring as a whole than any other idea. Pay close attention to what Alberich tells Wotan: “If ever I sinned, I sinned freely against myself: but you, you immortal, will sin against all that was, is, and shall be—if you brazenly take the ring from me now!” Alberich is accusing Wotan of committing the sin of religious belief, which renounces the real world because it is subject to the laws of time and change. Moments later Erda—Mother Nature herself—echoes Alberich’s accusation against Wotan when she says: “How all things were—I know; how all things are, how all things will be, I see as well.” It is Erda’s knowledge of the truth against which Wotan will sin if he co-opts Alberich’s ring of power for the gods’ sake. This is because Wotan must take the truth hostage in order to preserve the self-deceit that sustains them. Thus, when he is released, Alberich asks Wotan! rhetorically: “Am I free now? Really free?”
Alberich makes the same distinction between science and religion: science affirms the real world (Erda’s knowledge) and objectively accepts human nature no matter how abhorrent. Alberich’s image of humans is that we are all Nibelung dwarfs. And his impression of the gods is that like him, they are motivated solely by egoism, and that the only difference between Wotan and himself is that Wotan is a hypocrite who will not admit that his motives are not any nobler than Alberich’s. This is what Alberich means when he says he sins only against himself. But the gods’ religious impulse is to seek infinite satisfaction and to forget fear, artificial needs that nature’s laws cannot accommodate. And this religious impulse, expressed by our longing for redemption from reality and a wish to transcend our own nature, sets a higher ideal than the egoism of humans’ animal nature (for example, the giants’ claim on Freia) will allow. Since Alberich accuses Wotan of the crime of pessimism! and renunciation, in a sense he is accusing Wotan of matricide. Indeed, Wagner echoed Feuerbach when he suggested that placing the essence of nature outside nature’s self, in God, is a sin against Mother Nature. Did Orestes’ sin of matricide resonate with Wagner in this sense?
Cursing the ring, Alberich states that those who have deprived him of it will seek its power but find only fear, not joy. And all those besides Alberich who obtain it will be destroyed. In other words, self-deluded religious mortals who involuntarily invented divinity, immortality, heaven, redemption (the restoration of lost innocence), free will, and higher love, as an antidote to the fatal truth, will be inexorably drawn—in the course of history—to accumulate that very hoard of knowledge (gold) which will eventually overthrow their illusory happiness. This is what Alberich means when he says that everyone will be drawn to the gold and forsake love. Though the gods (that is, humans who believe in gods) abhor the truth, their false beliefs will stake a claim to it (the ring) that can be sustained only temporarily. They will suffer a gnawing feeling of doubt, the fear and trembling Erda bequeathed to Wotan. This is Alberich’s curse on the religious impulse to escape realit! y, which can never be satisfied. As Feuerbach and Wagner described it, however much humankind’s religious impulse seeks satisfaction in transcendence and escape from the bounds of our mortal body and our natural world, humans can never attain redemption but always find again their natural self, and the earth, even in the most remote regions reached by religious imagination. The gods in Valhalla and their ideal, represented by Freia, remain forever tied to their roots in Alberich’s forging of the ring and the giants’ labor. Alberich does not suffer from his curse on the ring because he contents himself with what is possible.
This places Wotan in a dilemma. To ensure that Alberich never exploits the potentially dangerous hoard of knowledge that humankind accumulates to overthrow the gods’ rule, Wotan must control access to it. But if Wotan tries to tap its latent power, or even openly acknowledge the need to defend himself from its truth, he (humankind) will become conscious of that knowledge which could destroy all the faith, beliefs, and values that make life worth living, granting Alberich his victory. Wotan’s fear is embodied in Fafner. Fafner makes sure that no one uses the ring’s and hoard’s power. Transformed, like Alberich, into a serpent, Fafner is the symbol of religious faith’s taboo on intellectual inquiry, its fear of truth, which, as Feuerbach wrote, holds reason (Alberich) hostage. It is highly significant that Feuerbach described Christian faith as founded on egoism and fear, the antitheses of love.
Wagner originally wrote that Erda warns Wotan that the gods will be destroyed “unless” he yields the ring to the giants, but he altered this passage to indicate that Wotan can flee Alberich’s curse temporarily. Erda proclaims that a day of darkness will dawn for the gods (in recognition of the inevitability of Alberich’s victory), and that all which exists will end. Wotan, in his crisis of faith, declares his need to learn from Erda the full truth about why he must live in fear. If he possessed such bitter knowledge, Wotan would know Mother Nature objectively, as Alberich does. But while watching Fafner kill Fasolt, thus illustrating the power of the ring’s curse, Wotan has a knowledge of that truth which he most fears, that self-interest is stronger than love. Implicit in this revelation is the distasteful acknowledgment that what people call spirit is merely a euphemism for egoistic physical impulses. So he changes his mind and says instead that he wants Erda to teach h! im how to end his fear.
Since Wotan can neither alter nor accept the truth, his only recourse is to cease to be conscious of it. Horrified by Mother Nature’s truth, Wotan intends to win Erda’s (Mother Nature’s) love in order to learn from her how to forget the fear she taught him and consign her objective knowledge to oblivion. The product of Wotan’s double-edged desire to learn from Erda both objective knowledge of what he fears and the means to forget it is Wotan and Erda’s daughter Brünnhilde, who will teach Wotan’s heir Siegfried both the meaning of fear and how to forget it. In other words, nature has provided us with the cunning mental gifts through which we can put objective thought (power) back to sleep and let feeling (love) control our thinking. These gifts are the waking dreams of religion and art, the product of thought, of imagination, controlled by feeling. But our redemption from truth is temporary, because we are fated to increase our hoard of knowledge of ourselves and our worl! d until modern science (Hagen) is born and overthrows our earliest mode of thought— religion, the belief in gods. Wotan’s quest to learn from Erda both the bitter truth and the means to forget it, and his subsequent wanderings in search of knowledge of his heart’s need (“herzens Not”) and the means to assuage it, are Wagner’s second and third metaphors for humankind’s historical accumulation of that hoard of knowledge, which will someday overthrow religious belief. This expresses humankind’s dual relationship to Mother Nature, whom it knows both objectively (waking, as in science) and subjectively (through the collective dreaming of religion and art).
Paul Heise, an independent Wagnerian scholar, has studied the Ring Cycle for more than 30 years.
