# Götterdämmerung - Is Alberich dead or alive?



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

Yet another Wagner thread, with a seemingly simple question: is Alberich dead or alive in the end?

Of course this very question has occupied Wagnerians for ages. The general consensus seems to be that no one really knows. So I thought, why not start a discussion to try and find out?

One theory seems to be, that Wagner doesn’t want us to know and leave this question open. I‘m not sure if this really makes sense. _Der Ring_ is Wagners Opus Magnum, his main representation of his vision of a liberated humanity. So why would he want to leave this question about a main character open?

Another theory, and it seems to be the main one, is that Alberich is still alive. After all he appears in Götterdämmerung and we never see him die on stage. The purpose of letting Alberich live might be to serve as a warning, that even in a freed society, the lust for power is not dead but only dormant and always lurking in the shadows. This all seems quite logical, doesn’t it?

But there’s still the possibility that Alberich is already dead before Götterdämmerung begins. His appearance at the beginning of Act II of Götterdämmerungen might just as well be only in Hagen‘s mind. After all, Hagen is indeed indicated to be sleeping in this scene, according to the libretto. If Alberich was still alive in Götterdämmerung, wouldn’t it make more sense for him to appear to Hagen at the beginning of Act I? His briefing of Hagen on his quest for the ring would be more helpful before Siegfried arrives at _Gibichs Halle_, wouldn’t it? Isn’t it much more likely, that Alberich has already told Hagen about the ring long before? Then it would make sense, that Alberich appears in Hagen’s dreams after Siegfried‘s arrival, to remind him of what he already told him before. And by the way, if Alberich was alive, why would he want Hagen to have the ring and not want it for himself?
So this theory, that Alberich is dead, has quite a lot going for it in my opinion. But then again, what would be the dramatic purpose of killing Alberich off stage and giving the audience even a shadow of a doubt about it by letting him appear physically on stage?

I‘m looking forward to your opinions on this in the end quite difficult question.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

My subconscience has always suggested that Alberich is too old by the end of the cycle to be effectively alive. He is the only character that sings that is also in Rhinegold (other than the Rhinemaidens who are presumably immortal). Of course, Erda and the Norns are also immortal.

N.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

I don't think he's dead at the end as much as irrelevant. At the end it's the Rhine and Rhine maidens representing a return to the way things were or should be, only refreshed or cleansed in a way. Full circle, er, ring.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

He is, of course, a zombie by then… 😂


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

It's a commonly held misconception that Schrödinger's famous thought experiment involved a cat ... in fact it was Alberich and he exists in a superposition of being both dead and not dead.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"At the end of the opera, Alberich along with the three Rhine maidens are the only key characters in _Der Ring des Nibelungen_ that remain alive." (Alberich | Wikiwand)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

From a literal standpoint, it's noteworthy that Alberich is a creature of earth, neither an elemental nor a god; he is thoroughly mortal, and would be old by the time Hagen is old enough to occupy a position of prominence among the Gibichungs. It doesn't matter whether he's still alive at the end, since he won't be around for long. From a symbolic standpoint, he lives on only through Hagen, to whom he appears as an inner prompting, an evil conscience. If Wagner had intended him to survive his own offspring and influence the future he would have indicated that in some way; it wasn't Wagner's way to leave a gigantic loose end and simply abandon a character still important to the story. But on an even deeper level, Alberich is part of the Old Order, the supernatural world belonging to mythic consciousness, which is superseded by the rational consciousness of a mankind fully self-aware, autonomous, and responsible for its own fate. None of the _Ring_'s supernatural beings - gods, elementals, giants, dwarves - "survive" in a literal sense, but their natures and lives live on in the forces of nature and in man's subconscious as principles and ideals - as "myths to live by." The death of the gods stands for a thoroughgoing change in the consciousness and life of humanity.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I wondered whether Alberich hung in until the end watching everything unfold from a discreet distance but was maybe lost to the Rhine's deluge at about the same time when Hagen was pulled under by the Rhinemaidens while trying to seize the ring - in a way that would be bringing things around full circle in Alberich's case as it was his plunging into the Rhine to snaffle the gold which kicked everything off. But, as Woodduck says, it's of no consequence.


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## Bellerophon (May 15, 2020)

Wagner could have included a line in one of Mime's speeches, or perhaps Hagen's, confirming that Alberich was dead. It does seem to be a lose end. Now that Wotan's not around maybe he could snatch the ring back.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Alberich's scene is a dream of his son with all psychoanalytic stuff, which was so overused by the cinema in the next century. (And it's one more proof of Wagner's genius). So he doesn't need to be alive to appear in a dream. In the other hand, his relationship with Hagen can hardly be called warm, and he is unlikely to come to the castle of descendants of his mistress openly. Despite he is in good fit several weeks earlier, in "Siegfried", he hasn't lived until "Götterdämmerung". (We have no significant data how long do nibelungs live). So, if he can't intercept the ring himself, he is dead or disabled (I don't think Wagner considered such an option). The only way he can act is through Hagen's mind.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> From a literal standpoint, it's noteworthy that Alberich is a creature of earth, neither an elemental nor a god; he is thoroughly mortal, and would be old by the time Hagen is old enough to occupy a position of prominence among the Gibichungs. It doesn't matter whether he's still alive at the end, since he won't be around for long. From a symbolic standpoint, he lives on only through Hagen, to whom he appears as an inner prompting, an evil conscience. If Wagner had intended him to survive his own offspring and influence the future he would have indicated that in some way; it wasn't Wagner's way to leave a gigantic loose end and simply abandon a character still important to the story. But on an even deeper level, Alberich is part of the Old Order, the supernatural world belonging to mythic consciousness, which is superseded by the rational consciousness of a mankind fully self-aware, autonomous, and responsible for its own fate. None of the _Ring_'s supernatural beings - gods, elementals, giants, dwarves - "survive" in a literal sense, but their natures and lives live on in the forces of nature and in man's subconscious as principles and ideals - as "myths to live by." The death of the gods stands for a thoroughgoing change in the consciousness and life of humanity.


Fantastic answer! Thank you.


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## Pjuhasz (5 mo ago)

Ulrich said:


> Yet another Wagner thread, with a seemingly simple question: is Alberich dead or alive in the end?
> 
> Of course this very question has occupied Wagnerians for ages. The general consensus seems to be that no one really knows. So I thought, why not start a discussion to try and find out?
> 
> ...


Don't think there is any evidence for Alberich's death (unlike that of Hunding's). So let's just leave it as an untied end of the work. Just like that of one of the greatest antagonists ever: Iago.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Pjuhasz said:


> Don't think there is any evidence for Alberich's death (unlike that of Hunding's). So let's just leave it as an untied end of the work. Just like that of one of the greatest antagonists ever: Iago.


Yeah but Iago's subsequent fate is pretty much foretold at the end. He's toast. In Shakespeare that is. I don't know anything about the Verdi opera.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Alberich's physical death is of no consequence. There was no need to kill him off in order to deactivate him as an agent in the drama, since he is already inactive except through his half-human son Hagen. This fact illustrates the passing of agency - of power to direct the course of the world - from non-human to human beings.

Death in Wagner's mythopoeia always means something. Once the ring is returned to the Rhine and cleansed of Alberich's curse, drowning Hagen in the process, Alberich is impotent even if he is alive, and so there is no reason to show or relate his end. He has no further function in the story, and is thus, in effect, dead. To ask about his possible physical survival is to misunderstand Wagner's methods and meaning, or to express a literal and superficial view of a work which is neither.


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## Pjuhasz (5 mo ago)

Yabetz said:


> Yeah but Iago's subsequent fate is pretty much foretold at the end. He's toast. In Shakespeare that is. I don't know anything about the Verdi opera.


In the opera - it's undefined.
In the original drama - Othello or anyone else could simply kill him once Iago was held; but he was not. My interpretation of this ending is: it's immaterial just as it's Alberich's end in the Ring cycle or whether Erda bore another god. If one truly wants to read into the story as it's relate to the future of humanity - it's certainly not good, Alberich or not.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"The Further Adventures of Alberich" is an opera Wagner didn't write or contemplate. In the post-_Ring_ universe, where man is in charge of his own destiny, dwarves are only the picturesque inhabitants of fairy tales.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Pjuhasz said:


> whether Erda bore another god.


Like Alberich's, Erda's story is ended. Already in her last conversation with Wotan, she was losing touch with the world as it passed into human hands and humanity's free will, and she retired, with the norns, to eternal sleep.

The story of the _Ring_ shows the birth, travails, and death of the entire mythical - premodern, prerational - world. At its end all the quasi-human agents which man believed controlled his fate are in effect dead, with only the physical elements such as fire and water, formerly incarnated as Loge and the Rhine daughters - remaining as impersonal forces.


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## Bellerophon (May 15, 2020)

The Gods are dead, and the human embodiments of heroism, Siegfried, and love, Brunhilde, are also dead. What's left?


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Bellerophon said:


> The Gods are dead, and the human embodiments of heroism, Siegfried, and love, Brunhilde, are also dead. What's left?


The Rhine, the Rhinemaidens, the gold and the audience. Now go out there and don't be Alberich, Hagen or Wotan.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bellerophon said:


> The Gods are dead, and the human embodiments of heroism, Siegfried, and love, Brunhilde, are also dead. What's left?


We are. Wagner's stage directions say: 

_From the ruins of the fallen hall, the men and
women, in the greatest agitation, look on the
growing firelight in the heavens. As this at length
glows with the greatest brightness, the interior of
Walhall is seen, in which the gods and heroes sit
assembled, as in Waltraute's description in the first act.
Bright flames appear to seize on the hall of the
gods. As the gods become entirely hidden by the
flames, the curtain falls._


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Like Alberich's, Erda's story is ended. Already in her last conversation with Wotan, she was losing touch with the world as it passed into human hands and humanity's free will, and she retired, with the norns, to eternal sleep.
> 
> The story of the _Ring_ shows the birth, travails, and death of the entire mythical - premodern, prerational - world. At its end all the quasi-human agents which man believed controlled his fate are in effect dead, with only the physical elements such as fire and water, formerly incarnated as Loge and the Rhine daughters - remaining as impersonal forces.


It's interesting that fire and water (Loge and the Rhinemaidens) remain, but earth (Erda) doesn't. Even more interesting that air doesn't even get a look in...

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> It's interesting that fire and water (Loge and the Rhinemaidens) remain, but earth (Erda) doesn't. Even more interesting that air doesn't even get a look in...
> 
> N.


I don't think Wagner was consciously concerned with the four elements, or that the beings in question have a monopoly on representing their respective elements. Is there even a being in Norse mythology who embodies air? Erda doesn't really represent the element of earth in the _Ring_, despite her name and place of abode. I would suggest the giants as the "earthiest" beings in the work.The Rhine is a fuller representation of water than the Rhinemaidens, slippery though they are. Loge is the only character near to being fully identified wih an element.

No consistent symbolism of the Four Elements is intended, so it isn't surprising that none is expressed in the characters or the events of the plot.


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## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

Thanks for the great explanations, Woodduck. It’s not that I view the _Ring_ in a literal sense. I guess it’s just more difficult to simply accept Alberich becoming irrelevant than with for example Gutrune, given his previous role and what he represents. After all he is part of the old order of which all the other representatives eventually die at some point.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ulrich said:


> Thanks for the great explanations, Woodduck. It’s not that I view the _Ring_ in a literal sense. I guess it’s just more difficult to simply accept Alberich becoming irrelevant than with for example Gutrune, *given his previous role and what he represents*. After all he is part of the old order of which all the other representatives eventually die at some point.


My question would be: what would be the purpose of having Alberich survive? It's clear to me that "his previous role and what he represents" - in other words, his purpose in the story - is simply ended. His role was to create and set in motion the struggle and growth of consciousness which is the _Ring_'s most fundamental theme, and having done that he grows more impotent and less relevant as the drama progresses. In _Siegfried_ all he can do is lurk in the bushes and have useless and rather comical arguments with Wotan and Mime, and in _Gotterdammerung_ he's nothing more than a nagging memory in the mind of Hagen, who is by his own confession unhappy and old before his time. The return of the gold to the Rhine, which drowns Hagen in his last attempt to forestall the inevitable, is the end of the story. The idea of old Alberich surviving - to do what? play pinochle with other elderly Nibelungs? - is poetically absurd. 

I think I read of a production - it might have been at Bayreuth - in which Alberich is brought back onstage at the end. I guess the idea is to say that what he represents - whatever the director conceived that to be - is permanently present in human life. I would say simply that the same can be said of the other characters in the _Ring_, whether they die in the story or not. Shall we revive them all and bring them onstage to sing a fugue about how "tutto nel mondo è burla"?

I find that Wagner can generally be relied upon to know what he's doing, and that if we have questions about it we should question our questions before we question his artistic judgment, much less casually throw it out the window as contemporary productions so often do.


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## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> My question would be: what would be the purpose of having Alberich survive? It's clear to me that "his previous role and what he represents" - in other words, his purpose in the story - is simply ended. His role was to create and set in motion the struggle and growth of consciousness which is the _Ring_'s most fundamental theme, and having done that he grows more impotent and less relevant as the drama progresses. In _Siegfried_ all he can do is lurk in the bushes and have useless and rather comical arguments with Wotan and Mime, and in _Gotterdammerung_ he's nothing more than a nagging memory in the mind of Hagen, who is by his own confession unhappy and old before his time. The return of the gold to the Rhine, which drowns Hagen in his last attempt to forestall the inevitable, is the end of the story. The idea of old Alberich surviving - to do what? play pinochle with other elderly Nibelungs? - is poetically absurd.
> 
> I think I read of a production - it might have been at Bayreuth - in which Alberich is brought back onstage at the end. I guess the idea is to say that what he represents - whatever the director conceived that to be - is permanently present in human life. I would say simply that the same can be said of the other characters in the _Ring_, whether they die in the story or not. Shall we revive them all and bring them onstage to sing a fugue about how "tutto nel mondo è burla"?
> 
> I find that Wagner can generally be relied upon to know what he's doing, and that if we have questions about it we should question our questions before we question his artistic judgment, much less casually throw it out the window as contemporary productions so often do.


Oh I‘m not questioning Wagner‘s artistic judgement in the least. That’s the very reason for my inquiry. The fact, that the gods are violently killed on stage while Alberich and the nibelungs just fade into obscurity has to mean _something_. I’m simply curious as to what exactly.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ulrich said:


> Oh I‘m not questioning Wagner‘s artistic judgement in the least. That’s the very reason for my inquiry. The fact, that the gods are violently killed on stage while Alberich and the nibelungs just fade into obscurity has to mean _something_. I’m simply curious as to what exactly.


It means that they don't matter any more. Alberich's only hope for regaining power lay in his son, whose death is symbolically Alberich's death too. The Rhinedaughters, Loge, Erda and the Norns aren't killed either. They don't need to be. I don't see a problem here.


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## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> It means that they don't matter any more. Alberich's only hope for regaining power lay in his son, whose death is symbolically Alberich's death too. The Rhinedaughters, Loge, Erda and the Norns aren't killed either. They don't need to be. I don't see a problem here.


But there’s a difference. Alberich and the nibelungs are, just like the gods, a part of the old order that in Wagner‘s view needs to be overcome. All those that you mentioned are, as far as I know, not part of that.
Now here is my theory about that:
The gods are that part of the old order which rules through laws and contracts. In short monarchs and nobility. In order to overcome their rule, they need to be overthrown. Hence their violent death in the end.
Alberich and the nibelungs rule through material wealth which they have wrested from nature. Let’s call them capitalists, for lack of a better word. The meaning of them fading into obscurity is not so clear for me. It could either mean it’s not necessary to overthrow them, because they have no power left in the end. Or it could mean it’s not possible to overthrow them because they will always be there.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ulrich said:


> But there’s a difference. Alberich and the nibelungs are, just like the gods, a part of the old order that in Wagner‘s view needs to be overcome. All those that you mentioned are, as far as I know, not part of that.
> Now here is my theory about that:
> The gods are that part of the old order which rules through laws and contracts. In short monarchs and nobility. In order to overcome their rule, they need to be overthrown. Hence their violent death in the end.
> Alberich and the nibelungs rule through material wealth which they have wrested from nature. Let’s call them capitalists, for lack of a better word. The meaning of them fading into obscurity is not so clear for me. It could either mean it’s not necessary to overthrow them, because they have no power left in the end. Or it could mean it’s not possible to overthrow them because they will always be there.


If we consider the _Ring_ a political/historical allegory, as Shaw and Chereau (among others) do, your view is plausible. The tale has that resonance, and Wagner himself, so recently a young revolutionary and in exile because of it, was aware of it. In that view we can see both monarchy and capitalism giving way to a kind of idealistic anarchy as represented by Siegfried and Brunnhilde. Even Shaw, though, recognized problems with a political/historical interpretation, and I think it's a limited view that falls far short of accounting for the work's mythopoeia, not to mention its profundity. Arguments about monarchy, capitalism and anarchy don't inspire music of such fantasy and such numinous and oceanic power.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> From a literal standpoint, it's noteworthy that Alberich is a creature of earth, neither an elemental nor a god; he is thoroughly mortal, and would be old by the time Hagen is old enough to occupy a position of prominence among the Gibichungs. It doesn't matter whether he's still alive at the end, since he won't be around for long. From a symbolic standpoint, he lives on only through Hagen, to whom he appears as an inner prompting, an evil conscience. If Wagner had intended him to survive his own offspring and influence the future he would have indicated that in some way; it wasn't Wagner's way to leave a gigantic loose end and simply abandon a character still important to the story. But on an even deeper level, Alberich is part of the Old Order, the supernatural world belonging to mythic consciousness, which is superseded by the rational consciousness of a mankind fully self-aware, autonomous, and responsible for its own fate. None of the _Ring_'s supernatural beings - gods, elementals, giants, dwarves - "survive" in a literal sense, but their natures and lives live on in the forces of nature and in man's subconscious as principles and ideals - as "myths to live by." The death of the gods stands for a thoroughgoing change in the consciousness and life of humanity.


I would actually disagree with that a little. I don't think those late great Wagner works were as much about the triumph of rationality and self-determination as they are about the inadequacy of rationality and the "political" to bring about redemption and transformation. It's about the triumph of the metaphysical: love and compassion overcoming the obsession with power and control. That is probably THE reason Wagner's work can't be presented in the way he envisioned it. It's inimical to the current philosophical Zeitgeist, in which the political is everything and everything is political. So it has to be given a bleak, nihilist tinge, or else concentrate on Wagner the political transgressor. The philosophical basis of Wagner's work is as alien to "modern sensibilities" as Bach's. In Bach's case that can be ignored with debates about "authenticity", countertenors, vibrato and a=415Hz...otherwise it's a debate about the "antisemitism" of the Passion settings or of the New Testament itself or about the "obsolescence" of Bach's theology.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> I would actually disagree with that a little. I don't think those late great Wagner works were as much about the triumph of rationality and self-determination as they are about the inadequacy of rationality and the "political" to bring about redemption and transformation. It's about the triumph of the metaphysical: love and compassion overcoming the obsession with power and control. That is probably THE reason Wagner's work can't be presented in the way he envisioned it. It's inimical to the current philosophical Zeitgeist, in which the political is everything and everything is political. So it has to be given a bleak, nihilist tinge, or else concentrate on Wagner the political transgressor. The philosophical basis of Wagner's work is as alien to "modern sensibilities" as Bach's.


I'm not sure how much we disagree. You did say "a little," so let's see...

You may have got hung up on the word "rational" in my phrase "the rational consciousness of a mankind fully self-aware, autonomous, and responsible for its own fate," but "rational" is a term that can be used in different ways. Context and emphasis are critical. I have to say that your phrase "the triumph of the metaphysical" is also at least ambiguous and, in my understanding of the term "metaphysical," confusing. The _Ring_ certainly shows love and compassion in opposition to power and control - perhaps the commonest view of what it's "about" - but as such that's more a psychological conception than a metaphysical one. It begs for a deeper philosophical grounding.

Metaphysics is "the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space." If the drama of the _Ring_ has metaphysical implications, it must deal with something very fundamental in man's conception of the universe and his place in it. I think it does. I see in the _Ring_ the transition from a world governed by supernatural forces, represented by the gods and other beings whose power over human life is absolute, to one governed by natural forces - including internal ones such as love and compassion - in which the roots of moral action must be sought not in mere submission but in intuition and self-understanding. The psychological transition from a morality of rigid authoritarianism to one of love and compassion is grounded in the transition from a metaphysic of the supernatural to one of the natural. At the heart of that transition, in the _Ring_'s narrative, is Wotan's inner struggle with his own godhood and the limits his divine status imposes on permissible action. In _Die Walkure_ we see him torn between law and love, beween Fricka's legalism and Brunnhilde's human impulses, her yielding to which must result in her loss of godhood. Wotan's stripping her godhood from her is not merely necessary, but it seals the fate of his own: leaving her on the rock and surrounding her with fire presages her turning the tables, setting fire to Valhalla, and freeing mankind from the rule of the supernatural and the authoritarian morality which that entails.

The _Ring_ is thus a parable of the history of the West and the progression of human thought, subsuming morality and politics. Wagner, a Romantic secular humanist of his era, fascinated by the religious traditions which he cannot take literally, has turned the world of primitive myth and mythic consciousness inside out, making it represent its own demise. And he does it again in _Parsifal,_ which recapitulates essentially the same subversive story, this time turning Christianity against its own theistic, authoritarian foundations. I think part of the problem of producing Wagner now is that Wagner's project - which was also the project of Niezsche and innumerable other shapers of the modern mind - has succeeded: Western man is now far enough away from his mythological roots that producers of the operas fear that Wagner's own symbolism will fail to communicate with audiences. Are they right? I don't know.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> I'm not sure how much we disagree. You did say "a little," so let's see...
> 
> You may have got hung up on the word "rational" in my phrase "the rational consciousness of a mankind fully self-aware, autonomous, and responsible for its own fate," but "rational" is a term that can be used in different ways. Context and emphasis are critical. I have to say that your phrase "the triumph of the metaphysical" is also at least ambiguous and, in my understanding of the term "metaphysical," confusing. The _Ring_ certainly shows love and compassion in opposition to power and control - perhaps the commonest view of what it's "about" - but as such that's more a psychological conception than a metaphysical one. It begs for a deeper philosophical grounding.
> 
> ...


Maybe, but I wouldn't be quick to label Wagner as a non-theist or thoroughgoing secular humanist of the Nietzsche type. I think the progression in Wagner's work is away from a belief in the political here-and-now means of earthly "salvation" and toward the metaphysical and individual which is actually consonant with biblical Christianity. Not that Wagner was any kind of traditional Christian by any means.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> Maybe, but I wouldn't be quick to label Wagner as a non-theist or thoroughgoing secular humanist of the Nietzsche type. I think the progression in Wagner's work is away from a belief in the political here-and-now means of earthly "salvation" and toward the metaphysical and individual which is actually consonant with biblical Christianity. Not that Wagner was any kind of traditional Christian by any means.


We seem to have a different view of Biblical Christianity. Talk of "metaphysical and individual" salvation sounds distinctly antinomian and suspiciously like Gnosticism. Actually Wagner might have been happy with that. He was definitely not happy with the law-giving Judeo-Christian God, and said so quite clearly.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> We seem to have a different view of Biblical Christianity. Talk of "metaphysical and individual" salvation sounds distinctly antinomian and suspiciously like Gnosticism. Actually Wagner might have been happy with that. He was definitely not happy with the law-giving Judeo-Christian God, and said so quite clearly.


A reply to that would violate forum rules, so I'll leave it at that.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> A reply to that would violate forum rules, so I'll leave it at that.


It would at least require care in keeping Wagner's ideas and beliefs at the center of the discussion. I'd risk it, but it does get us a little astray from the thread topic. I started a whole thread awhile back specifically on the religious content of _Parsifal_ - specifically its Christian and Buddhist influences - which brought in a number of perspectives and went well in general.


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