CHAPTER IV.

"DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN."

Beautiful and Enduring Legends are Universal Property.--Parallels Between the Elements and Apparatus of Mythological Tales.--The Grotto of Venus, the Garden of Delight, Avalon, Ogygia, the Delightful Island.--Pope Urban's Staff, the Lances of Charlemagne, Joseph's Staff, and Aaron's Rod.--The _Tarnhelm_, the Mask of Arthur, Helmet of Pluto.--The Holy Grail, the Horn of Bran; Huon's Goblet, the Horn of Amalthea.--Invulnerability of Achilles, Jason, and Siegfried.--The Sword of Wotan, Arthur's Sword, Ulysses's Bow.--Siegfried's Prototypes in Egypt, Greece, and Scandinavia.--Von Hahn's _Arische Aussetzung und Rückkehr Formel_.--The Celestial Plot in the Tragedy.--Wotan its Hero.--A Contest Between Greed of Gain and Temporal Power and Love.--Effect of the Curse.--Wotan's Vain Plot.--The Force of Law.--Brünnhilde becomes the Agent of Redemption by Becoming Simple, Loving Woman.--The Progress of the Plot is from a State of Sinlessness through Sin and its Awful Consequences to Expiation.--Symbols for These Steps in "Das Rheingold."--The Golden Age and the Instrumental Introduction.--Elemental Music.--Erda and the Götterdämmerung.--Greek and Teuton.--The Tragic Nature of the Northern Mythological System.--Wotan's Effort to Escape the Penalty of Violated Law.--A Plan Doomed to Failure from the Start.--Wagner's Mood Pictures.--How Nature Reflects the Discord Created by the God's Wrong Doing.--Contrasted Pictures in Two Preludes and First Scenes: the Peacefulness of the Golden Age, the Storm which Buffets Siegmund.--Entrance of the Sinister Element with Alberich and Hunding.--Agents Created to Carry on the Contest: the Beloved Progeny of the God, the Loveless Offspring of the Niblung.--Wotan's Tragic Grandeur in the Moment of Despair.--Brünnhilde the Embodiment of Wotan's Will.--The God Destroys his Agents, but Unconscious Love Carries on the Plot.--Siegfried.--The Forest Lad Achieves Heroic Stature.--He Discloses that he is a Free Agent by Shattering the Visible Symbol of the God's Power.--Wotan Disappears for the Action and Awaits the End of his Race.--The Miraculous in Wagner's Musical System.--The Drink of Forgetfulness.--Brünnhilde Prizes Love More than the Welfare of the Gods.--Outraged Love Avenged.--The Catastrophe.--The Death March a Hymn of Praise.--The Musical Symbol of the Ethical Principle of the Tragedy Pages 112-161