Part 8 (1/2)
The broken pieces roll at the Wanderer's feet He picks the struck, he accepts inevitable fate Theof the end of the Gods ”Go your way! I cannot hold you!” He vanishes in darkness
”With broken weapon the coward has fled?” says Siegfried, looking about for his father's eneic fire, as if to force the intruder back, has been pouring further and further down the lories in the glory of the flahtness! A radiant road lies open before me! Oh, to bathe in the fire! In the fire to find the bride! Hoho! Hoho! Hahei! Hahei!
Merrily! Merrily! This time I shall lure a dear coaily blowing the Lock-weise starts up the uine sht; the merry call is heard from time to time from the unseen cliion above is reached, the char smoke completely clears, we see the re under the spreading pine, as Wotan left her
It is calfried and stands still aat the peace, the airiness, considering the ”exquisite solitude on the sunny height!” The sweet Fricka-e of his blood, voices the vague instinct toward nest-building which in the Spring lightly turns a young hts of love He has come in search of a bride, upon the word of a little bird; but his ideas concerning the promised ”dear co so takes up his mind, that when his eyes presently fall upon the recuht is not that here must be what he has coht arain like a child, to see what it covers A man in suit of mail! He can see the face in part only, but warms with instantaneous pleasure in its comeliness The helmet, he surently he takes it off Long curling locks, loosed frofried is startled by the sight But the right words, ”How beautiful!” rise to his untaught lips He remains sunk in conte he has often watched: shi+ with their ripples a clear expanse of sky As if drawn by a net, he bends lower over the quiet form and so feels the sleeper's breath ”The breast heaves with the swelling breath, shall I break the cra corslet?”
Cautiously he ers unapt at the task, solves his difficulty by aid of Nothung With delicate care he cuts through the iron and lightly re away in amazement Such emotion seizes him, with sensations of dizziness and faintness--such a pressure on the heart, forcing fro no resource in himself, he casts about for help in this all so unfamiliar exquisite distress: ”Whom shall I call on that he , he sinks with his forehead against Brunnhilde's breast--to be roused again by the goad of his desire to see the eyes of the sleeper unclose ”That she should open her eyes?” He hesitates, in tender trouble ”Would her glance not blind ht?” He feels the hand treitated heart ”What ails me, coward? Is this fear? Oh, mother! Mother! Your bold child! A woht hi this fear to an end? How shall I gain back e? That I may myself awake froust and quiet sleeper again restrains hiazes at her ”blossorance of her breath sweeping his face forces forth his impulsive cry: ”Awake! Awake! Sacred woman!” He waits with suspended breath She has not heard She does not stir
An infinite weakness overtaking hihs, ”froh I should swoon to death in the act!” With closed eyes he bends over Brunnhilde's lips
Twelve bars, the te theravely to an end Brunnhilde opens wide her eyes Siegfried starts frouiltily or to move from his place, only to stand erect and, absorbed, watch herposture and with beatific looks takes account of the glorious world to which she has reawakened Solemnly she stretches her arreat pause, of drinking in further the loveliness of the scene and the joy of life returned to, then: ”Hail to thee, light!” And after another great pause of wondering ecstasy: ”Hail to thee, radiant day! Long was my sleep I afried stands spell-bound, in solemn awe at the sound of her voice and the superhuman splendour of her beauty
He answers, in the only way he knows, childlike, direct: ”I pressed through the fire which surrounded the rock; I released you frofried I am called who have awakened you!”
At the sound of the naain her song of praise: ”Hail to you, Gods! Hail to thee, world! Hail, sufried breaks forth, in an exalted rapture which inspires his ignorance with expression befitting the hour: ”Oh, hail to the mother who bore ht behold the eyes which now shi+ne upon ratitude, blesses, too, the mother who bore him, and the earth which nourished him, whose eyes alone should behold her, for who leaves a singular ihter of the Wala and the ”most splendid hero of the world” are siels, ardent with honest natural fire, like stars When their love finally reaches a perfect understanding their song is a succession of
”Oh, if you knew, joy of the world,” Brunnhilde exposes her artless heart to the hero, ”how I have loved you from all time! You were my care, the object of my solicitude! Before you were shaped, I nurtured you, before you were born, fried!” He believes for aand now speaks to hi him, Brunnhilde shows herself tenderly feminine
No sooner has she spoken the words which must fall with inevitable dreariness on his ear, ”Your mother will not come back to you!”
than she hastens to heal his hurt with the sweetest thing her love has to say: ”Yourself a of her earlier words: ”I have loved you froht was known That thought which I must never speak, which I did not think, but only felt; for which I strove, struggled, and fought; for which I braved the one who had framed it; for which I was ht you but grasp it!--was naught but love for you!”
It could hardly be hoped that the young forester should at thisso subtle, as he helplessly confesses: ”Wonderful sounds what you winningly sing; but the sense of it is dark to ht; I feel your war of your voice; but that which in your singing you would irasp the sense of distant things, when allonly you With anxious fear you bind ht er withhold froe!” Brunnhilde at this, with the touch of nature which -roo else She talks of Grane, who a little way off
As her eyes fall upon the corslet, cut froly, as a syer and defencelessness oppresses her, and when Siegfried, made bold in his fear of her by the very need he feels of overco that fear, impetuously seizes her in his ars her hands with a woful sense of not being any more that Brunnhilde ”whom no God had ever approached, before whom reverently the heroes had boho holy had departed froht failing, night and terror closing down upon her She appeals to hifried, see my distress!”
He stands so still for a tihten her further, that her ie-directions read, that ”a winning picture rises before her soul” The character of thissoftly forth, the reen branch, itin a su rather than repelling, winning hiive up his way for hers
”Eternal afried, joyous hero! Renounce me Approach me not with ardent approach
Constrainconstraint Have you not seen your own ilad one? If you stir the water into turmoil, the smooth surface is lost, you cannot see your own reflection any longer Wherefore, touch ht then shall you shi+ne back at yourself frofried, luminous youth! love--yourself, and withhold fro love to this replies--after the sier have I e should be broken in the glorious river before hie into it hiing be quenched in the flood It is he who appeals noith ancient arguon When at the end of theain, she does not as before wrest herself free, but laughs in joy as she feels her love surging, till it, as it seems to her, es, who should feel afraid She, indeed, asks him, does he not fear? But the opposite takes place With her love, ardent as his own, frankly given hie comes back, ”And fear, alas!” he observes, a little disconcerted at the queerness of this new experience, ”fear, which I never learned,--fear, which you had hardly taught otten it!” Brunnhilde laughs in delight--all of joy and laughter is their love after this up on the sunny height--and declares to the ” she will love hi they will accept destruction, laughing accept death! Let the proud world of Walhalla crulory, the Norns rend the coil of fate, the dusk of the Gods close down,--Siegfried's star has risen, and he shall be, to Brunnhilde, for ever, everything! In equally fine and joyous ravings Siegfried's voice has been pouring forth alongside of hers; reaching at last an identical sentiether like flashi+ngcurtain
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GodS
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GodS
(DIE GOETTERDAEMMERUNG)
I
In the Prologue of ”The Twilight of the Gods” we learn fros between the breaking of his spear and the final events which bring about the Gods' end
At the rising of the curtain the three Norns are dimly discerned upon the well-known scene of Brunnhilde's sleep, before the entrance to the rocky hall where Siegfried and she have their dwelling The fiery palisade around their fastness casts a faint glow upon the night The Norns, as it were to while away the heavy hour before dawn, spin and sing Their ”spinning” consists in casting a golden coil fro fastening it to this pine-tree, winding it about that point of rock, casting it over the shoulder, northward Their song is of no frivolousthe Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge Of the World-Ash they tell, in whose shade a well flowed,God who ca in toll one of his eyes From the World-Ash, he, Wotan, broke a branch and fashi+oned it into the shaft of a spear This he carved with runes of truth to compacts, and held it as the ”haft of the world” An intrepid hero clove it asunder Wotan thereupon commanded the heroes of Walhalla to hen the World-Ash and cut it to pieces ”High looest of the Norns; ”there in the hall sits Wotan amid the holy clan of the Gods and heroes Wooden billets heaped to a lofty pile surround the room
That was once the World-Ash!+ When the wood shall burn hot and clear, when the fla hall, the day of the end of the Gods shall have dawned!” Wotan hier to be averted of a dishonoured end,--if Alberich, that is, shall regain possession of the Ring,--will plunge the splinters of his defeated spear deep into Loge's breast and hiins to yield to dawn, confusion falls on the minds of the Norns; their visions, they coled between their fingers One of the before her; another beco at the threads of the coil