I have always found Siegmund (and with him, Sieglinde) to be characters with whom it is much easier to closely identify than Siegfried. The reason is that Siegmund is simply more human in his frailty, as well as in his awareness of this frailty and of his mortality.
Siegmund is your lonely wolf of a hero - indeed he was even raised by wolves. He is the odd man out in a dark, loveless world. He dares to say things as he sees them, and follows his heart, but the mores of the society in which people find themselves trapped and bound — by tribal oaths — will have none of it. He who speaks so frankly and honestly find himself a loner in this world, without friends. His family have disappeared too leaving him orphan.
From the very start of die Walküre, Wagner throws us tumultuously into this grim, stormy and loveless world, ruled by the God of war, vengeance and rage, where the lonely wolf-warrior Siegmund is being hunted down in the darkness of a storm (a symbol of the omnipresent God of storms, Wotan) by hoards of his enemy sworn to vengeance against him (in the name of Wotan), as they chase him down on horseback with snarling hounds at their side. Our lone wolf-warrior finds himself fighting alone and unarmed against a hostile world. He stumbles upon a heath and in desperation takes refuge there.
As Destiny would have it, alone in the heath is a woman — Sieglinde. He is such a pitifully lonely outcast, that when he is asked what his name is, he doesn't really know that either. He answers that he only calls himself "Wehwalt" - the Woeful One. However, in reality Sieglinde finds herself entrapped in a situation scarcely better than his.
This is where Wagner, the proto-feminist comes in. Sieglinde is held a virtual slave in a loveless marriage to a brute by the name of Hunding, which in German means the Houndling. His role is played by a bass, whose character simply drips with patriarchal arrogance. He is your arrogant chauvinist male incarnate. Sieglinde first introduces herself by saying:
Dies Haus und dies Weib sind Hundings Eigen
This house and this wife are Hunding's propertyThis is usually mistranslated as "Hunding's own". The German word eigen with a small firstly letter, mean does mean "own" as an adjective. However, what Wagner actually writes is Eigen — making this word a noun with a capital first letter. The modern German word for property is Eigentum, but Wagner is using the word Eigen as a noun in archaic German with the same figurative meaning. Implicit with this is a hidden critique of the dehumanising nature of the capitalist view of property, which reduces women to the status of commodities.
Of further note is the use of the word "Weib". It is etymologically related to the English word "wife". However, the use of this word to mean "woman" is archaic, and in modern German it has gained a pejorative meaning like "chick", "dame" or "broad". Once again, this is deliberate, the implication being that this sort of treatment of woman as sexual property is a form of capitalist barbarism.
Later Sieglinde explains that she was "found" as a orphan child, and then "given" to Hunding by her captors for a wife as a "gift". Women have little more value in this loveless world than cattle. Wagner wants us to hate Hunding for it, even more than Puccini wants us to hate Scarpia.
When our two lonely captives, entrapped in a dark loveless world, look into each others eyes, they see a reflection of their long lost selves. They feel they have known each other forever, and have always belonged together. They feel the power of the Destiny that brought them together in this instant. They fall deeply in love.
Why shouldn't they? For Sieglinde, Siegmund represents a freedom and love she has never been allowed. He is her hero who will cut the shackles of bondage and marriage that enchain her in servitude to the patriarchal brute, Hunding. Her husband comes homes, and permits this stranger as a guest in his house. However, on questioning him, Hunding soon discovers that the fugitive that he has been party to hunting down is in his own house. By the oath of hospitality to guests, he permits the Woeful One to stay in his house overnight, but challenges him to a battle till death in the morning.
So Sieglinde's liberator is there without a weapon in his enemy's house. Siegmund despairs of his situation and cries out to his wolf father, who had once promised him that in the moment of his direst distress he would one day be granted a mighty weapon. When will that weapon be granted? - he cries out: "bricht es heraus aus dem Brust???", "shall it erupt forth from within my breast???" At that moment, Sieglinde appears after having given Hunding a potion to make him sleep deeply. She leads Siegmund to a sword that a mysterious wanderer with one eye thrust into a tree at her wedding. No warrior has been great enough to be worthy of it nor strong enough to pull it out.
With a mighty pull, Siegmund draws the magic sword out of the tree and names his sword Nothung. "Not" means "need" or "distress" in German. It is the magic sword granted of deepest distress. Sieglinde shrieks with delight and gives the lonely, nameless wolf-warrior his name: Siegmund (the name means victorious protector).
In a dark, loveless world, our lovers kindle the small comforting flames of love. They escape and elope in the deep of night. But not before that they discover what it is that drew the wolf children together - they are twins, bother and sister, separated as children. That is why they feel one another to have a destiny forever bound together. That is why they feel each other to be soul mates. That is the tragedy of their Destiny.
This Destiny is something forged for them by the gods. They are but the hapless and blind playthings of this Destiny thrust upon them. Hunding cries out to the goddess of marriage, Fricka - Sieglinde has brocken the oath of marriage that binds them together. Hunding cries out to Fricka to allow Wotan to grant him vengeance in her name.
In Valhalla, Hunding's cry of distress is heard by Fricka. She confronts Wotan with what he has done. Wotan has taken the form of a wolf to father the race of wolf-children - die Wälsungen. He hopes to raise a mighty hero, great enough to slay the dragon Fafner, and take the Ring for himself, safe from the prying hands of the Nibelungs. Fricka's argument against this is that Siegmund is merely the blind instrument of Wotan's Will, and his creation, his plaything. Even the storm that lead Siegmund to Sieglinde was merely Wotan's creation: the unnatural brother-sister lovers are mere slaves of the destiny created for them by the gods. Wotan was the mysterious wanderer who planted the sword in the tree.
Even if Siegmund took the Ring, it would be no different if were Wotan to take the Ring himself straight from Fafner. By doing so, he would have brocken the oath to Fafner that forced Wotan to grant him the Ring in the first place. If Wotan breaks this oath, then all of the other oaths carved into his spear, as the God of Oaths, would be equally null and void. If Wotan rules as the God of Oaths, then his rule would be over. Wotan is slave to his own oaths. That which grants him power renders him powerless and enslaved to the source of power:
I who through oaths is lord,
to those oaths am I now slave
der durch Verträge ich Herr,
den Verträge bin ich nun Knecht
Wotan reluctantly concedes Fricka's points. The God who raised the hapless wolf children in his favour must now abandon them. Our two lovers are doomed. Or as Gloucester says in King Lear:
The idea is that the nature of the cruel destiny to which we are condemned is one where the gods play with us by raising us up, to taunt us in into thinking that we have won their favour, just so they then can cruelly dash our hopes into a thousand pieces. That is what will happen to our doomed lovers. The little glimmer of love and freedom in a grim, loveless world is going to be snuffed out, as our hated Hunding is granted his favour by the gods.
What takes place next in Act II is a lengthy "dialogue" between Wotan and Brünnhilde. This is perhaps the most important reflective dialogue - actually a monologue - in the whole Ring cycle. Brünnhilde is Wotan favourite child. She was granted to him by the Earth Goddess, Erda - the mother of wisdom - as his Wünschmädchen - his wish-maiden. Wotan is silently deeply distressed that Fricka was right about the failure of his schemes to regain the Ring before it falls into the hands of the Nibelungs. As his favourite daughter, Brünnhilde urges him to reveals his deepest distress: "what am I", says she, "if I am not your Will? When you confide in me, you confide only in yourself." That is why this really is Wotan's central monologue in the entire Ring cycle.
Wotan confesses the failure of his plans, and that now the gods are doomed. Whenever he creates agents of his Will, he creates only slaves. His might renders him powerless. Whenever he exercises his Will to take the Ring his might serves only to undermine him.
Not only that, but Wotan says let whatever ultimate End will befall the gods happen. Now, says Wotan, he not only willingly accepts his End - his Death - he wills it. Brünnhilde is more perplexed than anything. She does as not yet comprehend that this is the moment of Wotan's Resignation from Willing. He gives up his frenzied and tortured lust for the Ring and for absolute Power, over which he has endlessly agonised, conditional to whose power is the swearing off of Love. Instead he accepts Death.
Let's return for a moment to Wagner's letter to August Röckel:
It is the duty of the valkyrie, Brünnhilde to ominously appear before Siegmund. According to Germanic mythology, the valkyries are divinely beautiful goddesses, and daughters of Wotan. However, whoever sees a valkyrie before a battle is doomed to die in brave combat. He who dies bravely in battle has his soul taken up on the valkyries' winged horses into Valhalla to join the army guarding the gods against their enemies.
When Siegmund sees Brünnhilde, he knows what destiny will be his lot. No promises of being part of the banquet of warriors in Valhalla are enough that Siegmund will abandon Sieglinde. There is no place in this heaven for mere mortal women. He threatens to kill Sieglinde and then himself with his mighty sword then and there rather than to abandon her to the cruel destiny handed out by the gods. He would prefer to be united in death with the woman he loves, thus turning his back on the the brutally patriarchal cosmic order of the God of rage and war, even at the cost of denying himself a glorious afterlife.
Brünnhilde is horrified, and sympathetic to the sorry fate of the wolf-children, she promises to change the tragic outcome that was destined to the lovers by the gods - to protect them, and to grant them victory. In the meanwhile, the final show down is imminent. Hunding is out for vengeance and cries out mockingly to Siegmund "Wehwalt! Wehwalt!", as he challenges him to battle. The valkyries gather around amidst the storm of the battlefield.
For all rights, this work should dramatically have no right but to end in absolute misery as the faintest glimmer of love and hope have been abruptly trampled underfoot. Even our brave hero and protector of love dies a cruel death. Our heroine who hoped to escape her enslavement watches helplessly as her hopes of love and freedom are dashed with him. They are truly little more than "flies to wanton boys".
Worse still, Brünnhilde, must face the apocalyptic rage of Wotan. He responds only with blind rage to her action. Yet here lies the miracle of die Walküre. Out of the ashes of complete hopelessness arises the faintest glimmer of hope.
Wotan discovers why Brünnhilde is his wish-maiden. By defying Wotan, Brünnhilde, has granted him what deep in his heart he longed for most but which he was helpless to shape for himself. Her defiance was Wotan's profoundest wish-fulfilment. Brünnhilde has carried off Sieglinde, now pregnant with Siegmund's child, to safety along with the shattered remnants of Nothung which are entrusted to the mother-to-be together with the name for the boy she will bear: Siegfried (victorious in freedom). In her defiance, Brünnhilde has granted Wotan the deepest wish of his heart: the true hero - he who is free of the Destiny woven for him by the gods, and who will one day rise to slay the dragon, Fafner. Unlike his father, or mother, Siegfried will not be the mere slave or plaything of the gods. He will be the first ever truly free man, not the insect-like plaything of the gods, but the Free Man able to shape his own destiny in defiance of the gods. Indeed, Wotan calls him "der freier als ich der Gott", "the one freer than I, the God".
Instead of just throwing Brünnhilde into the wilderness in banishment from Valhalla, stripped of her divinity, Wotan grants her the wish that only the true hero who fears not the ring of fire around the sleeping maiden would awaken her. Wotan conjures up the fire god to surround Brünnhilde in a protective ring of fire, as Wotan farewells his favourite daughter with a final kiss that places her into an enchanted sleep.
For just one moment, this terrible God of vengeance and war, who moments before seemed to want to engulf the world in the torrents of his rage, reveals an aspect of himself that is sad, tender and deeply moved, an aspect of himself he would never dare to show anyone. Indeed, only because Brünnhilde is just part of himself, does he dare to reveal so much of himself, as an affectionate father giving his favourite daughter away forever. Yet to fulfil Wotan's Will even more thoroughly will be this wish-maiden's ultimate destiny.
Die Walküre truly had no right to end in anything but total despair. Somehow out of the clutches of the utmost misery, from the tragic story of the star struck doomed lovers, Wagner salvages the faintest glimmers of hope, just where no hope seemed possible. Fewer lovers are more attractive in all of literature, for we can identify with their all to human frailties, hopes and joys. Yet fewer lovers are crushed so miserably, like insects, by the gods who raised them up in their favour only to caste them down just as capriciously. With that the miracle of die Walküre is complete.
As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.
King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37
The idea is that the nature of the cruel destiny to which we are condemned is one where the gods play with us by raising us up, to taunt us in into thinking that we have won their favour, just so they then can cruelly dash our hopes into a thousand pieces. That is what will happen to our doomed lovers. The little glimmer of love and freedom in a grim, loveless world is going to be snuffed out, as our hated Hunding is granted his favour by the gods.
What takes place next in Act II is a lengthy "dialogue" between Wotan and Brünnhilde. This is perhaps the most important reflective dialogue - actually a monologue - in the whole Ring cycle. Brünnhilde is Wotan favourite child. She was granted to him by the Earth Goddess, Erda - the mother of wisdom - as his Wünschmädchen - his wish-maiden. Wotan is silently deeply distressed that Fricka was right about the failure of his schemes to regain the Ring before it falls into the hands of the Nibelungs. As his favourite daughter, Brünnhilde urges him to reveals his deepest distress: "what am I", says she, "if I am not your Will? When you confide in me, you confide only in yourself." That is why this really is Wotan's central monologue in the entire Ring cycle.
Wotan confesses the failure of his plans, and that now the gods are doomed. Whenever he creates agents of his Will, he creates only slaves. His might renders him powerless. Whenever he exercises his Will to take the Ring his might serves only to undermine him.
Not only that, but Wotan says let whatever ultimate End will befall the gods happen. Now, says Wotan, he not only willingly accepts his End - his Death - he wills it. Brünnhilde is more perplexed than anything. She does as not yet comprehend that this is the moment of Wotan's Resignation from Willing. He gives up his frenzied and tortured lust for the Ring and for absolute Power, over which he has endlessly agonised, conditional to whose power is the swearing off of Love. Instead he accepts Death.
Let's return for a moment to Wagner's letter to August Röckel:
. . . We must learn to die, in fact to die in the most absolute sense of the word; the fear of the End is the source of all lovelessness and it arises only where love itself has already faded. How did it come about that mankind so lost touch with this bringer of the highest happiness to everything living that in the end everything they did, everything they undertook and established, was done solely out of fear for the end?This is truly what the Ring is all about: the acceptance of our own mortality. The Ring is all about the awakening to the wisdom in learning to die. In this moment of Act II of die Walküre, Wotan resigns himself to the madness of his boundless lust for absolute power. It is also the moment he willingly embraces Death rather than fighting it. For that is what the Ring is about - the acceptance of the transitoriness of all things, where even the "Eternal" Gods are mortal. With that the die is cast, and end of the Eternal Gods is neigh. Still, Brünnhilde as yet understands little of this.
It is the duty of the valkyrie, Brünnhilde to ominously appear before Siegmund. According to Germanic mythology, the valkyries are divinely beautiful goddesses, and daughters of Wotan. However, whoever sees a valkyrie before a battle is doomed to die in brave combat. He who dies bravely in battle has his soul taken up on the valkyries' winged horses into Valhalla to join the army guarding the gods against their enemies.
When Siegmund sees Brünnhilde, he knows what destiny will be his lot. No promises of being part of the banquet of warriors in Valhalla are enough that Siegmund will abandon Sieglinde. There is no place in this heaven for mere mortal women. He threatens to kill Sieglinde and then himself with his mighty sword then and there rather than to abandon her to the cruel destiny handed out by the gods. He would prefer to be united in death with the woman he loves, thus turning his back on the the brutally patriarchal cosmic order of the God of rage and war, even at the cost of denying himself a glorious afterlife.
Brünnhilde is horrified, and sympathetic to the sorry fate of the wolf-children, she promises to change the tragic outcome that was destined to the lovers by the gods - to protect them, and to grant them victory. In the meanwhile, the final show down is imminent. Hunding is out for vengeance and cries out mockingly to Siegmund "Wehwalt! Wehwalt!", as he challenges him to battle. The valkyries gather around amidst the storm of the battlefield.
The final showdown between Siegmund and Hunding takes place with Brünnhilde struggling to shield Siegmund. Wotan intervenes and in the heat of battle his spear shatters Nothung, leaving Siegmund exposed to Hunding's fatal blow which strikes him in spite of Brünnhilde attempts to shield Siegmund. All the while Sieglinde looks on helplessly as all her love and hope of freedom, as well as her only family dies before her eyes.
With one wave of Wotan's hand as he waves off Hunding, commanding his slave to kneel before Fricka after his favour has now been granted. Hunding falls dead to the ground. Wotan is at his most terrifying and now seeks to extract vengeance against Brünnhilde for her defiance of his mighty Will.
For all rights, this work should dramatically have no right but to end in absolute misery as the faintest glimmer of love and hope have been abruptly trampled underfoot. Even our brave hero and protector of love dies a cruel death. Our heroine who hoped to escape her enslavement watches helplessly as her hopes of love and freedom are dashed with him. They are truly little more than "flies to wanton boys".
Worse still, Brünnhilde, must face the apocalyptic rage of Wotan. He responds only with blind rage to her action. Yet here lies the miracle of die Walküre. Out of the ashes of complete hopelessness arises the faintest glimmer of hope.
Wotan discovers why Brünnhilde is his wish-maiden. By defying Wotan, Brünnhilde, has granted him what deep in his heart he longed for most but which he was helpless to shape for himself. Her defiance was Wotan's profoundest wish-fulfilment. Brünnhilde has carried off Sieglinde, now pregnant with Siegmund's child, to safety along with the shattered remnants of Nothung which are entrusted to the mother-to-be together with the name for the boy she will bear: Siegfried (victorious in freedom). In her defiance, Brünnhilde has granted Wotan the deepest wish of his heart: the true hero - he who is free of the Destiny woven for him by the gods, and who will one day rise to slay the dragon, Fafner. Unlike his father, or mother, Siegfried will not be the mere slave or plaything of the gods. He will be the first ever truly free man, not the insect-like plaything of the gods, but the Free Man able to shape his own destiny in defiance of the gods. Indeed, Wotan calls him "der freier als ich der Gott", "the one freer than I, the God".
Instead of just throwing Brünnhilde into the wilderness in banishment from Valhalla, stripped of her divinity, Wotan grants her the wish that only the true hero who fears not the ring of fire around the sleeping maiden would awaken her. Wotan conjures up the fire god to surround Brünnhilde in a protective ring of fire, as Wotan farewells his favourite daughter with a final kiss that places her into an enchanted sleep.
Die Walküre truly had no right to end in anything but total despair. Somehow out of the clutches of the utmost misery, from the tragic story of the star struck doomed lovers, Wagner salvages the faintest glimmers of hope, just where no hope seemed possible. Fewer lovers are more attractive in all of literature, for we can identify with their all to human frailties, hopes and joys. Yet fewer lovers are crushed so miserably, like insects, by the gods who raised them up in their favour only to caste them down just as capriciously. With that the miracle of die Walküre is complete.
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