The Valkyries - Page 2

Fricka and Valhalla. He
seeks the First Mother; and through her womb, eternally fertile,
the inner true thought that made him first a god is reborn as his
daughter, uncorrupted by his ambition, unfettered by his
machinery of power and his alliances with Fricka and Loki. This
daughter, the Valkyrie Brynhild, is his true will, his real
self, (as he thinks): to her he may say what he must not say to
anyone, since in speaking to her he but speaks to himself. "Was
Keinem in Worten unausgesprochen," he says to her, "bleib es
ewig: mit mir nur rath' ich, red' ich zu dir."

But from Brynhild no hero can spring until there is a man of
Wotan's race to breed with her. Wotan wanders further; and a
mortal woman bears him twins: a son and a daughter. He separates
them by letting the girl fall into the hands of a forest tribe
which in due time gives her as a wife to a fierce chief, one
Hunding. With the son he himself leads the life of a wolf, and
teaches him the only power a god can teach, the power of doing
without happiness. When he has given him this terrible training,
he abandons him, and goes to the bridal feast of his daughter
Sieglinda and Hunding. In the blue cloak of the wanderer, wearing
the broad hat that flaps over the socket of his forfeited eye, he
appears in Hunding's house, the middle pillar of which is a
mighty tree. Into that tree, without a word, he strikes a sword
up to the hilt, so that only the might of a hero can withdraw
it. Then he goes out as silently as he came, blind to the truth
that no weapon from the armory of Godhead can serve the turn of
the true Human Hero. Neither Hunding nor any of his guests can
move the sword; and there it stays awaiting the destined hand.
That is the history of the generations between The Rhine Gold and
The Valkyries.

The First Act

This time, as we sit looking expectantly at the curtain, we hear,
not the deep booming of the Rhine, but the patter of a forest
downpour, accompanied by the mutter of a storm which soon gathers
into a roar and culminates in crashing thunderbolts. As it
passes off, the curtain rises; and there is no mistaking whose
forest habitation we are in; for the central pillar is a mighty
tree, and the place fit for the dwelling of a fierce chief. The
door opens: and an exhausted man reels in: an adept from the
school of unhappiness. Sieglinda finds him lying on the hearth.
He explains that he has been in a fight; that his weapons not
being as strong as his arms, were broken; and that he had to fly.
He desires some drink and a moment's rest; then he will go; for
he is an unlucky person, and does not want to bring his ill-luck
on the woman who is succoring him. But she, it appears, is also