Brünnhilde

“ Mechanically he sets the horn to his lips—a strain of the tenderest and most ecstatic of the Siegfried-Brünnhilde love-music marks the first effect of the draught which dissolves the mists obscuring memory,—followed close by the whole slowly unwinding Brünnhilde-motif. We feel as if we had suddenly, with Siegfried, waked from a bad dream. We take a trembling breath of relief at the weight removed from our heart. ”

“ If you have never felt these things, fear is unknown to you!" The music of fear is a darkened and discoloured fire-music through which we recognise, as if under a disguise veiling something of its beauty, the motif of Brünnhilde's sleep. If one looks for reasons, one can suppose the reference to be, as to a type of fearful things, to the terror-inspiring barrier surrounding Brünnhilde; and imagine a jesting intimation that fear, as Siegfried should eventually learn it, is the sensation suspending the heart-beats at sight of a beautiful woman in her sleep. ”

“ The magic fire rising from the valley throws a glow over the landscape. The notes of Siegfried's horn are heard. Brünnhilde joyously prepares to meet him. Suddenly she sees a stranger leap through the flames. It is Siegfried, but through the Tarnhelmet (the motive of which, followed by the Gunther Motive dominates the first part of the scene) he has assumed the guise of the Gibichung. In vain Brünnhilde seeks to defend herself with the might which the ring imparts. She is powerless against the intruder. ”

“ Speak to me again, charming singer: shall I break through the fiery wall? Can I waken the bride?" "Never," replies the bird, "shall the bride be won, Brünnhilde wakened, by a faint-heart! Only by one who knows no fear!" Siegfried shouts with delight: "The stupid boy who knows no fear—little bird, why, that am I! This very day I gave myself fruitless pains to learn it from Fafner. I now burn with the desire to learn it from Brünnhilde! How shall I find the way to her rock?" The bird forsakes the treetop, flutters over the youth's head and flies further. ”

“ Meanwhile as day breaks Siegfried and Brünnhilde emerge from the glen where they have been reposing in mutual happiness. Brünnhilde has told her lover the story of the gods and the secrets of the mystic runes, but he is still unsatisfied. His mission is not yet fulfilled. He must away to perform new deeds. Before he leaves her he gives her the ring as his pledge of fidelity, and they part, after exchanging mutual vows of love and constancy. ”

“ Brünnhilde pressingly continues, "if my obedience is to be given to masterful man, not of a coward and braggart let me be the prize! Let him not be worthless who shall win me!" "You cut yourself off from Walvater," he repulses her; "he cannot choose for you!" "A noble generation there is, having its origin in you—" Brünnhilde suggests, still unquelled, the point is so vital to her; "the most admirable of heroes, I know it, is to spring from the line of the Wälsungen...." "Not a word of the Wälsungen!" Wotan fiercely interrupts. ”

“ Brünnhilde cried.
"Kill Sieglinde, to save her from Hunding's wrath."
"Leave her to me," Brünnhilde entreated, moved with pity. "I swear to thee I will preserve her. Leave her with me."
"With thee—when Wotan himself has tricked me? Nay. The Gods are no longer trustworthy," he said, bitterly, turning again to Sieglinde. Brünnhilde, overcome with pity and admiration for such devotion between mortals—a love more steadfast than the promises of the Gods themselves—sprang forward to stay him.
"Do not! I will preserve thee—thee and thy Sieglinde. I am here to guard Hunding, but it shall not be so. ”

“ But Brünnhilde, who knew nothing of the magic-potion, saw in his words the deepest and most terrible deceit, and she burst into such rage and despair that Siegfried declared that he would try to satisfy her by swearing the Spear-Oath. ”

“ That one alone shall win the bride, who is freer than I—the god!" In a speechless ecstasy of gratitude, Brünnhilde sinks on his breast, and he holds her long silently clasped, while there floats heavenward as if the very voice of their relieved, pacified, uplifted hearts. Supporting her in his arms, gazing tenderly in her upturned face, he takes his last leave of her. There is a passage in Wotan's farewell which seems to contain, compressed into it, all the yearning ache of all farewells, with all the sweetness of the love which makes parting bitter. ”

“ Naught can save thee from thy punishment." Without hope, Brünnhilde came from the company of her sisters and threw herself on her knees before Wotan. He looked at her in pity because he loved her dearly.
"For thy treason to the Eternals and to me, I doom thee to roam the earth as a mortal woman. I take thy glory from thee. Walhall shall know thee no more. Thou art forever cast out from us. Henceforth thy fate shall be to spin the flax, to sit by the hearth, a slave to man." ”

“ These motives accompany the action most expressively. Brünnhilde still hesitates to cast off for ever the supernatural characteristics of the Valkyr and give herself up entirely to Siegfried. The young hero's growing ecstasy finds expression in the Motive of Love's Joy. At last it awakens a responsive note of purely human passion in Brünnhilde and, answering the proud Siegfried Motive with the jubilant Shout of the Valkyrs and the ecstatic measures of Love's Passion, she proclaims herself his.
With a love duet—nothing puny and purring, but rapturous and proud—the music-drama comes to a close. ”

“ A different matter it is which impelled me, fearful, to break Wotan's commandment...." Brünnhilde wakes to the sister's troubled looks, but she can still think of but one reason for them. "The stern one has not forgiven? You stand in terror of his anger?" "Had I need to fear him—there would be a term to my fear!" "Amazed, I do not understand you!" "Master your agitation, listen attentively. The terror which drove me forth from Walhalla, drives me back thither...." "What has happened to the eternal gods?" cries Brünnhilde, at last alarmed. ”

“ Brünnhilde only is wanting, to complete their number, but they dare not start for Walhalla without her, lest Walvater, not seeing his favourite, should receive them with a frown. They are amazed, when they finally see her coming, to descry on the back of her horse no warrior, but a woman—amazed, likewise, at the wild speed of Grane's flight, and to see him stagger and drop on reaching the goal. They hurry to Brünnhilde's assistance. She comes in, breathless with terror and haste, supporting Sieglinde. Wotan, she informs the wondering sisters, is hot in pursuit of her. ”

“ Would that some blow in that strife had fallen on me, so that I might have died with him. Indeed I will not be parted from him. So, O thou holy and dear maiden, who hast been so tender to me, let me not live and curse thy tenderness, but hearken to my prayer, and strike me to the heart with thy sword. Strike strongly of thy strength."
And Brunnhilde spoke low to her and earnestly. "Ah, not so, not so," she said. "Cast not his love away, the pledge of which he has given thee. For hidden deep in thee lies another life; from thy womb shall spring a Wolsung." ”

“ Gutrune upon this, apprehending all, curses Hagen who had given her the evil drink through which Siegfried had been made to forget his former love.
A long space Brünnhilde stands in contemplation of Siegfried's face, gazing with changing emotions, from passionate Page 187 sorrow to solemn exultation. She turns at length to the vassals and commands them to build a great funeral pile. High and bright let the flames leap which shall devour the noble body. Let them bring Grane, that he with herself may follow the hero, whose honours her own body yearns to share. ”

“ He replies passionately that no one while he lives shall touch the Stainless One, that if he must indeed die, he will first slay her in her sleep. Brünnhilde, in great emotion, begs still more urgently, "Entrust her to me, for the sake of the pledge of love which she took from you in joy!" But Siegmund, all the more firmly fixed in his resolve, lifts his sword, and grimly offering Nothung two lives at one blow, swings it above the sleeping woman. The Valkyrie at this can no longer keep in bounds the surging flood of her compassion: "Hold, Wälsung!" ”

“ A new song was put into the mouth of Sieglinde when Brünnhilde acclaimed her child, yet unborn, as destined to be the loftiest hero of earth. She poured out her gratitude in a prophetic strain in which we may, if we wish, hear the Valkyria celebrated as the loving, redeeming woman of the last portion of the tragedy. Out of that melody, and out of a phrase in the love duet in which Brünnhilde blesses the mother who gave birth to the glorious hero, grew the phrase in which, in "Die Götterdämmerung," Brünnhilde, Valkyria no longer, is symbolized in her new character as loving woman. ”

“ But awe of the so august and quiet sleeper again restrains him. He does not touch her, but lingeringly gazes at her "blossoming mouth," bows till the warm fragrance Page 142 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 him, a mortal coming less, "I will drink life," he sighs, "from sweetest lips, though I should swoon to death in the act!" With closed eyes he bends over Brünnhilde's lips. ”

“ But Brünnhilde is no more a virgin Valkyr, a mere daughter of the gods. She is a beloved and loving woman. The ring is Siegfried's bridal gift. Perish-416- the world; perish the eternal gods; but the ring shall not leave her finger where love kissed it into place. Even as Brünnhilde speaks, the orchestra sings the motive of Renunciation, for, as Waltraute flees in despair, the fire springs up in defence of Brünnhilde and the beguiled Siegfried comes in the Tarnhelm, wearing the face and form of Gunther, to wrest the ring from her and make her the bride of the son of Gibich. ”

“ The skiff draws to land. The vassals greet their lord and his bride with noisy chorus of welcome, clashing their arms together, beating their swords against their bucklers.
Brünnhilde stands beside Gunther in the boat, statue-still, her eyes bent on the ground, like one who neither sees nor hears. Without resistance she lets Gunther take her hand to help her ashore; but a suppressed snatch of the motif of Wotan's resentment suggests the shudder ominous of danger overrunning his Valkyrie daughter at the contact. ”

“ A nobler wife was never won! The race of the Gibichungen, by the grace of the gods, shall now tower to crowning heights of fame!" Brünnhilde does not heed or hear. When, as Gunther leads her toward the Hall, Siegfried and Gutrune meet them, coming forth from it with strains of marriage-music and a festal train of ladies, her eyes never moving from the ground, she does not see them. "Hail, beloved hero! ”

“ Brünnhilde cried, and Gunther, too cowardly to know the right, consented. With the morrow's tragedy arranged Hagen saw the way at last to possess himself of the Nibelungen ring.
As they decided upon the deed, the bridal procession came from the inner hall. All the vassals and women bore spears and flowers. Gutrune and Siegfried were carried aloft, upon shields, and as Brünnhilde and Gunther met them, they too, were hoisted high and the procession moved onward, toward the altars on the river's bank, where they were to offer sacrifices unto the Gods. ”

“ There greets our ear suddenly a sturdy strain, resembling something we have heard before. By analysis, we discover in it one of the Siegfried-motifs, the horn-call, but grown so robust and weighty, so firm, strong, commanding, that it hardly more than reminds us of the youthful Lock-weise, fluttering forth hopefully to find a "dear companion." The dear companion has long been found. Hard upon this motif of the grown-up Siegfried comes a wholly new motif, the motif of Brünnhilde Wedded, wonderful for its entwining tenderness, yet the elevation it combines with its immensely feminine quality. ”

“ Her rapturous reminiscences are interrupted by the sounds of an approaching storm and from the dark cloud there issues one of the Valkyrs, Waltraute, who comes to ask of Brünnhilde that she cast back the ring Siegfried has given her—the ring cursed by Alberich—into the Rhine, and thus lift the curse from the race of gods. But Brünnhilde refuses:
It is dusk. ”

“ The sisters endeavour to restrain him, pointing out that their own honour will suffer from such a scandal. He rejects this on the ground that they have nothing more whatever to do with the faithless sister. "A husband is to win her feminine favor; masterful man is henceforth to have her duty. By the fireside she shall sit and spin, an object of scorn to all beholders!" Brünnhilde drops at his feet, overwhelmed. Cries of horror and protest break from the others ”

“ The third day opens with a prelude, in which we see three Norns, weaving world's fate. When the cord breaks, they fly; the dawn of another world is upon them.
{69}
In the first act Siegfried bids Brünnhilde fare well. His active soul thirsts for deeds, and Brünnhilde having taught him all she knows does not detain him. He gives her the fatal ring in token of remembrance, confiding her to the care of Loge. Then we are transported to the Gibichung's hall on the Rhine. Gunther and his sister Gutrune sit there, together with their gloomy half-brother Hagen. ”