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Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication Page
General Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring

Introduction


References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

Donations Welcome

I would be grateful for donations of any size, small or large, to help defray the cost (1) of maintaining this website, (2) and to finance my past and present research which produced my book posted here, Volume One of "The Wound That Will Never Heal," and my forthcoming revision of Volume One (to be submitted for publication), and completion of Volume Two on Wagner's six other canonic operas and music-dramas. I sacrificed at least seven years of paid employment and incurred debts to complete this project, and am currently unemployed, so I thank you in advance for any financial help you can provide. Your friend, Paul Heise.

[[#28]] The Gods' Need to Honor Their Contracts To Maintain the Peace

Commonly known as the “Treaty Motif”

(#28 based on #21; in same family as #32b, #60, #62, #81Ab, part of #83, #96ab, #137, #164, and possibly #115; inversion related to #47 and #82)

[See #27 for #28’s dramatic context]

[[#29]] “Freia’s Golden Apples” of sorrowless youth eternal (immortality)

Representing the illusory promise of religion, that select human beings (such as the heroes inspired to martyrdom by the Valkyries, who are resurrected to serve Wotan and the gods of Valhalla in the final battle with Alberich and his host of night) will, after death, enjoy the gods’ immortality. Freia’s golden apples of immortality assuage man’s fear of death (Fafner)

 (#29 basis of #31)

“Fafner: [To Fasolt] (#33b hint?) Holding Freia helps us little; much, however, will be gained if we wrest her away from the gods. [[ #29 ]] golden apples grow in her garden. She alone knows how to tend them; the taste of the fruit confers on her kinsfolk endlessly never-aging youth; [[ #30a ]] but sick and wan, their bloom will wither, [[ #30b ]] old and weak they'll waste away, if Freia they have to forego, so let her be plucked from their midst! (#29; #26a)

 

Wotan: Loge delays too long!

[[#30ab]] “Godhead Lost”

The fact that Valhalla, the gods’ allegedly transcendent, heavenly realm, was built by the giants (man’s egoistic instincts) while the gods slept (i.e., during the stage of human evolution when man was collectively dreaming the gods into existence by involuntarily creating a mythology to explain man’s existence), proves that to acknowledge this debt would be tantamount to denying the reality of the gods, and of redemption. Thus, Fafner’s threat to deprive the gods of their immortality by taking Freia from them, is as much a mortal threat to religious faith, as is the gods’ debt to the Giants for building Valhalla.