pays no heed to its power, because he has better things to do; he keeps it simply as a token of the fact that he has not learned the meaning of fear. You will admit that all the splendour of the gods must inevitably grow pale in the presence of this man.“ [620W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 308-309]
[621W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 309]
[P. 309] “Above all, I am struck by your question why, since the Rhinegold is returned to the Rhine, the gods nevertheless perish? – I believe that, at a good performance, even the most naïve spectator will be left in no doubt on this point. {FEUER} It must be said, however, that the gods’ downfall is not the result of points in a contract which can of course be interpreted and twisted and turned at will – for which one would need only the services of a legally qualified politician acting as a lawyer; no, the necessity of this downfall arises from our innermost feelings – just as it arises from Wodan’s feelings. Thus it was important to justify this sense of neces-sity emotionally, and this comes about as a matter of course providing only that the spectator follow the course of the entire action through each of its simple and natural motives, and that he follow it, moreover, from beginning to end with complete sympathy … .” [621W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 309]
[622W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 310]
[P. 310] {FEUER} “ … if you shudder at the thought that this woman [Bruennhilde] should cling to this accursed ring as a symbol of love, you will feel exactly as I in-tended you to feel, and herein you will recognize the power of the Nibelung curse raised to its most terrible and most tragic heights: only then will you recognize the need for the whole of the final drama, ‘Siegfried’s Death’. This is something we must experience for ourselves if we are to be made fully conscious of the evil of gold. Why does Bruennhilde yield so quickly to Siegfried when he comes to her in dis-guise? Precisely because the latter has torn the ring from her finger, since it was here alone that her whole strength lay.” [622W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 310]
[623W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 310]
[P. 310] “It worried me that you could have so totally misunderstood certain aspects. But it certainly made clear to me that only when completed could the work hope to avoid being misunderstood: having then been seized by a violent desire to begin the music, I cheerfully abandoned myself to that urge before finally starting this letter. The completion of the Rhinegold (a task as difficult as it was important) has restored my sense of self-assurance, as you can see. I have once again realized how much of my work’s meaning (given the nature of my poetic intent) is only made clear by the music: I can now no longer bear to look at the poem without the music.” [623W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 310]
[624W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 312]
[P. 312] {anti-FEUER} “I am not so out of touch with nature as you suppose, even though I myself am no longer in a position to have scientific dealings with it. (…) It is only when nature is expected to replace real life – love – that I ignore it. In this respect I resemble Bruennhilde with the ring. I
