On Wagner’s understanding, consciousness is the origin, not only of the distinction between good and evil, but of the ‘hoard’ of scientific knowledge, which alienates us from our roots in species life. We long to regain the innocent oneness with the world that is the lot of animals and which was the lot of our pre-conscious ancestors. And we project that longing into the heavens, imagining there a blessed resting place where the wound of consciousness will be healed and we will regain the serenity that we lost in our first attempts at self-understanding.
That is the theme of Wagner’s drama as Heise interprets it. And in his subtle exposition he shows, one by one, how each scene of the work spells out some necessary feature of the allegory. (…)
(...) Two ideas animate the subsequent dramas [Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung]. The first is that we are redeemed not by renouncing love, but by renouncing life for the sake of love [the relationship of Siegmund with Sieglinde]. The second is that we are redeemed through art, and through the artist-hero (Siegfried) who takes on the task that religion failed to accomplish. The artist-hero presents a new kind of redemption, which is the redemption of ‘wonder’. Instead of looking for our vindication in the transcendental world, art shows that we are vindicated here and now, by our own capacity to recognise the beauty of the world, and to weave love and allusion into the warp of the sensory order. (…) In the place of the certainties of religion and the doubts of science, art gives us wonder. (…)
Heise’s book is not an easy book. But it is a deep book. All Wagnerians know that The Ring is full of enigmas. But the enigmas are resolved by Heise in a most pleasing, intense and persuasive way. The Wanderer, Wotan’s missing eye, the Norns and their rope, the head of Mime, the many drinks brewed and refused or stored and consumed, the Ring, the Tarnhelm, the sword Nothung, the spear, the wood-bird – so many obscure seeming symbols, which become bright and transparent in Heise’s reading. I don’t agree with all that he says. But he awakens interest, argument, dissent and wonder at every point, linking the text minutely to the musical realisation, and bringing this great work to life in a way that I hope you will appreciate as much as I have.”
Excerpts from Scruton ’s article The Ring of Truth, published in the May, 2011 issue of The American Spectator:
“Everybody with ears knows that the Ring is full of meaning, that plot, character, music, and motives are to be understood as multi-dimensional symbols, and that there unfolds on the stage, in the words, and through the music a complex argument about the nature of human life, about the hopes and fears of our species, and about the cosmos itself. Yet what exactly does it mean? I have wrestled with this question for many years, have been helped by this or that critical discussion or this or that striking performance. But much became clear to me when I discovered what is probably the only complete commentary on the Ring, which goes step by step through the text and the music, and explores some of its many allegorical meanings with relentless devotion and ardor. This is the commentary composed over many years by Paul Heise, which he has now made available to the public on his remarkable
