[musical] symbolism that admits of no simple stepwise decipherment,” which alone can make sense of “the Ring as it finally emerged … ,” which “… tells a rather different story … .” The problem with this critique is that there’s no reason to assume that my allegorical reading excludes the kind of concentrated musical symbolism which Scruton feels alone can explicate Wagner’s ultimate meaning, or that my allegorical reading is the product in any sense of a “… simple stepwise decipherment.”
Here Scruton expands on his thesis that the Ring in its ultimate meaning transcends Wagner’s allegedly outdated Feuerbachian allegory:
“It can fairly be said that when Wagner composed the poem of Siegfrieds Tod, his initial libretto for what was eventually to become the Ring cycle, he was a Feuerbachian, who saw the task of the artist as complementing that of the political revolutionary.” [P. 46]
“…the Ring cycle, as originally conceived, was to tell the story of man’s release from religion and from thraldom to his own illusions. Siegfried, in destroying the rule of the gods, realizes himself as a free individual. And from this gesture the society of the future is born.” [P. 56]
Scruton, referencing my allegorical interpretation here, seems to be confused, or at least isn’t sufficiently clear, concerning the manner in which I distinguish Siegmund, as Wagner’s archetypal social revolutionary, from his son Siegfried as Wagner’s archetypal inspired secular artist. Though he notes that early in Wagner’s process of creating his Ring he was a “… Feuerbachian, who saw the task of the artist as complementing that of the political revolutionary,” it’s not clear to which Ring protagonist(s) Scruton is assigning these roles. He further confuses the issue in stating that Siegfried’s realization of himself as a free individual who has released man from religion and thraldom to his own illusions is a gesture from which “… the society of the future is born.” In my allegorical reading Siegfried’s redemptive art isn’t expected to produce a society of the future: that political role Wagner assigned to the failed Feuerbachian social revolutionary Siegmund. But Wagner wrote his own loss of faith that social revolution could bring to birth a new society of justice and freedom and love into Wotan’s being forced to resign himself to his beloved son Siegmund’s incapacity to achieve it, and in Wotan’s despairing consignment of Siegmund to destruction.
In the following extract Scruton paves the way for his own Ring interpretation, which should leave my presumably defunct allegory far behind:
“Already, in writing the poem, however, Wagner’s feelings were moving in another direction. (…) … Wagner could not fail to perceive that the socialist dreams were every bit as illusory as the religion they had set out to replace. In telling the story of the gods and their doom, therefore, Wagner found himself telling the deeper story of humanity … . And this deeper story is filled with meaning not so much by the words as by the music … .” [P. 56-57]
When Scruton suggests that not allegory but a special kind of “… concentrated symbolism that admits of no simple stepwise decipherment” alone tells the deeper story of humanity that Wagner wanted to tell, which is “… filled with meaning not so much by the words as by the music,” he’s specifically referencing his own expert musicological analysis of the subtle ways in which Wagner
