“The gods, demi-gods, and goblins portrayed in The Ring are personifications of our unconscious needs and strivings …. They therefore bear the marks of a deeper nature - a nature that is pre-conscious, pre-moral and un-free. Examine them too closely and their credentials dissolve.” [P. 7]
“Unlike Alberich, Wotan has power from the outset, so that we do not ask about his origins [However, my allegorical reading is premised on seeking Wotan’s - Light-Alberich’s - origin in Dark-Alberich’s forging of the Ring of consciousness: this explains why Alberich’s Ring Motif H17ab transforms into the first two segments of Wotan’s Valhalla Motif H18ab before the gods wake to find Valhalla has been built while they slept, and dreamed.]. It is only as taken apart by the narrative that we understand this power as a thing acquired, rather than self-created. The narrative parallels the ‘peeling away’ of divine attributes that is the inevitable result of scientific knowledge.” [P. 202]
[Scruton even references my understanding of] “… the beautiful allegory that Wagner concocts in the story of the Giants and Freia … .” [P. 270]
Indeed, in Scruton’s opening gambit, his Introduction, his description of Wagner’s Ring is allegorical in the fullest sense, since it’s not self-evident that Wagner’s Ring: “… tells the story of civilization beginning at the beginning and ending at the end” [P. 5]. Our imagination must be put to work to construe what some have described as a drama about a multi-generational dysfunctional family as an allegory of world history.
And in the following extract Scruton acknowledges the value in the notion (which fully supports my allegorical reading) that through his musical motifs of reminiscence and foreboding Wagner is able to remind us continuously that Wagner’s truer-than-life characters are simultaneously allegorical embodiments of ideas of which, for the most part, his characters remain unaware. In fact, it’s thanks to Wagner’s musical motifs that his characters can, without strain (without forcing us to consciously philosophize instead of absorbing a performance naturally as it should be, as if we're involuntarily experiencing a dream which neutralizes our reflective mind), behave as credible individuals and yet carry a hoard of allegorical meaning borne by Wagner’s musical motifs which accompany them in life:
“Wagner’s works are … more than mere dramas: they are revelations, attempts to penetrate to the mysterious core of human existence. (…) Wagner worked in another medium [music], which enabled him to present the conscious and individual passions of his characters simultaneously with their universal and unconscious archetypes.” [P. 34]
One gets the impression from these quoted passages that Scruton concedes that my allegorical understanding of Wagner’s Ring is applicable at least to the gods and the other non-human characters, since he so readily applies my allegorical reasoning to them. But is there not also a hint in his last extract that my allegorical reading, when explicated by examining Wagner’s cross-referencing of his libretto with his musical motifs, grounds “… the conscious and individual passions of his characters … “ [perhaps all of his characters, including Siegfried and Brünnhilde?] in “… their universal and unconscious archetypes”?
