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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.

[[#43]] “The Tarnhelm's Transformations” (Wagnerian Wonder)

The religio-artistic imagination as the basis for Wagner’s “Wonder,” through which primal man first collectively and involuntarily, as in a dream, invented the gods, and later, the individual, unconsciously inspired artist, the music-dramatist, substituted musical feeling (Wagner’s musical motifs) for religious faith

(#43 based on #35 and #42; basis of #154; related to #48, #49, and #100)

[[#44]] First Motif of Mime's “Scheming”

Representing Mime’s hope to employ the Tarnhelm, Loge’s artistic cunning, to wrest the Ring from his brother Alberich, and free himself from Alberich’s power (a model for Wotan’s co-optation of Alberich’s Ring-power)

(#44 based on #27 and #36; basis of #101 and #116)

[[#45ab]] The Coercive “Power of the Ring”

Representing egoism (lust for power and/or fear of it) as man’s root motive

(#45ab based on #5ab, and #15 plus #13; basis of #161)

[[#46]] Alberich's ever-growing “Nibelung Hoard” of treasure

Wagner’s metaphor for collective, historical man’s (Wotan’s, i.e., Light-Alberich’s) worldly experience and accumulation of a hoard of objective knowledge of man and nature over time

(#46 based on #19b; related to other #19-based motifs such as #20a, #50, #51, #68, and #159)