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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

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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.

[[#119]] Siegfried reclaims his father Siegmund’s sword Nothung

By re-forging his father Siegmund’s sword Nothung, Siegfried reestablishes his broken link with the great heritage of culture-heroes, who have sustained mytho-poetic civilization by perpetuating man’s illusion that he has transcendent value. Siegfried thus inherits Wotan’s futile longing to restore lost innocence, to redeem the world from Alberich’s curse of consciousness. In this way Siegfried unwittingly falls heir to Wotan’s sin against Erda’s (nature’s) knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, the sin which Alberich’s curse punishes.

(#119 based on #57a, the octave drop on “Endet” in Erda’s vocal line as she sings that all things that are, end, except that in this case the octave jumps upward)

[[#120]] “Siegfried’s Smelting Song”

Siegfried’s re-forging of his father Siegmund’s (ultimately, Wotan’s) sword Nothung, the embodiment of Wotan’s grand idea for redemption. Siegfried’s re-forging of Nothung is Wagner’s dramatization of Wotan’s futile hope that the free hero he longed for could create (or forge) himself

(#120 possibly related to #105, and thus to #111 and #127)

[[#121]] Siegfried’s blowing of the bellows while smelting Nothung

(#121’s motival links, if any, not yet ascertained)

[[#122]] Nothung as Siegfried’s fiery Phallus – the natural necessity of Loge’s (Siegfried the artist-hero’s archetype) authentically inspired artistic creativity – cooled and stiffened in the bucket (womb) of water (a metaphor for the Rhine, and for Siegfried’s cooling the fire which is consuming his heart, in Bruennhilde’s flood)

(#122 transforms into #123; their other motival links, if any, not yet ascertained)