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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.

[[#123]] Mime prepares his sleep-of-death potion for Siegfried, while Siegfried re-forges Nothung

A metaphor for Wotan’s egoistic aim, that Siegfried should martyr himself in order to redeem the gods (man’s metaphysical impulse) from Alberich’s curse on his Ring, the curse of consciousness

(#123 is a transformation or continuation of #122; their other motival links, if any, not yet ascertained)

[[#124]] “Siegfried’s Forging Song” – Siegfried ostensibly creates himself by re-forging his father Siegmund’s (ultimately Wotan’s) sword Nothung

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

[[#125]] Siegfried’s triumph in re-forging Nothung

(#125’s motival links, if any, not yet ascertained; Wagner employed #125 in his Siegfried Idyll.)

[[#126ab]] Existential Fear (Fafner) – the basis of religious faith and social stability

Fear is the ground of the social contract, religious faith and tradition: it is the Basis for man’s desire for property, possessions, security, freedom from care, social stability and quiet, knowledge and power which insures our survival, abhorrence of change, and in a more abstract form, religious faith’s existential prohibition on intellectual inquiry, its taboo of all search into the roots of faith, all knowledge which might undermine it. Siegfried must eliminate this fear, the basis of religious faith, in order to free art from its service to religion (the gods)

(#126 based on #26ab)