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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.

fear of waking Bruennhilde], and finally, #137 into #164. Through #21, #164 is also related to #28, #30b, #60, #62, and perhaps #115.)

[[#165]] Siegfried’s ironic employment of his Phallus Nothung to preserve his muse Bruennhilde’s chastity and Gunther’s honor, so Siegfried can give Bruennhilde unsullied to Gunther as his wife

Commonly called the “Honor Motif”: The consequence of the failure of the poet-dramatist Siegfried to obtain unconscious artistic inspiration through loving union with his muse Bruennhilde, on this occasion, is that Siegfried will become too conscious of the inner processes of his formerly unconscious inspiration (as Wagner did) to find redemption in it any longer, and will expose the muse’s secrets – the formerly unconscious process of religious revelation and artistic inspiration – to the light of day, along with the bitter truth (Wotan’s hoard of knowledge which he repressed into his unconscious mind by confessing it to his “Will” Bruennhilde, a hoard embodied now by Alberich’s Ring), which it was formerly the sole purpose of art to conceal.

(#165’s motival links, if any, not yet ascertained; however, it has a two octave drop which may be a hyperbolic variant of Erda’s “Ende!” This may link it to the set of Gibichung motifs based on a drop of a specific interval, namely, #151, #155, #156, and #171)

[[#166]] The anguish of being Hagen: Hagen complains to his father Alberich that by virtue of being heir to Alberich's intent to undermine man's consoling illusions with the bitter truth, Hagen is doomed to a life of melancholy lovelessness

Hagen’s poor compensation for being Alberich’s son is that thanks to Hagen’s heroic, Nietzschean martyrdom for the sake of honoring the bitter truth, which envies the cheap happiness of the ignorant but has too much intellectual integrity to be capable of sharing it, Hagen can discredit man’s consoling illusions, which have historically taken man’s reason, his objective mind, prisoner, and supplant them with the will to power, worldly power which can only be attained by those men brave enough and ruthless enough to discard the illusion of love for the sake of objective knowledge of man and nature

(#166’s motival links, if any, not yet ascertained; but Dunning detects a #37 influence)