Isolde’s Liebestod (final transfiguration – and so-called redemption) hundreds of times in various prior lives, and that Wagner regarded Isolde as identical with Bruennhilde, we realize that Wagner is consigning both Isolde and Bruennhilde to the status of failures, since their reincarnate form Kundry herself fails to redeem the hero Parsifal through her offer to redeem both of them through loving union. In fact, Parsifal renounces her love (sexual love, yes, but the sexual love shared by hero and heroine is Wagner’s metaphor for the poet-dramatist’s – the hero’s - unconscious artistic inspiration by the muse, his heroine-lover) altogether, and chooses celibacy rather than consort with her. In point of fact, Bruennhilde, Isolde, and Kundry are identical in being Wagner’s metaphor for the artist-hero’s unconscious mind, his muse of inspiration, and all three fail because, according to Wagner, art in the end fails to resolve or redeem man’s existential dilemma.
[T.3.3: I]
This brings us to the climax of the entire Ring tetralogy, the twilight of the gods itself, which Erda foretold in R.4. It is the final fulfillment of Alberich’s curse on his Ring, his punishment of the gods for favoring illusion over truth, for figuraratively killing their mother, Nature. Appropriately, it is the god of lies, the fire god Loge, who burns the gods up, their illusions dying with them:
(The flames immediately flare up so that the fire fills the entire space in front of the hall and appears to seize on the building itself. #35. #33b [Norns’ vari?]. Horrified, the men and women press to the very front of the stage. When the whole stage seems to be engulfed in flames #98 [repeats and develops]; #97; the glow suddenly subsides, so that soon all that remains is a cloud of smoke which drifts away to the back of the stage, settling on the horizon as a layer of dark cloud. #59 chords/#3>>>>: At the same time the Rhine overflows its banks in a mighty flood, surging over the conflagration. The three Rhinedaughters are borne along on its waves and now appear over the scene of the fire. Hagen, who since the incident with the ring, has been watching Bruennhilde with increasing concern, is seized with extreme alarm at the sight of the Rhinedaughters. He hastily throws aside his spear, shield and helmet and plunges into the floodwaters like a man possessed, shouting the words ‘Get back from the ring!’ #51 [fragmented]. #175 end frag [sounding like #fire music in the same rhythm which accompanied the Gibichungs when they ran down from the cliff to join Siegfried on the shore of the Rhine?] Woglinde and Wellgunde twine their arms around his neck and, swimming away, draw him with them into the depths. Flosshilde leads the way as they swim towards the back of the stage, holding the regained ring aloft in a gesture of jubilation. #4/#3: A red glow breaks out with increasing brightness from the cloudbank that had settled on the horizon. By its light, the three Rhinedaughters can be seen swimming in circles and merrily playing with the ring on the calmer waters of the Rhine, which has little by little returned to its bed. #20a;
