how, the problem which we could easily understand without it
is stated. Wotan, who has been placed at the head of affairs by the
three blind fates, has caught the general disease of wishing to gain
the power to make others do his will. So anxious is he for that
authority that he not only makes a bargain for it with the powers of
stupidity--the giants, the brute forces of nature--which bargain is
afterwards and could never be anything but his ruin, but also he
stoops to a base subterfuge to gain it, and with the help of Loge,
fire, the final destroyer, he does gain it. So determined was Wagner
to make his point clear, that even in "The Rheingold," the superfluous
drama, he made it several times superfluously. He was not content to
let his point make itself--the humanitarian, the preacher of all that
makes for the highest humanity, was too strong in him for that: it was
a little too strong even for the artist in him: he must needs make the
powers of darkness lay a curse on power over one's fellow-beings, the
Ring standing as the emblem of that power. While Wotan takes the
power, his deepest wisdom, which is to say, his intuition--represented
by the spirit of the earth, Erda--rises against him and tells him he
is committing the fatal mistake, and he yields to the extent of
letting the giants have the supreme power. But he thinks, just as you
and I, reader, might think, that by some quaint unthinkable device he
can evade the tremendous consequence of his own act; and, instead of
at once looking at the consequence boldly and saying he will face it,
he elaborates a plan by which no one will suffer anything, while he,
Wotan, will gain the lordship of creation. From this moment his fate
becomes tragic. The complete man, full of rich humanity--for whom
Wotan stands--cannot exist, necessarily ceases to exist, if he is
compelled to deny the better part of himself, as Peter denied Jesus of
Nazareth. And in consequence of his own act Wotan has immediately to
deny the better part of himself, to make war on his own son Siegmund,
and then on his own daughter Bruennhilde: he destroys the first and
puts away from him for ever Bruennhilde, who is incarnate love. The
grand tragic moment of the whole cycle is the laying to sleep of
Bruennhilde. Wotan knows that life without love is no life, and he is
compelled to part from love by the very bargain which enables him to
rule. Rather than live such a life, he deliberately, solemnly wills
his ow