n death; and a great part of "Siegfried" and the whole of "The
Dusk of the Gods" are devoted to showing how his death, and the death
of all the gods, comes about through Wotan's first act. In "Siegfried"
and "The Dusk of the Gods" there is no tragedy--how can there be any
tragedy in the fate of the man who faithfully follows the impulse that
makes for his highest and widest satisfaction, for the fullest
exercise of his beneficent energies, for the man who says I will do
this or that because I know and feel it is the best I can do? "The
Dusk of the Gods" is Wotan's most splendid triumph; he deliberately
yields place to a new dynasty, because he knows that to keep
possession of the throne will mean the continual suppression of all
that is best in him, as he has had already to suppress it.
Incidentally there are many tragedies in the "Ring." The murder of
Siegmund by Hunding, aided by Wotan, before Sieglinde's eyes; the
hideous incident of Siegfried winning his own wife to be the wife of
his friend Gunther; the stabbing of Siegfried by Hagen; Bruennhilde's
telling Gutrune that she, Gutrune, was never the wife of
Siegfried,--all these are terrible enough tragedies. Bruennhilde's is
the most terrible of them all, though she too takes her fate into her
hands, and by willing the right thing, and doing it, goes victorious
out of life. What there is difficult to understand about her, why she
should be accused of deceit and have her conduct explained, I can
hardly guess. In "The Valkyrie" she is a goddess; but when she offends
Wotan by disobeying him and walking clean through all the
Commandments, he is bound, for the maintenance of his power, to punish
her. So he takes away her godhead, and she is thenceforth simply a
woman. Siegfried treats her treacherously--as she necessarily
thinks--and she very naturally takes vengeance on him. Mr. Shaw speaks
as though he wished her to be a bread-and-butter miss; but a woman of
Bruennhilde's type, a daughter of the high gods, could scarcely be
that.

In short, "The Dusk of the Gods" seems to me perfectly clear, and in
no more need of explanation than "The Valkyrie" or "Siegfried." Of
course there are a thousand loose ends in the "Ring," as there are in
life itself; but to count them and find out what they all mean would
occupy one for an eternity. To throw away "The Dusk of the Gods"
because one cannot understand the loose ends, is ridiculous; instead
of wishing there were fewer of them,