d will I
win," and it is his daemonic will to depreciate love and set up power as
the only value, so that nobody shall doubt his greatness and unique
genius. "As I renounce love, so all shall renounce it, with gold have I
bought you, for gold shall you crave." Love shall die and lust shall
take its place; he will force even the wives of the gods to do his will,
for his wealth has made him master of the whole world. Compared to his
restless activity, the giant "Fafner" is "stupid"; he is incapable of
transforming gold into power; he merely enjoys its possession, content
with the consciousness of his wealth.

But the curse of Alberich, the first who transmuted the shining metal
into money, rests on gold and power. "It shall not bring gladness--who
has it be seared by sorrow, who lacks it devoured by envy...." The curse
of the eternal concatenation: tyranny--slavery, the care which
accompanies wealth and the envy of the have-nots, can only be lifted
from the world by a man who is inwardly free, who is neither master nor
slave. Siegfried understands the song of the birds and the elementary
beings, the Rhine-daughters; he is a stranger to human desires and
passions. "I inherited nothing but my body--and living it is consumed."
He is proof against the magic of the ring; the only value he knows is
love. Alberich, his opponent, says, in speaking of him: "My curse has no
sting for the mettlesome hero, for he knows not the worth of the ring;
he squanders his prodigal strength, laughing and glowing with love his
body is burning away." Half way between Alberich, the inwardly worthless
wielder of power, and Siegfried, the truly free man, the embodiment of
all virtue, who is murdered by the powers of darkness, stands Wotan, in
whose heart both motives, authority and love, are struggling for
supremacy, who will renounce neither love nor power. Artistically and
symbolically the salvation of the world from the curse of greed and
tyranny is brought about by the restitution of the ring, and its
dissolution in the pure waters of the river from whence it had been
taken; the gold is given back to the Rhine-daughters, to fulfil again
its original purpose, namely, to delight the heart of man with its
dazzling sheen.

Thus Wagner, the greatest and most inspired exponent of love among
modern artists, declared that of all values love was the greatest. His
intuitive genius left all the doctrines formulated by Schopenhauer and
Buddha far behind a