ming to thicken and grow
blacker about her.

The women have gone off; the sailors occupy themselves with eating
and drinking; and Senta, pursued by Eric, comes on. He has heard of
the intended marriage, and begs passionately that she shall not
sacrifice herself, ending with a cavatina--a cavatina by Richard
Wagner!--in vain. But Vanderdecken has heard all from the
wings--another bit of old-fashioned stage trickery, like the
"asides"--and resolves that Senta shall not sacrifice herself. "For
ever lost," he cries, realizing that he is renouncing his last chance.
Senta declares her determination to follow him--she will redeem him
whether he wishes it or not; in a regular set trio she, he and Eric
thrash the matter out; she is not to be shaken; Eric gives a
despairing cry which brings on the women folk and the sailors. The
Dutchman says farewell, pipes up his spectral crew, who heave the
anchor, and he goes on board. As the ship moves off Senta throws
herself into the water; the ship falls to pieces; the sun rises, and
in its beams the "glorified forms" of the pair are seen mounting the
skies. Senta has had her way: she has worked out her destiny and
"saved" the wanderer. The curtain falls.

This is the first of the genuine Wagner dramas, the first, therefore,
from which the Wagnerians have drawn, or into which they have read,
"lessons." As we get on I shall try to show that no moral can be
tacked on to any of Wagner's works. But supposing that he did wish to
teach us something in the _Dutchman_, what on earth can it be? Not,
surely, that one should not swear rash oaths in a temper? We have all
done that and needed no redeemer. There is no touch of essential
veracity in the old legend, a bit of puerile medieval fantasy; there
is no sort of proportion between the trivial offence and the appalling
punishment; even in an age which thought to oppose the will of the
Almighty the rankest blasphemy it can never have been considered
eternally just that a righteous and merciful Creator should deal out
such a punishment. Besides, in the ancient legend, as in Wagner's
book, the Almighty has little to do with the matter: it is the foul
fiend who snaps up Vanderdecken in his momentary lapse. Again, after
the first act Vanderdecken is second to Senta. Even the belated
attempt to show him heroic in his determination to sail off alone to
his doom has no dramatic point; it has no bearing on his salvation,
for nothing happens until Senta