o the flesh. The
poem--or, more properly, the four opera-books--must now be summarised,
and I will endeavour to avoid imitation of Wagner by not going over
the same ground twice, or more than twice.

II

The central figure of the _Ring_, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He
is absolute lord of earth and heaven as long as his luck lasts. The
luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some
mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the
hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be
rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the
minor gods shall perish; a new start shall be made in the world. Now,
this idea of the old saga is clearly enough a way of stating, in the
guise of a story, a simple historical fact, that with the coming of
the White Christ the old deities were driven out. There is no drama
inherent in it: for the drama Wagner went to the explanatory story of
how the _denouement_ came about, of the causes which brought it about,
which, with the self-contradictoriness of most of those primitive
attempts to account for the mystery of the world, were not causes at
all, but only incidents by the way, since the catastrophe had been
arranged for since the beginning of time. The main cause (in this
sense) is Wotan's lust for power, and Wagner reads it thus: since to
hold and exercise this power compels Wotan to do things which are a
violence to his best nature, to thrust love from him, he voluntarily
abdicates and calmly awaits the end. He first makes several struggles
to keep the power while shifting its responsibilities, and these form
the subject of three of the four dramas.

The power is symbolised by the gold of the Rhine; this gold, made into
a Ring--the _Nibelung's Ring_--gives absolute power to its possessor.
It is accursed; the curse being what I have just mentioned--that the
power cannot be exercised without its possessor doing violence to his
nature, thereby destroying that nature. Wotan thinks if an absolutely
free agent, a hero owing nothing to any one, bound by no conditions,
could gain this Ring, his power might be preserved: he might defy even
Fate, since no conditions were attached to the possession of it. He
makes the initial mistake when he determines to raise up such a hero:
the hero's act is as much Wotan's as if Wotan had himself committed
it.

After this description of the main dramatic motive of the _R