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Wotan's unshakable dignity indeed does not prevent a quick easy laugh. And he shows the true aristocratic temper in being little moved by the sorrows of those beneath and unrelated to him: one of his laughs, which we witness, is for the howls of a poor wee dwarf who had been savagely beaten. And so this powerful clan-chief had had a fancy for a house to live in worthy of their greatness.
"I cannot deal him defeat!" protests Wotan, in anguish, "he found my sword!" "Withdraw the charm from the sword. Let it snap in the knave's hand. Let the adversary behold him without defence!... Here comes your warlike maid.... This day must her shield protect the sacred honour of your wife. My honour demands the fall of the Wälsung. Have I Wotan's oath?"
"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."
It seemed as true then as it did now more true; for she was less self-conscious in the fictitious than in the real scene. She knelt at her father's or at Wotan's feet she could not distinguish; all limitations had been razed. She was the daughter at the father's feet. She knelt like the Magdalen.
She describes Walvater returning home from his wanderings with his broken spear, the erection around the Hall of the Blessed of the funeral pile cut from the World-Ash, the assembling about Wotan's throne of the gods and heroes. "There he sits, speaks no word, the splinters of the spear clenched in his hand. Fear and amazement bind the gods.
Wotan's wife was the first to see it. "Awake, Wotan! Awake!" she cried. As Wotan opened his eyes he saw the castle upon the summit of the mountain. What a great shining castle it was! In delight Wotan cried: "'T is finished! And my glorious dream is true!" All night long Fafner had toiled hard. He finished just as the morning dawned.
Die Gottrerdammerung begins with an elaborate prologue. The three Norns sit in the night on Brynhild's mountain top spinning their thread of destiny, and telling the story of Wotan's sacrifice of his eye, and of his breaking off a bough from the World Ash to make a heft for his spear, also how the tree withered after suffering that violence. They have also some fresher news to discuss.
Two ravens at this moment make sudden interruption, flying out of a tree and wheeling above Siegfried's head. He starts up, in natural interest at the apparition of Wotan's messengers. "Can you understand, too, the croaking of these ravens?" sneers Hagen. Siegfried, looking after the black birds as they bend their flight Rhine-wards, turns his back to the questioner. "They bid me take vengeance!"
Leaving aside "Tristan" and "Die Meistersinger," which he never surpassed, many regard the first act of "Die Walküre" the most finished of Wagner's creations; and certainly it has a marvellously impressive climax Siegmund's drawing of the sword from the ash-tree, and the love duo which follows; and another in Wotan's farewell in Act III. But grand as these are, many consider the last act of "Die Götterdämmerung" the supreme achievement of Wagner.
No sooner has she spoken the words which must fall with inevitable dreariness on his ear, "Your mother will not come back to you!" than she hastens to heal his hurt with the sweetest thing her love has to say: "Yourself am I, if you love me, fortunate...." She explains the meaning of her earlier words: "I have loved you from all time, for to me alone Wotan's thought was known.
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