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Updated: June 14, 2025
So long as I can see her, I cannot part with her." Then Wotan and his family heaped the glittering gold. They piled it as loosely as they could, but when they had put on all the gold they had, the greedy Fafner cried: "More, more! It is not high enough! Still I can see fair Freya's shimmering hair. Throw on that shining helmet!" "Put it on, Loki," commanded Wotan. "There, Fafner, is your pay.
The Ring was in the possession of Fafner, who had turned himself into a dragon, and in a lonely forest-girt cave guarded it and the rest of the treasure of the Nibelungen, for the sake of which he had killed Fasolt, his brother.
The play haunts one, as it is, but it would have haunted one with a more subtle witchcraft if the Stranger had never appeared upon the stage. Just as Wagner insisted upon a crawling and howling dragon, a Fafner with a name of his own and a considerable presence, so Ibsen brings the supernatural or the subconscious a little crudely into the midst of his persons of the drama.
Behind them, upon a neighbouring mountain, rise the towers of Valhalla, Wotan's new palace, built for him by the giants Fafner and Fasolt in order to ensure him in his sovereignty of the world.
But his ambition is boundless; he cannot give up the idea of reigning supreme; and when things seem at their worst he has a sudden inspiration that, already mentioned, of raising up a hero who will freely take the Ring from Fafner, and, by letting Wotan have it, free of treaties, enable him to reign supreme.
"How haughtily do you threaten in your defiant strength," the rabid Alberich continues, "yet how uneasy is all within your breast.... Doomed to death through my curse is Fafner, guardian of the treasure. Who will inherit from him? Will the illustrious Hort come once more into the possession of the Nibelung? The thought gnaws you with unsleeping care.
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.
He might as well go and kill Fafner himself and take the Ring as breed a hero to do it for him with the aid of a magic sword. If he did so it would be by virtue of the power conferred on him by the runes on the Spear; and by those runes those laws Siegmund must be, and is, promptly judged and punished.
Still less was "Fraulein X." able to identify herself with Venus, whom she seemed to conceive as an ideal Munich barmaid. "Lindemann", the Landgrave, you know, from Hamburg; his voice is as powerful as ever, and he might, later on, serve you as "Fafner" or "Fasolt." "APROPOS", your "X." is a perfect madman, and I should certainly not advise you to have anything to do with a man like him.
With the cry: "The dragon is upon me! Fafner! Fafner!" he cowers behind the anvil. The alarming noise proves to have been only Siegfried coming with characteristic impetuosity to ask for his sword. "Hey, there! Lazy-bones! Have you finished? Quick! What success with the sword?" Mime is not in sight. His voice is heard, faint, from his hiding-place: "Is it you, child? Are you alone?"
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