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The Hartels have sent you three hundred thalers for the nine pieces from "Lohengrin." Farewell, and let me soon hear from you. Your January 8th, 1854. The "Rhinegold" is done, but I also am done for. Latterly I had intentionally dulled my feeling by means of work, and avoided every opportunity of writing to you before its completion. Let it break forth, then. I can restrain it no longer.
At the end of December, about Christmas, I shall be with you. Then we will feed like the gods on your "Rhinegold" and "Valkyrie," and I, too, shall contribute some hors d'oeuvre. WEYMAR, September 23rd, 1855.
The proofs of "Rhinegold", which Messrs. Schott would have liked so much to have published at Christmas, have been lying on my table for seven weeks without my being able to make any progress with them. Guess at my condition from this fact, and forgive me anything that I may have done to shock you.
This is not to be hypercritical: it is to compare, as one must, a great achievement with an achievement in all respects very much, immeasurably, greater. Had we only the Rhinegold, with all its plentiful lack of inspiration and its theatricality, it would rank very high; but Wagner himself in the Valkyrie set the standard by which inevitably it must be judged.
My mental disharmony is indescribable; sometimes I stare at my paper for days together, without remembrance or thought or liking for my work. Where is that liking to spring from? All the motive power which, for a time, I derived from my dreary solitude is gradually losing its force. When I commenced and quickly finished the "Rhinegold," I was still full of the intercourse with you and yours.
She heard it as people hear things in their sleep. She knew scarcely anything about the Wagner operas. She had a vague idea that "Rhinegold" was about the strife between gods and men; she had read something about it in Mr. Haweis's book long ago. Too tired to follow the orchestra with much understanding, she crouched down in her seat and closed her eyes.
He begs her therefore not to harbor a grudge against Gunnar. Brynhild remains unconvinced, and plans Sigurd's death, and threatens Gunnar with the loss of dominion and life, if he will not kill Sigurd. After some hesitation, Gunnar consents, and, calling Hogni, informs him that he must kill Sigurd, in order to obtain the treasure of the Rhinegold.
She is troubled with a large mass of correspondence of the most unpleasant kind. May God grant that next summer we enter a new stage of the status quo, and that our Zurich trip need not be delayed after the end of June. Your "Rhinegold" is ready, is it not? Bestir yourself, dearest friend. Work is the only salvation on this earth.
Then follows a scene that is, and always will be, a stumbling-block: Wotan seeks to explain his position in quasi-Schopenhauerian terminology and at immense length. We know all about it: it has been explained amply in the Rhinegold and in the scene we have just witnessed, and now he must needs go over the ground again with dreary and soporific effect.
Siegfried pours the melted steel into a mould, thrusts it into the water to cool, and then bursts out into a new song, accompanied by anvil blows, as he forges and tempers it, the motive of which has already been heard in the "Rhinegold" prelude, when Alberich made his threat. While Mime quietly mixes his potion, Siegfried fastens the hilt to his blade and polishes the sword.
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