United States or Norfolk Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Fricka wakes first, and is startled, not to say horrified, by the apparition. The Giants, Fasolt and Fafner, have built the castle, and the promised payment is Freia, Fricka's sister, whose apples all gods and goddesses must eat every day, else they will fade and perish.
Fafner is a bad giant and his hair and furs are black. He is much cleverer than his brother. They carry as walking-sticks the trunks of trees. They make it known that they have come for their wages. Wotan bids them, with a sturdy aplomb worthy of his godhead, state their wishes. What shall the wages be? Fasolt, a shade astonished, replies, "That, of course, which we settled upon.
There is not gold enough to accomplish this: however cunningly Loki spreads it, the glint of Freia's hair is still visible to Giant Fafnir, and the magic helmet must go on the heap to shut it out. Even then Fafnir's brother, Fasolt, can catch a beam from her eye through a chink, and is rendered incapable thereby of forswearing her.
The affair, it now would seem, must be closed; but Fasolt, in his grief over the loss of the Fair one, still hovers about, peering if perchance he may still see her, and so he catches through the screen of gold the gleam of her eye, and declares that so long as the lovely glance is visible he will not renounce the woman. "But can you not see, there is no more gold?" remonstrates Loge.
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.
Wotan to these makes no more retort than as if the words had not been spoken; but to gain time till Loge shall arrive when the giant has quite finished, he inquires, "What, after all, can the charm of the amiable goddess signify to you clumsy boors?" Fasolt enlarges, "You, reigning through beauty, shimmering lightsome race, lightly you offer to barter for stone towers woman's loveliness.
Wotan refuses to give up the ring until warned by the goddess Erda, the mother of the Fates, who rises from her subterranean cavern, that to keep it means ruin. The ring passes to the giants, and the curse at once begins to work. Fafner slays Fasolt in a quarrel for the gold, and carries off the treasure alone. Throughout this scene the clouds have been gathering round the mountain-top.
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.
Fasolt does not fall in willingly with the arrangement which shall give them the gold in place of the woman; he has been overpersuaded by the black brother; his regret at losing Freia is so great, he tells the gods, that the treasure, if she is to be relinquished, will have to be piled so high as completely to hide the blooming maid.
He snatches at it, Fafner defends it, and when in the wrestling which ensues Fasolt has forced it from his brother, the latter lifts his tree-trunk and strikes him dead. Having taken the ring from his hand, he leisurely proceeds to finish his packing, while the gods stand around appalled, and the air shudderingly resounds with the notes of the curse. A long, solemn silence follows.
Word Of The Day