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Updated: June 29, 2025
The effect of her words upon Wotan to whom this mirror held up to him reveals the weakness of his scheme to create a hero who should act for himself, unprompted, against the gods, yet in the very manner the case of the gods demanded still increases his wife's assurance. "What do you require?" asks Wotan at last, in gloom, heart-struck. "That you should sever from the Wälsung!"
In time, when the son was well grown, Wotan forsook him, left him to complete his development alone, under the harsh training of the calamities and sorrows fatally incident to the temper and manner of viewing things which that father had bred in him. The lad received the usage of a sword in the forging, extremes of furnace and ice-brook.
And, curiously enough, throughout the group the old romantic allegiance of the earliest Schoenberg reaffirms itself. Wotan with his spear stalks through the conclusion of the first of the "Three Pieces for Pianoforte."
Wotan chides, as he appears from the valley. "How? What bargain concluded by me?..." Pinned down to accounting for himself, "I promised," he says, "to think over the matter, and try to find means of loosing you from the bargain.... But how should I have promised to perform the impossible?"
"Brunhilde," said Wotan, "to-day there is to be a fearful battle. The fierce Hunding is to fight with my dearest friend the valiant Siegmund. "Long have I wished to have my noble friend at Valhalla. Fly, Brunhilde, to the battlefield. Give to Siegmund the victory. Carry him here to dwell upon the heights." At that moment Wotan's wife rushed to them in great anger.
"You cut yourself off from Walvater," he repulses her; "he cannot choose for you!" "A noble generation there is, having its origin in you " Brünnhilde suggests, still unquelled, the point is so vital to her; "the most admirable of heroes, I know it, is to spring from the line of the Wälsungen...." "Not a word of the Wälsungen!" Wotan fiercely interrupts.
He is in his turn questioning them, when he hears Alberich's bullying voice approaching. He runs hither and thither in terror and calls to the strangers to look to themselves, Alberich is coming! Wotan quietly seats himself on a stone to await him.
There was a flash of Siegfried's blade, then a crash that echoed over mountains and valleys, and Siegfried had shattered Wotan's spear. It lay in splinters on the ground. Wotan stepped aside and sadly bowed his head upon his breast. He knew this meant the downfall of the giants. No longer would the earth be ruled from fair Valhalla's heights. Siegfried hurried up the mountain-side.
With the entrance of Wotan the music which concludes the Second Act recurs: the All-powerful clothed in wrath and flame; then comes his denunciation of Brünnhilda, another specimen of the lyrical Wagner. Even more characteristic of Wagner is the dying down of the storm.
The gods are furious; and Wotan passionately declares that he only consented to the bargain on Loki's promise to find a way for him out of it. But Loki says no: he has promised to find a way out if any such way exist, but not to make a way if there is no way.
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