::2004-08-03
WOTAN
By John Weinstock

Wotan, the central character of the Ring, is asleep when seen for the first time, dreaming about his brand new fortress and seemingly oblivious to what Alberich has perpetrated in Scene One of Das Rheingold. We soon learn that Wotan has made a dangerous bargain to acquire his castle: he has offered the builders––the giant brothers Fasolt and Fafnir––Freia in payment. She happens to be his sister-in-law, the goddess of love and the keeper of the golden apples. Willing to abandon her Wotan is in effect rejecting love. His pursuit of power is incompatible with love, even if it is well intentioned and seemingly non-violent. His spear is never used as the weapon it is; rather it has the treaties Wotan has made with other parties inscribed on it and hence it represents law and order. His rule is civilized vs. the naked violence that Alberich practices. However, the results are quite the same. Wotan’s regime leads to perpetual injustice: he makes compromises, breaks promises, cheats and steals. Wotan and Alberich are just two sides of the same coin, and Wotan knows this well. Later in the cycle he confirms this by calling the Nibelung Black-Alberich and then referring to himself as Light-Alberich.

Wagner originally conceived the Ring as a single opera, Siegfried’s Tod (Siegfried’s Death). Wotan was not the hero at all, but Wagner soon realized that for viewers to make any sense of the work he would have to fill in the earlier history of Siegfried. That meant three additional operas in which Wotan displaced Siegfried as the dominant character. Gradually over the course of these first three operas and the prologue to Siegfried’s Tod, now Götterdämmerung, it becomes evident that Wotan has taken a number of steps similar to Alberich’s rape of the Rheingold, turning it into a ring of mysterious power and using it on his fellow Nibelungs. It turns out, though, that Wotan has beaten Alberich to the punch, but we don’t realize it at first. That is, unless we listen carefully to the majestic castle (Valhalla) motive at the beginning of Scene Two: it turns out to be a variant of the Ring motive from the previous scene.

The early part of the Ring has to do with the socialization of mankind based on original sin. When Fricka wakens Wotan “his eye is attracted by the sight of the castle.” NB: eye in the singular. Soon thereafter Wotan announces that he has subdued the proud race of giants with his spear. He has imposed order on Nature and acquired absolute power through his rape and exploitation of the raw materials of nature: the Rhinemaidens and Norns (whom we do not meet until much later) preside over these raw materials. Wotan committed the original sin when he came to the World Ash tree and gave up an eye to drink from the well of knowledge and broke a limb from the tree from which he fashioned his spear, both acts incompatible with the natural order. Drinking from the well was Wotan’s and humanity’s first step toward emancipation from nature and becoming conscious, but the loss of one of his eyes meant that his vision was impaired: he lost the ability to see into himself and to understand how he had changed. As he admits later in the cycle:

“When youth’s delightful pleasures [love] had waned,
I longed in my heart for power.”

Power, equated with gold, is the ultimate violation of and substitute for love. As we saw in Scene One Alberich, unable to rape one of the Rhinemaidens, rapes the gold instead. Now Wotan renounces love to gain a castle he will eventually pay for in gold.
Fricka berates Wotan for offering Freia in payment to the giants. Wotan reminds her:

“I worship women much more than you’d like;
and Freia, the fair one, I shall not yield.”

When the giants come to fetch her Wotan asks them to choose an alternative payment. Then Loge returns from his travels through the whole wide world and tells the gods and giants that “nothing at all is of greater worth to a man than woman’s beauty and love!” Surely this must give Wotan pause for thought considering the course he has been on of late, but his more immediate concern is escaping the pact with the giants. Loge also informs them all that Alberich has indeed fashioned a ring and is forcing his fellow dwarfs to mine more gold. Fafner then says they will accept only the Nibelung treasure as a substitute for Freia and they take her hostage until Wotan can scrape together the gold. Wotan has gotten himself into a morass of trouble and it takes Loge to bail him out. With Freia gone and no more golden apples the gods immediately begin to wither. Wotan and Loge go to Nibelheim and capture Alberich. Back above ground Wotan commits the ultimate hypocrisy when he forces Alberich to have his gold brought to the surface, takes the Tarnhelm and then brutally wrests the ring––whose gold really belongs to the Rhinemaidens––from Alberich’s finger. Note that Wotan does not charge Alberich with the loveless exploitation of his fellow beings for he is doing the same thing himself.

The giants return to exchange Freia for the gold promised them. When the gold and the Tarnhelm are not enough to completely cover Freia so that the lovesick Fasolt can no longer glimpse her, they insist that the Ring be added to the pile. But Wotan does not want to give up the Ring; he knows what it represents, the ultimate tool of power. Then the primeval sybil Erda rises from the ground and tells Wotan he must give up the Ring. She knows his fate and tells him: “All things that are, perish! An evil day dawns for the immortals.” Wotan reluctantly gives up the Ring, yet we must ask why Erda did not tell him to return the Ring to the Rhinemaidens and why Wotan bothered to give up the Ring if all was lost anyways.
Immediately Wotan sees the curse in action when Fafner kills his brother Fasolt to gain the Ring. What Wotan has brought about and witnessed in this loveless first opera, especially Erda’s warning and the slaying of Fasolt, has an effect on him and he begins to think what he might do to change things. Just before he and the other gods cross the rainbow bridge to the new castle Wotan is “seized by a grand thought.” Then he names the castle Walhall. The libretto does not indicate what the grand thought might be, but at this point in the action we hear a new motive, the Sword motive. Of course, there is no sword; its meaning will only become clear in the next opera.

In most of Wagner’s music dramas beginning with Der fliegende Holländer the central male character commits some sort of crime and must await redemption at the hands of a woman. But that will be a long wait for Wotan in this monumental Ring cycle.

© John Weinstock [e-mail]