[mamascarlatti]

How do you feel about sitting twenty years at home, tearing out your embroidery at night, having 100 lovers stalking you and when your husband is dressed up like a beggar you don't believe him (until he describes what patchwork you made in the bedroom). I hold Greek mythology responsible for the centuries lasting repression of women: back to the kitchen sink and wait in the bedroom. With Paris and the 3 goddesses the story is keen to point out how utterly vain these beauties are: again pinning women down on this.

The Penelope story is not responsible for repression of women but simply a reflection of the existing social system. Within that system Penelope was pretty wily, keeping those suitors kicking their heels for 20 years. That's determination for you. And things are different in Olympus - Pallas Athene is able to help Odysseus all by herself.

Meanwhile in the Ring, Fricka can only influence events through Wotan (really by nagging him until he cracks), while Freia can be bargained away like a slave, and Brünnhilde is expected to toe the line by obeying her father to the letter, and her punishment for failing to do so is to be the "wife" of the first man who comes across her, an object of scorn and pity to all. Not really flagbearers for the feminist revolution then.

I'm all for being a Greek Goddess. Warmer, too.

 

[Almaviva]

I think the conclusion is that both in Greek and Norse mythologies women weren't the lucky ones, which like Nat said, reflects their social role at the time. We've extensively described how in opera in general womens' fate is terrible - they get raped, stabbed, poisoned, diseased, prostitued, seduced and abandoned, given in marriage to a man they don't love, etc, with *very few* exceptions (such as La Fanciulla del West, La Fille du Régiment, Don Pasquale, a few others). Certainly it took a loooooong time for women to climb to their current social position in modern Western societies, while they're still oppressed in places like Muslim non-secular nations. Art, as usual, reflects what goes on in society; it can influence it to a certain degree but it is usually the other way around.

 

[Almaviva]

Very interesting questions... I definitely don't have answers to any of them. Where would I find answers? What is the Prose Edda Norse source material?

By the way, is one supposed to be able to sit through Die Walküre, Siegfried or Götterdämmerung in one sitting? I watched the first two acts of Die Walküre today.. and it's just So long. I decided to put off the third act to Tuesday (I'm busy all day tomorrow).

The Norse sagas and ancient Nordic poetry including the Edda (in addition to a separate source, the German Niebelungenlied) are the source materials for the Ring. The Norse sagas are better known to Westerns as the mythology associated with the Vikings. Wotan is another name for Odin. Here you can find extensive material about the Norse sagas:

http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Main_Page

Your other question: the Ring with its 16 hours of music is better enjoyed when broken down in several evenings, to prevent fatigue.

 

[MAuer]

Are there still enough people around, who are familiar with Greek mythology? I think that this is not the case anymore. It used to be 'normal' in the past to know one's classics. The difference between the Greek/Roman gods and Wagner's imaginations is profound: in Greek mythology women hardly have a voice; in Wagner's operas they are the key-figures, the women are the ones who tip the balance of fate and the men are reduced to the role of being merely spectators. Wotan cannot do a thing because of being married & hand-cuffed in holy matrimony to Fricka. This aspect of women gaining power is quite ungreek & quite modern.

I've never been quite happy with what Wagner did to the character of Gudrun (Gutrune). He makes her into such a passive wimp -- and this character, whether in the Norse myths or as Kriemhilde in the Nibelungenlied, was anything but. She was actually responsible for the deaths of both Hagen and Günther in retaliation for Siegfried's death. But I suppose Wagner had to reduce Gudrun to a fairly insignificant individual in order to give greater prominence to Brünnhilde.

 

[Aksel]

The Norse sagas and ancient Nordic poetry including the Edda and the Niebelungenlied are the source material for the Ring. They are better known to Westerns as the mythology associated with the Vikings. Wotan is another name for Odin. Here you can find extensive material about the Norse sagas:

http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Main_Page

Your other question: the Ring with its 16 hours of music is better enjoyed when broken down in several evenings, to prevent fatigue.

No. The Nibelungenlied is German.

 

[Chi_townPhilly]

How did it come to pass that Wotan achieved the highest level of power among the gods?

Was du bist, bist dur nur durch Verträge;
bedungen ist, wohl bedacht deine Macht.

What you are, you are only through treaties;
your power is based on carefully considered pacts.
Fasolt (to Wotan), "Das Rheingold" Scene II.

This reminder lets us know that Wotan's power (in its ascendency) is NOT unconditional, capricious, or subject to whim. It also serves to put us on notice that the more he seeks to subvert the conditions of his power, the more his power will, of necessitating pre-ordination wane.

The incipient Wotan questing for more and greater power can be unpleasant to watch- but we have Alberich on the scene to remind us that exercises of power can get A LOT more tyrranical than those shown by Wotan(!)

(As for the answers to the other questions [except for the 'extra-credit' one], you can find some answers RIGHT THERE in the story, just like the answer to the first one.)

 

[Aksel]

(extra credit)- In what significant manner does Wagner's Froh/Donner encounter with the Giants differ from the encounter as described in the Prose Edda Norse source material?

For one, the giants are dwarfs in the Edda, and there were three of them, Fafner (Fåvne from now on), Regin and Ótr (Oter from now on). Oter, in the form of an otter, was killed by Loge whilst he, Odin and Høne were out walking, and when they came to the home of the Dwarf King, Reidmar, they showed the skin of Oter to Reidmar and his sons, Regin and Fåvne. Because of this, the remaining giants got to fill the body of Oter with gold, the cursed gold of Andvari (remember Alberich?). Among this gold, was a magic ring (who'da thunk it, right?) that Fåvne took. Fåvne and Regin killed Reidmar over the gold and Fåvne went into the woods and turned himself into a giant serpent. Later, he was killed by Sigurd, son of Sigmund and Hjørdis, who later was known as Sigurd Fåvnesbane. Inhale.

EDIT: I didn't even answer the question. I am so smrt. But I couldn't find anything about any encounters between Fåvne/Regin and Frøy/Tor. Are they even relevant in Volsungesaga?

 

[Almaviva]

No. The Nibelungenlied is German.

I know, that's why I said *and* because the Ring is not just based on the Norse sagas, but I guess my phrase construction was ackward. I was replying to a question about the Norse sagas and didn't want to say they are *the* source material, so I added *and the Nibelungenlied* which as its name indicates is obviously German. I should have done it between parenthesis, I'll edit the post.

 

[mamascarlatti]

Was du bist, bist dur nur durch Verträge;
bedungen ist, wohl bedacht deine Macht.

What you are, you are only through treaties;
your power is based on carefully considered pacts.
Fasolt (to Wotan), "Das Rheingold" Scene II.

This reminder lets us know that Wotan's power (in its ascendency) is NOT unconditional, capricious, or subject to whim. It also serves to put us on notice that the more he seeks to subvert the conditions of his power, the more his power will, of necessitating pre-ordination wane.

The incipient Wotan questing for more and greater power can be unpleasant to watch- but we have Alberich on the scene to remind us that exercises of power can get A LOT more tyrranical than those shown by Wotan(!)

Just want to add, hence the significance of Wotan's spear, which is a symbol of the contracts on which his power is based, and which are written on the spear.

 

[superhorn]

Wotan is hungry for power ,the same as so many other movers and shakers in world history. He will do anything to get and keep it.If he has to manipulate others and rely on help from questionable sources like Loge, so be it.
He relies on his assumption that the giants are too stupid to see through him, and there he is dead wrong. They ARE rather slow-witted, but ARE smart enought o see through him. Wotan digs himself deeper and deeper into a hole of his own making throughout the Ring. The same as countless people in real life.

 

[TxllxT]

Just want to add, hence the significance of Wotan's spear, which is a symbol of the contracts on which his power is based, and which are written on the spear.

The spear, rheingold, tarnkappe, all these attributes I consider to be rather weak. Wotan without spear is lost, so is Alberich without tarnkappe and the Rhine maidens without their gold. Makes me think of nowadays youth without their Ipods....

 

[Chi_townPhilly]

If [Wotan] has to manipulate others and rely on help from questionable sources like Loge [emphasis mine], so be it.

I think we're onto something here.There's plenty of modern interpretive fashion that treats Loge as an affable, rakish agent-of-chaos and even secret protagonist in Rheingold. I think superhorn's point leads to increased accuracy in assessment of Loge- but that could well be a topic suitable for another thread, as it takes us a little afield of the header topic of Wotan.

Wotan is hungry for power, the same as so many other movers and shakers in world history. He will do anything to get and keep it.

I think this observation might be another matter, though. Is there agreement with this position? Does anyone here see things a little differently?!

 

[Elgarian]

The spear, rheingold, tarnkappe, all these attributes I consider to be rather weak. Wotan without spear is lost, so is Alberich without tarnkappe and the Rhine maidens without their gold. Makes me think of nowadays youth without their Ipods....

Natalie's point isn't about the spear, as a spear, but about the symbolic significance of the spear - that is, of the laws and contracts that it represents, which are crucial to any understanding of Wotan's plight. Hence the enormous significance of its final breaking. Wouldn't any symbol seem weak and uninteresting if we were to remove its symbolic context and see it just as a stage prop? (Or do you mean something different to what I think you mean?)

 

[Anselm]

When people talk about the plot of the Ring, the music usually winds up retreating backstage. That seems to me topsy-turvy, because the Ring is firstly a work of music, not of literature or drama. The music tells us what no words can. That's the logic of music. It's like summing up a poem, reading the plot summary of a novel or describing a painting - it's no substitute for the real thing. The meaning is in the expression. From this angle, I think it's more important to discuss the relationship between the music and the action when trying to ascribe meaning to what's going on on stage.

In Wagner's case, of course, the infamous "leitmotifs" tell us loads. When considering Wotan, the first thing we know about him, we hear. During the transition from the first to the second scene of Rheingold, the sinuous musical theme we've come to associate with the Ring itself becomes gradually transformed into a stately melody played on the brass. What we see in conjunction with this is Valhalla, and Wotan sleeping in the foreground. Straight away, the music imprints on our minds the indelible association between what we've experienced of the Ring so far (which is that it comes from nature and that it is capable of endowing whoever has it with limitless power, but only at the cost of forswearing love) on the one hand and Valhalla and Wotan on the other. Wotan is tainted in our imaginations before ever he opens his mouth, partly because we remember the origin of his apparently serene, predictable, stately theme in one that's incomplete and that therefore leaves us hanging. That's an intuition that can't be explained, but must be felt.

So yes, we can discuss Wotan's motivations, but all the time we should be going back to the music to truly understand it. Wotan doesn't exist as a real person, or even as a literary figure, but only as a musicodramatic one.

 

[Almaviva]

When people talk about the plot of the Ring, the music usually winds up retreating backstage. That seems to me topsy-turvy, because the Ring is firstly a work of music, not of literature or drama. The music tells us what no words can. That's the logic of music. It's like summing up a poem, reading the plot summary of a novel or describing a painting - it's no substitute for the real thing. The meaning is in the expression. From this angle, I think it's more important to discuss the relationship between the music and the action when trying to ascribe meaning to what's going on on stage.

In Wagner's case, of course, the infamous "leitmotifs" tell us loads. When considering Wotan, the first thing we know about him, we hear. During the transition from the first to the second scene of Rheingold, the sinuous musical theme we've come to associate with the Ring itself becomes gradually transformed into a stately melody played on the brass. What we see in conjunction with this is Valhalla, and Wotan sleeping in the foreground. Straight away, the music imprints on our minds the indelible association between what we've experienced of the Ring so far (which is that it comes from nature and that it is capable of endowing whoever has it with limitless power, but only at the cost of forswearing love) on the one hand and Valhalla and Wotan on the other. Wotan is tainted in our imaginations before ever he opens his mouth, partly because we remember the origin of his apparently serene, predictable, stately theme in one that's incomplete and that therefore leaves us hanging. That's an intuition that can't be explained, but must be felt.

So yes, we can discuss Wotan's motivations, but all the time we should be going back to the music to truly understand it. Wotan doesn't exist as a real person, or even as a literary figure, but only as a musicodramatic one.

Excellent point. I believe we are all aware that particularly in the Ring more than in any other opera, the music tells the story, but it is nice to reminded in such eloquent and insightful terms, thanks for your post.:tiphat:

 

[Sieglinde]

That's why I love Wotan.

But isn't Don Giovanni a spoiled, selfish brat too?

 

[TxllxT]

That's why I love Wotan.

But isn't Don Giovanni a spoiled, selfish brat too?

Love?? I do love Don Giovanni for being as utterly decadent as one is able to imagine a human being. But Wotan? When someone carries the sign around his neck: "I'm the Boss", does this mean that he is a boss? Don Giovanni's being decadent will remain so incorporated in his character even when you would strip him stark naked before throwing him down into hell. When Wotan looses his sign "I'm the Boss" (= the spear), he shows himself as a divine nobody . The only comfort I get out of him is his Leitmotiv. Mozart's Don Giovanni libretto is a literary masterpiece. Wagner's libretto is cut out of 19th century cardboard.

 

[Elgarian]

But Wotan? When someone carries the sign around his neck: "I'm the Boss", does this mean that he is a boss?

Well it might, in a Myth - perhaps even in reality (where wearing a crown may be an accepted symbol of kingship). I think if we treat the Ring just as a soap opera we run into a brick wall, and indeed everything would inevitably tend to seem cardboard-ish and unconvincing. But we're dealing with a particularly complex art form here, which draws not only on music, poetry and story, but also - because we're dealing with Myth - with archetypal elements of the kind that run through all the folk tales and myths of the world. If one approaches any myth with an expectation of literal, everyday sense, everything will unravel pretty quickly. I've long been of the view that any great art can be made to seem inadequate merely by approaching it with inappropriate criteria, and demanding that it fit them.

 

[TxllxT]

Well it might, in a Myth - perhaps even in reality (where wearing a crown may be an accepted symbol of kingship). I think if we treat the Ring just as a soap opera we run into a brick wall, and indeed everything would inevitably tend to seem cardboard-ish and unconvincing. But we're dealing with a particularly complex art form here, which draws not only on music, poetry and story, but also - because we're dealing with Myth - with archetypal elements of the kind that run through all the folk tales and myths of the world. If one approaches any myth with an expectation of literal, everyday sense, everything will unravel pretty quickly. I've long been of the view that any great art can be made to seem inadequate merely by approaching it with inappropriate criteria, and demanding that it fit them.

Wagner's mythical imagination has an inherent nationalistic (German) undercurrent, that can also be observed in the works of his dwarfish pupil Smetana, who also mixed legend & myth to prop his people's (Czech) nationalism. This kind of swampland I would like to address with common sense: it is great & grand musicdrama, let's be careful with 'loving' it.

 

[Elgarian]

This kind of swampland I would like to address with common sense: it is great & grand musicdrama, let's be careful with 'loving' it.

Yes, and we can do that. We can stand outside a myth and study it, and draw all kinds of interesting analytical (even common sense) connections, and indeed this is the sort of thing we do and are doing in this thread. The danger is that in studying it 'from outside' as it were, we may be misled after our efforts into thinking that we've got it sorted out. As with the analysis of a fine malt whisky, in studying its chemistry we may neglect to drink it, and thereby miss its entire raison d'etre.

So with Wotan. Theories about what Wotan stands for need to be distinguished from the result of diving into the world of the Ring and experiencing the complexity of the music, poetry, drama and myth directly. (Not to love it, but to taste it.)