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Title Page
Dedication Page
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Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for key references
Guide to abbreviations used in text
Allen Dunning's numbered Guide to the Ring's Musical Motifs
Detailed Table of Contents

The Ring

Introduction


References
Appendix I
Appendix I I

Key Colour Coding

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I would be grateful for donations of any size, small or large, to help defray the cost (1) of maintaining this website, (2) and to finance my past and present research which produced my book posted here, Volume One of "The Wound That Will Never Heal," and my forthcoming revision of Volume One (to be submitted for publication), and completion of Volume Two on Wagner's six other canonic operas and music-dramas. I sacrificed at least seven years of paid employment and incurred debts to complete this project, and am currently unemployed, so I thank you in advance for any financial help you can provide. Your friend, Paul Heise.

[[#37]] “Loveless” World

Otherwise known as the “Motif of Woman’s Worth” – This motif, a sign for the motif from which it is derived, #18, is the embodiment of man’s “Fall,” through his acquisition of reflective consciousness, the anguish or “Noth” which is the price of consciousness

(#37 based on #18b; it influences many other motifs)

 

"Wotan: Keep your promised word! (…)

 

Loge: Ingratitude is ever Loge’s wage. For your [Wotan and the gods’] sake alone, I looked all around me, stormily scouring the ends of the earth, (#37 Vari?) seeking a ransom for Freia that the giants might approve. I sought in vain and see full well: in the whole wide world there’s naught so rare as to strike mankind as a worthy ransom for [[ #37 ]] woman's delights and worth.

 

([[ #38 ]]; #24: All express astonishment and various forms of consternation)

 

Wherever there’s life and breath in water, earth and air, I asked a good deal, inquired of all, where the life-force moves and seedbuds stir: what might man deem mightier (#24) (#37) than woman’s delights and worth? But wherever there’s life and breath, my inquisitive skill was laughed to scorn: in water, earth and air none will relinquish love and woman.

 

(#24: General Agitation)

 

Only one man I saw (#12) who forswore love’s delights: for the sake of red gold he forwent women’s favours. (#16?) The Rhine’s fair children (#5) complained to me of their “Noth”: the Nibelung, Night-Alberich, (#4) wooed in vain for the nixies’ favours; the thief robbed the (#12) Rhinegold then in revenge: (#19) it seems to him now the rarest jewel, (#37?) greater than woman’s grace.”

[[#38]] Musical prologue to Loge's narrative about the impossibility of finding a substitute for love

(#38 based on #2 and #14; related to #175)

[See #37 for #38’s dramatic context]