[613W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 306-307]
[P. 306] For me my poem has only the following meaning:{FEUER} Depiction of reality in the sense indicated above. – Instead of the words:‘a gloomy day dawns on the gods: in shame shall end your noble race, if you do not give up the ring!’ I now make Erda say merely: ‘All that is – ends: a gloomy day dawns on the gods: I counsel you, shun the ring!’ – We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word: fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness, and this fear is generated only when love itself is [P. 307] beginning to wane. {FEUER} How did it come about that a feeling which imparts the highest bliss to all living things was so far lost sight of by the human race that everything that the latter did, ordered and established was finally conceived only out of a fear of the end? My poem shows the reason why. It shows nature in all its undistorted truth and essential contradictions, contradictions which in their infinitely varied manifestations embrace even what is mutually repellent.” [613W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 306-307]
[614W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[P. 307] {FEUER} “But it is not the fact that Alberich was repulsed by the Rhine-daughters which is the definitive source of all evil – for it was entirely natural for them to repulse him; no, Alberich and his ring could not have harmed the gods unless the latter had already been susceptible to evil. Where, then, is the germ of this evil to be found? Look at the first scene between Wodan and Fricka – which leads ultimately to the scene in the 2nd act of the Valkyrie. {FEUER} The firm bond whichbinds them both, sprung from the involuntary error of a love that seeks to prolong itself beyond the stage of necessary change and to obtain mutual guarantees in contravention of what is eternally new and subject to change in the phenomenal world – this bond constrains them both to he mutual torment of a loveless union.” [614W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[615W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[P. 307] {FEUER} “ … the remainder of the poem is concerned to show hownecessary it is to acknowledge change, variety, multiplicity and the eternal newness of reality and of life, and to yield to that necessity. Wodan rises to the tragic heights of willing his own destruction. This is all that we need to learn from the history of mankind: to will what is necessary and to bring it about ourselves. {FEUER} The final creative product of this supreme, self-destructive will is a fearless human being, one who never ceases to love: Siegfried. – That is all.” [615W-{1/25-26/54}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[616W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[P. 307] “ … the pernicious power that poisons love is concentrated in the gold that is stolen from nature and put to ill use, the Nibelung’s ring: the curse that clings to it is not lifted until it is
