restored to nature and until the gold has been returned to the Rhine. This, too, becomes clear to Wodan only at the very end, once he has reached the final goal of his tragic career; in his lust for power, he had utterly ignored what Loge had so frequently and so movingly warned him of at the beginning of the poem; initially – thanks to Fafner’s deed – he learned to recognize the power of the curse; but not until the ring proves the ruin of Siegfried, too, does he see that only by restoring to the Rhine what had been stolen from its depths can evil be destroyed, and that is why he makes his own longed-for downfall a pre-condition of the extirpation of a most ancient wrong. Experience is everything.“ [616W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[617W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[P. 307] {FEUER} “Not even Siegfried alone (man alone) is the complete ‘human being’: he is merely the half, only with Bruennhilde does he become the redeemer: one man alone cannot do everything; many are needed, and a suffering, self-immolating woman finally becomes the true, conscious redeemer: for it is love which is really ‘the eternal feminine’ itself.” [617W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
[618W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 308]
[P. 308] “ … I believe it was a true instinct that led me to guard against an excessive eagerness to make things plain, for I have learned to feel that to make one’s intentions too obvious risks impairing a proper understanding of the work in question; in drama – as in any work of art --, it is a question of making an impression not by parading one’s opinions but by setting forth what is instinctive. It is precisely this that distinguishes my poetic material from the political material which is virtually all that is current today.” [618W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 308]
[619W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 308]
[P. 308] “Following his farewell to Bruennhilde, Wodan is in truth no more than a departed spirit: true to his supreme resolve, he must now allow events to take their course, leave things as they are, and nowhere interfere in any decisive way; that is why he has now become the ‘Wanderer’: {FEUER} observe him closely! He resembles us to a tee; he is the sum total of present-day intelligence, whereas Siegfried is the man of the future whom we desire and long for but who cannot be made by us, since he must create himself on the basis of our own annihilation.” [619W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 308]
[620W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 308-309]
[P. 308] {FEUER} “ … my hero should not leave behind the impression of a totally unconscious [P. 309] individual: on the contrary, in Siegfried I have tried to depict what I understand to be the most perfect human being, whose highest consciousness expresses itself in the fact that all consciousness manifests itself solely in the most immediate vitality and action: the enormous significance I attach to this consciousness - which can almost never be stated in words – will become clear to you from Siegfried’s scene with the Rhine-daughters; here we learn that Siegfried is infinitely wise, for he knows the highest truth, that death is better than a life of fear: he, too, knows all about the ring, but
