Elaine Meinel Supkis
Part II of the Madness of Builders: Der Ring Die Nibelungen is the perfect metaphor for the Autumn days of the once mighty American Empire. It shows us how the New World Order won't be us in charge but rather, an overthrowing of the present system.
This epic opera remains to this day, a giant edifice within the world of opera. It, like the storyline’s protaganist, Wotan, is over ambitious and willfully powerful and like within itself, the hubris that brings destruction down upon Valhalla and Wotan mirrored the same forces that destroyed Hitler and Germany.
HItler loved this opera above all others. The Wagner family had this opera performed at Bayrueth at frequent intervals. This town’s main business was to host Wagner’s operas every summer. Wagner’s second wife, a woman very much like Frika, Wotan’s imperious wife in the opera, hosted parties for Hitler and was an ardent anti-semite like her husband.
The opera opens with the cavorting Rhine maidens teasing a rapacious dwarf, Alberich. They are guardians of the Rhinegold, the magic of sex and power. This power flows from the sun and from internal energy produced by organic matter as well as water flowing. Tying this together is sexual energy.
The dwarf, in retaliation to the relentless playful teasing of the Rhine Maidens, steals this power and turns the raw energy into a system that gives power to whoever holds it. The potent power of energy harnessed by machines made from material dug out of the earth is the underlying force in this interesting opera.The potent power overwhelms the mind of the dwarf wielding it and he becomes brutal and oppressive as he protects himself emotionally by abusing the wealth this energy showers upon him. In Norse mythology, he uses this power to seduce the goddesses as well as queens who prostitute themselves to him for a share of this wealth and power.
Wotan knows his life isn’t eternal but to protect himself and his family of gods, he decides to build Valhalla, a major construction project that only the Giants can do. To pay for the Giants, he needs funds and to get these funds, he needs to steal it from the dwarf.
Using trickery, he succeeds. The dwarf curses him and the Ring of Power. After this point, all the tricks and strategems of Wotan only make things worse and worse as he struggles to reconcile his original crime with his desire for total security and eternal life.
It ends when his daughter, Brünnhilda, explains everything and then throws herself, the Ring of Power and her dead lover on a funeral pyre and destroys not just these things but sets all of Valhalla on fire, destroying Wotan and everything he built.
The Zeitgeist of Germany when this opera was written was very upbeat. Under the astute leadership of Bismark, one of history’s infrequent geniuses in statecraft and war, the Second Empire was built on the fractured ruins of the previous Holy Roman Empire that rotted and collapsed in the religious fratricidal wars that wracked Europe from 1500 onwards. New flags flapped in the wind and the wind was blowing for Germany. Brimming with the released energy of the German people who suddenly saw all barriers collapse and a new sense of nationalism and unity swept the populace, all the fruits of the Romantic Movement were suddenly concentrated in Germany.
The new empire swept into war and overthrew the French Empire, forcing the heir of Napoleon to flee. As Germany strengthened its own state, France had another revolution and reaction which made France look weaker than Germany. The mature British Empire was the only power standing in the way of Germany’s expansion.
In this heady mix, Wagner wrote an opera that clearly showed the dire results of all this. Precient and unprecedented, it dared to show not just the end of power in Germany but nuclear war. The power elite as well as the dwarves and giants on earth, were swept away in a massive fire/flood. This dark vision of the future was hidden by the garb of Dark Age mythology. But the story makes it clear: the hubris of the ruling elites desiring total security and complete power dooms them to destruction for their own actions insure their own defeats.
All great powers that try to freeze everything in place end up conspiring to commit crimes, murder and mayhem in this Quixotic quest and thus, create what they fear.
Germantic romantic culture has spread throughout our own culture for it is very compelling as well as frightful. Just like the rich burden of Italian culture or French sensibilities overwhelms anyone who tries to digest it all, these powerful forces shape our view of the universe quite literally in Einstein’s case, all the stuff flowing from the former Holy Roman Empire still troubles our sleep and lures us into the same traps that caught Wotan so totally.
The Ring cycle is today by far the most influential opera on stage. Many opera houses count on Wagner Ring cycles for making money in summer just as the Nutcracker Ballet makes money in winter. This mirrors today’s Zeitgeist in America and Europe: a desire to steal energy and live in Valhalla while forcing the Giants and Dwarves, China and all the third world workers and peasants, to toil for us as we sit on our side of the Rainbow Bridge, having sex, eating and drinking merrily. This plan has flaws for the Dwarves are actively fighting back and the Giants are nearly done with their labors and will soon ask for us to honor our IOUs we have handed them as if there is no tomorrow.
Using the power of the Giants and Dwarves, we have built many palaces and giant towers. The biggest industry in America now is selling the labor of the Giants in the form of industrial goods produced in Asia and exploiting the Dwarves, illegal aliens, making them build our McValhallas for a pittance. Like in the Wagner opera, we mainly produce death equipment as our sole industry is now military stuff. To pay for this stuff, we sell weapons all over the planet and then we wail with fear as the world becomes more and more dangerous.
LOGEWhat can equal
your luck, Wotan?
Great your gain
when you won the ring;
still more it profits (benefits) you
now that it is taken(as payment);
for see, your foes
fell (fighting) each other
for the gold that you gave up.WOTAN
Yet how anxiety weighs upon me!
Dread and fear
are a ball and chain in my mind;
how to end it
Erda must teach me:
I must go down to her (and have sex).
Like in the operas, the Giants fight and then the winner becomes a dragon, Fafnir. This dragon can only be slain by a pure hero but this same person is directly responsible for destroying everyone including himself because he is rash and stupid.
China is aware of the dangers of rash stupidity and they are very wary about Bush and his pseudo-heroism and the American people have followed this coward pretending to be Siegfried and thus, ended up being defeated by tribes of dwarves, the barely armed people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The dwarf in North Korea was smarter than the other dwarves and has armed himself with a small Ring of Power but it is enough to protect himself from the crazed American AWOL false Siegfried. Siegfried likes to talk about ‘victory’ all the time just like Hitler but victory is eluding him because he has no personal power, he is a feeble shell of a man.
The Dragon curls around the dwarf in North Korea and protects him but it can also crush him if he gives it too much annoyance. The Dragon knows that Siegfried and his Pentagon pals plan to kill it and it is taking many measures to prevent this crime. But all its efforts will be for naught if the rash fake hero feels he has to do the deed. This is why he works so frantically on building Valhalla America: a fortress that is unassailable.
Except it isn’t. And like the operatic painted backdrops lit up like fire as the music thunderously destroys it all, so will America fall to the thunder of thousands of nuclear bombs if we try and fail to take down the Dragon.
Like Germany before WWI and WWII, America is filled with fatalists who think it would be a good thing to have a final confrontation that will seperate the goats and the sheep, the dwarves and giants defeated while the hero dies and all lies in ruins, to be reborn as a New World Order wherein only the innocent and the good remain.
In the opera, it is the cheeky, laughing, sexually active females who are irresponsible and careless who survive.
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 18, 2006; Page A01
President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone "hostile to U.S. interests."The document, the first full revision of overall space policy in 10 years, emphasizes security issues, encourages private enterprise in space, and characterizes the role of U.S. space diplomacy largely in terms of persuading other nations to support U.S. policy.
When writing about all this, one can't help but notice how the grandest of all space operas, the Star Wars epic, is similiar to and based on the Ring of the Nibelungen. And it, too, senses something is very wrong with our future plans for a Valhallian power, our plans for the Dwarves and Giants of the Earth. Lucas doesn't have the depth of Wagner to see the logical conclusion, he has a happy, Nüremberg Rally ending to his saga.
But as time passed and Lucas aged, he fell more and more into the same spell that captured Wagner's mind. His last film was totally dark and the logic of the earlier movies fades in the face of the Dark Force triumphant for the entire culture is dark in the Revenge of the Sith.
The Valkyrie are Yoda and his clique of warriors and Sieglinde is Darth Vader's illicit wife who also bears fatal twins who are doomed to destroy their father. All this was washed out of the Return of the Jedi. I greatly dislike that movie because it isn't serious like the second Star Wars movie that has the true glimpse of the utter despair of the last movie in this long series.
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