Gap [1] The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict (15 page)

My intentions were conceptual rather than literal. I wasn’t interested in simply retelling the story of Wotan’s doomed struggle to preserve the power of the gods in the face of pressure from giants, dwarves, and humankind. Rather I wanted to create an analogue which would allow me to explore the same themes and exigencies on my own terms. Most particularly, I was fascinated by Wotan himself, who finds that an understanding of his own power leads to the destruction of that power, as well as of himself and everything he represents; even more, that an understanding of his power leads him to
will
his own destruction.

But the idea remained utterly and entirely static—until 1987, when I realized that the world of Angus, Morn, and Nick offered me the perfect setting for the story I had in mind.

(In addition, of course, I realized that using
The Real Story
to launch a larger narrative gave me a perfect opportunity to make constructive use of the ways in which it didn’t measure up to my original intentions. The relative imbalance of the roles in the novella becomes a strength rather than a weakness when its implications can be pursued in subsequent books.
This
was the third, unconscious reason for my distress concerning
The Real Story.
My work there disturbed me because it wasn’t
complete
—and couldn’t be completed without the catalysis of a second idea.)

As the ending of
The Real Story
suggests, the relevance of Wagner’s epic to Angus’s fate may not be readily apparent. That’s the only excuse I can offer for my slowness to comprehend that Wagner and Angus needed each other.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whether afterwords are considered a pleasure or an affliction, I can’t explain the relevance without discussing
The Ring
in some detail.

Put simply, Wagner’s opera cycle tells the story of how the gods were brought down by two things: a bitter curse; and an act of unselfish heroism.

Das Rheingold

In a world where humankind is the weakest and least effective form of life, the gods (Wotan; Fricka, his wife, goddess of family and hearth; Donner, god of storm; Froh, god of light; Loge, god of fire; and Freia, goddess of eternal life) rule proudly—although they are neither the oldest nor the most potent forces or beings in their sphere. However, their power is precarious: It depends on their ability to compel submission from two magical and creative races, the giants (builders of large things) and the dwarves (builders of small things), both of which aspire to supplant the gods. Hungry for supremacy, Wotan has carved a staff from the World Tree; and into his staff he cuts the bargains and treaties he makes to consolidate his dominance, so that his authority becomes part of the natural order. But precisely because his rule is based on authority and law rather than on love or virtue, it inspires resentment. So, to make himself and the gods secure, he cuts a deal with the giants to build an impregnable fortress for him: Valhalla. His idea is to fill Valhalla with heroes to fight for him, so that he can resist any challenge from either giants or dwarves.

Two problems arise immediately, however: one of his own making, one outside his control.

The one he can’t control involves three watery females, the Rhine Maidens, and a dwarf, Alberich, who falls in lust with them. (All right, I admit it: I’ve never found the Rhine Maidens themselves especially convincing.) The Maidens were fathered by one of the aforementioned older beings, and their purpose in life (or at least in the Rhine) is to guard the Rhine Gold, one of the archetypal sources of power (like the World Tree). Now, the secret of the Rhine Gold is this: Any being who “foreswears love,” giving up all bonds of passion or commitment, takes the Gold, and forges it into a ring, will gain the power to impose his will on others. This the Maidens gleefully reveal to Alberich, primarily because they think his lust—and loneliness—are funny. (Characters with nothing better to do in a story than sit around being archetypal are often rather insensitive.)

But they underestimate the scale of his loneliness and desire. Taunted past bearing by beauties he cannot have, he does indeed foreswear love, take the Gold, and forge it into a ring. Before anyone notices what he’s up to, he gains dominion over all the dwarves, accumulates a vast treasure—and commences to plan his attack on the gods. Thus begins an evil which can only be ended by returning the Gold to the Maidens.

The problem Wotan could have avoided, if he were wiser—i.e., less hungry for power—is that for the sake of getting Valhalla built “on the cheap” he has made a bargain with the giants which he has no intention of keeping: He has offered them Freia (source of the gods’ immortality) in exchange for the fortress. This is manifestly misguided, since his supremacy depends on bargains and agreements; but he is young, strong, and arrogant—and he believes that once Valhalla is built he’ll be able to persuade the giants to accept some other payment.

No such luck. The giants want
Freia
, or to hell with Valhalla and the gods. (They realize, of course, that without her the gods can’t endure; so their insistence on correct payment is inspired by a desire to bring Wotan down.)

This is a terrible moment for Wotan—he’s doomed if he breaks his bargain, and doomed if he keeps it—but he isn’t yet wise enough to realize the full implications. Instead of facing up to the consequences of his own actions, he hits upon a solution of convenience. Maybe the giants will accept Alberich’s treasure (and ring) as payment in Freia’s place. The giants agree: they’ve heard about the ring.

At this point, Alberich’s only weakness is that he isn’t yet accustomed to the sheer size of his new power. He doesn’t really understand that he stands on the brink of godhood himself: He’s too busy enjoying his treasure—and his ability to torture his own people with impunity. In consequence, he’s vulnerable, not to force, but to trickery. Helped by the cunning of Loge, Wotan obtains the ring by subterfuge and immediately uses it to master both Alberich and the treasure.

This would be a self-destructive act on Wotan’s part in any case: He has no right to the ring, but he is immediately consumed by desire for its power. However, his position deteriorates further when Alberich curses the ring. Only in losing the ring does Alberich grasp its magnitude. In an apotheosis of grief and rage, he cries:

As its gold gave me power without limit,
now let its magic bring death to whoever wears it.
No happy man shall be glad of it,
no fortunate man know the smile of its bright gleam.
Whoever possess it shall be seared by anxiety,
and whoever has it not, shall be nagged by envy.
Everyone shall hanker for its possession
but no one enjoy it to advantage.
Without gain its master shall guard it,
for it draws him to his assassin.
Condemned to death the coward will be in fear’s grip.
As long as he lives he shall long for death,
the ring’s master be slave to the ring….

Now Wotan is in
real
trouble. The ring is cursed, but he desires it too much to give it up. Yet it is the only payment the giants will accept in Freia’s place. Without her, the gods must die. Wotan can’t simply declare war on the giants because the enforcement of his bargains is carved into his staff, the source of his power: to violate his own commitments will undo him. And the natural order of existence can only be restored by returning the Gold to the Rhine Maidens—which will force Freia into the hands of the giants.

At last Wotan begins to understand his plight. With a little help from Erda, the Earth Mother (another of those preexisting beings), he gains enough insight to realize that he must surrender the ring. So the giants take the ring; Freia remains with the gods; and Wotan gets Valhalla.

Alas, this is only a stop-gap resolution. The natural order is still in jeopardy. The ring remains a threat to the gods. And the curse
works:
The giants proceed
to
slaughter each other until only one remains to hold the ring; and that one sequesters himself (as a dragon), dedicating his entire being to the simple goal of preventing anyone from getting the ring away from him.

Die Walküre

Wotan is now obsessed with understanding his dilemma. After some intensive study with Erda (study which just happens to produce eight daughters—the Valkyries), he learns that the only cure for the evil of the ring is to return the Gold to the Maidens. Unfortunately, he can’t do that: He can’t get the ring away from the dragon without breaking his bargain with the giants. However, in due course he hits on the only apparent solution to the problem: He decides to use an agent to obtain the ring for him.

First, on a human woman he gets himself a son, Siegmund (and, not coincidentally, a daughter as well, Sieglinde, Siegmund’s twin). Then he trains his son to be strong, brave, and
desperate
enough to tackle a dragon. Sadly, this training involves separating Siegmund and Sieglinde and abandoning them both to lives of extreme loneliness, abuse, and danger. Neither of them has any idea that their father loves them—and needs them. All they know of life is bitter survival against cruel odds.

Too bad. Wotan’s plan was flawed from the beginning—a fact that becomes transparent when Siegmund and Sieglinde find each other and fall in love (she gets pregnant). This attracts the attention of Fricka: As goddess of matrimony, she’s responsible for punishing sins like incest. She forces Wotan to recognize that any agent of his is no different from him; that for Siegmund to get the ring will be the same as if Wotan himself took it. Therefore Wotan can’t use Siegmund to solve his problems for him; and so he has no defense against Fricka’s argument that Siegmund and Sieglinde must die for their crime. Broken-hearted—and aware of his own doom—Wotan commands his favorite Valkyrie, Brünnhilde, to make sure that Siegmund and Sieglinde are killed by Hunding, Sieglinde’s rapist/husband.

It is Brünnhilde’s act of unselfish heroism which changes the nature of the dilemma.

As Wotan’s favorite, she thinks of herself as his will incarnate. However, his pain when he condemns Siegmund and Sieglinde moves her deeply. And she is further distraught by Siegmund’s passionate and fatal loyalty to Sieglinde. At the last, the Valkyrie chooses not to help Hunding execute Siegmund. Instead, she fights for Siegmund against Hunding, directly defying Wotan, the All-Father.

Outraged, Wotan intervenes personally, killing both Siegmund and Hunding. In the confusion, however, Brünnhilde escapes with Sieglinde. If Siegmund cannot be saved, perhaps his son can be preserved. She helps Sieglinde flee into a trackless forest (the same forest, incidentally, where the dragon guards his treasure), then turns to face Wotan’s wrath (thereby buying Sieglinde time to run).

Because she has opposed him, Wotan condemns Brünnhilde to an enchanted sleep, from which she can only be awakened by the shame of being “taken” as a mortal’s lover. And because he loves her, he guards her sleep with a fire which will prevent any man who isn’t utterly fearless from approaching her.

Siegfried

Sieglinde, meanwhile, struggles on into the forest. Close to death, she comes upon a cave where Mime, Alberich’s brother, has been living ever since Alberich’s hold over the dwarves was broken. Mime keeps her alive until her son, Siegfried, is born; after she dies in childbirth, he raises young Siegfried with one goal in mind: to make Siegfried utterly fearless so that he’ll be brave enough to fight the the dragon and get the ring for his foster father.

Like most plans in this story, Mime’s proves flawed. For one thing, both Wotan and Alberich know what he’s doing—and Alberich has plans of his own. For another, Mime succeeds only too well: He teaches Siegfried to be
so
fearless that Siegfried can’t stand the sight of his craven foster father and won’t do anything for the dwarf. Trying to trick him, Mime tells Siegfried he’ll learn something wonderful—fear—if he meets the dragon; so Siegfried decides to accept the adventure, despite his loathing for Mime. But this, too, doesn’t work out well for poor Mime.

Instead of learning fear, Siegfried kills the dragon (laughing all the way) and gets the ring; in addition, he captures a magic talisman, the tarnhelm, which makes him a shape-changer, and gains from the dragon’s blood the ability to understand birds. At once, a bird tells him that Mime is about to poison him. In righteous indignation, Siegfried kills Mime. Then the bird tells him about Brünnhilde. Hungry for more adventures, he goes off to rescue her.

Along the way, he encounters Wotan, who forbids him to approach the magic fire. But Siegfried is nothing if not self-willed: Oblivious to symbolism, he breaks Wotan’s spear and continues his quest to rescue the enchanted woman.

(Without his spear, of course, Wotan is finished. In fact, he had reason to believe that his spear wouldn’t stop the boy. His decision to challenge Siegfried regardless is complex. On the one hand, he knows that if his spear can’t stop Siegfried the gods are doomed anyway: They’ll never be able to control whatever use is made of the ring. On the other, he understands that unless his spear—his rule—is shattered, the world will never be free of the destructive effects of his bargains. He challenges Siegfried in an attempt to simultaneously save and destroy himself.)

Götterdammerung

In a manner of speaking, Siegfried is a dream come true for Brünnhilde—a mortal so heroic that he might as well be a god. She gives him her heart, as well as a spell to protect him from any danger as long as he doesn’t turn his back on it; and he goes out into the world to have more adventures so that she’ll be proud of him. (I should perhaps have mentioned earlier that Siegfried isn’t very bright.)