As is well-known, the heroines in Richard Wagner’s works tend to share one obvious quality: they frequently appear as women redeemers, and Brüunnhilde is probably the most famous example of this kind. Occasionally, Wagner’s idea of ‘redemption’ has ev ...
As is well-known, the heroines in Richard Wagner’s works tend to share one obvious quality: they frequently appear as women redeemers, and Brüunnhilde is probably the most famous example of this kind. Occasionally, Wagner’s idea of ‘redemption’ has even been recognised as a particularly ‘female’ quality. As regards Der Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner, the redemption idea seems to be more related to Brünhilde than to Siegfried: first, Brünhilde represents the reconciliation between Wotan and Siegmund. Secondly, she experiences the sacrifice of falling asleep due to her compassion. Thirdly, she even becomes like a human being: the various human feelings like love, pain, frustration, and repentance are powerfully projected through her character. When considering the long process of the emergence of the Ring cycle, however, Wagner’s conception of the free-willed hero as a redeemer offers a perspective that is more interesting. Whereas Wagner’s concept of Brünhilde remained almost the same from the first draft of Siegfried’s Tod in 1848 to the completion of the Ring cycle in 1874, the idea of Siegfried as a redeemer underwent a process of significant change and refinement. Therefore, the central interest of the present essay is how Wagner’s concept of Siegfried as a redeemer, and concurrently his notion of redemption in general, developed between Siegfried’s Tod and the final version of the Ring.
For this investigation, I shall view Wagner’s idea of redemption in a particularly religious way. In fact, the Ring is full of religious and mythological resources like sacrifice, rebirth, self-denial, purification, love, and betrayal. Moreover, Wagner planned to write two sacred dramas which clearly show his knowledge of various religious ideas. As a unique biblical reference, Wagner wrote a prose draft of a drama entitled Jesus of Nazareth between 1848 and 1849. the timing of its creation needs to be noted because in the air of the Dresden revolution (May 1849), it emerged soon after the creation of Siegfried’s Tod and was followed by his significant theoretical writings (Art and Revolution, The Art-Work of the Future, and Opera and Drama). While, in many respects, Jesus of Nazareth mainly involves the issue of the impending revolutionary atmosphere, it reveals Wagner’s basic notion of redemption and of a redeemer. As another reworking of a religious idea, namely that of ‘renunciation’ in 1856 after he had read Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation, Wagner sketched a Buddhist drama, The Victors (Die Sieger). This Buddhist idea adopted by Wagner seems to have enriched his previous understanding of the nature of religion. After all, Wagner may have taken the freedom to take any kind of stimulus from the various religious ideas that affect people’s mind. – One could argue that this approach would ignore Wagner’s well-known anti-Christian attitude. Thus, to investigate Wagner’s notion of redemption in the light of Christian and Buddhist notions of redemption, I shall first examine how Siegfried is presented as a redeeming hero in the Ring synopsis and in Siegfried’s Tod. The second section looks into Jesus of Nazareth and The Victors, and Wagner’s adoption of major religious ideas. The third section traces the way in which the redemption idea is embodied in the Ring, focussing on the main changes of the ending.