Simon Weil's Wagner and the Jews - 4 of 8

[Claire McIntosh]

Simon Weil's Wagner and the Jews - 4 of 8

CHAPTER 4: THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG

Part I

Wagner wrote his Ring cycle of operas during his revolutionary period
(or at least the libretti for them). It is to these operas that we now
turn. The operas came freighted with the most tremendous expectations
from Wagner. Although the librettos were ready within 4 years, with
the writing of the music, they took him over 25 years to complete.
This was his masterwork, lasting 15 hours spread over 3 days and a
preceding evening. It tells the story of the Gods, from the building
of their palace Valhalla to its destruction - but there are many other
themes intertwined with this.

The Ring is constructed out of filleted and redistributed versions of
myths and stories from Teutonic culture. The result is a remarkably
seamless effort which convinced people that they were experiencing
something deeply rooted in the German past. Because of The Ring's
psychological acuteness, however, it has also had a value across
cultural and political divides. If nothing else, one has to admire
Wagner for the psychological insights he is capable of providing.

The libretti for The Ring were completed in 1853. This meant that,
although the work was not finally staged until 1876, its conception
was firmly rooted in Wagner's revolutionary period. In contrast,
Wagner's musical style changed over the cycle's composition. There is
a particularly noticeable leap in Siegfried, the third opera of the
cycle. In the middle of composing the music for this Wagner wrote two
other operas. He returned to The Ring with a style that had deepened.

We can say, therefore, that the text of The Ring did not change
substantially from the version he wrote during his revolutionary
period. The one thing that Wagner did make changes with was with a
speech (by Brunnhilde) at the end of the Gotterdammerung. This speech
was to precede the destruction of Valhalla and, to some extent, to
explain it. In the end Wagner just left it out.

A persistent theme in Wagner's private statements is the idea that
people have not understood his work properly. The quote at the
beginning of the book is an example of this view. Here are a couple of
quotes about The Ring:

"I can think of a performance [of The Ring] only after the revolution.
Only the revolution can provide me with the artists and the listeners.
The coming revolution must necessarily put an end to the whole of our
theatrical enterprises. All of them must and will perish, it is
inevitable. From the ruins I shall then find those whom I need. Then I
shall erect a theatre on the banks of the Rhine and issue invitations
to a great dramatic festival. After a years preparation, I shall
present my complete work in a series of 4 days: with this I shall make
the men of the revolution recognise the meaning of the revolution
according to its most noble contents. That Audience will understand me
the present cannot." / Burrell Collection Letters p626 to Uhlig
12/11/1851

"..the multitude leaves me indifferent...it can't grasp what I am
driving at...my only holdfast is the individual in whom I can see that
through my art I have preached to his conscience...and made him a
fellow-combatant against the good-for-nothing reign of "worldly
wisdom." / Family Letters p180-1 21/3/1852

If there is a problem with understanding his work, one would like to
know how to go about understanding it properly.

"Wigand is publishing a pamphlet of mine, Art and Revolution...it will
be a precursor - as soon as I set to work again I shall follow it up
by one of greater detail, The Artwork of the Future, to which,
afterwards a third, The Artists of the Future, will form the
conclusion....It is most essential that I should accomplish this work
and send it into the world before going on with my immediate artistic
productions .... If I accomplish this to my satisfaction, I shall then
set to work at the music of my Siegfried; for that is what I yearn
after with all my soul's desire..." / Letters to Uhlig etc. p7
16/9/1849

Siegfried here refers to Siegfried's Death, which (renamed as
Gotterdammerung) became the last opera in The Ring cycle. So here
Wagner is saying that if you want to understand The Ring you have to
read his writings. He repeated his idea to Uhlig two years later. On
receiving his copy of A Communication to My Friends he said (in some
exasperation):

"What can I still say if now my friends do not clearly understand...I
have left nothing undone in order to make myself intelligible." /
Ibid. p165 (?)1/1/1852

Altogether these statements provide three sorts of individuals who
understand Wagner's works: Revolutionaries; people who become
"fellow-combatants"; people who come to an understanding of Wagner's
"artistic being" as a result of reading his revolutionary tracts.
Well, how about us? Can we come to an understanding of The Ring? I
believe we can. We start with this statement:

"..my Nibelung drama...had taken form when I had built up an
optimistic world...believing that, in order to realise such a world,
it was only necessary for man to wish it...I remember that I conceived
the personality of Siegfried with the intention of representing an
existence free of pain [Siegfried is often characterised as wooden].
But I meant in the presentation of the whole Nibelung myth to express
my meaning more clearly by showing how from the first wrong-doing a
world of evil arose, and consequently fell to pieces, in order to
teach us the lesson that we must recognise evil and tear it up by the
roots, and raise in its stead a righteous world..." / Letters to
Rockel VI p149 23/8/1856

Here Wagner is talking about his original intent for The Ring. This
was to teach a moral lesson. We will look at its content - "to
recognise evil and tear it up by the roots" - shortly, but first we
need to know how the composer thought of the world at the time.

Part II

The first quote we have about The Ring is from April 1 1848, when
Devrient reports that Wagner plans to produce an opera about
Siegfried. "On October 4 1848, the composer completed The Nibelung
Legend - the first evidence from Wagner's hand. In quick succession he
then produced the prose draft of Siegfried's Tod (20 October) and the
verse draft of Siegfried's Tod (12-28 November)." All this time Wagner
himself was a revolutionary. For the composer himself declares that in
1847-8:

"I had arrived at the point where I was in a position to thoroughly
recognise the necessity of the commencing Revolution of 1848..." / A
Communication to my Friends PW1 p355 1851

So Wagner was a revolutionary by late February 1848, when the
Revolution began. In line with this, on May 19th he wrote to one of
the delegates of the German National assembly asking for "The
immediate introduction of the system of arming the people" and looking
to place the German Princes "in the dock". He also wanted the
Parliament to "revolutionise the individual States" (Altmann Letters
Vol. I).

On June 1st 1848 a poem signed by Wagner appeared in a Viennese paper.
The second verse has:

"...The bonds that knit our slavery,/Those bonds have now been
broken./The tempest no man could escape,/And whom it struck, he
fell;/The foes who Freedom's fame would rape,/Full soon they heard
their knell."/ / Greetings From Saxony to the Viennese 1848 PW8 p215

The poem concludes with the sort of rhetorical question you might
address to a crowd you wanted to incite:

"....shall we do, or cower?" / Ibid. p217

On the same day Eduard Devrient met with Wagner (as he often did
during the revolutionary period). They had already talked politics in
March, April and May (in April Wagner had seen "treachery and malice
everywhere") :

"..we again talk furiously about politics. He [Wagner] wants to
destroy to produce the new world, I want to transform what exists..."
/ Tagebucher Vol. I p439 1/6/1848

On June 14 1848, Wagner delivered a speech (The Fatherland Speech PW4
p136-45). In it he called for, amongst other things, "the extinction
of the last glimmer of aristocratism" and the abolition of Money. If
his demands were not met, he suggested that:

"Outraged nature [might] gird herself for a battle of brute force
[which] would root up every trace of ...two thousand years of
civilisation..." / Ibid. p140

Devrient called the speech "Wagner's mad manifesto", which seems fair.
Later in the Summer the composer visited Vienna. He met Eduard
Hanslick:

"Wagner was full of politics: he expected that the victory of the
revolution would bring about a complete rebirth of art, society and
religion, a new theatre, a new music..." / Wagner Handbook p161

This is broadly the Wagner of the 1849-51 writings.

Indeed, on 21/10/1848 Eduard Devrient has a reference to Wagner's
Utopia:

"Now a united Germany is no longer enough for him...He wants a united
Europe in which a united mankind will be free." / Tagebucher I
Devrient p451

In June Wagner had wanted to abolish Money. In December 1848, the two
had a long conversation following a reading of an early version of
Gotterdammerung. They came to:

"...Wagner's hobby horse, the destruction of Money [die Vernichtung
des Kapitals]." / Ibid. p457 2/12/1848

So we can see Wagner was a dedicated revolutionary through the whole
time he was working on his early versions of the Siegfried opera.
Whatever the detailed meaning of Wagner's 1856 statement, there is one
thing that can be said. If a revolutionary says he wants to tear evil
up by the roots, he is thinking about Revolution. As Siegfried's Death
was intended to get people to do this, it must have started out as an
incitement to Revolution.

This fits with the three sorts of individuals who will understand
Wagner's works - Revolutionaries; people who become
"fellow-combatants" as a result of his Art; and people who come to an
understanding of Wagner's "artistic being" as a result of reading his
revolutionary tracts.

Part III

In November 1851 Wagner explicitly states that he sees The Ring as a
revolutionary metaphor (He's going to use it to explain the meaning of
the Revolution). As we know, the revolutionaries were supposed to be
the mob. I cannot see how Wagner could have hoped to explain the
meaning of the Revolution to such relatively simple individuals if The
Ring itself did not contain a representation of the Revolution. This
means that something in the cycle must be an allegory for this
massively destructive event.

"All that remains for me to indicate here is what, given my present
standpoint, I must now feel urged to do if I and the rest of mankind
are to draw nearer the goal which I know has been set for
mankind...This is where my art must come to the rescue: and the work
of art I had no choice but to conceive in this sense is none other
than my Nibelung poem." / SLE p306 25-26/1/1854

The "goal which [Wagner] knows has been set for mankind" is his Utopia
built on Love. The Ring started out as an incitement to the Revolution
which was going to lead Man into that Utopia. So this is effectively a
confirmation of the cycle as revolutionary tract. In the same letter,
Wagner describes Brunnhilde's self-immolation - the culminating act of
the cycle - which brings The Ring to an end in mass destruction by
burning up everything in sight thus:

".. a suffering, self-immolating woman finally becomes the true,
conscious redeemer: for it is love itself which is really 'the eternal
feminine' itself." / SLE p307 25-26/1/1854

Compare this with:

... how shall it seem to us if the monster that is Paris is burned to
the ground, if the conflagration spreads from town to town, and if we
ourselves, in our wild enthusiasm, finally set fire to these
uncleansable Augean stables for the sake of a breath of fresh air? -
With complete level-headedness and with no sense of dizziness, I
assure you that I no longer believe in any revolution save that which
begins with the burning down of Paris ...... Strong nerves will be
needed, and only true human beings will survive the revolution, i.e.
those whose humanity is the product of need and the most grandiose
terror....our redeemer will destroy with furious speed all that stands
in our way! ... There is only one [italics] step to be taken; and that
step is imperatively necessary. ... we need a fire-cure to remedy
(i.e. destroy) the cause of our illness - a cause that is all around
us. We shall return then to a state of nature ..." / SLE p217-220
22.11.1850 Letter to Uhlig

In the letter to Uhlig revolution is described as "our redeemer"
destroying everything. We know that this is to occur through burning.
But Brunnhilde is likewise the "redeemer" bringing everything to
destruction through burning. If The Ring contains a representation of
the Revolution, this would appear to be it. As we know the ending of
Wieland has the Revolution represented by similar mass-destruction by
burning. There are some other quotes that bear on this:

"Wodan [Wotan] rises to the tragic heights of willing his own
destruction. That is all we need to learn from the history of
humanity: to will what is necessary and to bring it about ourselves.
The final product of this supreme, self-destructive will is a fearless
human being, one who never ceases to love: Siegfried" / SLE p307
25-26/1/1854

"Following his farewell from Brunnhilde, Wodan...has now become the
'Wanderer'...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." / SLE p308
25-26/1/1854

If we combine these quotes, we can see that "the sum-total of
present-day intelligence" (Wotan in his role as the Wanderer) rises to
the tragic heights of wishing [its] own destruction. That is it sees
that it must have Wagner's massively destructive revolution. This
implies that Wagner sees Wotan's self-destruction as the present day
contriving its own destruction in favour of the Utopian future - as a
metaphor for the Revolution. But Wotan's (= The present day's)
destruction occurs as part of Brunnhilde's massive act of destruction
at the end of The Ring. Or to put it another way, the end of the cycle
incorporates a symbolic version of the Revolution.

Part IV

The Ring, logically, is about a ring. Alberich the Nibelung, an ugly
dwarf, had been watching some river spirits (the Rhinemaidens)
cavorting in the Rhine. His lusts rose but the Rhinemaidens spurned
him. In a fit of pique he steals their gold, the Rhinegold. Listening
to them, he has learnt that it can be converted into a ring that will
give him mastery of the world. He has, however, to forego love in
order to gain this power. He has no problem with this and starts on
the road to world domination. Unfortunately he only gets as far as
dominating his fellow dwarves, the Nibelungs. Wotan, the chief of the
Gods tricks him out of the Ring and uses it to help pay off the
mortgage on his palace, Valhalla.

Alberich, miffed once more, curses the Ring. Henceforth everyone who
possesses it will come to a bad, unfortunate or untimely end. The Gods
themselves become corrupted (although Wotan only possesses it to pass
it on to his creditors) and Wotan decides to end it all.

Many hours later this end comes to pass in the burning of Valhalla.
All the Gods perish in the conflagration. But at the same time the
Ring is returned to Nature, being recaptured by the Rhinemaidens. Thus
the evil power of the Ring is removed at the same time as the society
which it has corrupted (that of the Gods) is destroyed.

"...I meant in the presentiment of the whole Nibelung myth to express
my meaning more clearly, by showing how the first wrong-doing a world
of evil arose, and consequently fell to pieces in order to teach us
the lesson, that we must recognise evil and tear it up by the roots,
and raise in its stead a righteous world..."

The first wrong-doing is the stealing of the gold:

"The gold is in itself only a shining ornament in the depths of the
waves..but it possesses another power, which only he who renounces
love can succeed in drawing from it.” / Letters to Uhlig etc.
12/11/1851 p139

To use the power of the Ring, one must renounce love. Love and the
power of the Ring are at opposite poles - an idea Wagner extends when
he tells Roeckel:

"The actual poison of love, the power of evil, is concentrated
in...the Ring". / S.B. VI p68 25-26/1/1854

So Wagner's original intent seems to have been "to teach us the
lesson, that we must recognise ‘the actual poison of love, the power
of evil’ and tear it up by the roots, and raise in its stead a
righteous world...". We know that he was a revolutionary at this time.
But, in Wagner's revolutionary theory, the power of evil -
concentrated Egoism - is Money.

So, was the Ring meant as some sort of analogue of Money? Here's
Wagner's view of Money in 1848 - when he was just setting out on The
Ring:

"...the question of the root of all the misery in our present social
state... [It] must be decided whether Man...were meant by God to serve
in menial bondage to the stubbornest, the most lifeless product in all
Nature, to sallow metal...whether Money is to be left to stunting the
fair free Will of Man to the most repulsive passion, to avarice, to
usury and the sharper's itch....” / Fatherland Speech 14/6/1848 PW4
p138

So Money is the "root of all the misery of our present social state"
in 1848. But we know that, at just this time Wagner wanted to use his
early version of The Ring to tear evil up by the roots. So, here, the
fit between Money and the Ring is just about perfect. Once the root of
all evil was removed, one would then raise in its stead a righteous
world. But in 1848, Wagner says:

"We shall perceive that Human Society is maintained by the activity of
its members, and not through any fancied agency of money...and like a
hideous nightmare will this demoniac idea of Money vanish from
us...God will give us light to find the rightful law...That will be
the full emancipation of the human race; that will be the fulfilment
of Christ's pure teaching..." / Fatherland Speech 14/6/1848 PW4 p139

Here Money is asserted to be evil. Its removal will be the "full
emancipation of the human race", "the fulfilment of Christ's pure
teaching" - i.e. a Society built on Love. That is to say Wagner's
“righteous world”. We also know that Wagner had originally thought of
The Ring as contrasting Materialism and Love. For:

"..I meant in the presentiment of the whole Nibelung myth to... [show]
how the first wrong-doing a world of evil arose, and consequently fell
to pieces in order to teach us the lesson, that we must recognise evil
and tear it up by the roots, and raise in its stead a righteous
world.....I remember that once, towards the end, I decided to bring
out my original purpose,...in Brunnhilde's final..somewhat
artificially coloured invocation to those around her, in which having
pointed out the evils of possession, she declared that in love alone
is blessedness to be found..." / Letters to Rockel VI p149-51
23/8/1856

Wagner suggests here that his "original purpose" was to contrast
materialism ("the evils of possession") with Love. This is part and
parcel of Wagner's Revolutionary thought.

The lesson Wagner wanted to teach in The Ring when he first wrote it
was congruent with the program he had for the world at that time. That
program revolved around the removal of Money, while his lesson
revolved around the removal of the Ring. On the very day that Wagner
came to read his early version of The Ring, Siegfried's Death, to
Edward Devrient we find:

"...Wagner's hobby horse, the destruction of Money [die Vernichtung
des Kapitals]." / Tagebucher I Devrient p457 2/12/1848

Can we get any more evidence for this? Here's a quote from 1881 (i.e.
over 30 years after The Ring was originally conceived):

"Clever though be the many thoughts expressed by mouth or pen about
the invention of money and its enormous value as a civiliser, against
such praises should be set the curse to which it has always been
doomed in song and legend. If gold here figures as the demon
strangling manhood's innocence, our greatest poet [Goethe] shews at
last the goblin's game of paper money [1]. The Nibelung's fateful ring
become a pocket-book [a symbol of the power of Money] might well
complete the eerie picture of the spectral world-controller." / Know
Thyself PW6 p268 1881 [Completed February 1881]

Here Wagner equates Gold with Money and then goes on to assert that
the Ring (which is made of Gold) might be considered analogous to a
pocket book - That is to a symbol of Financial power. So Wagner is
still thinking of the Ring as analogous to Money. And, indeed in
another statement from that same month, we find:

"Recently R. [Wagner] expressed his pleasure at having provided in Der
Ring des Nibelungs a complete picture of greed for money, and the
disaster it brings about." / CWDII 15/2/1881

So we know for sure that it is valid to think of The Ring in terms of
Money. I can't see how one can now fail to accept that Wagner thought
of the Ring as analogous to Money. He would have started off The Ring
with that view and he still had it in 1881.

Part V

Let’s see how this analogy between The Ring and Money is worked out in
the cycle. We know that it was Wagner's original intention to use The
Ring as a call to Revolution - a revolution in which Money would be
abolished. The catastrophe at the end being a coded version of the
Revolution itself. Let us look at the original (October 1848) version
of this ending.

Siegfried has been stabbed in the back and killed by Hagen. His body
is brought back to lie in state. The death of the hero has brought
about general consternation, but Brunnhilde, his wife, steps forward.
She takes the Ring from Siegfried's hand and says:

"To my hand he gave to end his work: loosed be the Nibelungs'
thraldom, the Ring shall no more bind them. Not Alberich shall receive
it; no more shall he enslave you, but he himself be free as ye. For
you I make this Ring away, wise sisters of the waters' deep [The
Rhinemaidens from whom Alberich stole the gold which he made into the
Ring]; the fire that burns me, let it cleanse the evil toy; and ye
shall melt and keep it harmless..." / The Nibelungen Myth as Sketch
for a Drama October 1848 PW7 p310-1

Brunnhilde then immolates herself on Siegfried's pyre. This ending is
very much in line with Wagner's ideal for The Artwork of the Future.
It has an individual destroy herself for the good of all. Brunnhilde
does this in all the versions of The Ring - so the cycle does indeed
"celebrate Death". Other deaths in the cycle (those of Wotan,
Siegfried, Sieglinde and Siegmund) also seem designed to fit Wagner's
ideal. So this is another way in which The Ring fits with the
composer's revolutionary ideals.

Brunnhilde's self-sacrifice produces Wagner's great catastrophe - i.e.
the Revolution. The Ring is destroyed in it. We know that Wagner told
Rockel:

"..my Nibelung drama...had taken form when I had built up an
optimistic world..believing that, in order to realise such a world, it
was only necessary for man to wish it... I meant in the presentiment
of the whole Nibelung myth to express my meaning more clearly, by
showing how the first wrong-doing a world of evil arose, and
consequently fell to pieces in order to teach us the lesson, that we
must recognise evil and tear it up by the roots, and raise in its
stead a righteous world..."

The tearing up of evil is the scene we have been looking at. In the
catastrophe, Brunnhilde speaks. She says she ends "the Nibelungs'
thraldom, the Ring shall no more bind them. Not Alberich shall receive
it; no more shall he enslave you...."

This is an artistic version of a sentiment Wagner was to publish in
The Revolution in Spring 1849 (Though without signing. The Revolution
is a rewrite of Wagner’s 1849 poem Noth. That is the basis for the
attribution):

"I [Revolution] will destroy the existing order of things...that turns
millions into slaves of a few...I will destroy the order of things,
which wastes man's powers in service of dead matter." / The Revolution
PW8 April 1849 p237

By "dead matter", Wagner means Money. For in June 1848 he asks:

"...whether Man...were meant by God to serve in menial bondage to the
stubbornest most lifeless product in all Nature, to sallow metal...It
will have to be decided whether this minted matter is to be accorded
the right of making the king of Nature [Man], the express image of
God, its servitor and tributary, - whether Money is to be left the
power of stunting the fair free will of Man... / Fatherland Speech
June 1848 PW4 p138

Basically Wagner has just transposed his Revolutionary feelings into
the drama. In particular he has transposed his feelings about Money
into the drama. For Money is the lifeless metal which Man serves in
menial bondage, producing the "Slave of Industry"[1] In the Nibelungen
Myth these ideas appear as the Nibelungs bound in slavery to the Ring.
The Ring itself is "lifeless metal".

Part VI

One can also see these ideas in the interaction between Alberich and
the Nibelungs that appears earlier in the story. In The Nibelung Myth
he is introduced in this way:

"The pure and noble Rhine-gold Alberich seized...wrought therefrom
with cunning art a ring that lent him rulership of all his race, the
Nibelungen: so he became their master, forced them to work for him
alone, and amassed the priceless Nibelungen-Hoard... Thus armoured,
Alberich made for mastery of the world and all it contains." / The
Nibelungen Myth as Sketch for a Drama October 1848 PW7 p301

Essentially the Ring gives Alberich the power to rule the World. This
is to be achieved by building up the Hoard:

"...the whole of the world/I'll win with it [the hoard] as my own." /
The Rhinegold Scene Three

Nevertheless the true power remains the Ring. Later in the drama,
Alberich is prepared to give up the Hoard because he knows that, if he
retains the Ring, he will be able to build up another hoard.

As we know Alberich enslaves his fellow Nibelungs. He then forces them
to mine gold for him. In particular he enslaves his own brother Mime.
This is a transparent reversal of the brotherly love of Utopia. Later
Wagner introduces another pair of brothers. One kills the other for
the Ring. Wagner's evident goal is to indicate that the Ring prevents
Men being brothers, inducing absolute selfishness. Mime, "a slave",
bemoans the fate of the Nibelungs:

"Carefree smiths,/we used to fashion/trinkets for our
womenfolk/delightful gems and/delicate Nibelung toys;/we cheerfully
laughed at our pains./Now the criminal makes us/Crawl into
crevices,/ever toiling/for him alone./...we must seek /and search and
dig/smelting the spoils/and working the cast/without rest or repose/to
heap up the hoard for our lord."

This is just Wieland all over again.

"Wieland the Smith, out of very joy in his handiwork, forged cunning
trinkets for himself...." / The Artwork of the Future 1849 PW1 p210

The Nibelung must work for Alberich alone. But:

There was a King, Neiding (Envy)[2] by name, who had heard much talk
of Wieland's skill; he burned to trap the Smith, that henceforth he
might work for him alone..." / Ibid. p211

The Nibelungs amass the Hoard so that Alberich may rule the world. Its
"greatest treasure is the Tarnhelm...a work that Alberich compelled
his own brother [Mime] to weld for him" (The Nibelung Myth p301). But:

"Set down in Neiding's court, Wieland must hammer for the King all
kinds of objects, useful, strong, and durable, harness, tools, and
armour, by aid of which the King might broaden out his realm." / Ibid.
p211

Mime and the rest of the Nibelungs are slaves, producing "wealth" for
Alberich. But

"Thus sate he then, in all his misery, the art-rich Wieland, the
one-time blithesome wonder-smith crippled, behind his anvil, at which
he now must slave to swell his master's wealth..." / Ibid. p211

Mime complains that he is "the most wretched of all". But:

...Who might measure all [Wieland's] suffering, when he thought back
to his Freedom, to his Art, - to his beloved wife!" / Ibid. p211-2

Essentially Wagner has just taken the interaction between Wieland and
Neiding, removed Wieland's successful revolt, and put it in The Ring.
However, Wieland encapsulates the plight of the "slave of Industry"
and Neiding is therefore a represention of his master. What does this
mean? It seems to me that The Ring certainly contains a representation
of the slave of industry. The Nibelung are industrial slaves (The
industry being mining).We can check this. We have seen that the
position of the Nibelungs under Alberich duplicates that of Wieland:

"...weariness, and bitter, sorrowful toil... is the lot of the Slave
of Industry; and our modern factories afford us the sad picture of the
deepest degradation of man, constant labour, killing both body and
soul, without joy or love, often almost without aim." / Art and
Revolution PW1 p49

This is exactly as it is with the Nibelungs. The Nibelung "labour" as
"wretched slaves" in "joyless" Nibelheim. Their wretchedness
corresponds to the "deepest degradation".

What about Alberich then? Plainly Wagner understood that Alberich and
Neiding were related characters. Both are ruthless industrialists who
use slaves to build up their wealth. Alberich is the boss of a mine
and forces Mime to weld for him. We found that Neiding was an
industrialist in the previous chapter.

Both Wieland and The Ring were conceived as revolutionary works. Both
contain essentially the same, damning, representation of the Slave of
Industry.

Given that Alberich is an industrialist, one imagines he is supposed
to represent an industrial capitalist. Certainly his original intent
in stealing the Rhinegold to make was to get hold of the world's
wealth/ inheritance. In the event this is represented by gold. Wagner
himself makes Money the power that enslaves man to manufacturers.
Moreover, Capitalism and Industry would have been inextricably linked
for someone of Wagner's time (He was a contemporary of Marx). This
provides us with another way in which the Ring is analogous to Money.
The Ring gives Alberich power just as Money gives the industrialist
power.

VII

This brings us to the question of the Jews. For it was Wagner's view
that the Jews ruled the world - and ruled it through Money. Thus:

"Jews behave quite differently from us Germans, they know the world
belongs to them." / DII 15/5/1878

But Wagner told Liszt:

"Let us treat the world only with contempt ... It is evil,
fundamentally evil ... It belongs to Alberich." / Correspondence of
Wagner and Liszt Vol. II p50 7/10/1854

Alberich wishes to rule the world through the Ring, as do his brother
Mime and his son Hagen. In this quote, Wagner makes his wish come
true. He rules the world. Does Wagner mean Liszt to see Alberich as a
surrogate Jew? Let us go back to the 1881 quote:

"...money..The Nibelung's fateful ring become a pocket-book [symbol of
Power of Money] might well complete the eerie picture of the spectral
world-controller....Faith is now replaced by ‘Credit’...What comes to
pass beneath the benedictions of this Credit we are now witnessing and
seem inclined to lay all blame upon the Jews. They certainly are
virtuosi in an art which we but bungle; only, the coinage of money out
of nil was invented by our Civilisation itself; or if the Jews are
blameable for that, it is because our entire civilisation is a
barbaro-judaic medley...." / Know Thyself PW6 p268 1881

Wagner says the Ring is analogous to Money. But he goes on to suggest
that the ill-effects of Money are down to the Jews. There is an
implicit invitation in this to read backwards into The Ring. If Wagner
wants us to compare Money with the Ring, he is inevitably asking us to
compare those who control Money in the real world with their
counterparts in the world of The Ring. The quote invites us to compare
Jews with Nibelungs. This doesn't tell us (by a long way) if the
Nibelungs are surrogates for the Jews. But it does mean that it is
legitimate to wonder if they might be. Wagner made his statement about
riddles after writing Know Thyself.

This is to look at it from the point of view of the outsider. Wagner
would have known what he meant the Nibelungs to be. It is no good
saying, as George Windell does, that: "It is possible..that Alberich
and his brother, Mime...express the composer's anti-Semitism." - And
leaving it at that. Either they did or they didn't. The Nazis used
Wagner's Nibelungs as caricature Jews to add lustre to their world
view. What Wagner intended them to be matters.

Let us see if we can build up some sort of general picture of the
Nibelungs. In his first attempt at The Ring, the 1848 sketch, Wagner
describes the Nibelungs and the Gods thus:

"From the womb of Night and death was spawned a race that dwells in
Nibelheim, i.e. in gloomy subterranean clefts and caverns; Nibelungen
are they called; with restless nimbleness they burrow through the
earth, like worms in a dead body... "...the race of the Gods...in high
emprise the Gods have planned the world, bound down the elements by
prudent laws, and devoted themselves to careful nurture of the Human
race. Their strength stands over all...The object of their higher
ordering of the world is moral consciousness..." / The Nibelung Myth
as Sketch for a Drama October 1848 p301-2

One can see here that Gods and dwarves (The Nibelungs) are literally
worlds apart. The Gods on high ordering the world morally; the
Nibelungs inhabiting a deathly underworld. As we have seen, this
underworld is a place of slavery, implicitly a place of moral
corruption.

So Wagner has constructed a world, in general terms, of moral black
and moral white - which he underlines by placing the black
underground. Moreover, it is Alberich's intent to rule the world with
his "evil toy" - The Ring. If this were to occur another sort of world
order to that intended by the Gods would occur - An evil one. In a
broad sense, Wagner's original sketch posits a battle between good and
evil - The Nibelung being representatives of evil.

Although Wagner changes around the specifics of the story, this theme
persists in all versions of The Ring. Wagner delights in dragging
Wotan into greyness. But he always, as it were, remains on the side of
the Gods. Wagner telegraphs his intentions in Siegfried, the third
opera of the cycle. Here Wotan refers to himself as Light-Alberich;
Alberich becomes Black-Alberich. Wagner is saying that Wotan and
Alberich are mirror images - one from the world of light, the other
from the darkness - good versus bad.

This is highly reminiscent of Wagner's theoretical universe, which was
split into light and darkness also, the evil of egoism versus the good
of the communal. Moreover the black side of the equation here, The
Nibelungs, are themselves dominated by Money. Two of the three key
characters on the white side of the equation (with Brunnhilde) are
Wotan and Siegfried. In the final version of the cycle Wotan is the
central figure. Wagner describes them thus:

"Wotan...Look well at him, for in every point he resembles us. He
represents the actual sum of the Intelligence of the Present, whereas
Siegfried is the man greatly desired and longed for by us of the
Future." / Letters to Rockel IV 25-26/1/1854 p100-1

Wagner says Wotan resembles us "in every point". At various stages in
his career he also directly identifies himself with Wotan. E.G .

"...if I am "Wotan"...."/SLE p689 8/4/1866

So Wotan, the central figure of the cycle, is somewhat of a surrogate
for Wagner himself. Black Alberich, is opposed by white Alberich,
Wotan. But Alberich is a Money Man and Wotan as "the Intelligence of
the Present" represents Wagner's ideals. We have found representations
of these in The Ring. For when the Ring is returned to the Rhine and
Valhalla destroyed these are metaphors for the Revolution itself and
the destruction of Money. It is at Wotan's - the intelligence of the
present's - behest that these events occur. So, Wagner's surrogate,
Wotan, is set against the Ring, Money. Moreover Siegfried represents
the Man of the Future.

This is thoroughly in line with our view of The Ring as a
revolutionary metaphor. In order to achieve this larger effect, Wagner
appears to have constructed individual artistic metaphors for key
elements (e.g. the Ring as analogous to Money) in his revolutionary
philosophy.

Part VIII

Unfortunately this doesn't help us very much with the Nibelungs. Our
intent was to decide definitely whether the Nibelungs are surrogates
for the Jews. We haven't got very far.

In fact, Wagner wanted to achieve just this result. He deliberately
avoided telegraphing his intentions - making them absolutely definite.
He sought personal survival and wanted to leave something up to the
intuition of the audience. Talking specifically about The Ring he
said:

"I do not agree with your criticisms with regard to [lack] of lucidity
and distinctness...on the contrary, I believe that a true instinct has
kept me from a too great definiteness; for it has been born in on me,
that an absolute disclosing of the intention disturbs true insight.
What [is required] in drama - as indeed in all works of Art - is to
achieve your end, not by statement of the artist's intentions, but by
the presentiment of life as the resultant...of eternal laws..." /
Letters to Rockel IV p99-100 24-5/1/1854

This, however, is not much use to us. Wagner may want to avoid a too
great definiteness, but definiteness is precisely what we want to
achieve. But it does tell us one thing. If the Nibelungs are
surrogates for the Jews, the means that Wagner uses to convey this
cannot be too obvious. We should not expect to look at the libretto
and see characters called Cohen who rub their hands together and wear
Stars of David, for example. As it happens, though, Mime does rub his
hands together[3].

If Wagner isn't going to make it obvious if the Nibelungs are Jews,
how are we going to decide? At the beginning of the chapter we found
that there were three sorts of people who Wagner believed would be
able to understand The Ring: Revolutionaries, fellow-combatants
against worldly wisdom (i.e. probably white nationalist
revolutionaries) and people who had read his revolutionary tracts.
Presumably there are not many people who would own up to being one of
Wagner's revolutionaries these days. So this means we are left with
understanding The Ring via his revolutionary writings.

Only one of these, Judaism in Music, is specifically concerned with
the Jews. So it must be a key source in deciding whether the Nibelungs
are Jews. In Judaism in Music, the Jews are asserted to be
egotistical, heartless and repellent. Ruling the world through Money,
they exemplify the enemy of the Volk, by whom they are instinctively
hated. They are to be one of the targets of the Revolution.

All these traits, but one, find a parallel in the Alberich. Alberich
is the ultimate egoist, denying Love in order to have the chance of
world-power, he enslaves his brother. So little fellow feeling has he
that, in the end, he laughs at his brother's death. He is heartless.
But he is also repellent. Wagner deliberately makes him look odd and
ill-starred. The original problem was the Rhinemaidens found him
repellent and rejected him. As we know he wants to rule the world
through Money.

He is not, however, instinctively hated by anyone in The Ring. He is,
to be sure, the obverse of Wotan, who is Wagner's surrogate. And Wotan
hates him as The enemy. So he could easily be a Jew, as the Jews are
enemies in Wagner's philosophy. Yet the hatred is not quite the same
instinctive, unconscious feeling the Volk has for the Jews.

As Wagner tells us in his Nibelungen Myth, Alberich is a member of a
race, the race of the Nibelungen. In Judaism in Music, the Jews are
persistently viewed in racial terms. Wagner talks about the Jewish
"stock" (PW3 p84, p87, p88 and p89), the Jew's "native stem" (p90). So
this is one fundamental similarity between Nibelungs and Jews.

There are a number of minor parallels, including one of imagery.
Wagner liked to compare Jews to creatures that throve on decay,
parasites. Thus, in his wife's diaries he compares Jews to, amongst
other things rats and flies. He also compares them to worms (On one
occasion he dreams of being surrounded by Jews who turn into worms).
In Art, the Jews had the effect of:

"a swarming colony of insect-life" in a "body's flesh". Art had become
a "worm-befretted carcass". / Judaism in Music 1850 PW3 p99

An exactly similar image occurs in his original sketch for The Ring:

"Nibelungen ... burrow through the bowels of the earth, like worms in
a dead body.." / The Nibelungen-Myth as Sketch for a Drama 1848 PW7
p301

In fact the two images appear in different sources. The first comes
from Medieval antisemitism, while the second appears in The Edda. So
this might or might not be a coincidence.

Some further minor parallels: The Jewish intellect is a "fruitless
effort from above", while the Nibelungs "go their way of fruitless
labour". The "restless busy spirit" of the Jews (Wagner often uses
restlessness in connection with the Jews) matches the "restless
nimbleness" of the Nibelungs. The Nibelungs are the "busiest folk" to
go with the "busy spirit" of the Jews.

Part IX

So we still haven't got very far. However, we haven't as yet looked at
Mime, Alberich's brother and Hagen, his (half-Nibelung) son. Actually
that's not strictly true. In The Rhinegold, we found Mime duplicating
Wieland's role as the slave of Industry. But Mime reappears in
Siegfried where he has a different and much bigger role. This role is
going to be important to us so I want to examine it in some detail.
The original title of Siegfried was Young Siegfried. Here Wagner
describes its genesis:

"All the winter through I have been tormented by an idea, which of
late has completely taken hold of me, that I will now realise it. Did
I not once tell you about a genial subject? It was that of the youth
who sets out "in order to learn fear" and was so stupid as never to be
able to learn it [From the Grimms' Fairy stories]. Think of my alarm
when I discover that this youth is none other than the young
Siegfried, who wins the hoard and awakes Brunnhild. The scheme is now
ready. I am for the moment collecting my strength so as to be able to
write the poem of Young Siegfried....Young Siegfried has the decided
advantage that it presents the important myth in the form of a play to
the public, just as a fairy tale is presented to a child [Based as it
was on fairy tale itself.]. Here everything makes [an]..effect by
means of sensuous expressions,, here everything is understood at once,
- and then the serious Siegfried's Death [= Gotterdammerung, the last
opera of the cycle] follows, the public knows all that which has there
to be presupposed or even hinted at, and - my game is won, - all the
more as by my Young Siegfried, which throughout appeals far more to
the public conscience, and which is less heroic than filled with the
gladsome mirth of young manhood, the actors are practically exercised
and prepared to solve the more important task of Siegfried's Death.
Besides, I have no longer a general abstract public in mind, but a
special one, to which I purpose to address myself, so that by it I may
be understood." / Letters to Uhlig etc. p105-6 10/5/1851

Six months later Wagner explains to Liszt that the public he has in
mind are the "friends" of A Communication to my Friends. He says he
wrote the Communication in order that they should be able to
understand Siegfried/Young Siegfried .

"...young Siegfried the subject of a poem. In it everything in
Siegfried's Death [that] was either narrated or taken more or less for
granted was to be shown in bold and vivid outline by actual
representation. This poem was soon sketched and completed. When I was
going to send it to you, I for the first time felt a peculiar anxiety.
It seemed as if I could not possibly send it to you without
explanation, as if I had many things to tell you, partly as to the
manner of representation and partly as to the necessary comprehension
of the poem itself. In the first instance it occurred to me that I
still had many and various things to communicate previous to my coming
before my friends with the poem. It was for that reason that I wrote
the long preface to my three earlier operatic poems [A Communication
to my Friends]... / Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt Vol. I
20/11/1851 p170

Wagner again states that people have to read his prose works to
understand the drama. But this letter appears 8 days after Wagner had
told Uhlig that he was going to use The Ring to explain the meaning of
the Revolution to the revolutionaries. Once more, whatever meaning
Wagner wants people to extract from Siegfried must be revolutionary:

Wagner says that the opera is "filled with the gladsome mirth of young
manhood". In his autobiography he says he conceived of it as "a heroic
comedy". Wagner has interesting things to say about comedy:

"The hero of the Comedy will be the obverse of the hero of the
Tragedy...in his role as Egoist, of foe to the principle of
Generality, [he] will strive to withdraw himself therefrom, or else
arbitrarily direct it to his sole self-interest; but he will be
withstood by this principle of generality in its most multifarious
forms, hard pressed by it, and finally subdued. The Egoist will be
compelled to ascend into Community...." / The Artwork of the Future
1849 PW1 p201 footnote

This is a very narrow, not to say tendencious, definition of Comedy.
Wagner is just using it as a vehicle for his ideological message. From
his perspective, the central figure of the Comedy is for Wagner not so
much a hero as an anti-hero - a quintessential egoist who is compelled
to become part of the community. In Wagner's definition he becomes
something of a scapegoat, a legitimate butt. Siegfried is named after
Siegfried, but the description doesn't apply to him. On the other hand
it fits Mime like a glove.

The "comedy" of the opera is of the crude and brutal sort. In the
first scene Mime is found alone at the anvil. He is forging a sword in
the certain knowledge that Siegfried is going to come along and break
it. Siegfried appears with a bear which he sets upon Mime. Cue
"humorous scene" in which Siegfried laughs a lot. Once the bear has
gone Siegfried abuses Mime a bit and then breaks the sword.

So, in this short period at the beginning of the opera, it is clear
what Mime is. He is a loser. First he gets mauled physically, then he
gets mauled verbally and finally his work gets junked. Whatever is
going to happen to Mime, his basic role is clear: He is someone who is
going to get it - The butt of the audience's laughter.

Wagner is obliged to prevent us having sympathy for Mime. If we were
to feel sympathy for him, we might start thinking that Wagner was
being unfair. If this were to happen we would stop laughing. Mime has
brought up Siegfried. However we learn that this seemingly altruistic
activity (they are not related) which should instantly qualify Mime as
a possessor of the communal spirit of the archetypal member of the
Volk, has quite a different basis. Mime has no love for Siegfried.

Although Mime is effectively Siegfried's step-father, he intends to
betray him. Indeed Mime not only means to betray Siegfried, he means
to kill him. It is this motif of (step-)father betraying child that
destroys our sympathy for Mime. The dwarf's years of toil (and abuse)
have been undergone for entirely egoistic reasons. He wants Siegfried
to get him the Ring. Just like his brother Alberich he wants to rule
the world[4]. After he has the Ring he intends to kill Siegfried in
his sleep. In effect Mime is a "heartless" "egoist" obsessed with
Money.

A substantial amount of the "humour" comes from an addition to Mime's
character of murderous loser. Wagner paints him as so inept that no
matter what he does he's going to get it wrong. Instead of being
afraid, we laugh.

If Mime corresponds to egotistical anti-hero of the Comedy, then "the
Generality" is encapsulated in Siegfried. Siegfried is a of course a
character from Teutonic mythology. But Wagner says:

"The Gods and heroes of its religion and saga are the concrete
personalities in which the spirit of the Volk portrays its essence to
itself." / The Nibelungen 1848 PW7

So Siegfried encapsulates the essence of the Volk. In the future, the
Generality, the Volkish commune will rule. But Siegfried is the "Man
of the Future". Further, Wagner says Siegfried is his idea of "the
perfect Man", while the sword he wields is Nothung - the sword of
Noth, of Communal Moral Necessity. On this basis, Siegfried is not
merely a representative of the Generality, as "the perfect Man" he is
its most perfect representative.

If we now go back to our description of the comic anti-hero, we can
see how closely it fits Mime: "The hero of the Comedy [Siegfried is a
comedy] will be the obverse of the hero of the Tragedy...in his role
as Egoist [Mime is certainly an egoist], of foe to the principle of
Generality [Siegfried], [he] will ...arbitrarily direct it to his sole
self-interest [he wants Siegfried to get him the Ring]; but he will be
withstood by this principle of generality in its most multifarious
forms, hard pressed by it, and finally subdued [Mime is indeed
"subdued"]. The Egoist will be compelled to ascend into Community
[Mime is subdued and compelled to ascend in the most extreme way. He
is killed by Siegfried with the sword of Communal Necessity]..."

Wagner believed that people should know his theoretical works before
they came to The Ring, and it seems fair to say that he has used his
theoretical template for Comedy as the basis for Siegfried. Indeed
Wagner does not seem to have known any other way of being funny. He
used the template for his other "comedy" - The Mastersingers of
Nuremberg.

On this basis we can say that the egoistic, money-loving Mime is a
"foe of the Generality". That is he is an enemy of the Volk. In this
he is much like his brother Alberich, another money-loving egoistic.
Alberich is enemy and opposite of Wotan, the surrogate for Wagner. So,
he too, must be more or less an enemy of the Volk. Hagen, Alberich's
son, turns out to be just as obsessed with the Ring (an analogue of
Money). For he kills Siegfried for it, stabbing him in the back. As
Siegfried is the representative of Volk, this makes Hagen another "foe
of Generality".

The other Nibelungs are shown only en masse. They have no particular
character. So all the Nibelungs we know anything about are enemies of
the Volk. They are, on the evidence we have, a race of egotistical,
Ring-obsessed foes of the Volk. But this exactly parallels what the
Jews are - a race of egotistical money-loving foes of the Volk. Given
that Wagner put analogues of important elements of his revolutionary
thought into The Ring, we can see that he has done the same with the
Jews.

Part X

I want now to have a closer look at Mime. One of the reasons we were
unsure of whether Alberich was a Jew was the lack of instinctive
hatred he induces. But Wagner succeeds in making us hate Mime too.
Apart from being a murderous, incompetent loser he is a craven coward.
In this way Mime's role as butt is, to some extent, justified to us.
One does in fact feel a degree of ill-will towards him. You just wish
he would go away. As Wagner makes the Jew a hate-object for the Volk
in Judaism in Music. Mime fulfils the same role for the audience of
The Ring.

These feelings are paralleled by those Wagner gives Siegfried. In
Siegfried Mime produces anger, scorn and hate (twice) in Siegfried. He
makes him furious. Siegfried twice says he loathes Mime, once that he
is repelled by him and once that he is detestable. His final words to
Mime (as he kills him) describe him as either loathsome or horrible.

Thus Siegfried hates and is repelled by Mime to exactly the same
overwhelming degree that the Volk hates and is repelled by the Jews.
To go with this, Mime eventually reveals that he hates Siegfried "and
all his kind", just as Siegfried hates him. In Judaism in Music the
Jew is a "hostile looker-on" for whom the Folk has "instinctive
ill-will".

In Judaism in Music, Wagner places much stress on the way the Jew
looks:

"...in ordinary life [the Jew] strikes us primarily by his outward
appearance which...has something disagreeably foreign to that
nationality and that we find insuperably unpleasant...this unpleasant
freak of nature..." / Judaism in Music 1850 PW3 p82-3

Mime (and his brother Alberich) also draws attention to himself by his
appearance. Hunched and hairy, he looks decidedly off-putting. In a
lesser detail Mime is described as a "babbler" and the Jew as having
"nothing left to babble over". A more telling parallel is what happens
to Mime when he gets carried away: "It is only in moments of extreme
excitement he becomes exteriorily ludicrous". But the Jew's
"excitement" has "a tinge of the ridiculous".

Mime is a Jew in all but name. But this isn't really good enough.
Frankly, at this point I think he is a Jew. It's just that I don't
think I've proven it. So I want to bring up something else. From my
first experience of the cycle, Mime's name bugged me. The very name
"Mime" makes one think. Was Mime supposed to be akin to someone who
strikes poses for artistic effect, or something? The idea pressed in
on me in a sort of semi-conscious way; finding no conclusion, yet
insistent. I found this annoying. This was not a direction I wanted to
go in.

This response now seems to me a mistake. Right at the end of A
Communication to my Friends (which we recall Wagner wrote specifically
to help people understand Siegfried) he says that in his ideal
performance of The Ring:

"The object of this production I shall consider thoroughly attained,
if I and my artistic comrades, shall within these four evenings
succeed in artistically conveying my true purpose to the true
Emotional (not the Critical) Understanding of spectators...." / A
Communication to my Friends 1852 PW1 p391

In other words, Wagner believed that what you intuitively felt about
The Ring was the key thing. For three years, I kept feeling that
Mime's name meant something and indeed something I didn't want to have
to think about. Yet it seems to me that this sort of involuntary
intuition is precisely the sort of response that Wagner was looking to
induce (it carries with it echoes of the intuitive necessity that is
of such importance in Wagner's system), so let us follow it up.

Why is Wagner calling him Mime? The response I had was this had
something to do with effete individuals striking poses for "Art". At
any rate, it suggests that Mime is someone who thinks of himself as an
Artist. In fact, in German, Mime means "thespian". To me this name has
some derogatory connotations - there seems to be a lot of narcissism,
in "thespian".

Now this does make a sort of sense. For though Mime is a smith, what
he does is persistently described in terms of Art. Wagner uses the
word Kunst (The German for Art) on 8 separate occasions in connection
with him. On one occasion he even calls him "Mime the artist". The
simple solution would be that Wagner is trying to get us to see Mime
as an artist. Given that Wagner's name for Mime impels me in this
direction anyway, my response is "OK, well if Wagner wants me to think
of Mime an artist, then I'll think of him as an artist."

Wagner's use of the word "Kunst" with Mime is a repeat of the
technique he uses with Wieland (who we found to be linked with Mime
through their identity as "slaves of Industry"). Wieland is a smith
also and Wagner persistently uses the word Kunst in connection with
him. In Wieland's case Wagner actually says (in a private letter to
Liszt) that Wieland was conceived as a "free artist".

In an article written while he was orchestrating the opera (in 1857),
Wagner used Siegfried's forging of the sword as a metaphor for the
creation of Art. This means that he thought of smithing as a metaphor
for Art at the very time he was working on the opera.

I believe this confirms my original intuition. Wagner sees smithing as
a metaphor for Art in 1850, 1857 and 1863. In 1851 he writes the
libretto for Siegfried in which he 8 times uses the word "kunst" in
connection with Mime's smithing. On one occasion he is called "Mime,
the artist". Ergo Mime, just like his predecessor Wieland, is a
metaphorical portrait of an artist.

There is however a fundamental difference between Mime and Wieland.
While Wieland is the free artist/smith, creating the free (and
freeing) artwork - the wings of Noth - Mime is an incompetent.
Tellingly he can't forge the sword of Noth. Indeed, the best swords he
makes Siegfried breaks. They shine on the outside but have no inner
strength. As we have seen, Wieland is also a personification of the
Volk - but Mime is "a foe of the Volk", Wieland's polar opposite.

This is not likely to be a coincidence. For Wagner has made Mime into
the antithesis of someone, Wieland, who is a surrogate for himself.
Basically, Mime is Wagner's artistic opposite, his incompetent
smithing standing for incompetent Art.

We can check this. A key source for this is Judaism in Music. Here
just such incompetent Art is presented. It is Art is produced under
Jewish domination (either by the Jews themselves or those who are
"Jewified"). That is Jewish Art and, in particular, Jewish Music. What
the cultured Jew produces in his attempts at Art is "trivial and
indifferent". He only sees the surface of things, and accordingly can
only produce a superficial imitation of true Art. Amongst the many
things wrong with these imitations is that they are "awry". These
works of Art are without value. They may perhaps look OK, but inside
they will lack an inner truth, an inner strength. The Jew's efforts at
Art parallel precisely Mime's at smithing.

The Jew's inability to create true Art is paralleled by Mime's
inability to reforge Nothung, the sword of Communal Necessity. Jew
cannot get in touch with Nature. Instead he uses it. His art is
"unnatural". He cannot feel the unconscious Necessity which compels
the true Artist. Nor has he any communal feelings. When confronted
with Nothung, a work that was an expression of Communal Necessity, he
would be completely at sea.

The other thing about Mime is that he is a relentless materialist. One
can see this from Mime's own words. He is quite obsessed with payment.
Apart from the many years he has put in in order to get hold of the
Ring, he says that he is looking for "reward" from his art. He
considers the fragments of Nothung "paltry payment". He looks to
Siegfried to "pay" him for rearing him, asserting that he has long
waited for his "wages".

Wagner seems determined to have us take on board both aspects of
Mime's character. But these two sides of Mime are brought together in
the scene between Mime and his brother Alberich. Alberich remembers
back to The Rhinegold. He says "The magic ring first compelled the
Dwarf [Mime] to make his Art for me". As the Ring is an analogue for
Money, this is analogous to "Money first compelled Mime to make his
Art..." This is the key to Mime. Wagner felt extremely strongly about
making Art for Money. He believed that "Art grasps after gold...[for]
our god is God" so no "truly beauteous thing"[1] could appear. So, in
Mime, Wagner was presenting an analogue of the kind of Artist he
despised - and I'm sure, deliberately.

In Judaism in Music, Wagner had referred to the "be-Jewing" of "modern
art". The idea of Mime as a "Jewified", money-dominated artist is a
relatively well accepted interpretation, just as the interpretation of
Alberich as an industrial capitalist is. It appears that, in these two
brothers, Wagner presented the two aspects of Money-dominated society
that particularly concerned him - Art and Industry. It does however
have to be said that all the evidence we have amassed tends to suggest
that Mime is not a "Jewified" artist but a Jewish one. If he is not a
Jew, he gives an exceptionally good impersonation of one.

Part XI

Wagner's first diatribe against the Art of his time was Art and
Revolution. This seems to have been inspired by something in
particular. After the failure of the 1849 revolution, Wagner spent a
little time in Paris. But, he told Uhlig:

"Into what good humour the sight of the Paris economy has put me
again, you will shortly see in an important article of mine in the
"National", "Art and Revolution". / Letters to Uhlig etc. 9/8/1849 p2

So Paris inspired Art and Revolution. It appeared in Autumn 1849.
While still in Paris, Wagner had written this to Liszt:

"...work I will as much as I can, but to sell my ware in this market
is impossible to me. artistic affairs here are in so vile a condition,
so rotten, so fit for decay, that it only requires a bold scytheman
who understands the right cut....to-morrow I shall begin a searching
article on the theatre of the future for some important journal...as
far as art and the theatre is concerned you must, with good grace,
allow me to be as red as possible, for a very determined colour is the
only one of use to us...Belloni...tells me that here [Paris] I want as
much money as Meyerbeer or really more than Meyerbeer, or else I must
make myself feared. Well, money I have not, but a tremendous desire to
practise a little artistic terrorism. Give me your blessing, or better
still, give me your assistance. Come here and lead the great hunt; we
will shoot, and the hares shall fall right and left." / Correspondence
of Wagner and Liszt Vol. I p25-6 5/6/1849

This is an interesting letter. Wagner sees his future article (Art and
Revolution) as an act of artistic terrorism. He looks forward to
blasting away at the opposition with Liszt's help. His view seems to
be that the art-establishment in Paris is so rotten it should be gone
at with a scythe. A parallel to what should be done with Society at
large. A few months later, Wagner restated his views about Paris and
Meyerbeer:

"... a week in Paris was enough to make clear to me the great mistake
[i.e. going there at all] I had been pushed into. Spare me from
expiating here in more detail on the revolting baseness of Parisian
art tendencies, especially in opera. In recent decades, under the
mercenary influence of Meyerbeer, the condition of opera in Paris has
become so ruinously horrible that it is useless for an honest man to
devote himself to it... I am firmly convinced that I shall never
succeed in having an opera performed at the [Paris] Academy, at least
not under present conditions and under its new regime. As things stand
now, Meyerbeer holds everything in his hand, that is, in his
moneybag.... / Burrell Collection Letters p262-3 19/11/1849

Here Wagner puts Meyerbeer and his moneybag at the core of "Parisian
art tendencies". From this point of view one can quite see why Wagner
thought Parisian art was rotten. But it seems he had reason to do so;
for here is a description of 19th Century Paris:

"The world knew Paris for its carnival flash, a crazy tinsel circus of
all the fleshy pleasures and all earthly magnificence. Moralists were
chilled by the siren grin behind which rotted greed and cynicism
without parallel in 19th Century Europe....'I think there was never a
more corrupt, abominable city, nothing but brothel and gambling hall,'
roared the splenetic Thomas Carlyle:
‘Perhaps its most compelling strength was an apparently trivial one.
It radiated glamour. It glittered and dazzled as it celebrated itself
in a series of monuments and triumphs. the style was one of swaggering
vulgarity, with plenty of gold trimmings...’” / Tales of New Babylon
Rupert Christiansen p17 and p18

Wagner largely shared this view, and indeed Christiansen's title "New
Babylon" is paralleled by Wagner’s reference to Paris as a "modern
Babylon" in 1851 (A Communication to my Friends PW1 p382). Further
Christiansen later talks of Paris' "soulless heart" and refers to:

"...its outward elegance, namely its absolute egoism, the unscrupulous
hostility of each of its members toward his neighbour, like himself in
pursuit of a four, a possibly profitable transaction, or an intrigue."
/ New Babylon p19

So it seems perfectly reasonably of Wagner to assert that "Parisian
art tendencies" were rotten - for Paris, as a whole, could be seen as
rotten. In Art and Revolution, he relates "Parisian art-tendencies" as
being representative of the Art-world as a whole. So, in a way,
Meyerbeer becomes representative of the entire art-world. Nor does it
stop the rot stop there. For in Art and Revolution, Wagner asserts:

"Our modern stage materialises the ruling spirit of our social
life...[it] is the efflorescence of corruption, of a hollow and
unnatural condition of human affairs and human relations..." / PW1 p43
1849

The rot has spread to the entire world. For, Money, the ruling spirit
in the world corrupts. So Meyerbeer is now an example of their entire
world. One notes that he is a Jew.

"...we need but honestly search the contents and workings of our
public art, especially that of the stage, in order to see the spirit
of the times reflected therein as a faithful mirror; for such a mirror
public Art has ever been." / Art and Revolution PW1 p43 1849

And:

"the nullity of our whole public system...in the successes of that
famous Jewish opera-composer [Meyerbeer] grow clear for anyone to
see..." / Judaism in Music PW3 p98-9 1850

[Meyerbeer (The ultimate Money-man) represents all that Wagner opposes
in Art. This is also what Mime is. One wonders how many symbols of the
same thing Wagner needs.

_____________________________

We saw above that Wagner wanted to apply the scythe to Parisian art in
June 1849. By November he has moved somewhat further than this. In a
letter sent with the manuscript of The Artwork of the Future, he says:

"From your last letter I perceive particularly your anxiety to obtain
favourable notices of my literary works. Do not trouble so much about
them. Only one thing is important - that they are read as much as
possible; and what will tend to that pleases me. That they should be
attacked is quite natural, and a matter of indifference to me. I bring
no reconciliation to worthlessness, but war to the knife. Now are
public life is full of worthlessness, and specially so with regard to
professional artists and literary men, I can in the present time only
find friends who are quite removed from this ruling publicity. Here
there is nothing to convince, to win over: extermination is the only
cure. To accomplish this in time, we shall receive the necessary
strength if, as disciples of a new religion, we learn to know
ourselves, and by mutual love strengthen our faith..." / Letters to
Uhlig etc. p14 21-22/11/1849

[Editor’s note - Here Wagner speaks of the bad press that Meyerbeer
has arranged for him: negative and hate-filled reviews of everything
that he produced. Wagner understands that it’s useless to respond
directly, as he and his allies do not possess a print media (ruling
publicity) of their own. Nor do they possess Meyerbeers’ money power.
In his letter to Uhlig he very clearly recommends “extermination” for
Meyerbeer and the Jewish press (those who rule publicity).]

Wagner wants to bring "war to the knife" and "extermination" to those
elements of the Art-world he doesn't like. One step up from scything
away at Parisian Art. Wagner would also like to exterminate
"worthlessness" in other areas of society - whatever that might mean.

In 1851, Wagner's view has not changed substantially. In a letter we
have already seen, he says:

"...The coming revolution must necessarily put an end to the whole of
our theatrical enterprises. All of them must and will perish, it is
inevitable..."

So we now have three quotes saying the same thing: Wagner is looking
towards a ruthless culling of the art-establishment. Indeed in 1849,
he twice puts them, as it were, to the sword. In June he looking to
apply the right cut with his scythe, while in November it is war to
the knife. It is not clear whether he actually believes that
individuals will be killed, but he certainly believes in the ruthless
destruction of the art-world of his day.

If we now return to Mime, he is killed by being put to the sword. But
Mime represents the "Jewified", money-dominated artist. So he
exemplifies the art-world of Wagner's day. It looks as though his
death represents the destruction of the money-based artist that Wagner
so despised.

Part XII

We have deduced that Meyerbeer was something of a symbol for all that
Wagner opposes in Art. In fact, in Judaism in Music (p98), he is made
an example of the "ineptitude of the present musical epoch". Wagner
himself says he is antithesis on a number of occasions. He writes:

"..if I were try to sum up precisely what it is that I find so
offensive about the lack of inner concentration and outer
effortfulness of the opera industry today, I would lump it all
together under the heading ‘Meyerbeer’..." / SLE p135 1/1/1847

So Wagner specifically says that Meyerbeer is his artistic antithesis.
Here is a different take on Meyerbeer as antithesis:

"Should you not have found long ago that natures like that of
Meyerbeer are strictly opposed to yours and mine? ...deception was
possible for a time...Meyerbeer is thoroughly little..." /
Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt Vol. I 5/6/1849 p24-5

The influence of Meyerbeer informs Art and Revolution (1849). Wagner
then devotes a couple of damning pages to him in Judaism in Music
(1850). But it is in the next prose work, Opera and Drama (1851), that
Meyerbeer achieves a starring role. In it he says:

"I have not taken upon myself to offer a criticism of Meyerbeer's
operas, but...to show by them the essence of our modernest Opera." /
Opera and Drama PW2 1851 p100

Meyerbeer represents all that Wagner opposes in the opera of his day.
He gives Meyerbeer 14 consecutive pages along with 7 other entries. He
also gets a thorough bashing from Wagner. If Meyerbeer and Mime are
artistic antithises of Wagner, in Opera and Drama Meyerbeer is treated
in a way not dissimilar to the way Siegfried treats Mime.

In the introduction, Wagner explains that he wants to get down to
particulars in Opera and Drama:

"I have been at pains to show, not merely in general terms - as in my
Artwork of the Future - but by minute entry into particulars the
possibility and necessity of a more salutary tillage of the soil of
Poetry and Music. / Opera and Drama 1851 PW2 p8

In order to do this he feels he first has to make an:

“..exposition of the worthlessness of our modern opera affairs...I
attack, in...unsparing fashion, a personage famous in the daily roll
of opera-composers [Meyerbeer]...” / Ibid. p8-9

In Opera and Drama, Wagner makes a rare attempt to be specific:

"..it was my concern, not merely to arouse, but also to make my
meaning unmistakable. To make myself intelligible I was forced to
point my finger at our art's most salient features...that phenomenon
[= Meyerbeer's Art]..shows plainest an artistic error crying to us for
solution...Wherefore, if I held my hand from sheer regard for this one
personage [Meyerbeer], I either must have given up all thought of
writing the accompanying work [Opera and Drama]..or else I must have
purposely lamed its effects..." / Ibid. p9-10

I.E. Wagner has to bring up Meyerbeer because his work "shows
plainest" an artistic error that needs solution. However "the error
rears itself in nakedest abomination and baldest prostitution..in the
Meyerbeerian opera" (Ibid. p16). Further his work demonstrates "the
essence of our modernest Opera". Unsurprisingly, Wagner considers this
attack is central to Opera and Drama, leaving it out would have
"lamed" the book. Nevertheless, the strength of the attack left its
problems. A few months later he told Uhlig:

It would be terrible if the book should come to be looked upon simply
as an attack on Meyerbeer..." / Letters to Uhlig etc. 10/3/1851

Towards the end of his introduction, Wagner also asserts:

"I should be blind if I did not clearly see that, from the moment when
I struck in my artistic works that path which in the following pages I
advocate as Writer, I fell into exile from our public artist-world in
which I find myself today, alike politically and as an artist, and
from which it is quite certain that I cannot be redeemed apart from
others." / Opera and Drama p10

So Wagner believes he is an outsider, exiled from the "public
artist-world". His assertion that he will only be redeemed from this
exile appears to be an allusion to his view that only a revolution
will provide him with an appropriate audience for his works. Here
Wagner explains how he came to write Opera and Drama:

[Editor’s note - In the press of 1851, which Jews and German liberals
dominated, they blasted Wagner with name-calling, claiming that he was
mad, a criminal, and a Jew-hater. Rather than attacking his essay
"Judaism in Music" directly and risking a debate, they made sure his
operas got bad reviews and relentlessly attacked him and his friends
on other issues. There is no doubt that Wagner was an
art-world/media-world outsider.]

"...Siegfried's Death...I was at last, in the autumn of 1850, on the
point of sketching the musical execution of this drama, when again the
obvious impossibility of getting it adequately performed anywhere
prevented me...from beginning the work. To get rid of this desperate
mood, I wrote the book Opera and Drama. [On returning to The Ring I
knew that Siegfried's Death] was in the first instance impossible. I
found that I should have to prepare it by another drama, and therefore
took up the long-cherished idea of making the young Siegfried of a
poem [i.e. he started on Siegfried/Young Siegfried" / Ibid. p169-170
20/11/1851

So Wagner is saying that he wrote Opera and Drama, to some degree, out
of despair at getting Siegfried's Death put on properly. He saw
himself as exiled from "public art-world" and this would have
mitigated against performance. They wouldn't want to put on a
revolutionary. Rather than work on Siegfried's Death, Wagner wrote
Opera and Drama as an attack on the ruling aesthetic of his day,
because he believed that it was preventing him getting his work put
on. As we know, Wagner's problems would be solved by the revolution,
which would sweep away the art-establishment of his day.

Meyerbeer was in part attacked as a symbol of the art-establishment.
But Wagner also saw him as a very real impediment to the performance
of his work. As we saw above:

"... I am firmly convinced that I shall never succeed in having an
opera performed at the [Paris] Academy, at least not under present
conditions and under its new regime. As things stand now, Meyerbeer
holds everything in his hand, that is, in his moneybag....”

Similar comments abound in Wagner's letters of the time. Not only did
he believe that Meyerbeer was stopping him getting his work put on in
Paris, but elsewhere as well. Wagner had hoped to have his opera
Tannhauser put on in Berlin, but the Court-official who was
responsible had been got at:

"Hulsen is too inexperienced and is duped by Meyerbeer and Meyerbeer's
agent with the King, Count Redern: the sudden change according to
which they all at once believe that Tannhauser cannot be given either
on the birthday of the King or on that of the Queen..does not come out
of the clear blue sky; this is the work of Meyerbeer..." / Burrell
Collection Letters p142 11/9/1852

Wagner returned with a variation on the theme in 1854. He had messed
up his chance of having Rienzi succeed in Berlin in 1847. Now he
declares:

"...my Rienzi made a completely favourable impression on the still
UNINFLUENCED audience at the first performance in Berlin, so that I
was certain of success. But I also found out that the press (which in
its chief publications was already subservient to Meyerbeer)
immediately slandered Rienzi; and Hulsen confirmed what is already
common knowledge - namely that the public allowed itself to be taken
in by this attitude of the press to such an extent that the second
performance was already badly attended. I found out that Meyerbeer
(through his friend Redern) knew how to keep the King from attending
one of the three performances conducted by me, as well as receiving me
in audience. I have proof of this." / Ibid. p148 1854

Wagner already held somewhat similar views in the early summer of
1849. Just arrived in Paris as an exile, he wrote to his wife:

"All I can do...is to make a decent name for myself through the
newspapers and journals and prepare to face the countless intrigues to
which I shall be exposed and whose threads are for the most part held
by Meyerbeer..When I went into Schlesinger's shop, I was given a
friendly reception, Meyerbeer was there, too, but he happened to be
behind a screen, where he remained hidden when he heard my voice, so
that it looked as if what was holding him back was his shock at my
sudden appearance and a guilty conscience at his intrigues in Berlin.
When I finally discovered he was there, I went behind the screen, all
affability and smiles, and drew him forth: he was embarrassed and at a
loss for words, but I knew enough to be on my guard against him." /
SLE p170 4/6/1849

So Meyerbeer is both a symbol of the antagonism of the
Art-establishment to his work and (in Wagner's mind) an antagonist in
a very real way. Given that Wagner only started writing Opera and
Drama in despair over having his work put on, it makes a lot of sense
that he attacked Meyerbeer in it.

Opera and Drama was written in the winter of 1850, but "All the winter
through I [had] been tormented by an idea, which of late has
completely taken hold of me, that I will now realise it." This was
Siegfried. So for much of the time Wagner was writing Opera and Drama,
Siegfried was on his mind.

This means that while Wagner was lambasting Meyerbeer, his antithesis,
in Opera and Drama, he was involuntarily turning through his mind the
similar lambasting of Mime, who is also his antithesis, in Siegfried.
It seems almost impossible to me that these figures, appearing at the
same time in Wagner's mind and representing the same thing, are not
somehow connected.

Can we test this? If you remember my instinctive response to Mime's
name was that maybe he was someone who strikes poses for artistic
effect. In fact Mime means "thespian" in German. Here is Wagner on
Meyerbeer:

"The secret of Meyerbeer's operatic music is - Effect...if we wish to
define what we understand by this word, we may translate "Effect" by
"a Working without a cause." / Opera and Drama PW2 1851 p95

So Meyerbeer's Art is characterised by "a Working without a cause".
Now here are the first two lines of Siegfried, which are sung by Mime:

"Punishing torment!/Toil without purpose!"

"Toil without purpose" is just about the same thing as "Working
without a cause". Just to make sure we have got it, Mime sings it
again a few minutes later. Further, in Opera and Drama, Meyerbeer is
said to have become disgusted with "fruitless toil" (PW2 p89). This
matches Mime's "Toil without purpose".

I said that "Mime" brings to mind narcissism, and indeed Mime is
described as a braggart. In Opera and Drama (p101), Meyerbeerian
opera-music is characterised by "vanity". Further, the Meyerbeerian
opera is that of "a contortionist and mountebank" (Opera and Drama
p102). A mountebank is a quack who harangues and plays the fool: a
buffoon a charlatan. This rather accurately describes Mime, who is
indeed an artistic quack who harangues and plays the fool. Thus
Siegfried wonders "How much more must the braggart dupe me". In
Judaism in Music Meyerbeer is said to know "completely how to dupe"
(p97).

There are some other parallels between Mime and Meyerbeer. In a
rejected line, Mime says" I'll offer myself as his [Siegfried's]
mentor". With or without the line this is more or less what Mime
attempts to do throughout. Early in Wagner's career he spoke of
rumours that he was a pupil of Meyerbeer. (Family Letters 6/11/1842
p77). Wagner also asserts that Meyerbeer has "a great skill in
achieving superficial effects", just as Mime can produce swords which
look good but break with ease. Mime wants to remake Nothung anew but
can't. Meyerbeer "would like to turn out artworks and yet is painfully
aware he cannot" (Judaism in Music PW3 p97).

Wagner says that to draw inspiration from Meyerbeer would be "the
death-knell of my creative powers". In Opera and Drama, Wagner goes to
great length to demonstrate that Meyerbeer (like Mime) is utterly
impotent as a creative artist. Indeed, the opera of Wagner's day (the
quintessential example of which is Meyerbeer's work) has been reduced
to "utter impotence" (Opera and Drama PW2 p103).

In another version of Meyerbeer as his antithesis, written after Opera
and Drama but before work began on Siegfried, Wagner said:

"Towards Meyerbeer my position is a peculiar one. I do not hate him
but he disgusts me beyond measure. This eternally amiable and pleasant
man reminds me of the most turbid, not to say vicious period of my
life, when he pretended to be my protector; that was a period of
connections and back stairs when we are made fools of by our
protectors, whom in our inmost heart we do not like. This is a
relation of the most perfect dishonesty; neither party is sincere
toward the other; one another assume the appearance of affection, and
both make use of each other as long as their mutual interest requires
it... ...From inner causes arose the necessity to relinquish all
considerations of common prudence with regard to him [This appears to
be Wagner's explanation for attacking Meyerbeer so thoroughly in Opera
and Drama]. As an artist I cannot exist before myself and my friends,
I cannot think or feel, without realising and confessing my absolute
antagonism to Meyerbeer, and to this I am driven with genuine
desperation when I meet with the erroneous opinion even amongst my
friends that I have anything in common with Meyerbeer. Before none of
my friends can I appear in clear and definite form, with all that I
desire and feel, unless I separate myself from the nebulous outline in
which many see me. This is an act necessary for the perfect birth of
my matured nature .." / Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt Vol. I
p145-6 18/4/1851

Here Wagner once more states that he and Meyerbeer are at opposite
poles. This letter suggests that he had been attempting in Opera and
Drama to distance himself once and for all from the Jewish composer.
But he says something else as well. He describes their relationship in
some detail. It is very close to the relationship between Siegfried
and Mime. Meyerbeer is "eternally amiable and pleasant". This is
exactly what Mime is (Siegfried refers to his kindness). But it is
just a front. The dishonest Mime plans to kill Siegfried to acquire
the ring. Meyerbeer is likewise making use of Wagner for as long as it
is in his interest (in his earlier letter to Liszt Wagner had said
that "deception was possible for a time"). The major difference
between the Siegfried-Mime and Wagner-Meyerbeer relationships is that
Wagner is some ways as bad as Meyerbeer. Siegfried is the perfect Man
and so cannot be presented in this way. He neither uses Mime nor is
dishonest - but, apart from this the relationships are fundamentally
similar. Wagner does not like Meyerbeer "in his inner heart" and
Meyerbeer reciprocates. Siegfried hates Mime and is hated in return.

Wagner also makes Mime into a coward while he implies that Meyerbeer
was also cowardly when he hid from him in Paris. We know that Wagner
used both Mime and Meyerbeer as symbolic figures representing his
artistic antithesis. He went straight from attacking Meyerbeer (who he
blamed both personally and as a member of the art-establishment for
preventing him getting his works put on) to attacking Mime. In Mime he
destroys the artistic establishment. We have found an extremely large
number of other connections between Mime and Meyerbeer. It is really
not credible to say that Wagner did not mean the two to be linked .
But there is one other link that makes quite certain that none of this
is coincidence. In Siegfried, Siegfried tells Mime to "Stop that
endless starling's song". But in Opera and Drama, Wagner says this:

Meyerbeer...everywhere and everywhen he followed on [Opera-music's]
footsteps...He was like the starling who follows the ploughshare down
the field, and merely picks up the earthworm just uncovered in the
furrow. Not one departure was his own, but each eavesdropped from his
forerunner, exploiting it with monstrous ostentation..." / Opera and
Drama PW2 p88 1851

In other words Meyerbeer's music is a "starling's song". Now this is
simply too specific to be anything but deliberate. Wagner went almost
immediately from writing about Meyerbeer to developing Mime's
character in Siegfried. Moreover he had been thinking about writing
the opera the whole time he was working on Opera and Drama. In my
view, this solves the problem. Mime is Meyerbeer, put into The Ring
cycle.

There is one final detail. Wagner had told Liszt "Meyerbeer is
thoroughly little". Doubtless it gave him pleasure to make him a
dwarf.

Part XIII

Let us review what we have got. Mime is an example of the impotent
Money-obsessed artist who Wagner despised. Now we have proved that he
is Wagner's bugbear, Meyerbeer. Above we found that Mime has all the
characteristics that Wagner ascribes to the Jews. But now we see why,
for Meyerbeer was a Jew.

We are close to proving that the Nibelungs, as a race of money-loving
repugnant egoists, were Jews. We have now proven that one of their
number is Jew. He is Meyerbeer. As the Nibelungs are a race,
presumably the rest of them are Jews also.

1. In Faust II, paper money is introduced by gnomes/hobgoglins/dwarves
dressed as miners at a Court Festival. This appears to be at the
instigation of Mephistopheles, i.e. the Devil. So Wagner is using
Goethe to suggest that paper Money is a diabolical invention. See
Faust II lines 5898-5913 and 6054-6142.

2. Art and Revolution 1849 PW1 p49

3. In a letter to Ludwig II in the 1860's, Wagner compared his
political enemies to the "envious dwarves" in The Ring

4. Siegfried Act 1 Scene 3

5. Why do villains always want to rule the world?

6. Judaism in Music p81