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6/28/2025, 10:14:38 AM
>>24499178
Two features of the Eddic line — the variations in the length of the line and its free rhythm — undoubtedly served to recommend the Eddic metres to Wagner as a musician. In A Communication to my Friends he praises this method of versification “which, in keeping with true speech inflections, can be adapted to suit the most natural and lively rhythms; which is at all times readily capable of the most infinitely varied expression …” This is obviously a musician speaking.
When Brunnhilde argues with her master in Die Walküre II.ii, Wotan makes an angry attempt to silence her:
Was bist du, als meines Willens
blind wählende Kür?—
As Wagner argued at length in Oper und Drama, the virtue of Stabreim is its ability to establish through phonology associations or antitheses between particular words and concepts. (Stabreim entails a use of language akin to music in so far as it allows the word to derive meaning from its place in a phonetic pattern rather as the musical note derives meaning from its place in a tonic pattern.) It is a verse form which, in Wagner's hands, demands that particular attention be paid not only to each word but also to each root-syllable. By means of the Stabreim, Wotan's words to his rebellious daughter here bring to a focal point certain crucial issues of the drama.
The phrasing and rhetoric of Wotan's question echo Brunnhilde's earlier plea:
wer—bin ich,
wär'ich dein Wille nicht?
The effect is epic, the language abstract. The modernists paid heed: T. S. Eliot quotes the Rhinemaidens in The Waste Land, and Joyce has them swim in the river of Finnegans Wake.
O heilige Schmach! — O righteous shame!
O schmählicher Harm! — O shamefulsorrow!
Götternoth! — Gods’ distress!
Götternoth! — Gods’ distress!
Endloser Grimm! — Infinite rage!
Ewiger Gram! — Eternal grief!
Der Traurigste bin ich von Allen! — I am the saddest of all living things!
When our ears detect consonant patterns—say, “heilig” (“holy/righteous”) and “Harm” (“sorrow”)—we recognize a bond between seemingly opposed emotions.
>Anyone who has not read the text carefully - a clever, profound text that deliberately uses the alliterative scheme, which deserves the highest respect and not the mockery of those who do not want to think about operas - who has not read the text carefully and understood it word for word, so to speak, in the performances of the RING he will do what only the Rhine daughters are allowed to do, he will 'swim'.
- Joachim Kaiser
Two features of the Eddic line — the variations in the length of the line and its free rhythm — undoubtedly served to recommend the Eddic metres to Wagner as a musician. In A Communication to my Friends he praises this method of versification “which, in keeping with true speech inflections, can be adapted to suit the most natural and lively rhythms; which is at all times readily capable of the most infinitely varied expression …” This is obviously a musician speaking.
When Brunnhilde argues with her master in Die Walküre II.ii, Wotan makes an angry attempt to silence her:
Was bist du, als meines Willens
blind wählende Kür?—
As Wagner argued at length in Oper und Drama, the virtue of Stabreim is its ability to establish through phonology associations or antitheses between particular words and concepts. (Stabreim entails a use of language akin to music in so far as it allows the word to derive meaning from its place in a phonetic pattern rather as the musical note derives meaning from its place in a tonic pattern.) It is a verse form which, in Wagner's hands, demands that particular attention be paid not only to each word but also to each root-syllable. By means of the Stabreim, Wotan's words to his rebellious daughter here bring to a focal point certain crucial issues of the drama.
The phrasing and rhetoric of Wotan's question echo Brunnhilde's earlier plea:
wer—bin ich,
wär'ich dein Wille nicht?
The effect is epic, the language abstract. The modernists paid heed: T. S. Eliot quotes the Rhinemaidens in The Waste Land, and Joyce has them swim in the river of Finnegans Wake.
O heilige Schmach! — O righteous shame!
O schmählicher Harm! — O shamefulsorrow!
Götternoth! — Gods’ distress!
Götternoth! — Gods’ distress!
Endloser Grimm! — Infinite rage!
Ewiger Gram! — Eternal grief!
Der Traurigste bin ich von Allen! — I am the saddest of all living things!
When our ears detect consonant patterns—say, “heilig” (“holy/righteous”) and “Harm” (“sorrow”)—we recognize a bond between seemingly opposed emotions.
>Anyone who has not read the text carefully - a clever, profound text that deliberately uses the alliterative scheme, which deserves the highest respect and not the mockery of those who do not want to think about operas - who has not read the text carefully and understood it word for word, so to speak, in the performances of the RING he will do what only the Rhine daughters are allowed to do, he will 'swim'.
- Joachim Kaiser
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