Saturday, January 14, 2012
Wotan: Righteous Indignation or Supreme Wanker?
I've been listening to recordings and watching productions of Die Walkuere since seeing the Met broadcast in May, and I frankly find myself stymied. Why on earth does Wotan feel the need to punish Brunnhilde so intensely? Rendering your beloved daughter mortal and stranding her, asleep, on a rock seems a little extreme a reaction for her asserting her own opinion. I just can't understand it.
Discuss.
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7 comments:
I guess you have to be a bit of a bastard to become king of the Gods
Oh Gott, Terfel is making me cry. [Edited to add: this is a really long 2 cents, sorry.] The eternal question in your title was vigorously debated in the subway after my first live Walkuere. The Beloved Flatmate and I had gone with a friend who said Wotan's actions were both unjustified and unnecessarily cruel. We sprang to the god's defense. Since Bruennhilde has defied his Will, doesn't he actually have to punish her (Was du bist, bist du nur durch Vertraege...)? I think Bruennhilde is correct when she asserts that she only did what Wotan longed to do himself... but that doesn't make it less of a crime in the order of things.
On a more "human" level, if you will, the fact that Wotan has prepared his coming-of-age daughter for just such an assertion of defiant independence doesn't make it less painful when it happens... she has been like an extension of himself, as Fricka notes with some asperity. And he still loves her; this separation is his loss as well as hers, arguably both a result and a continuation of his loss of power.
...sob.
@Operaramblings: True, it does take a certain ruthlessness to rise to the top.
@Lucy: I admit to leaning towards your friend's opinion, that Wotan is unjustifiably cruel. It does make sense that he has to punish Brunnhilde, but I think the way he goes about it is extreme. Still, that's Wagner for you. Wotan really does hurt himself more than her, I think.
The writer in me has no end of fun imagining how the Valkyries conspired to make Wotan's life in Valhalla miserable for some time after these events. He goes wandering on the earth for a reason. ;)
Would it be to cryptic to say that Wagner may have answered this question within Walkure already? Especially in the manner of the changing "Spear Motif" to "love's triumph" leitmotifs? And if we then add love-curse lietmotif as he concludes?
In Wagner, its all in the orchestra :)
What The Wagnerian said. Plus: she didn't just assert her opinions; she acted on them, decisively, in a way incompatible with her semigoddess status, which depended on her military chain-of-command relationship with Wotan. But above all, as Wotan explains, she took it on herself to resolve - contrary to the way Wotan himself had, and that's crucial! - the agonizing conflict between love and duty that Fricka had made so clear. "Doch feig und dumm dachtest du mich...." All Brünnhilde can see in Fricka winning the argument is Fricka "estranging" Wotan from his true self, which Brünnhilde presumes to know better than Wotan does. That by itself could, at a stretch, be forgiven, but she then goes on to do the very thing Wotan most wanted to do, but which, in a god-level struggle with himself, he had realized he can't. One can debate the degree of punishment, but clearly it calls for some. Anyway Act III of WALKÜRE is not tragedy at all, but just a failed family sitcom, if Wotan is just an overly strict dad.
"In eigener Fessel fing ich mich: ich Unfreiester aller!"
Love the sitcom analogy - not sure Wagner would have though :)
The key point of the punishment is to change her from god to half-god or even mere mortal. She's the only god who defies/ tricks Wotan (Doner/Froh etc argue with him but don't defie him; Loge tricks him but he is only half god). Hence she must be demoted from divine to mortal.
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