Edward Benson - The Valkyries

In the following pages an attempt has been made to render as closely as possible into English narrative prose the libretto of Wagner's "Valkyrie". The story is one little known to English readers, and even those who are familiar with the gigantic music may find in the story something which, even when rendered into homely prose, will reveal to them some new greatness of the master-mind of its author. It is in this hope that I have attempted this version.

Whether I have attempted a task either absolutely impossible, or impossible to my capacity, I cannot tell, for so huge is the scale of the original, so big with passion, so set in the riot of storm-clouds and elemental forces, that perhaps it can only be conveyed to the mind as Wagner conveyed it, through such sonorous musical interpretations as he alone was capable of giving to it. Yet even because the theme is so great, rather than in spite of it, any interpretation, even that of halting prose, may be unable to miss certain of the force of the original.

The drama itself comes second in the tetralogy of the Ring, being preceded by the Rheingold. But this latter is more properly to be considered as the overture to a trilogy than as the first drama of a tetralogy. In it the stage is set, and Heaven above, rainbow-girt Walhalla, and the dark stir of the forces beneath the earth, Alberich and the Niebelungs, enter the arena waiting for the puny and momentous sons of men to assert their rightful lordship over the earth, at the arising of whom the gods grow grey and the everlasting foundations of Walhalla crumble. From the strange loves of Siegmund and Sieglinde, love not of mortal passion, but of primeval and elemental need, the drama starts; this is the first casting of the shuttle across the woof of destiny. From that point, through the present drama, through Siegfried, through the dusk of the gods the eternal grinding of the mills continues. Once set going the gods themselves are powerless to stop them, for the stream that turns them is stronger than the thunderings of Wotan, for the stream is "That which shall be."

In storm the drama begins, in storm of thunder and all the range of passion and of death it works its inevitable way, till for a moment there is calm, when on the mountain-top Brunnhilde sleeps, waiting for the coming of him whose she is, for the awakening to the joy of human life. And there till Siegfried leaps the barrier of flame we leave her.

Never before in the memory of man had spring been so late in coming, and into mid-May had lasted the hurricanes and tempests of winter. Not even yet was the armoury of its storms and squalls wholly spent, and men, as they huddled by the fire and heard night by night, and day by day the bugling of the wind, and the hiss of rain and the patter of the hailstones, wondered what this subversion and stay of the wholesome seasons should portend. For now for many years had strange omens and forebodings shadowed and oppressed the earth. Some said that the earth itself and Erda the spirit of earth were growing old; some even had seen the great mother, not as of old she had appeared from time to time, vigorous and young, clad in the fresh green of growing things, but old and heavy-eyed, and her mantle was frosted over with rime, for the chill of the unremitting years had fallen on her. Others again said that in Walhalla, which Wotan the father of gods and men had builded by the might of giants, all was not well; that shadows crowded in places where no shadows should be, and that their companies grew ever greater, and that dim voices of wailing and of warning sounded in the ears and in the high places of the gods. Others said that the gods themselves were growing old; that Wotan feared the spirits of the earth, and of the places beneath the earth, for he was no longer certain of his strength, and that age and the grey shadow of death itself looked over his shoulder when he sat alone, and when he slept with Fricka his wife visions of ill portent would trouble his dreams so that often he rose at dead of night from his couch, and would look from the walls of Walhalla over the still sleeping earth, wondering from which quarter danger would come, and from where he would first see the red light of war. Night by night he would commune with himself, wondering how it was that the strength and the merriment of old days had departed, wondering, yet in himself knowing. For he knew the Book of Fate and of that which should be, as a man still dreaming knows that he is in bed, and the night-hag rides him, and yet is powerless either to fully sleep or fully wake. Certain also it was that day by day he sent his daughters, whom he begat by Erda the spirit of the earth, to slay and bring into Walhalla heroes of the sons of men, into whom he breathed the spirit of eternal life so that for ever they should guard those walls that once he thought impregnable; and day by day did the eight Valkyries, led by Brunnhilde, the fairest and the strongest of them all, go on their quests. She it was in whom above all Wotan delighted, for so at one with him was the swift strength and fearless will of the maid; it was to her he told all his intentions and his purposes, and not to Fricka his wife, so that often when he talked with Brunnhilde he scarcely knew whether he spoke to her or whether his own soul but communed with itself. Yet though he thus guarded Walhalla, thinking to make it safe, he knew that there was one thing in the world which was stronger than he, and that was Fate. What Should Be, would be, and What Should Be recked of Wotan as lightly as it recked of the falling of a sparrow, or the passing of a spring shower.

Now these omens of gloom and fate which lay heavy on Walhalla, troubled also the minds of men. If death came to the gods, should not death come also to the earth and the children of the earth? When the Master fell should not the servant fall also? Yet because the race of men were yet but young on the earth, and vigorous, flourishing in stony places like a creeping plant that shall soon cover the desert with its stems, there were men, and those wise ones, who held that after the fall of the gods the kingdoms of the world and all the sovereignty of the earth should soon be given to the sons of men. And they looked for the coming of one who should challenge the gods themselves, before whom the everlasting foundations of Walhalla should crumble. He it was, they said, whom Wotan feared, he who was free and owed nothing to the lords of Walhalla, for Wotan knew that before him his own god-like strength would crumble as a dead leaf, and as a dead leaf be borne away on the winds. And in this long continuance of winter, when already spring should have awakened the earth with its glad shout, they saw in figure the winter of the gods; and when winter should cease and spring come, even so would come in the fulness of time now nigh the upspringing of men, in which should be forgotten the winter of the gods. For the finger of fate pointed to the new time, when Walhalla should be shaken and fall, and men should be slaves no longer to the early outworn gods, but possess the earth in peace and plenty.

Yet still in mid-May the storms of winter were not spent; still the sap of growing things stayed and stirred not in the barren branches of the forest trees. And winter still froze and hardened in the heart of Sieglinde the wife of Hunding. Though she had been long his wife, yet she was still young, and her woman's heart hungered for love, and starved for a man she could love, but froze again ever into ice at the sight of her lord. Unwittingly and by compulsion of her kindred and his she had married him; hate blossomed in her heart where the flower of love should have made fragrance, and in all but deed she was unfaithful to him. Day by day she did the work of a wife; she made his food for him before he went out to the hunt, whether it was the deer he hunted to make venison, or man that he hunted for vengeance, for he was of the tribe of the Niedings, who wooed by sword and violence, and from the slaughter of her kindred had often borne away a maid to her wedding feast Then after she had given him his food, she would give him his spear and sword and shield, a service which but earned her a curse or a blow, and watch him stride off into the forest, with bitter loathing in her heart And truly if hate could kill, Hunding would have died by his wife's hand a hundred deaths a day.