I just finished reading Deryck Cooke's recently reprinted I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's Ring. If you're interested enough in the Ring to endure a wealth of detail (from the work itself and its sources), it's really worth a read, even though it was nowhere close to finished at the time of the author's death. Even if you're not quite that interested, the introductory section serves as a fine manifesto for how to approach such a work intelligently. Particularly worthy of quotation are two of the conditions which Cooke maintains an interpretation fulfill if it is to be judged satisfactory:
(3) The degree of emphasis placed by Wagner on each element of the drama must be faithfully reflected by the interpretation, with nothing exaggerated, or minimized, or omitted.(4) The interpretation should be such that it merely clears the way for an unhindered reaction to the work in the theatre, and leaves it to speak for itself there: it should not put ideas into the reader's head which he cannot possibly relate to his experience of the work in performance.
Excellent advice, and the satisfaction of Cooke's subsequent criticisms is largely due to his success in following his own principles. Cooke's take on the ring certainly blows out of the water interpretations like those of Shaw, who dwells shamelessly on every moment of the Ring conducive to a socialist outlook while brushing aside most of the work's finest and most moving passages, or Donington, who asks us to believe that the twisted dwarf with the brutality laden vocal line is (in Scene 1 of Rheingold) "renounc[ing] the infantile fantasy of being mothered through life", and therefore performing a laudable act.
Cooke also outshines all other critics by his intimate familiarity with Wagner's music. Sadly, his detailed musical analysis remained unfinished, but two of his introductory chapters contain more musical insights than most other criticisms put together. And we also have his recorded lecture with musical examples, which is the truly indispensible resource for anyone interested in approaching the Ring Cycle. Cooke's major insight is that Wagner's leitmotives are not isolated, static snippets, but rather develope into and intertwine with each other, as e.g. the Valhalla motive emerges from that of the Ring. (If this seems obvious to most Wagnerians today, thanks are due to Cooke; I fear it remains by no means obvious to would-be fans facing pages of apparently unconnected musical examples for the first time). Cooke's opening chapters and the lecture together give one enough respect for his approach to imagine the musical insights which we might have enjoyed, had he lived.
Wagner criticism has been so irrationally politicized, especially in the last seventy years, that certain obvious approaches have gone entirely unexplored (and here, patient reader, we come to the justification of this post's title). Again I quote Cooke:
But it seems impossible to accept [Donington's] assumption that Wagner represented nature as 'unreal' (and therefore of no account), human development as something far more important, and the whole state of affairs as basically satisfactory. Clearly, it is nature that is 'real', since the Rhinemaidens will be there when every other character has perished; and it is humanity's achievement at nature's expense, if anything, that is 'unreal', since Valhalla will go up in flames when the ring has been restored to the Rhine. Wagner-- rightly or wrongly-- saw nature as the ultimate reality, and human development as a power-struggle based on a crime against nature
Of course, just about everyone who might have sympathy for such an interpretation of the Ring labours under the delusion that Wagner was a Nazi.
Likewise the feminists. Their extreme wing has mustered sufficient sophistry to convince itself that Newton's Principia Mathematica is a 'rape manual', but Wagner wrote a work which really is all about rape, and they have overlooked it. The symbolism of Alberich's theft of the Rhinemaidens' treasure, and of the Norns' wellspring of wisdom running dry when Wotan has cut his spear from their tree, ought to be apparent to a high school student. These original sins of rape result in a wretched world where love has no defenders. The possibility of Wotan selling Freia to be concubine to giants is even less obscure, and Sieglinde is a rape victim in the most brutally literal sense. After some hope is provided in Act III of Siegfried that a man and a woman can unite in triumph instead of tragedy, Brünnhilde too is forced to marry against her will in Götterdämmerung. It is this violation which leads her to realize what act is necessary to redeem the world.
Wagner is generally perceived as the demi-god of dead-white-male oppression, a perception which leads many people to make the ostentatious statement of ignoring works which might otherwise be quite edifying to them. Perhaps the feminists' neglect of the Ring is due to the fact that Wagner's undeniable sympathy towards his rape victims, and his postulate that enlightened feminine conciousness will save the world, fly in the face of modern feminism's conviction that male-produced European art is inherently oppressive to women; and so Wagner's works are swept under the anachronistic rug of Nazism. Did Wagner really intend the Ring to be an exhortation of feminine potential? I'll ask him the next time I see him. But it is impossible to ignore that, whatever his intentions, Wagner produced a work whose climax is an enlightened woman redeeming the world by atoning for the primal rape which has corrupted it.
