Der Ring Des Nibelungen: Composition of The Poem - The End of The Ring

The End of The Ring

The final scene of the Ring probably caused Wagner more trouble than any other. He rewrote the text for it several times and his final thoughts were never made absolutely clear. Six or seven different versions exist or can be reconstructed from Wagner's drafts:

• Original Ending (early December 1848) – Wagner's first ending for the cycle was optimistic and confident. The ring is returned to the Rhine; Alberich and the Nibelungs, who were enslaved by the power of the ring, are liberated. In her closing speech, Brünnhilde declares that Wotan is all-powerful and everlasting; she gives up her own life and leads Siegfried to Valhalla, where he is reconciled with Wotan and order is restored. Siegfried and Brünnhilde are depicted rising above Siegfried's funeral pyre to Valhalla to cleanse Wotan of his crime and redeem the gods, rather as The Dutchman and Senta ascend above the clouds at the end of Der fliegende Holländer. A major difference between this draft and subsequent revisions is that there is no suggestion here that the Gods are destroyed. Brünnhilde's final oration stresses the cleansing effect of Siegfried's death:

"Hear then, you mighty Gods. Your guilt is abolished: the hero takes it upon himself. The Nibelungs’ slavery is at an end, and Alberich shall again be free. This Ring I give to you, wise sisters of the watery deeps. Melt it down and keep it free from harm."

• First Revision (before 18 December 1848) – the second fair copy of the libretto for Siegfried's Tod (Drittschrift des Textbuches) was made almost immediately after the first. It incorporates several revisions, most of which are quite minor, and none of which affects the ending. The only major change, as noted above, was the addition of the Hagen's Watch episode to Act I. After completing this fair copy, however, Wagner made two marginal alterations to Brünnhilde's closing speech. In the first of these she declares that the gods have now atoned for their misrule of the world, and she urges them to accept Siegfried as a new member of the Norse pantheon. This was clearly an attempt by Wagner to restore Siegfried's role as Christlike redeemer of the gods, taking their guilt upon himself and by his death atoning for their sins. The second alteration, added later, is quite different. Brünnhilde now admonishes the gods to "depart powerless", leaving the world to mankind;

"Fade away in bliss before the deed of Man: the hero you created. I proclaim to you freedom from fear, through blessed redemption in death."

• May 1850 Revision – in May 1850 Wagner made a third fair copy of the text (Viertschrift des Textbuches) in the hopes of having it published. Unfortunately this manuscript, which is presently in the Bayreuth Archives, is fragmentary, some of its pages having been discarded during the next revision, for which it was the source-text. Among the missing pages are the final few, so it is impossible to tell whether either of the marginal verses added to the final page of the second fair copy was incorporated into Brünnhilde's closing speech.
• Feuerbach Ending (November and December 1852) – by the time Wagner had completed the libretti for Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, he had come to realize that the cycle must end with the destruction by fire of both Valhalla and the gods. This necessitated further and far-reaching revisions of both Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried's Tod. The new ending of the latter was influenced by Wagner's reading of Ludwig Feuerbach, whose writing suggested that Gods were the construction of human minds, and that love had primacy over all other human endeavours. In this Feuerbach ending Brünnhilde proclaims the destruction of the Gods and their replacement with a human society ruled by love:

"The holiest hoard of my wisdom I bequeath to the world. Not wealth, not gold, nor godly splendour; not house, not court, nor overbearing pomp; not troubled treaties’ deceiving union, nor the dissembling custom of harsh law: Rapture in joy and sorrow comes from love alone."

This ending was added by Wagner to the third fair copy (Viertschrift des Textbuches) of the work. Although the Feuerbachian lines were eventually dropped, the other significant change to the ending (viz. the substitution of the gods’ destruction for the liberation of the Nibelungs) was retained in all subsequent versions.

• Schopenhauer Ending (1856) – following his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his growing interest in Buddhist philosophy, Wagner once again changed the ending of the Ring. The Schopenhauer ending stressed self-overcoming, resignation and the illusory nature of human existence, in keeping with the notion of negation of the Will. Brünnhilde sees herself redeemed from the endless cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth; enlightened by love, she achieves the state of non-being, or Nirvana. Wagner wrote out a prose sketch of this new ending in 1856 (WWV 86D Text VIIIb), but he did not set it to verse until 1871 or 1872, adding the text and its fair copy to his personal copy of the 1853 printing of the Ring libretti. Brünnhilde's new verses (which were intended to precede the passage beginning, "Grane, mein Ross") close with the words:

"Were I no more to fare to Valhalla's fortress, do you know whither I fare? I depart from the home of desire, I flee forever the home of delusion; the open gates of eternal becoming I close behind me now: To the holiest chosen land, free from desire and delusion, the goal of the world's migration, redeemed from incarnation, the enlightened woman now goes. The blessed end of all things eternal, do you know how I attained it? Grieving love's profoundest suffering opened my eyes for me: I saw the world end."

• Final Ending (1874) – when Wagner finally came to set the ending to music in 1874, he reverted to the 1852 revision, but shorn of its closing Feuerbachian lines. Although Wagner never set either the Schopenhauerian or the Feuerbachian lines, he did include them as footnotes in the final printed edition of the text, together with a note to the effect that while he preferred the Schopenhauerian lines, he declined to set them because their meaning was better expressed by the music alone. In other words, the ending he finally set to music is Schopenhauerian in its intention even though this is never stated explicitly in the libretto.