It was out of the Revolution
itself that _Siegfried_ directly sprang.
In 1848, Wagner was not yet thinking of a Tetralogy, but of an heroic
opera in three acts called _Siegfried's Tod_, in which the fatal power
of gold was to be symbolised in the treasure of the Niebelungen; and
Siegfried was to represent "a socialist redeemer come down to earth to
abolish the reign of Capital." As the rough draft developed, Wagner went
up the stream of his hero's life. He dreamed of his childhood, of his
conquest of the treasure, of the awakening of Bruennhilde; and in 1851 he
wrote the poem of _Der Junge Siegfried_. Siegfried and Bruennhilde
represent the humanity of the future, the new era that should be
realised when the earth was set free from the yoke of gold. Then Wagner
went farther back still, to the sources of the legend itself, and Wotan
appeared, the symbol of our time, a man such as you or I--in contrast to
Siegfried, man as he ought to be, and one day will be. On this subject
Wagner says, in a letter to Roeckel: "Look well at Wotan; he is the
unmistakable likeness of ourselves, and the sum of the present-day
spirit, while Siegfried is the man we wait and wish for--the future man
whom we cannot create, but who will create himself by our
annihilation--the most perfect man I can imagine.
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