"The Ring of the Nibelung": Romantic Nonsense? ~ The Imaginative Conservative

"The Ring of the Nibelung": Romantic Nonsense? ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Richard Wagner’s story of gods and heroes, of giants and dwarfs, is not a fairy tale. It is addressed to modern people, who have lost the ways of enchantment, and for whom the path to heroism is overgrown. It is a story in which law and love, power and property are all caught up in a life and death struggle between the forces that govern the human soul. The Ring of the Nibelung, Wagner’s great cycle of operas exploring the origin of consciousnes…