The Perfect Wagnerite | Page 9

to us is plain enough to those
who have the power of understanding what they see as they look at the
plutocratic societies of our modern capitals.
First Scene
Here, then, is the subject of the first scene of The Rhine Gold. As you
sit waiting for the curtain to rise, you suddenly catch the booming
ground-tone of a mighty river. It becomes plainer, clearer: you get
nearer to the surface, and catch the green light and the flights of
bubbles. Then the curtain goes up and you see what you heard--the

depths of the Rhine, with three strange fairy fishes, half water-maidens,
singing and enjoying themselves exuberantly. They are not singing
barcarolles or ballads about the Lorely and her fated lovers, but simply
trolling any nonsense that comes into their heads in time to the dancing
of the water and the rhythm of their swimming. It is the golden age;
and the attraction of this spot for the Rhine maidens is a lump of the
Rhine gold, which they value, in an entirely uncommercial way, for its
bodily beauty and splendor. Just at present it is eclipsed, because the
sun is not striking down through the water.
Presently there comes a poor devil of a dwarf stealing along the
slippery rocks of the river bed, a creature with energy enough to make
him strong of body and fierce of passion, but with a brutish narrowness
of intelligence and selfishness of imagination: too stupid to see that his
own welfare can only be compassed as part of the welfare of the world,
too full of brute force not to grab vigorously at his own gain. Such
dwarfs are quite common in London. He comes now with a fruitful
impulse in him, in search of what he lacks in himself, beauty, lightness
of heart, imagination, music. The Rhine maidens, representing all these
to him, fill him with hope and longing; and he never considers that he
has nothing to offer that they could possibly desire, being by natural
limitation incapable of seeing anything from anyone else's point of
view. With perfect simplicity, he offers himself as a sweetheart to them.
But they are thoughtless, elemental, only half real things, much like
modern young ladies. That the poor dwarf is repulsive to their sense of
physical beauty and their romantic conception of heroism, that he is
ugly and awkward, greedy and ridiculous, disposes for them of his
claim to live and love. They mock him atrociously, pretending to fall in
love with him at first sight, and then slipping away and making game of
him, heaping ridicule and disgust on the poor wretch until he is beside
himself with mortification and rage. They forget him when the water
begins to glitter in the sun, and the gold to reflect its glory. They break
into ecstatic worship of their treasure; and though they know the
parable of Klondyke quite well, they have no fear that the gold will be
wrenched away by the dwarf, since it will yield to no one who has not
forsworn love for it, and it is in pursuit of love that he has come to
them. They forget that they have poisoned that desire in him by their
mockery and denial of it, and that he now knows that life will give him

nothing that he cannot wrest from it by the Plutonic power. It is just as
if some poor, rough, vulgar, coarse fellow were to offer to take his part
in aristocratic society, and be snubbed into the knowledge that only as a
millionaire could he ever hope to bring that society to his feet and buy
himself a beautiful and refined wife. His choice is forced on him. He
forswears love as thousands of us forswear it every day; and in a
moment the gold is in his grasp, and he disappears in the depths,
leaving the water-fairies vainly screaming "Stop thief!" whilst the river
seems to plunge into darkness and sink from us as we rise to the cloud
regions above.
And now, what forces are there in the world to resist Alberic, our dwarf,
in his new character of sworn plutocrat? He is soon at work wielding
the power of the gold. For his gain, hordes of his fellow-creatures are
thenceforth condemned to slave miserably, overground and
underground, lashed to their work by the invisible whip of starvation.
They never see him, any more than the victims of our "dangerous
trades" ever see the shareholders whose power is nevertheless
everywhere, driving them to destruction. The very wealth they create
with their labor becomes an additional force to impoverish them; for as
fast as they make it it slips from their hands into the hands of their
master, and makes him mightier than ever. You can