Huginn and Muninn

Posted by Lew , Saturday, June 19, 2010 4:49 PM

According to Norse mythology, Odin is accompanied by two ravens, known as Huginn and Muninn: Thought and Memory. Wotan sends the two forth at daybreak, charging them with flying the width and breadth of Midgard before reporting back to him in the evening. Like many things, Wotan is in constant fear that the two might never return, abandoning him and leaving him without vital knowledge of the dealings of man. In the poetic Edda Grímnismál, Odin states:

Hugin and Munin fly each day
over the spacious earth.
I fear for Hugin, that he come not back,
yet more anxious am I for Munin (trans. Benjamin Thorpe).

When Richard Wagner composed his great operatic saga "Der Ring Des Nibelungen,"which borrowed promiscuously from both Norse and Germanic mythology, he used the Germanic pronunciation "Wotan," rather than the more Scandinavian "Odin." Huginn and Muninn survived the transfer, and while they play a relatively small part in the tetralogy, their presence is felt in at least two crucial points in the drama. Just prior to his death in the third act of "Gotterdammerung" Siegfried is distracted by the ravens. When he turns to observe them Hagen thrusts his spear into the hero's back and kills him. Then, in the climactic scene of both this opera and the entirety of the Ring, Brunnhilde sends the ravens forth to summon Loge, sending him to Valhalla to set fire to the great palace of the gods.

As symbols, however, the ravens operate on a much deeper level. In part they represent Wotan's paranoia and fear as the god withdraws from human affairs into the stronghold of Valhalla. He knows that his empire is morally bankrupt, and as such lives in constant fear that his grand idea of power and dominance, symbolized by Valhalla, wrung from the sweat and toil of the giants Fafner and Fasolt, will one day come to a violent end. That he knows this from the start of the drama is of little relief. His attempts to keep the Ring, violently wrenched from Alberich, have left literal and metaphorical blood on his hands. The selective breeding of Siegfried are of no use, as the child becomes stronger than the (grand)father, and shatters the spear that stands for Wotan's law and contract.

The ravens, then, are Wotan's only contact with the race of men, and are the only means by which Wotan knows that Gotterdammerung -- the Twilight or Death of the Gods -- is imminent. In "Das Rheingold" the gods are present in the world of men before crossing the rainbow bridge to Valhalla. In "Die Walkure" they return, but are severely limited in both actions and ability. Wotan is reduced to "the Wanderer," disguised and stooped, in the pentultimate "Siegfried," and none of the immortals appear in "Gotterdammerung." The ravens, then, demonstrate a god, the supreme Sky God, is reduced to augury.

The intelligence that the ravens deliver to Wotan stimulates both his thought and memory, as their names suggest. They bring reminders not only of the facts of Wotan's actions, but the prick of conscience that these actions suggest. Wotan is forced to think, but also to remember.

Wagner's own conceptions of art would seem to preclude the activity of thought and memory. In Opera and Drama he states "At a performance of a dramatic work of art, nothing should remain for the synthesizing intellect to search for: everything presented in it should be so conclusive as to set our feeling at rest about it: for in this setting at rest of feeling, after it has been aroused to the highest pitch in the act of sympathetic response, resides that very repose which leads us towards an instinctive understanding of life. In drama, we must become knowers through feeling ". In other words, the music, and the drama, should speak for it self.

In fact, this transfers the work of Thought and Memory from the individual operagoer to the composer, the director, the musicians, and the singers. Thought and Memory, properly interpreted before performance, allows (at least in theory) the individual to sink, like Erda, to that place of "repose which leads us towards an instinctive understanding of life." Yet, as Deryck Cooke has observed, "The Ring is the one work [...]for which his dicta do not hold good." In the Ring, even a "traditional" Ring like the Metropolitan Opera's recently retired production, we are faced with symbols which our minds instinctively wish to interpret. Our own thoughts, our own memories, are constantly at work, comparing, analyzing, evaluating. Non traditional stagings, such as those produced by Wieland Wagner at Bayreuth, Chereau's "Centennial" Ring, also at Bayreuth, and the Freyer Ring now on stage in Los Angeles bring their own set of problems.

The Los Angeles Opera's Artistic Director (and conductor of the Ring) James Conlon notes that the experimentations of previous decades have given way to a more integrated approach to this mammoth work. "'The Ring' is Freudian and it's Jungian and it's Marxist and it's Keynesian and Buddhist and Christian -- it's all of those things, but not one of those things." Our thoughts and our memories, however, may rebel at the barrage of conflicting images that this vision suggests. We may wish for the "repose" and "rest,"of an integrated vision, yet our intellects, along with Thought and Memory, like so many ravens, remain always in motion.

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