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| ACT THREE SCENE THREE The hall of the Gibichungs (It is night. Moonlight is reflected on the Rhine. Gutrune comes out of her room into the hall)
 Bad dreams disturbed my sleep. Wildly his horse neighed; Brünnhilde's laughter wakened me. Who was the woman I saw walking to the river bank? Brünnhilde frightens me! Is she at home?  (She listens at the door, right, and calls softly) Brünnhilde! Brünnhilde! Are you awake?  (She opens the door timidly and looks into the inner room) Her room is empty. Then it was she that I saw going to the Rhine!  (She starts and listens to a sound in the distance) Was that his horn? No! No sign of life! If I could only see Siegfried soon! (She is about to go back to her room; but hearing Hagen's voice, she pauses and stands for a time motionless, transfixed with fear)  HAGEN'S VOICE (approaching from outside) Hoiho! Hoiho! Awake, awake! Lights ho! Bright torches! We are bringing home the spoils of the hunt. Hoiho! Hoiho!  (Lights and growing firelight from outside)  HAGEN (entering the hall) Up, Gutrune! Greet Siegfried! The mighty hero is coming home. GUTRUNE (in utter terror) What has happened? Hagen! I did not hear his horn! (Men and women, with lights and firebrands, lead in the procession returning home with Siegfried's body: Gunther is among them.)  HAGEN The pallid hero can blow it no more; no more will he go off hunting or into battle, nor woo lovely women. GUTRUNE (with growing horror) What are they bringing? (The procession reaches the centre of the hall, where the vassals set down the body on a dais.)  HAGEN A wild boar's prey, Siegfried, your dead husband.  (Gutrune shrieks and falls on the body. General shock and grief.)  GUNTHER (tending Gutrune, who has fainted) Gutrune, dear sister, open your eyes, speak to me!  GUTRUNE (recovering consciousness) Siegfried - Siegfried slain! (She pushes Gunther violently away)  Away, faithless brother, my husband's murderer! O help! Help! Alas! Alas! They have killed Siegfried!  GUNTHER Do not reproach me! Complain to Hagen: he is the accursed boar who savaged this noble hero. HAGEN Do you revile me for it?  GUNTHER My anguish and misfortune dog you for ever!  HAGEN (stepping forward with terrible defiance) So be it! But I slew him. I, Hagen, struck him dead. He was forfeit to my spear, on which he swore falsely. I have now exacted the sacred right of reparation, for which I now demand this ring.  GUNTHER Stand back! You shall never seize what is my property. HAGEN Vassals, declare my right! GUNTHER Would you lay hands on Gutrune's inheritance, shameless son of a gnome?  HAGEN (drawing his sword) Thus does his son demand the gnome's inheritance!  (He rushes on Gunther, who defends himself: they fight. Vassals throw themselves between them. Gunter falls dead from a stroke of Hagen's.) Give the ring here!  (He grasps at Siegfried's hand, which raises itself menacingly. All stand motionless in horror.) (Brünnhilde comes forward, firmly and solemnly, from the background.)  BRÜNNHILDE Silence the shrill clamour of your grief! All of you betrayed his wife, who now comes for vengeance.  I have heard children cry to their mother when sweet milk had been spilled; but no lament reached my ear fitting for this supreme hero.  GUTRUNE (furiously getting up from the ground) Brünnhilde, black with jealousy! You brought this disaster on us: your tongue turned the men against him. Alas that you ever came near this house!  BRÜNNHILDE Silence, poor wretch! You were never his true wife; you served him but as paramour.  I am his rightful spouse, to whom Siegfried swore eternal vows before ever he set eyes on you.  GUTRUNE (breaking out in violent despair) Curses on you, Hagen, for suggesting to me the potion that snatched away her husband! Ah, woe is me!  Suddenly I understand: Brünnilde was his true love whom the draught drove from his mind! (Fearfully she turns away from Siegfried and, dissolved in grief, bends over Gunther's body: she remains like this, motionless, until the end. Hagen stands leaning defiantly on his spear and shield, sunk in deep thought, on the opposite side.)  BRÜNNHILDE (alone in the centre: after gazing at Siegfried's face, first with deep shock, then almost overcome with grief, she turns to the men and women in solemn exaltation).  (To the vassals) Stack stout logs for me in piles there by the shore of the Rhine! High and bright let a fire blaze which shall consume the noble body of the mighty hero. Lead here his horse, that with me it may follow the warrior; for my own body longs to share the hero's holiest honour.  Fulfil Brünnhilde's request! (During the following the younger men erect an immense funeral pyre in front of the hall, close to the bank of the Rhine. Women decorate it with coverings, on which they strew plants and flowers.)  BRÜNNHILDE (again lost in contemplation of Siegfried's body: her face becomes increasingly transfigured with tenderness) Like sunlight his clear radiance shines on me: he was the purest, he who betrayed me! Deceiving his wife, loyal to his friend, with his sword he separated himself from his own true love, alone dear to him.  No man more honest ever took an oath; none more true made treaty; none was more pure in love; and yet none so betrayed all oaths, all treaties, his truest love! Do you know why this was?  (looking upwards) O you, heavenly custodian of oaths! Turn your gaze on my great grief, see your everlasting guilt! Hear my lament, mighty god! Through his most doughty deed, that you rightly desired, you sacrificed him who wrought it to the curse which had fallen on you: this innocent had to betray me so that I should become a woman of wisdom!  Do I know now what is your will? Everything, everything, everything I know, all is now clear to me!  I hear your ravens stirring too; with dreaded desired tidings I now send them both home. Rest, rest now, o god!  (She signs to the vassals to lift Siegfried's body on to the funeral pyre; at the same time she removes the ring from Siegfried's finger and gazes thoughtfully at it.) Now I take up my inheritance.  Accursed ring, terrible ring, I take your gold and now I give it away. Wise sisters of the water's depths, you swimming daughters of the Rhine, I thank you for your good counsel. I give you what you crave: from my ashes take it for your own! The fire that consumes me shall cleanse the ring from the curse! You in the water, wash it away and keep pure the gleaming gold that was disastrously stolen from you.  (She has put on the ring and now turns to the funeral pyre on which Siegfried's body lies stretched. She snatches from one of the vassals a huge torch,)  (swings it and points towards the background.) Fly home, you ravens! Recount to your master what you have heard here by the Rhine! Pass by Brünnhilde's rock: direct Loge, who still blazes there, to Valhalla; for the end of the gods is nigh.  Thus do I throw this torch at Valhalla's vaulting towers. (She hurls the torch into the pile of wood, which quickly bursts into flame. Two ravens fly up from the rock by the shore and disappear into the background.) (Brünnhilde catches sight of her horse, which two young men lead in. She runs towards it, takes hold of it and quickly unbridles it: then leans towards it confidentially)  Grane, my steed, greetings! Do you too know, my friend, where I am leading you? Radiant in the fire, there lies your lord, Siegfried, my blessed hero. Are you neighing for joy to follow your friend? Do the laughing flames lure you to him? Feel my bosom too, how it burns; a bright fire fastens on my heart to embrace him, enfolded in his arms,to be one with him in the intensity of love!  Heiajoho! Grane! Greet your master! Siegfried! Siegfried! See! Your wife joyfully greets you!  (She has jumped on to the horse and with one bound leaps into the burning pyre. The flames immediately crackle and flare up high, so that the fire fills the whole space in front of the hall and seems to seize on this too.   Terrified, the men and women press to the extreme foreground.) (When the entire stage appears to be completely filled with flame, the glare suddenly dies down, soon leaving only a cloud of smoke which drifts towards the background and lies on the horizon like a dark pall of cloud. At the same time the Rhine greatly overflows its banks, and its waters inundate the area of the fire.  The three Rhinemaidens swim past on the waves and appear above the pyre.  Hagen, who since the incident of the ring has been watching Brünnhilde's behaviour with growing anxiety, is filled with the utmost terror at the sight of the Rhinemaidens. He hastily throws aside his spear, shield and helmet and plunges, as if insane, into the flood.)  HAGEN Keep away from the ring! (Woglinde and Wellgunde twine their arms round his neck and, swimming backwards, drag him with them into the depths.  Flosshilde, swimming in front of the others towards the background, exultantly holds high the recovered ring.  Through the cloud bank that lies on the horizon breaks an increasingly bright red glow. In its light the three Rhinemaidens are seen happily playing with the ring and swimming in circles in the calmer waves of the Rhine, which is gradually subsiding into its bed.  From the ruins of the place, which has collapsed, the men and women, in the utmost apprehension, watch the growing firelight in the sky. When this finally reaches its brightest there becomes visible the palace of Valhalla, in which the gods and heroes sit assembled, exactly as Waltraute described them in Act One.        Bright flames seem to set fire to the hall of the gods. As the gods become completely hidden from view by flames, the curtain falls) |
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