The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West

The most important cultural event of the past decade is the ongoing release of the film version of J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. No better guide exists to the mood and morals of the United States. The rapturous response among popular audiences to the first two installments of the trilogy should alert us that something important is at work. Richard Wagner's 19th-century tetralogy of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelungs, gave resonance to National Socialism during the inter-war years of the last century. Tolkien does the same for Anglo-Saxon democracy.

Tolkien well may have written his epic as an "anti-Ring" to repair the damage that Wagner had inflicted upon Western culture. Consciously or not, the Oxford philologist who invented Hobbits has ruined Wagner before the popular audience. It recalls the terrible moment in Thomas Mann's great novel Doktor Faustus when the composer Adrian Leverkuhn, finishing his Faust cantata in the throes of syphilitic dementia, announces: "I want to take it back!" His amanuensis asks, "What do you want to take back?" "Beethoven's 9th Symphony!" cries Leverkuhn. Leverkuhn (on the strength of a bargain with the Devil) has written a work whose objective is to ruin the ability of musical audiences to hear Beethoven.

Tolkien has taken back Wagner's Ring. That may be his greatest accomplishment, and a literary accomplishment without clear precedent. To be sure, The Lord of the Rings is not a great work of literature to be compared to Cervantes or Dostoyevsky. But it is a great landmark of culture nonetheless. Its revival in a reasonably faithful cinematic version has far-reaching effects on the popular mind.

Wagner had done as much to Beethoven. "People don't like music; they just like the way it sounds," quipped the English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Beethoven's musical devices are stations along a journey which has a goal. Wagner turned these musical devices into the haunted caves and dells of a world in which the listener wanders capriciously, abandoning all sense of time and direction. Audiences never liked Wagner's music, but they loved the way it sounded. Musical effects in Beethoven, however eccentric, are subordinate to the long-range musical goal. In Wagner, musical effects are capricious events. That well suits the introduction of Wagner's Uebermensch, the hero Siegfried, for reasons I will make clear in a moment.

It is hard for us today to imagine what a cult raised itself around Wagner after the 1876 premiere of his Ring cycle. Compared to it the combined fervor for Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna and Michael Jackson seems like a band concert in the park. Perfectly sensible people attended a Wagner opera and declared that their lives had changed. Bavaria's eccentric King Ludwig II literally fell in love with the composer and built him the Bayreuth Festival, to which the elite of Europe repaired in homage. It was something like the mood that swept the youth of the West in the late 1960s, but an order of magnitude more powerful.

In 1848, Wagner was a disgruntled emulator of French grand opera who stockpiled hand grenades for revolutionaries, a fugitive from justice after that year's uprising. A quarter-century later he stood at the pinnacle of European culture. What precisely did he do?

Wagner announced the death of the old order of aristocracy and Church, of order and rules. Not only was the old order dying, but also it deserved to die, the victim of its inherent flaws. As the old order died a New Man would replace the servile creatures of the old laws, and a New Art would become the New Man's religion. The New Man would be fearless, sensual, unconstrained, and could make the world according to his will. Wagner's dictum that the sources of Western civilization had failed was not only entirely correct, but also numbingly obvious to anyone who lived through the upheavals of 1848. But how should one respond to this? Wagner had a seductive answer: become your own god!

Using elements of old Norse sagas and medieval epic, Wagner cobbled together a new myth. The Norse god Wotan personifies the old order: he rules by the laws engraved on his spear, by which he himself is bound. To build his fortress Valhalla he requires the labor of the giants, and to pay the giants, he steals the treasure of the Nibelung dwarf Alberich. Alberich won the treasure with a magic ring he fashioned from the stolen Gold of the Rhine River. Wotan covets this ring, which gives its bearer world mastery, but is compelled to give it to the giants.

Wagner's audience had no trouble recognizing in Wotan and the other immortal gods the ancient aristocracy of Empire and Church, who made a fatal compromise with capital (the Ring of world domination) and thus sealed their own doom. Siegfried (Wotan's grandson) takes the Ring back from the giant Fafner, and then shatters the god's spear and wins as his bride the immortal Valkyrie Brunnhilde. Through the rest of a silly plot full of love potions and magic disguises, Siegfried is betrayed and stabbed in the back. Brunnhilde immolates herself on Siegfried's funeral pyre and the flames burn down Valhalla as well, gods and all. A New World Order emerges on the basis of heroic will. It is not hard to see how appetizing this stew was for Hitler.

Tolkien himself despised Wagner (whom he knew thoroughly) and rejected comparisons between his Ring and Wagner's cycle ("Both rings are round," is the extent of his published comment). But the parallels between the two works are so extensive as to raise the question as to Tolkien's intent. The Ring of Power itself is Wagner's invention (probably derived from the German Romantic de la Motte Fouque). Also to be found in both works are an immortal woman who renounces immortality for the love of a human, a broken sword reforged, a life-and-death game of riddles, and other elements which one doesn't encounter every day. Here is a compilation derived from sundry websites, along with a few of my own observations. For those who don't know the details of the Tolkien Ring - well, you will before long, because it is a story that everyone will learn.

Wotan needs the giants to build Valhalla The Elves need Sauron to forge their Rings of Power

The Ring gives the bearer world domination The Ring gives the bearer world domination

The Ring is cursed and betrays its bearer The Ring is evil and betrays its bearer

Fafner kills brother Fasolt to get the Ring Smeagol kills friend Deagol for the Ring

Fafner hides in a cave for centuries Smeagol-Gollum hides in a cave for centuries

Siegfried inherits the shards of his father's sword Aragorn inherits the shards his fathers' sword

Brunnhilde gives up immortality for Siegfried Arwen gives up immortality for Aragorn

Wotan plays "riddles" for the life of Mime Gollum plays "riddles" for the life of Bilbo

The gods renounce the world and await the end The Elves renounce the world and prepare to depart

The Ring is returned to its origin, the River Rhine The Ring is returned to its origin, Mount Doom

The details are far less important than the common starting point: the crisis of the immortals. Wagner's immortal gods must fall as a result of the corrupt bargain they have made with the giants who built Valhalla. Tolkien's immortal Elves must leave Middle-earth because of the fatal assistance they took from Sauron. The Elves' power to create a paradise on Middle-earth depends upon the power of the three Elven Rings which they forged with Sauron's help. Thus the virtue of the Elven Rings is inseparably bound up with the one Ring of Sauron. When it is destroyed, the power of the Elves must fade. More than anything else, The Lord of the Rings is the tragedy of the Elves and the story of their renunciation.

What Tolkien has in mind is nothing more than the familiar observation that the high culture of the West arose and fell with the aristocracy, which had the time and inclination to cultivate it. With the high culture came the abuse of power associated with the aristocracy; when this disappears, the great beauties of Western civilization and much of its best thought disappear with it. That is far too simple, and in some ways misleading, but it makes a grand premise for a roman-a-clef about Western civilization.

Tolkien enthusiasts emphasize his differences with Wagner, as if to ward off the disparagement that The Lord of the Rings is a derivative work. As Bradley Birzer, David Harvey, and other commentators observe, Tolkien detested Wagner's neo-paganism. He was a devout Roman Catholic, and explicitly philo-Semitic where Wagner was anti-Semitic. But this defense of Tolkien obscures a great accomplishment. He did not emulate Wagner's Ring, but he recast the materials into an entirely new form. "Recast" is an appropriate expression. A memorable scene in Wagner shows Siegfried filing the shards of his father's sword into dust, and casting a new sword out of the filings. That, more or less, is what Tolkien accomplished with the elements of Wagner's story. Wagner will still haunt the stages of opera houses, but audiences will see him through Tolkien's eyes.

What does one do when the immortals depart? One acts with simple English decency and tenacity, says Tolkien, and accepts one's fate. The Lord of the Rings is an anti-epic (as Norman Cantor puts it), whose protagonist is a weak, vulnerable and reluctant Hobbit, as opposed to the strong, wound-proof and fearless Siegfried. The Hobbit Frodo Baggins does his duty because he must. "I wish the Ring had never come to me! I wish none of this had happened!" he exclaims to the wizard Gandalf, who replies: "So do all that come to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." No utopian is Gandalf; what one must do is to muddle through.

"I will remain Galadriel, and I will diminish," decides the Elf-Queen of Lothlorien, rejecting the chance to take possession of the One Ring and preserve her powers. The Elves choose between vanishing and accepting a taint of evil, and choose the former.

Modesty, forbearance, and renunciation are the virtues that Tolkien sets against Wagner's existential act of despair. The high culture of the West is gone. The world that remains after the Elves board their gray ships and sail into the West is devoid of beauty and wonder. The kingdom of Men that emerges from The Lord of the Rings is a humdrum affair, in which the best men can do is to get on with their lives. Even the anti-heroes of this anti-epic, the Hobbits who bear the evil Ring to its ultimate destruction, cannot remain in Middle-earth; they sail off along with the Elves.

Those who hold America in contempt for its lack of refinement (this writer always has held the term "American culture" to be an oxymoron) should think carefully about this conclusion. From their founding on Christmas Day 800 AD, when Charlemagne accepted the crown of the revived Roman Empire, the institutions of the West have been formed in response to external threat. The Holy Roman Empire of the High Middle Ages, Tolkien's conscious model for the Kingdom of Gondor, arose in response to the incursions of Arabs in the south, Vikings in the north, and Magyars in the West. Boorish and gruff as the new American Empire might seem, it is an anti-empire populated by reluctant heroes who want nothing more than to till their fields and mind their homes, much like Tolkien's Hobbits. Under pressure, though, it will respond with a fierceness and cohesion that will surprise its adversaries.

"liberals hate freedom, desire control over others and want a world empire controlling everything"

What Tolkien described as the "dominion over other free wills."

Yeah, good points.

I am not that familiar with the time and concepts of which you speak, tho they sound interesting.

I do believe that the average citizen has been better off under monarchies than under outright socialist governments like the U.S.S.R., or governments derived from similar roots as the socialists, such as the fascists states.

That last paragraph is fancy daydreaming by the author. To compare Tolkien's created world with our country is a travesty, faulty logic 180 degrees off center. Where is LaBelleDameSansMerci when we need her literary sense?

I couldn't agree more. Absolute monarchy is the ultimate private property state. Since the kingdom is his private property, a wise king will always act with rational self-interest to increase its worth and value, thus bringing benefit to its inhabitants. On the other hand, a representative government, while "owned" by the citizens in theory, is actually owned by the bureaucratic mandarin class that administers it, a group with no stake in the welfare or success of the state outside of making sure the checks go out on time. It's the difference between FedEx and the United States Postal Service.

Incidentally, I love Die Meistersinger von Nurnburg. Herr Wagner himself is a different matter. "Lieb der Kunst, Hass der Kunstler."

Great article. I noticed the similarities between LOTR and Der Ring Des Nibelungen a long time ago. It's my opinion that both Tolkien and Wagner based their works on the same mythic elements.

Peter Jackson is probably well aware of the similarities. In particular, by having Arwen instead of Glorfindel carry Frodo to the ford shows a parallel to the valkyrie Brunnhilde.

"Boorish and gruff as the new American Empire might seem, it is an anti-empire populated by reluctant heroes who want nothing more than to till their fields and mind their homes, much like Tolkien's Hobbits. Under pressure, though, it will respond with a fierceness and cohesion that will surprise its adversaries."

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"The New Man would be fearless, sensual, unconstrained, and could make the world according to his will."

The basis of Communism, Nazism, or any other Liberalism. And also a basic principle of satinism, specifically "Be your own God".

There are a few things wrong with the analogy. The Elves don't leave the world. They "go into the West", to Valinor, but are still in the world. They are part of the world, hence their immortality. (Men, on the other hand, are not tied to the world the way the Elves are. They were given "the gift of death" by Illúvatar and thus leave the world.) The Elves don't leave Middle Earth "because of Sauron". They were called to Valinor by Manwë and the other Valar ages earlier. They weren't supposed to be in Middle Earth. Those that were there, the Moriquendi and the Noldor, were disobeying the Valar.

This is a great article. For us now, though, Tolkein does look derivative of Wagner. Maybe our grandchildren will see things differently. In his own day, Wagner, must have struck many as just an imitator of old myths.

But the problem with "Spengler's" article is that Wagner's own "Parzifal" has already been seen as an answer or response to the Ring and its worldview. The innocence, repentence, modesty, and chastity that the author celebrates in Tolkien already found their way into Wagner's later works.

The modest, unprepossessing "English" way in the arts was ridiculed by generations of aesthetes. Today, it's finally come into its own, and that's a good thing. But in art, final victories and final defeats are rare. So I don't think Wagner can be counted out.

I haven't yet digested the fulsome article as yet, yet must comment as some little wisdom I have discovered about Wagmer's Ring Cycle. It is about the waning days of the Roman Empire in Ravenna, that is the germanic roots. Not german at all: Roman.

"unconstitutional"( absolute) monarchy( which in practice tends to be the most libertarian form of government).

That is a foolish myth spread by Hoppe and other Rockwellites. You could certainly make a case that there was greater liberty and smaller government before the French Revolution than after it. Or that it was easier to evade rulers in pre-modern societies.

But the oriental despotisms of the world prove beyond question that absolute monarchy is far from "the most libertarian form of government." Or, if it is, that says very little for libertarianism.

And while feudalism allowed much freedom from the state and its ruler, it subordinated individuals to other lords to a great extent. Those who take this view ignore what it would have been like to have been bound to the land, and exaggerate the difference between taxes and feudal dues.

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