The Beating Heart of Cleary's Book, Chapter 4

I wrote this short piece on the MOOC for my Wagner class.

I wanted to make a recommendation among our readings, which I have found to be both dense and deliciously written, and informative.

Understanding that all of us are busy adults, and sometimes forced to skim what we might savor if we had more time, I found chapter 4 of Collin Cleary’s Wagner’s Ring and the Germanic Tradition to be the beating heart of that book. Everything before leads up to it, and everything after feels a bit like an afterthought. It is the crown jewel of the text.

The chapter is titled, "Wotan & the Faustian West." The chapters after it turn to the individual dramas, but Chapter 4 establishes the philosophical interpretation Cleary wants you to utilize like a key to unlock the rest of the book, and the Ring cycle itself.

I have not read anything else by Cleary, but a review of his biography tells me that his specialities are Germanic mythology, German Romantic/philosophical thought, and esoteric or pagan interpretations of myth. This book, particularly this chapter, seems like a three-way synthesis of those strengths.

What Cleary is doing there is much larger than saying, "Here are the Germanic sources Wagner used." He makes Wotan into a figure for Western modernity itself: restless striving, knowledge, mastery, contracts, law, technology, domination of nature, and the increasingly elaborate structures human beings construct in an attempt to secure themselves. Hence Faustian. Wotan isn’t merely Odin adapted for the stage. He becomes a philosophical archetype of Western culture.

That makes something about the Ring snap into focus for me. Wotan’s problem isn’t simply that he has made some bad decisions. His entire way of solving problems generates new problems. Every attempt to escape the consequences of one act requires another act of will, another bargain, another instrument, another intermediary.

And suddenly his rune-inscribed spear matters differently. Valhalla matters differently. The contracts he negotiates matter differently. Even Wotan’s obsession with producing a free hero becomes paradoxical. He wants to manufacture someone who is independent of him, and yet under his control.

It also explains why I think you should read Chapter 4 slowly and thoughtfully, rather than merely breeze past it. On the first reading you’re following Cleary’s argument. After you’ve finished the entire Ring, you can come back and ask something much more interesting:

Does the drama actually bear the philosophical weight Cleary has placed upon it?

You may decide that some of Cleary’s interpretation is magnificent and some of it is imposed upon Wagner. That’s exactly the kind of argument worth examining, and chapter 4 is the spear point of that argument.