"There Is No Sexual Relationship": Wagner as a Lacanian
1996; Duke University Press; Issue: 69 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/488606
ISSN1558-1462
Autores Tópico(s)Musicology and Musical Analysis
ResumoOne of the enigmas of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelungs concerns the motif usually designated as that of renunciation: this motif is first heard in scene 1 of The Rhinegold, when, answering Alberich's query, Woglinde discloses that nur wer der Minne Macht versagt [only the one who renounces the power of love] can take possession of the gold. This motif is then repeated approximately 20 times, most noticeably toward the end of Act I of The Valkyrie, at the moment of the most triumphant assertion of love between Siegmund and Sieglinde just prior to his pulling out the sword from the tree trunk, Siegmund sings it to the words Heiligster Minne h6chste Noth [Holiest love's deepest need].' Why, then, does the same motif stand first for the renunciation of love, then for its most intense assertion? Claude Levi-Strauss provided the hitherto most consistent answer.2 According to his reading, the central problem of The Ring is the constitutive imbalance of the (social) exchange. Wotan the very god of contracts supposed to safeguard exchanges again and again engages in attempts to break the self-imposed bond of his own rules and to get for nothing. In contrast to him, Alberich is more honest: he exchanges something (love) for something else (power), thereby obeying the fundamental symbolic law according to which can't have it all, i.e., you can have what you possess only on the basis
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