Siegfried & The Twilight of the Gods. The Ring of the Niblung, part 2
Рихард Вагнер
Richard Wagner
Siegfried & The Twilight of the Gods / The Ring of the Niblung, part 2
SIEGFRIED
CHARACTERS
SIEGFRIED
MIME
THE WANDERER
ALBERICH
FAFNER
ERDA
BRÜNNHILDE
SCENES OF ACTION
I. A CAVE IN A WOOD
II. DEPTHS OF THE WOOD
III. WILD REGION AT THE FOOT OF A ROCKY MOUNTAIN; AFTERWARDS: SUMMIT OF "BRÜNNHILDE'S ROCK"
THE FIRST ACT
A rocky cavern in a wood, in which stands a naturally formed smith's forge, with big bellows. Mime sits in front of the anvil, busily hammering at a sword.
MIME
[Who has been hammering with a small hammer, stops working.
Slavery! worry!
Labour all lost!
The strongest sword
That ever I forged,
That the hands of giants
Fitly might wield,
This insolent urchin
For whom it is fashioned
Can snap in two at one stroke,
As if the thing were a toy!
[Mime throws the sword on the anvil ill-humouredly, and with his arms akimbo gazes thoughtfully on the ground.
There is one sword
That he could not shatter:
Nothung's splinters
Would baffle his strength,
Could I but forge
Those doughty fragments
That all my skill
Cannot weld anew.
Could I but forge the weapon,
Shame and toil would win their reward!
[He sinks further back his head bowed in thought.
Fafner, the dragon grim,
Dwells in the gloomy wood;
With his gruesome and grisly bulk
The Nibelung hoard
Yonder he guards.
Siegfried, lusty and young,
Would slay him without ado;
The Nibelung's ring
Would then become mine.
The only sword for the deed
Were Nothung, if it were swung
By Siegfried's conquering arm;
And I cannot fashion
Nothung, the sword!
[He lays the sword in position again, and goes on hammering in deep dejection.
Slavery! worry!
Labour all lost!
The strongest sword
That ever I forged
Will never serve
For that difficult deed.
I beat and I hammer
Only to humour the boy;
He snaps in two what I make,
And scolds if I cease from work.
[He drops his hammer.
SIEGFRIED
[In rough forester's dress, with a silver horn hung by a chain, bursts in boisterously from the wood. He is leading a big bear by a rope of bast, and urges him towards Mime in wanton fun.