Excerpt from Wagner's Life and Works, Vol. 2: Nibelung; Tristan; Mastersingers; Parsifal Wotan, except in the noble scene with Britnnnilde in the finale of The Valkyr, is a bore. He is Wagner's one failure - and Wagner's failure was on as colossal a scale as his successes were. Wotan is the chief of the gods, a race marked out by fate for annihilation. Walking in the shadow of impending destruction he would, one might sup pose, bear himself with a certain tragic dignity. Instead of this, however, he is constantly bemoaning his fate and hence strikes one as contemptible rather than as tragic. Moreover, even if his outbursts of grief were tragic instead of ridiculous and wearisome, we could hardly clothe with god-like dig mity a character who pursues the female sex - divine, semi. Divine and purely human - with the persistency of a mytho. Logical Mormon and has reared a numerous family each member of which would probably find considerable diffi culty in identifying his or her mother. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.