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Wittgenstein on Frazer's Golden Bough

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Costis M. Coveos
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Extract

One of Wittgenstein's latest remarks on Frazer begins as follows:

Hier scheint die Hypothese erst der Sache Tiefe zu geben. Und man kann sich die Erklärung des seltsamen Verhältnisses von Siegfried und Brunhild im unsren Nibelungenlied erinnern. Nämlich, daß Siegfried Brunhilde schon früher einmal gesehen zu haben scheint. (Here it seems as though it were the hypothesis that gives the matter depth. And we may remember the explanation of the strange relationship between Siegfried and Brunhilde in our Nibelungenlied, namely that Siegfried seems to have seen Brunhilde before.)

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 65 , Issue 254 , October 1990 , pp. 518 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1990

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References

1 Geman, text in Synthese 17 (1967), 247Google Scholar; translation by Miles, A. C., The Human World 3 (1971)).Google Scholar

2 The Nibelungenlied, trans. Hatto, A. T., Penguin, 1981Google Scholar. All references made to this edition (NL).

3 Siegfried was invisible during the contest at Isenstein, ‘doing the deeds while Gunther went through the motions’ (NL 66); he was also feigning Gunther in the darkness during that bed-time fight back in Burgundy intended to persuade Brunhild to surrender her charms to the King's will (NL 91–3).

4 NL 53, 58–9, 305, 328, 330.

5 All references made to the librettos from the famous Decca/John Culshaw recording (with Nilsson, Hotter, Windgassen, Crespin, King, Stolze, Frick, etc. and Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic).

6 Vd. chapter 5: ‘How Siegfried first set eyes on Kriemhild’, 46.Google Scholar

7 Act I, Scene I.

8 NL 54.

9 Act III.

10 Die Edda, übertr. von Felix Genzmer, eingel. von Kurt Schier, Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1984, 262–4.Google Scholar

11 PU §§39, 44 and PG p. 285 give further support to my view: Wittgenstein is referring to ‘Nothung’—Siegmund's and (eventually) Siegfried's sword in Wagner's Ring—and not, say, to ‘Gram’ or ‘Balmung’, which is the legendary sword's name in the Eddic lays and in Teutonic Mythology respectively. (I wish to thank Stuart G. Shanker, with whom I discussed the matter, for reminding me of this).

12 Shanker considers also the case in which Wittgenstein might not be using ‘Nibelungenlied’ to denote the final (c. 1205), Austrian version, but either the entire constellation of thematically connected sagas or some specific earlier version he had come across in his youth. As a matter of fact, some of the Eddie lays on young Siegfried speak of a love-affair between Siegfried and Brunhild (which accounts for the fact that they have seen each other before), but there is no indication that this relation was in any sense ‘seltsam’.