When does the story of the Ring Cycle take place?

Question

I read somewhere that the Ring Cycle was a chronicle of the Age of the Gods, which took place beginning at Creation. After Brunnhilde immolated herself, the Age of the Humans started, and we are living in that age now.

But I also read somewhere else that the entire world ends when the curtain goes down. Has the entire history of the world taken place in only three generations?

Answer 1

Although very erudite and scholarly and a user whose knowledge and education I greatly admire, I think "petr b" is way off base - his antitheses towards Wagner should be well known now by any and all regular patrons of this category. And I really don't mean to be pejorative: he to me, just seems to have an irrational bias when it comes to anything regarding Wagner.



Don't know whether you've googled the topic, but here's a series of articles you may find enlightening when I did:



http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=8&oq=der+ring+des+n&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4RNTN_enUS349US350&q=der+ring+des+nibelungen+story



Remember my in the past mentioning Dr. Jane Ennis, a recognized authority on Wagner? You may find this website of her's interesting/possibly enlightening:



http://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/ring.html



My understanding is that the characters and mythological setting is primarily based on the "Nibelungenleid": http://www.bookrags.com/Nibelungenlied



But the scenario/plot is essentially that of Wagner alone. Granted, it's a very entangled one and very involved/difficult, for many if not most to make any real sense of. I once did an analysis of the time-span covered; and if one calculates it in human terms, it's that of an approximate 42 years(minimum)if I recall correctly.



To wit: the 9 valkyries are sired and birthed subsequent to the conclusion of "Das Rheingold"; Siegfried is born and if one assigns a say teen-age date to his entire life span, that's another 16-7-8 years, minimum; and so on, etc., etc.



My interpretation of the plot, is that Brunnhilde's ultimate sacrifice definitely ends the reign of the Gods; the Rheingold is purified of/freed from Alberich's original curse upon it(which is the genesis of the cycle)by her returning it to the Rhinemaidens in effect, when she immolates; and the entire world including the human race is thus purified, and can begin anew.



As to your specific question(caption), I would say that the Ring Cycle takes place during and ending a/the mythological era; thus paving the way for a human historical one, as projected/idealized by Wagner in this great epic.



Alberich

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------edit: "odzooker..": I stand before you, guilty as charged; very well said, and even better, "put". What else can I say?



I hope your response is chosen as Best; HONESTLY. "petr b" and I should be taken out behind the woodshed, and be given the "intellectual flogging/whipping", we both so richly deserve.

Answer 2

Of course, Alberich is referring to petr b's "antipathy" toward all things Wagnerian. I grant you that I love marzipan and volcanic Mexican food, but every time I get into the mood to listen to an entire chapter of the Ring I have this vision of a dark angel coming down and informing me that I have made a culinary choice of Wagnerian proportions and I shall be doomed to eating nothing but marzipan and tacos con chipotles for eternity, no matter how good they taste today. The same is true of this tiresome squabble; both enthusiasts and detractors of Wagner have somehow forgotten the gentle words of Aristotle, who counseled: "Enough already."



Of course, nobody ever seems to have ever seriously considered looking up the meanings of the word "myth," which might have spared us all the trouble and embarrassment of watching these Titans assailing one another with creampuffs and marshmallows. I remember my dissertation advisor, after a vacation among sites of antiquity: "I was disappointed at how little, how insignificant Troy looked in person. But then it struck me that The Iliad was much like the politics of academia: the struggle looked so heroic because the arena was so small."



The struggle of the Ring occurs in Mythic Time, which is conventional rather than "objective," the Logical Positivists and the True Believers be damned. Put directly, a "myth" in its generic sense is simply a story that informs us of something significant about our relationship with that which is greater than ourselves, a "spiritual narrative" in its simplest form (look up Jerome Brunner on what he calls "narrative consciousness"). In this connection we may speak dispassionately of "myths of creation and destruction (of which Wanger's is only one), the Christ myth, the myth of the Fisher King, and even the myth of the Star Wars Saga. Why wrestle with factitious and irrelevant antagonists?



Myth therefore takes place in "narrative time," the time it takes to tell the story by conventionally compressing time and space into exactly what is needed to make its point. Literalism is beside the point; arguing the length of a day in Genesis or the number of generations of the Ring on literal grounds defies the convention of myth-telling itself as much as scoffing at Star Wars can be based on defying George Lucas to point to the "galaxy far away" in the sky. These things are narrative CONVENTIONS, people!!! They are things AGREED ON for a PURPOSE. and not the central meaning of the stories themselves!! It's like being asked "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" and then quibbling about how big the pin should be. The question is not about dancing or pins!!! It's about not confining meaning to the material!!



Maybe that's why I'm a visitor to this forum only on a sometime basis, but every now and then I feel moved to use my jawbone to smite some Philistine @ss. Be warned--continue on this soporific and sophomoric course, and I shall be forced to call down the ghosts of Plato, Kant, Jung, Ernst Cassirer, and Joseph Campbell to haunt your collective sorry butts.. That is, if you believe in ghosts.

Answer 3

Probably at the same time as Hobbits inhabited Middle Earth..

Answer 4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F



All the best,