Review: May 2003 Götterdämmerung - the Libretto -
an adaptation by John Kinsella for the Perth Festival Golden Anniversary
2003
Like our President, Roger Cruickshank, I liked immensely the Perth
Festival's 50th anniversary production of Wagner's monumental Götterdämmerung
(see Roger Cruickshank's review in the last newsletter (No. 91, March
2003) or on the Wagner Society website at www.wagner-nsw.org.au).
My interest, however, was also taken by the translated/adapted libretto
screened as surtitles during the performance. Fortunately, Kinsella's
libretto had been published so I was able to take a copy to read more
closely. In the book was also an article by Kinsella: On Adapting
Wagner's Götterdämmerung into English, in which he outlined the
theoretical underpinnings of his adaptation. [Text published by Perth
International Arts Festival & University of Western Australia
2003.] I found this to be an illuminating account of his approach
to the translation/adaptation as well as to some of the more puzzling
and "unpoetic" elements in his work. Kinsella also wrote
an article for the Guardian Unlimited that may still is available
at the website: www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/ 0,11710,891229,00.html.
In this essay, Kinsella asserted that: "This will be my significant
work in poetry, if ever I am to write one!" (p12) and gave us
his " initial statement of intent". Here are some key points:
"This is not a translation into English, of which there are many,
but a version, an interpretation. It is intended to capture the passion
and dynamism of the original, as well as the spiritual and material
crisis it invokes. The language [of the adaptation] is contemporary,
and the mythology fluid" (pp9-10). "My interpretation tackles
the prejudices of Wagner, of Australian intolerance (to refugees etc),
multiculturalism, and above all else, the power of the land versus
the "power" of progress, the power of love versus the lust
for power "(p10). "Above all, a dedication to the work as
poetry has informed the adaptation and translation process. Even where
an expression is repeated, or a stock epithet deployed, its context
and place in the physical drama, and the drama on the level of language,
will win out "(p194).
In his essay, Kinsella selected the text of Brünnhilde's rage
against the gods in Act 2, Scene 4 of Götterdämmerung to illustrate
his approach to adapting the original libretto to contemporary conditions:
Wagner's original
Heil'ge Götter, himmlische Lenker!
Rauntet ihr dies in eurem Rat?
Lehrt ihr mich Leiden, wie keiner sie litt?
Schuft ihr mir Schmach, wie nie sie geschmerz?Ratet
nun Rache, wie nie sie gerast!
Zündet mir Zorn, wie noch nie gerzähmt!
Heißet Brünnhild', ihr Herz zu zerbrechen,
Den zu zertrümmern, der sie betrog! (p19-20)
Kinsella's adaptation
Sacred, holy Gods,
Rulers and hosts of Heaven.
Did you write this into your programme?
Did you plan my suffering?
A suffering to rival and defeat all other suffering?
Is my humiliation to set a new standard for humiliation?
Am I to be paraded as some kind of cosmic joke?
If not, then help me seek vengeance.
Let me get revenge with a rage
That no vengeance ever bore.
Let new registers of heat and pain be unleashed.
Unleash fission and fusion, chemical and biological weapons.
Drive Brünnhilde to rip apart her heart, destroy the
man who betrayed her! (p21 & p129-30).
The most obvious difference between the original and the adaptation
is the length, which begs the question of whether the extra text in
the adaptation adds anything not clear in the original or other translations.
The first two lines of Kinsella's adaptation are expanded simply,
it would appear, to fit the different line length he has chosen. The
second brings off a clever pun that reflects the original description
of the gods whispering conspiratorially to create a plan to teach
Brünnhilde a suffering that no one had ever experienced before. Kinsella
codes a metaphor based on computing language suggesting the gods are
somewhat nasty programmers writing a vicious executable file, a computer
virus or Trojan horse, to ruin Brünnhilde's life.
Kinsella uses this computing metaphor on other occasions such as
his translation of the stage directions describing the wall of fire
surrounding Brünnhilde's rock: "Fireglow, firewall..."(p95)
that effectively suggests the role of the flames in protecting Brünnhilde
from contamination or invasion by alien, hostile codes, embodied in
lesser mortals, as a firewall program does for computers.
Later, when Brünnhilde laments the fact that she gave Siegfried all
her wisdom, Kinsella has Brünnhilde cry: "I downloaded all my
learning and awareness/into him, created an artificial intelligence"
(p137). This suggests a parallel process to that embarked on by Wotan
in Die Walküre when he set about creating Siegmund as a tool to retrieve
the ring from Fafner as the Würm. Brünnhilde has transferred all her
knowledge as a goddess to her lover to help him be successful in the
world. The reference to "artificial intelligence" has overtones
from many people's view that Siegfried is not the most intelligent
man.
Then, Kinsella introduces contemporary usage - "Am I to be paraded
as some kind of cosmic joke?" - intended to reinforce Brünnhilde's
feelings of betrayal. However, to me it elaborates unnecessarily on
the underlying idea in Wagner's text. Kinsella's would argue
that he wanted to make the text relevant to contemporary readers;
however, to me the words reduce the intensity of Brünnhilde's passion
to banality. It made me wonder what the point is in selecting phrases
that appear to undercut Wagner's own powerful words.
Let's return to Brünnhilde's cry to the gods, particularly the section
about letting "new registers of heat and pain be unleashed".
Kinsella follows this with: "Unleash fission/ and fusion, chemical
and biological/ weapons". I like the call "unleash fission
and fusion" - these words are wonderfully malevolent and disturbing
in the way they conjure up for any post-Hiroshima reader images of
destruction and suffering. If only Kinsella had stopped there, but
unfortunately he goes on to add bogey words to, I guess, reinforce
his point - "chemical and biological/ weapons". However,
to me this is simply overkill and adds nothing to imagistic impact
of the previous phrase. I would have responded better to less abstract
words such as "acids and spores" that suggest the same weapons,
but are more immediately evocative.
Similarly in the Prologue, Kinsella has the Third Norn describe Wotan's
end through the burning of Valhalla and the gods: "Shattered
spear's razored splintering/ will be angled by Wotan/ into the heat's
glow, / plunged deep into the reactor core, / China Syndrome, Three
Mile Island, / Sellafield, Chernobyl..."(p.48). When I read this
in the surtitles and later in the book, I was impressed by the image
of Wotan's spear shattering and plunging into the fire of a reactor
core as a parallel for the rule of law vaporising in the white heat
of a power only precariously under control. But, I stumbled over yet
another list of bogey words. What does "China Syndrome"
or "Chernobyl" add to the image? In my view nothing. The
ideological intrusions simply literalise the metaphor and destroy
the poetic power of the preceding words. It's not as if Kinsella's
reference to "reactor core" wouldn't conjure up those dreadful
incidents that he spells out for us.
A further example, to illustrate the level of overkill with this
ideological twitch. Waltraute is trying to persuade Brünnhilde to
give up the ring because the "world's collapse,/the land's ending/
hangs on it (p92)": "To end the torment of Valhalla/ cast
this circle of damnation/ into the river? Neutralize the toxins -
pesticide/ residues, nitrogenous fertilizers,/ oil slicks and heavy
metals./ Detoxify and purify!" (p92). Again, for me, Kinsella
destroys the quite strong effect of his earlier active images with
a list of heavy, abstract proper nouns "pesticides" and
even "nitrogenous fertilizers" that seem more in place in
a environmental assessment report than in an adaptation of Wagner's
poem, however much Wagner may have been concerned about the degradation
caused to his environment by the earlier phase of the Industrial Revolution.
Elsewhere, Kinsella lists " DNA", "Pioneer 10",
"growing saline", "Carbon-dating", "electro-shock
therapy, injections", "radiation, echoes of fallout",
"high tech, smart weapons", "PCBs, carbon monoxide,
radiation", and "silt and heavy metals and chemical residue".
In each case, the ideological intention is clear, but the effect arbitrary
and forced and not integrated into the poetry. Kinsella, though, might
defend the inclusion of catalogues of bogey words by saying that he
intends to drive an ideological point home. Indeed in his essay, he
asserts that: "Passion in language is dictated by odd juxtaposition,
dramatic shifts. It's real speech and formality. It's evocation, invocation,
ritual and loss of control together" (p22-23).
They are just words deployed to establish Kinsella's ideological
credentials while, in my view, they clang like cracked lead bells
in the sounding of the poem. I find it implausible that Waltraute,
even were she the most committed environmentalist, would be likely
to cry "Detoxify and purify" to anyone, let alone Brünnhilde,
as a crowning argument to convince anyone to surrender the ring.
Kinsella employs many other literary techniques in his adaptation,
which I haven't space to discuss here. However, I would like to touch
on Kinsella's "localising" of Wagner's text to make the
setting and culture of Götterdämmerung appear Australian, that I think
is generally successful.
To begin the process of localising the setting of Götterdämmerung
to Western Australia, or Australia generally, Kinsella employs the
names of many local plants (karri, red-gum, ghost gum, kangaroo paws,
scarlet runners, "...the mallee and blackbutt, jarrah and parrot
bush, ferns and sun orchids, the rich stands of banksia" (p84),
where Brünnhilde bids Waltraute rest her horse in her mountain home,
"red-inflamed marri-blossom" (p95)), a few birds (crows
- rather than Wotan's ravens - a wedge-tailed eagle, a golden
whistler, "night herons and black swans" p83), references
to swamps, [wheat] harvesters, the goldfields, and "Rolling bushfires"
(p86). Evocatively, Siegfried describes Gutrune's eyes as generating
"a heat that warps railway lines and destroys airconditioning"
(p74). Anyone who has experienced an outback summer can relate immediately
to such an image.
However, Kinsella deploys another set of metaphors to "Australianise"
Wagner's text - Aboriginal Dreamtime and cultural references. The
three Norns lament the passing of their time in a deliberate allusion
to Aboriginal culture: "Our timeless learning ended!/ Women's
business lost to the world,/ silenced, our wisdom unheard" (p51).
There is some merit in deploying this allusion since, in Wagner's
version, the Norns, along with their mother, Erda, to some extent,
represent the persistence of a matriarchy in early Nordic and Germanic
culture.
Later, Kinsella translates part of Siegfried's and Gunther's
"bloodbrotherhood" oath as: "...drops drunk solemnly
today/ will gush in rivers, congeal like/ the sap of red-gum over
the conscience,/ atonement and retribution for the tribal law broken..."
(p79). This image has validity as well in extending the Norns- Aboriginal
women link by comparing the ancient laws behind the "bloodbrother"
oath to even more ancient Aboriginal laws.
Given that ancient Nordic or Germanic myths are less likely to evoke
strong reactions in 21st Century Australian audience, Kinsella's Dreamtime
images give us correlatives from a, possibly, more familiar local
culture, to help us re-possess a fitting sense of otherness or mystery.
In the scene in which Brünnhilde, Hagen and Gunther conspire for
Siegfried's death, she says: "I downloaded all my learning and
awareness/ into him, created an artificial intelligence./ His taking
possession of a woman's business/ has given him power over the woman..."(p137).
This both extends the computing imagery already associated with Brünnhilde,
as well as linking with the image of the Norn's "women's business"
and very effectively links Brünnhilde with the Norns (since they are
all Erda's daughters). This imagery evokes the "white magic"
thinking that is behind much conceptualisation of the roles of men
and women in traditional societies. If you appropriate someone's
magic, for example by learning the secret words or stealing sacred
implements, then you obtain control over that person.
Even Siegfried is given words that echo the Aboriginal heritage of
Australia when he rejects the Rhinedaughters' request to return
the ring and their predictions about what will happen if he doesn't:
"Wild, frantic, destructive curses/ woven and embedded into the
matrix/ of the eternal rope of primeval law -/ inchoate and written
in rock-walls,/ in ochre under the sand, in the vascular/ system of
the land, even so -/ Notung will cut every thread..." (p158).
These images are, again, appropriate given the mythic world from which
both Aboriginal law and Siegfried's imperatives derive. They
help to create a sense of strangeness and distance that is entirely
appropriate to Siegfried's world, as it appears to us in the early
21st Century.
In his essay, Kinsella puts his money on the table about his choice
of words, images and concepts: "In Wagner's original, there
are many puns and wordplays that are universally missed, or more likely
avoided, by translators, because they don't fit into the tight alliterative
and narrative framework constructed by Wagner. These puns and word-plays
are mostly intentional, but some come about from his failings as a
poet [my emphasis]. In other words, they sounded as corny then as
now. What is not in abundance is metaphorical twisting of the language
that is totally ambiguous in meaning. There are wonderful moments
of this ilk, but the language is often more direct than this. This
is what impairs it as poetry. More ambiguity and more uncertainty
increase the poetic mystery" (pp35-36).
Kinsella also says that, "As a post-modernist, it is expected
that I be aware of the limitations of text; that I do this automatically.
Wagner, however, certainly wasn't expected to do this; nor would he
have expected from himself" (pp31-32). I take this to be an indication
that Kinsella believes he is more aware than Wagner of the ambiguity
of language and the limits to what can be expressed in a way that
other people can understand. While Wagner could not have deployed
post-modernist terminology to account for his understanding of how
humans communicate, I doubt that Wagner was any less aware of the
"limitations of text" than Kinsella. One only need read
some of Wagner's meditations on how his works were developing to realise
that his understanding of the constraints on writers in conveying
their mental constructs was very sophisticated.
In his "Afterword", Kinsella is also specific about some
of his word choices: "I'd like to add, as a postscript, a few
comments on the translation process that really only resonance after
the journey has been completed. Shifts between different 'meanings'
and motifs are not inconsistencies or random choices of words, but
intentional selections and deployments according to context, mood
and the pace of the narrative at a particular time" (p193). My
only response is that it doesn't come across particularly poetically
- on any level. There may be passion in Kinsella's ideological convictions,
but this doesn't translate into memorable metaphors or striking images.
To me, it seems that Kinsella, in these theoretical claims, is trying
to have his cake and eat it too. He criticises Wagner for not being
"metaphorical or ambiguous" enough for his libretto to be
considered great poetry. Then Kinsella packs his own adaptation with
even more literal, unambiguous, unmetaphorical constructions, such
as his lists of bogey words, and call this poetry. Kinsella then claims
that taking this tack in his adaptation is "intentional".
In other words, Kinsella is creating a warm, comfortable hermeneutic
structure based on circular arguments designed to make a pre-emptive
strike against any criticism of his poetic text. In simple terms,
his proposition goes: "If I write X, then I say that I intended
X to be poetry, then X is poetry". However, irrespective of the
defensively circularity of this position, it is not incumbent on his
readers to stay with him in his postmodernist circularity. We can
choose to step outside the charmed circle and evaluate his poetry
by other criteria. This is in keeping with more rigorous postmodernist
postulates that there is no privileged position from which poetry
comes into existence or makes its meaning manifest to its readers,
even a self-created charmed circle.
I have found much of Kinsella's adaptation inventive and stimulating,
but it does not prevent me from finding that much of it is also tired
cliché, bad rhetoric and prosaic propagandizing, none of which helps
Wagner's reputation or Wagner's own messages to reach a contemporary
audience. Whatever the value of Wagner's libretto as poetry, and there
is much discussion about this, Kinsella's text evidences similar kinds
of achievements and failings, although not to Wagner's heights.
Kinsella undercuts many of his intentions by too clumsily substituting
his own "corny" puns and wordplays, too deliberately "twisting"
Wagner's word and too blatantly exposing his ideological convictions
where Wagner was content to allude indirectly to his. [If anyone would
like to borrow my heavily annotated copy, please call me.
[Ed - May 2003]
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10-Mar-2004
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