Devour my heart and take my ring; now sing
Your fated wisdom and the dirge we bring.
Let Death or gods come, still, I will not give;
Through you and your love, I forever live.
You sit on your throne in an oppressive languor. For how long have you remained in this solemn stupor? Centuries? Eons? Pastless generations that can only be measured in Promethean tremors?
Over and over, you repeat this aberrant memory until the distinction of the dream and reality is merely a matter of the dreamer’s perception. In Sisyphean desperation, you attempt to form and rebuild the structure of the forgotten memory. You gather your memory from pieces and fragments of a once-cherished past. Yet, once you manage to reach the epoch of lucidity and awaken, your memory fades and becomes lost in the boundary between the sleeping and waking world.
Again, you try to remember in vainglorious effect. For are you not the son of kings? Descendent of Volsung, slayer of Fafnir, master of the Nibelungs and keeper of their treasure? By what impudence may someone call you incapable? Yes! Go, go and dream on! Dream of the dragon and the heart, the bathing of blood; of dwarves and giants, kings and men; of gods and valkyries, and—“valkyries?” you think to yourself. “There are no valkyries, there is a valkyrie. But whom?”
You lift your head and observe your surroundings. Where are you? Here, you sit in the throne room on the precipice of Nibelung mountain. The battlements of your castle pierce the heavens, your courtyard blooms with flowers from other lands and other worlds, your gilded halls dazzle and reflect the evening sun. In the castle cupola stand nine stone angels armed with spears and swords and godly presence; each watching the skies, the ground and the great beyond. Thousands of dwarves and giants hail before you; all willing to live and die by your command. Each liegeman observed becomes more gallant than the last; their mail coats and weapons are forged from ancient gold and shine the blood of Fafnir. Their robes were stitched from Arabian silk and threaded with the rarest of stones. To your right sits Queen Kriemhild: the fairest lady on the Rhine who poets call their greatest muse, and who can topple empires with a single tear.
A group of Burgundians ride into your castle and greet the lords and ladies that dwell within. The valiant knights were sent by King Gunther and the Queen, inviting you and Kriemhild to Worms for festivities. Kriemhild rises from her throne in excitement, “Oh, what wonderful news! My lord, surely we must agree to this most pleasant of requests?”
You ignore your guests and look at the golden tapestries that adorn your walls, gifted by King Gunther’s wife. The embroidery weaves a tale that recounts the conquests and victories throughout your life: the war of kings, the conquest of Nibelungland and the slaying of Fafnir. The tapestries are woven with perfect precision, with each stitch containing such fine detail that it can only have been sewn by someone who witnessed the events; however, there is no valkyrie to be found. You stare at the tapestries until your heart stops and your blood runs cold.
“My lord?”
Thunder roars and strikes your memory into smaller partitions. More broken, more fractured than the last, your memory disintegrates into tinier, finer pieces, more irreparable and irreconcilable than the last. You sit on your throne grabbing and shaking your head. You try to organize your thoughts into some coherence. What transgression did I conspire to deserve this? I honor my wife, my subjects, my friends and my God. And yet, there is a feeling of dread that troubles my mind. Did I break an oath I no longer remember?
A range of superlatives flow through your mind in a vain attempt to articulate your ennui: broken, lost, empty, incomplete? Such primitive words are too inadequate to define your malady. Broken, lost, empty, incomplete: words used by minstrels and troubadours who have merely loved in tableaux, but never truly lived.
No, you are a fallen being, Siegfried. An inferior specimen spent to suffer perdition in the lamentations of your sunken state. A luciferian pygmy anguished in the former knowledge of grace and the glory of a higher climb. Your punishment is not just the fires of your mental Gehenna, but to suffer complete understanding of the impossibility of reconciliation. Oathbreaker, defiler, this is your torment.
“Siegfried!”
Is life simply a theater for the Gods? you wonder. Orchestrated and conducted by the Norns, we costume ourselves in the ermine of kings and the linen of peasants. By their command we are born and labeled: lords, slaves, concubines, priests and heretics. We scatter and war, divide and conquer. For what purpose? For celestial amusement? Is the arrival of the Burdgundians fate or simply inevitability? Yes; I understand now. I swore an oath to you and broke it. I promised the world and gave nothing. You married a man that you didn’t love, and now you’re here to fulfill your duty. Now, I must too. I am no coward. I will meet those fires that fate commanded—no, that I brought about by my insolence. I’m sorry my love, my—
“Raphael!”
The helmet falls and Raphael shields his eyes from the blinding light. The stone walls of Castle Nibelung crumble into decorum plastered onto the walnut walls of Moneta Theater. The legions of giants and dwarves transform into college students. Their kits of armor that shone red and gold dull into painted aluminum, their jewelry become cheap ornaments, their tabards of gilded silk fade into cotton. “Kriemhild? Sigmund? Alberich?—Amelia?” questioned Raphael. “Amelia! Please, may I ask why you’re shaking me in such a frenzy?”
Amelia stopped and hesitantly asked: “Raphael, are you okay? You stopped responding and we began to worry. You started to look, dare I say, catatonic.”
Catatonic? Raphael thought to himself. He glanced at the ground and chuckled,“Me, catatonic? Heavens, no! I’m terribly sorry if I caused anyone a terrible fright. I was just tired, and maybe a bit dehydrated as well. That’s all. You see, I stayed up all night trying to memorize my lines, but it would appear that I may have stayed up too late. And look at this armor I must wear! It’s very hot, you know, and it greatly fatigues the wearer after a while. Katharina would agree with me if she wasn’t out today. I promise, I’m perfectly fine.”