Germanic mythology

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches Germanic mythology through Wagner's Ring, which, as he recalls, draws on the Icelandic Eddas1. He relies on Lévi-Strauss, for whom Wagner is the father of the structural analysis of myths, and draws an "algebra" out of the narrative: gold and love exclude each other, and the curse of the ring follows from this exclusion12. With Marx and Clouscard, he reads the three tiers of the world, dwarves, giants and gods, as a symbolism of class relations: the gods do not work, and Alberich makes gold work like capital3. He dwells on several figures: Freia, whose name means "free"; Loge, the fire, whom he likens to Hermes and Heraclitus; the Norns, the Germanic counterpart of the Parcae; the world ash tree, mutilated by Wotan. For him, the Norns' thread breaks because of Siegfried's free act: this marks the end of fatalism and the passage from the circular time of the gods to the world of men45. He thus links the theme to memory, freedom and the understanding.

1. 1#9.13 How can sciences of history be real?29 Jan 2021
2. 2#9.15 How can sciences of history be real?18 Feb 2021
3. 3#9.12 How can sciences of history be real?14 Jan 2021
4. 4#3 Benefits and harms of amnesia…6 Nov 2020
5. 5#9.18 Twilight of the Gods, or from repetition to liberation3 Apr 2021

Introduction produced automatically from the 5 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.