Three 'Schopenhauerian' Trilogies: Grillparzer, Wagner, Hebbel

Abstract

Grillparzer's trilogy Das goldene Vließ, Wagner's operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen and Hebbel's trilogy Die Nibelungen have many common features of form, thematic content, and dramatic motif — many of them probably derived from a common, though in each case unacknowledged, literary model, Fouqué's trilogy Der Held des Nordens (1808–10). The mythical/legendary story, whether classical or Germanic — Grillparzer himself described the Golden Fleece of the Greek legend as 'eine Art Nibelungenhort' — tells of a self-perpetuating chain of violence and retribution, originating in the theft of a talismanic treasure. The pursuit of this treasure can be seen as a symbolic representation of the insatiable driving Will which in Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, published at the time Grillparzer was completing his work, is identified as the essence of an evil world.