They
were also called Abel and Cain. Both brothers are strongly
characterized and each one represents a different aspect of
the people. The first one would correspond to the utopia
of 1789, the one that dreams about justice and about equality.
For this idealist, money has no value; only women and love
are worth granting efforts. With a lot of common sense he
accuses Wotan of sacrificing love and the value of women to
sterile stony bulwarks. His brother Fafner would correspond
more to the revolutionary of 1791. The ambitions are totally
negative.
If
he wants to seize Freia, it is only to deprive the Gods of
the golden apples, to weaken them, by no means to eat them.
He is the one who will urge his brother to agree with the
exchange.
The
argument is still defensive: it is necessary to prevent Alberich
from taking advantage of it. When he seizes the treasure, all his
fighting spirit will faint, as the former revolutionary becomes
a conservative bourgeois brooding his gold.
Of
all the characters, the two giants are those that best correspond
to the concept of "race". The word is to be understood
in terms of a homogeneous human group. Each of the giants
would thus symbolize an aspect of people builders, farmers,
while Nibelungen belong to the working class. By referring
to the myth, the Giants are in war with the Nibelungs.
The
Giants are shown as two massive bearded men, with heavy gestures
of relatively little meaning. Loge says they are brutes endowed
with sensibility. As he is dying, Fafner himself becomes endowed
with a sort of clairvoyance and even prescience.
In
the original stage setting, he dies under the shape of the dragon,
which Siegfried brings down, but with Chéreau, he resumes
his human shape. The reason for it is that the dialogue is more
expressive between human faces.
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