ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Wagner's attitude towards the natural world of the Ring. It focuses on three particular aspects: the River Rhine, the World-ash tree, and the forest. The chapter explores how German idealism attempted to bridge the gap between Spirit and Nature. Wagner transfers to the River Rhine the 'merely sensuous existence,' incapable of 'development or culture [Bildung],' ascribed to the Negroes in Hegel's Philosophy of history, and subsequently both plagiarised and divested of any real meaning in Stimer's depiction of 'Negroidity'. Gnarled and threatening tree trunks and branches, portrayed in a generalised nco-Romantic, post-Friedrich fashion, figure strongly in Josef Hoffmann's designs for the first Bayreuth Ring. Wagner's depiction of the forest and its denizens in Siegfried is also instructive in this respect. He did not care for Virgil, condemning 'the whole Renaissance and all the Latin races, [for] the way they clung' to him.
