Robbed Water, Raped Earth: Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung as Nature Writing

Abstract

This article argues that composer Richard Wagner indirectly anticipates environmentalist Aldo Leopold’s land ethic through his treatment of natural elements within the operatic cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. While the 19th century European perspective often viewed land through the lens of romantic anthropomorphism, Wagner presents environmental elements as members of what Leopold later defined as the “biotic community,” with voice, legitimate interests and agency, resulting in a libretto open to interpretation as a form of nature writing. To explicate such an interpretation, this article examines Wagner’s treatment of fire, earth and water in the light of Lawrence Buell’s four criteria for environmental texts, as set out in The Environmental Imagination: the intertwining of human and natural history; recognition and validation of non-human interests; human  accountability toward the environment; and acknowledgement of the environment as a process rather than a constant.