From Genesis to the Ring: Richard Wagner and D. H. Lawrence's Rainbow

Abstract

This article explores connections between D.H. Lawrence's 1915 novel The Rainbow and Richard Wagner's music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. It argues that Ursula, the novel's third-generational Brangwen, turns from Christianity to a comparative mythology that merges Christian, Hellenic, and Germanic tales of creation, destruction, and renewal. It suggests that the apocalyptic scenes of the novel's closing chapter draw both from the tetralogy as a whole as well as from its first part, the ‘preliminary evening’ Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold). The Wagnerian connections complicate interpretations of the novel's main image, the rainbow itself. Whereas the rainbow, in the Old Testament, symbolizes God's covenant with humanity, in The Rhinegold it is a symbol of the gods' delusion and folly, their desire to turn their backs on the shameful acts which have enabled them to take possession of Valhalla. Rather than making the novel easier to interpret, paying attention to Wagnerian connections intensifies the novel's ambiguities, as the novel shares the Ring's uncertainty about the questions it poses so dramatically, most importantly the question of whether a realm of love can redeem a corrupted order of law and power.