The Wound That Will Never Heal

Paul Brian Heises The Wound That Will Never Heal is an original allegorical reading of Richard Wagners epic music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. Heise challenges the standard view that Wagner merely dramatizes the conflict between love and power and demonstrates instead that his greatest work is an allegory exploring humanitys longing for transcendent value and that quests paradoxical establishment of a science-based secular society. By employing a more extensive analysis of primary evidence than any prior interpretation, The Wound That Will Never Heal is the first interpretation to propose and sustain a global and conceptually coherent account of the entire Ring.