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The Wagnerite will remember that the first scene of Wagner's “Rheingold” opens in the depths of the Rhine where the three Rhine maidens are keeping watch over the Rheingold, a golden treasure set upon a pinnacle of rock. The misshapen gnome Alberich appears out of the bowels of the earth and would wanton with the three. He is informed by one of them, Woglinde, that
“Nur wer der Minne
Macht versagt,
nur wer der Liebe
Lust verjagt,
nur der erzielt sich den Zauber,
zum reif zu zwingen das Gold.”
(“He only who forswears the power of passion, he only who pursues not love's pleasure, attains the magic to mold the gold into a ring.”)
Until I had familiarized myself with Freud's “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory,” the symbolism puzzled me greatly. Why should the gnome not possess both the gold and the maiden? As an anal-erotic symbolism, however, the whole tale immediately becomes comprehensible. It is quite obviously a manifestation of Wagner's own anal-eroticism.
The anal-erotic is one of the partial libido trends. It has been pointed out by Freud (op. cit.) and von Hug-Hellmuth (Mental Life of the Child) that the first treasure the child brings to his parents is his feces, the product of his own body. The anal-erotic is one of the erogenous zones that manifests its activity very early. With certain types that incline to inversion this trait is never outgrown and in the regressions of the schizophrenic, this zone may again come into activity.1