“Swear to me, Hagen, my son!”, 1911, ink and watercolor on paper, Arthur Rackham. Image Source
“Swear to me, Hagen, my son!”
This 1911 illustration by the English illustrator, Arthur Rackham, is from Richard Wagner’s opera, The Ring of the Nibelung. The Ring of the Nibelung is a four-part opera loosely based on Norse mythology. It follows the fate of a magic ring created by the dwarf, Alberich, and the struggles between gods and heroes to gain control of it.
This scene from the story takes place in the fourth part of the opera, the “Twilight of the Gods.” Wagner composed this Germanic opera between 1848 and 1874. The very well known “The Valkyrie” is the second part of this opera.
This piece, titled “Swear to me, Hagen, my son!,” is a scene from the opera when Alberich, the creator of the ring, speaks with Hagen. Rackham was the top illustrator in England at the time he was given this illustration job. The opera was translated into English and printed as a book. For this 1911 first edition, Rackham drew 30 colored plates in additional to monotone pieces.
C. S. Lewis loved Rackham’s work and spoke about the first time he saw this book in person:
“There, on [my cousin’s] drawing room table I found the very book… which I had never dared to hope I should see, “Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods” illustrated by Arthur Rackham. His pictures, which seemed to me to be the very music [of Wagner] made visible, plunged me a few fathoms deeper into my delight. I have seldom coveted anything as I coveted that book; and when I heard there was a cheaper edition at 15 shillings… I knew I could never rest until it was mine.” source
For more on Arthur Rackham, please visit his short biography here.
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