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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: it. He had thought better of his old threat to dethrone Wotan and
Loki. He had found that Nibelheim was a very gloomy place and
that if he wanted to live handsomely and safely, he must not only
allow Wotan and Loki to organize society for him, but pay them
very handsomely for doing it. He wanted splendor, military glory,
loyalty, enthusiasm, and patriotism; and his greed and gluttony
were wholly unable to create them, whereas Wotan and Loki carried
them all to a triumphant climax in Germany in I87I, when Wagner
himself celebrated the event with his Kaisermarsch, which sounded
much more convincing than the Marseillaise or the Carmagnole.
How, after the Kaisermarsch, could Wagner go back to his
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