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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: funeral pyre is raised whilst she declaims a prolonged scene,
extremely moving and imposing, but yielding nothing to resolute
intellectual criticism except a very powerful and elevated
exploitation of theatrical pathos, psychologically identical with
the scene of Cleopatra and the dead Antony in Shakespeare's
tragedy. Finally she flings a torch into the pyre, and rides her
war-horse into the flames. The hall of the Gibichungs catches
fire, as most halls would were a cremation attempted in the
middle of the floor (I permit myself this gibe purposely to
emphasize the excessive artificiality of the scene); but the
Rhine overflows its banks to allow the three Rhine maidens to
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