My Father Pledged Me a Sword
Anselm Kiefer German
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This title comes from a scene in Wagner’s opera Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), in which Wotan’s son Siegmund, needing a weapon to fight the unwanted husband of his sister Sieglinde, cries out, "My father pledged me a sword." Instead of lodging the sword in an ash tree, as told in Germanic myths, Kiefer located it near the apex of a high cliff, where it would be dangerously inaccessible like Edelweiss, a plant native only to very high mountains. In the Alps, it is tradition to risk one’s life by scaling a cliff to obtain it as a lover’s gift. Just as the pursuit of Edelweiss is often deadly, so too is Siegmund’s plight; he eventually dies in battle with his sword Nothung ("needful") shattered.
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