Donington on Jung and Wagner's "Ring"

Robert Donington's Wagner's 'Ring' and its Symbols is the oft-cited Jungian analysis of the cycle of four operas. In discussing the paradox of the general situation that develops in the first opera, "Das Rheingold," Donington makes the point that the "bitterness and the sweetness of life are quite inseparable." He quotes Wagner, who wrote in a letter that "'Without death as a necessary concomitant, there is no life; that alone has no end which has no beginning.'" Music, continues, Donington, "is at its greatest when it puts us in mind at once of our own mortality and of life's worth and beauty, and reconciles us to the paradox." He goes on to extend the realization to all the arts, especially "in this age of weakened religious understanding" when "the arts have more responsibility than ever for quickening our intuitive awareness that life does hold a meaning to be discovered by each in his own individual way." In short, "great art reconciles the opposites, and in so doing helps us to reconcile them and to become reconciled with life."
Wagner is not a lovable man, or even a likable one, but in his work his (apparent?) knowledge of his own shortcomings, of man's capacity for inflicting pain, seems to enrich the music. Does this forgive his sins? No, but it may help to explain the appeal of his music.