The Ring As A Whole: Embracing Siegfried
By Paul Heise
Embracing Siegfried
In Siegfried, Wotan tells Alberich that he is no longer competing with him for the Ring because he has given up trying to change the world (for the better), and from now on he will only observe it. With this statement, Wotan proclaims that art is free from the fear of truth. However, Wotan’s religious renunciation of the world is echoed in Siegfried when the hero reflects that his mother died giving birth to him, unwittingly declaring himself heir to Wotan’s sin of matricide (in his renunciation of the world, Wotan gives up the truth, Mother Nature).
Further, Mime represents everything that Wotan loathes about himself, and yet Mime’s cynical exploitation of Siegfried is the truth hidden behind Wotan’s ostensibly nobler motives in seeking redemption through Siegfried, since Wotan is driven by fear, not love. Because Wotan is reborn in Siegfried, Siegfried’s contempt for Mime, and his insistence that Mime has no influence over him, expresses Wotan’s self-contempt and his desire for a hero who, by defying him, will unwittingly fulfill his wishes. Siegfried, unaware of what motivates Wotan (since Brünnhilde holds this knowledge for him), and thus freed from experiencing Wotan’s fear and self-loathing as his own, projects these motives and feelings onto Mime.
Wagner’s characterization of Mime is often cited as evidence that Wagner inscribed his anti-Semitism in the Ring. Wagner believed that the Jews as a race were inherently egoistical and lacking in idealistic, spiritual impulses, but in fact Mime’s claim on Siegfried (and Alberich’s claim on Wotan) represents Wagner’s fear that egoism is the essential impulse underlying all human thought, feeling, and action, and not just Jewish thought, feeling, and action. Clearly, in his personal life, Wagner projected this fear on the Jews as if by doing so he could purge his theoretical (but nonexistent) Aryan race of the taint of egoism, just as Wotan, in his confession to Brünnhilde, represses any knowledge of his own inherent egoism, his fear and self-loathing. Thanks to Brünnhilde, Siegfried defeats Fafner—a metaphor for Wotan’s fear—and eliminates Mime—a metaphor for Wotan’s head, his self-loathing. Wotan sacrifices his head (Mime) to his heart by leaving the lovers Siegfr! ied and Brünnhilde heirs to Valhalla’s legacy of idealism. Hagen is now master of the real world, Erda’s world, and Siegfried is master of the illusory ideal.
Siegfried’s use of Nothung to cut loose the baggage of Wotan’s conscious mind follows from the same reasoning. Deryck Cooke noted that the Sword Motif is almost identical to the Nature Arpeggio with which the Ring began. It is therefore a musical symbol for the time before the birth of human consciousness. By killing Fafner and Mime with Nothung, Siegfried has artificially restored preconscious, prefallen nature, which according to Wagner is art’s very function. It is no wonder that Mime cannot reforge Nothung. Mime is, as he says, too “wise,” that is, too conscious, to do so.
Fafner, as Wagner’s metaphor for Wotan’s fear of the truth, the symbol of that religious faith which holds freedom of thought (Alberich) hostage, is the guardian of Alberich’s Ring, the Tarnhelm, and the hoard of knowledge; he ensures that the sources of Alberich’s power remain inaccessible. The artist-hero Siegfried, Wotan’s (religion’s) heir, must kill Fafner—that is, kill faith and its fear of the truth—in order to free religion’s essence, love and musical feeling (as Feuerbach and Wagner put it), from the intellectual contradictions of religious belief. In this way Siegfried can take aesthetic possession of Alberich’s hoard of knowledge of the tragic world and, through the cunning of the artistic imagination, transform it into something sublime, which renders Alberich’s curse harmless. Only in this way can Alberich’s Ring, which has now become the symbol for his entire hoard of knowledge (which Siegfried conveniently leaves unused in Fafner’s cave), be transformed in! to the symbol of the love Siegfried and Brünnhilde share.
This reasoning is also behind Wagner’s praise of Elsa’s breach of faith in Lohengrin in his essay “A Communication to My Friends.” Here Wagner expresses his admiration for Elsa’s insistence that Lohengrin share with her the secret of his true identity so that Elsa can help Lohengrin keep his secret and protect him from the danger (Not) to which he would be exposed were his secret revealed. Wagner wrote that Elsa’s choice of love over worship and faith (that is, the preference for art, especially music, over religion) impelled his revolutionary transition from romantic opera to music-drama, the Ring. Wagner wrote, “Elsa showed me the way to this man [Siegfried].” In fact, Elsa’s insistence on sharing with Lohengrin the secret of his true identity, and the burden of facing the danger (Not) to which this would expose him, is the prototype of Brünnhilde’s request to hear Wotan’s confession of his “divine Not” (Götternoth). The contrast betwe! en Lohengrin, who refuses to countenance Elsa’s breach of faith, and Wotan, who agrees to confess his unspoken secret to Brünnhilde, parallels the difference between Wagner’s older, romantic operas and his newer, revolutionary music dramas. Wagner felt that in his romantic operas music was still only mechanically linked with his poetic texts; but in his music dramas, beginning with the Ring, music and poetical drama were fused in an ecstatic union, through which music redeems the world and allows the characters to regain the naïveté (innocence) missing in conventional drama. Perhaps this explains how the virgin Brünnhilde figuratively gives birth to the foolish and innocent savior Siegfried by hearing Wotan’s confession (God’s word), thus transforming Wotan’s thought into feeling and redeeming his world through the magic of her music.
Arguably, Feuerbach’s praise of Eve—in the final pages of his Thoughts on Death and Immortality—had a substantial influence on Wagner’s conception of such heroines as Elsa, Brünnhilde, and others (including Eva) and on his depiction of Siegfried’s most heroic deed, the killing of Fafner (the symbol of faith’s fear of truth). In his book, Feuerbach describes Eve as “reason,” as faith’s lost paradise, a rib that God took from Adam’s faith in order to end his vulnerable innocence. Feuerbach celebrates the day when Eve showed her love for us by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge and sharing it with Adam. He closes his book with a request that maidens take the ancients (the Greeks) as their example and once again drive away theology. This may explain why Brünnhilde is Erda’s—that is, Mother Nature’s—daughter, for it is Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be (the object of reason, of thought) which Wotan fears.
Curiously, even though the Woodbird tells Siegfried the specific use he can make of the Tarnhelm and Ring upon emerging from Fafner’s cave, Siegfried has already forgotten their function. This can only mean that Siegfried obtained, through the Woodbird’s song, through music, an aesthetic intuition of Alberich’s hoard of knowledge. He felt it but didn’t think it. He knows it only subliminally, unconsciously, musically. The Woodbird’s teaching, in effect, left Siegfried untaught. But it is Wotan’s own fear and longing, imparted to Brünnhilde and thus repressed into his unconscious mind during his confession, that speak through the Woodbird’s song. For Siegfried, as if under a spell, follows the Woodbird’s instructions to do precisely what Wotan wished he could do: (1) take possession of Alberich’s Ring and Tarnhelm so Alberich cannot regain them (the Ring having by now become the symbol for Alberich’s hoard); (2) by killing Mime, eliminate all that Wotan so loathed about hi! mself; and (3) leave the Ring in Brünnhilde’s protective hands to keep its power safe, thus rendering its curse harmless and fulfilling Wotan’s hope of redemption, at least temporarily. It was Wotan’s unconscious thoughts, his confession of what must remain “forever unspoken,” the profound secret of his poetic intent, that inspired Siegfried, through music, to fulfill Wotan’s wishes. On June 11, 1864, Wagner wrote to King Ludwig that Wotan lives on in Siegfried as the artist lives on in his artwork, which ideally bears no trace of the handiwork of its creator.
As Wagner—echoing Feuerbach—wrote, music (the great musical tradition that Wagner inherited from the masters) is the last refuge of a dying religious belief. God retreats to the inner heart (the inner Rhine) of the individual artist in the face of the modern world’s lovelessness and scientific skepticism, in which divinity can no longer find a home. In this way, as Feuerbach wrote, God finds safety in feeling when he can no longer sustain himself as a concept. Music, the Woodbird’s tune, is the link through which Siegfried can retrace the road to the hoard of fearful knowledge, which was its original, hidden source of inspiration, its secret “program.” So the Woodbird’s song leads Siegfried into the depths of his own unconscious, Brünnhilde, in whom Siegfried’s dangerous self-knowledge sleeps. The “old tune” (alte Weise) serves a similar function for Tristan. The secret of Wagner’s musical motifs, which link feeling with thought, is that they hold the key to his un! conscious.
In his second confrontation with Erda, Wotan expresses the same two concerns he expressed in Das Rhinegold. Only now he expresses them rhetorically. When Erda suggests that Wotan ask her daughters the Norns to give him the knowledge he seeks from her, he complains that they spin their rope according to the world—namely, Erda’s real world (all that was, is, and will be)—whereas Wotan longs to stop a rolling wheel. In other words, Wotan is complaining that he cannot accept the truth, cannot resign himself to his fearful fate. But his complaint is rhetorical because he has just finished telling Alberich that he only desires to observe and will no longer take action to change things, since the world’s nature cannot be altered. Then Erda suggests that Wotan seek knowledge from Brünnhilde instead. Why? Because if Wotan cannot accept the truth, Brünnhilde can offer him redemption from it. When Wotan asks Erda what use Brünnhilde can be to him, he answers his own question ! with another: “How can the god overcome his care?” It is well to recall here that during his confession Wotan asked what use his “will” (Brünnhilde) could be to him, since he cannot will a free hero. It was through Wotan’s confession of his longing for such a hero to his wish-womb Brünnhilde that the seed of his unconscious poetic intent gave birth to his free and fearless hero, Siegfried.
Confident that Valhalla’s religious idealism, purified now of all taint of religious worship and belief (and purged even of all “thought,” including moral thought), will be reborn in Siegfried’s love for Brünnhilde—the redemption of religious feeling through art—Wotan proclaims that Erda’s waking knowledge, “primeval mothers’ fear,” wanes before his “will.” In other words, Erda’s knowledge (Wissen) wanes before his unconscious mind, Brünnhilde, in whom Wotan has stored the fearful knowledge that Erda has taught him. Through Brünnhilde’s magical protection—Siegfried’s unconscious mind and source of inspiration—Siegfried is freed from suffering Alberich’s curse of consciousness. Wagner’s remark—addressed to King Ludwig in “On State and Religion”—that art’s serenity offers us an alternative to self-destructive religious nihilism, is dramatized in Wotan’s passing of the torch to Siegfried through Wotan’s (religion’s) annihilation of his power.
When Wotan tells Erda, accompanied by the so-called World-Inheritance Motif, that upon waking Brünnhilde will perform a world-redeeming act, Wotan is not speaking of Brünnhilde’s ultimate decision to restore the Ring to the Rhine. In a letter dated January 25, 1854, Wagner informed August Roeckel that not until Wotan realizes that Siegfried will fail (that is, fail to redeem the gods) does he seek to return the Ring to the Rhine. Rather, the world-redeeming act is Brünnhilde’s loving union with Siegfried, Wagner’s metaphor for the unconscious inspiration of Siegfried’s heroic deeds of art, which will temporarily protect Valhalla—in its new incarnation as secular art—from destruction.
It should be obvious why Siegfried feels fear when he faces the prospect of sexual union with Brünnhilde. Siegfried tells Fafner, “I still don’t know who I am,” but Brünnhilde tells Siegfried, “Your own self am I, if you but love me in my bliss. What you don’t know I know for you.” Siegfried fears the sleeping Brünnhilde because she holds for him the fearful knowledge—which Wotan could not bear—of his true identity and fate. Brünnhilde also tells Siegfried that what Wotan thought, she felt, and Siegfried confirms that he doesn’t grasp what she sings, but only feels passion for her. Here Wagner is telling us that his musical motifs, Brünnhilde’s singing, hold the key to the Ring itself, the “unspoken” secret that inspired Wagner to create it.
Like Siegfried, Brünnhilde fears sexual union because, as Siegfried’s unconscious mind and keeper of Wotan’s unspoken secret (the fearsome hoard of knowledge that Wotan imparted to her), she has a premonition that Siegfried will betray the secret of unconscious artistic inspiration, that is, their love. Here we find a stunning example of Wagner’s gift for disclosing subliminally hidden conceptual associations between one passage of the poetic text and another. As Brünnhilde’s fear of sexual union with Siegfried (namely, the risk that he might reveal Wotan’s hoard of knowledge, which it is her function to conceal even from Siegfried) rises to its highest pitch, we hear the very same juxtaposition of motifs—including Alberich’s Curse Motif and what is known as the Motif of Wotan’s Rebellion—that we first heard during Wotan’s outburst complaining of his divine Not, prompting Brünnhilde’s request that Wotan confide in her. This is the motivic symbol for Wotan’s confess! ion of his hoard of forbidden knowledge to Brünnhilde.
If Siegfried betrays their love, he will do so by revealing the unbearable truth that Siegfried’s art is meant to conceal (the Ring and its curse) in a heroic deed of art Brünnhilde inspires Siegfried to create. If Wotan’s (humankind’s) repressed thoughts are revealed, Hagen might use this knowledge to destroy Wotan’s hope of redemption through art. But Brünnhilde agrees to inspire Siegfried’s art through her love because he is, after all, the “hoard [Hort] of the world,” the unwitting guardian of Wotan’s hoard of knowledge of Erda’s world, which Alberich affirms. He is, in other words, the artist-magician who with Brünnhilde as co-guardian of the last of the religious mysteries, the secret of unconscious artistic inspiration, is humankind’s sole remaining hope of redemption from the truth, who alone can consign Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be to oblivion through his art. It is through such inspired art that, according to Wagner, the world’s tragic truth (the Ring) can be transformed aesthetically into an ornament of delight and love. Plainly, Siegfried and Brünnhilde can forget their fear, at least temporarily, only if Brünnhilde inspires Siegfried to create such redemptive deeds of art.
This explains what Siegfried means when he demands of Brünnhilde that “to me, you must be what, fearful, you were and will be,” a demand that otherwise would be quite inexplicable. Siegfried, in other words, is demanding that Brünnhilde perform that act of redemption to which Wotan alluded when he told Erda that her knowledge (Wissen) wanes before his “will” (Brünnhilde), namely, redeem Siegfried from Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, so he can forget the fear Brünnhilde has taught him. It also explains why Brünnhilde asks Siegfried: “Do you not fear the wildly raging woman?” and why we hear Alberich’s and Fafner’s Serpent (Dragon) Motif—the motivic incarnation of Wotan’s fear of the truth—as Brünnhilde asks Siegfried whether her gaze does not blind him. Siegfried, in the ecstasy of his unconscious artistic inspiration by Wotan’s forbidden hoard of knowledge, celebrates with Brünnhilde the fact that “the fear that I never learned—the fear that you ! scarcely taught me: that fear, I think—fool that I am, I have quite forgotten it now!” as we hear the Woodbird’s tune.
Paul Heise, an independent Wagnerian scholar, has studied the Ring Cycle for more than 30 years.
