to debase me to fathomless depths? [[ #96a ]] plus #89) Was what I did so lacking in honour my lapse must deprive me of honour? (raising herself gradually into a kneeling position: #87) O tell me, father! Look in my eyes and silence your anger; curb your wrath and explain to me clearly what hidden guilt (#81A) forces you now, in stubborn defiance, your dearest child to disown! (#81A)”
[[ #96b is first heard a bit later:]]
“Bruennhilde: (#96a) Not wise am I, but one thing I knew – (#81 [plus triplet figure influenced by #89]: very slowly) that you loved the Waelsung [Siegmund]: (more animatedly: #88) I knew the discord that made you forget this one thing altogether. (#66>>; #81A) Yet something else you had to see, the sight of which so sorely pained you’re heart (#Octave drop) you withheld your protection from Siegmund.
Wotan: You knew it was so and yet you dared to protect him?
Bruennhilde: (beginning quietly: #81 plus #89 Strings) Since, for you, I kept sight of that one thing alone on which, painfully torn by the other’s constraint, you helplessly turned your back, (#81 plus #89; #81 Vari) she who, in battle, guards Wotan’s back, she saw only (#87) what you did not see: - (#87) Siegmund I had to see. (#88) (#88) Heralding death, I stepped before him, (#88) (#81-plus-#89 Motif) beheld his eye and heard his word; (#87) I noted the hero’s hallowed need [“Noth”]; the bravest of men’s lament rang forth – the fearful pain of freest love, the mightiest scorn (#40 or #64?) of the saddest of hearts: (#87) it rang in my ear (#87) and my eye beheld what, deep in my breast, caused my heart to tremble in holy awe. (#81-plus-#89 Motif) Shy and startled I stood there in shame: (#81-plus-#89 Motif) all I could think of was how to serve him: (more animatedly: #94?; #47 or #82 Vari?) victory or death to share with Siegmund – (#89 Vari?) this I now knew was the fate I must choose! (#81B?) (slowly: [[ #96b ]]) Inwardly true to the will which inspired this love in my heart and which bound me to the Waelsung, [[ #96b ]] I flouted your command.”
[[#97]] Wotan puts Bruennhilde to sleep in a mountaintop after taking her godhead away, ostensibly to punish her by leaving her to be won by any man who wakes and finds her, but actually so that the artist-hero Siegfried will win her love
Commonly called “Bruennhilde’s Magic Sleep.” Based on #30b, “Godhead Lost” – Wotan prepares to leave the repository of his unspoken secret (the secret hoard of knowledge he obtained from Bruennhilde’s mother Erda – Mother Nature), his unconscious mind Bruennhilde, asleep, so that his heir, the artist-hero Siegfried, can wake and win her. In this way Siegfried can safely draw subliminal inspiration from Wotan’s abhorrent self-knowledge, through loving union with his muse Bruennhilde, to produce an art which will redeem the world from Alberich’s curse of consciousness.