to her, knowledge (of the inevitability of the twilight of the gods) which he told her he dare not speak aloud lest he lose the grip sustaining his will, tells us (at least subliminally) something far deeper and more disturbing. She's having a premonition that Siegfried will betray her trust in some way, and not only bring about the twilight of the gods, but the twilight of their love, both of which are inextricably bound up with Alberich’s Ring Curse. She’s also, therefore, having a premonition that Siegfried will succumb to Alberich’s Ring Curse just as his father Siegmund and grandfather Wotan did. What’s at stake, and what unites these two moments of despair suffered respectively by Wotan and Brünnhilde, is that by winning her love Siegfried falls heir to the forbidden hoard of knowledge which Wotan confessed to Brünnhilde after asking her to keep it secret, saying that in confiding it to her it would remain forever unspoken in words. Brünnhilde is having a premonition that Siegfried, in betraying her, will also betray that secret she keeps for Wotan to the light of day, which, as I demonstrated in my online Ring book, is the very plot of Twilight of the Gods.
For the same reason, Kitcher and Schacht misconstrue Siegfried’s fear of waking Brünnhilde, which, as I’ve explained, stems from the same cause as Brünnhilde’s fear of becoming Siegfried’s lover. The following is virtually all they have to say about Siegfried’s initial fear of waking Brünnhilde, commentary that, again, omits the crucial motival reference which expresses Siegfried’s fear:
“Naiveté is part of Siegfried’s nature; and this entails an ignorance that must somehow be dealt with. Wagner’s solution was to have him express it in lines that at least appear to be among the worst pieces of libretto he ever wrote (and must be awful to deliver, with a straight face), from blurting ‘Das ist kein Mann! [Better left untranslated]’ to crying out to his mother’s memory for help. (…) But upon reflection, we suspect that this scripting is quite deliberate and has a point. For as we see him, Siegfried is meant to be a hero whom it will be difficult to respect … .” [P. 159]
Here, in compensation for Kitcher’s and Schacht’s omission of the most important clue (a motival clue, needless to say) which Wagner offered to explain what’s behind Siegfried’s sudden onset of fear prior to waking Brünnhilde, is the key passage which partially includes and follows the one to which they allude in their remarks above. A moment after Siegfried exclaims: “No man is this!,” after having cut through Brünnhilde’s breastplate to reveal her breasts, and being wholly overcome with emotion, he cries out:
“(H65 = #66:) To save me, whom shall I call on to help me? Mother! Mother! Remember me! (…) How shall I awaken the maid so that she opens her eyes for me? (H141B = #132b:) Opens her eyes for me? What though the sight might yet blind me! Might my bravery dare it? Could I bear their light? - (H147A = #137a:) Around me everything floats and sways and swims; searing desire consumes my senses: on my quaking heart my hand is trembling! - (H102 = #98) What is this, coward, that I feel? (H147A = #137a:) Is this what it is to fear? - O mother! Mother! Your mettlesome child! A woman lies asleep: (H102 = #98:) she has taught him the meaning of fear!”
Having failed to learn fear from Fafner, the guardian of Alberich’s Nibelung Hoard, his Tarnhelm, and his Ring with its Curse, Siegfried has now learned it from Brünnhilde, because she's Wotan’s repository for his hoard of knowledge he found so fearful he daren’t speak it aloud (consciously)
