to himself. The specific motif associated in this passage with Siegfried’s fear, which Brünnhilde has taught him, is H147A = #137a, which, as Deryck Cooke demonstrated, is a baroque variant of H80 = #81, the motif (derived ultimately from Wotan’s Spear Motif H19 = #21) Wagner introduced in The Valkyrie Act Two Scene One to express Wotan’s rising conviction that his wife Fricka was correct in her accusation that Siegmund isn’t the free hero Wotan hoped for, but a mere reflection of Wotan’s own fear and self-deception. So, just as in the case of Brünnhilde’s fear of consummating her predestined sexual union with Siegfried, Siegfried’s fear of waking and winning Brünnhilde is his own subliminal premonition that in winning her love Siegfried is falling heir to that irresolvable conundrum and imperishable guilt which compelled Wotan to renounce his hope that Siegmund could redeem the gods from Alberich’s Ring Curse. Siegfried will fail as a redeemer just as his father Siegmund failed, and this motival reference to Wotan’s fear and self-delusion is the musical expression of Siegfried’s premonition.
Having ignored this crucial motival reference which explains what’s truly behind Siegfried’s anxiety in the face of waking Brünnhilde (that he’s inheriting Wotan’s irresolvable existential dilemma from her, and that it therefore might rise to consciousness in him), and having also omitted any mention of the resonant musical motifs which link Brünnhilde’s fear of consummating a loving union with Siegfried with Wotan’s irresolvable dilemma, it’s again no surprise that Kitcher and Schacht are reduced to informing us that what, in my interpretation, is Wagner’s allegorical representation of the artist-hero Siegfried’s unconscious artistic inspiration by his muse, his unconscious mind, Brünnhilde, in Siegfried Act Three Scene Three, “… has to fail as a depiction of true - and therefore necessarily mutual - love”:
“The ludicrous character of this moment infects the scene that follows. For all its psychological fascination, it has to fail as a depiction of true - and therefore necessarily mutual - love.” [P. 159-160]
Well, the solution to Kitcher’s and Schacht’s dilemma is that Wagner never intended Act Three Scene Three of Siegfried to be a depiction of “… true - and therefore necessarily mutual - love” in the first place. Siegfried and Brünnhilde taken together are an allegorical being, Wagner’s depiction of the relationship of the music-dramatist to his own unconscious mind, his muse of unconscious artistic inspiration. It doesn’t help that throughout their book Kitcher and Schacht construe Siegfried’s seemingly naïve and clunky heroism as totally divorced from Brünnhilde’s capacity for love and its redemptive power, as if they could be considered in isolation from each other. A couple of relevant extracts from among many similar ones will illustrate my point:
“… the idea that what will replace Wotan’s rule of law is the triumph of heroism - is accompanied by a second option: the possibility of an order based on the sway of love.” [P. 115]
“Brünnhilde’s dawning new capacity for love is a very different thing from the heroism that is Siegfried’s primary stock-in-trade, and also from the adolescent style of love he brings to her - even if he himself begins to discover the possibility of a richer love through her, and perhaps at the end has grown enough to be capable of realizing it with her.” [P. 115-116]
