person, since he himself stands before his own work of art – if it really is a work of art – as though before some puzzle, which is just as capable of misleading him as it can mislead the other person.” [641W-{8/23/56}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 357]
And here we find Wagner’s detailed description of the actual process of unconscious artistic inspiration, a process we’ve actually heard in the musical interlude between R.1 and R.2, in the transformation of Alberich’s Ring, #19, into Wotan’s and the gods’ abode, Valhalla, #20a:
[P. 111] “… the prodigious force here framing appearances from within outwards, against the ordinary laws of Nature, must be engendered by the deepest Want (Noth). And that Want presumably would be the same as finds vent in the common course of life, in the scream of the suddenly awakened from an obsessing vision of profoundest sleep. (…) [P. 112] What we here experience is a certain overcharge, a vast compulsion to unload without, only to be compared with the stress to waken from an agonising dream; and the important issue for the Art-genius of mankind, is that this special stress called forth an artistic deed whereby that genius gained a novel power, the qualification for begetting the highest Artwork.” [786W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 111-112]
If we compare this fascinating passage with the events in R.1 and R.2 we have just witnessed, then Alberich’s “Noth,” his anguish which inspires in him the wish to avenge himself on nature for not satisfying his desires, and to attain world-power, involuntarily gives birth to Godhead, Wotan (Light-Alberich), and the heavenly abode of the gods, Valhalla, through what may be described as Wotan’s (mankind’s) dream. Wotan of course remains unconscious of the part his dark, or unconscious half, Alberich, played in creating Valhalla. In any case, Alberich’s curse on love, theft of the Rhinegold, and forging of the Ring in Nibelheim, with all the attendant horror Alberich’s lust for power forces upon his fellow Nibelungs, becomes for Wotan his obsessive vision of profoundest sleep, the nightmare which he forgets upon waking, but which gave birth to his waking dream Valhalla. Valhalla can thus be construed as a sort of allegory representing Nibelheim, a waking sublimation of Nibelheim, which remains in the dark, unconscious. This would explain why #19 becomes #20a, why Wotan is Light-Alberich, and why, as we’ll see later, Wotan is entirely dependent upon Alberich’s forging of the Ring, and upon all that follows from Alberich’s power, to establish and preserve his abode Valhalla for himself and the other gods. Both Alberich and Wotan are then ultimately motivated by egoism, except that Wotan, unlike Alberich, in proclaiming his divine rank, must falsely interpret his true motive as noble, not selfish:
[P. 27] “We must assume that … this immediate vision seen by the Religious [i.e., the actualsource of religious revelation, as opposed to what our conscious, waking mind makes of it] to the ordinary human apprehension remains entirely foreign and unconveyable … . What … is imparted thereof … to the layman (den Profanen), to the people, can be nothing more than a kind of allegory; … a rendering of the unspeakable, impalpable, and never understandable …, into the speech of common life and of its only feasible form of knowledge, erroneous per se. In this sacred allegory an attempt is made to transmit to worldly minds (der weltlichen Vorstellung) the mystery of divine revelation: but the only relation it can bear to what the Religious had immediately beheld, is the relation of the day-told dream [Wotan’s waking dream of Valhalla] to the actual dream of night [Alberich’s realm of mist and night, Nibelheim].
