musical motifs’ analysis of the drama, and now he holds this virtue against me. The whole point of Wagner’s web of motival cross-references is to constantly remind us of the wider, historical, even cosmic context which heightens the meaning of all the characters’ specific dramatic gestures, making them seem larger than life and making them numinous beings. It’s not a weakness of my interpretation that Wagner saw himself as a world-historical artist unlike any other before him, who’d inherited man’s (Wotan’s) legacy of futile religious longing for transcendent value in a secular, scientific age, and dramatized the tragedy of his position in Siegfried’s relationship to Wotan via Brünnhilde, but its glory.
But having in my view gone much too far in his attempt to discredit my allegorical reading, Scruton seems to have had, like Kitcher and Schacht before him, some doubts about the probity of his own symbolical interpretation which he fears might, like mine, burden Wagner’s vivid, breathing characters with too much abstract meaning:
“The problem that Wagner confronts at this point of the drama [Siegfried Act Three Scene Three], and not only at this point, is how to make Brünnhilde credible in her symbolic meaning. The brilliant artifice, whereby he has isolated Siegfried and Brünnhilde on a mountaintop, dramatized the moment of sexual awakening in both of them, and condensed into that first kiss an entire philosophy of sexual desire and its significance in the life of self-conscious beings, prompts the thought that these two characters are merely ciphers, cartoon representations of purely philosophical ideas. And if that is so, … the drama falls apart at the most important point in the cycle, the point when the world of mortals awakens to its own sacred character, and inherits the redemptive task of the gods.” [P. 225]
In my allegorical interpretation, what Scruton describes as “The brilliant artifice, whereby he [Wagner] has isolated Siegfried and Brünnhilde on a mountaintop … ,” is a reflection of Wagner having conceived their love-duet in Siegfried Act Three, Scene Three in the first place as his metaphor for his own unconscious artistic inspiration by his muse which, it goes without saying, would isolate the couple, since they’re construed as the conscious and unconscious of one human being. However, I contest Scruton’s contention that because (in his view) the love-duet of Siegfried and Brünnhilde in Siegfried Act Three, Scene Three carries the weight of “… an entire philosophy of sexual desire and its significance in the life of self-conscious beings … ,” that Siegfried and Brünnhilde may somehow be reducible to “… merely ciphers, cartoon representations of purely philosophical ideas,” or that in this case “… the drama falls apart at the most important point in the cycle … .“ I contest this because I can't think of any dramatic writing and music more vivid, immediate, urgent, than that which Wagner authored and composed for the final scene of Siegfried. As Wagner's metaphor for the most exalted state of being he ever experienced or could imagine, his own unconscious artistic inspiration which gave birth to his Ring of the Nibelung, it’s a consummate musico-dramatic embodiment of that otherwise indescribable experience of doubt overcome by exaltation.
Be that as it may, as Scruton notes below, the problem that Wagner’s characters, including Brünnhilde as she presents herself in the final scene of Siegfried, may be carrying too great a burden of symbolic or allegorical significance, ultimately culminates with Siegfried, whom Scruton here confesses is “… so manifestly conceived as a symbol that no other interpretation seems to make sense of him.”:
