Wotan: You’re foolish, not to say spiteful! (#33b) You see me in need [“Noth”] myself: how might I offer help to others?
Fasolt: (who has been listening attentively, to Fafner) The gold I begrudge the elf; the Nibelung’s caused us much distress [“Noth”], but the dwarf has always slyly slipped from our clutches.
Fafner: The Nibelung will think up new ways to harm us, as long as the gold gives him power.
Fafner: (#33b:) You there, Loge (:#33b)! Say without lying: (#16?:) what is the gold’s great virtue that it satisfies the Nibelung (:#16?)?
Loge: (#15:; #13:) A toy it is in the watery deep, delighting laughing children (:#15; :#13): (#17>#19:) but once it is forged to a rounded hoop, it helps to confer unending power and wins the world for its master (:#17>#19). (#19)
Wotan: (reflectively: #19:) Of the gold in the Rhine I’ve heard it whispered (:#19) (#20a:) that booty-runes (#19:; #18?:) lie hid in its fiery glow (:#20a); power and riches beyond all measure may be gained through a ring (:#19; :#18?)
In his statement that he found nothing in the world which is a worthy ransom for woman’s delights and worth, Loge introduced two new motifs. The first, #37, is generally called the “Loveless Motif” because it is derived, Cooke observed, from the second segment of #18, the motif which accompanied the Rhinedaughters as they told Alberich that he could only forge a Ring from the Rhinegold granting him limitless power if he renounced love. #37 is a key motif in the Ring and in effect can be regarded as an abbreviated variant of #18 whenever it is heard, though its range of reference is far greater than that of #18 per se, which is only heard complete a few times in the entire Ring. The second motif, #38, is what Cooke describes as one of those family of motifs representing the Motions of Nature. It is related to #2, the first variant of the Original Nature Arpeggio #1 in which we hear the motion of the Rhine River’s flowing, and to #14, associated with the Rhinedaughters’ jubilant dance-like swimming in celebration of the shining Rhinegold. It will be heard later prominently just prior to the onset of Siegfried’s Forest Murmurs in S.2.2, and only a few other times in an abbreviated variant (as for instance when Wotan wakes Erda to ask her for knowledge in S.3.1).
As I noted previously, woman’s delight and worth (a figure for love), as Loge describes it here, is not merely a description of woman’s sexual delights, or romantic love, or even sympathy of one living being for another, but rather conveys a feminine essence which for Wagner embraced
