Alberich’s suspicion of his two new visitors, Wotan and Loge, and his exercise of Ring-power over his fellow Nibelungs, has introduced two new motifs to the Ring. We hear a #50 Embryo as Alberich, in his resentment of any potential rivals for his Ring-power, inquires who his new visitors are. Cooke notes it is a syncopation of the Ring Motif’s (#19’s) harmony. It is generally known as the Resentment (Neid), Greed (Neid) or Grudge (Neid) Motif. #45, Cooke’s “Power of the Ring,” stems, he says, from Alberich’s existential cry of woe “(#5a) Wehe! (#5b) Ach, wehe!” Alberich had exclaimed in unbearable anguish when he finally realized that all three Rhinedaughters had been mocking his need for love, and drew the conclusion not only that he would never find love in the world, but in all probability that the idea of love is an illusion, since from that time forward he swore to make all others renounce love, as he had. His cry, strangely, gave birth to the Rhinedaughters’ cries of joy in celebration of the Rhinegold, #13 (“Heiajaheia! Heiajaheia!”, stemming from #5ab) and #15 (“Rhinegold! Rhinegold!”, stemming from #5a). His cry expresses man’s longing for an innocence that has been irrevocably lost to man by virtue of being who he is, conscious man. #13 in turn gives birth to the Nibelungs’ Labor (or Hammering) Motif #41. And Cooke also noted that #45 later produces a variant, #161, known as Hagen’s (Alberich’s son) Watch Motif.
Alberich’s assessment of Nibelung nature as contemptible and loathsome presumably also embraces himself as a Nibelung. This is according to Wagner’s later writings the view of man which modern science would compel us to accept, that man is a mere physical animal, a product of the evolution of species, has no free will, no transcendent spirit (and therefore no basis for hoping for immortal life), no divine origin, no capacity for love and compassion (regard for others) which cannot be trumped by fear and pain (regard for self). For Wagner, this modern understanding of man was abhorrent and virtually intolerable to contemplate. He found a basis for it, however, in Feuerbach, as we see in the following passages. For Feuerbach, where the objective, scientific man (here described as the “pagan,” who makes no effort to set himself or his gods outside of nature) knows man as animal and common, the religious (i.e., Christian) man exalts himself with all the pride which comes from the illusion he has a divine origin and immortal soul:
“To the heathen, man was a common, to the Christian, a select being … .” [162F-EOC: p. 309]
“If the Christians severed man from all community with nature, and hence fell into the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which stigmatised the remotest comparison of man with the brutes as an impious violation of human dignity, the heathens, on the other hand, fell into the opposite extreme, into that spirit of depreciation which abolishes the distinction between man and the brute… .” [104F-EOC: p. 151]
Wagner was greatly troubled by a difficulty in Feuerbach’s thinking which seems not to have troubled Feuerbach himself, who for some reason never seems to have reconciled his optimistic appraisal of modern secular, scientific life with the consequence for mankind which must follow logically from it, that man is nothing more than a function of natural law, devoid of true freedom of choice, and consequently unable to sustain a true morality, a morality based on self-sacrifice for others, since egoism lies behind all human actions, thoughts, and words in such a prosaic, spiritless world. For Feuerbach this inherent, inescapable egoism was expressed not only in tyranny and the sadism of the powerful (Alberich) over the powerless (his fellow Nibelungs), but also in the fear and acquiescence of the powerless. Alberich’s tyrannous impulse expresses the egoism behind all
