the cat playing with a mouse does not know what this means to the mouse, but a human being does know.’ "[961W-{3/23/79} CD Vol. II, p. 281]
Ironically, the very aspect of the imagination which allows the compassionate man to feel and sympathize with other mens’ pain, to place oneself in another’s shoes, also grants the sadist the privilege of imagining the pain he inflicts without actually suffering it himself. This sadism arises in a sense from self-loathing, in that a society organized under the influence of a world-view in which only self-interest, rather than love, motivates all men, as instanced in the social contract which requires of us mutual self-restraint for the sake of our collective self-preservation, cannot possibly engender either self-respect or respect for others, and the mere chance of finding oneself in a position of power over others would lend itself inevitably to enjoyment and expression of that power, spiced up with the loathing for the very nature of man which is the logical conclusion of such a world-view.
It is my belief that a basis for Wagner’s anti-Semitism was that he projected his suspicion that all humans are by nature craven and unspiritual beings on to the Jews, in order in some way to purge his favored Aryans or Germans of this universal human nature. We will see in V.2.2, for instance, how Wotan seeks Bruennhilde’s aid in helping him cast off his own loathsome nature, projecting it in a sense on to Mime, in order that Wotan can be reborn as a new, purified self, in Siegfried. In this reading Mime, considered Wagner’s stereotype for the Jews, represents Wotan’s true egoistic nature which he must deny, and Siegfried represents Wotan’s imaginative creation of a new identity freed from its Jewish (or egoistic) premises.
Again, we find a basis for this in Feuerbach, who describes the Jew’s God as the embodiment of egoism and practical need:
“The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day. Their principle, their God, is the most practical principle in the world, - namely, egoism; and moreover egoism in the form of religion.” [84F-EOC: p. 114]
But why, if Alberich is construed as one of Wagner’s stereotypical representations of Jews, is Alberich heartless towards his own kind, the Nibelungs? One would have thought, given anti-Semites’ assumption that the Jews as a cultural entity have evil designs on the Gentiles among whom they lived, that Alberich would not have enslaved the Nibelungs but instead lead them as a free people to enslave the gods. Though, as we’ll learn shortly, Alberich does indeed intend eventually to storm Valhalla with his host of night (i.e., the Nibelungs), this is a metaphor for Alberich’s intent to confront man’s illusory ideals with the bitter truth about human nature: the Nibelungs remain Alberich’s slaves under all circumstances, because the truths of nature, of which Alberich is the advocate, must always display man to himself as a lowly being inherently subject to egoistic motives. Perhaps we will find a solution to this problem in a reassessment of Wagner’s representation of their enslavement, which may well be a figure or metaphor for a psychological or philosophical enslavement. We will examine this question at an appropriate point later.
The Nibelungs’ forced labor, aside from being Wagner’s metaphor for the Biblical concept of man’s “Fall,” i.e., the price man must pay as the consequence of his acquisition of symbolic consciousness (which forced man to labor consciously, with forethought, to satisfy his needs, rather
