confession to Bruennhilde in V.2.2, when Wotan has finally acknowledged the inevitability of Alberich’s victory over the gods and explodes in an access of despair. Dunning calls it “Wotan’s Revolt.” According to Dunning #82abc is comprised of three prior motifs, #81’s twist, #47 - which of course is the inversion of #21 - in a much more emphatic variant, and the last three notes of #53 (to which Erda proclaims the ephemeral nature of the world in time, the past, present, and future). #47 in its initial form, heard here and in a couple of other instances which will soon come to our notice, expresses Alberich’s confidence, his certainty, that he will overthrow the gods’ rule, that in some sense the Ring’s power, which he alone had the courage to win, can never truly be taken away from him.
Alberich’s assumption that if Loge remains true to his nature he will eventually betray the gods, just as Loge has betrayed Alberich by working for the gods, is a foreshadowing of the artist-hero Siegfried’s ultimate betrayal of Wotan’s hope that both he and Bruennhilde, through their love, will redeem the gods and the world from Alberich’s curse on his Ring. For Loge is the archetypal artist- hero upon whom Siegfried is modeled, the only difference between them being that the cynic Loge is depicted as quite conscious of the role he plays in helping the gods dupe themselves, whereas Siegfried’s part in this is entirely unconscious. Siegfried will also, under Hagen’s influence (Hagen’s Potion: #154), betray the basis for Wotan’s hope of salvation, the love Siegfried and Bruennhilde share, by unwittingly enabling Hagen’s plot to have Siegfried abduct his muse and lover Bruennhilde, and give her in marriage to the Gibichung Gunther (a metaphor for the artist-hero’s audience). This is of course a major component of Alberich’s assurance that his victory over the gods is inevitable, namely, that the gods’ dependence on the liar god Loge to sustain their self-deception is predestined to failure, because, in the end, Alberich’s objective truth will overthrow the illusions which sustain the gods.
Loge’s claim of blood-kinship with Alberich Wagner probably based on the Greek myth of Prometheus, who provides Wagner a model for both Loge and Bruennhilde. Prometheus was once one of the pre-Olympian Titans, and formerly supported his kin, but he betrayed them for the sake of the upstart gods of Olympus, employing his cunning to help those gods overthrow their forefathers the Titans. With the aid of Prometheus’ treachery and cunning the Olympian gods co-opted the Titans’ power and consigned them to oblivion, much as Wotan employs Alberich’s relative Loge both to consign the Giants and the gods’ debt to them to oblivion, and to overthrow Alberich’s foundational power and co-opt it to secure the newfound power of the upstart gods in Valhalla. We must never forget that Alberich’s forging of his Ring (#19) produced the gods’ abode Valhalla (#20a).
But Prometheus, having served the Olympian gods, betrayed the gods in turn by giving support to mortal man’s bid to share in the gods’ power, stealing the gods’ prerogative, fire, for mortal man’s sake, and giving mortals the divine gift of foresight, which granted man divine wisdom minus the virtue – immortality - which made that wisdom tolerable. For mortal man could now foresee his inevitable death, just as Erda’s prophecy of the gods’ inevitable end will plunge Wotan into irredeemable despair. This gift of foresight of death is the actual cause of Prometheus’ unhealing wound, which in the myth is described as Zeus’s punishment for Prometheus’ betrayal of the gods. Prometheus’ betrayal of the gods for mortal man’s sake is the basis for Bruennhilde’s betrayal of Wotan for the Waelsung clan’s sake. Similarly, Wotan’s punishment of Bruennhilde for supporting his mortal spawn the Waelsungs in defiance of the gods’ law, by exposing her on a mountaintop, is
