[R.3: H]
In order to intimidate Wotan and the other Valhallan gods Alberich now draws Wotan’s attention to the means through which Alberich will eventually overthrow their rule, his slowly growing Hoard of Treasure, whose motif #46, introduced here, is according to Cooke derived from #19b, the second segment of the Ring Motif, which is three rising notes repeated ever higher:
Loge: (#35?:; #33 voc loose vari:) Your power has made you very high-minded [??]: fearsomely great your strength has grown (:#35?; :#33 voc loose vari).
Alberich: Do you see the hoard that my army has heaped up for me there?
Loge: Such a splendid one I never yet saw! (…)
Alberich: [[ #46: ]] That’s just for today, a pitiful pile: daunting and great it shall grow hereafter(:#46).
Wotan: But what good is the hoard since Nibelheim’s joyless and naught can be bought [the German word “feil” apparently also carries the implication of prostituting oneself, of venality, of having one’s “price,” as if Wotan is suggesting that nothing can be corrupted here in Nibelheim with wealth] here with wealth?
Alberich: To create yet more wealth and to hide away wealth Nibelheim’s night serves me well; (#46:) and yet with the hoard, heaped up in the cave (:#46), I shall then, I think, work wonders: (#17>#19?:) The whole of the world I’ll win with it as my own. (#19)
Wotan’s question to Alberich, what possible use his Hoard could be to him, since nothing can be bought with it in Nibelheim, is more or less the only time in the entire Ring in which Alberich’s treasure is actually spoken of as wealth which can be used to acquire other things of use and value. For after this, and especially later when Wotan gathers what is described as a hoard (“Hort”) of knowledge from Erda by consorting with her in person in the bowels of the earth, or, what is the same thing, gathers knowledge during his wanderings over the earth (“Erde,” or Erda), the hoard takes on a much broader meaning as a metaphor for man’s historical experience of the world (the earth, Erda). This embraces knowledge of both man - i.e., of what is within (Wotan’s self-knowledge) – and of the outer world of nature (Erda). Alberich’s and Wotan’s gradual accumulation of this treasury of knowledge, a natural consequence of man’s power of thought (the
