his vision, realizing as he completed it that greed for money is just one expression among many of an inherent egoism which Wagner acknowledged had poisoned human history from the beginning, and which might well, in the end, bring about man’s demise.
In any case, in response to Wotan’s asking what use Alberich could possibly make of his hoard, since there is nothing to buy with it in joyless Nibelheim, Alberich answers that Nibelheim’s night serves to create and hide more wealth, with which he will someday work wonders. I take this to be Wagner’s metaphor for the fact that since, throughout most of human history, man’s mind has been trapped in the illusions of religious mythology (i.e., Wotan has held the objective mind, represented by Alberich and his Ring, hostage), that man’s potential for attaining objective scientific thought, which would eventually give man mastery over his world, was kept in the dark, but nonetheless furtively increased its sway in spite of all of religious man’s efforts to restrain freedom of inquiry. In S.2.1, Alberich will describe how he has waited outside the cave where the Giant Fafner, transformed into a serpent (as Alberich once was), has guarded access to Alberich’s Ring, Tarnhelm, and Hoard for aeons, for a chance to reclaim his lost power. Fafner, we will see, represents the stranglehold which religious faith has historically held on man’s freedom of inquiry, the freedom to obtain objective knowledge of man and nature. In other words, man’s potential for objective understanding of himself and his world has waited in the shadowy wings for its chance to breach religious faith, and free man from the stranglehold of religion’s censorship of the advancement of knowledge. But Wotan (Light-Alberich), even after taking Alberich prisoner, will in the meantime have been gradually accumulating that hoard of knowledge of nature (Erda) which will eventually free the Ring (the human mind) from Valhalla’s (religious faith’s) stranglehold. In other words, religious man will ultimately, and unwittingly, undermine his own faith in the gods, as his understanding matures.
[R.3: I]
Alberich now describes what will happen then, when he at last is able to restore his power and threaten the gods’ rule (religious faith):
Wotan: And how, good friend, will you go about that?
Alberich: (#24 vari violin:) You who live, laugh, and love up there in the breath of gentle breezes (:#24 vari violin): (#47:) in my golden grasp I’ll capture all you gods (:#47)! (#19) (#18; #24 vari violin:) As love has been forsworn by me, so all that lives shall also forswear it (:#18); (#24 vari violin:) lured by gold, you’ll lust after gold alone (:#24 vari violin). (#19)
We hear #47 again as Alberich tells how someday he will capture in his golden grasp the gods who up until then have lived, laughed, and loved in the heights above Nibelheim. #18 accompanies Alberich (one of its very few recurrences as a whole motif in the entire Ring) as he explains what he means by this: just as he renounced love, all that lives will renounce it. Lured by gold, the gods
