himself responsible for his mother’s death because, after he neglected her and never returned home to her, she died of a broken heart. There are many good reasons for suggesting that in each of these cases we are confronting Wagner’s metaphor for religious man’s sin against mother nature, religious man’s pessimistic denial of the world, and that this is based on Wotan’s sin against all that was, is, and shall be, a metaphor which I believe was inspired by Wagner’s reading of Feuerbach. These will be detailed in my chapters covering the music-dramas devoted to the lives of these heroes.
Ultimately, when Alberich says Wotan will be sinning against the real world if he co-opts Alberich’s Ring-power, i.e., if religious belief takes possession of the human mind and cramps its potential, Alberich is accusing Wotan (religious man) of intellectual dishonesty, saying Wotan does not have clean hands with respect to the truth, that Wotan does not have pride enough to acknowledge the truth, since Wotan has arrogantly assumed divine status. Alberich is saying of himself that he has the courage to acknowledge the real world for better or ill, no matter how ugly it appears to him, no matter how ugly he and his kind appear to themselves, but Wotan cannot stomach the truth about himself and his world. Of course this was implicit in Wotan’s reaction of dismay when Loge told him the price he’d have to pay to forge a Ring from the Rhinegold. Feuerbach gave Wagner the impetus for Alberich’s description of Wotan as a sinner, as an immoral man, when he said that religion contradicts morality when it dishonors the truth and understanding:
“In general, wherever religion places itself in contradiction with reason, it places itself also in contradiction with the moral sense. Only with the sense of truth coexists the sense of the right and good. Depravity of understanding is always depravity of heart. He who deludes and cheats his understanding has not a veracious, honourable heart; sophistry corrupts the whole man.” [133F-EOC: p. 246]
Feuerbach summed up this indictment in his drastic assertion that he’d rather be a devil who owns the truth than an angel standing on falsehood:
“ … I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth [Alberich], than an angel in alliance with falsehood [the gods of Valhalla].” [117F-EOC: p. 188]
[R.4: D]
Having co-opted all of Alberich’s power, taking possession of Alberich’s Ring, Tarnhelm, and Hoard of Treasure, Wotan tells Loge he can now free Alberich from his bonds. Of course, Alberich knows that so long as Wotan holds Alberich’s Ring, i.e., so long as man’s religious mythology sways man’s thinking, Alberich can never truly be free:
Loge: (to Wotan) is he ransomed?
Wotan: Set him free! (Loge frees Alberich from his bonds)
