satisfy both Wotan’s desire to learn the meaning of the fear Erda’s prophecy of the gods’ doom implanted in his heart, and his antithetical desire to forget this fear.
Since Wotan cannot bear to consciously confront the full knowledge of what Erda will teach him about the meaning of his fear, nonetheless Wotan must experience this forbidden knowledge in some sense in order to draw the inspiration from it necessary to seek redemption from this knowledge in forgetfulness. This is a two step process, both steps necessary to produce that Wahn, or self-delusion, in which Wotan can consign his fear (and the knowledge of its cause) to oblivion. It seems then that Wotan’s visit to Mother Nature, Erda, is an unconscious process, very similar to that collective dreaming through which Alberich’s forging of the Ring gave birth to Valhalla (in conjunction with the unconscious labor of man’s animal instincts, the Giants, and the cunning of man’s artistic imagination – represented by Loge - through which man can deceive himself) while the gods slept. It turns out that the artist-hero Siegfried’s loving relationship with his muse Bruennhilde, his figurative sexual union with her, will replicate Wotan’s relationship with Erda in detail, for Siegfried will both learn fear from Bruennhilde, and through his loving union with her forget his fear. And this loving union of the artist with his muse will give birth to those works of art through which Wotan hopes to redeem the gods, i.e., redeem religious faith, from the assault of objective truth, the hoard of knowledge both Dark-Alberich and Light-Alberich (Wotan) accumulate throughout man’s history. Only through the production of authentically unconsciously inspired artworks, Wahn in its grand, redemptive sense, can Wotan hope to forget the meaning of fear, and end fear itself. Secular art, not sharing religious faith’s false claim to the power of truth (the Ring), will also be freed from religious man’s fear that truth will undermine faith (the twilight of the gods), and therefore be freed from fear of the truth. The reason for this is that since secular art does not present itself as the truth it need not fear contradiction by it. At the appropriate point in our discussion of the drama I will provide the theoretical background for this concept in both Feuerbach’s and Wagner’s meditations on the subject.
Alongside #57, Wagner has also introduced another new motif here, #58ab, as Wotan salutes the newly built abode of the gods, Valhalla: “(#58a) Thus I salute the fortress, (#58b) safe from dread and dismay!” Cooke observed that #58b breaks off from #58ab to become a new motif which will make its dramatic entrance in V.1.3 as Wotan’s son Siegmund, the first of the Waelsungs and first of the heroes through whose freest acts Wotan hopes to redeem the gods from the fate Erda foretold, salutes the sword Nothung (whose motif is #57) which Wotan, in disguise, has left for him in Hunding’s House-Tree. #58b will then – Cooke notes - give birth to the last of the new motifs generated from this set, #79, which in V.2.1 will be associated with Fricka’s (Wotan’s wife’s) warning to Wotan that the race of mortals he has brought into the world (through one of his adulterous bondings with a mortal woman), the Waelsungs, threaten the gods’ rule by virtue of the mortals’ independence of the gods’ laws. Fricka, as the embodiment of faith in the divinity of the gods’ rule by law, which by definition cannot be altered and certainly never doubted, will never grasp why the gods should need the services of mortal men, nor particularly why the gods, whose eternal rule can never be questioned, should need redemption at all. It is because Wotan has self-doubt, that the truth of the gods’ claim to divinity is itself in question, that Wotan needs redemption from his doubt. This then will be the meaning of #79, whose embryonic form #58b is introduced here in conjunction with #57, the motif representing Wotan’s grand idea how the gods might seek redemption by giving birth to a race of mortal heroes. #58b, being first heard in conjunction with Wotan's expression of his hope that Valhalla will offer refuge from all that causes the gods dread
