power), from nature as known to us sympathetically through subjective feeling, or music, which we can identify with Bruennhilde:
“Nature in her actual reality is only seen by the Understanding, which de-composes her into her separatest of parts; if it wants to display to itself these parts in their living organic connexion, then the quiet of the Understanding’s meditation is involuntarily displaced by a more and more highly agitated mood … of Feeling. In this mood, Man unconsciously refers Nature [Erda] once more to himself … . In Feeling’s highest agitation, Man sees in Nature a sympathising being [Bruennhilde] … .” [526W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 218]
And in our next, rather arcane passage, he informs us that Nature (which we can construe here as represented by the Rhinedaughters - Wagner’s metaphor for preconscious animal instinct - who thwarted Alberich’s desire for love) abandoned man (Alberich) to those conditions which led inevitably to “self-gained consciousness,” i.e., to Alberich’s forging of his Ring of power. And he adds that Nature was then transformed from the over-tender mother (i.e., Erda as known to Wotan subjectively and sympathetically, when she advised him to renounce objective consciousness by yielding the Ring to the giants), into a “bashful bride,” whom we will meet later in Erda’s daughter Bruennhilde, who at first resists the artist-hero Siegfried’s sexual overtures:
“ … where Nature in her overfill was All [i.e., during the golden age of preconscious animal instinct prior to the evolution of human consciousness], we neither light upon free Man nor genuine Art; but where … she left those empty gaps, where she thus made room for the free self-evolution of Man and of his need-grown energy, was Art first born. Granted, that Nature has also had her share in the birth of Art, just as the highest expression of the latter is the brilliant ‘close,’ the conscious reunion of Nature with Man, effected by his understanding of her [Wagner refers here to music, or subjective feeling, through which we feel one with the world and don’t distinguish the world from ourselves as an object of knowledge]. Her share, however, was this: that she abandoned Man [the Rhinedaughters renounce Alberich’s bid for love], the creator of Art [Light-Alberich, Wotan, who with the help of Loge’s cunning, dreams Valhalla into existence], to the conditions which must necessarily spur him on to self-gained consciousness [Dark-Alberich forges the Ring, which in turn gives birth to Valhalla]. (…) From the over-tender mother [i.e., Erda, when she was solicitous of Wotan’s welfare by warning him to yield the Ring to the Giants], she became to him a bashful bride [Bruennhilde, who initially resists Siegfried’s sexual advances], whom he now must win by vigour and love-worthiness for his – endlessly enhanced – fruition … [Bruennhilde will become the muse of inspiration for Siegfried’s art].” [448W-{2/50} Art and Climate: PW Vol. I, p. 253]
Why, if Bruennhilde’s mother Erda (Nature) prophecies the twilight of the gods, is her daughter Bruennhilde the gods’ redeemer? Wagner’s following remarks suggest that though Mother Nature is the source of all that man abhors as evil, it is also solely through natural means that we can console ourselves for the terrible truths of the world with illusion and ultimately with music, which provides us a sympathetic way of grasping Nature, and offers us redemption:
“[In the following cryptic remark Wagner is taking issue with a male-oriented critique of nature as being “purposelessly formative,” suggesting instead that those who subscribe to this critique are
