Orchestra, the greatest artistic achievement of our age, this archetypal element goes hand in hand with the action itself, unsevered from the dialogue, and in a profounder sense may be said to embrace all the action’s motives in its mother-womb [all of Wotan’s motives repressed by him into the womb of his wishes, Bruennhilde].” [842W-{2/73} Prologue to a Reading of Twilight of the Gods: PW Vol. V, p. 305-306]
In other words, not only do Wagner’s music-dramas attain a unique naivete and directness of utterance since the characters’ (especially Siegfried’s) motives are hidden within, yet expressed by, musical motifs, but furthermore, this very naivete, restored innocence, is embodied specifically in the artist-hero Siegfried.
Wotan’s existential dilemma is the following: he seeks a “free” hero who will instinctively and spontaneously, without Wotan’s influence, do what Wotan wishes for him to do, in order that the gods may be redeemed from Alberich’s curse on the Ring, fear of which has paralyzed Wotan into impotence and inaction. In other words, Wotan is hoping for a miracle, an uncaused cause, who nonetheless will devote himself to alleviating mankind’s sufferings (“Noth”), in his hoped-for hero. A basis for this is Feuerbach’s thesis respecting the Christian notion of a creation from nothing:
[P. 101] “The culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out of nothing. (…)
Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omnipotence: but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself from all objective conditions and [P. 102] limitations, and consecrating this exemption as the highest power and reality: nothing else than the ability to posit everything real as unreal – everything conceivable as possible: nothing else than the power of the imagination, or of the will as identical with the imagination, the power of self-will. (…) On this ground, creation out of nothing as a work of the Almighty Will falls into the same category with miracle, or rather, it is the first miracle … ; the principle of which all further miracles are the spontaneous result.” [81F-EOC: p. 101-102]
However, Wotan confesses to Bruennhilde that he regards the creation of a truly free hero, i.e., a hero freed from Wotan’s influence, who will nonetheless instinctively do what the gods need for their redemption, as an impossibility, for Wotan now finds his loathsome, egoistic motives behind all of his hero’s (Siegmund’s) seemingly freest, most loving and compassionate actions, since it was Wotan who brought Siegmund up for this very purpose. Wotan can’t help noting that insofar as his Waelsung heroes serve to redeem the gods from Alberich’s curse, it is Wotan’s fear of death, and fear of truth, that subliminally motivates and inspires their heroic acts. Wotan here expresses Fricka’s doubts about the freedom of will of mortal men, who so far as she could see are purely preconditioned products (unlike gods), and therefore incapable of initiating free choices. But if the gods themselves are not free in this respect, which in the course of the drama so far has proven to be the case, how much less so are mortals!
Feuerbach has much to say on this subject of the absurdity of the concept of free will, and Wagner concurs:
[P. 162] “Just as the purposiveness of nature is simply a human, or rather, a theological [P. 163] expression for the profound and all-embracing coherence of nature, so the divine will or decision which supposedly endows each of us with certain inclinations, impulses, predispositions,
