himself each day, in a certain measure, in the situation where the ordinary man forthwith despairs of life.” [707W-{64-2/65} On State and Religion: PW Vol. IV, p. 32]
It almost seems as if Wagner is referencing his observation about the sufferings of the higher man, above, in his description of Wotan’s exceptional nature in the following extract:
“At breakfast we talk about ‘Parsifal,’ and he feels I am not entirely wrong when I tell him that each of us bears within his soul a fellow feeling for the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde as well as of Parsifal – the power of love; each of us feels at one time the death wish within it. And the power of sin, of sensuality, I think, too, and its longing for salvation. Wotan’s experiences, on the other hand – his feelings toward Siegfried and Siegmund – people do not feel those inside themselves, the man of genius lays them bare, people look and are overwhelmed.” [966W-{5/20/79} CD Vol. II, p. 311]
And what Wotan sees - which other, average men cannot see - is that man’s irrevocable, absolute subjection to practical egoism and its selfish impulse is repugnant and loathsome, a self-image of man’s Nibelung-nature which is so abhorrent that Wotan found it too intolerable to contemplate consciously, and repressed it into his unconscious mind, Bruennhilde. It is unbearably abhorrent,
not to be borne by Wotan’s conscious mind, because it precludes the possibility of a more exalted, spiritual life of transcendent meaning, not only because the dominance of egoism over all other human motives inevitably trumps any spiritual impulse, but also because it proves that man’s very longing to break his bondage to egoism is ultimately inspired by egoism. What Wotan longs for, thanks to his unhealing wound, Alberich’s curse, is unattainable. It is the desire to purge one’s preconditions, one’s natural and social context, one’s true identity and history, to become an entirely new, spiritual, transcendent self, when in fact man’s very longing to transcend his natural limits originates in his physical fears and desires (the Giants) in the first place. Man’s debt to the natural world which gave him birth can never be settled.
Wagner provides a very detailed description in the passages below of man’s religious impulse to seek freedom from his bondage to the egoistic Will, an impulse which Wotan in the Ring recognizes as inherently incapable of satisfaction:
“Whoever rightly weighs these aptitudes of the human race … must come to the conclusion that the giant force which shaped the world [i.e., Erda’s natural law, and specifically, evolution of species] by testing every means of self-appeasement, from destruction to re-fashioning, had reached its goal in bringing forth this Man; for in him it became conscious of itself as Will [Mother Nature becomes conscious of herself in man, as Erda wakes for both Alberich and Wotan when they possess the Ring of consciousness], and, with that knowledge, could henceforth rule its destiny [they win the Ring’s limitless power]. To feel that horror at himself [Wotan’s self-loathing] so needful for his last redemption, this Man was qualified by just that knowledge, to wit the recognition of himself in every manifestment of the one great Will [Wotan finds universal egoism as an expression of natural necessity, in all that he does]; and the guide to evolution of this faculty was given him by Suffering [Wotan, i.e., man, is the saddest of all living things], since he alone can feel it in the requisite degree.” [1034W-{6-8/80} Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 244]
