pauses in thought.) And Alberich will see to that end! (#53) – Only now do I fathom the silent sense of the vala’s mysterious words: - (#50:) “When love’s dark foe begets a son in his fury, the end of the gods (:#50) won’t be long delayed!” ([[ (#@: a or c?) = #20b harmonic vari in minor/#12?: ]] [this compound motif deserves designation as a distinct, numbered motif!]) Of the Nibelung I lately heard it told that the dwarf had had his way with a woman, whose favours gold had gained him. (#52 harmonic hint?:) A woman harbours the seed of hate (:#52 harmonic hint?); (#50:) The force of envy [“Neides”] (:#50) stirs in her womb: (#37 loose vari?:) this wonder befell the loveless dwarf (:#37 loose vari?); (#37 loose vari:) yet I who wooed in love (:#37 loose vari) cannot father one who is free! – (rising in bitter anger: ((#@: a or c?) = #20b harmonic vari in minor/#12?) So take my blessing, Nibelung son! What I loathe most deeply I leave as your legacy: godhood’s empty glitter. may your envy [“Neid”] greedily gnaw it away!
Wotan is now resigned to the fact that Erda’s prophecy of the gods’ doom is true, and that Alberich’s son will bring it about. Mother Nature, i.e., the real world, has told Wotan that all his illusions about the world, including the notion of godhead, are destined to destruction inevitably by those who affirm her objective knowledge, Alberich and his proxy Hagen. Hagen we will recognize later as Wagner’s metaphor for the modern, secular, scientific age of skepsis, which will ultimately overthrow religious faith and the transcendent ideals which have depended on it. In other words, science is going to replace the gods with Mother Nature (i.e., with Erda as known to man objectively), thereby punishing Wotan (man) for the religious sin of world-denial, or matricide in its Feuerbachian sense. As Feuerbach noted, it is the very nature of man that he should, over time, overthrow the consoling illusions which formerly gave his life meaning, through the gradual accumulation of objective knowledge which allows him to correct the errors committed during mankind’s childhood, so to speak:
“ … for all his extravagant faith, man is unable to repress or relinquish his natural human reason, which tells him that extradivine things or beings [i.e., mortal men] act independently. This is particularly true of the Germanic and other Occidental peoples, whose highest ideals are autonomy, freedom and independence, qualities to which they could not lay claim if God alone were capable of autonomous action.” [246F-LER: p. 159]
And here we have a few items, both previously cited, from Wagner’s contribution to this debate. In our first extract, Wagner affirms the truth of Feuerbach’s argument that with the advancement of man’s knowledge of the world man will gradually supplant the gods as an explanation of things, with Nature:
“Whilst Man involuntarily moulds his Life according to the notions he has gathered from his arbitrary views of Nature, and embalms their intuitive expression in Religion: these notions become for him in Science the subject of conscious, intentional review and scrutiny. The path of Science lies from error to knowledge, from fancy {‘Vorstellung’) to reality, from Religion to Nature.” [417W-{9-12/49} The Artwork of the Future: PW Vol. I, p. 72]
