love has now become wholly impossible … [i.e., thanks to man’s advancement in knowledge andthe maturation of his consciousness of self, it is no longer possible to posit an actual restoration of innocence, especially in a transcendent sense]. [P. 305] If it is a question, therefore, of seeking tosave ourselves by means of some makeshift solution, I can find none better than a totally honest approach to the above-described state of affairs, and a frank admission of the truth [as Wotan does in confessing the bitter truth to Bruennhilde], even if there be no other personal gain to be had from this than the pride of knowing the truth, and, ultimately, the will and the endeavour to pass on that knowledge to the rest of mankind and thus set them on the path that will lead to their redemption.” [i.e., to offer man the only possible substitute for religion’s promise of supernatural redemption, the Wagnerian music-drama] [611W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 304-305]
And in the following striking extract Wagner actually provides us his blue-print for the Riug’s plot, which is essentially that the God (religious belief) is sacrificed to science (the gods of Valhalla sacrificed to Alberich’s curse on the Ring), in order to free Jesus (the artist-hero, Siegfried) to express religious feeling (love, the love Siegfried and Bruennhilde share), when religious belief can no longer be sustained in the face of man’s increase in knowledge:
[P. 79] “Is it so utterly impossible to Theology, to take the great step that would grant to Science its irrefutable truths through surrender of Jehova, and to the Christian world its pure God revealed in Jesus the only?” [928W-{3-7/78} Public and Popularity: PW Vol. VI, p. 79] [See also 1023W]
And in the following passage Wagner quite specifically notes that Wotan’s self-destruction gives birth, through his “Will” Bruennhilde, to the redeemer Siegfried:
“Wodan rises to the tragic heights of willing his own destruction. This is all that we need to learn from the history of mankind: to will what is necessary and to bring it about ourselves. The final creative product of this supreme, self-destructive will is a fearless human being, one who never ceases to love: Siegfried. – That is all.” [615W-{1/25-26/54} Letter to AugustRoeckel: SLRW, p. 307]
We find the inspiration for Wagner’s understanding of the relationship of Wotan to Siegfried in Feuerbach’s atheistic reinterpretation of the relationship of the Old Testament God to the New Testament Christ, the god of love, in whom the transcendent God of the human imagination ceases to exist, because in Christ man recognizes God as his own idealized self:
“… love is a higher power and truth than deity. Love conquers god [as Wotan in S.3.2 willingly goes into oblivion to make way for his heir Siegfried]. It was love to which god sacrificed his divine majesty. (…) As god has renounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce god… .” [62F-EOC: p. 53]
However, by seeking an escape from the conflict between science (truth) and religion (error), in art, which stakes no claim to the truth and therefore seems free from refutation by science, Wotan does not secure redemption, but merely a new lease on life for the unconscious to hide from us, temporarily, the bitter truth of the world, which will eventually rise to consciousness as mankind (Wotan) increases knowledge by accumulating Alberich’s hoard. Wagner freely admitted that even
