describes obliquely, through a surprising metaphor, the role which Bruennhilde plays in relation to God-the-Father Wotan, and his grandson Siegfried (Siegfried, who, to slightly stretch the Biblical analogy, we may as well regard as God-the-Father’s son, the savior, since the redemptive power Wotan hoped but failed to find in his son Siegmund, he hopes to find in Siegfried):
“In the mingling of races the blood of the nobler males is ruined by the baser feminine element: the masculine element suffers, character founders … . The feminine thus remains owing deliverance: here art – as there in religion: the immaculate Virgin gives birth to the Saviour.” [1103W-{10/23/81} BB, p. 202]
Wagner here introduces the notion that the so-called Aryan race’s blood was tainted by mixture with inferior races with which the Aryans came into contact in the course of their conquests, to which he adds the related idea that female blood is inferior to male blood because, presumably, he thinks female blood is baser, more subject to materiality. But this is also an obvious reference to Eve in Paradise, who according to the Genesis myth seduced Adam into taking on the burden of the Fall with her by acquiring divine, though forbidden, knowledge. But the key point here which relates this passage to Bruennhilde’s role in the Ring is that, like Bruennhilde, and like Eve, Wagner says that the feminine in general, having tainted nobler male blood, owes deliverance (redemption) as compensation for this crime. And this compensation that Eve owes Adam (or Bruennhilde owes Wotan), to atone for disobedience, for breaching faith, is nothing less than the virgin birth of the savior. Wotan, having planted the seed of his longing for a free hero - who would redeem the gods from Alberichs’ curse - in his wish-womb Bruennhilde, has effectively given birth metaphysically to Siegfried, just as in the Biblical God-the-Father impregnates Mary supernaturally:
“The Understanding [Wotan’s conscious mind, in need of redemption] is … driven by necessity to wed itself with an element [music, the product of the unconscious mind] which shall be able to take-up into it the poet’s Aim [Wotan’s longing for a free hero] as a fertilising seed, … that it may bring it forth as a … redeeming utterance of Feeling [the savior Siegfried, who, inspired by his muse Bruennhilde, will create that music-drama in which man’s religious impulse, Wotan, hopes to find redemption].” [530W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 235]
Wotan has realized the poet’s aim, embodied by Wotan’s unutterable secret, the hidden contents of his confession, by submerging it in his unconscious mind, his muse, his music, Bruennhilde, who will figuratively give birth to the hero Siegfried. Siegfried is in a sense redeemed apriori from Wotan’s sin by virtue of the fact that Bruennhilde takes on the burden of that sin, that fatal consciousness, for Siegfried, and protects him from it. That is why he is fearless, that is why (as Siegfried will tell Fafner in S.2.2) Siegfried does not know who he is, and that is why he alone will be able to penetrate Loge’s ring of fire to obtain unconscious artistic inspiration from Wotan’s forbidden hoard of knowledge, knowledge which Bruennhilde holds for Siegfried and will impart to him subliminally during their S.3.3 love duet. Wotan, of course, must kiss Bruennhilde’s godhead away so that man’s religious impulse can live on as feeling in secular art, which has been freed from all involvement with religious faith.
