[V.3.3: G]
Wotan now sets about the task of calling up Loge – mankind’s archetypal artist-hero - to surround Bruennhilde, in sleep, with a protective ring of fire, to keep all men away except the greatest of the Waelsung heroes, Siegfried, and in so doing introduces the last of the new motifs generated by the drama of The Valkyrie, #100, the basis for the famous “Magic Fire Music”:
(With solemn resolve he then strides to the centre of the stage and directs the point of his spear towards a large rock: #21)
Wotan: Loge, listen! (#34 vari:) As I found you at first, a fiery glow, as you then disappeared, as a will-o’-the-wisp (:#34 vari), just as I bound you, (#21) I tame you today! (#35; #33b) Arise, you flickering flame, enfold the fell with fire! (During the following, he strikes the stone three times with his spear.) Loge! Loge! Come hither!
([[ #100: ]] A stream of fire springs from the rock, gradually increasing in intensity until it becomes a brilliant fiery glow. Bright flickering flames break out. Flickering wildly, tongues of lambent flame surround Wotan. With his spear, he directs the sea of fire to encircle the edge of the rock; it immediately moves towards the back of the stage, where it now continues to burn, enclosing the mountain in flames. #98)
Wotan: (#92:) He who fears my spear-point shall never pass through the fire (:#92)! (He stretches out his spear as though casting a spell. He then gazes sorrowfully back at Bruennhilde, turns slowly to leave and looks back once again before disappearing through the flames. #99; #92; #98; #87, #34)
The Magic Fire Music, #100, is a variant of one of Loge’s motifs, #35, and therefore is part of the same family which includes the two Tarnhelm Motifs, #42 and #43, The Serpent (Dragon) Motif #48, and “Hagen’s Potion Motif” #154. It is therefore a member of that thematically unified set of motifs which in sum convey the notion of the Wagnerian “Wonder,” Wagner’s notion, that his musical motifs distill the essence of the drama in the same way that, according to Feuerbach, that product of man’s involuntarily imagination, the collective dreaming of the Folk, distilled all their experience of man and nature into the gods, the Folk’s unwitting invention. Loge, the archetypal artist-hero, the Folk’s (Wotan’s) artistic cunning, has given birth to this “Wonder,” and Siegfried is heir to this cunning. It represents the artistic magic whereby Siegfried will involuntarily sublimate
