Siegfried: ([[ #110: ]]/#104 frag:) Go forth from the forest into the world: I’ll nevermore return. (#110/#104 frag:) How glad I am to have gained my freedom, nothing binds or constrains me! (#104 >>:) You’re not my father, my home’s far away; your hearth’s not my house, nor your roof my shelter. (#110:) Fleet as the fish in the floodtide, free as the finch as it soars aloft (:#110), ([[ #111 ]]:) I fly from here and float away (:#111), wafting along like the wind over woodland – nevermore, Mime, (#92c or #71 vari “hero” or #57 vari”?:) to see you again (:#92c or #71 vari “hero” or #57 vari?)!
(He runs into the forest)
Mime: (in the utmost fear) Stop! Stop! Where are you going? Hey! Siegfried! Siegfried! Hey! (#110 varis:; #111 varis and frag: he gazes in astonishment as Siegfried rushes away.)
Siegfried, thunderstruck at Mime’s revelation that Siegfried has now fallen heir to his heroic father’s own sword, introduces the new Motif #109 as he peremptorily demands that Mime must now re-forge it for him. Dunning suggests that #109 is a synthesis of #57, i.e., the Sword Motif (“Wotan’s Grand Idea For Redemption Motif”), and #103, Siegfried’s Youthful Horncall Motif. This fully implicates Siegfried in Wotan’s futile, subliminal scheme to restore the innocence lost to the world because of Alberich’s acquisition of the power of conscious thought, and his accumulation of objective knowledge. The fact that Siegfried obnoxiously keeps on insisting that Mime re-forge Siegfried’s father’s sword for him, knowing full well that Mime is inherently unable (with #104, the Motif of Siegfried’s Contempt for Mime sounding in the background), and ultimately decides that Siegfried alone can re-forge his father’s sword, references the fact that though Wotan, Light-Alberich, originally manufactured that sword as the expression of his grand idea for redemption, leaving his son Siegmund (and Siegfried’s father) heir to it, the hero Siegfried will soon proclaim his total autonomy from Wotan’s influence by re-forging the sword himself. As Wotan told Bruennhilde, the hero who alone can serve Wotan’s need must make himself, for Wotan can only make serfs. However, it still remains Wotan’s sword, re-forged or not, because its motif remains identical to the one to which Wotan originally proclaimed his grand idea for the redemption of Valhalla, in the finale of R.4.
And now we realize why Siegfried continually demanded that Mime forge swords for him, knowing full well that Mime is inherently unable to, and why Siegfried nonetheless demands that Mime re-forge his father’s sword for him (for if Mime can’t forge a sword from his own chosen materials which would meet Siegfried’s demands, how much less can Mime re-forge the authentic instrument of Siegfried’s father’s heroism!). Siegfried has demanded these swords from Mime solely in order to prove their worthlessness, because Mime is a metaphor for all that Wotan loathes in himself, and it was Wotan’s futile longing for the redemption of man’s transcendent value from the truth which originally brought Nothung into being. By proving Mime’s incapacity to provide Siegfried with his rightful sword, Siegfried is unwittingly condemning Wotan’s original intent to
