Wagner well knew), typified by artists whose work is the product of ulterior and therefore inartistic motives, he further explores what it is he wishes to purge from his own artistic endeavors, just as Wotan wished for a hero in whom Wotan would not find any of those qualities which Wotan loathes in himself:
[P. 158] “In this singular phenomenon, this invasion of the German nature by an utterly alien element [“Israelites”], there is more than meets the eye. Here, however, we will only notice that other nature in so far as its conjunction with us obliges us to become quite clear as to what we have to understand by the ‘German’ nature which it exploits. (…) Adorable and beautiful is that foible of the German’s which forbade his coining into personal profit the inwardness and purity of his feelings and beholdings, particularly in his public and political life: that a profit here, as well, was left unused, could be cognisable to none but a mind which misunderstood the very essence of the German nature. The German Princes supplied the misunderstanding, the Jews exploited it. (…) [P. 159] ‘Tis as though the Jew had been astounded to find such a store of mind and genius yielding no returns but poverty and unsuccess. (…) The Jew set right this bungling of the German’s, by taking German intellectual labour into his own hands, and thus we see an odious travesty of the German spirit upheld to-day before the German Folk, as its imputed likeness. It is to be feared, ere long the nation may really take this simulacrum for its mirrored image … .” [721W-{9-12/65} What is German?: PW Vol. IV, p. 158-159]
Again, we find in Mime’s efforts to profit from Siegfried’s innocence and heroic nature, his inability to forge swords that only a true hero can wield, or to re-forge a true hero’s sword, Nothung, and his co-optation of Siegfried’s true heritage, parallels to Wagner’s remarks above concerning Jewish nature, which are in point of fact descriptive of the relationship of men and women of genius to the general mass of average human beings, who don’t understand the genius and see him or her only in light of their own practical concerns.
[S.1.1: J]
So Siegfried - freed, he feels, from Mime’s repugnant claims upon him - runs off into the forest, expecting to return for one last time, and only to retrieve the sword which he has demanded Mime re-forge for him (knowing full well, presumably, that if Mime was inept in forging common swords for him, surely he’ll be wholly unable to make anything of the pieces of Siegfried’s father’s sword):
Mime: (He returns to the forge and sits down behind the anvil.) Away he storms! – (#102 vari?:) and here I sit (:#102 vari?): (#101:) to my age-old plight [“Noth”] (#19) I can now add a new one (:#101); (#19?) I’m well and truly trapped! (#41; #101?) How can I help myself now? (#41; #101) How shall I hold him fast? (#41) (#48:) How lead the hothead (#41:) to Fafner’s lair (:#48; :#41)? (#41/#5 >>>) How join the shards (#41) of insidious steel? (#41) No furnace’s fire can fuse these stirling splinters, nor any dwarf’s hammer (#41) subdue their stubborn strength: (harshly: #102 vari:) the Nibelung’s envy [“Neid”], need [“Noth”] and sweat cannot join together (sobbing)
