fails utterly to grasp the need for, and means to achieve, redemption, in its Wagnerian sense. Mime is too wise, too conscious, to obtain redemption in the unconscious, involuntary mind, to restore lost innocence as Wotan has done through the aid of the loving woman, his daughter Bruennhilde.
Mime’s first question is, who are the beings who trade in the bowels of the earth, i.e., Erda. The notion that the Nibelungs “trade” seems to be a holdover from a concept of the Nibelungs as businessmen or traders which, with the exception of this slip of the tongue, and Wotan’s remark in R.3 that Alberich’s hoard seems useless to him since nothing can be bought with it in Nibelheim, Wagner has not carried over into his final conception of the Nibelungs, as found in the Ring as we know it. Later, we will find a few other examples where Wagner seems to have overlooked some passages when updating the whole of his Ring in order to make each detail consistent with his final concept of the characters and plot. Wotan provides the briefest possible summary of the Nibelungs’ history, particularly Alberich’s enslavement of his fellow dwarfs. The primary new piece of information Wotan provides is his description of the Nibelung as black elves, and their lord Alberich as Black-Alberich, in direct contrast with Wotan’s subsequent description of the gods of Valhalla as elves of light, and of Wotan himself as “Light-Alberich.”
But the most striking and meaningful statement in this passage is Mime’s highly unusual description of Nibelheim, where Alberich rules, as the earth’s “umbilical-nest” (i.e., “Erda’s Navel-nest”). This further confirms my argument that Alberich affirms Mother Nature’s knowledge, of all that was, is, and will be, the objective world bound by time, space, and causality (“fate” in the sense of natural necessity, or natural law). For Mime has described Nibelheim, where Alberich accumulates that hoard of earthly treasure which grants its owner earthly power, as, in effect, Erda’s umbilical nest, as the place where Erda gives birth to the world, so to speak, or at any rate gives birth to our knowledge of the world, her world.
[S.1.2: C]
Mime now asks Wotan to describe the race that inhabits the earth’s broad back (i.e., the Giants), and for his final question asks Wotan to tell who dwells on the cloud-covered heights (i.e., the Valhallan gods):
Mime: Now tell me straight (#101?) what’s the race that rests on the earth’s [“Erde,” i.e., Erda] broad-shouldered back? (#26a drums)
Wotan: On the earth’s broad-back (#26a?:; #26b?:) weighs the race of giants: Riesenheim [Giant Home] is their land; Fasolt and Fafner the roughnecks’ princes, envied [“neideten”] the Nibelung’s power; (#101, or #36?:) the mighty hoard they won for themselves (:#101, or #36?) and with it gained the ring: (#17:) strife flared up (#19?) between the brothers (:#17); (#48>>:) he who murdered Fasolt, Fafner now guards the hoard in the form of a fearsome dragon (:#48). – (#48 vari?; #21) Now the third question threatens.
