Mime: (completely lost to the world and deep in thought: #41; #101) (#113:) Much, Wanderer, I see you know of the earth’s [“Erde”] rugged back (:#113): (#41/#17; #101) now tell me truly which is the race (#21 vari?: [or possibly Donner’s “It will sweep the heavens clear,” from R.4?]) that dwells on cloud-covered heights (:#21 vari [or #Donner’s music?])? (#21 vari?)
Wanderer: On cloud-covered heights there dwell the gods: (#20a >>:) Valhalla is their hall. Light-elves they are; Light-Alberich, Wotan, rules their host (:#20a). [[ #2/#53 - i.e., #146?: ]] From the World-Ash’s holiest bough he made himself a shaft (#21): though the trunk may wither (:#2/#53 – i.e. #146?), [[ #115: ]] the spear shall never fail (#21); with the point of the weapon [[ #115: ]] Wotan governs the world (:#115). ([[ #116: ]]) Hallowed treaties’ binding runes (#26a?) he whittled into its shaft (:#116): (#115:) he who wields the spear (#21) that Wotan’s fist still spans (#115:; #45:) holds within his hand control over all the world (:#115; :#45). (#5?) before him bowed (#17) the Nibelungs’ host; (#45) the brood of giants (#115?) was tamed by his counsel. (#115:; #112:) Forever they all obey the mighty lord of the spear (:#115; :#112). (#21: In an apparently spontaneous gesture he strikes the ground with his spear; a distant role of thunder can be heard, causing Mime to jump violently.)
Mime’s question regarding the Giants Wotan answers in a straightforward manner. However, in his effort to summarize the Giants’ history Wotan seems to suggest that the Giants themselves secured Alberich’s Hoard and Ring, leaving out Wotan’s and Loge’s role in dispossessing Alberich of these items and giving them to the Giants in exchange for Freia. However, if we regard the giants as the natural motives of self-preservation and desire which prompt the gods, and Wotan in particular, to do all that they do, in that sense we can say that the Giants themselves secured the Ring and Hoard, since it was they who motivated Wotan to do so.
In Wotan’s answer to Mime’s question about the gods, Wotan describes himself, somewhat surprisingly, as “Light-Alberich.” But Wotan does not call himself “Light-Alberich” merely because he calls Alberich “Black-Alberich,” as a way of contrasting the lord of the dark elves with the lord of the light elves. The problem with this thesis is that Black-Alberich, throughout the Ring, is almost always called only “Alberich.” In other words, if we were to construe the word Alberich as meaning “Elf-Lord,” on the assumption that the German word Alb or Alp stands for elf, and erich references the word “reich”, for kingdom, rendering “Alberich” in translation as something like “lord of a kingdom,” then on this interpretation Alberich is the overall Elf-lord, the lord of all elves, both dark and light. For only Alberich is granted the generic title “Elf-lord” under this interpretation. No, the fact is that Dark-Alberich and Light-Alberich are two halves of the same coin. In a sense, as Robert Donington put it, Alberich can be understood as Wotan’s shadow, that aspect of Wotan which he wishes to disavow and deny [Donington: P. 103], much as I have
