which Siegfried hopes to plunge once Nothung has been re-forged, according to Wagner. Neidhoehle is not far from the world: it is the world. And this world into which Siegfried told Mime he intends to go, wielding Nothung, is the world where Mime warns Siegfried cunning will trap him if he’s not armed with the fear which everyone else in the world lives by. And of course, Siegfried will eventually succumb to the cunning of the world of men when he, in T.1.2, arrives at the Hall of the Gibichungs, inhabited by Alberich’s son Hagen, and Hagen’s half siblings (children of Gibich and Hagen’s mother, Grimhilde) Gunther and Gutrune. Siegfried needs to liberate knowledge (Alberich’s Hoard), imagination (Alberich’s Tarnhelm), and the gift of thought itself (Alberich’s Ring) from the fear (Fafner) which religious faith engenders, and also to liberate it from Alberich’s threat to use it to destroy every noble, idealistic impulse in man, in order to free art from its servitude to religion, so that secular art (especially Wagner’s art) can restore lost innocence.
[S.1.3: E]
With this lesson in fear agreed upon, Siegfried now asks after his father’s sword which he had demanded Mime re-forge. Mime is forced to admit that he hasn’t the remotest idea how to re-forge the sword, which resists all his best efforts, so Siegfried tells Mime to get out of the way then: Siegfried will take in hand the re-forging of his father’s sword himself:
Siegfried: (#103 frag or vari: [a three-note rising staccato figure which accompanies Siegfried’s forging]) Thither you shall lead me (:#103 vari?): when I’ve learned the meaning of fear, I’ll away then into the world! (#?: [a sharp figure also possibly heard during Siegfried’s forging song]) Be quick then! Make me the sword, in the world I mean to wield it (:#?).
Mime: (#104:) The sword? O woe [“Noth”]!
Siegfried: (#104:) Into the smithy with you! Show me what you’ve made (:#104). (#5/#104)
Mime: (#41 duple vari >>: [with perhaps a touch of the musical figure associated with Fricka’s rams?]) Accursed steel! I don’t understand how to patch it up! No dwarf’s resources can master the stubborn spell (:#41 duple vari [suggesting Fricka’s rams?]). (#34?:; #41 duple vari?:) He who’s never known fear would sooner find the art [“Kunst”] (:#34?; :#41 duple vari?).
Siegfried: (#41 duple vari:) The idler is skilled in subtle wiles (:#41 duple vari); (#104:) he ought to admit to being a bungler: by cunning wiles he lies his way out (:#104). Here with the fragments! Away with the (#109) bungler! (#57 or #109?: striding over to the hearth) For me my father’s blade
