eliminate that aspect of religion which Feuerbach identified as practical, and which Wotan now loathes, that aspect represented by Mime. For this Wotan needs a hero who will slay Fafner, and slay Mime, i.e., slay the fear and practical egoism behind religious faith, to take possession of man’s Hoard of knowledge, man’s imagination (the Tarnhelm), and man’s abstract mind (the Ring), aesthetically, by employing Alberich’s powers of mind to produce redemptive art. Man’s religious impulse can live on, or be reborn, seemingly purged of religion’s practical egoism, in the secular art that Siegfried the artist-hero will produce under the inspiration of his muse, his unconscious mind, Bruennhilde.
Bruennhilde, not Fafner, will teach Siegfried fear indeed, but subliminally, unconsciously, and therefore safely. In figurative sexual union with his muse he will learn the meaning of Wotan’s (mankind’s) existential fear unconsciously, in order to draw from it the inspiration to sustain the veil of Maya, or Wahn, Loge’s magic fire, which masks the fatal truth under the consolation of illusion. So Wotan will lose his head (Mime), but not his heart, which will live on in Siegfried’s love for Bruennhilde. In this way Wotan, not Mime, resolves the conundrum that Mime outlined above, for Wotan loses his head (his real self, Mime, which Wotan sacrifices to Alberich, so to speak), while his heart (his ideal self, Siegfried) takes aesthetic possession of Alberich’s Hoard, Tarnhelm, and Ring, thereby redeeming man’s religious impulse, as feeling, from Alberich’s threat. And by killing Fafner, religious faith’s fear of freedom of inquiry, Siegfried supplants practical faith with seemingly innocent art-for-art’s-sake. This fact is underlined by the recurrence here, again, of music evoking Loge’s ring of fire which protects the sleeping muse Bruennhilde from being awoken by anyone save the authentically inspired artist-hero Siegfried.
[S.1.3: G]
After learning from Mime the name of his father Siegmund’s sword, Nothung, Siegfried commences smelting the sword while singing a heroic song celebrating the sword’s mysterious history, the process of its manufacture, its personality, etc. Wagner presents here, and also in the forging song which follows, a musico-dramatic celebration of the unfettered creative will laying claim to its freedom with vital heroic force. Mime, in the meanwhile, striving to sort out how he can exploit Siegfried to kill Fafner and win the Ring power for himself, without losing his head to Siegfried, hits on the idea of drugging Siegfried after Siegfried has won the Ring, so Mime can have the Ring’s power and also free himself from the hero who is predestined to take his head:
(Siegfried has filed down the fragments and collected them in a crucible, which he now places on the forge fire.)
Siegfried: Hey, Mime, quick: what’s the name of the sword that I’ve spun out into splinters? (#57)
