continuation of #122, as we found in the relationship of #42 (the Tarnhelm) to #43 (the Tarnhelm’s transformations). #122, a staccato motif first heard on horns, is the motival accompaniment to Siegfried’s statement that Nothung’s tempered steel, now cold and stiff, is lordly, and will soon flow with hot blood, evoking sexual union in an image which also evokes death. We’re reminded that as Siegmund prepared to withdraw Nothung from Hunding’s House-Ash, he expressed the idea that the highest need of love urged him on “to deed and death.” #122’s continuation as #123, which ends with an oscillating figure which seems to be the motival symbol for Mime’s sleep (and death) potion, is the motival embodiment of a curious observation which both Siegfried, and Mime, make. It is first heard here as Siegfried notes that while he is smelting the steel (of the sword Nothung), Mime is brewing slops (the sleep of death potion). This reminds us that shortly after Siegfried was introduced to us in S.1.1 he knocked a bowl of slops out of Mime’s hand after Mime offered it to him, declaring he’d cook his own meals. Mime repeats this, acknowledging that since he can no longer teach Siegfried anything, but in fact must regard Siegfried as his teacher, he now serves as cook to the boy: while Siegfried smelts the iron to pulp, the old man cooks him broth and eggs.
Wagner is not making a random comparison. On the basis that Wagner is drawing an elaborate symbolic comparison between Mime’s relationship with Siegfried, and Wotan’s relationship with Siegfried, there is a real parallel between Siegfried’s plunging his sword Nothung into the basin of water to stiffen it, and Siegfried’s subsequent use of Nothung as a symbolic phallus (in S.3.3) to cut off Bruennhilde’s protective armor to win her sexual favor, which is to say, metaphorically, that the artist-hero draws unconscious artistic inspiration from his muse, Bruennhilde, who holds for him the hidden source of his inspiration, Wotan’s unspoken secret, the forbidden contents of Wotan’s confession. In this way Siegfried will be unwittingly implicated in Alberich’s curse. Bruennhilde confirms our suspicion about the phallic nature of Nothung in T.2.4 when, after Siegfried has sworn that he lay Nothung between them in order to honor his oath of blood-brotherhood to Gunther, for whom he has won Bruennhilde (and as whom he is now disguised, thanks to the Tarnhelm’s magic, as he takes Bruennhilde to bed posing as Gunther), she offers the witty retort that she knows well both the sword Nothung (i.e., Siegfried’s phallus) and the sheath (i.e., Bruennhilde, or Bruennhilde’s womb) in which it sat against the wall, while Siegfried lay with her. But this imagery makes a broader point: Wotan is in effect condemning Siegfried and Bruennhilde to martyrdom in letting them fall heir not only to Wotan’s futile quest to redeem the gods from Alberich’s threat to overthrow them in shame, but in letting them fall heir to Alberich’s curse itself, which condemns its owner to death and destruction. Mime’s sleep of death potion is, in a sense, a metaphor for the legacy Wotan has left Siegfried, in the sleeping Bruennhilde. In fact, the loving couple will confirm this parallel when, at the height, and end, of their famous S.3.3 love duet, they cry out “Laughing Death!” Siegfried will of course succumb to Alberich’s curse, just as Wotan did before him.
[S.1.3: I]
Siegfried now sings his famous forging song, #124, adding more sexual imagery, but intersperced with passages in which Mime, ever more enthusiastic, plans the coup through which he’ll eliminate both Fafner and Siegfried and win the spoils of the fight for himself alone. Mime, again, notes that while Siegfried forges the sword, Mime brews the potion:
