Alberich: (more animatedly: #114a vari:) How darkly you speak of what I know clearly (:#114a vari)! (#57) Defiant, you cling to heroes’ sons (mockingly: #40 or #64?:) who are dearly descended from your own blood (:#40? or #64?). (#20c?; #?: [a four-note fragment of a motif which i can’t identify: this may be very important!!!:) Haven’t you nurtured a boy who would cleverly pluck the fruit (with increasing vehemence) which you yourself aren’t allowed to pick (:#20c?; :#? [what motif is in play?])? (#81)
Alberich reminds Wotan that if Alberich ever regains his Hoard, i.e., if the now matured scientific mind can ever free itself from man’s religious illusions and independently develop an alternative, objective understanding of the world, which is widely disseminated among collective humanity, Alberich will use the power of the Ring (conscious knowledge), unlike the foolish Giants, to overthrow the rule of the gods (i.e., the sway of religious belief) over men, supplanting them with his own power. Alberich’s remark highlights something crucial to our understanding of Fafner’s status as the guardian of the Ring’s (consciousness’s) power: Fafner doesn’t use the power inhering in the Ring, Tarnhelm, or Hoard, or even increase the Hoard, but just guards it to keep others from using it. While it would be easy to read this as merely an indictment of the capitalist who acquires more and more wealth and property without using it himself, but keeping others from benefiting from it, a plausible reading far more consistent with our current interpretation is that Fafner represents, in general, man’s fear of the new, particularly where this might overthrow cherished traditions and beliefs, even though these traditions and beliefs preclude man’s progress in knowledge, technology, and other benefits.
Religious faith takes man’s freedom of mind and intellectual conscience prisoner, just as Wotan and Loge took Alberich prisoner to deprive him of the means to overthrow the gods (belief in the gods) through knowledge. Fafner doesn’t use the potential power of the Hoard, Tarnhelm, and Ring, because, as the metaphor for Wotan’s fear of the truth, he does not wish to. Fafner, Wotan’s (religious man’s) fear of the truth, during the period of human history dominated by the mytho-poetic world-view, insures that no man will use the Ring’s (thought’s) power freely. The one and only time Wotan placed Alberich’s Ring on his finger and had the opportunity to wield its power, Erda woke (i.e., Nature became conscious of itself in man) and showed him that the price man must pay to win the unfettered power which objective knowledge alone can grant us, would be the twilight of the gods, the shameful end of all our dreams of transcendent value and ideals. But so long as Alberich (objective, scientific thinking) doesn’t gain control over society, Wotan and the gods are safe from his threat. The more Alberich’s objective consciousness does gain control, the more Wotan (man’s religious impulse) must take refuge in feeling (art, and particularly music).
Wotan now answers Alberich in kind. Just as Alberich said he’s now learned enough about Wotan’s weaknesses and machinations to defeat him, Wotan retorts that he knows Alberich full well yet no longer fears him. Wotan mysteriously agrees with Alberich that whoever wins the Ring will command its power, while the motif #114 sounds. This is the motif which was introduced when Wotan offered to compete with Mime in a contest of wits and knowledge, telling Mime that Wotan’s head is Mime’s to treat as he chooses if Mime fails to ask what he needs to know (Mime did fail), and Wotan doesn’t answer his questions with his lore (he did). {{ Spencer’s translation
