it knows how to explain and consciously display them [only Wotan, in whom Siegfried is reborn minus consciousness of his true origin, purpose, and destiny, can explain the true motives behind Siegfried’s allegedly spontaneous heroic actions]. In the repose of age [Wotan as mere observer, who does not act] we thus win the ‘moment’ of highest poetic faculty; and only that more youthful man [Siegfried] can make this faculty his own, who wins that repose, i.e. that justness toward the phenomena of Life. –
The loving admonition of the experienced to the inexperienced, of the peaceful to the passionate, of the beholder [Wotan] to the doer [Siegfried], is given the most persuasively and resultfully by bringing faithfully before the instinctive agent his inmost being [Bruennhilde]. He who is possessed with life’s unconscious eagerness, will never be brought by general moral exhortations [the upbringing Wotan gave Siegfried’s father, Siegmund] to a critical knowledge (zur urtheilfaehigen Erkenntniss) of his own being, but this can only succeed entirely when in a likeness [Bruennhilde, in whose still waters Siegfried will see himself mirrored, before he dives into the flood] faithfully held up before him he is able to look upon himself; for right cognisance is re-cognition, just as right conscience is knowledge of our own Unconsciousness. The admonisher [Wotan, who grasps Siegfried’s entire historic context and raison d’être] is the understanding, the experienced-one’s conscious power of view: the thing to be admonished is the feeling [what Wotan thought, Bruennhilde feels, and imparts Wotan’s thought to Siegfried as feeling], the unconscious bent-to-doing of the seeker for experience [Siegfried].” [518W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 206]
Wotan is the experienced, aged one, who grasps the meaning of Siegfried’s heroic life (having planned it in advance) in a way that the much less conscious Siegfried (who does not know who he is) cannot. Note that Wagner speaks of this aged teacher as peaceful not passionate, as a beholder, not a doer. This of course calls to mind Wotan’s description of himself to Alberich as one who has come to observe, not act. And Wotan will show Siegfried, the instinctive youth, his inmost being, by leaving Siegfried heir to his daughter, the ageless part of himself, the sleeping Bruennhilde, in whom Siegfried will see himself reflected. Wagner adds that this teacher or admonisher (Wotan) is the conscious understanding (i.e., the head, or the word, as in poetic drama), while the admonished (Siegfried) is feeling (heart/music). Again, we have the contrast between Wotan’s head, Mime, which he suppressed through his confession to Bruennhilde, and his heart, Siegfried, who is what is left of Wotan once we eliminate his head.
Now Wagner becomes far more specific and in so doing grants us a much deeper insight into the true subject of the Ring allegory:
[P. 355] “The Poet [Wotan] and Musician [the music-dramatist Siegfried, inspired by his muse Bruennhilde], whom we mean, are very well thinkable as two persons. In fact the Musician, in his practical intermediation between the poetic aim [Wotan’s longing for redemption from Alberich’s curse] and its final bodily realisement through an actual scenic representation, might necessarily be conditioned by the Poet as a separate person, and indeed, a younger than himself – if not necessarily in point of years, yet at least in point of character. This younger person [Siegfried], through standing closer to Life’s instinctive utterance – especially (auch) in its lyric moments, -- might well appear to the more experienced, more reflecting Poet, as more fitted to realise his aim than he himself is [Wotan needs a hero freed from his own influence and law, who can do of himself, of his own spontaneous “Noth,” what Wotan, because he is too conscious of his ulterior
