Such men and women of genius look for consolation, not to be found among fellow humans, in the mysterious haunts of nature, where they can really know themselves.
As Siegfried describes Mime’s appearance and odd locomotion in contemptuous terms we hear #41, the Nibelung Labor Motif, which represents the egoism of self-aggrandizement (of those on top) and fear (of those on the bottom, who must cater to those on top). This prosaic labor lacks the inspiration of the aesthetic and poetical and mystical, i.e., lacks all love or refined feeling:
“Miracle is agreeable because … it satisfies the wishes of man without labour, without effort. Labor is unimpassioned, unbelieving, rationalistic; for man here makes his existence dependent on activity directed to an end, which activity again is itself determined solely by the idea of the objective world.” [97F-EOC: p. 132]
We also hear #7, the Motif identified in R.1 with the futility of Alberich’s clumsy attempts to woo the Rhinedaughters. The futility of his clambering up the slopes was Wagner’s metaphor for the unnaturalness of those who are so conscious of what they do, so conscious of their motives in pursuing things, that they can no longer act naturally and spontaneously from instinct. This is what lies behind Alberich’s and Mime’s ugliness and dwarfishness.
As Siegfried strives with difficulty to imagine what his mother looked like, the forest murmurs based on #11 and #2 increase, and ultimately we hear #38 and #24 over #11, which is a direct reference to that moment in R.2 when Loge was about to narrate how futile was his search for anything in the world which the living, and man in particular, could accept as substitute for love and woman’s worth. Wagner here is identifying the feminine, and love, with Mother Nature herself (i.e., Erda), and with the primal preconscious feelings which took form as the three Rhinedaughters. But we also hear #66, which in this instance is a specific reference to Sieglinde (as opposed to Siegmund, whom Siegfried spoke of moments ago but without calling up #66). But #66 has wider scope and is not, with the exception of some signal instances, generally a reference to Sieglinde alone, since Wagner has employed, and will employ, #66 in other contexts which inform us that it represents the “Noth” which the Waelsungs in general must suffer for being unwitting heirs to Wotan’s futile longing to redeem the gods from Alberich’s curse on the Ring.
Siegfried’s meditation on how his mother died giving him birth offers us what I think is the authentic cause for the recurrence of #66 here, for his mother Sieglinde’s death in childbirth, which Mime described with such surprising, if brutal, eloquence, is a figure for the sin Wotan committed against Mother Nature herself, and her truth, in depriving Alberich, the truth-teller, of his Ring and its power. As Alberich said, Wotan would be sinning against all that was, is, and will be if he stole the Ring from Alberich and tried to co-opt its power, and Alberich’s curse, which all Wotan’s Waelsungs suffer, is the price Alberich swore Wotan and his proxies would have to pay for trying to co-opt Alberich’s Ring power without paying Alberich’s price of Noth. It is through his curse on the Ring that Alberich punishes religious man (the gods of Valhalla and all those who draw meaning and value from them) for committing the sin of world-renunciation. Siegfried, as an artist-hero who will fall heir to Wotan’s feeling (Bruennhilde) when Wotan as an idea (Wotan’s thought) can no longer be sustained, inherits also Wotan’s subliminal knowledge of the truth which Alberich threatens to waken, i.e., the substance of Wotan’s confession of his unspoken secret to Bruennhilde. Therefore, Siegfried also inherits Wotan’s sin against Mother Nature.
