about this, however, is that Siegfried will not be aware that he is serving Wotan’s desperate quest for redemption in this way. Siegfried will simply act upon this impulse spontaneously, as prompted by his unconscious mind Bruennhilde, through whom Wotan can subliminally impart this knowledge to Siegfried and inspire him to create redemptive art.
And, strange to say, to fulfill Wotan’s desire that he redeem the gods from Alberich’s curse on the Ring by becoming their friendly foe, Siegfried has had to kill religious faith’s taboo on freedom of inquiry, in order to free his art from the gods’ (i.e., religion’s) protection and influence. And this leaves Wotan’s unspoken secret potentially more vulnerable to Alberich’s plan for revenge than ever before. Allegorically speaking, Alberich, representing man’s tendency over time to obtain objective knowledge through experience of men and nature, and to exploit this knowledge to acquire worldly power, has had to suffer humiliation for thousands of years under the constraints imposed on freedom of thought by religious man. But now that Siegfried has broken faith’s stranglehold on freedom of thought himself in order to produce a secular art, Alberich (or, that is, his progeny and proxy Hagen) is free to expose the illusions which sustained the gods’ rule.
Wagner, in the spirit of Feuerbach’s praise of freedom of intellectual inquiry, noted in the following extract the role the poet (say, Siegfried) plays in dramatizing the freeing of human thought from the insufferable bond of religious dogma and state support of religion:
[P. 195] “It … became the poet’s task to display the battle in which the Individual sought to free himself from the political State or religious Dogma … . (…)
[P. 196] The dangerous corner of the human brain, into which the entire individuality had fled for refuge, -- the State [P. 197] endeavoured to sweep it out … , by the aid of religious Dogma; but here the State was doomed to failure, since it could merely bring up hypocrites, i.e. State-burghers who deal otherwise than as they think. Yet it was from thinking, that there first arose the force to withstand the State. The first purely human stir of freedom manifested itself in warding off the bondage of religious dogma; and freedom of thought the State at last was forced to yield.” [510W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 195-197]
[S.2.2: F]
Fafner, mortally wounded by Siegfried, now delivers his parting words, asking who this young lad might be who has stabbed him to the heart, and who or what might have prompted Siegfried to do what clearly his young brain had not hatched on his own:
Fafner: (in a weaker voice: #50 >>:; #126:) Who are you, valiant lad, who has wounded me to the heart (:#50?; :#126?)? Who goaded the mettlesome child to commit this murderous deed (:#? – [the peculiar four-note phrase])? (#51:) Your brain did not brood upon what you have (#92:) done (:#51).
