Siegfried: (#92?:) There is much that I still don’t know (:#92): (#92c or #71 vari :) I still don’t know who I am (:#92 vari or #71 vari?): (#92:) to join in murderous fight with you (#17?:) you goaded me on yourself (:#17?). (#? [the peculiar four-note phrase]; #126?)
Fafner: (#50:) You bright-eyed boy, unknown to yourself: I’ll tell you whom you have murdered (:#50). (#26a:) The giants’ towering race, Fasolt and Fafner, both brothers (:#26a) (#27?:) now have fallen (:#27?). (#17/#126:) For curse-ridden gold, bequeathed by gods, (#26a?:) I dealt my brother his deathblow (:#17; :#26a?): (#48:) he who, as dragon, watched over the hoard, Fafner, the last of the giants, (#109) (#92c or #71 vari “hero” voc?:) was felled by a rosy-cheeked hero (:#92c or #71 vari “hero” voc?). (#50/#126 tympani >>:) See clearly now, (#126?) you radiant youth; (#?: [possible reference to music which preceded Alberich’s cursing his ring in R.4?]) he who goaded you on in your blindness (#50?) is plotting the death of the radiant youth (:#?). (#51:) Mark how it ends: - (dying) Pay heed to me (:#51).
Siegfried: (#19 vari?:) Advise me yet on where I have come from (:#19 vari?); (#17 voc?:) wise you seem, wild beast, in dying (:#17 voc?): (#92:) divine it from my name (:#92): (#92c or #71 vari “Hero”?:) Siegfried am I called (:#92c or #71 vari “Hero”?).
Fafner: (sighing deeply: #126) Siegfried! (He rears up and dies. #126?; #48?)
When Fafner asks Siegfried who goaded him to kill Fafner, the obvious answer is Mime, but in fact it was Wotan who first contemplated the need for a hero - freed from the gods’ divine law - who might, of his own volition, do what the gods are forbidden to do, slay Fafner and take possession of Alberich’s Ring, Tarnhelm and Hoard so that Alberich can’t regain possession of them. And Wotan imparted this desire to Bruennhilde, who we might say imparts this knowledge to Siegfried even in the act of metaphysically giving birth to him, since Bruennhilde holds for Siegfried the knowledge which Wotan imparted to her. But of course, as Fafner asks who prompted Siegfried to deliver his death blow, the motifs #50 and #51 remind us that we can trace this back furthest to Alberich and his curse on the Ring, for anyone possessing the Ring, Alberich said, would die, and Fafner is now dying at the hands of Siegfried. But I have already argued that it is obviously not a condition of the curse that its possessor die instantly, and in fact, as we can see in Fafner’s case, he has probably possessed the Ring for a long time prior to suffering death at the hands of the Ring curse. No, I made the case previously that this condition of the curse is a metaphor for the price mankind pays for the power of reflective consciousness (the Ring), that man is gifted with foresight of his death, and that this is a sort of death in life, and furthermore, that it is the muse of inspiration for man’s unhealing wound, his metaphysical impulse to futilely strive to transcend his preconditions in nature, an impulse which can never be satisfied. Siegfried has now fallen heir to Alberich’s curse
