(:#131; :#66?)! (#51?:) Drink and choke yourself to death (:#51?): (#41?) you’ll never taste another (#109?) drop! (sniggering)
Siegfried: (raising his sword: #109:) Have a taste of my sword, you loathsome babbler (:#109)!
(As though in a paroxysm of violent loathing, he deals Mime a sudden blow; the latter immediately falls to the ground, dead. #101 vari [expressing alarm]; #41; #101, #41: Alberich’s mocking laughter is heard from the cleft. gazing at the body on the ground, Siegfried calmly replaces his sword.)
Siegfried: (#?: [is there any special motival or musical reference here?]) Nothung pays the wages of spite [“Neides-Zoll”]: for that I had to forge it (:#?). (#51)
This extensive passage again draws a subtle comparison between Wotan’s exploitation of his Waelsung race, represented here motivally by #66 perhaps, and Mime’s exploitation of Siegfried. The fact that thanks to the Woodbird’s music (or rather, the dead Fafner’s blood) Siegfried has an insight into the egoistic motives behind Mime’s two-faced protestations of interest in Siegfried’s welfare, i.e., an insight into the thoughts which Mime is hiding from Siegfried (but not from himself), is a direct parallel to the fact that, thanks to Bruennhilde, Wotan’s unconscious mind (which Siegfried will soon wake), Siegfried has direct access to Wotan’s unconscious thoughts, thoughts which even Wotan himself cannot afford to be conscious of. While Mime is fully conscious that he is attempting to deceive Siegfried in order to exploit him, Wotan is unconscious of the fact he is lying, because he is - as he told Bruennhilde in his confession - deceiving himself. But, as Alberich said, Wotan’s motives in seeking to take possession of the Ring to keep it out of Alberich’s hands, are no higher than Alberich’s motives in having forged it in the first place. Of course the fact that the artistic genius Siegfried has the unique privilege of unconscious inspiration by music, sets him apart from the wholly conscious, venal, and ulterior mind of Mime, which is why Siegfried can see through Mime’s hypocrisy. But the point is, he can also see through Wotan’s unwitting hypocrisy (just as Siegfried’s archetype Loge could), for Siegfried will soon wake Bruennhilde and take possession of the hoard of knowledge of his own unconscious hypocrisy which Wotan confessed to her. Siegfried is, after all, the product of Wotan’s self-deceit.
While Mime expresses his suspicion that the Wanderer (Wotan) is responsible for tipping Siegfried off about the virtues of the Ring and Tarnhelm he’s chosen from the Hoard (Mime being wholly unaware that the Woodbird imparted this knowledge to Siegfried), we hear #66. While #66 may well represent Wotan’s implication of the Waelsung race in his own tragic, futile quest for redemption from his fate, making them subject to Alberich’s curse, it also calls to mind Wagner’s remark that the recurrence of this motif here represents the concern of the spirit of his dead mother Sieglinde for her son Siegfried, as if Sieglinde has become reincarnate in the Woodbird:
