longer as an idea, but only as feeling, in art. As an ultimate fulfillment of Woglinde’s Lullaby #4 (which gives birth to variants, the Woodbird Songs #128 and #129), by placing the Ring representing the power of conscious thought in Bruennhilde’s - the unconscious mind’s - safekeeping, Siegfried is effectively putting this fallen knowledge back to sleep. Wotan will in fact confirm this when, during his second and final confrontation with Mother Nature, Erda, in S.3.1, he consigns this author of his fear, and imparter of frightful knowledge of the gods’ inevitable end, to the oblivion of sleep and dreaming, just before Siegfried wakes and wins Bruennhilde.
Throughout the entirety of Mime’s song-and-dance about the love he bears Siegfried - in which Siegfried can actually hear Mime confess that his sole purpose in bringing Siegfried up was to gain possession of Alberich’s treasures, and that now that he’s done so Mime plans to eliminate Siegfried - we hear a new motif #131, a motif which perhaps should be called Mime’s “Wheedling Song of False Friendship,” if we wish to give it a title which more or less expresses the range of meaning it seems to encompass.
{{ An interesting aspect of the musical expression and motival referencing in this entire passage is the occasional presence of musical material which seems to foreshadow some of the rhythms and melodies associated with the Gibichungs, whom Wagner introduces in T.1.1, particularly the siblings Gunther and Gutrune. These apparent motival references include possible hints of Gunther’s Motif #152, and that family of musically related Gibichung Motifs which includes Hagen’s Motif #151, Gunther’s Motif of False Friendship #155, Gutrune’s Motif #156, and the Gibichung Horncall #171. This potential musico-dramatic parallel needs to be examined more closely, for there is in fact a demonstrable conceptual parallel between Siegfried’s current conversation with Mime, and Siegfried’s subsequent interaction with the Gibichungs. The Gibichungs, like Mime, in T.1.2 hypocritically offer false friendship to Siegfried in order to exploit him to do for them what they can’t do for themselves. Instead of sending Siegfried after Alberich’s Ring, Tarnhelm, and Hoard, as Mime does, Gunther sends Siegfried to capture Bruennhilde for him so that Gunther can have her hand in marriage, while Hagen, Gunther’s half-brother (and Alberich’s son) manipulates Siegfried to capture his father Alberich’s Ring for him, since Siegfried, having given Alberich’s Ring to Bruennhilde, must win it back from her in order that Hagen can regain it for his father Alberich. These potential musical and motival premonitions I have underlined in the passage to aid subsequent analysis. }}
When Mime asks Siegfried how things fared with Fafner, Siegfried answers bitterly that he hates the one who prompted him to kill the Dragon Fafner much more than the Dragon itself. This accusation points immediately to Mime, but again, we must survey the larger picture to grasp that Siegfried is unwittingly blaming Wotan as well. Siegfried’s father Siegmund, likewise, declared war against his own father Wotan (unaware, of course, that Wotan was his father), for taking away the power of Siegmund’s sword Nothung so that Hunding could exact revenge on him, thus leaving Sieglinde unprotected. The implicit hostility between Wotan and his friendly foe Siegfried will of course flare up in the confrontation between Wotan and Siegfried in S.3.2, when Wotan tries to impede Siegfried’s progress up Bruennhilde’s mountain.
{{ When Mime declares that it was not out of love he brought Siegfried up, but only so that Siegfried could win him the Hoard, we hear what sounds like hints of #21, and also #20a. This needs to be investigated. The presence of these motifs in this dramatic context would of course be
