Wotan: (#53:) O unwise woman, I call on you now (:#53) (#54:) to sleep forever, free from care (:#54)! (#133 chord) Fear of the end of the gods no longer consumes me (#133) now that my wish so wills it! (#133:) What I once resolved in despair, (#21?; #51?) in the searing smart of inner turmoil, (#133 vari:; #92c or 71 vari “Hero” or #57 vari?: [as heard immediately after Bruennhilde introduces #92ab in V.3.1, and as she sings: “In bliss your wife bids you welcome” to the dead Siegfried as she rides into Siegfried’s funeral pyre in T.3.3?]) I now perform freely in gladness and joy (:#133 vari; :#92c or #71 vari “Hero” or #57 vari?): [[ #134: ]] though once, in furious loathing [“Ekel”], (#37) I bequeathed the world to the Nibelung’s spite [“Neid”], (#92:; #57a vari &/or #58ab vari?: [in a form which seems to influence the honor motif #165 and the family of Gibichung motifs which includes #151, #155, #156, and #171?]) to the (#133) lordliest Waelsung I leave my heritage now. (#20a; #57a? [but in a form which seems akin to #165 or the family of Gibichung motifs which includes #151, #155, #156, and #171?]) He whom I chose but who never knew me, the bravest of boys, though deprived of my counsel, has won for himself (#57) the Nibelung’s ring: (#17 varis: [is this a #19/#20a hybrid in the triumphant form into which Bruennhilde converts it in T.1.3 when telling Waltraute that Siegfried’s love shines from the ring, and that she’ll never give it up (to the Rhinedaughters) in order to redeem the gods and world?]) rejoicing in love, while free from greed [“Neides”] (#92?), Alberich’s curse (#133?:) is powerless over the noble youth; (#92?) (#?: [possibly hint of the music from V.2.2, just before Wotan’s confession, when Bruennhilde asked Wotan: “… who am I if not your will?,” which may include #59a &/or #15?]) for fear remains unknown to him (:#? [possible hint of #59a &/or #15?]).
This is the turning point where Wotan, willingly consigning himself and the other gods (overt religious belief) to oblivion (i.e., willing the necessity of the inevitable fate Erda proclaimed to him), leaves the mortal artist-hero Siegfried (and his muse, Bruennhilde) heir to his legacy. Siegfried will, however, not fall heir to the real, loveless (#37) world which Wotan bequeathed to Alberich’s spite (“Neid,” embodied by Alberich’s son Hagen), but to Wotan’s legacy Valhalla (represented here by #20a), so that religious feeling, the heart of religious man’s longing for transcendent value, can live on in the redemptive art Siegfried will produce, minus dogmatic belief in the gods.
This is the Feuerbachian turning point where man, no longer requiring belief in gods to make life livable, acknowledges that the gods were, all along, just the projected ideals of collective, historical man:
“The necessary turning point of history is … the open confession, that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the consciousness of the species; that man can and should raise himself only
