Wanderer: (still in the same position: #112 vari >>:) That is the Wanderer’s way when he walks against the wind (:#112 vari).
Siegfried: (observing him more closely: #20ab:; #?: [extremely powerful string figure – is it #20b?]) But under it one of your eyes is missing (:#20ab)! No doubt someone struck it out when you stubbornly (:#? [string figure]) stood in his way? (#voc?:; #104?:) Be off with you now! Or else you could easily lose the other one, too (:#voc?; :#104?).
Wanderer: (very calmly: #20a:) I see (:#20a), (#20b >> [is this related to the special harmonic transformation of #20b associated with Alberich’s son Hagen’s predestined role in bringing about the twilight of the gods, as heard in V.2.2?]) my son (:#20b), (#20b >>: [this may be very important!!! – is there any #20c here?]) that where you know nothing, you know how to get your own way (:#20b). (#20ab:) With the eye which, as my second self [“das als and’res”], is missing, you yourself can glimpse (#20c:) the one (:#20c) (#20d:) that’s left for me to see with (:#20d).
Siegfried: (after listening thoughtfully now bursts out in a peal of spontaneous laughter: #19 [possibly hybrid with #20a?]) At least you’re good for a laugh!
The most obvious reason why #66 so markedly accentuates Siegfried’s complaint that if Wotan can’t show him the way to Bruennhilde, he should just get out of the way, is the assumption, based partly on Wagner’s own testimony, that #66 represents the concern of the dead Sieglinde’s spirit, who spoke to Siegfried in the form of the Woodbird, for her son Siegfried. The meaning would be that the heartless Wotan is the antithesis of the loving and sympathetic Sieglinde, and therefore totally unqualified to lead Siegfried to Bruennhilde.
However, #66 also represents the “Noth” which the Waelsung race must suffer as the unwitting agents of Wotan’s need for a free hero who will, in effect, involuntarily martyr himself in order to redeem the gods from Alberich’s curse on the Ring. The problem with the interpretation of #66’s presence here as indicative of Sieglinde’s presence, or the thesis that her dead spirit speaks to Siegfried through the Woodbird, is that, frankly, it is Wotan who stands to gain most from the redemptive love which Siegfried and Bruennhilde will bring in to the world, as Wotan confessed to Erda in S.3.1. Clearly, though Wotan would deny it, just as his prompting was behind everything that Siegmund did to challenge the rule of the gods, Wotan’s motives, his fears and desires, are also the motives which subliminally drive Siegfried, by virtue of the fact that Wotan imparted them to his daughter Bruennhilde during his confession, and she in turn has figuratively given birth to Siegfried. It seems advisable to point out again that though Sieglinde could plausibly speak
