through the Woodbird to warn Siegfried about Mime, and guide him to Bruennhilde, it is not at all likely that she would have any motive to request that he take possession of Alberich’s Hoard, Tarnhelm, and Ring. Yet this was the first message conveyed by the Woodbird to Siegfried. Only Wotan would have a reason to convey this message to Siegfried. The Woodbird, I repeat, represents music as the essence or heart of man’s religious longing for transcendent value, which Wotan hopes his chosen hero Siegfried and his muse Bruennhilde will preserve in the art they will create.
#66’s presence here as a symbol for Wotan’s intent that his Waelsung heroes martyr themselves in order to spare the gods from suffering Alberich’s curse on his Ring, helps to explain the logic behind Bruennhilde’s accusation against Wotan in the finale of Twilight of the Gods (T.3.3), that by virtue of Siegfried’s having done what Wotan needed him for, Siegfried fell heir to the same curse which destroyed Wotan. Bruennhilde has effectively blamed Wotan for implicating his chosen hero, through his bravest deed which was Wotan’s most fervent wish, in the curse that destroyed them both.
Siegfried’s complaint to Wotan that he is just another one of the old men who have always stood in Siegfried’s way, and that if he doesn’t clear out of the way he’ll likely suffer the same fate as Mime, is one of the most explicit examples of Wagner’s identification of Mime with Wotan, a fact highlighted by the orchestra’s sounding of several motifs associated with Mime during this passage, such as #104 (Siegfried’s contempt for Mime), #105 (Mime’s Starling Song reminding Siegfried of how much he owes to Mime), and #107 (one of the motifs which represents the love parents owe to their children, a love which Mime selfishly interprets as the love which the child owes to the parent). Mime, as I have said, represents Wotan’s head, his conscious, ulterior, mundane, egoistic thinking, while Siegfried represents his heart, his ideal. The joke here is that Wotan’s head, Mime, has already suffered the fate which Siegfried threatens Wotan with now, and Wotan is, in spite of his best intentions, being provoked by Siegfried’s assurance that Wotan (this egoistic, Mime-like aspect of Wotan) is a has-been who ought to step out of Siegfried’s way because Siegfried has no use for him.
Siegfried’s insult, telling Wotan that an old man has always stood in his way, brings to mind a vivid remark which Mime made in S.1.3 as he observed in astonishment Siegfried’s evident ability to re-forge his father’s sword Nothung through instinctive rather than learned knowledge. Mime said that though he was old as cave and wood, he’d never seen the like. Mime, like Fricka and Fafner, is a symbol for the status quo, the tendency of the majority of men in society to accept their legacy with no desire for revolutionary change, who are content if they satisfy their immediate need, with no vision of greater scope. The Waelsung heroes are of course archetypal revolutionaries at odds with established society.
Wagner expressed this concept subtly in the following extracts. In the first, we find an echo of Mime’s remark that though he’s old as cave and wood he’s never seen the like of Siegfried’s instinctive ability to do what all Mime’s experience and knowledge could not show him how to do. Mime, who constantly describes himself as “wise,” is representative of what Wagner describes below as the “state at its wisest,” historical experience. Wotan, in his relationship with Siegfried, can of course be identified with what Wagner describes here as “the love of age for youth,” who, unlike Mime, points his chosen Siegfried to fresh experience (the love of Bruennhilde), as opposed
