to his own experience (represented by Mime), which Wotan repressed through his confession to Bruennhilde:
[P. 204] “The State – taken at its wisest – thrusts upon us the experiences of History [Wotan’s confession of all that he loathes about himself and his history to Bruennhilde], as the plumb-line for our dealings; yet we can only deal sincerely, when through our Instinctive dealings themselves we reach experience [by waking and winning Bruennhilde Siegfried falls heir to Wotan’s hoard of knowledge, but which, thanks to Bruennhilde’s love, he can experience subliminally, through feeling rather than thinking]; [P. 205] an experience taught us by communications can only be resultful for us, when by our instinctive dealings we make it over again for ourselves [Siegfried re-forges his father Siegmund’s sword Nothung, which Wotan manufactured]. Thus the true, the reasonable love of age [Wotan] toward youth [Siegfried] substantiates itself in this; that it does not make its own experiences the measure for youth’s dealings [Wotan insists that his chosen hero must be free from Wotan’s influence], but points it toward a fresh experience [Siegfried re-forges Wotan’s sword Nothung and wins Bruennhilde], and enriches its own thereby … .” [516W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 204-205]
It is clear that Siegfried, like the youth described above, is under the sway of feeling which makes Wotan’s experience his own. That is, Siegfried takes aesthetic possession of Alberich’s Ring, Tarnhelm, and Hoard, and wakes and wins Bruennhilde, thereby taking aesthetic possession of Wotan’s unspoken secret, the hoard of knowledge he confessed to Bruennhilde.
Wotan’s only confrontation with Siegfried, the subject of S.3.2, shows Wotan passing on the legacy of man’s religious feeling to the secular artist Siegfried. In the following extract Wagner examines in greater detail the true nature of their relationship:
[P. 216] “… we owe the highest art-creations of the human mind [P. 217] to that rarest of intellectual gifts which endows this capability of total self-divestment [Siegfried] with the clearest perspicacity (Besonnenheit) [Wotan’s knowledge of Siegfried’s historical context] … , in power whereof the state of self-divestment itself is mirrored in that very consciousness which in the case of the mime is wholly dethroned..Through that capability of self-divestment in favour of a purely visionary image the Poet [Wotan] thus is ure-akin to the Mime [Siegfried, the unwitting actor in Wotan’s drama, who alone can give it life], whereas he becomes his master through this other one, of clearest perspicacity. To the mime [Siegfried] the poet [Wotan] brings his self-possession and his lucid brain, and thus their intercourse acquires that incomparable gaiety known only to great masters in their comradeship with dramatic performers … . But this gaiety is the element … that holds the gifted mime secure above the gulf toward which he feels his supernatural trend to self-divestment impelling him in the practice of his art. Whoso can stand with him [Siegfried] at brink of that abyss [preparing to wake Bruennhilde], will shudder at the peril of this playing with one’s personality [Siegfried initially feels fear at the prospect of waking Bruennhilde], that a given moment may turn to raving madness; and here it is just that consciousness of play which saves the mime, in like manner as the consciousness of his self-divestment leads the poet to the highest creative discernment. That saving consciousness of play it is, that lends the gifted mime [Siegfried] the childlike nature which marks him out so lovably from all his lesser-gifted colleagues, from his
