protection, stems from his unconsciousness of the shameful end of the gods, which will be brought about by Hagen. It is precisely because Bruennhilde’s protection keeps Siegfried unconscious of the fateful knowledge which has paralyzed Wotan into inaction, that Siegfried can spontaneously do what Wotan needs for him to do, without suffering from Wotan’s consciousness of his guilt-ridden, egoistic motives. }}
In the second and last part of this passage, accompanied now by #20abcd, Wotan tells Siegfried something quite mysterious, that Siegfried is looking at Wotan with the eye which, as his other self, Wotan is missing. The meaning presumably is that Wotan (“Light-Alberich”) had to lose intuitive knowledge, or animal instinct (represented by the Rhinedaughters’ joy in the Rhinegold prior to Alberich’s theft of it and forging of a Ring from it), in order to win the power of symbolic human thought, just as Alberich had to renounce love in order to forge the Ring of power, which I have identified as Wagner’s metaphor for the birth of human reflective consciousness, and its power. It is through the artist-hero Siegfried that Wotan can hope to restore, at least artificially, the intuitive, aesthetic knowledge which was lost in the “Fall” through knowledge. This secular art which the artist-hero Siegfried and his muse of inspiration Bruennhilde will produce through their loving union, will become the New Valhalla (#20abcd). Robert Donington was at least partially correct when he described Wotan’s missing eye as his eye which looks inward, into the unconscious mind, which I have identified as Bruennhilde. [Donington: P. 69]. Though Donington noted Wotan’s remark that Siegfried is the eye which Wotan is missing, he did not draw any further conclusions from this, except those that were implicit in what Donington had already said about Wotan’s relationship with Siegfried.
Here’s what Wagner had to say about man’s inner eye, the eye of music (and the unconscious), long before his presumed first (direct) acquaintance with Schopenhauer’s philosophy:
“Man’s nature is twofold, an outer and an inner. The senses to which he offers himself as a subject for Art, are those of Vision and of Hearing: to the eye appeals the outer man, the inner to the ear. (…) … the more distinctly can the outer man express the inner, the higher does he show his rank as an artistic being. But the inner man can only find direct communication through the ear, and that by means of the voice’s Tone. Tone is the immediate utterance of feeling and has its physical seat within the heart, whence start and whither flow the waves of life-blood.” [430W-{9-12/49} The Artwork of the Future: PW Vol. I, p. 91]
I believe we may presume that Siegfried, as Wotan’s missing eye, is indeed the eye which looks inward to music and the unconscious (Bruennhilde). And we must not forget that Wotan in V.2.2 has already acknowledged that Bruennhilde, Siegfried’s future lover, is his “Will,” and the other half of himself, in other words, his unconscious. Furthermore, Bruennhilde in V.3.3 told Wotan that in time of war she guards his back, and therefore sees what he can’t see.
