Siegfried’s narrative of how he came to grasp the meaning of Birdsong, presented to the Gibichungs at Hagen’s behest, is Wagner’s metaphor for the presentation of his own Ring to his audience, in which his musical motifs (represented by the Woodbird’s Songs) betrayed the secret of his formerly unconscious artistic inspiration (and therefore retroactively betrayed the mystery of religious revelation, which gave birth to the gods) to his audience. This is Wagner’s confession of an unwitting sin for which the world may never forgive him, his betrayal of the last refuge of religious faith and of man’s longing for transcendent value, music, by making it think!
((#@: E or F?), the #Motif of Remembrance, is evidently either a #174c inversion (in which case it may evoke #4, Woglinde’s Lullaby, since #174 is a loose inversion of #4), or a #139 Variant? This particular motif’s motival basis and links need to be ascertained!!!)
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[[#177ab]] Siegfried’s Death-Stroke: Hagen stabs him in the back with the memory of his true identity as Wotan. Siegfried was predestined to his tragic end by the hubris he inherited from collective, historical, religious man (Wotan), and from all other inspired artists (fellow-Loge’s) whose cunning aided and abetted man’s sin of self-deceit and world-denial (against truth, all that was, is, or will be)
Siegfried’s death - Wagner’s metaphor for the end of unconsciously inspired art and of man’s religious impulse, which had taken refuge from science there - was predestined. Siegfried, the secular artist-hero Wagner, in whose art religious feeling lived on when religious thought, as a false claim on the truth, could no longer be sustained in the face of science, had unwittingly perpetuated religious man’s matricide, his figurative murder of his mother, Nature (Erda), by creating works of art, inspired by his muse Bruennhilde, which offered man redemption from Erda’s knowledge of the truth. Religious man had based life’s meaning on the illusion that man can transcend nature (Erda), which was predestined to destruction by the truth (man’s ever increasing hoard of knowledge), which would inevitably rise to consciousness in the course of world-history.
Erda (Mother Nature) foresaw that Alberich would inevitably overthrow the gods and their proxies, since ultimately the truth (Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, and that all things will end) will overthrow all illusions of man’s transcendent value upon which religio-artistic man has based his happiness. Siegfried, unwitting heir to Wotan’s hoard of knowledge of Erda’s bitter truth, has fulfilled Alberich’s threat to raise his hoard (Wotan’s hoard of knowledge) from the silent depths (of Siegfried’s unconscious mind, Bruennhilde), to the light of day, and to storm Valhalla (as Siegfried figuratively raped the New Valhalla, the new religion, music, represented by Bruennhilde). Siegfried is therefore too conscious to seek redemption any longer through unconscious artistic inspiration, so Bruennhilde, his formerly unconscious mind, now wakes forever. There is no
