this is what frightens him. Wagner provides ample evidence for this reading. For instance, Cosima recorded his remark that:
“… R. plays me his third act [Siegfried], great emotion. ‘The kiss of love is the first intimation of death, the cessation of individuality, that is why a person is so terrified by it.’ ” [754W-{8/15/69} CD Vol. I, p. 137]
But an acknowledgment of the outer, objective world, at the expense of man’s feeling and subjective wish, which diminishes man’s value but enhances nature’s prestige (a philosophy such as I have ascribed to Alberich, who sinned only against himself, but affirmed Erda’s knowledge of all that was, is, and will be, by renouncing love for the sake of the Ring’s power), also threatens to diminish or eclipse the “self” in relation to the “all.” Witness Feuerbach:
“Reason is the self-consciousness of the species, as such; feeling is the self-consciousness of individuality; the reason has relation to existences, as things; the heart to existences, as persons. (…) Feeling only is my existence; thinking is my non-existence, the negation of my individuality, the positing of the species; reason is the annihilation of personality. (…) Reason is cold, because … it does not interest itself in man alone; but the heart is a partisan of man.” [146F-EOC: p. 285]
So Siegfried’s fear of waking and having sexual union with Bruennhilde could stem as much from the objective hoard of knowledge she possesses (Erda’s knowledge which Wotan imparted to Bruennhilde), as from a fear of the mystical loss of self through loving union with another “self.”
In another passage whose ostensible subject is the need for actors (whom Wagner here calls mimes) in a drama to divest themselves of their own identity in order to embody the character they’re playing, we can easily construe its applicability to Siegfried, who, like this actor-mime, must divest himself of his ego in order to serve Wotan’s – in this case Wotan can be identified with the dramatic poet who employs the actor-mime to present his work to the public – poetic intent. From this standpoint we can construe Siegfried as a sort of unwitting actor in Wotan’s drama, whose dramatic intent is hidden from the mime Siegfried, but subliminally imparted to Siegfried by Bruennhilde, Wotan’s unconscious mind, who possesses for Siegfried the unspoken secret of Wotan’s poetic intent and imparts it to Siegfried musically. In the following passage Wagner, intriguingly, describes the mime’s self-divestment of ego as placing the mime at the brink of an abyss, echoing Feuerbach’s remark above [see 333F]:
[P. 215] “… Ed. Devrient … he demands of the Mime the truly Republican virtue of self-denial. At bottom this implies a notable extension of those qualities which make out the mimetic bent itself, since that bent is chiefly to be understood as an almost daemonic passion for self-divestment (Hang zur Selbstentaeusserung). (…) And here we stand before an utter [P. 216] marvel, at the brink of an abyss illumined by no consciousness of ours. (…) Granted that a real putting-off of our Self is possible, we must assume that our self-consciousness, and thus our consciousness in general, has first been set out of action [as Wotan put his self-consciousness out of action, making it “go under,” by repressing his conscious knowledge into his unconscious mind through his confession to Bruennhilde, so that he can be reborn as the artist who lives only in the present, Siegfried].” [835W-{6-8/72} Actors and Singers: PW Vol. V, p. 215-216]