In one of Wagner’s more reflective moments he summed up the meaning of his art in the most startling way:
“ … he says that he sometimes has the feeling that art is downright dangerous – it is as if in this great enjoyment of observing he is perhaps failing to recognize the presence of some hidden sorrow.” [753W-{7/27/69} CD Vol. I, p. 130]
Wagner’s point seems to be that the consolation of beauty which authentic art (i.e., his art) offers us hides from us its true source of inspiration, a hidden sorrow. It is not merely that superficial art distracts us from having a more profound and compassionate understanding of the earnest, terrible state of the world, but rather that Wagner’s art (which no one, least of all Wagner, could justifiably call superficial or complaisant, though he did later accuse himself of hiding from the bitter truth of the world through his dreamy art) hides within its magic circle (its veil of Maya, or Loge’s protective ring of fire) something very disturbing. Since Wotan’s confession of his guilt to Bruennhilde is indeed Siegfried’s true source of unconscious artistic inspiration, Wagner’s insight into his own art seems a perfect explanation for Siegfried’s fear of the sleeping Bruennhilde.
In the chapters on The Rhinegold, I have already cited in considerable detail a selection of Wagner’s observations which I offered as evidence that Wagner identified Wotan’s confession to Bruennhilde (in V.2.2) with the hoard of runes which Wagner stated on several occasions Bruennhilde imparts to Siegfried. In these extracts Wagner indicated that upon Siegfried’s death, this hoard of knowledge Bruennhilde imparted to Siegfried is revealed to be the Norns’, or Erda’s, or the Ring’s runes, i.e., the unbearably fearful knowledge which Erda taught Wotan during his sojourn with her in the bowels of the earth, that sojourn whose product was their daughter Bruennhilde. Two passages from this selection will suffice for very strong evidence that Wagner did indeed regard this hoard of runes which Bruennhilde taught to Siegfried as Wotan’s confession to Bruennhilde:
“Bruennhild: ‘Thou forward hero … [Siegfried]! All my rune-lore I bewrayed to thee, a mortal, and so went widowed of my wisdom; thou usedst it not, thou trustedst in thyself alone: but now that thou must yield it up through death, my knowledge comes to me again, and this Ring’s runes I rede. The ur-law’s runes, too, know I now, the Norns’ old saying! Hear then, ye mighty Gods, your guilt is quit: thank him, the hero, who took your guilt upon him! ‘ “ [380W-{6-8/48} The Nibelungen Myth: PW Vol. VII, p. 310]
And here Wagner confirms that this knowledge which Bruennhilde taught to Siegfried, comprised of the Ring’s runes, the ur-law’s runes (referring here obliquely to Erda, the source of ur-law), and the Norns’ old saying (at an early stage in the writing of the Ring libretto Wagner had the Norns issue a warning about the Ring curse which he later assigned to Erda), were taught to Bruennhilde by Wotan:
“The Walkueren:
Gav’st thou away … thy holiest lore,
the runes that once Wotan had taught thee?
Bruennhild:
