world-renunciation (pessimism). This is in large part why Siegfried fears Bruennhilde: he has a premonition of disaster, an intimation that he is taking on some terrible burden by waking and winning her.
And now Bruennhilde explains, accompanied by #141, that though Siegfried’s mother won’t come back to him, Bruennhilde is Siegfried’s self if he will only love her in her bliss, i.e., Wotan’s new self. And immediately afterward we hear #87 (Fate), and either #58b or its variant #79, as Bruennhilde makes the remarkable claim that what Siegfried doesn’t know, she knows for him. Bruennhilde holds for Siegfried the knowledge of the fate (#87), the twilight of the gods, which her mother Erda foretold to Wotan, knowledge which paralyzed Wotan into inaction by benumbing him with existential fear. Bruennhilde also knows for Siegfried the role Wotan assigned to his Waelsung heroes, including Siegfried, in Wotan’s futile quest for redemption, the unwitting role Wotan’s Waelsung heroes will play in Wotan’s long-term plan to exploit them in order to redeem the gods from the shameful end Alberich’s son Hagen is predestined to bring about. #58b, introduced in R.4, represents Wotan’s hope that Valhalla - protected ultimately by the race of Waelsung heroes Wotan will produce – will be the gods’ refuge from the dread and dismay caused by Erda’s prediction that Alberich’s curse on the Ring will bring about the twilight of the gods. #79 (derived from #58b) was, ironically, first associated with Fricka’s fear that through Wotan’s involvement with the illicit heroes - the Waelsungs upon whom he secretly depends to redeem the gods from Alberich’s curse, his sole hope of redemption - he is placing the gods’ rule at risk. #141 will be permanently associated now with the concept that Bruennhilde knows Siegfried’s true identity, history, and fate for him, so that she, his unconscious mind, can protect him from suffering the unhealing wound of consciousness.
In other words, Bruennhilde holds for Siegfried Wotan’s confession of that knowledge of the gods’ fate (#87), which crushed him with such intense existential fear that he could not contemplate it consciously, and could no longer act on his own behalf. His spirit was made impotent by his rising consciousness of the futility of his longing for redemption. There is no line more crucial than this, that Bruennhilde knows for Siegfried what he doesn’t know, to the understanding of the overall Ring plot, and it seems remarkable to me that apparently it has not previously disclosed its secret to an investigator.
#134 is heard again in the context of Bruennhilde’s closing remark that she is knowing, in the special way she has described, only because she loves Siegfried. This makes it ever more clear that Bruennhilde - who knows for Siegfried what he does not know himself, the contents of Wotan’s confession of his unspoken secret to Bruennhilde - is Wotan’s unconscious mind, and, as the repository for Wotan’s confession, the hidden source of inspiration for the art Siegfried will produce in union with his muse. We could virtually describe #134, which Wagner himself identified as the “Redemption Motif,” and described as sounding like the herald of a “new religion” when first heard in S.3.1, as the symbol for Wagner’s own unconsciously inspired music-dramas, the heir to lost religious faith. When the orchestra introduced it in S.3.1, Wotan was telling Erda that he no longer feared the death of the gods (the end of the old, traditional religion) because Siegfried and Bruennhilde (Siegfried’s secular art, the Wagnerian music-drama, the new religion) would redeem the world (and presumably redeem Valhalla, at least figuratively) from Alberich’s curse on the Ring.
