[i.e., thanks to being reborn as Siegfried, who remains unconscious of his true identity and motives because his unconscious mind Bruennhilde holds them for him, Wotan can enjoy the power of Alberich’s Ring, i.e., thought, without renouncing love, i.e., feeling, in the music-drama which will be the product of Siegfried’s loving union with Bruennhilde], as it can judge all-righteously the agency of individual feelings [Wotan, collective man, is the historical context and justification for Siegfried, a context of which Siegfried remains ignorant], in their contact with their objects and opposites; which latter likewise act from individual feelings. It is the highest social force, itself conditioned by Society alone … .
[P. 208] Only in the most perfect artwork therefore, in the Drama, can the insight of the experienced-one [Wotan] impart itself with full success; and for the very reason that, through employment of every artistic expressional-faculty of man, the poet’s aim (Absicht) is in Drama the most completely carried from the Understanding to the Feeling [Wotan’s confession to Bruennhilde] … . The Drama, as the most perfect artwork, differs from all other forms of poetry in just this, -- that in it the Aim is lifted into utmost imperceptibility [Wotan wished for his hero to do, spontaneously, of his own free volition and without Wotan’s overt influence, that deed which Wotan longed to do but could not], by its entire realisation. In Drama, wherever the aim, i.e. the Intellectual Will, stays still observable, there the impression is also a chilling one; for where we see the poet still will-ing, we feel that as yet he can not. The poet’s can-ning, however, is the complete ascension of the Aim into the Artwork, the emotionalising of the intellect (Gefuehlswerdung des Verstandes) [i.e., what Wotan thought, Bruennhilde felt, and imparts to Siegfried as feeling alone].” [519W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 206-208]
[P. 233] “The poet can only hope to realise his Aim, from the instant when he hushes it and keeps it secret to himself [Wotan’s confession to Bruennhilde, which he said would remain forever unspoken]: that is to say, when, in the language [P. 234] wherein alone it could be imparted as a naked intellectual-aim, he no longer speaks it out at all. (…) A Tone-speech to be struck-into from the outset, is therefore the organ of expression proper for the poet who would make himself intelligible by turning from the Understanding to the Feeling … .” [529W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 233-234]
And finally, we see here that Wagner describes orchestral music as the “unspeakable,” which, through the association of musical motifs with the thoughts and gestures of characters in the drama, becomes the “messenger” of thought, transmitting thought to feeling. This messenger is, of course, Bruennhilde, who transmits Wotan’s “inmost secret,” his confession of his unbearable thoughts, and his poetic aim of redemption from these thoughts, to Siegfried as feeling (through music):
[P. 324] “ This faculty [“of uttering the unspeakable”] the ear acquires through the language of the Orchestra, which is able to attach itself just as intimately to the verse-melody as earlier to the gesture, and thus to develop into a messenger of the very Thought itself, transmitting it to Feeling … .” [540W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 324]
How interesting that Kundry, like Bruennhilde, is not only the messenger of the Holy Grail who inspires Grail knights fighting for the faith (or, in Bruennhilde’s case, the muse who inspires heroes subliminally with the message of Valhalla, or, what is the same thing, Nibelheim), but the Eve who imparts fatal knowledge, the knowledge which delivers the unhealing wound of existential fear and its temporary antidote, metaphysical hubris, to the hero she inspires!
