his powers on objectless and never-compassed aims, I turned afresh to the soil of Greek antiquity, and here, again, was pointed at the last to Mythos … . (…) From this side, also, did Mythos lead me to this Man alone, as to the involuntary creator of those relations [Wotan admitted to Bruennhilde that he unwittingly deceived not only others, but himself], which in their documento-monumental perversion, as the excrescences of History (Geschictes-momente), as traditional fictions and established rights, have at last usurped dominion over Man and ground to dust his freedom.” [574W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 357-358]
And here Wagner confirms that his naked, history-less man, is Siegfried:
“With the conception of ‘Siegfried,’ I had pressed forward to where I saw before me the Human Being in the most natural and blithest fulness of his physical life. No historic garment more [Wotan’s corrupt history and craven identity, as confessed to Bruennhilde], confined his limbs; no outwardly-imposed relation hemmed in his movements, which, springing from the inner fount of Joy-in-life, so bore themselves in face of all encounter, that error and bewilderment [Feuerbach’s existential fear], though nurtured on the wildest play of passions, might heap themselves around until they threatened to destroy him, without the hero checking for a moment, even in the face of death, the welling outflow of that Inner fount [Siegfried is fearless]; or even holding any thing the rightful master of himself and his own movements, but alone the natural outstreaming of his restless fount of life. It was ‘Elsa’ [or, in the Ring, Bruennhilde] who had taught me to unearth this man: to me, he was the male-embodied spirit of perennial and sole creative instinct (Unwillkuer) [Bruennhilde as Siegfried’s unconscious source of inspiration, his muse], of the doer of true Deeds, of Manhood in the utmost fulness of its inborn strength and proved loveworthiness.” [579W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 375]
Siegfried is fearless because Bruennhilde holds for him the self-knowledge which so overcame Wotan with fear and loathing that Wotan repressed this knowledge into his unconscious, Bruennhilde, in his confession. Siegfried is fearless, in other words, because Wotan agreed to share with her the unspoken secret of his divine “Noth.” I have explained elsewhere why it is that Wagner asserts above that it was Elsa, the heroine of Lohengrin, who taught him to unearth his Siegfried. Elsa had offered to help Lohengrin keep the secret of his identity and history, if only he would share it with her, because she wished to protect him from the “Noth,” the suffering, which she feared would be the consequence of exposing the secret of his identity and origin to the light of day. He refused, and because she pressed the point Lohengrin had to separate himself from Elsa. Though Wotan, like Lohengrin, eventually separates himself from Bruennhilde because of her disobedience to his command to support Fricka (conventional history and morality) against the revolutionary Waelsungs (the purely human), he initially grants her request to hear his confession of his secret, divine “Noth” (his unhealing wound of existential fear and anguish), which, he notes, will remain forever unspoken if he shares it with her, since he acknowledges her as a part of himself. Wagner described Elsa as the unconscious half of the conscious Lohengrin. This was Wagner’s foundation for the relationship of Wotan with Bruennhilde.
Siegfried’s and Bruennhilde’s description of the nature of their relationship, through which Siegfried can grasp Wotan’s confession through feeling rather than thought, is Wagner’s key metaphor in the Ring for his concept of the “Wonder,” through which a musical motif can
