Siegfried! Siegfried! (#140 vari [the string fanfare from above which is possibly heard in S.3.1 in association with Wotan’s confrontation with Erda?]) Can you not see me? (#48:) As my gaze consumes you (:#48), are you not blinded? (#140 vari clarinet?) (#48:) As my arm holds you tight (:#48), don’t you burn for me? (#140 vari flute?) As my blood streams in torrents towards you, (#77) do you not feel its furious fire? (#77/#78b:; #77voc?:) Do you fear, Siegfried, do you not fear (#92?:) the wildly raging woman (:#77/#78b; :#77voc? ; :#92?) (She embraces him passionately.)
Siegfried: (in joyful terror) Ha! – (#? [this music sounds as if #77 and #92 are in union?]) (#92 >> :; #92voc?:) As the blood in our veins ignites, as our flashing glances consume one another (:#92), (#74b hint: [is this based on #24?]; #92 new vari or frag?: [could it be #92c, #71 vari “Hero,” or the special #57 vari from V.3.1?]:) as our arms clasp each other in ardour (:#74b hint; :#92 new vari or frag? [perhaps #92c or #71 vari “Hero” or a #57 vari?]) – (#92:) my courage returns (:#92) (#74b hint:; #92 new vari or frag?: [perhaps #92c or the #71 vari “hero” or special #57 vari?]) and the fear, ah! the fear that I never learned (:#74b hint; :#92 new vari or frag? [perhaps #92c, or #71 vari “hero,” or special #57 vari?]) – (#voc?: [perhaps #30b or #42 or #97 or #112 hint?) the fear that you scarcely taught me (:#voc? [#30b or #42 or #97 or #112 hint?]): that fear – (#129b) I think – (#128b?) fool that I am, (#128b?: ]the frag which accompanies the woodbird’s “blissful I weave my lay from woe”?]) I have quite forgotten it now (:#128b?)! (At these last words he has involuntarily released Bruennhilde.)
This is of course a totally overwhelming experience in the theater, drunk as we are with one of the most exalted scenes in Wagnerian music-drama (or any drama!), so it is necessary to sober up a bit in order to grasp the extraordinary subtlety of Bruennhilde’s dialogue with Siegfried at this point. We need to examine Bruennhilde’s opening remark very closely to see all that’s at stake. Accompanied by #137b (representing Siegfried’s initial fear of sexual union with Bruennhilde), and evidently by some other motival material associated with her prior fear of sexual union with Siegfried, perhaps fragments of #82 and/or #51, etc., Bruennhilde makes the extraordinary remark: “Godlike composure rages in billows; the chastest of light flares up with passion.” Then - accompanied this time by first by #141, and then #140 (in the family of love motifs) - she declares: “Heavenly knowledge floods away, love’s rejoicing drives it hence!” Clearly, Siegfried has won her over to the idea that it is only through their sexual union, which is to say, her unconscious inspiration of his redemptive music-drama, that she can still keep Wotan’s unspoken secret. She says in fact that love’s rejoicing has driven heavenly knowledge (i.e., Wotan’s confession and the fear it engendered) away, reminding us that Wotan told Erda that her knowledge waned before Wotan’s will, Bruennhilde. In other words, in the completed, inspired artwork the artist finds no trace of its original, subliminal source of inspiration, which is forgotten, remaining repressed below consciousness. It reaches the surface of consciousness only in sublimated form, a waking dream of
