[S.3.3: K]
Now Siegfried and Bruennhilde reach the height of ecstasy in a final apostrophe to each other in which, it is clear, Bruennhilde remains the repository for Siegfried’s knowledge of the wider world and history, leaving Siegfried ignorant of everything but the bliss of union with her. Thus, thanks to Bruennhilde, his muse of unconscious inspiration, Siegfried the artistic genius remains childlike and foolish, the unwitting guardian of Wotan’s (mankind’s) unspoken secret, Alberich’s (and Light-Alberich’s) hoard of knowledge, which Siegfried has redeemed from Alberich’s curse of consciousness temporarily through his art. And note, Bruennhilde names Siegfried heir to Fafner’s hoard again, calling him a “foolish hoard [“Hort”] of loftiest deeds”:
Bruennhilde: (laughing wildly and joyfully: #77/#78 >>:) O childish hero! O glorious boy! You foolish hoard of loftiest deeds [“Du hehrster Thaten thoeriger Hort”] (#77?)! (#141 >> :) Laughing I must love you; laughing I must grow blind: laughing let us perish – laughing go to our doom! ([[ #145: ]] [based either on the basic love motif #25/#40, or perhaps #104?]) Be gone, Valhalla’s light-bringing world! May your proud-standing stronghold moulder to dust! [[ #145: ]]; #140:) Fare well, resplendent pomp of the gods! (#140:) end in rapture, you endless race! [[ #145: ]]; #140:) Rend, you Norns, the rope of runes! Dusk of the gods [“Goetter-Daemm’rung”], let your darkness arise! Night of destruction, let your mists [“Neb’le”] role in! (#134:) Siegfried’s star now shines upon me (:#134): [[ #145: ]] he’s mine forever, always mine, my heritage and own, my one and all, (#141/#134 >> :) light-bringing love and laughing death (:#141/#134)!
Siegfried: [[ #145: ]] Laughing you wake in gladness to me: Bruennhilde lives! Bruennhilde laughs! – (#140?:) Hail to the day that sheds light all around us! Hail to the sun that shines upon us! Hail to the light that emerges from night! Hail to the world for which Bruennhilde lives! (#134?:) She wakes! She lives! She smiles upon me! Bruennhilde’s star shines resplendent upon me! She’s mine forever, always mine, my heritage and own, my one and all: light-bringing love (#141?:) and laughing death (:#145; :#141)! (Bruennhilde throws herself into Siegfried’s arms. #141?; #92?; #134?)
We hear #141 as Bruennhilde exclaims that laughing, they must grow blind and perish. #141’s first significant conceptual association, in fact, was with Bruennhilde’s statement to Siegfried that she would be his own self if he but loves her in her bliss, and that what he doesn’t know she knows for him. #141 here expresses their loss of identity in each other’s passion, and the fact that Siegfried remains unconscious of his true identity and origin, because Bruennhilde holds this knowledge for him. Wagner said, by the way, that music blinds us to the daylight, to the outer, objective world, so
