Siegfried to present his own true muse of inspiration, his unconscious mind Bruennhilde and her secrets, to Gunther, the artist-hero Siegfried’s figurative audience, and to wed a false muse, Gutrune, who will inspire Siegfried to make a public display of the profoundest secrets of the music-dramatist’s aim, in other words, to betray the contents of his unconscious mind, Bruennhilde, to the light of day.
Gunther, exasperated that Hagen has virtually told him there are insuperable obstacles to his suggestion that Gunther win Bruennhilde as his wife, complains that Hagen has made him long for something he can’t obtain by force. Our initial response is that this complaint would be more appropriately lodged against Wotan and Siegfried, representatives of religious belief and secular art, which encourage men to long for that which is inherently unattainable. Science and technology, on the other hand, offer man only things that are well within the bounds of natural possibility, as Feuerbach put it so well. But Gunther’s remark reminds us that it was Alberich’s forging of the Ring of human consciousness (#19) which brought the gods’ divine realm Valhalla (#20a) into being, and which inspired man to overreach, to quest for the impossible. Hagen is Alberich’s proxy and the agent whom Alberich brought up as the embodiment of his curse on the Ring. And Alberich’s curse, in essence, is that the gift of human consciousness which gives birth to man’s cunning of self-deception, will also punish this self-deception, punish Wotan for committing his sin against all that was, is, and will be. Alberich’s curse, in other words, was that those men who misused the objective power of the human mind in order to futilely posit man’s transcendent value, will suffer the unhealing wound of seeking to satisfy artificial, imagined needs, and will become unbearably conscious of the radical distinction between what is true, and what man feels ought to be true.
Hagen immediately, and mysteriously, addresses Gunther’s concern. He intimates (as the orchestra plays #42, the Tarnhelm Motif, followed by its variant, the new “Hagen’s Potion Motif” #154), that if Siegfried himself brought Bruennhilde back to Gunther, Bruennhilde would belong to Gunther. Gunther wonders how Hagen could persuade Siegfried to do this, and Gutrune, introducing another new motif, #153 (often called the “Seduction Motif”), protests that such a hero as Siegfried has his pick of any woman he wants and would scarcely be interested in Gutrune. #153 is derived from the first of the two motifs associated with Freia as the goddess of love, #24. #24 is generally described as representing merely the sensuous aspect of love. But #24 is the basis of #139, the motif associated with Siegfried’s waking of Bruennhilde, {{ and #139 will later (in T.1.2) take on special significance as what we might describe as the #Motif of Remembrance (#@: E or F?), in its association with Hagen’s effort to persuade Siegfried to tell the assembled Gibichungs how he came to understand the language of Woodbird’s song. However, this must be more fully vetted, since Dunning also identified a #174b or #174c variant in that position. }}
Hagen has provided the solution to this seemingly insurmountable problem. Hagen noted, accompanied by #150, that Siegfried will indeed abduct Bruennhilde for Gunther if Gutrune binds him first. Hagen has reminded Gutrune that a potion he once obtained will bind Siegfried to her in love, if he drinks it, and compel him to forget any other woman. We hear #37, the “Loveless Motif,” and #24, the motif which generally represents the sensuality of love, as if to say that Gutrune will bind Siegfried to her sexually, through seduction, and therefore lovelessly rather than lovingly. While Hagen describes the effect of the potion we again hear #42, the Tarnhelm Motif,
