known through collective man’s long accumulated hoard of worldly experience, becomes a small pinewood for Siegfried when he is out seeking adventures (i.e., adventures of artistic creation).
I re-present below Feuerbach’s seminal notion of the miracle, which transcends the limits of time and space, followed by Wagner’s key passage describing his concept of the “Wonder,” produced by his musical motifs, an idea clearly influenced profoundly by Feuerbach’s notion of the supernatural miracle:
[P. 236] “If we … turn to miracles, we shall find that they objectify, embody, realize nothing other than the essence of a wish [one of Wotan’s nicknames is “Wunsch,” i.e., wish, and his Valkyrie daughters are “Wish-maidens,” his daughter Bruennhilde the womb of his wishes]. (…) [P. 237] Wishes are not subject to the barriers of space and time; they are unrestricted, unfettered, as free as a god.” [291F-LER: p. 236-237]
“The condensation of the most varied and extended phenomena, where many members harmonise to produce one, single, definite effect; the perspicuous presentation of such a harmony, which to us remains unseizable without the deepest research and widest experience [man’s accumulation of a hoard of knowledge], and fills us with amazement when beheld, -- in art, which can operate only conformably to certain conditions of time and place, this is to be obtained through nothing save the miraculous. Here in poetic fiction the tremendous chain of connection embracing the most heterogeneous phenomena is condensed to an easily-surveyed bond of fewer links [i.e., Wagner’s musical motifs, which capture the essence of phenomena], yet the force and might of the whole great chain is put into these few: and in art this might is miracle.” [478W-{49-51 (?)} Notes for ‘Artisthood of the Future’ (unfinished); Sketches and Fragments: PW Vol. VIII, p. 371]
It is also worth recalling that it is the nature of the Tarnhelm, and therefore also of Hagen’s Potion (whose motif #154 stems from the Tarnhelm Motifs #42 and #43), as symbols for the imagination (deriving ultimately from Loge’s Motif #35), and in Siegfried’s hands representing the imagination in service to artistic creativity, to compress all objects and events widely scattered in time and space, and in this way to make all imaginable things present to the mind, and also to transform the shapes of things creatively. It is this collective artistic imagination, collective involuntary and unconscious myth-making, which Feuerbach described as the birthplace of the gods.
That Siegfried will inevitably visit Gibichung Hall follows from the fact that the Gibichung society Siegfried visits in his search for adventure, is an archetype for that society, still operating under the shadow of man’s religious heritage, man’s futile and ill-considered quest for transcendent meaning, to which Siegfried will present the heroic deeds of art (adventures) which Bruennhilde has inspired him to undertake. As Siegfried and his sounding horn motif #103 comes closer, we hear three notes repeated which will later become the second segment of a new motif #168, namely #168b. This motif, called by Cooke “Hagen’s Day,” will be the motif to which the dawn comes up at the end of T.2.1, during its transition to T.2.2, after Hagen has conspired (apparently in a dream) with his father Alberich to bring an end to both gods and their Waelsung hero Siegfried.
They listen more closely and now spot a hero on board a skiff poling it swiftly upstream against the Rhine’s natural current toward the shore at Gibichung Hall. As Hagen describes how this hero casually, easily poles this skiff upstream against the Rhine’s natural current, we hear a remarkable,
