consciousness, but Siegfried will also be sharing with his future audience, represented by Gunther, the knowledge which was so abhorrent and fearful that Wotan himself, the Feuerbachian symbol for both godhead and collective, historical man, could not bear to be conscious of it. This is the profound secret of the poet-dramatist’s artistic intent, which Wagner said he shares with his audience subliminally through his musical motifs. There is one thing Siegfried remembers, however. When Gunther complains that the fire will never die down to let him pass on to win Bruennhilde, Siegfried observes that since he is not afraid of any fire, he’ll win Bruennhilde for Gunther, if Gunther in his turn will give Siegfried his sister Gutrune in marriage. Gunther concurs, and they prepare to set off immediately to capture Bruennhilde.
When Gunther inquires how they ought to deceive Bruennhilde so that she will think it is Gunther, and not Siegfried, who has won her, Siegfried recalls what Hagen said of the use he could make of the Tarnhelm to change his form, and suggests he transform himself to resemble Gunther. Two points are at stake here. First, Wagner found the notion of borrowing from others honors which they alone have earned morally abhorrent, and here we have Gunther agreeing to let Siegfried’s courage stand in to cover Gunther’s lack of it, and what is worse, Siegfried aiding and abetting this plan. Gunther, in other words, is unashamed at converting into a commodity, available to anyone no matter what their personal worth, an honor which can only be of worth if one earns it oneself, if, in other words, one is worthy of it. One thinks here also of Wotan’s quest for a hero who can do for him what he can’t do for himself. But only the unconsciously inspired artist-hero Siegfried is worthy of, or capable or wooing, the authentic muse of unconsciously inspired art, Bruennhilde.
Second, Wagner anticipated Siegfried’s betrayal of Bruennhilde in his theoretical work from 1850-1851, Opera and Drama, when he noted that the man, i.e., the poet (Siegfried), left the loving woman, i.e., music (Bruennhilde):
“This melody was the love-greeting of the woman to the man, and the open-armed ‘Eternal Womanly’ here showed itself more loveable than the egoistic Manly … . For all the wonders of the meeting, the man yet left the loving woman: what to this woman was the highest sacrificial incense of a life-time, to the man was a mere passing fume of love. Only the poet whose Aim we have here expounded [the Wagnerian music-dramatist], will feel driven so irresistibly to a heart-alliance with the ‘eternal womanly’ of Tone-art, that in these nuptials he shall celebrate alike his own redemption.” [537W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 285]
In this passage, in which we can see that Wagner identified Siegfried as a metaphor for the poet-dramatist, and identified Bruennhilde with music, Wagner not only anticipated that Siegfried the music-dramatist would betray the secret kept in silence by his music (his musical motifs), but that in so doing Siegfried would betray Wotan’s need for redemption, so that Siegfried the artist-hero can no longer sustain his role as the Lord of Nature, who offers man redemption from the world’s terrors by taking aesthetic possession of Alberich’s Ring, Tarnhelm, and Hoard of knowledge, and thereby sublimating their power into a form in which the existential fear their power would engender were it conscious, can be forgotten. In other words, Siegfried is betraying love as the Woodbird defined it, betraying his ability to gain inspiration from man’s woe, in order to win for himself and his audience bliss.
