There is another fascinating aspect of Siegfried’s offer to pose as Gunther through the Tarnhelm’s magic, whose motifs #42 and #43 (themselves derived from Loge’s motif #35) are the basis for Hagen’s Potion Motif #154. By transforming himself into Gunther, the artist-hero Siegfried effectively transforms himself into his own audience, making himself indistinguishable from his audience, and his audience indistinguishable from himself. And by granting Gunther access to Bruennhilde, i.e., to those secrets kept by man’s collective unconscious, to which formerly only the alleged recipients of divine revelation, i.e., inspired artist-heroes, were privy, Siegfried transforms his audience into himself. Wagner did, indeed, say that through his musical motifs he could make his audience fellow-knowers of the artist’s most profound secret, a secret which Wagner admitted even the authentic artist himself remains unconscious of, for Wagner said that for the authentic artist his art remains as much a mystery as for his audience. In this way, as Wagner put it, he grants his audience the privilege of participating in the artist's personal clairvoyance, a grasp of those inner processes of which Wagner himself claimed to have unique access by virtue of being both the author and composer of his own work.
[T.1.2: E]
But prior to shoving off in Siegfried’s boat to abduct Bruennhilde, Gunther suggests they swear an oath as a vow. In earlier discussions I noted Wagner’s moral distaste for oaths, inspired by Feuerbach’s ruminations on this subject. Wagner believed that the mere fact of requiring an oath suggests the two parties to it do not share trust in each other, for the behavior demanded by the oath of the parties to it either comes naturally from both parties, and reflects their true character, in which case making an oath to compel the parties to do what they would naturally do anyway is superfluous, or, if this behavior is unnatural to the parties and therefore coerced by the oath, it is valueless. But this is just another example of Gunther’s hypocrisy and cravenness which Siegfried aids and abets, just as Loge, Siegfried the artist-hero’s archetype, aided and abetted the gods’ cowardly self-deception, though Loge knew better. It is this cunning society of which Mime was the exemplar, and whose nature Mime tried to teach Siegfried, though Siegfried in his repulsion for such teaching refused Mime’s lessons. Siegfried’s and Gunther’s oath of loyalty introduces four new motifs, #157, #158, #159, and #160, which I will describe in detail below:
Gunther: Swear oaths, then, as a vow! ( [[ #157: ]] To blood-brotherhood (:#157) (#51) let an oath be sworn.
(#33 vari: [Norns’ vari?]; #21; #33 vari [Norns’ vari?]; #57; #152; #151; #21: Hagen fills a drinking-horn with new wine and offers it to Siegfried and Gunther, who scratch their arms with their swords and hold them for a moment over the top of the horn. Both men place two fingers on the horn, which Hagen continues to hold between them)
