Siegfried: Thus (he drinks and hands the empty drinking-horn to Hagen.) (#92c or #71 “Hero” vari or frag, or #75 vari?:) do I pledge my faith to you (:#92c, or #71 “Hero” vari or frag, or #75 vari?)!
(Hagen strikes the horn in two with his sword. #165?; #21; #151: Gunther and Siegfried join hands.)
The first new motif is #157, and is generally called the “Blood-brotherhood Oath Motif.” Dunning suggests it probably ought to be considered part of the family of musical motifs which stems from #21 (Wotan’s Spear: the social contract) and its variants. Wotan’s oaths and treaties are recorded in runes on his Spear, and the fact that Siegfried and Gunther are now swearing their own oath is also illustrated by the fact that #21 is repeated here throughout their oath. #21 reminds us that the coercion and unnaturalness engendered by oath-taking was also what motivated Wotan’s self-criticism. Wotan said that the Spear’s agreements, through which he rules, also trap him. Hagen, without taking part in the blood-brotherhood oath himself, fills a drinking horn with wine and holds it out so the two oath-takers can prick their arms and let their blood flow into the drink they’ll share. It is as if, by swearing this oath to aid the corrupt Gunther in abducting Siegfried’s own true love and muse, in order to force her into a loveless marriage, Siegfried has effectively become indistinguishable not only from Wotan (whose spear motif #21 sounds repeatedly throughout this oath) at his worst, but also from Alberich (who intended to compel the Rhinedaughters to satisfy his desire, without love), and most strikingly with those Neidings who forced Sieglinde into a loveless marriage with Hunding.
Siegfried introduces another new motif, #158, while singing that the freshening blood of flowering life he lets trickle into the drink, and Gunther adds the hope that, bravely blended in brotherly love, their lifeblood may bloom in the drink! I noted previously that the first segment of #158 is virtually identical to #102, the motif associated in S.1.1 with Mime’s constant complaint that his Nibelung skill cannot re-forge Nothung. This makes eminent sense in our present context: Siegfried has lent his heroism, normally unconsciously inspired, as aid to an essentially corrupt - because it is conscious and ulterior - endeavor, the attempt to obtain the secrets of unconscious artistic inspiration for the sake of Gunther’s glory and profit. Gunther is as unworthy to woo the authentic muse Bruennhilde as Mime was unworthy - because he is inherently unable (due to his too conscious and ulterior mind) - to re-forge the sword Nothung, which represents Wotan’s hope to restore lost innocence, and doubles as the hero’s symbolic phallus, which plants the seed of the music-dramatist’s profoundest secret, his poetic intent. Mime was too “wise” for that. Yet, by sharing their blood Siegfried is becoming indistinguishable from Gunther.
A third new motif is introduced, #160, as both Siegfried and Gunther sing: “Faith I drink to my friend … .” But now an older motif is re-introduced in the most suggestive way: the two blood-brothers sing “(#111 or #127?:) Happy (Froh) and free (Frei), (#157) may blood-brotherhood spring from our bond today.” We hear #127 (or its earlier version #111), the motif to which Wotan sang to Alberich that Siegfried is entirely independent of him and stands on his own, and to which Siegfried sang of his joy in his emancipation from Mime’s claims upon him and his newly won freedom. But both motifs stem originally from #105, Mime’s Starling Song, in which he sung of all that Siegfried owes to Mime. This passage is remarkably ironic, then, for Siegfried proves here that
