he is not at all independent but is actually acting as if he never cut Wotan’s spear in half with his sword Nothung, since Siegfried in his oath-taking has reconstituted Wotan’s spear, whose motif #21 is repeated like a mantra during this oath. And #51’s presence here tells us that Siegfried, whom Wotan had bragged to Erda is entirely freed from Alberich’s curse, is not only succumbing to it, but actively (if unwittingly) bringing it to fulfillment. Siegfried is of course Hagen’s pawn at this point, and Hagen is the very instrument of Alberich’s intent to avenge himself against the gods, who co-opted his Ring power, through his curse on the Ring, by co-opting Wotan’s heroes.
Furthermore, one can’t help noting in the libretto the reference here to the gods Froh (happy) and Freia (Frei = free). Siegfried is demonstrating that rather than being independent of and autonomous from the gods and their underlying egoism, he is the agent of man’s old religious impulse, the expression of Wotan’s fear of the truth. It is this fact, that Siegfried’s most sublime and heroic and loving impulses can be traced back to Wotan’s egoism and fear, that will allow Hagen to destroy Siegfried.
Now the last of our new motifs originating in the Blood-brotherhood oath is introduced, namely, #159, known as the “Oath of Atonement,” which Cooke noted is a variant of the motif known as “Hunding’s Rights,” #68. #68 is based on the Ring Motif (#19’s) chord. It expressed the honor of Hunding’s hearth, home, and clan, i.e., the stability and security of property and possession and social status and social quiet, the very things threatened by Siegmund’s revolutionary impulse and personal conscience. It is this motif to which Siegfried and Gunther sing that if a brother breaks the bond, or if a friend betrays his loyal friend, the drink of blood which they drink today in drops of sweetness will stream in rivers in righteous atonement of a friend. It is this part of the oath to which Hagen will later appeal as pretext for killing Siegfried. In other words, Hagen will accuse Siegfried, perhaps correctly, of breaking man’s social contract.
This is an appropriate moment to examine a subtlety in what Siegfried owes to Gunther, i.e., what Wagner the music-dramatist owes to his audience. Siegfried the artist-hero has fallen heir to religious man’s longing for transcendent value, when religion itself as a philosophy of life and set of beliefs is becoming more difficult to sustain in the face of man’s advancement in objective knowledge of himself and his world. Loge, Wotan’s cunning companion, represented the artistic self-deceit at the bottom of the religious imagination, and it was his purpose to both create and sustain belief in the gods, to serve man’s need to deceive himself about the truth. It was for this reason that when Wotan (historical man) tried to disavow his involvement in the scheme to trick the Giants into building Valhalla, by falsely promising them the goddess of love and eternal youth, Freia, Loge pinned the responsibility for this self-deception squarely on Wotan. Loge is merely serving Wotan’s need to deceive himself. Similarly, the artist-hero Siegfried, as heir to man’s religious impulse, must protect Gunther’s “honor” indeed, but that honor is itself based upon self-deceit and is therefore dishonorable towards the truth. It is in this sense that Hagen is jealous of the power his half-brother Gunther wields, and is angered that this power was given to Gunther only because Wotan and Loge had, in the earliest phase of human history, co-opted his father Alberich’s potential power in order to sustain the gods’ self-deceit. The point is that Siegfried will betray Gunther’s false honor if Siegfried betrays himself, i.e., if Siegfried betrays his own secret of unconscious artistic inspiration (Bruennhilde) - which is the source of consolation for secular man - to the light of day. It is precisely this end which Hagen, however, desires. He wishes to discredit the artist-hero Siegfried as a value-giver, and turn Siegfried’s audience - who up until now have
