Wagnerian music-drama), and the price she would pay for this. #164, developed out of #81B via #137 (the motif which represents Siegfried’s fear of waking Bruennhilde, his intuition of the danger he would confront upon gaining access to Wotan’s hoard of forbidden knowledge, which Bruennhilde would impart to Siegfried upon waking), is the symbol for Bruennhilde’s reinterpretation of the bliss of love she shares with Siegfried. And this love is Wagner’s metaphor for secular art as the last refuge of religion, or Valhalla. She will soon understand that love to be the climactic expression of Wotan’s punishment. What had seemed bliss will now be construed as Bruennhilde’s woe, for in a matter of minutes Siegfried will wholly betray their love, prompting Bruennhilde to transform her love into a burning longing for vengeance, and hate. Ultimately, #164 represents Wotan’s recognition that Siegfried is no more a free hero, a hero freed from Wotan’s loathsome egoism and Alberich’s curse on the Ring, than Siegmund was. #81, the basis for #164, represented in V.2.1 and V.2.2 Wotan’s acknowledgment that Siegmund was not free, but merely a product of Wotan’s own fear. Wotan has lost faith in redemption by love and now resorts to his original, nihilistic and desperate desire to end it all. Siegfried’s and Bruennhilde’s love had merely provided a temporary reprieve from the operation of Alberich’s curse, a reprieve now understood to be predestined to a tragic end.
[T.1.3: D]
But Waltraute believes Wotan holds onto one last hope: eavesdropping, she heard him, as if in a dream, express his longing that Bruennhilde could be prevailed upon to do what Wotan never did, restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, to let the Rhine’s waters wash away the sin inhering in its curse, and restore the Ring to the pristine purity of the pre-Fallen Rhinegold:
Waltraute: (#161 >> :) Both his ravens he sent on their travels (:#161): (#voc?:) if ever they come back again with good tidings (:#voc?), (#15?:) then once again – (#17 vari?:) for one last time (:#17 vari?) (#13) – the god would smile for ever. (#13 [transforming into a #77 vari]) (#81 >>: in the vari which usually transforms into #164?]) Clasping his knees we Valkyries lie (:#81>>): (#77 voc?:; #45a?:) he is blind to our pleading glances; we are all consumed by dismay and infinite dread [“Angst”] (:#77 voc?; :#45a?). (#81/#164:) To his breast I pressed myself, weeping (:#81/#164): (hesitating:) his glance grew less harsh; (#99:) he was thinking, Bruennhilde, of you (:#99)! Sighing deeply, he closed his eye and, as in a (#15:) dream, whispered the words (:#15): (#19 >> :) ‘If she gave back the (#37:) ring to the deep Rhine’s daughters (:#19; :#37), (#51) from the weight of the curse (#15: [#15 seems to merge with #20c? - as cooke notes occurs most powerfully in Bruennhilde’s final judgment of the gods when she addresses Wotan: “Rest! Rest! Thou god!,” in the finale of Twilight of the Gods]) both (#20c:) god and world would be (15:) freed (:#20c; :#15).’ (#20c merged with #15 as heard in T.3.3’s finale as Bruennhilde sings: “Ruhe! Ruhe!”?)
