But, just as her lover Siegfried was once (in S.3.3) oblivious to Bruennhilde’s attempt to place her love for Siegfried in the context of Wotan’s confession of his divine “Noth,” telling Bruennhilde that what she sings to him he does not understand, so Bruennhilde, now living for love alone, likewise tells Waltraute that the gods’ tragic end does not concern her, as if Wotan’s fate is all a dream. We recall Wotan’s suggestion to Bruennhilde’s mother Erda near the end of S.3.1, after telling her he would consign her - the mother of care and fear - to sleep, that, dreaming, she can behold his end. Bruennhilde now describes herself, like Siegfried, as a fool, who has risen above the mists of the gods’ hallowed heaven, as we hear #20a (the first segment of the Valhalla Motif) transform back into its true source, #19, Alberich’s Ring, a point Wagner also underscores verbally with Bruennhilde’s description of “the mists of the gods’ hallowed heaven,” the word mists (“Nebel”) invoking Valhalla’s origin in Alberich’s Nibelheim (“Mist-home”). The musico-dramatic point at stake is that Wotan, having recognized his motives as no higher than Alberich’s, is tainted, but Bruennhilde, living for love alone and freed therefore from consciousness of the contradictions inhering in Wotan’s thought, feels herself freed from the gods’ fate altogether. Like Siegfried’s response to Bruennhilde’s suggestion that Wotan has a claim on their love, Bruennhilde’s response now to Waltraute’s attempt to link Bruennhilde’s fate with that of the gods is a firm no, because Bruennhilde claims not to understand what she hears, its sense seeming wild and confused (accompanied at this point by #164 again, that motif which of all others symbolically stakes Wotan’s claim on Siegfried and Bruennhilde, since it informs us that their blissful love is actually Wotan’s punishment, and the ultimate fulfillment of Alberich’s curse on his Ring). And of course Wotan’s claim on their love Bruennhilde herself confessed to Siegfried when she told him what he did not understand, that what Wotan thought (as imparted to her in his confession), she felt, and that was just her love for Siegfried (#134).
Bruennhilde, confused by Waltraute’s plea, asks Waltraute what she expects Bruennhilde to do. Waltraute screams that for Wotan’s sake Bruennhilde must cast the Ring on her finger away. In response to Bruennhilde’s shock, Waltraute demands that Bruennhilde give it back to the Rhinedaughters. Bruennhilde is incredulous: does Waltraute really imagine that Bruennhilde would give Siegfried’s pledge of love away? {{ As Bruennhilde’s outrage at Waltraute’s preposterous demand rises to its highest pitch, expressed in Bruennhilde’s asking whether Waltraute is out of her mind, we hear what sounds like #139, associated with Siegfried’s waking Bruennhilde in S.3.3, but which was heard most recently as Siegfried pledged his troth to Bruennhilde in a toast which culminated in his drinking Hagen’s potion, which made Siegfried forget Bruennhilde. In T.3.2, I believe this same motif, which might well be labeled the #Motif of Remembrance, will be stamped with the impression of Hagen’s repeated request that Siegfried should honor the assembled company with the story of how he learned the meaning of Woodbirdsong. It is first heard in T.3.2 just after Siegfried says to the assembled company of Gibichungs: “I thirst.” Clearly, he is thirsty for what he has lost, a remembrance of things past. }}
As Waltraute now, in her despair, goes to the greatest lengths to make her plea to Bruennhilde persuasive, we hear a #13 variant constantly transforming itself into a #161 variant, and transforming back again, as if the Rhinegold were hovering between its pre-Fallen, innocent condition, represented by #13, and its fallen condition as an object of Alberich’s and Hagen’s ulterior intent, represented by #161 (which is based originally on both #15 and #13). Waltraute asks Bruennhilde to listen to her fears. The world’s ill fate, Waltraute says, surely hangs upon the Ring. Waltraute therefore asks Bruennhilde to cast it away into the waves, to end Valhalla’s distress.
