in order to sustain the illusion of transcendence and deny Mother Nature’s truth. #79, associated in V.2.1 with Fricka’s incomprehension of the gods’ need for redemption from the truth, is of course based upon #58b, a motif to which Wotan acclaimed the newly built fortress of the gods, Valhalla, as a refuge from dread and dismay, the existential dread and dismay inspired in Wotan by his premonition of the inevitability that Alberich’s curse on his Ring would bring about the twilight of the gods. Siegfried, having succumbed to Alberich’s curse, which insures that all the living will rise from unconsciousness to consciousness, is now destroying the last refuge of religion, music (Bruennhilde), by making it think. Both Bruennhilde and Siegfried are steeped in the gods’ guilt, though they are wholly oblivious to it.
Thus it is that as she runs off in horror at the disaster Bruennhilde’s indifference to the gods’ “Noth” has wrought, Waltraute cries out: “Alas! Woe betide you, sister! Woe betide Valhalla’s gods!”
