(He makes to attack her. They struggle. Bruennhilde breaks free, runs away and then turns to defend herself. #161/#77; #161/#77; #150; #151?; #51; #77/#161; #51. He seizes her by the hand and tears the ring from her finger. Bruennhilde screams violently. #21?; #139 or #153? [ or #154 in sinuous form?]; #143 [is this based on Bruennhilde’s “Leave, oh leave me! Leave me be!”, and is it related to #Remembrance? – I believe it was heard during the transition T.1.2-3?]. As she sinks down in his arms, as though broken, her gaze unconsciously meets Siegfried’s. #154?; #149. He lowers her fainting body on to the stone terrace outside the rocky chamber. #42 end frag)
Siegfried: (#154:) Now you are mine (:#154) (#50? [perhaps as heard immediately after Wotan violently ripped the ring from Alberich’s finger in R.4, and just before Alberich cursed it, saying: “Am I free now? Really free?,” after Loge had unbound him? It is the seed of “Neid” with which Alberich inseminated Grimhilde to produce Hagen]) Bruennhilde, Gunther’s bride, (#153 frag:) allow me to enter your chamber (:#50?; :#153 frag)! (#50 [develops]) Bruennhilde: (staring impotently ahead of her, weakly: #149:; #19 voc?:) How could you stop him, woman most wretched (:#149; :#19 voc?)!
Bruennhilde threatened Siegfried with her Ring, hoping to wield its power to defend herself from the vile intruder. However, in this case, as in that of Fafner, and even that of Alberich in R.4, the Ring does not protect its owner. Just as Siegfried killed Fafner, even though Fafner possessed the Ring and, one might have thought, could have used its power in defense, so Bruennhilde is powerless - even though she wields the Ring in defense - to prevent Siegfried from forcing it off her finger and taking possession of it. The Ring’s ineffectiveness as a weapon of defense, even though the Rhinedaughters proclaimed that forging a ring from the Rhinegold would grant one limitless power, demands an explanation. The answer is quite simple: possession of the Ring represents possession of the power of conscious, objective thought, the power to amass, through hard labor over time, a hoard of knowledge of man and the world in order to gain power over other men and one’s natural environment. Unlike divine, supernatural power, the Ring does not grant its owner omnipotence, but merely the ability to grasp the sole truly omnipotent thing in this transient world, the unalterable laws of nature, as a concept or idea. In other words, we can know the true source of worldly power, but we cannot be that source. As Feuerbach put it:
“ … unlike religious faith or religious imagination, civilization is not all-powerful. No more than nature can make gold out of leather after the manner of God, can civilization, which masters nature only through nature – that is, by natural means, perform miracles.” [276F-LER: p. 208]
“ … the Godhead consists … of two components, one originating in man’s imagination, the other in nature. ‘You must pray,’ says the one component, the god differentiated from nature
