their consoling illusions which protect them from having to pay the price for the Ring’s power which Alberich had to pay in order to forge it. Thinking back, we recall the gods who succumbed to their natural mortality and aged when they were deprived of Freia and her golden apples of sorrowless youth eternal by the Giants. They became victims of a deep depression of the spirit since they had, as Loge said, based all their happiness, the meaning of their lives, on the illusion that they had transcendent value. And in fact Hagen’s complaint to Alberich verbally references both Froh (Joy) and his sister Freia (Free) in the original German text (“hass’ ich die Frohen, freue mich nie!”).
Those Hagen envies are happy only because they are ignorant of the bitter truth which Hagen himself was born to contemplate in lonely solitude, as all thinkers dedicated to uncompromising truth must do. Self-deception, on the other hand, tends to characterize those dedicated to a life within society, who depend on a network of others for their happiness and sense of meaning. Feuerbach said it all:
[P. 66] “To be able to be solitary is a sign of character and thinking power. Solitude is the want of the thinker, [P. 67] society the want of the heart. We can think alone, but we can love only with another. In love we are dependent, for it is the need of another being; we are independent only in the solitary act of thought.” [68F-EOC: p. 66-67]
And it is this indifference to the moral and social consequences of the quest for knowledge and its power, according to Wagner, which makes modern scientific studies seem heartless, loveless:
“Today R. said he was convinced that modern scientific studies were making people completely heartless.” [1108W-{11/24/81}CD Vol. II, p. 753]
[T.2.1: B]
But this is exactly how Alberich likes it: he tells Hagen to hate the happy, but to love Alberich himself as Hagen ought to, accompanied again by #37 (“Loveless”):
Alberich: (as before: #50?:) Hagen, my son, hate the happy (:#50?)! (#?: [perhaps a musical reference to Alberich’s complaint about Wotan’s hypocrisy in trying to co-opt the power of Alberich’s ring without paying its price in R.4?]) But me, the mirthless, much-wronged dwarf (:#? [R.4 Alberich reference?]), (#37:) you love just as you ought (:#37)! (#50?:) If you’re stalwart, bold and clever (:#50?), (#37?: [in #16’s or #17’s rhythm?]) those whom we fight in nightly feud (:#37? [with #16’s or #17’s rhythm?]) (#?: [perhaps a musical reference to Bruennhilde’s retort to Waltraute in T.1.3: “(#voc?:) Poor fool that I am, I have risen above the (#19 frag:) mists of the (#20a:) gods’ hallowed heaven (:#19 frag; :#20a): (#164 >>:) your meaning seems wild and confused … .” It is also heard elsewhere, perhaps when Gutrune accuses Bruennhilde of bringing
