Alberich: (#50 frag:) Are you sleeping, Hagen, my son (:#50 frag)?
Hagen: (remaining motionless, as before: #166 end frag? [Hagen’s sad two-note figure, plus #Norn pulses?]) The immortals’ power – who would inherit it (:#166 end frag? [plus #Norn pulses?])?
Alberich: [[ #167: ]] I – and you: we’ll inherit the world if I’m not deceived in my trust in you, if you share my grief and rage (:#167). (#57) Wotan’s spear (#21:) was split by the Waelsung (#126a) who felled the dragon, (#48?) Fafner, in combat (#33a frag:; #19:; #17, or #16?:) and, child that he is, (#33a/#19 frag:) won the ring for himself (:#33a/#19 frag; :#17 or #16?): (#17 vari:) every power he has gained; (#16 or #17 in a new vari? [is there any #4?]) Valhalla and Nibelheim bow down before him; (with a continuing air of secrecy: #17:) even my curse grows feeble in face of the fearless hero: (#106 hint? [or other music associated with Siegfried’s lonely longing for a companion after killing Mime in S.2.3?]) for he does not know what the ring is worth, he makes no use of its coveted power (:#16 or #17 in new vari?; :#106 hint? [or other musical reference to Siegfried’s loneliness in S.2.3?]); (#103) (#103 developed >> :) laughing, in loving desire, he burns his life away. (#151b:) To destroy him alone avails us now. (#37) Are you sleeping, Hagen, my son?
Hagen: (#42?; #151a) To his own destruction he serves me even now. (#167)
Hagen has asked his father, rhetorically (because Hagen’s seemingly fool-proof plan to discredit Siegfried and inherit Alberich’s Ring-power is already afoot), who will, in the end, inherit the immortals’ (gods’) power. Alberich’s answer introduces a new motif, #167, sometimes called the “Murder Motif,” which is a tightly wound variant of the “Ring Motif,” #19, with a very dissonant harmony. Alberich says that Hagen, and he, will inherit the world if he’s not deceived in Hagen, if Hagen shares his grief and rage. This is the grief and rage of those free thinkers who were suppressed and persecuted and martyred for thousands of years by mainstream societies under the spell of religious mythology, societies which could not countenance questioning of tradition and belief and received wisdom, because the social order (the social contract) was considered divinely inspired and ordained.
Now Alberich introduces the novel problem of what to do about Siegfried, who felled Fafner (emancipated the arts from the stranglehold of religious faith and its fear of the truth) in combat, and – as Alberich says – child that he is, won the Ring for himself, split Wotan’s spear, and inherited Wotan’s power. It is of course Siegfried’s artificial innocence (the product of the fact that
