Siegfried: (#19 vari; #164?:) It was not from a woman the ring came to me (:#19 vari - plus #164?), (#16 or #17?:; #19?:) nor was it a woman (#48:) from whom I took it (:#16 or #17?; :#19?; :#48?): (#164 frag:; #15:) I recognize clearly (#126) the spoils from the fight (#126a:; #16 or #17?:; #19?:) which I once won at (#161 vari:) Neidhoehle [“Envy-Cave”] (:#161 vari) (#59a, b, or c?:) when slaying the mighty dragon (:#126a; :#16 or #17?; :#19?; #59a, b, or c?). (#12/#19 vari; #126?)
Hagen: (stepping between them: #41?:) Bruennhild’, intrepid woman! Do you recognize the ring? (#12) If it’s the one that you gave to Gunther (:#41?) then it is his alone (#151b/#51 broad) and Siegfried won it by fraud, (#92?) (#42? [is this the #154 frag Dunning identified below?]) for which the traitor must pay (:#42?)! (#154 frag)
As several spectators ask what ails Bruennhilde, we again hear #164, but also #88 and #42’s (the Tarnhelm’s) end fragment, followed shortly by #154 (Hagen’s Potion). #88 represents the terrible fate, or doom, the price of being implicated in - and being martyred for the sake of - Wotan’s sin, his futile quest to deny Mother Nature’s truth and substitute a consoling illusion for it. And #42 alongside of #154 recalls that the imagination (the Wagnerian Wonder), which religious man formerly employed to co-opt the power of the mind in service to self-deception, will now betray and expose that self-deception to the light. When Siegfried himself asks what troubles Bruennhilde, she stumbles over her words trying to make sense of what is happening, and when he acknowledges that he is now being wed to Gutrune, and declares Bruennhilde is being wed to Gunther, Bruennhilde calls him a liar, and nearly faints as we hear an #88 variant again. Looking into his eyes she implores him to tell her if he knows her, as we hear #149 (the motif which represents Bruennhilde’s inspiration of Siegfried’s new adventures, i.e., his art), but Siegfried’s only response is to call Gunther’s attention to the fact that Gunther’s wife Bruennhilde seems unwell.
Suddenly Bruennhilde sees the Ring on Siegfried’s finger, the very one which Siegfried, disguised as Gunther, had forcibly ripped off her finger, and is overcome striving to grasp the terrible implications, as we hear the Curse Motif #51. Hagen takes advantage of the situation, asking the vassals to mark closely what Bruennhilde discloses. Bruennhilde, composing herself, is now accompanied by Alberich’s old “Envy – or Resentment – Motif,” #50, as she tells everybody present that the Ring on Siegfried’s finger doesn’t belong to Siegfried, but was forcibly removed from Bruennhilde’s finger by Gunther. Bruennhilde asks how Siegfried could have gotten the Ring from Gunther. Siegfried, looking at his Ring, almost as if noticing it on his finger for the first time, and obviously having forgotten that he’d originally given it to Bruennhilde, and clearly not having recognized that it was his own Ring which he forced off her finger, accompanied by #12/#154, says distractedly that he didn’t get the Ring from Gunther. Siegfried is not consciously lying. Evidently he really does not recall how he forcibly took his own Ring from Bruennhilde. Hagen’s potion not only made Siegfried forget Bruennhilde and fall in love with the first woman he saw after drinking it (Gutrune), but apparently it precludes the possibility that he can become conscious of anything which might remind him of his former relationship with Bruennhilde. We must consider that each time Siegfried visits Bruennhilde by passing through Loge’s protective Ring of fire, the veil of
