voc?: [possibly a reference to music associated with Bruennhilde’s growing sympathy with Siegmund’s “Noth” in V.2.4??]) that father’s such faint-hearts as you (:#88 or #90 voc?)!
Gunther: (beside himself: #164 >> :) Deceiver I – (#164:) and deceived! (#164:) Betrayer I – (#164:) and betrayed (:#164)! (#159 vari:; #98 hint?:) Crush my bones, break my breast (:#159; :#98 hint?)! (#45:) Help, Hagen! Help my honour! (:#45)! (#37:) Help your mother (:#37), who bore me too in truth!
Hagen: (#164:) No brain can help you, no hand can help you, only (#151?:) Siegfried’s death (:#151?) can help you! (#170?/#164)
Gunther: (seized with horror) Siegfried’s death! (#170/#164)
Hagen: That alone can purge your shame.
Gunther: (staring ahead of him: #158:) Blood-brotherhood we swore to one another!
Hagen: (#158:) May blood now atone (:#158) (#58b?: [&/or some other music from Gunther’s and Siegfried’s blood-brotherhood oath in T.1.2?]) for the broken bond (:#58b? [&/or some other music from the Bloodbrotherhood oath in T.1.2?])!
Gunther: (#159:) Did he break the bond?
Hagen: When he betrayed you (:#159)!
Gunther: Did he betray me?
Figuratively speaking, Gunther has been made conscious of Wotan’s unbearable knowledge, by virtue of the fact that both the inner process of unconscious artistic inspiration (whose metaphor is Siegfried’s formerly secret relationship with his muse Bruennhilde), and the forbidden hoard of knowledge which it had made inaccessible to the conscious mind of man (represented now by Alberich’s Ring), have both been exposed to the light of day. Thus Gunther, representative of the common man of whom Wagner spoke in our last extract, has been made aware of the tragic
