meaning of life itself, that no transcendent value inheres, and that all that Gunther had valued, all that he believed gave him honor, significance, importance, value, was ultimately nothing more than self-indulgence and the benefit of cowardice. For Gunther, like Wotan, had let Siegfried (representative now of all those culture-heroes of the past, in both religion and art, who had lent human life its majesty, through illusion) face the bitter truth for him, so he could enjoy the fruits of Siegfried’s inspiration. Gunther (and – what is tantamount to the same thing – Wotan) now comes face to face with his craven hypocrisy in looking to the artist-hero Siegfried to make life meaningful for him.
Wagner claimed that in Wotan’s irresolvable existential dilemma he had revealed something so deep that audiences for the arts had not experienced it before, and he supposed that such an audience would be completely overwhelmed by the experience:
“Wotan’s experiences … – his feelings toward Siegfried and Siegmund – people do not feel those inside themselves, the man of genius lays them bare, people look and are overwhelmed.” [966W-{5/20/79}CD Vol. II, p. 311]
Gunther is the victim of all prior culture heroes, all Loges, who tempted man (Wotan) into believing the impossible, that human life was especially privileged and divine, with transcendent meaning, and a truly substantial, everlasting glory (remember here Wotan’s original apostrophe to the newly built Valhalla in R.2!). It was Loge whose false promise to redeem Freia (the goddess of transcendent love and immortality, the essential promise of religious faith) from the Giants (the claim of reality, man’s egoistic impulses, which are the foundation even of love) lured Wotan into making a contract with them to build Valhalla, the gods’ heavenly abode, in the first place. Siegfried is just the latest and perhaps the last Loge, whom Gunther and all such men before him favored with renown and power, because the illusions they created flattered prosaic men, redeeming them from having to contemplate their dwarflike, Nibelung status by making them seem to themselves gods, or at least worthy to live among the gods, redeemed from their mortal finitude. Thus #37, the “Loveless Motif,” representing the “Fall,” the fact that transcendent value does not inhere in the real world, stamps itself upon Gunther’s self-lacerating explosion of despair, as Gunther echoes Wotan, saying he’s the most sorrowful of men. Hagen is glad to throw salt on Gunther’s wounds, adding – accompanied by #164 – that Gunther is indeed beset by disgrace, and Hagen can’t deny it. The disgrace of course stems from having banked all his sense of value on false change, a fact Hagen will soon cash in.
Now Bruennhilde unloads her contempt on Gunther, a contempt she could just as easily apply to Wotan, who was every bit as content to exploit Siegfried’s naivete to confront Alberich’s curse for him, as Gunther was to let Siegfried do his wooing for him. Again accompanied by #164, Bruennhilde charges Gunther with being a craven man and false companion, who hid behind the hero, that the harvest of fame the hero might reap for him. As Wagner put it:
[Speaking of the hero archetype, Wagner said:] He knows no fear (Furcht), but respect (Ehrfurcht) … ; whilst honour (Ehre) itself is the sum of all personal worth, and therefore can neither be given nor received, as is our practice to-day … . From Pride and Honour sprang the rule that, not property ennobles man, but man this property … .” [1088W-{6-8/81}Herodom and Christendom – 3rd Supplement to ‘Religion and Art’: PW Vol. VI, p. 277-278]
