hoard of knowledge to Bruennhilde, knowledge which Wotan (collective, historical man) has repressed. Wagner had described how the new music of his music-dramas was an artificial attempt to retreat from consciously intentional thought, with conscious motives, to unconscious, involuntary thought, or dreaming. By asking Siegfried to recount how he came to grasp the meaning of birdsong, Hagen is effectively asking Wagner to explain how he, as both the composer and the author of his music-dramas, came to grasp those inner processes of unconscious artistic creation which formerly were hidden from the conscious mind, hidden from the eyes of scientific inquiry. Hagen, who we may suggest actually represents the scientific impulse in Siegfried himself, is asking Siegfried to disclose the secret of unconscious artistic inspiration and religious revelation. Hagen, in other words, is asking Wagner himself to tell us how he came to write and compose the Ring.
As Siegfried tries to discourage Hagen from asking him to tell the tale of how he learned the meaning of birdsong, telling Hagen it’s long since he’s heard their warbling, we hear what sounds like a musical hint of either #149 or #150 from T.P.2, motifs recalling Siegfried’s relationship with his muse of inspiration Bruennhilde. #149 represents Bruennhilde’s love as the source of inspiration for Siegfried to undertake new adventures of artistic creation, and #150 recalls that Siegfried obtains that inspiration subliminally from Wotan’s hoard of runes, which Wotan imparted to Bruennhilde during his confession, and which Bruennhilde imparts to Siegfried in turn.
Then, suddenly, Siegfried in his naïve exuberance calls upon his blood-brother Gunther to drink the drink Siegfried offers him. Gunther, horrified, looks into the drinking horn Siegfried has offered him, and, accompanied now by #159/#150, responds that Siegfried has mixed this drink insipid and pale. #159 is the Oath of Atonement to which the heroes Gunther and Siegfried swore that there would be blood to pay if either of them betrayed their oath to the other. Then, under his breath, accompanied by #170/#164, Gunther murmurs that Siegfried’s blood alone is in this drink. Siegfried calls upon Gunther to remedy the situation by mixing this drink with his own, pouring wine from Gunther’s drinking-horn into Siegfried’s, so that it overflows. This profoundly symbolic invocation of the bond of blood-brotherhood which Gunther and Siegfried swore to honor is at this point almost too much for Gunther to bear, realizing that he is committed to Hagen’s conspiracy to kill Siegfried for allegedly dishonoring that oath, even though Gunther in the final analysis is not persuaded that Siegfried ever dishonored it or betrayed Gunther’s trust.
Siegfried’s response to Gunther is one of the most breathtaking instances of Wagner’s allegorical logic in the entire Ring. Initially, we hear two motifs recalling Siegfried’s blood-brotherhood oath with Gunther from T.1.2, during which they drank from a single cup which contained their mixed blood, namely #160 and #111, as Siegfried sings: “(#160) So mix it with your own. (#111) Mixed, it’s overflowed: to Mother Earth [i.e., Erda] (#156a/#33b) let it bring refreshment.” Siegfried’s death is the sacrifice to Mother Earth (Erda) required to erase Wotan’s guilt in having committed religious man’s sin against Mother Nature, against Erda’s self-knowledge of all that was, is, and will be. That sin was the religious sin of pessimism, or world-denial, the longing to transcend the real world and substitute for it an unreal, supernatural world of the imagination, considered by the faithful to be the sole true, substantial, and real world, while the physical world was turned on its head and consigned to the status of an insubstantial illusion. It was this sin which Alberich said Wotan would be committing if he stole Alberich’s Ring and co-opted its power for the gods’ (religious illusion’s) sake, and it was to punish this sin that Alberich laid his curse upon his Ring,
