(Siegfried starts up suddenly and, turning his back on Hagen, watches the ravens fly away. #51/#170a)
Hagen: To me they counseled vengeance!
(Hagen thrusts his spear into Siegfried’s back. Gunther and the vassals throw themselves at Hagen. Siegfried raises his shield in both hands in order to throw it at Hagen: his strength fails him; the shield falls to the ground behind him and he himself collapses on top of it. #92; [[ #177ab ]])
Four Vassals: (having tried in vain to stop Hagen) Hagen, what are you doing? (#177ab)
Two Others: What have you done? (#87)
Gunther: Hagen, (#159) – what have you done? (#159)
Hagen: (#159:) A false oath I avenged (:#159)!
(#177ab: Hagen turns away calmly and disappears over the cliff top, where he can be seen walking away slowly through the gathering gloom. Griefstricken, Gunther bends down beside Siegfried. In a gesture of sympathy, the vassals form a circle round the dying man. #87 plus #Crisis on drums)
When Hagen asks Siegfried if he knows what the Ravens who just flew up whispered, Hagen perhaps doesn’t suspect the full truth of what he’s said, because those Ravens were sent by Wotan to report back to him when Siegfried is dead. The reason for this is that only with Siegfried’s death can the Ring be returned to the Rhine and the weight of Alberich’s curse be lifted from gods and the world, as Wotan put it, since Siegfried is the final refuge of Wotan’s original sin against all that was, is, and will be, and with his death, presumably this sin will be atoned and will no longer be perpetuated.
Hagen now delivers that fateful death-stroke by stabbing Siegfried in his vulnerable back where Bruennhilde’s magic had not protected him. Siegfried is stabbed in the back by remembrance of things past, things which Wotan thought – by virtue of his confession to Bruennhilde - he had put behind him, and could permanently forget. Having unwittingly given his muse of unconscious artistic inspiration, Bruennhilde, away to his audience, Gunther and the Gibichungs, and having thereby revealed what she had long concealed, the Ring and its runes (Wotan’s hoard of runes), it was inevitable that Siegfried would grow so conscious that he could no longer seek redemption in
