heart like Wagner to go on living. This put Wagner in the untenable position of identifying the Jews with the truth, and his theoretical Aryan Folk with self-deception. It is this irresolvable quandary which is one of the pillars of Wagner’s life-work in the arts. It also seems to have been at the bottom of much of Dostoevsky’s literary achievement (for Dostoevsky like Wagner was obsessed with the threat which reductive Western science presented to man’s religio-artistic longing for transcendent meaning and freedom), and also his anti-Semitism.
[T.3.2: F]
Now, presumably fully conscious of who he is, and his whole history, Siegfried, dying, sings his final apostrophe to Bruennhilde, in a death-song painfully reminiscent - for some lovers of revolutionary music-drama - of the old operatic cliches Wagner claimed to have put behind him, but which nonetheless works on us with incomparable force in its dramatic context:
Siegfried: (supported in a sitting position by two men, opens his eyes radiantly: #138: [#: a cryptic version of the harp music, trills, and shimmers from Bruennhilde’s awakening in S.3.3]) Bruennhilde: (:#138) – Hallowed bride - awaken! (#139:) Unclose your eyes (:#139)! (#87 vari:) Who locked you in sleep once again? (#87 vari:) Who bound you in slumber’s dread bonds (:#87 vari; :# [other music from Bruennhilde’s awakening in S.3.3])? – (#: Morse-code-like pulses from Bruennhilde’s original awakening; #: other music from her original awakening]) One came to wake you; (#92) his kiss awakes you and once again he (#92) breaks the bride’s bonds: (#92) and Bruennhilde’s joy laughs upon him (:# [Morse-code-like pulses from Bruennhilde’s awakening in S.3.3]; :# [other music from Bruennhilde’s awakening]). (#92) (#140>>:) Ah! those eyes – now open for ever! (#140:) Ah, this breath’s enchanted sighing (:#140)! (#141) Sweet extinction [“Suesses Vergehen”], - (#141) blissful terror [“seliges Grauen”]: - (#87?) Bruennhild’ (#87 orch & voc?:) gives me her greeting (#87 orch & voc?)!
This passage recapitulates, in brief, much of the musical/motival material associated in S.3.3 with Siegfried’s original waking of Bruennhilde. We hear #138 (its chord based on Erda’s #53, i.e. her knowledge of all that was, is, and will be), along with the orchestral trills, shimmers, and harp music from S.3.3, as Siegfried calls out to his hallowed bride Bruennhilde. #139, the motif heard during her original awakening, and also just before Hagen’s potion made Siegfried forget Bruennhilde (and which may be what I have designated the Motif of Remembrance, (#@: E or F?), associated in T.3.2 with Siegfried’s thirst for self-knowledge, and with Hagen’s effort to persuade Siegfried to tell the assembled Gibichung hunting party how he came to understand the meaning of birdsong), accompanies Siegfried as he asks who closed her eyes, which are locked in sleep once again, and who bound her in slumber’s bonds. We also hear #87, reminding us that Bruennhilde held the knowledge of the gods’ and Siegfried’s fate for Siegfried, and therefore was able to protect him from suffering Wotan’s fear of the gods’ fated end. Now some morse-code-like pulses
