this harm (“Noth”), i.e., Siegfried’s and Gunther’s deaths, upon them. She blames Bruennhilde as the author of Hagen’s and Gunther’s conspiracy to kill Siegfried. But Bruennhilde stops Gutrune’s arrogant, naive mouth with the truth: it was Gutrune the wanton, who was never Siegfried’s lawful wife, who bound him. Accompanied now by the definitive version of #134, sounding here for the last time, Bruennhilde proclaims that she herself was Siegfried’s lawful wife, to whom he swore eternal vows, ere Gutrune ever saw Siegfried (#164 cutting off #134 midstream as Bruennhilde is still speaking). #134 is of course the motif which represents redemption through love, i.e., redemption through unconscious artistic inspiration, the love of the artist-hero for his muse. #134 was for Wagner the sole redemption motif in the Ring, representing the new religion of secular art, the Wagnerian music-drama, which was to compensate man for the loss of religious faith. Gutrune was at best a conscious muse, i.e., a representative of all those motives, both practical and ideal, such as the longing for audience approbation, wealth, fame, status, perhaps the generous desire to share one’s bliss with others, perhaps a doctor’s impulse to heal, which motivate most artists to some extent, whether they are authentically unconsciously inspired or otherwise, to share their art with an audience, but which are the sole motives for inauthentic artists who are not unconsciously inspired, and therefore for whom art is not a necessity, not an inevitability. The false muse Gutrune’s - and her brother Gunther’s - hold over Siegfried, represents Wagner’s need to present the sacred and formerly secret mysteries of his own unconscious inspiration, his muse, on the stage, where his audience could share them. But this was Siegfried’s downfall, because he was the unwitting refuge of dying religious faith, the unconscious repository for the mysteries of religio-artistic inspiration, which he should have concealed, rather than revealed, to his fellow men. Yet, ironically, it was inevitable that Wagner’s Ring, once made available to Wagner’s audience, would reveal its secrets in the fullness of time.
To a certain extent Nattiez was right to compare Gutrune with the Italian “wanton,” as Wagner’s metaphor for Italian opera, and with the French “coquette,” as Wagner’s metaphor for Parisian Opera Comique. [Nattiez: p. 84-88] [See also 488W] Wagner regarded these as corrupt forms of opera, dedicated solely to trivial entertainment, which tainted the sacred space of the opera house, which should have been devoted instead to meditation on man’s profoundest problems. Wagner regarded the masters of these genres as men motivated by egoism alone, the lust for popularity, money, fame, status, etc. Thus, neither the wanton nor the coquette are motivated by love, but only the power which the imitation of love can bring. He reasoned that the audience for such art could be contented by cheap effects which mime the grandeur of the authentic masters, but could never truly collect themselves in the presence of such an art, through meditation on life’s existential dilemmas. It is in effect the difference between mere entertainment and religion. In this sense the Ring is a mystery play. Wagner hoped to consign these retro artforms to oblivion through his authentic music-dramas, and restore the “sacred” to the opera house, the earnestness of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy and Beethovenian music.
But Siegfried did not betray his own authentic art, the music-drama unconsciously inspired by his authentic muse Bruennhilde, by creating an opera of the old-school consciously motivated by his passion for the false muse Gutrune. When Hagen called upon Siegfried to perform, Hagen insisted on asking Siegfried to tell his audience, the Gibichungs, how he came to grasp the meaning of birdsong, i.e., how Wagner came to create his own Ring. And it was Wagner’s own Ring which Siegfried performed when he told the tale of his life to the Gibichungs. Siegfried, in other words, betrayed his muse Bruennhilde, by presenting the very work of art to the public which Bruennhilde
