Bruennhilde once placed in the as yet unborn Siegfried, does not provide any justification for concluding that #93 should be construed as a motif representing redemption through love, since the hopes that were placed in Siegfried were dashed by Siegfried himself. It is difficult to see how his unwitting betrayal of his love for Bruennhilde, and her raging quest for vengeance for betrayed love, can produce redemption through love, except in the figurative sense that Siegfried’s self-betrayal and death gave birth to Wagner’s own world-redeeming masterpiece, The Ring of the Nibelung.
There are some who would argue that Bruennhilde’s and Siegfried’s refusal to succumb to fear - Bruennhilde ignoring Waltraute’s warnings about the imminent end of the gods, and Siegfried ignoring the Rhinedaughters’ warnings of his imminent demise, both Siegfried and Bruennhilde ignoring this warning for the sake of love - is the sacrifice required for this redemption. However, in both instances they refused to restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, which, in the event, was the only possible means of redeeming the world from Alberich’s curse on the Ring. So this thesis has several problems, not the least of which is that the Rhinedaughters themselves, the agents of final redemption through the dissolution of the Ring in the Rhine’s waters, blamed Siegfried for refusing to heed their warning, and persuaded Bruennhilde to change her mind and restore the Ring to them after all, but only after Bruennhilde had initially refused to do just this at Waltraute’s request, standing up for her love for Siegfried against Wotan’s counter-impulse to act on his fear of the end. True, both Bruennhilde and Siegfried would not seek redemption from the Ring curse on the basis of fear, deciding instead to martyr themselves for the sake of love, but it is precisely this fact, that they were so committed to the illusion of man’s transcendent value that they can’t bear to live in the real world, which is their tragic flaw, just as it was Wotan’s tragic flaw. It is this very commitment to an illusion, held to be the truth, which is the essence of Alberich’s curse on his Ring, the very thing which his curse punished. In other words, the hope Wotan placed in the love Bruennhilde shared with Siegfried, for redemption from the Ring curse, was betrayed by the very agents and means Wotan looked to for redemption, which is why Wotan finally concluded that the only way out was to restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters. This latter is a mode of redemption which is wholly distinct from the original redemption by love, i.e., redemption of man’s religious, metaphysical longing in art, offered by the artist-hero Siegfried and his muse of inspiration Bruennhilde. It was, as Wagner himself wrote to Roeckel, only after Wotan realized Siegfried would fail, that he decided it would be best after all if Bruennhilde return the Ring to the Rhine. [See 616W] {{ #134 could have been considered redemption music had the definitive #134 Motif been heard here and emphasized in the manner that #93 so obviously is. }}
{{ But there is another problematical factor. Dunning notes that just as Bruennhilde is singing her final words before plunging into Siegfried’s funeral pyre on Grane, with the intent that the Rhinedaughters retrieve the Ring from Bruennhilde’s ashes in order to dissolve it, and its curse, in the Rhine, out of the orchestra rises a variant of #134. This is the only motif which Wagner himself ever called a redemption motif. The relevant prior manifestation of #134 was of course Wotan’s prophecy in S.3.1, proclaimed to his illicit lover Erda, that their daughter, the all-wise Bruennhilde, would, upon being woken by Siegfried, work the deed that redeems the world. But I have already shown how Bruennhilde, as the muse of Siegfried’s unconscious artistic inspiration, redeemed the terrible world temporarily through each artwork her love inspired Siegfried to produce. I believe it is this that Wotan meant when he confronted Erda, and certainly not Bruennhilde’s final decision to restore the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, since this was Wotan’s afterthought, which came to him
