abandoned to the first passing libertine, but that she is made pregnant only by the man who yearns for womankind with [P. 221] true, irresistible love.” [464W-{11/25/50}Letter to FranzLiszt: SLRW, p. 220-221]
The protective ring of fire which Loge will provide is then a metaphor for the means through which artist-heroes of the past, mytho-poetic (religious) phase of human history, and artist-heroes of the future, secular-scientific phase, have protected and will protect man’s legacy of religious impulse, man’s longing for transcendent value, from destruction by prosaic, objective, utilitarian thought. Man’s fear of examining the basis of religious faith and of art’s magic, will keep all men except the inspired hero from accessing the secret of religious and artistic inspiration. But the hero will be involuntarily impelled by the same inner doubt which led Wotan to seek out Erda for knowledge both of what caused him fear, and of how he might end his fear, to seek out his muse of inspiration and healing, his unconscious mind, Bruennhilde, Erda’s daughter.
If the fearfulness of Loge’s fire represents man’s fear of examining the true source of his religious faith and art’s magic, a fear of scientific analysis which threatens to penetrate and destroy the magic circle, that fear itself is evidently represented by the new motif #98 which Bruennhilde has introduced in the context of her plea that Wotan protect her defenseless sleep with terrors from all but a fearless hero. #98 is, Cooke notes, a pentatonic melody of five notes in the same family as the other pentatonic motifs such as #4 (Woglinde’s Lullaby from R.1), #128ab and #129 (the Woodbird’s songs introduced in S.2.2-3, which are essentially a transformation of #4), and #174 (the Rhinedaughters’ final lament for their lost gold from T.3.1, which according to Dunning is a loose inversion of Woglinde’s Lullaby #4). As we will see, these pentatonic tunes are thematically unified by the concept underlying their first exemplar, #4, Woglinde’s Lullaby, through which Woglinde sought to keep the world from waking, sought to forestall the inevitable coming of the Fall, the birth of human consciousness and its curse. In other words, by inseminating the womb of music with all the knowledge which Wotan fears, this knowledge embracing the consequences of the Fall through consciousness, Wotan has repressed this dangerous knowledge and sublimated it into feeling, or music, and pentatonic music is music’s most primal form. In this way Wotan’s unspoken secret is safely transmuted into feeling, which keeps his secret unspoken, and the natural path of evolution (natural necessity), from unconsciousness to consciousness, is reversed, and to that degree innocence restored. #98 therefore represents man’s fear of consciousness and longing to restore the lost innocence of preconsciousness, in feeling, or music.
Wotan now launches into another of the most poignant and moving passages of the Ring, nostalgically reminiscing about all those things that he will lose forever in losing Bruennhilde. This passage culminates in his proclamation that he will make a bridal fire to protect her sleep such as the world has never seen, and the declaration that one man alone will now woo the bride, one freer than Wotan himself, the god, as we hear the most sweeping, climactic variant of #96b, that motif which now expresses both Bruennhilde’s rebellion against Wotan’s condemnation of her actions and punishment, and Bruennhilde’s longing for reconciliation with Wotan. What will make Wotan’s hero freer than Wotan, the god, is what makes Wagner’s secular art freer than religious faith. As Wagner says in our extract below, secular art, which openly proclaims itself illusory, is free from religion’s claim to truth. Art can use religious symbols in a free spirit, not the rigid forms imposed by the church’s insistence on the literal truthfulness of its myths, because such art is a profound form of play which does not stake a claim on reality and its potential power:
