This passage, by the way, proves that Wagner did not, after all (at least in 1879), regard the Jewish character as eternally fixed by blood inheritance, since he suggests here that the Germans, if allowed to develop, would have passed on the positive traits their culture acquired to the Jews. This fact does not of course relieve Wagner of the charge of racist condescension, which is so obviously the motive behind his remark above. It is also interesting that Wagner says the Jews intervened before the Germans had become fully aware of themselves (i.e., before national unification, which Wagner hoped would inspire the Germans to assert themselves culturally in a way true to their essential character), since Siegfried in S.2.2 will tell Fafner: “I still don’t know who I am.”
Mime’s character as a self-serving, profit-driven egoist expresses itself in his harping here, again, on the fact that he’s gained no profit from having reared Siegfried, and no thanks. Mime didn’t rear Siegfried for Siegfried’s sake, but only so that Siegfried would do Mime’s bidding and win the Ring and Hoard for him, even at risk of his life. Interestingly, Wotan exploits Siegfried and his Waelsung parents seemingly for more exalted reasons, but in the final analysis his motives are just as craven as those inspiring Mime, as Alberich himself suggested in his indictment of Wotan’s hypocrisy in R.4.
[S.1.1: H]
Mime now describes Siegfried’s mother Sieglinde’s tragic last moments, which Bruennhilde herself had predicted when she told Wotan in V.3.3 that Sieglinde would suffer greater anguish than any woman in childbirth ever had, in giving birth to Siegfried, as if the anguish of her childbirth were directly proportionate to the greatness of the hero to whom she gave birth. And of course, we hear #66 repeatedly as Mime speaks of her anguish, as #66 is a motif expressing the “Noth” that the Waelsungs have to suffer, as the heroic race to whom Wotan looks to pay the price of Alberich’s curse, in order to redeem the gods from it:
Mime: Out there in the wildwood a woman once lay whimpering: (#66) I helped her into the cave (#63) to ward her by the warming hearth. (#64>:) She bore a child within her womb: in sadness she gave it birth here; back and forth she writhed, I helped as best I could: (#40) great was her travail [“Noth”]; (#66) she died – (#92) but Siegfried, he survived.
Siegfried: (slowly: #?: [music which may recur in S.3.3?]) So my mother died through me (:#? [music which may recur in S.3.3?])? (#66)
Mime: (#?: [music which may recur in association with a special #41 vari in Siegfried’s narrative about the youth he spent with Mime in T.3.2?]) She handed you over into my care:
