further evidence that Wagner in S.1 and S.2 is making an elaborate identification of Mime with Wotan. }}
Mime now offers Siegfried the sleeping potion he brewed while Siegfried was smelting and forging his sword Nothung, and adds that he’s making the greatest effort to hide his true thoughts from Siegfried, yet complains, when Siegfried demonstrates that he has surprising knowledge of Mime’s ulterior intent, that Siegfried is misinterpreting all that he says. {{ As Mime says this we may hear #114, the motif associated with Mime’s and Wotan’s contest of knowledge, and with Mime’s confession to Wotan of his ulterior intent to exploit Siegfried, and ultimately with Siegfried’s murder of Mime (since Wotan stakes their heads in this contest of knowledge), the price Mime pays for losing his contest of knowledge with Wotan. The reason why Mime (Wotan’s head) must die at Siegfried’s hands, of course, is that Mime did not recognize his need for redemption, which is also why he could not re-forge the Waelsung’s sword Nothung. #114’s possible presence here needs to be checked in the score. }} #107 and #108, motifs which express the notions of parental love, are heard – with great ironic effect - while Mime is speaking of his potion, pretending he’s offering as refreshment what is really his means to kill Siegfried. Siegfried inquires, rhetorically of course, how Mime brewed this drink. Mime responds: never mind, just trust in my art! If you drink this your senses will descend into night (“Nacht”) and mist (“Nebel”), verbal references to Nibelheim. As Mime introduces this verbal image of Nibelheim we hear a new variant of #122 which contains a sort of tick-tock resembling a metronome, and #122 carries this metronome effect until Mime’s death at Siegfried’s hands. One wonders what the symbolic significance might be: did Wagner once suffer from music lessons delivered by an obnoxious pedant time-beater and carry his resentment over into Siegfried’s contempt for Mime?
As Mime again offers Siegfried his fatal potion, telling him with glee to choke on it, Mime calls him, strangely enough, “son of Wolfe.” Siegmund, Siegfried’s father, was of course the son of Wolfe (Wotan in disguise, perhaps as the Wanderer), the name Wotan presented to the public, but known to Siegmund privately as Waelse, i.e., founder of the Waelsung clan. Whether this was an inadvertent mistake on Wagner’s part, or simply reflects the fact that since Wotan’s original son Siegmund failed to do what Wotan needed him to do in order to redeem the gods, Wotan is trying again with his grandson, perhaps his symbolic son, Siegfried, I do not know. Siegfried at this point has had enough and, as Wagner describes it, is so filled with an access of loathing for Mime that he strikes him dead with Nothung, saying that Nothung has paid the wages of spite.
[S.2.3: E]
We enter at this moment a mysterious realm of revelation. After dropping Mime’s body into Fafner’s cave so that Mime can, in death, watch over the hoard he so lusted after in life, Siegfried laboriously drags the dead Fafner over to sit him on top of the cave so he can watch after the hoard - which Siegfried will leave in the cave unused - as well. Wagner places an extraordinary amount of musico-dramatic emphasis on the strenuous labor Siegfried must expend to drag Fafner’s dead body over to sit him atop the cave where the Hoard he had once guarded lies unused, and we are reminded that the Giants are repeatedly described in the course of the drama as oppressively weighing down the world with their great bulk. This is of course a testimony to what Wagner described as the invincible, irrevocable power of egoism as the primary motive for all human
