Feuerbach sums up his analysis of man’s collective unconscious as the involuntary inventor of the gods in his following provocative remark:
[Footnote:] “… a man can go so far as to disclaim all credit; for ultimately my feeling, my consciousness, my very being result from premises which are situated outside the I, which are the work of nature or of God. Indeed, the deeper man looks within, the more the distinction between nature and man or I vanishes, the plainer it becomes to him that he is only consciously unconscious, a not-I that is an I. That is why man is the deepest and most complex of all beings. But man cannot understand or endure his own depth [both Wotan and Siegfried feel fear in the presence of their own depth, as represented by Erda and Bruennhilde, the repository for the fateful knowledge her mother Erda, Mother Nature, imparted to Wotan, and which Wotan imparted in turn to their daughter Bruennhilde], and for that reason he splits his being into an I without a not-I, which he calls God [Wotan] and a not-I without an I, which he calls nature [Erda].” [334F-LER: p. 313]
The relationship of Wotan’s conscious mind to Erda (Mother Nature), and to that part of Erda in Wotan which links him to her more directly, his unconscious mind Bruennhilde, is of course replicated in Siegfried. The key difference between Wotan and Siegfried in this respect is that where Wotan represents collective, historical humanity, the Folk in its widest sense (according to Wagner the original involuntary creator of the elements of civilization, including language and the religious myths), Siegfried represents a single individual, or at least an archetype representative of a small group of individuals, i.e., the inspired modern artist who is able to tap into mankind’s collective unconscious, Bruennhilde, for inspiration. As Wagner might put it, the spirit of the primevally creative Folk (Wotan), who invented the gods involuntarily during the collective dream-time when man was rising, through the evolution of species, to consciousness of himself as distinctly human, has been reborn in the individual artist-hero Siegfried. Wagner actually described the key character from his only comic music-drama, Hans Sachs of The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, as a last vestige of the art-creative spirit of the Folk:
“I took Hans Sachs as the last manifestment of the art-productive spirit of the Folk (Volksgeist) … .” [563W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 329]
In my chapter on that comedy I will in fact demonstrate that Hans Sachs is modeled on Wotan in numerous respects. One of the most startling is the fact that Sachs’ confession to Eva - who will become the muse of inspiration for the dream which gives birth to Walther von Stolzing’s mastersong – during his second act cobbling song, is modeled on Wotan’s confession to Bruennhilde.
Besides internal evidence from the Ring libretto and music (and we have scarcely exhausted that evidence at this point), what evidence if any is there in Wagner’s writings and recorded remarks that suggests Siegfried fears Bruennhilde because she possesses the fearful knowledge her mother Erda imparted to Wotan, and Wotan imparted in turn to Bruennhilde? Wagner provided a series of explanations for Siegfried’s fear, several of which might appear to be mutually exclusive. A number of scholars have assumed, correctly, that in view of the fact that Siegfried must in some sense give up his distinct personal identity, or ego, to enjoy full loving union with Bruennhilde, that
