expressed Siegfried’s loneliness & longing in S.2.3?]; :#153 beginning frag?) (#37?:) the hero for whom you long (:#37?).
(Gunther has returned to the table and, leaning on it, listens attentively.)
Hagen: If Siegfried were to enter now (#57) (#153 vari:; #?: [this music sounds as if #57 merges with #42?]) and taste the herbal drink (:#153 vari; :#? [#57 merging with #42?]) (#87?), (#42:; #voc?: [does this vocal line reference one of Siegfried’s conversations with Mime?]) he’d be [[ #154: ]] forced to forget (:#42; :#voc? [referencing one of Siegfried’s conversations with Mime?]) (#24:; #139?: #42:; #58b voc?: [Siegmund’s #58b vari associated with his longing for the sword Waelse promised him in his time of highest need, i.e., “Noth”]) that he’d seen a woman before you (:#58b voc?), (#24:; #154:; #122 or #123 end frag?: [the alternating chords representing Mime’s potion?]) that a woman had ever come near him (:#24; :#154; :#122 or #123 end frag? [the alternating chords representing Mime’s potion?]. – (#151) Now tell me: - (#161 end frag) (#152 rhythm?:) what think you of Hagen’s advice?
Gunther: (starting up, animatedly: #151) (#152 vari:) Praise be to Grimhild’, who gave us our brother (:#152 vari)!
Hagen has informed Gunther and Gutrune that Siegfried’s fame sprang from killing the Serpent who guarded the Nibelung Hoard, and taking possession of that Hoard (i.e., Ring) which, if one knew how to use it, would bind the world to his will, as we hear both #19 (the Ring Motif) and #37 (the Loveless World Motif). This reminds us of two things: one, that Siegfried the artist-hero has taken aesthetic possession of that power of conscious thought, and knowledge, which in the hands of an objective thinker would grant the Ring’s owner the capacity to dominate the physical and human worlds. And two, that Hagen, the rightful heir to his father Alberich’s Ring, has been dispossessed and disinherited by Wotan (man’s religious impulse) and by Siegfried and Bruennhilde (man’s religious impulse as found in secular art). We can take it for certain that if Hagen regained his rightful legacy, the Ring, he would employ its objective power to overthrow the usurpers who depend upon self-deception for their happiness, and to establish a purely science-and-nature-based worldview and world-order, which grants special power to those with the knowledge of the truth and the ruthlessness to exploit this knowledge at all costs. Hagen, we will see, is Wagner’s metaphor for the modern, secular, scientific world-view which strives to solve all mysteries, leaving nothing in nature or human nature autonomous from human reason.
Hagen then tells Gunther something which seems quite odd unless properly understood. He says, in answer to Gunther’s interesting question whether Siegfried won the Ring in fair fight, and
