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It is impossible not to see in the above quote the seeds of Nietzsche's 'amor fati' and Superman. Wagner's 'Siegfied' must then be looked into if one wishes to increase an understanding of Nietzschean philosophy."The figure of Siegfried is the kernel of the whole 'Ring' drama, and it was from a conflation of the Siegfied myth of the god's downfall that Wagner constructed his Tetraology". [M.Cooper, notes to Siegfried]
As mentioned, the 'Ring' was a 'tetraology', i.e., four Operas connected by an overarching concept. Wagner worked on Siegfried, part three of the tetraology, intermittently from the late 1840s, through the 1850s; leaving it to take it up again in the 1860s, finishing the score in 1871. The first performance of the Ring as a whole was at Bayreuth in August 1876, although much of the music would have been heard before then.
The Opera Siegfied has four main characters - the eponymous hero, the Wanderer [actually Wotan in disguise], Mime the dwarf and the Valkyrie Brunnhilde. We notice the 'Wanderer' as a Nietzschean figure [book 'The Wanderer and his Shadow', and in 'Zarathustra'], while "Siegfied is unquestionably the hero, embodying the ruthlessness and amorality, the animal vitality and physical beauty that Wagner and Nietzsche naturally associated with the Superman". [Cooper ib.]
Mime is something of a 'Semitic' figure who contrasts with Siegfried's Aryanism;
' Schmeck du mein Schwert, ekliger Schwatzer! '('Taste my sword, loathsome babbler!' -
Siegfried to Mime as he slays him: [Act II sc.3])"Siegfried's loathing for the dwarf Mime is to a great extent physical, and his violence with Mime is not just that of an undisciplined child, but the expression of 'Ekel', physical disgust or nausea". [Cooper ib.]
This term 'Ekel' recurs in Nietzsche's Zarathustra, particularly to refer to the 'Last Man'; we also notice the appearance of a dwarf in the same work, who at one point plays a foil to Zarathustra's explication of the all important doctrine of the Eternal Return. Cooper emphasises the parity of Nietzsche/Wagner in the following;"Wagner's music makes Siegfried a symbol of youth, youthful innocence [in the sense of premoral rather than amoral] and vitality, desire for knowledge and impatience".The concept of the 'premoral' was articulated by Nietzsche in his 'Beyond Good and Evil', while the notion of 'Innocence' as the virtue of the Overman occurs with great effect in Nietzsche's mature work.
' The dead can tell no tales.Then lead me, my living sword!Its blood burns like fire!
(He involuntarily puts his fingers in his mouth to the blood from them. As he gazes thoughtfully before him, his attention is increasingly drawn to the song of the forest-birds)
It seems almost as if the birds were speaking to me!Did the taste of its blood affect me?That rare bird there,Hark! what says its song? '[Siegfried after he has killed the dragon Fafner, (Act II sc.2)]
The symbolic images here of blood, fire and bird-song are powerfully drawn."When the Wanderer has barred Siegfried's path with his spear, and the spear has been shattered by Siegfied's sword - a perfect Freudian vignette of the rivalry between the old male and the young - he surrenders and retires". [Cooper ib.]
Freud acknowledged his debt to Nietzsche, and also to Schopenhauer; it was during this period that both Nietzsche and Wagner saw themselves as 'disciples' of Schopenhauer whose theory of the blind will did much to inspire the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious."Throughout the Ring, and perhaps more particularly in 'Siegfried', it is from a psychological angle that we must understand the theology, or cosmology, which Wagner puts into the mouths of Wotan, Erda and Brunnhilde". [ib.]
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