>>24093602
After slaying the dragon, Siegfried meets father Wotan, who is plagued by gloomy cares because the earth-mother Erda has laid the old serpent in his path in order to enfeeble him. He says to Erda:

All-knowing one,
Care’s piercing sting
By thee was planted
In Wotan’s dauntless heart:
With fear of shameful
Ruin and downfall
Thy knowledge filled him;
The fearful tidings
Choked his breast!
Art thou the world’s wisest woman?
Then tell me:
How may a god conquer his care?

ERDA: Thy name
Is not as thou sayest!

With poisoned sting the mother has robbed her son of the joy of life and deprived him of the power which lies in the secret name. Just as Isis demanded the secret name of Ra, so Erda says: “Thy name is not as thou sayest!” But the Wanderer has found a way to conquer the fatal charm of the mother:

The gods’ downfall
No more dismays me
Since I willed their doom!
To the loveliest Wälsung
I leave my heritage;
To the eternally young
Joyously yields the god!

These wise words contain in fact the saving thought: it is not the mother who lays the poisonous worm in our path, but life itself, which wills itself to complete the sun’s course, to mount from morn to noon, and then, crossing the meridian, to hasten towards evening, no more at odds with itself, but desiring the descent and the end.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra says:

I praise my death, the free death which comes to me because I desire it.

And when shall I desire it?

He who has a goal and an heir desires death at the proper time for the goal and the heir.

Nietzsche’s amor fati is somewhat overdone, and like an ailing Superman he tries to be always one jump ahead of fate. Siegfried is more cautious: he conquers father Wotan and sets out to win Brünhilde.

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