Even before the ring is forged, the potentiality of its forging is created by a set of conditions already set into motion by that most contradictory of characters, Wotan himself. This is, essentially, the dialectic of Das Rheingold. It consists of the bargain Wotan makes, prior to the events of the opera, with regards to the spear of contracts, for which he both exchanges his eye and which requires him to mutilate the World Ash Tree, thus disrupting the primordial and balanced order of things. This fundamental disruption is what makes other subsequent disruptions possible.
This double act of forswearing (of his vision, itself a metaphorically rich concept, and, arguably, Wotan’s own humanity) and violation establishes both the structure of one being’s acquisition of power over others and the methodology of acquiring that power: through a fundamental interference with nature. Wotan's eye/spear bargain will be mirrored by Alberich’s foreswearing of love, his extraction of the Rheingold and, subsequently, by his curse of the ring, which functions as a freedom-limiting factor forced upon the world against the will of the world.
In this it is similar to the power of the spear of contracts itself, which both limits Wotan's power and is what grants him power over the human realm. The ring limits the power of many different characters because of its curse and yet, in a similar paradox, promises its wearer infinite such power. (We can call this the contract/spear, curse/ring dichotomy.)
In pursuit of that power, the collateral damage is massive -- in the case of Wotan, the use of the spear creates the inhospitable conditions on earth in which man is pitted against man in constant acts of violence in pursuit of the ring. (The ultimate victim of this is, of course, Siegmund.) In the case of Alberich's curse of the ring, the collateral damage is ultimately the world of the gods itself. From the very beginning this mirroring between Wotan and Alberich is extremely complete across all structures within the cycle. Both are in a bind that cannot be broken until the end, though Alberich's path to losing the ring is far more direct than that of Wotan, who, despite the curse, still retains a great deal of freedom within unfreedom thanks, in part, to the power of the spear. So it goes!
A table explaining the dialectic of Das Rheingold.
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