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But what does this march mean to us who have been trying to study the real meaning of the tragedy? The catastrophe which is to usher in the new era of love. Search for a musical symbol for the redeeming principle. It cannot appear in its fulness till the old order, changing, gives place to the new; but still we may find it in the prevision of a woman to whom the shadow of death gave mystical lore. A new song was put into the mouth of Sieglinde when Br?nnhilde acclaimed her child, yet unborn, as destined to be the loftiest hero of earth. She poured out her gratitude in a prophetic strain in which we may, if we wish, hear the Valkyria celebrated as the loving, redeeming woman of the last portion of the tragedy. Out of that melody, and out of a phrase in the love duet in which Br?nnhilde blesses the mother who gave birth to the glorious hero, grew the phrase in which, in "Die G?tterd?mmerung," Br?nnhilde, Valkyria no longer, is symbolized in her new character as loving woman. But when the flames from Siegfried's funeral pile reach Valhalla, when by a stupendous achievement the poet-composer recapitulates the incidents of the tragedy in his orchestral postlude, while pompous brass and strident basses depict the destruction of Valhalla, the end of the old world of greed of gold and lust of power, this melody, the symbol of redeeming love, soars high into ethereal regions on the wings of the violins, and its last transfigured harmonies proclaim the advent of a new heaven and a new earth under the dominion of love. 'Tis the "Woman's Soul" leading us "upward and on:"

FOOTNOTES:

Professor Dippold's translation.

Dippold. Wagner's poem, "The Ring of the Nibelung," p. 61.

Professor Dippold's translation.

See page 35.

The last of Wagner's dramas is not only mystical in its subject, but also in the manner in which it confronts the critical student. In Bayreuth it exerts a most puissant influence upon the spectator and listener; but when one has escaped the sweet thraldom of the representation, and reflection takes the place of experience, there arise a multitude of doubts touching the essential merit of the drama. These doubts do not go to the effectiveness of "Parsifal" as an artistic entertainment. If they did they would arise in the course of the representation and hinder enjoyment. Against what, then, do they direct themselves?

An answer to this question must precede our study of the drama.

"Parsifal" is not a drama in the ordinary acceptation of the term; yet it is a drama in the antique sense. It is a religious play; but, again, not a religious play in the general sense in which Wagner's mythological tetralogy may be said to be a religious play; it is specifically a Christian play. It is contemplation of it in this light which gives the student pause. There are indications in the records of Wagner's intellectual activity that he wrote it to take the place of two dramas which had occupied his mind many years before "Parsifal" was written. The first of these dramas, which he sketched in 1848, was a tragedy entitled "Jesus of Nazareth;" the second, which he planned in 1856, was entitled "The Victors," and was based on a Hindu legend. Its hero was to be Chaka-Munyi--the Buddha. In a manner, it may be said, these two dramas were blended in "Parsifal," but, strangely enough, that blending was accomplished so as to bring into prominence a conception of religion more in harmony with the feeling of Buddhistic, or mediaeval asceticism than with the sentiments of modern Christianity. Wagner's Jesus of Nazareth was a purely human philosopher who preached the saving grace of love, and sought to redeem his time from the domination of conventional law--the offspring of selfishness. His philosophy was socialism imbued with love. Wagner's Buddha, on the other hand, was the familiar apostle of abnegation and asceticism. The heroism of the lovers Ananda and Prakriti was to have been displayed in their voluntary renunciation of the union, towards which love impelled them. They were to accept the teachings of the Buddha, take the vow of chastity, and live thereafter in the holy community.

When Wagner came to write his Christian drama he put aside his human Christ, accepted the doctrine of the Atonement with all its mystical elements, but endowed his hero with scarcely another merit than that which had become the ideal of monkish theologians under the influence of fearful moral depravity and fanatical superstition, as far removed from the teachings and example of his original hero as the heavens are from the earth. After having eloquently proclaimed the ethical idea which is at the basis of all the really beautiful mythologies and religions of the world, and embodied it in "The Flying Dutchman," "Tannh?user," and "The Niblung's Ring"--the idea that salvation comes to humanity through the redeeming love of woman--he produced a drama in which the central idea, so far as the dramatic spectacle is concerned, is a glorification of a conception of sanctity which grew out of a monstrous perversion of womanhood, and a wicked degradation of womankind.

This, I say, is the case "so far as the dramatic spectacle is concerned." Of course there is much more in "Parsifal" than a celebration of the principal feature in mediaeval asceticism, but I am speaking now of the things which fill the vision during representation, which inspire a feeling of awe at the time, but afterwards irritate and confound the reflective faculty. So far as the spectacle is concerned, the heroism of Parsifal is not that of the Divine Being, of whom Wagner does not hesitate to make him a symbol, but that of a desert recluse. This contradiction of the modern sense of propriety is accentuated by the means resorted to by Wagner for the sake of identifying the hero with his lofty prototype. In the third act, scenes are borrowed from the life of Christ, and Parsifal is made to play in them as the central figure; Kundry anoints the feet of the knight and dries them with her hair; Parsifal baptizes Kundry and absolves her from sin. These acts, and the resistance of Kundry's seductions in the Magic Garden, make up, for the greater part, the sum of the acts of a hero in whom the spectator wishes to see, on the one hand, some of the attributes of the heroes of the profoundly poetical romances from which the subject-matter of the drama was drawn, or, on the other, some evidences of that nobility and that gentleness of conduct, and that fine sanity of thought which marked the life of Him of whom it has been said that he was

"The best of men That e'er wore earth about him-- A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed."

These things, taken in connection with the adoration of the Holy Grail, which makes up so much of the action of the drama, and the worship of the Sacred Lance, seem to us of the nineteenth century like little else than relics of the monkish superstitions of the early Middle Ages. Under them, it is true, there is much deep philosophy, and the symbolism of the drama is surcharged with meaning; but a recognition of the paradox is necessary, the better to appreciate the fact that the essence of "Parsifal" lies less in what is seen on the stage than in what the things seen stand for. To appreciate the work at its full worth it must be accepted for the lesson which it inculcates, and that lesson must be accepted in the spirit of the time which produced the materials of the drama. The ethical idea of the drama is that it is the enlightenment which comes through conscious pity that brings salvation. The allusion is to the redemption of man by the sufferings and compassionate death of Christ; and that stupendous tragedy is the pre-figuration of the mimic tragedy which Wagner has constructed. The spectacle to which he invites us, and with which he hopes to impress us and move us to an acceptance of the lesson underlying his drama, is the adoration of the Holy Grail, cast in the form of a mimicry of the Last Supper, bedizened with some of the glittering pageantry of mediaeval knighthood and romance. The trial to which the hero is subjected is that with which the folk-lore of all times and peoples, as well as their monkish legends, have made us familiar: the hero proves his fitness for his divine calling, and accomplishes it by withstanding the temptations which Ulysses withstood on the Delightful Island where he met Calypso, to which Tannh?user succumbed in the grotto of Venus.

Though "Parsifal" endures a separation of its poetic, scenic, and musical elements less graciously than any other drama of its creator, it is the music which must be relied on to bring about a reconciliation between modern thought and feeling, and the monkish theology and relic worship which I have discussed. The music reflects the spirit of that Divine Passion which is the kernel of theological Christianity. There is extremely little music in the score, which is descriptive of external things--less than in any other of Wagner's works except "Die Meistersinger." It is like that of "Tristan und Isolde," which deals much more with mental and psychic states than with the outward things of nature. It is music for the imagination rather than the fancy. In listening to it one can be helped by bearing in mind the distinction so beautifully made by Ruskin:

"The fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail.

"The imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt, but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted in its giving out of outer detail.

"Fancy, as she stays at the externals, can never feel. She is one of the hardest-hearted of the intellectual faculties, or, rather, one of the most purely and simply intellectual. She cannot be made serious, no edge-tool but she will play with; whereas the imagination is in all things the reverse. She cannot be but serious; she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly ever to smile. There is something in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, that we shall not be inclined to laugh at.

"Now observe, while as it penetrates into the nature of things, the imagination is pre-eminently a beholder of things as they are, it is, in its creative function, an eminent beholder of things when and where they are not; a seer, that is, in the prophetic sense, calling the things that are not as though they were; and forever delighting to dwell on that which is not tangibly present.... Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison and is happy; but imagination is a pilgrim on the earth, and her home is in heaven."

The fundamental elements of the music of "Parsifal" are suffering and aspiration. When they are apprehended the ethical purpose of the drama becomes plain. But not till then.

The investigations of scholars determined long ago that the legend which is at the bottom of Wagner's drama is formed of two portions which were once distinct. One of these portions is concerned with the origin and wanderings of the Holy Grail prior to the time when it became the object of the Quest which occupied so much of the attention of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table; the second portion is concerned with that Quest. The relative age of the two portions of the legend and the genesis of each have caused much controversy, which has thrown a great deal of light on mediaeval civilization. We are little concerned in that controversy, however, except so far as it enlightens us as to the real nature of the legend, and helps us to understand how the Grail became the loftiest symbol of Christian faith, and the Grail Quest the highest duty of Christian knighthood.

"'Thorenkleider soll mein Kind An seinem lichten Leibe tragen: Schl?gt und rauft man ihn darum, So kommt er mir wohl wieder.' Weh, was litt die Arme da! Nun nahm sie grobes Sacktuch her Und schnitt ihm Hemd und Hose draus In einem St?ck, das bis zum Knie Des nackten Beins nur reichte. Das war als Narrenkleid bekannt. Oben sah man eine Kappe."

Once there were two knightly brothers, of whom one was childless while the other had two sons. A strife breaks out between them, and the father is slain with his sons. The wicked knight then sends word to the widow that if she should give birth to another son, he, too, must be put to death. She does give birth to a son, and to save his life sends him into the wilderness to be reared by a kitchen wench who has a love-son. The lads grow up strong and hardy. One day the knightly lad runs down a deer, kills it, and of its skin makes himself a motley suit of clothes. He slays his foster-brother for laughing at him in his strange dress, catches a wild horse, rides to his uncle's palace, and though when asked his name he can only answer "Great Fool," he is recognized. Thus his adventures begin. He avenges the wrongs of his mother. This Great Fool is the original Seeker after the Grail.

Among the oldest manuscripts which contain the Quest story there are two which make no mention of the Holy Grail as a Christian relic or symbol. The most interesting of these is Welsh, and is known as the Mabinogi of "Peredur, the Son of Evrawc." It is an Arthurian story, and the majority of its adventures are identical with those of Percival. Its beginning is a parallel of "The Lay of the Great Fool." The Holy Grail of the Percival romances is replaced by a bleeding lance, a bloody head on a salver, and a silver dish. These talismans are brought into the hall of a castle belonging to a lame king, and are greeted with loud lamentations by the assembled knights. In the French romances the talismans are the Holy Grail and the bleeding lance, the latter being identified, as in Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur," with the spear with which Longinus opened the side of the crucified Christ. As Percival is condemned in these romances for a long time to wander in fruitless search of this castle, because having seen the wonders he did not ask their meaning, so Peredur, in the Welsh romance, is cursed in the Court of King Arthur for a similar neglect. Had he asked, the lame king would have got well of his wound, and Peredur would have proved his fitness to avenge the death of his cousin, who was the lame king's son, and had been killed by the sorceresses of Gloucester. After many trials, tallying with those of Percival in the French romances and Parzival in Wolfram's poem, Peredur finds the castle again , is recognized as the nephew of the king, and avenges his cousin's death by leading Arthur and his knights against the sorceresses of Gloucester. There are some allusions to the Christian religion in the old tale, but essentially it is pagan. The bloody head and bleeding lance are part of ancient British legendary apparatus.

A bleeding lance, says Mr. Alfred Nutt, is the bardic symbol of undying hatred of the Saxon. Here it bled till the death of Peredur's cousin was avenged. The bloody head was the head of that cousin.

In his character as the mystically chosen Agent of the Grail and the instrument of salvation, Parsifal is also typified in the music by the phrase to which the oracular promise which appeared on the Holy Vessel is repeated in the first scene, and again with great solemnity in the ceremony of the Adoration of the Grail.

Prototypes of the Quest of the Grail and of the Quester have been found in popular tales which have nothing to do with Christianity. Until the talisman became a symbol of religion, the object of the search for it was simply the performance of a sacred duty by the hero to his family, by avenging a death, healing the lingering illness of a relative, or in some instances to bring freedom to individuals whose lives have been miraculously and burdensomely prolonged. The talisman itself is to be found in a multitude of forms, from the dawn of literature down to today. To recognize it we must study its properties rather than its shape or material. In the legend of the Holy Grail it is the chalice used by Christ

"At the last sad supper with his own,"

in which afterwards his blood was caught. In one form of the legend--that which is most familiar, because of Tennyson's "Idyls of the King"--this cup is carried to Great Britain by Joseph of Arimathea and deposited at Glastonbury. In another form, which was that adopted by Wagner, it is given into the keeping of Titurel, who builds a sanctuary for it on Monsalvat , where it is guarded by a body of knights obviously organized on the model of the Knights Templars of the Crusades. It is not always a cup. Wolfram von Eschenbach describes it as a jewel. But whether stone or cup its miraculous properties are of two kinds.

The Grail's property of furnishing sustenance is the possession of so many talismans of ancient story that it would be a waste of space to enumerate them all. The most striking examples must suffice. A horn was the earliest drinking-vessel. The horn which the nymph Amalthea gave to Hercules, whose memory we still preserve in those pretty toys called cornucopias--horns of plenty--is easily recalled in this connection. The Grail is nothing else than the Philosopher's Stone which was to transmute all baser metals into gold; it is the stone which Noah was commanded to hang up in the Ark that it might give out light; it is the goblet which Oberon gave to Huon of Bordeaux, which in the hands of a good man became filled with wine; it is the golden cup which was given to Hercules by the sun-god Helios; it is the cup of Hermes, which played a part in the Eleusinian mysteries; it is the magic napkin or table-cloth of Aryan fairy-lore which produced all manner of food simply for the wishing; it has its fellows in three of the thirteen Rarities of Kingly Regalia which were preserved in Arthur's Court at Caerleon, viz., the horn of Bran the Hardy of the North--the drink that might be desired of it would appear as soon as wished for; the Budget or Basket of Gwyddno with the High Crown--provision for a single person if put into it multiplied a hundredfold; the table-cloth of Rhydderch the Scholar--whatever victuals or drink were wished thereon were instantly obtained. It is the stone in the serpent's tail told about in the old Welsh story of Peredur, the virtue of which was that it would give as much gold to the possessor as he might desire. It is the magic ring Draupnir of Scandinavian mythology which every ninth night dropped eight other rings of equal weight and fineness.

But of prototypes of this class the most striking in its relation to the Holy Grail is found in the legendary lore of the primitive home of the Aryan race. Long ago the Holy Grail was the Golden Cup of Jamshid, King of the Genii in Persia, the power of which extended his career over seven hundred years, and then left him to die because he failed to look upon it for ten days. Here we have a parallel of the legend of Joseph of Arimathea, of whom it is said that the Jews having thrown him into a subterranean prison after he and Nicodemus had prepared the body of Christ for burial, Christ appeared to him and brought the chalice which he had used at the Last Supper, and in which Joseph had caught the blood which flowed from his wounds. The sight of this dish kept Joseph alive forty-two years, until he was released by the Emperor Vespasian, who had been miraculously cured of leprosy in his youth by a touch of the kerchief of Veronica with which Christ wiped his face while on his way to Calvary. Like Joseph of Arimathea, Wagner's Titurel lives in his grave, being sustained by the Grail until Amfortas refuses longer to unveil it.

The second property of the Grail, its spiritual property, is also found in the talismans of ancient folk-lore. It was possessed by the silver cup which Joseph in Egypt had put into Benjamin's sack that he might be brought back to him. "Up, follow after the men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my lord drinketh and whereby, indeed, he divineth?" There is a Hebrew legend to the effect that "the supernatural knowledge of Solomon was recorded in a volume which Rehoboam inclosed in an ivory ewer and deposited in his father's tomb. On repairing the sepulchre, some wise men of Babylon discovered the cup, and having extracted the volume, an angel revealed the key to its mysterious writing to one Troes, a Greek, and hence the stream of occult science which has so beneficially unfolded the destinies of the West." There is a parallel story in Greek literature telling how, warned by the Delphic oracle, Aristomenes secreted an article while the Lacedemonians were storming the fortress of Mount Ira. The article was to be a talisman for the future security of the Messinians. When, later, the talisman was exhumed it was "found to be a brazen ewer containing a roll of finely-beaten tin on which were inscribed the mysteries of the great divinities." The Holy Grail is a divining-cup: it speaks oracularly, like its prototypes. It was not only the chalice from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, but also the dish which discovered Judas as the future betrayer of his master: "He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me."

The Grail romances, as we possess them, were written within the fifty years compassing the last quarter of the twelfth and the first quarter of the thirteenth centuries--that is to say, while the third and fourth crusades were in progress, and the memory of the supposed discoveries of the sacred cup and lance were still fresh in the minds of Europeans. This fact furnishes ample suggestion as to how such talismans as I have mentioned became transformed into the relics of Christ's passion. It was by a literary process that has always been familiar to the world. The species of belief or superstition which inspired the transformation is not yet dead. If we are to believe Father Ignatius the miracle of the Grail vision was repeated but recently at Llanthony Abbey in Wales, where an Episcopal monk saw the chalice shining through the oaken doors of the cabinet which enclosed it. That is a Christian form of the belief; evidences of a pagan may be observed in nearly all civilized communities almost any date. When you see a baby cutting its teeth upon a red bit of bone, or ivory shaped like a branch of coral and tricked out with bells, you see a relic of an unspeakably ancient superstition closely allied to the belief in these miraculous talismans. When you see a baby with a string of red coral beads around its neck you see another. In Wagner, as in Tennyson, the Grail shines red:

"Fainter by day, but always in the night Blood-red, and sliding down the blacken'd marsh Blood-red, and on the naked mountain-top Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below Blood-red."

Thus much for the genesis of the Grail, its Quest, and its Quester. We have seen that they are all relics of a time antedating Christianity; but that fact only adds interest to them, for even in their pagan guises they show those potential attributes which adapted them to receive the lofty symbolism which they acquired under the influence of Christianity.

"Nie sollst du mich befragen, Noch Wissens Sorge tragen, Woher ich kam der Fahrt, Noch wie mein Nam' und Art!"

The reason of the prohibition may be learned from Wolfram von Eschenbach. The sufferings of Amfortas having been needlessly prolonged by Parzival's failure to ask the healing question, the Knights of the Grail thereafter refused to permit themselves to be questioned:

"Als die Taufe nun geschen, Fand am Grale man geschrieben: 'Welchen Templer Gottes Hand Fremdem Volk zum Herren g?be, Fragen sollt' er widerraten Nach seinem Namen und Geschlecht, Und dann zum Recht ihm helfen. Wird die Frage doch gethan, So bleibt er ihnen l?nger nicht.' Weil der gute Amfortas So lang im bittern Schemerzen lag, Und ihn die Frage lange mied, Ist ihnen alles Fragen leid: All des Grales Dienstgesellen Wolln sich nicht mehr fragen lassen."

The suffering of Amfortas, which came upon him because he, the King of the Grail, fell from the estate of bodily purity enjoined by the rules of the order, receives more eloquent expression than any of the other feelings which enter the drama. In Wagner's philosophical scheme it, as well as the tortures of conscience felt by Parsifal when Kundry's impure kiss awakens him to consciousness of transgression, recalls the vicarious suffering of Christ on the Cross. In the personal history of Parsifal, furthermore, it is associated with the death-agonies of his mother, who died because he left her to go in search of knighthood. The name of this mother Wagner changes so that it becomes a symbol of pain. It is Herzeleide--that is, Heart's-sorrow, or Heart's-suffering, the antithesis of our sweet English word Heart's-ease. The phrases which give the predominant mood of agony and pain to the music of the drama, which, as I have already said, reflect the spirit of theological Christianity, salvation through sacrifice, are these:

These were the names which Parsifal once knew but had forgotten. They are associated in his mind with his mother, and therefore the allusion is accompanied by the Herzeleide phrase.

"For a world that slumbered With sorrows unnumbered He once His own blood offered."

It is this phrase that lends such great poignancy to the music which accompanies Parsifal and Gurnemanz as they walk towards the Castle of the Grail.

For the prelude, whose melodic material has been thus marshalled, we have Wagner's own poetic exposition:

"Strong and firm does Faith reveal itself, elevated and resolute even in suffering. In answer to the renewed promise the voice of Faith sounds softly from dimmest heights--as though borne on the wings of the snow-white dove--slowly descending, embracing with ever-increasing breadth and fulness the heart of man, filling the world and the whole of nature with mightiest force; then, as though stilled to rest, glancing upward again towards the light of heaven. Then once more from the awe of solitude arises the lament of loving compassion, the agony, the holy sweat of the Mount of Olives, the divine sufferings of Golgotha; the body blanches, the blood streams forth and glows now with the heavenly glow of blessing in the chalice, pouring forth on all that lives and languishes the gracious gift of Redemption through Love. For him we are prepared, for Amfortas, the sinful guardian of the shrine who, with fearful rue for sin gnawing at his heart, must prostrate himself before the chastisement of the vision of the Grail. Shall there be redemption from the devouring torments of his soul? Yet once again we hear the promise and--hope!"

Klingsor is remotely connected with the history of two other dramas of Wagner. In the poem describing the Contest of Minstrelsy held in the Wartburg which Wagner blended with the legend of Tannh?user, Klingsor is a magician and minstrel of Hungary, and to him Heinrich von Effterdingen, otherwise Tannh?user, appeals when defeated by Wolfram von Eschenbach, who is not only the author of the poem "Parzival," but also the tuneful minstrel who sings a woful ballad to the evening star in Wagner's opera. In his epic Wolfram makes Klingsor a nephew of the renowned magician Virgilius of Naples.

Cyriacus Spangenberg, who wrote a book on the Art of the Master-singers in 1598, devotes several pages to Klingsor, describing him as the greatest master-singer of his age, who met all comers in poetical combat and overthrew them to the number of fifty-two. He was finally confounded by Wolfram von Eschenbach, who discovered his dependence on the Powers of Evil, and put both him and his familiar, a devil called Nazian, to shame by singing the glories of the Son of God become Man.

Yet Kundry, to proceed with Mr. Nutt, "would find release and salvation could a man resist her love spell. She knows this. The scene between the unwilling temptress, whose success would but doom her afresh, and the virgin Parsifal thus becomes tragic in the extreme. How does this affect Amfortas and the Grail? In this way: Parsifal is the pure fool, knowing naught of sin or suffering. It had been foretold of him that he should become 'wise by fellow-suffering,' and so it proves. The overmastering rush of desire unseals his eyes, clears his mind. Heart-wounded by the shaft of passion, he feels Amfortas' torture thrill through him. The pain of the physical wound is his, but far more, the agony of the sinner who has been unworthy of his high trust, and who, soiled by carnal sin, must yet daily come in contact with the Grail, symbol of the highest purity and holiness. The strength of the new-born knowledge enables him to resist sensual longing, and thereby to release both Kundry and Amfortas."

In spite of this, however, and more than this, in spite of all the religious mysticism with which the work can be infused by the analyst and interpreter, I cannot but question the right of "Parsifal" to be considered as in any sense a reflex of the religious feeling of to-day. It is beautiful in much of its symbolism, and it is profound; but it is too persistently mediaeval in its dramatic manifestations to satisfy the intelligence of the nineteenth century. The adoration of the relics of Christ's passion, and the idea that all human virtues are summed up in celibate chastity, were products of an age whose theories and practices as regards sex relationship can have no echo in modern civilization. Wolfram von Eschenbach's married Parzival, who clings with fond devotion to the memory of the wife from whose arms he had to tear himself in order to undertake the quest, and who loses himself in tender brooding for a long time when the sight of blood-spots on the snow suggests to his fancy the red and white of his wife's cheeks, seems to me to be a much more amiable and human hero than the young ascetic of Wagner's drama.

FOOTNOTES:

Genesis xliv., 4 and 5.

Mr. Price's note in Warton, vol. i.

Matthew xxvi., 23.

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