Parsifal Part 1

Parsifal.

by H. R. Haweis.

WAHNFRIED

I visited Bayreuth on the 24th of July, 1883, and attended two crowded performances of Wagner's last work, _Parsifal_. In the morning I went into the beautiful gardens of the Neue Schloss. On either side of a lake, upon which float a couple of swans and innumerable water-lilies, the long parklike avenue of trees are vocal with wild doves, and the robin is heard in the adjoining thickets. At my approach the sweet song ceases abruptly, and the startled bird flies out, scattering the pale petals of the wild roses upon my path. I follow a stream of people on foot, as they move down the left-hand avenue in the garden of the Neue Schloss, which adjoins Wagner's own grounds.

Some are going--some are coming. Presently I see an opening in the bushes on my left; the path leads me to a clump of evergreens. I follow it, and come suddenly on the great composer's grave. All about the green square mound the trees are thick--laurel, fir, and yew. The shades fall funereally across the immense gray granite slab; but over the dark foliage the sky is bright blue, and straight in front of me, above the low bushes, I can see the bow-windows of the dead master's study--where I spent with him one delightful evening in 1876.

I can see, too, the jet of water that he loved playing high above the hedge of evergreen. It lulls me with its sound. "Wahnfried! Wahnfried!"

it seems to murmur. It was the word written above the master's house--the word he most loved--the word his tireless spirit most believed in. How shall I render it? "Dream-life! dream-life! Earth's illusion of joy!"

Great spirit! thy dream-life here is past, and, face to face with truth, "rapt from the fickle and the frail," for thee the illusion has vanished! Mayest thou also know the fulness of joy in the unbroken and serene activities of the eternal Reality!

I visited the grave twice. There is nothing written on the granite slab.

There were never present less than twenty persons, and a constant stream of pilgrims kept coming and going.

One gentle token of the master's pitiful and tender regard for the faithful dumb animals he so loved lies but a few feet off in the same garden, and not far from his own grave.

Upon a mossy bank, surrounded with evergreens, is a small marble slab, with this inscription to his favorite dog:

"_Here lies in peace 'Wahnfried's' faithful watcher and friend--the good and beautiful Mark_" (der gute, schone Mark)!

I returned, too, to Wagner's tomb, plucked a branch of the fir-tree that waved above it, and went back to my room to prepare myself by reading and meditation for the great religious drama which I was to witness at four o'clock in the afternoon--Wagner's latest and highest inspiration--the story of the sacred brotherhood, the knights of San Graal--_Parsifal_!

PARSIFAL

The blood of G.o.d!--mystic symbol of divine life--"for the blood is the life thereof." That is the key-note of _Parsifal_, the Knight of the Sangrail. Wine is the ready symbolical vehicle--the material link between the divine and the human life. In the old religions, that heightened consciousness, that intensity of feeling produced by stimulant, was thought to be the very entering in of the "G.o.d"--the union of the divine and human spirit; and in the Eleusinian mysteries, the "sesame," the bread of Demeter, the earth mother, and the "kykeon,"

or wine of Dionysos, the vine G.o.d, were thus sacramental.

The pa.s.sionate desire to approach and mingle with Deity is the one mystic bond common to all religions in all lands. It is the "cry of the human;" it traverses the ages, it exhausts many symbols and transcends all forms.

To the Christian it is summed up in the "Lord's Supper."

The medieval legend of the Sangrail (real or royal blood) is the most poetic and pathetic form of transubstantiation; in it the gross materialism of the Roman Ma.s.s almost ceases to be repulsive; it possesses the true legendary power of attraction and a.s.similation.

As the Knights of the Table Round, with their holy vows, provided medieval Chivalry with a center, so did the Lord's table, with its Sangrail, provide medieval Religion with its central attractive point.

And as all marvelous tales of knightly heroism circled round King Arthur's table, so did the great legends embodying the Christian conceptions of sin, punishment, and redemption circle round the Sangrail and the sacrifice of the "Ma.s.s."

In the legends of _Parsifal_ and _Lohengrin_ the knightly and religious elements are welded together. This is enough. We need approach _Parsifal_ with no deep knowledge of the various Sagas made use of by Wagner in his drama. His disciples, while most eager to trace its various elements to their sources, are most emphatic in declaring that the _Parsifal_ drama, so intimately true to the spirit of Roman Catholicism, is nevertheless a new creation.

Joseph of Arimathea received in a crystal cup the blood of Christ as it flowed from the spear-wound made by the Roman soldier. The cup and the spear were committed to t.i.turel, who became a holy knight and head of a sacred brotherhood of knights. They dwelt in the Visigoth Mountains of Southern Spain, where, amid impenetrable forests, rose the legendary palace of Montsalvat. Here they guarded the sacred relics, issuing forth at times from their palatial fortress, like Lohengrin, to fight for innocence and right, and always returning to renew their youth and strength by the celestial contemplation of the Sangrail, and by occasional partic.i.p.ation in the holy feast.

Time and history count for very little in these narratives. It was allowed, however, that t.i.turel the Chief had grown extremely aged, but it was not allowed that he could die in the presence of the Sangrail. He seemed to have been laid in a kind of trance, resting in an open tomb beneath the altar of the Grail; and whenever the cup was uncovered his voice might be heard joining in the celebration. Meanwhile, Amfortas, his son, reigned in his stead.

Montsalvat, with its pure, contemplative, but active brotherhood, and its mystic cup, thus stands out as the poetic symbol of all that is highest and best in medieval Christianity.

The note of the wicked world--Magic for Devotion--Sensuality for Worship--breaks in upon our vision, as the scene changes from the Halls of Montsalvat to Klingsor's palace. Klingsor, an impure knight, who has been refused admittance to the order of the "Sangrail," enters into a compact with the powers of evil--by magic acquires arts of diabolical fascination--fills his palace and gardens with enchantments, and wages bitter war against the holy knights, with a view of corrupting them, and ultimately, it may be, of acquiring for himself the "Sangrail," in which all power is believed to reside. Many knights have already succ.u.mbed to the "insidious arts" of Klingsor; but the tragical turning-point of the _Parsifal_ is that Amfortas, himself the son of t.i.turel, the official guardian of the Grail, in making war upon the magician, took with him the sacred spear, and _lost_ it to Klingsor.

It came about in this way. A woman of unearthly loveliness won him in the enchanted bowers adjoining the evil knight's palace, and Klingsor, seizing the holy spear, thrust it into Amfortas's side, inflicting what seemed an incurable wound. The brave knight, Gurnemanz, dragged his master fainting from the garden, his companions of the Sangrail covering their retreat. But, returned to Montsalvat, the unhappy king awakes only to bewail his sin, the loss of the sacred spear, and the ceaseless harrowing smart of an incurable wound. But who is Parsifal?

The smell of pine woods in July! The long avenue outside the city of Bayreuth, that leads straight up the hill, crowned by the Wagner Theater, a n.o.ble structure--architecturally admirable--severe, simple, but exactly adapted to its purpose. I join the stream of pilgrims, some in carriages, others on foot. As we approach, a clear blast of trombones and bra.s.s from the terrace in front of the grand entrance plays out the Grail "motive." It is the well-known signal--there is no time to be lost. I enter at the prescribed door, and find myself close to my appointed place. Every one--such is the admirable arrangement--seems to do likewise. In a few minutes about one thousand persons are seated without confusion. The theater is darkened, the footlights are lowered, the prelude begins.

Act I

The waves of sound rise from the shadowy gulf sunken between the audience and the footlights. Upon the sound ocean of "wind" the "Take, eat," or "Love-feast" motive floats. Presently the strings pierce through it, the Spear motive follows, and then, full of heavy pain, "Drink ye all of this," followed by the famous Grail motive--an old chorale also used by Mendelssohn in the Reformation Symphony. Then comes the n.o.ble Faith and Love theme.

As I sit in the low light, amid the silent throng, and listen, I need no interpreter--I am being placed in possession of the emotional key-notes of the drama. Every subject is first distinctly enunciated, and then all are wondrously blended together. There is the pain of sacrifice--the mental agony, the bodily torture; there are the alternate pauses of Sorrow and respite from sorrow long drawn out, the sharp ache of Sin, the glimpses of unhallowed Joy, the strain of upward Endeavor, the serene peace of Faith and Love, crowned by the blessed Vision of the Grail. 'Tis past. The prelude melts into the opening recitative.

The eyes have now to play their part. The curtain rises, the story begins. The morning breaks slowly, the gray streaks redden, a lovely summer landscape lies bathed in primrose light. Under the shadow of a n.o.ble tree, the aged knight. Gurnemanz, has been resting with two young attendants. From the neighboring halls of Montsalvat the solemn _reveille_--the Grail motive--rings out, and all three sink on their knees in prayer. The sun bursts forth in splendor as the hymn rises to mingle with the voices of universal nature. The waves of sound well up and fill the soul with unspeakable thankfulness and praise.

The talk is of Amfortas, the king, and of his incurable wound. A wild gallop, a rush of sound--and a weird woman, with streaming hair, springs toward the startled group. She bears a phial with rare balsam from the Arabian sh.o.r.es. It is for the king's wound. Who is the wild horsewoman?

Kundry--strange creation--a being doomed to wander, like the Wandering Jew, the wild Huntsman, or Flying Dutchman, always seeking a deliverance she can not find--Kundry, who, in ages gone by, met the Savior on the road to Calvary and derided him. Some say she was Herodias's daughter.

Now filled with remorse, yet weighted with sinful longings, she serves by turns the Knights of the Grail, then falls under the spell of Klingsor, the evil knight sorcerer, and, in the guise of an enchantress, is compelled by him to seduce, if possible, the Knights of the Grail.

Eternal symbol of the divided allegiance of a woman's soul! She it was who, under the sensual spell, as an incarnation of loveliness, overcame Amfortas, and she it is now who, in her ardent quest for salvation, changed and squalid in appearance, serves the Knights of the Grail, and seeks to heal Amfortas's wound!

No sooner has she delivered her balsam to the faithful Gurnemanz, and thrown herself exhausted upon the gra.s.s--where she lies gnawing her hair morosely--than a change in the sound atmosphere, which never ceases to be generated in the mystic orchestral gulf, presages the approach of Amfortas.

He comes, borne on a litter, to his morning bath in the shining lake hard by. Sharp is the pain of the wound--weary and hopeless is the king.

Through the Wound-motive comes the sweet woodland music and the breath of the blessed morning, fragrant with flowers and fresh with dew. It is one of those incomparable bursts of woodland notes, full of bird-song and the happy hum of insect life and rustling of netted branches and waving of long ta.s.seled gra.s.s. I know of nothing like it save the forest music in _Siegfried_.

The sick king listens, and remembers words of hope and comfort that fell from a heavenly voice, what time the glory of the Grail pa.s.sed:

"Durch Mitleid wissend Der reine Thor, Harre sein Den ich erkor."

[Wait for my chosen one, Guileless and innocent, Pity-enlightened.]

They hand him the phial of balsam; and presently, while the lovely forest music again breaks forth, the king is carried on to his bath, and Kundry, Gurnemanz, and the two esquires hold the stage.

As the old knight, who is a complete repertory of facts connected with the Grail tradition, unfolds to the esquires the nature of the king's wound, the sorceries of Klingsor, the hope of deliverance from some unknown "guileless one," a sudden cry breaks up the situation.

A white swan, pierced by an arrow, flutters dying to the ground. It is the swan beloved of the Grail brotherhood, bird of fair omen, symbol of spotless purity. The slayer is brought in between two knights--a stalwart youth, fearless, unabashed, while the death-music of the swan, the slow distilling and stiffening of its life-blood, is marvelously rendered by the orchestra. Conviction of his fault comes over the youth as he listens to the reproaches of Gurnemanz. He hangs his head ashamed and penitent, and at last, with a sudden pa.s.sion of remorse, snaps his bow and flings it aside. The swan is borne off, and Parsifal, the "guileless one" (for he it is), with Gurnemanz and Kundry--who rouses herself and surveys Parsifal with strange, almost savage curiosity--hold the stage.

In this scene Kundry tells the youth more than he cares to hear about himself: how his father, Gamuret, was a great knight killed in battle; how his mother, Herzeleide (Heart's Affliction), fearing a like fate for her son, brought him up in the lonely forest; how he left her to follow a troop of knights that he met one day winding through the forest glade, and being led on and on in pursuit of them, never overtook them and never returned to his mother, Heart's Affliction, who died of grief.

At this point the frantic youth seizes Kundry by the throat in an agony of rage and grief, but is held back by Gurnemanz, till, worn out by the violence of his emotion, he faints away, and is gradually revived by Kundry and Gurnemanz.

Suddenly, Kundry rises with a wild look, like one under a spell. Her mood of service is over. She staggers across the stage--she can hardly keep awake. "Sleep," she mutters, "I must sleep--sleep!" and falls down in one of those long trances which apparently last for months, or years, and form the transition periods between her mood of Grail service and the Klingsor slavery into which she must next relapse in spite of herself.