IX.
The first act of the drama treats of the election of the hero, the guileless simpleton of the talismanic oracle. In the second stage of the action the hero is proved by temptation. All the elements here are derived from legendary stories, but in their combination Wagner has proceeded with remarkable dramatic power, freedom, and ingenuity. The apparatus is magical. Klingsor, a pervasive personage in mediæval sorcery; Kundry, the repulsive messenger of the Grail no longer, but a supernaturally beautiful siren; a magic garden and castle, and a bevy of maidens, whose office it is to stimulate the senses by suggesting an appeal to all of them at once (they are half human, half floral)—these are the agencies of Parsifal's temptation. The prototype of the scene in old mythologies and folk-lore is a visit to a bespelled castle where generally the hero succumbs to sensual weakness of some kind; he eats of proffered food and loses his speech; or he asks a question which is tabu; or he fails to ask a question which is commanded; or falls asleep; or fails to bring away a talisman which has opened the castle to him; or he falls as Tannhäuser fell. As a rule the castle vanishes at the end of the adventure, as it does in "Parsifal," when the hero resists Kundry's love-spell, seizes the lance which the magician launches against him, and with it makes the sign of the cross and pronounces a formula of exorcism. Often the purpose of the visit is to release a damsel who is bespelled or imprisoned. Students of comparative folk-lore have found the mythological essence of the stories of this class to lie in a visit to the underworld. Siegfried achieved an analogous adventure when he penetrated the wall of fire, and awakened Brünnhilde from the spell of sleep in which she was held.
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 Tannhäuser, Klingsor is a magician and minstrel of Hungary, and to him Heinrich von Effterdingen, otherwise Tannhäuser, 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.[R]
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.
"Kundry," says Mr. Alfred Nutt, "is Wagner's greatest contribution to the legend. She is the Herodias whom Christ, for her laughter, doomed to wander till He come again." The manner in which Wagner compounded this, his most striking and original dramatic character, is the most marvellous of his poetical achievements in the drama. Kundry draws her elements from the Grail romances, from Christian legends, from fairy tales, and from the profoundest depths of the poet's imagination. In the Welsh tale her prototype is the hero's cousin, who is under a spell, and in accordance with the popular tale formula appears as a loathly damsel until her kinsman achieves the vengeance demanded by family ties. Then she appears in her true form as a handsome youth. In Wolfram, Kundrie la Sorcière is only the Grail Messenger, and as such is hideous of appearance; the temptress of the Magic Garden is a beauteous damsel named Orgeluse. Wagner united both attributes in his creation. As a penitent, seeking atonement for sin committed, she is a loathly damsel in the service of the Grail. As a siren she is a tool of Klingsor, to whose power she is subject while asleep. She has innumerable prototypes in fairy-lore, who are released from wicked spells by the kisses of handsome princes, the fidelity of husbands, or the granting of their wills, as in "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine." In Wagner, the dissolution of the spell releases her from a double curse. The suggestion to make use of the Herodias legend lies near enough in both the Mabinogi of Peredur and Wolfram's epic. The Templeisen, as Wolfram calls his Knights of the Grail, were an order obviously patterned after the Knights Templars, who were accused among other things of having secretly worshipped a head which they credited with the virtues of the talismans that I have discussed. Their patron saint was John the Baptist, and when the vessel of green glass, so long and piously revered as the santo catino, was brought back by crusaders seven hundred years ago, it was deposited in the Chapel of St. John at Genoa. A relic of the John the Baptist cult has survived among the Knights Templar, a branch of the Order of Free Masons, to this day. That the talisman of a bloody head upon a salver in the Welsh tale should have suggested the Herodias legend is obvious enough. Wagner's transformation of the legend, accomplished for the purpose of identifying his Kundry with Herodias, is extremely suggestive and felicitous. According to the old tale, Herodias was in love with the prophet of the New Dispensation. After the dance before Herod and its awful consequences, she secretly crept to the head upon the salver for the purpose of covering it with tears and kisses. At that moment a blast issued from the dead lips which sent Herodias flying off into space. Thus she is still driven forward, permitted to rest only from midnight to dawn, when she sits cowering under willow and hazel copses, and bemoans her fate. In Wagner she becomes a Wandering Jewess. She saw Christ staggering under the burden of the Cross and laughed. His glance fell upon her, and doomed her to wander ceaselessly without the sweet refuge of tears, subject to the powers of evil, yet longing to make atonement by deeds of virtue. These characteristics Wagner developed with marvellous dramatic power in the music which he associates with her, and which is equally wild and hysterical, whether it picture her flying along on a horse doing errands in the service of the Grail, or in one of those fits of mad laughter to which the curse makes her subject.
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."