V.
We find in Parsifal on his entrance only a thoughtless, impetuous forest lad, unlearned in the affairs of life, utterly unconscious of its conventions—in short, another young Siegfried. He is the hero of the "Great Fool" stories, but in the process of Christianizing the character a new meaning has been given to the epithet. He is a chosen vessel for a divine deed, because he is a pure or guileless fool. In this, though the suggestion was derived from the old Aryan folk-tales, we are obliged to see a new, a Christian symbolism, the spirit of which may be found in Christ's words, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter it." In Wagner's conception of the legend it was necessary that the hero be one as guiltless of all knowledge of sin as he was of the necessity and nature of salvation. Enlightenment was to come to him through compassion or fellow-suffering, and this enlightenment was to enable him in turn to resist temptation and bring surcease of suffering to Amfortas, Kundry, and the community of Grail knights. In his musical phrase as it enters the drama with him one may hear chiefly his youthful energy, but also a certain innate dignity, a germ of nobility which contains the possibility of the stupendous proclamation which greets him on his entrance into the Castle of the Grail in the last act. But there is another element in the typical music of "Parsifal" which chiefly we recognize in its bright, assertive, militant rhythm. It is the chivalric element which may also be noticed in the brilliant phrase with which Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, is greeted by the populace in the earlier drama of Wagner's. This kinship need not be set down as fanciful. There are few features of Wagnerian study more interesting than the tracing of spiritual and material parallels between the composer's own melodies. As a writer uses forms of expression which resemble each other to express related ideas, so Wagner has frequently recurred in his later works to melodic phrases and modulations which he had used with like intent many years before. In two cases he made a direct quotation. Hans Sachs's allusion to the story of Tristram and Iseult in Act III. of "Die Meistersinger" is accompanied by the fundamental melody of "Tristan und Isolde," and the swan which Parsifal kills comes fluttering across the scene and dies to a reminiscence of the swan harmonies in "Lohengrin."
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.