Studies in the Wagnerian Drama

by Henry Edward Krehbiel

VII.

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."

Now note this truth of vast significance: the essential element in the Grail, whether seen as a chalice or as a salver containing a head, is the blood. The meaning of this need not be sought far. The human imagination cannot be projected into the past sufficiently far to picture the time when the awful idea of a bloody atonement did not confront humanity. Hence it is that in pagan mythology blood is the symbol of creative power, as the cups, horns, dishes, ewers, were symbols of fecundity, abundance, and vivification. The essence of the Grail myth is the reproductive power of the blood of a slain god. The application which lies so near in a study of the Christian symbolism of the Grail cannot fail. I omit it in order to trace the evolution of the idea in a pagan talisman whose history the ingenuity of Dr. Gustave Oppert, a German savant, has disclosed to us. When Perseus cut off the head of the Medusa he placed the bleeding member on the sward near the sea-coast. The blood transformed the grass that it dyed into a red stone which was found to have marvellous healing power. This belief is expressed in the poems descriptive of the virtues of stones which are attributed to Orpheus. Dr. Oppert traces the record touching the curative powers of coral into the book of a Christian bishop of the twelfth century, and thence into a Latin work printed in Strassburg in 1473, in which allusions to the Orphic songs and the Christian religion are blended. Wolfram's alleged model, Kyot, professes to have derived his account of the Grail from the book of a pagan called Flegetanis, written in Arabic and deposited at Toledo. Now, Dr. Oppert finds an Arabic physician and philosopher of the tenth century who describes coral as having a strengthening and nourishing influence upon the heart, which belief seems recognized again in a bit of mediæval etymology which compounds the word of cor and alere. Mediæval Latin poems express the belief that peculiar properties of sustenance are possessed by coral, and, finally, in a book entitled Musæum Metallicum it is defined as a memorial of the blood of Christ. In its physical attributes coral and the Grail are now identical. Had Dr. Oppert wished, he might have gone further and quoted Pliny's remark that the Indian soothsayers and diviners "look upon coral as an amulet endowed with sacred properties and a sure preservative against all dangers; hence it is that they equally value it as an ornament and as an object of devotion."[P] Here spiritual properties are attributed to it; but also physical. Pliny says that calcined coral is used as an ingredient for compositions for the eyes; that it makes flesh (very significant this) in cavities left by ulcers. In his day it was hung about the necks of infants to preserve them against danger. The Romans thought that it preserved and fastened the teeth of children when hung about their necks. Paracelsus prescribed coral necklaces as preservatives "against fits, sorcery, charms, and poison," and an old English writer makes it disclose the presence of sickness in a wearer by turning pale and wan. Here it is a touchstone, and this superstition has penetrated to the United States. In our day I have been told by devoted mothers that coral beads strengthen the eyes. When the present Crown-prince of Italy was born in Naples the municipality presented the royal babe with a coral cradle.

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.