What influence Wolfram’s poem, with its practical, human enthusiasm, its true and noble sexual morality, might have had on English literature is an interesting speculation. It would have appealed, one would think, to our race with its utilitarian ethical instinct, with its lofty ideal of wedded love. The true man, Parzival, should, in the fitness of things, be the English hero of the Quest, rather than the visionary ascetic Galahad. Mediæval England was dominated by France and knew nothing of Germany, and when in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we can trace German influence on English thought and writ, taste had changed, and the Parzival was well-nigh forgotten in its own land. It remained so almost until our own days. The Quest after Perfection still haunted the German mind, but it was conceived of on altogether different lines from those of the twelfth century poet. The nation of scholars pictured the quester as a student, not as a knight. When it took shape in the dreary period of Protestant scholasticism the quest is wholly cursed. Faust’s pursuit of knowledge is unlawful, a rebellion against God, which dooms him irrevocably. Not until Goethe’s day is the full significance of the legend perceived, is the theme widened to embrace the totality of human striving. Thus the last glimpse we have of Faust is of one devoted to the service of man; the last words of the poem are a recognition of the divine element in the love of man and woman.[158]
In Germany, as in England, the old legend has appealed afresh to poets and thinkers, and then, as was natural, they turned to Germany’s greatest mediæval poet. Wagner’s Parsifal would, in any case, be interesting as an expression of one of the strongest dramatic geniuses of the century. Considered purely as a work of literature, apart from the music, it has rare beauty and profound significance. The essentially dramatic bent of Wagner’s mind, the stage destination of the poem, must be borne in mind when considering it. Wolfram’s conception—youthful folly and inexperience chastised by reproof, followed by doubt and strife, cancelled by the faithful steadfastness of the full-grown man—is obviously unsuited for dramatic purposes. At no one point of Wolfram’s poem do we find that clash of motives and of characters which the stage requires. In building up his conception Wagner has utilised every hint of his predecessor with wonderful ingenuity. Klinschor, the magician, becomes with him the active opponent of the Grail King, Amfortas, from whom he has wrested the holy spear by the aid of Kundry’s unholy beauty. Kundry is Wagner’s great contribution to the legend. She is the Herodias whom Christ for her laughter doomed to wander till He come again. Subject to the powers of evil, she must tempt and lure to their destruction the Grail warriors. And yet she would find release and salvation could a man resist her love spell.[159] 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 nought of sin or suffering. It had been foretold of him 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 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 which comes of the new-born knowledge enables him to resist sensual longing, and thereby to release both Kundry and Amfortas.
In the latest version of the Perceval Quest, as in the Galahad Quest, the ideal of chastity is thus paramount. This result is due to Wagner’s dramatic treatment of the theme. The conception that knowledge of sin and fellowship in suffering are requisite to enable man to resist temptation, and that thus alone does he acquire the needful strength to assist his fellows, however true and profound, can obviously only be worked out on the stage through the medium of one form of sin and suffering. The long psychological process of Wolfram’s poem, the slow growth of the unthinking youth into the steadfast, faithful man, is replaced by a mystic, transcendental conversion. From out a world of human endeavour, human motive, we have stepped into one wholly ascetic and symbolical. The love of man for woman only appears in the guise of forbidden desire; the aims and needs of this world are not even thought of. Every incident has been remoulded in accord with Christian tradition. Wagner fully accepts the sacramental nature of the Grail, and the Grail feast is with him a faithful reproduction of the Last Supper. Holiness and purity are the essence of the Grail, which is cleared from every taint of its pagan origin. And whilst Wagner, following the French models, identifies the Grail with the most sacred object of Christian worship, he also, developing hints of Wolfram’s, reshapes the career of his Grail-seeker in accord with that of Christ. Parsifal, the releaser of sin-stricken Kundry, of sin-stricken Amfortas—Parsifal, the restorer of peace and holiness to the Grail Kingdom—becomes a symbol of the Saviour.
In the reasoned, artistic growth of the legend, the plastic, living element is that supplied by Christian tradition. From the moment that the Celtic lord of the underworld is identified with the evangelist of Britain we see the older complex of tales acquire consistency, life, and meaning. Even where the direct influence of the intruding element is slightest, as in the Conte du Graal, we can still perceive that it is responsible for the germs of after development. Sometimes violently and unintelligently, sometimes with a keen feeling for the possibilities of the original romance, sometimes with the boldest introduction of new matter, sometimes with slavish adherence to pre-Christian conceptions, the transformation of the Celtic tales goes on. The cauldron of increase and renovation, the glaive of light, the magic fish, the visit to the otherworld, all are gradually metamorphosed until at last the talisman of the Irish gods becomes the symbol of the risen Lord, its seeker a type of Christ in His divinest attributes.
The ethical teaching of the legend becomes also purely Christian as the Middle Ages conceived Christianity. Renunciation of the world and of the flesh is its key-note. Once only in Wolfram do we find an ideal human in its essence, though dogmatic in form; the path thus opened is not trodden further, and the legend remains as a whole, on the moral side, a monument of Christian asceticism.
We have seen reason to surmise that the folk-tales which underlie the romances themselves gave the hint for the most characteristic manifestation of this ascetic ideal. It is worth enquiry if these tales have developed themselves independently from the Christianised legend, and if such development shows any trace of ethical conceptions comparable with those of the legend. Can we gather from the tales as fashioned by the folk teaching similar to that of the preachers, philosophers, and artists by whom the legend has been shaped? Few enquiries can be more interesting than one which traces such a conception as the Quest after the highest good as pictured by the rudest and most primitive members of the race.
Many of the tales which formed a part of the (hypothetical) Welsh original of the earliest Grail romances have been shown to come under the Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula (supra, [Ch. VI]). Among most races this formula has connected itself with the national heroes, and has given rise to hero-tales in which the historical element outweighs the ethical. Sometimes, as in the tale of Perseus, the incidents are so related as to bring out an ethical motif; Perseus is certainly thought of as avenging his mother’s undeserved wrongs. I cannot trace anything of the kind among the Celts. All the incidents of the formula in Celtic tradition which I know of are purely historical in character. This element of the old Saga-mass thus yields nothing for the present enquiry. Others are more fruitful. Perceval is akin not only to Fionn, but also to the Great Fool. The Lay of the Great Fool was found to tally closely with adventures in the Mabinogi and in the Conte du Graal (supra, [Ch. VI]). It also sets forth a moral conception that admits of profitable comparison with that of the Grail romances.
Ultimately, the Lay is, I have little doubt, one of the many forms in which a mortal’s visit to the otherworld was related. Wandering into the Glen of Glamour, the hero and his love encounter a magician; the hero drinks of the proffered cup, despite his love’s remonstrances, and forthwith loses his two legs. This is obviously a form of the widely-spread myth which forbids the visitant to the otherworld to partake of aught there under penalty of never returning to earth. But this mythical motif has taken an ethical shape in popular fancy. According to Kennedy’s version, it is the hero’s excess in draining the cup to the dregs which calls for punishment. This change is of the same nature as that noted with regard to a similar incident in the Grail romances. There, the old mythic taboo of sleeping or speaking in the otherworld called at last for an explanation, and found one in Wolfram’s philosophic conception. The parallel does not end here. Perceval may retrieve his fault, and so may the Great Fool; Wolfram makes his hero win salvation by steadfast faith, the folk-tale makes its hero in the face of every form of temptation a pattern of steadfast loyalty to the absent friend and to the pledged word. It may, or may not, be considered to the advantage of the folk-tale that, unlike the mediæval romance, it deals neither in mysticism nor in asceticism. The sin and atonement of the Great Fool are such as the popular mind can grasp; he is an example of human weakness and human strength. The woman he loves is no temptress, no representative of the evil principle—on the contrary, she is ever by his side to counsel and to cheer him.
When it is remembered that the two off-shoots, romantic-legendary and popular, from the one traditional stem have grown up in perfect independence of each other, the kinship of moral idea is startling. The folk-lorist has often cause to wonder at the spontaneous flower-like character of the object of his study; folk-tradition seems to obey fixed laws of growth and to be no product of man’s free thought and speech. The few partisans of the theory that folk-tradition is only a later and weakened echo of the higher culture of the race are invited to study the present case. A Celtic tale, after supplying an important element to the Christianised Grail legend, has gone on its way entirely unaffected by the new shape which that legend assumed, and yet it has worked out a moral conception of fundamental likeness to one set forth in the legend. It would be difficult to find a more perfect instance of the spontaneous, evolutional character of tradition contended for by what, in default of a better name, must be called the anthropological school of folk-lorists.
We must quit Celtic ground to find another example of an element in the originals of the Grail romances, embodying a popular ethical idea. This instance is such an interesting one that I cannot pass it by in silence. As was shown in [Chapter VII], one of the many forms of the hero’s visit to the otherworld has for object the release of maidens held captive by an evil power. A formal connection was established between this section of the romance and the folk-tale of the Sleeping Beauty. As a whole, too, this tale admits of comparison with the legend. Its origin is mythic without a doubt. Whether it be regarded as a day or as a year myth, as the rescue of the dawn from night, or of the incarnate spring from the bonds of winter, it equally pictures a victory of the lord of light and heat and life over the powers of darkness, cold, and death. With admirable fidelity folk-tradition has preserved the myth, so that its true nature can be recognised without fail. It would be wrong, though, to conclude that retention of the mythic framework implied any recognition of its mythic character on the part of those who told or listened to the story. Some investigators, indeed, hold it idle to consider it otherwise than as a tale told merely for amusement. But a story, to live, must appeal to moral as well as to æsthetic emotions. In the folk-mind this story sets forth, dimly though it may be, that search for the highest human felicity which is likewise a theme of the Grail romances. What better picture of this quest could be found than the old mythic symbol of the awakening of life and increase beneath the kiss of the sun-god. The hero of the folk-tale makes his way through the briars and tangle of the forest that he may restore to the deserted castle life and plenty; so much has the tale retained of the original mythic signification. As regards the quester himself, the maiden he thus woos is his reward and the noblest prize earth has to offer him. Where the romance writers made power, or riches, or learning, or personal salvation the goal of man’s effort, the folk-tale bids him seek happiness in the common human affections.