[1.] Iwein is in the castle, Lunete having saved him from the vassals of the slain Askalon by giving him a ring that made him invisible.
[2.] Heinrich had playfully called her his ‘wife.’ The girl is but eight years old when the story begins.
[ XXIV. WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH]
The deepest of the three chief romancers and the most strongly marked in his individuality. His date is approximately 1170-1220. He was a Bavarian knight of humble estate, who spent some time at the court of Landgrave Hermann in Thuringia. He speaks of himself as ‘ignorant of what the books contain,’ which is usually taken to mean that he could not read or write. His great work is Parzival, a blend of Arthurian and Grail romance, which he says he got from a French poet Kyot. Nothing is known of any such poet, and some think him an invention. Certain it is, however, that Wolfram had some other source than Chrestien de Troyes’ Conte del Graal, though he was acquainted with that, and that he invented freely. Two other narrative poems, Titurel and Willehalm, were left unfinished. The selections from Parzival below are from the translation by W. Hertz, Stuttgart, 1898.
From ‘Parzival,’ Book 3, lines 293-500[1]: Parzival takes leave of his mother, who has tried in vain to prevent his hearing of knighthood; the young ‘fool’ follows her directions all too literally.
Heut mocht’ ein andrer birschen,
Sein Sinn stand nicht nach Hirschen.
Er rennt nach Haus zur Mutter wieder,
Erzählt—und sprachlos sinkt sie nieder.