As I sit in the low light, amid the silent throng, and listen, I need no interpreter—I am being placed in possession of the emotional key-notes of the drama. Every subject is first distinctly enunciated, and then all are wondrously blended together. There is the pain of sacrifice—the mental agony, the bodily torture; there are the alternate pauses of Sorrow and respite from sorrow long drawn out, the sharp ache of Sin, the glimpses of unhallowed Joy, the strain of upward Endeavor, the serene peace of Faith and Love, crowned by the blessed Vision of the Grail. 'Tis past. The prelude melts into the opening recitative.
The eyes have now to play their part. The curtain rises, the story begins. The morning breaks slowly, the gray streaks redden, a lovely summer landscape lies bathed in primrose light. Under the shadow of a noble tree, the aged knight. Gurnemanz, has been resting with two young attendants. From the neighboring halls of Montsalvat the solemn reveillé—the Grail motive—rings out, and all three sink on their knees in prayer. The sun bursts forth in splendor as the hymn rises to mingle with the voices of universal nature. The waves of sound well up and fill the soul with unspeakable thankfulness and praise.
The talk is of Amfortas, the king, and of his incurable wound. A wild gallop, a rush of sound—and a weird woman, with streaming hair, springs toward the startled group. She bears a phial with rare balsam from the Arabian shores. It is for the king's wound. Who is the wild horsewoman? Kundry—strange creation—a being doomed to wander, like the Wandering Jew, the wild Huntsman, or Flying Dutchman, always seeking a deliverance she can not find—Kundry, who, in ages gone by, met the Savior on the road to Calvary and derided him. Some say she was Herodias's daughter. Now filled with remorse, yet weighted with sinful longings, she serves by turns the Knights of the Grail, then falls under the spell of Klingsor, the evil knight sorcerer, and, in the guise of an enchantress, is compelled by him to seduce, if possible, the Knights of the Grail.
Eternal symbol of the divided allegiance of a woman's soul! She it was who, under the sensual spell, as an incarnation of loveliness, overcame Amfortas, and she it is now who, in her ardent quest for salvation, changed and squalid in appearance, serves the Knights of the Grail, and seeks to heal Amfortas's wound!
No sooner has she delivered her balsam to the faithful Gurnemanz, and thrown herself exhausted upon the grass—where she lies gnawing her hair morosely—than a change in the sound atmosphere, which never ceases to be generated in the mystic orchestral gulf, presages the approach of Amfortas.
He comes, borne on a litter, to his morning bath in the shining lake hard by. Sharp is the pain of the wound—weary and hopeless is the king. Through the Wound-motive comes the sweet woodland music and the breath of the blessed morning, fragrant with flowers and fresh with dew. It is one of those incomparable bursts of woodland notes, full of bird-song and the happy hum of insect life and rustling of netted branches and waving of long tasseled grass. I know of nothing like it save the forest music in Siegfried.
The sick king listens, and remembers words of hope and comfort that fell from a heavenly voice, what time the glory of the Grail passed:
"Durch Mitleid wissend
Der reine Thor,
Harre sein
Den ich erkor."
[Wait for my chosen one,
Guileless and innocent,
Pity-enlightened.]
They hand him the phial of balsam; and presently, while the lovely forest music again breaks forth, the king is carried on to his bath, and Kundry, Gurnemanz, and the two esquires hold the stage.