Nehmet hin mein Blut
Um unserer Liebe willen!
Nehmet hin meinem Leib
Auf dass ihr mein gedenkt!
Is there a purposed resemblance here to the words of consecration in the mass? Accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes. Hoc est enim Corpus meum. Accipite, et bibite ex eo omnes. Hic est enim Calix sanguinis mei! In a moment made wonderfully impressive by Wagner's music, while Amfortas bends over the grail and the knights are on their knees, a ray of light illumines the cup and it glows red. Amfortas lifts it high, gently sways it from side to side, and blesses the bread and wine which youthful servitors have placed beside each knight on the table. In the book of the play, as the hall gradually grows light the cups before the knights appear filled with red wine, and beside each lies a small loaf of bread. Now the celestial choristers sing: "The wine and bread of the Last Supper, once the Lord of the Grail, through pity's love-power, changed into the blood which he shed, into the body which he offered. To-day the Redeemer whom ye laud changes the blood and body of the sacrificial offering into the wine poured out for you, and the bread that you eat!" And the knights respond antiphonally: "Take of the bread; bravely change it anew into strength and power. Faithful unto death, staunch in effort to do the works of the Lord. Take of the blood; change it anew to life's fiery flood. Gladly in communion, faithful as brothers, to fight with blessed courage." Are these words, or are they not, a paraphrase of those which in the canon of the mass follow the first and second ablutions of the celebrant: Quod ore sumpsimus Domine, etc., and: Corpus tuum, Domine, etc.? He would be but little critical who would deny it.
Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that Wagner wished only to parody the eucharistic rite. He wanted to create a ceremonial which should be beautiful, solemn, and moving; which should be an appropriate accompaniment to the adoration of a mystical relic; which should, in a large sense, be neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Buddhistic; which should symbolize a conception of atonement older than Christianity, older than Buddhism, older than all records of the human imagination. Of this more anon. As was his custom, Wagner drew from whatever source seemed to him good and fruitful; and though he doubtless thought himself at liberty to receive suggestions from the Roman Catholic ritual, as well as the German Lutheran, it is even possible that he had also before his mind scenes from Christian Masonry. This possibility was once suggested by Mr. F. C. Burnand, who took the idea from the last scene of the first act only, and does not seem to have known how many connections the Grail legend had with mediaeval Freemasonry or Templarism. There are more elements associated with the old Knights Templars and their rites in Wagner's drama than I am able to discuss. To do so I should have to be an initiate and have more space at my disposal than I have here. I can only make a few suggestions: In the old Welsh tale of Peredur, which is a tale of the quest of a magical talisman, the substitute for the grail is a dish containing a bloody head. That head in time, as the legend passed through the imaginations of poets and romances, became the head of John the Baptist, and there was a belief in the Middle Ages that the Knights Templars worshipped a bloody head. The head of John the Baptist enters dimly into Wagner's drama in the conceit that Kundry is a reincarnation of Herodias, who is doomed to make atonement, not for having danced the head off the prophet's shoulders, but for having reviled Christ as he was staggering up Calvary under the load of the cross. But this is pursuing speculations into regions that are shadowy and vague. Let it suffice for this branch of our study that Mr. Burnand has given expression to the theory that the scene of the adoration of the grail and the Love Feast may also have a relationship with the ceremony of installation in the Masonic orders of chivalry, in which a cup of brotherly love is presented to the Grand Commander, who drinks and asks the Sir Knights to pledge him in the cup "in commemoration of the Last Supper of our Grand Heavenly Captain, with his twelve disciples, whom he commanded thus to remember him." Here, says Mr. Burnand, there is no pretence to sacrifice. Participation in the wine is a symbol of a particular and peculiarly close intercommunion of brotherhood.
To get the least offence from "Parsifal" it ought to be accepted in the spirit of the time in which Christian symbolism was grafted on the old tales of the quest of a talisman which lie at the bottom of it. The time was the last quarter of the twelfth century and the first quarter of the thirteenth. It is the period of the third and fourth crusades. Relic worship was at its height. Less than a hundred years before (in 1101) the Genoese crusaders had brought back from the Holy Land as a part of the spoils of Caesarea, which they were helpful in capturing under Baldwin, a three-cornered dish, which was said to be the veritable dish used at the Last Supper of Christ and his Apostles. The belief that it was cut out of a solid emerald drew Bonaparte's attention to it, and he carried it away to Paris in 1806 and had it examined. It proved to be nothing but glass, and he graciously gave it back to Genoa in 1814. There it still reposes in the Church of St. John, but it is no longer an object of worship, though it might fairly excite a feeling of veneration.
For 372 years Nuremberg possessed what the devout believed to be the lance of Longinus, with which the side of Christ was opened. The relic, like most objects of its kind (the holy coat, for instance), had a rival which, after inspiring victory at the siege of Antioch, found its way to Paris with the most sacred relics, for which Louis IX built the lovely Sainte Chapelle; now it is in the basilica of the Vatican, at Rome. The Nuremberg relic, however, enjoyed the advantage of historical priority. It is doubly interesting, or rather was so, because it was one of Wagner's historical characters who added it to the imperial treasure of the Holy Roman Empire. This was none other than Henry the Fowler, the king who is righteous in judgment and tuneful of speech in the opera "Lohengrin." Henry, so runs the story, wrested the lance from the Burgundian king, Rudolph III, some time about A.D. 929. After many vicissitudes the relic was given for safe keeping to the imperial city of Nuremberg, in 1424, by the Emperor Sigismund. It was placed in a casket, which was fastened with heavy chains to the walls of the Spitalkirche. There it remained until 1796. One may read about the ceremonies attending its annual exposition, along with other relics, in the old history of Nuremberg, by Wagenseil, which was the source of Wagner's knowledge of the mastersingers. The disruption of the Holy Roman Empire caused a scattering of the jewels and relics in the imperial treasury, and the present whereabouts of this sacred lance is unknown. The casket and chains, however, are preserved in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg to this day, and there have been seen, doubtless, by many who are reading these lines.
There is nothing in "Parsifal," neither personage nor incident nor thing, no principle of conduct, which did not live in legendary tales and philosophical systems long before Christianity existed as a universal religion. The hero in his first estate was born, bred, went out in search of adventure, rescued the suffering, and righted wrong, just as Krishna, Perseus, Theseus, OEdipus, Romulus, Remus, Siegfried, and Wolf-Dietrich did before him. He is an Aryan legendary and mythical hero-type that has existed for ages. The talismanic cup and spear are equally ancient; they have figured in legend from time immemorial. The incidents of their quest, the agonies wrought by their sight, their mission as inviters of sympathetic interest, and the failure of a hero to achieve a work of succor because of failure to show pity, are all elements in Keltic Quester and Quest stories, which antedate Christianity. Kundry, the loathly damsel and siren, has her prototypes in classic fable and romantic tale. Read the old English ballad of "The Marriage of Sir Gawain." So has the magic castle of Klingsor, surrounded by its beautiful garden. It is all the things which I enumerated in the chapter devoted to "Tannhäuser." It is also the Underworld, where prevails the law of taboo—"Thou must," or "Thou shalt not;" whither Psyche went on her errand for Venus and came back scot-free; where Peritheus and Theseus remained grown to a rocky seat till Hercules came to release them with mighty wrench and a loss of their bodily integrity. The sacred lance which shines red with blood after it has by its touch healed the wound of Amfortas is the bleeding spear which was a symbol of righteous vengeance unperformed in the old Bardic day of Britain; it became the lance of Longinus which pierced the side of Christ when Christian symbolism was applied to the ancient Arthurian legends; and you may read in Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" how a dolorous stroke dealt with it by Balin opened a wound in the side of King Pellam from which he suffered many years, till Galahad healed him in the quest of the Sangreal by touching the wound with the blood which flowed from the spear.
These are the folklore elements in Wagner's "Parsifal." It is plain that they might have been wrought into a drama substantially like that which was the poet-composer's last gift to art without loss of either dignity or beauty. Then his drama would have been like a glorified fairy play, imposing and of gracious loveliness, and there would have been nothing to quarrel about. But Wagner was a philosopher of a sort, and a sincere believer in the idea that the theatre might be made to occupy the same place in the modern world that it did in the classic. It was to replace the Church and teach by direct preachments as well as allegory the philosophical notions which he thought essential to the salvation of humanity. For the chief of these he went to that system of philosophy which rests on the idea that the world is to be redeemed by negation of the will to live, the conquering of all desire—that the highest happiness is the achievement of nirvana, nothingness. This conception finds its highest expression in the quietism and indifferentism of the old Brahmanic religion (if such it can be called), in which holiness was to be obtained by speculative contemplation, which seems to me the quintessence of selfishness. In the reformed Brahmanism called Buddhism, there appeared along with the old principle of self-erasure a compassionate sympathy for others. Asceticism was not put aside, but regulated and ordered, wrought into a communal system. It was purged of some of its selfishness by appreciation of the loveliness of compassionate love as exemplified in the life of Çakya-Muni and those labors which made him one of the many redeemers and saviours of which Hindu literature is full. Something of this was evidently in the mind of Wagner as long ago as 1857, when, working on "Tristan und Isolde," he for a while harbored the idea of bringing Parzival (as he would have called him then) into the presence of the dying Tristan to comfort him with a sermon on the happiness of renunciation. Long before Wagner had sketched a tragedy entitled "Jesus of Nazareth," the hero of which was to be a human philosopher who preached the saving grace of love and sought to redeem his time and people from the domination of conventional law, the offspring of selfishness. His philosophy was socialism imbued by love. Before Wagner finished "Tristan und Isolde" he had outlined a Hindu play in which hero and heroine were to accept the doctrines of the Buddha, take the vow of chastity, renounce the union toward which love impelled them, and enter into the holy community. Blending these two schemes, Wagner created "Parsifal." For this drama he could draw the principle of compassionate pity and fellow-suffering from the stories of both Çakya-Muni and Jesus of Nazareth. But for the sake of a spectacle, I think, he accepted the Christian doctrine of the Atonement with all its mystical elements; for they alone put the necessary symbolical significance into the principal apparatus of the play—the Holy Grail and the Sacred Lance. {1}
Footnotes:
{1} "Parsifal" was performed for the first time at the Wagner Festival Theatre in Bayreuth on July 28, 1882. The prescription that it should belong exclusively to Bayreuth was respected till December 24, 1903, when Heinrich Conried, taking advantage of the circumstance that there was no copyright on the stage representation of the work in America, brought it out with sensational success at the Metropolitan Opera-house in New York. The principal artists concerned in this and subsequent performances were Milka Ternina (Kundry), Alois Burgstaller (Paraifal), Anton Van Rooy (Amfortas), Robert Blass (Gurnemanz), Otto Görlitz (Klingsor) and Louise Homer (a voice).