"Leave me, you will not catch me," exclaims the young man, who would take flight.
Then Kundry appears voluptuously stretched upon a bed of flowers. She is of supreme beauty, and adorned in the strangest and most superb manner in the oriental fashion. "Parsifal, stay," she cries. At the sound of this voice the young girls, frightened, withdraw regretfully, casting tender glances toward the handsome youth. "All hail to thee, thou innocent fool!" And they disappear with stifled laughter.
"Parsifal!" ... murmurs the young man, stupefied, "my mother once called me thus in a dream." Then, with the majesty of a goddess, and the tenderness of love, the seducer speaks to him of the mother whom he abandoned, and who died after long tortures of despair. "My mother! my mother! can I have forgotten her," exclaims Parsifal. "Alas! alas! what have I ever remembered? A crushing madness alone possesses me!" And overpowered with grief, he sinks at Kundry's feet. "Confession and repentance will blot out thy sin," she says, bending toward him; "they will change folly to reason; learn to understand the love which enveloped Gamuret when influenced by thy mother's passion. The love that gave thee form and existence, before which death and madness must drawback, gives thee to-day, with the supreme greeting of the maternal benediction, its first kiss." And with a most radiant smile, the enchantress leans over the young man and presses a long kiss upon his mouth. At the contact of their lips Parsifal rises quickly, as if transfigured; the veil which enveloped his mind is suddenly torn away; he now comprehends the meaning of everything he has seen; he feels kindling in his own heart the devouring fire with which Amfortas burns. "The wound! the wound!" he cries, "it burns in my heart. Oh, lamentation! frightful lamentation! it cries out from the very depths of my being. Here, here in the heart is the flame, the burning desire, the terrible and unbidden desire which seizes all my senses and subjugates them! Oh, torment of love! how the whole framework shudders, trembles, and thrills with guilty desires!"
Again he sees Amfortas before the Grail, and the horror of sacrilege, the sinner's torture he now understands.
"Superb hero, fly the illusion, be gracious at the approach of grace," says the temptress, filled with passionate admiration. And he, still prostrated at her feet, regards her fixedly while she displays before him all the charms of her beauty. "Yes," he says, "this voice! it is thus that she called him, and this glance which smiled upon him, I recognize it! These lips, yes, it is thus that he saw them quiver, it is thus that she bent her head, thus raised it proudly. In this manner flowed her silken curls, thus she enfolded him and gently caressed his cheek. Allied to all the tortures of suffering, she kissed away from him his soul's salvation. Ah! such kisses!" Raising himself quickly he repulses Kundry impetuously.
"Away, corrupter!" he cries, "far from me forever."
The lofty mission which he is destined to accomplish is now regaled to him; he must defy, like Amfortas, all the pleasures of guilty temptations, suffer all that he has suffered; but resist where he has yielded, and triumph where the other has succumbed; this is the price by which he will save him.
Kundry, in a delirium of furious passion, sets loose in vain all the seductions of hell against him; in vain she endeavors to soften him: "Ah cruel one, if thou feelest naught in thy heart but the sufferings of others, feel also mine. If thou be the Saviour, why not unite thyself to me for my salvation; during eternities I have awaited thee. Oh! if thou couldst know the curse which sleeping and waking in torment and laughter invigorates me endlessly for new suffering. I saw Him, Him, and I laughed. His glance fell upon me. Since then I seek this glance from world to world, I shall meet it again yet; in the height of my distress I seem to see it, I feel it resting upon me. Then the cursed laughter seizes me again. A sinner falls into my arms, and I laugh, I laugh; I cannot weep. I can only cry out, carried deliriously into the night of folly ever renewed, from which penitence itself scarce arouses me. Him whom I ardently desire in the midst of my agony I recognize in thee; let me weep upon thy breast and unite myself to thee for a single hour, and though seemingly rejected by God and the world, let me be saved and redeemed in thee."
"Thou wouldst be damned with me for all eternity if for one hour I should forget my mission in the embrace of thy arms."... "It was my kiss which rendered thy eyes clear? the full gift of my love would give thee divinity. Save the world if that is thy mission, and if this hour has made thee a god, let me suffer damnation forever. Only give me thy love."
"Thee too will I save, sinner; show me but the road which I have lost, the way which leads to Amfortas."