BOOK IX
TRADITIONAL EVENTS
| Hero meets with pilgrims who reproach him for bearing arms on Good Friday, and direct him to a hermit, who points out his sins and gives him absolution. | Chrêtien: Peredur: Perceval |
Introduction to line 25. This spirited opening, with its invocation of the embodied 'Frau Aventiure,' is peculiar to Wolfram. The entire episode is much more briefly treated by Chrêtien, who brings his hero at once in contact with the pilgrims, and has neither the meeting with Siguné nor the combat with the Grail knight.
Page [251], line 5—'Frau Aventiure.' This is a personification of the 'story' and of the spirit of romantic story-telling. Grimm (Kl. Sr. i. 83-112) claims that we have here a survival of the personifying instinct which led the northern poets to make 'Saga' a daughter of Odin. The word itself is simply taken over from French romance where or dist l'Aventure is a standing initial formula, in which Aventure exactly renders the maere of the opening quatrain of the Niebelungenlied.—[A. N.]
Page [251], line 6—'Whom Kondrie, to find the Grail.' Cf. Book VI. p. 187.
Page [252], line 34—'The sword that Anfortas gave him.' Cf. Book V. pp. 137 and 144, and note.
Page [252], line 47—'Schionatulander and Siguné.' This is Parzival's third interview with his cousin, who has a much more important rôle assigned to her in this poem than in the other romances. The hero meets her at every important crisis in his life; on his first entrance into the world, Book III. p. 79; after his visit to the Grail Castle, Book V. p. 141; now, previous to his interview with the hermit; and finally, in Book XVI. after he has won the Grail kingdom and been reunited to his wife, he finds her dead, and buries her with her lover. Siguné's parentage is fully given on p. [274] of this book.
Page [257], line 204—'The Templar bold.' This identification of the knights of the Grail with the Templars (Templeisen) is a marked peculiarity of Wolfram's poem. Nothing at all answering to the Grail kingdom and its organisation, as described in the Parzival, is to be found elsewhere. The introduction of this spiritual knighthood, chosen by Heaven, and, with special exceptions, vowed to celibacy, seems intended as a contrast with, and protest against, the ideal of worldly chivalry and lax morality portrayed in Arthur's court. Are we to attribute this feature of the poem to Wolfram himself or to his source? Judging from the value Wolfram placed upon fidelity to tradition it seems scarcely probable that he would have departed so far from his model as to introduce such an entirely new and striking element into the story; nor have we any trace of the poet-knight's connection with the order of Templars; but if the writer of the admitted French source was an Angevin, who had been in the East during the Angevin rule in Jerusalem, the connection is easily explained. Certainly, to judge from the freedom with which the introduction to the story has been handled, 'Kiot' does not seem to have been hampered with an undue respect for the traditional form of the legend.
Page [258], line 223—'Nor Lähelein, nor Kingrisein, etc.' Kingrisein is the father of Vergulacht, supposed to have been slain by Gawain, cf. Book VIII. p. 240. King Gramoflanz plays an important part in the poem from Book XII. onward. Count Laskoit, cf. Book III. p. 99.