Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas / A Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of His Work

by W. J. Henderson

As we have already seen, it was while gathering the materials for "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" that the character and writings of Wolfram von Eschenbach became known to Wagner. His famous epic, "Parzival," is the immediate source of Wagner's drama, but the origin of such a remarkable art-product cannot be dismissed with this simple statement. Wagner's drama opens to us the entire field of Arthurian romance and the whole circle of legends of the Holy Grail. These old tales have played so important a part in the literature of our own time, as well as in that of the Middle Ages, that it seems fitting and proper that we should seize this opportunity for a glance over the whole ground. Wagner, as we shall find, has in this work, as in his others, taken hints from all the sources, and has introduced special and highly significant ideas of his own.

Wolfram's history I must recount but briefly, for little is known of his life. We learn from his name that he was probably born (about 1170) at Eschenbach in Bavaria, and it is certain that he was buried there; for toward the end of the seventeenth century his tomb, with an inscription, could be seen in the Frauen-Kirche of Ober-Eschenbach. He tells us that he was of the knightly order and with some humour refers often to his poverty. It does not appear, however, that he was obliged to roam about, reciting his verse for a living. He was extremely proud of his knighthood, and his entire poem breathes the spirit of chivalry. It was probably written—or dictated, for Wolfram was ignorant of writing—in the early years of the thirteenth century, and it was published in 1477.

According to Wolfram, the source of his work was a story of the Holy Grail by one Kiot of Provence. No such poem is now known. According to Wolfram, Kiot found at Toledo an ancient black-letter manuscript in Arabic, and learned from it that Flagetanis, a heathen, born before Christ and celebrated for his acquaintance with occult arts, had read in the stars that there would at some time appear a thing called the Grail, and that whosoever should be its servitor would be blest among men. Kiot set out to ascertain whether anyone had ever been worthy of this service, and, as the house of Anjou was then in power, he had no difficulty in discovering that one Titurel, a very ancient king of this dynasty, had once been the keeper of the Grail. Of course this story was invented by Kiot to do honour to his sovereign liege. Wolfram declares that Kiot related the tale incorrectly, and at any rate his version, so far as reported by Wolfram, contains nothing about Parsifal. And this brings us to an important point.

How far back the legends of the Grail go, is unknown. No matter how far we trace them, we always find references to a source. But it seems almost certain that in their earliest forms they had no relation to the tale of Perceval, or Peredur, the Parsifal of later versions. The story as it is now known to us is a union of two originally separate legends. There is good ground, according to all the folk-lorists, for believing that in its original form the Celtic, or, more exactly, Kymric, legend of Peredur was independent of the Grail stories. The latter appeared between 1170 and 1220, and constituted a large body of literature, dealing with a talisman not at first distinctly Christian. For half a century poets sang this legend enthusiastically and then suddenly dropped it. A few scattered and worthless Grail romances date from a later period, and, with Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur," written 300 years later,—a noble fragment, indeed,—they came to an end. Mr. David Nutt, in his "Studies on the Legends of the Holy Grail," holds, with apparently excellent reason, that the Grail was originally a Pagan talisman, and that a history of the legend is the history of the development of this talisman into a Christian symbol. He further shows that the legends may be divided into two classes, one dealing entirely with the talisman itself, and being largely influenced by Christian ideas, and the other treating of the quest of the Grail. Somewhere or other in the stories of the adventures of Peredur was found a resemblance to some legend of the search after the Grail, and thus the Kymric folk-hero became the protagonist of the Grail-drama.

The Arthurian legends are British; the Grail stories are French. Let us see how they came together. Undoubtedly the former went first from France to England, and the latter followed them. To understand this we must bear in mind that France was ancient Gaul, and that a large part of the ancient population was Celtic. The Celts fairly filled all that part of France extending from the Garonne River to the Seine and the Marne. In this land dwelt the Celtae proper, but their speech and their influence spread beyond its confines. For these Celts in France were but a surviving and compressed fragment of the great vanguard of the Aryan race, which, issuing from its forest cradle in Asia Minor, and carrying in its bosom the nursling star of empire, swept westward toward the Atlantic. It peopled most of Europe and the isles of the sea, and it planted among the sunny fields of the Midi and the verdant vales of Britain the seeds of the Arthurian legends, the Nibelung tales, the Norse Sagas, all garnered first from some great parent stem of folk-lore in the Eastern jungles. How it chanced that the Arthurian tales blossomed into full fancy in England first no one knows, but it is equally inexplicable how the Grail legends were first developed in France. For the Grail was originally a vessel in which was offered a draught of wisdom or youth, and its transformation into a sacred cup dates from a period considerably later than the time of Christ.

In Gaelic chants descended from remote times we read of a vase or basin which conferred upon its possessor superhuman power. This basin was always placed by the legends in the hands of some famous warrior by a giant or a dwarf, or both, emerging from the waters. The possession of the vase caused him to be envied, and so arose many fierce combats. Not unlike the hoard of the Nibelungs was this famous basin. It is not difficult to see how, as Christianity spread, the wondrous powers of the vessel were attributed to its connection with the Saviour. Wolfram von Eschenbach does not agree with older writers as to the origin of the Grail. He accepted the version of the mediæval poem called the "Wartburgkrieg."

According to this, sixty thousand angels, who wished to drive God out of Heaven, made a crown for Lucifer. When the archangel Michael struck it from his head a stone fell to the earth, and this became the Grail. In the latest mediæval French version the Grail was the cup in which was received the sacred blood from the wounds of the dying Saviour. Indeed, the etymology of the word itself has been a subject of inquiry and dispute. In the Middle Ages it was thought that the name "san-gral" was a corruption of the words "sang real," "blood royal," referring to the office of the cup. Dr. Gustave Oppert has written a long and ingenious argument to prove that "coral" was derived from "cor-alere," and this theory consists well with Wolfram's story of the origin of the Grail as a precious stone. The word, however, is most rationally derived from the Provençal word "grial," a vessel. This derivation accords best with the finest of the early versions of the story, that written by the remarkable French poet, Chrétien de Troyes; and the word "grial" in its several forms is still used in Provence to signify a vessel.

Efforts have been made by tracing the derivation of "Perceval" to show that he was connected with the earliest forms of the Grail legends. One writer derives the name from "perchen," a root signifying possession, and "mail," a cup. The latter word by inflection becomes "vail," and we get as a result "Perchen-vail" or "Perchenval,"—whence Perceval,—a cup-holder or Grail-keeper. This derivation is of little value in face of the undeniable fact that in the Mabinogi version of the Peredur story he is not the holder of the Grail. Indeed, the Grail itself appears here only in one of its early forms, that of a charger on which lay a bleeding head. This head was afterward decided to be that of John the Baptist. Peredur becomes a searcher after this, and that is the foundation of his connection with later forms of the legend.

We may now review briefly the manner in which the Grail entered the Arthurian romances, and then take a glance at the principal versions which were of value to Wagner. In 1154, died Geoffrey of Monmouth, a learned Welsh monk, who is celebrated for his work entitled "The History of the Britons." In this we find set forth in full for the first time the account of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Fact and fiction were, of course, curiously mingled in this work, and historical personages were accredited with some of the deeds narrated in the ancient legends. But here, at any rate, we find the Arthurian cycle in its earliest recorded form. The old Welsh collection of romances known as the Mabinogi, which is sometimes said to be the oldest version of these tales, shows too many evidences of influence from the Grail stories. It must be of a later date than the work of Geoffrey, and certainly much later than the fundamental utterance of the Perceval legend.

In the year in which Geoffrey died, Henry II. of Anjou ascended the throne, uniting under his sceptre the sovereignty of England, Normandy, Anjou, and a great part of Southern France. In this reign flourished Walter Map, or Mapes, the great son of Hertfordshire, who, under Richard I., in 1197, became Archdeacon of Oxford. His chief work seems to have been the introduction of the Holy Grail into the legendary romances. He systematised the Arthurian tales by spiritualising them and making them essentially Christian. This he accomplished largely by the employment of the Grail, an element which he undoubtedly obtained from French sources through the unification of the kingdoms under Henry. Map created Sir Galahad, the stainless knight, and it is regarded as probable that he wrote the Latin original of the "Romance of the Saint Grail." It is accepted as certain that he wrote the original of "Lancelot of the Lake," "The Quest of the Grail," and the "Mort Artus."