The rising of the curtain on the second act reveals to us the chamber of Klingsor in a tower of his castle. He is there awaiting the arrival of Parsifal, who he knows has been cast out of Monsalvat and is approaching his domain. He summons Kundry, calling her she-devil, rose of hell, and Herodias, the daughter of Herod. She arises in a cloud of vapour, apparently in the sleep into which we saw her sink in the first act. Klingsor orders her to tempt the pure fool, whose very foolishness makes him dangerous to the powers of evil. Kundry struggles in vain. Her will is mastered by Klingsor, for she is not pure. The scene changes to the magic garden. Parsifal is standing upon the wall lost in amazement. Beautiful maidens, half clad, changing presently to something almost like flowers, allure him with blandishments of the most seductive kind. These are the servants of Klingsor and they do his bidding. But the pure fool does not understand them. Presently from a thicket comes the voice of Kundry, calling, "Parsifal."
It is the first time the name has been uttered, and he remembers it as in a dream. He now sees Kundry, who has changed from the wild, dishevelled, weeping creature of the first scene to a young woman of surpassing beauty. She tells Parsifal the story of his origin, of his mother's woes and death, and, when his heart is touched, bids him learn the mystery of love. She presses her lips upon his in a long kiss. The result is startling; Parsifal springs up in terror and appears to suffer suddenly intense pain. Then he cries: "Amfortas! The wound, the wound!" He has received the needed enlightenment, through the pity for his mother. His own breast is now torn with the anguish of Amfortas, and with the terrible self-accusation of his own failure to save the sufferer. He realises that the seductions aimed at him are those to which Amfortas succumbed, and he bids the accursed sorceress begone. In her rage she discloses to Parsifal that it was Klingsor who wounded Amfortas with the sacred spear. The magician comes to aid Kundry in her struggle with Parsifal. The flower maidens also return. Klingsor, enraged, hurls the spear at Parsifal to slay him, but the sacred weapon remains suspended above his head. He grasps it, and, making with it the sign of the cross, bids the castle disappear. At once the whole is wrecked, and, as the curtain falls, Parsifal, standing on the ruined wall, tells Kundry that she knows where she may find him again.
The third act shows us Gurnemanz, now very old, living as a hermit in a little hut at the edge of a forest. It is Good Friday, and the loveliness of spring is in the land. To Gurnemanz comes Kundry, clothed in the garb of a penitent, and without her early wildness of mien. She begs leave to serve, and goes about it at once. Parsifal, clad in black armour with closed helmet visor, and bearing the holy spear, approaches. He plants the spear in the earth, takes off his helmet, kneels, and prays before the lance. Gurnemanz, amazed, recognises him. Parsifal expresses his gratitude at finding the aged man once more, and we learn from his speech that he has passed through many experiences since he left the garden of Klingsor. Now he has only one thought, to return to the castle of the Grail and release Amfortas from his sufferings. Gurnemanz tells him that Titurel has died and Amfortas has refused longer to perform his office as Grail-warder. No more is the sacred vessel revealed, for thus Amfortas hopes to win release by death. Parsifal is deeply moved by the consciousness that he might have prevented all this. He almost faints, and Kundry eagerly brings water to revive him. She bathes his feet, and at his request Gurnemanz baptises him. Kundry produces a phial of ointment and anoints his feet. Again at his request, Gurnemanz anoints his head. Then Parsifal, with water from the spring, baptises Kundry, bidding her trust in the Redeemer. Kundry weeps. Parsifal is clad in the mantle of a knight of the Grail, and with Gurnemanz and Kundry he goes to the great hall at Monsalvat. The body of Titurel is borne in, followed by Amfortas on his litter. The knights conjure him once more to reveal the Grail, but he, in desperate agony, discloses his terrible, unhealing wound, and beseeches the knights to bury their swords in it.
At this moment Parsifal, accompanied by Gurnemanz and Kundry, advances. Parsifal says solemnly that but one weapon will suffice, the spear which made the wound. With it he touches Amfortas's side, and the wound is healed. Parsifal declares the identity of the spear and holds it aloft, while all gaze upon it in rapture. Parsifal commands the pages to uncover the Grail, which he takes out and swings gently before the kneeling knights. Kundry sinks expiring to the floor. Gurnemanz and Amfortas kneel in homage to Parsifal, while from the dome above voices are heard singing, "O heavenly mercy's marvel, redemption to the redeemer!"
No other drama of Wagner shows wider departures from the original material or more condensation of it than this, the last of his works. Here, as in other dramas, he has not rested upon any one foundation, but, using the story of Wolfram as his chief guide, he has selected from other versions of the Grail legend such ideas as were in harmony with his own poetic purpose. Thus he discards Wolfram's conception of the Grail as a stone from the crown of Lucifer and goes back to the Provençal idea of it as the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man who bought the body of Christ from Pilate, received the precious blood from the wounds. From Wolfram he took the idea that the knights who dwell in Monsalvat, and who went forth to aid the needy in distress (as in "Lohengrin"), were fed and strengthened by the Grail itself. The significance of the bleeding spear he obtained from Chrétien de Troyes. Wolfram, it will be remembered, made it simply a poisoned lance, with which an unknown pagan, in the strife for the Grail, had wounded Amfortas. Chrétien described it as the spear with which Longinus had pierced the side of the crucified Saviour. This idea could not fail to attract Wagner, for it gave him an opportunity to strengthen the ethical basis of his drama. Amfortas, yielding to the seductions of Kundry, the temptress, becomes the prey of the powers of evil, represented by Klingsor, is robbed of the sacred lance, and wounded with it. Such a wound is more than physical; it is a mortal hurt of the soul. The cure comes only through the touch of the spear itself in the hands of one who is pure. The wounded King exists in all the versions of the legend, and is always to be made whole by the expected knight, who is to ask the essential question.
But in Wagner's version the question is not asked. It has no dramatic value. As Wolzogen has well noted, for an audience a visible and symbolic act is far more effective; and so, instead of hearing Parsifal say, as in Wolfram's epic, "What ails thee, uncle?" we see him touch the wound with the spear and bid Amfortas "be whole, forgiven, and absolved." By this simple change of the original story the conclusion of the drama is infinitely improved. But the alteration goes farther than that, for it touches the character of Parsifal. He is, in Wagner's book, the same guileless fool as he is in the original legends, but his enlightenment comes to him in another way. Wagner has subjected his hero to the temptation which in Wolfram's story is undergone by Gawain.
The psychologic plan of the garden scene is subtle, but not at all difficult of comprehension. Parsifal has known but one love; he remembers but one tenderness. The sorest spot in his conscience is that where dwells the memory of the dear mother whom he left. Kundry, acting as the agent of the evil powers, seeks to touch that spot. She awakens in her intended victim the divine spark of pity, akin to love, and then she strives to lead him onward to love itself by the imprint of a passionate kiss. But the influence of pity has enlightened the inexperienced heart of the guileless fool, and the kiss which would draw his soul from him serves but to reveal to him the nature of the sin for which Amfortas suffers. He cries out with the anguish of the very wound itself, and bids the temptress begone. This is a conception of unusual power, and for the purpose of exposition through music it is most admirable, in that it centralises the dramatic action entirely upon the play of emotion. Here we find the Wagnerian theory of the music drama working in its fullest freedom and completeness. Parsifal needs no question. He never hears of one. His awakened soul has already given him the necessary information, and when, after long and weary wanderings, he once more finds the domain of the Grail he is ready to heal the sufferer by the only means capable of performing that merciful act.
Kundry is entirely Wagner's creation. In Wolfram's story Condrie is the messenger who upbraids Parsifal for not healing the sick King, and Orgeluse is the beautiful woman who tempts Gawain. Wagner has united the two, but has created a personality of his own. According to one of the legends, Kundry was Herodias, the daughter of Herod, and had been cursed for having laughed at the head of John the Baptist on a charger. Wagner makes her a woman who had laughed at the suffering Christ and had been condemned by him to endless laughter. Thenceforward she wanders through the world in search of her redeemer. This wandering is common to heroines of the old German legends, and shows us that Kundry had certain traits in common with the Valkyrs of the Northern mythology. One of the names applied to her by Klingsor, Gundryggia, we find also in the Eddas as that of a Valkyr, and we further recognise the Valkyr nature in the union of hostile and helpful traits which was characteristic of the Choosers of the Slain.
Wagner's Kundry seeks to expiate her sin by serving the Grail, but the curse prevents her. Through it she becomes the slave of the powers of evil, represented by Klingsor, and, when under the spell, exercises her entire force in seducing the defenders of the right. Not until one of the righteous resists her can the power of the evil one be overthrown, and not till then can she be released from the burden of her sin. In other words, through resisting her, Parsifal becomes her redeemer, and it is thus natural and proper that he should baptise her, and that in the scene of the baptism the laughter-cursed woman should receive the blessing of tears.
The relation of Kundry and Parsifal as temptress and tempted was one which had long dwelt in Wagner's mind. When in 1852 he revived the idea, conceived in 1849, of writing a drama on incidents in the life of Jesus, he told Mrs. Wille, his Zurich friend, that he thought of showing Christ as beloved by Mary Magdalene and resisting her. Again in "The Victors," the Buddhistic drama, which he only sketched, we find that Ananda, the hero, renounced love and was perfectly pure, while Prakriti, the heroine, after loving him in vain, herself renounced love and was received by him into the true faith. It was with these plans still in his mind that Wagner developed the suggestions of the original sources of his drama into the wonderful scene of the temptation in "Parsifal," and their influence also was potent in the composition of the character of Kundry. Mr. Kufferath, in his interesting study of "Parsifal," says that Kundry was to Wagner's mind simply another incarnation of the eternal woman, of whom Mary and Prakriti were earlier embodiments. And, indeed, the extraordinary capacity of Kundry's nature makes this theory more than merely plausible. Another fact which adds to the value of Mr. Kufferath's idea is that, according to one of the earlier German legends, the real cause of the enmity of Herodias for John the Baptist was his refusal of her love. When the head was presented to her on a charger, she wished to kiss the dead lips, but from them was breathed upon her a blast of breath so fierce that it sent her wandering through the world as the unfortunate Francesca flew through the Inferno forever. This stormy wandering was a peculiarity of the Valkyrs, and thus with the union of so many elements in the history and nature of Kundry, we come easily to a belief that Wagner intended to make her one of the aspects of the "eternal feminine." Beautifully he gives her rest when the same blessing is conferred upon the man whose life she ruined. She has repented, but till her victim is freed from the consequences of the joint sin, she, too, must suffer her punishment.