PARSIFAL

I

The story of the Holy Grail and its guardians up to the moment

of Parsifal's appearance upon the scene, is--we gather it from

Gurnemanz's rehearsal of his memories to the youthful esquires,--as

follows: At a time when the pure faith of Christ was in danger from

the power and craft of His enemies, there came to its defender,

Titurel, angelic messengers of the Saviour's, and gave into his

keeping the Chalice from which He had drunk at the Last Supper

and into which the blood had been gathered from His wounds as He

hung upon the Cross; likewise the Spear with which His side had

been pierced. Around these relics Titurel built a temple, and an

order of knighthood grew. The temple, Monsalvat, stood upon the

Northern slope of mountains overlooking Gothic Spain. No road led

to its doors, and those only could find their way to it whom the

Holy Spirit guided; and those only could hope to be so guided,

and could belong to the brotherhood, who were pure in heart and

clean of the sins of the flesh. The knights were mystically fed

and strengthened by the vision of the Chalice--which is called

the Grail; the duties of the Order were "high deeds of salvation,"

comprehending warfare upon Christ's enemies, at home and in distant

lands.

On the southern slope of the mountain, facing Moorish or heathen

Spain. Klingsor had gone into hermitage, in an attempted expiation

of evil committed down in the heathen world. What his sin had been,

Gurnemanz says, he knows not; but he aspired to become a holy man,

he wished to join the brotherhood of the Grail. Finding it impossible

to subdue sin in himself by the spirit, he sought, as it were, a

mechanical substitute for virtue, by which, however, he failed

to attain his object, for his sacrifice called forth from Titurel

only contempt, and he was rejected from the Order. He turned all

the strength of his rage then to acquiring black arts by which

to ruin the detested brotherhood. On the southward mountainside,

he created by sorcery a wonderful pleasure-palace and garden, in

which uncannily beautiful women grew. This lay in the path of the

knights of the Grail, a temptation and a trap, and one so effectual

that he who permitted himself to be lured into it was lost; there

had been no exception, safety lay singly in avoidance. Titurel

having reached so great an age that he had no longer strength to

perform the service of the Grail, invested with the kingly office

Amfortas, his son. The latter undertook at once the removal of

the standing danger to his knights, the destruction of Klingsor.

Armed with the Sacred Spear, he fared forth.... Alas! even before

the walls of the enchanted castle had been reached, his followers,

among whom Gurnemanz, missed him. A woman of dreadful beauty had

ensnared him. In her arms he forgot everything, he let the Spear drop

from his hand.... A great cry, as of one mortally hurt, Gurnemanz

relates, was suddenly heard. He rushed to the rescue, and caught

sight of Klingsor, laughing as he disappeared carrying the Spear,

with which he had wounded Amfortas. And now, possessed of the Spear,

it was Klingsor's boast that he should soon be in possession of the

Chalice likewise, the Holy Grail itself. And the wound of Amfortas

would not heal, and an apprehension was that never could it heal,

save at the touch of the Spear which made it. And this, who could

conquer it back? Yet the knights were not wholly without hope, for,

Amfortas once praying before the despoiled sanctuary, and imploring a

sign of pardon, a holy dream-face had appeared to him and delivered

the dim but comforting oracle: "Wise through compassion.... The

immaculate Fool.... Await him.... My appointed one...."

Thus matters stand when the curtain rises for us upon the forest

surrounding the Castle of the Grail. The introductory music is

wholly religious, composed principally of the so moving phrase

of the Last Communion, the Grail-motif and the Faith-music. The

latter opens with what has the effect of a grand declaration, as

if it might be understood to say: "I believe in God the Father!

I believe in God the Son! I believe in God the Holy Ghost!" and

fell to worshipping prayer.

The grey-haired Gurnemanz and two young boys of the Order are discovered

sleeping. At the clarion-call from the Castle, they start awake and

kneel at their morning devotions. The lake is near where the sick

King is carried daily for the bath. Forerunners of his cortège

pass, and are questioned by Gurnemanz concerning his condition. No,

the healing herb, obtained at such price of courage and cunning,

has not helped him. (For, though their drugs prove still and ever

useless, the devoted followers will not give up the search for

earthly relief.) This discouraged answer is hardly given, when another

appears who has been ranging afar in search of a remedy--Kundry,

arriving like the whirlwind, on a mare that staggers reaching the

goal. Spent with speed, the strange wild woman totters to Gurnemanz

and presses on him a crystal phial: Balsam! If this does not help,

Arabia holds nothing more from which health can be hoped! Felled

by fatigue, she drops on the ground, refusing any further speech.

When the king is now brought in upon a litter and halts on his

way to the lake for a moment's rest, receiving from Gurnemanz the

balsam, he thanks the woman, as one who has often before done him

such service. She rejects his thanks roughly, as if almost they

hurt: "No thanks! No thanks! What good will it do? Away! Away!

To the bath!"

The young esquires, lingering after the king has been borne onward,

eye her as she lies on the ground like a wild beast, and voice

their suspicion of her, founded, after the fashion of youth's

judgements, upon her looks. They believe those potions of hers

will finally destroy the king altogether. Gurnemanz checks them,

reminding them heatedly of her services, beyond all that any other

could perform. "Who, when we are at loss how to send tidings to

brethren warring in distant lands, we scarcely even know where,--who,

before we have come to any resolve, flies to them and returns,

having acquitted herself of the task aptly and faithfully?..."

"But," they object, "she hates us! See how malignantly she glowers

at us! She is a heathen, a sorceress!" "One she may be, perhaps,

labouring under a curse," Gurnemanz goes thus far with them; "she

lives here, it may be, a penitent, to expiate some unforgiven sin

of her earlier life." He tells how, so long ago as at the time

of the building of the temple, Titurel first found her among the

tangled growth of the forest, rigid in death-like sleep. "I myself,"

he continues, "discovered her but recently in the like condition.

It was soon after the calamity had befallen, brought upon us by

the evil one over the mountain." And turning to Kundry, as if the

thought had but just occurred: "Hey! Tell me, you! Where were you

roaming when our master lost the Spear?" The woman gazes gloomily,

and preserves a silence which we afterwards see to be significant.

"Why did you not help us at that time?" "I never help!" she exclaims

darkly, and turns away. "If she is as faithful as you say, and as

daring, and full of resource," suggests ironically one of the young

esquires, "why not send her after the lost Spear?" "That!" Gurnemanz

replies sadly, "is another matter. That nobody can achieve!" And,

the memory of the past rising strong within him, he relates to the

questioning young fellows, new in the brotherhood and ignorant of its

history, the events set down in their order a little way back. He

has repeated to them the mysterious promise of help: "Wise through

compassion.... The immaculate Fool.... Await him.... My appointed

one...." And they, impressed, are saying it after him, when, at the

words "_Der reine Thor_," the pure--the clean-lived--the immaculate

Fool, a commotion develops in the direction of the lake-side, cries

of "Woe! A pity! A shame! Who did it?" A great wild swan flies

in sight, sinks to earth hurt to death by an arrow, and the king's

esquires bring in, chiding and accusing him, a tall, innocent-eyed,

fresh-cheeked boy, armed with bow and arrows,--Parsifal. Rustic

enough is his outfit, but his bearing unmistakably that of the

high-born, as Gurnemanz does not fail to remark. A sturdy, brave,

gay-hearted strain has ushered him in, and for just a moment he

stands quite like a brother of Siegfried's, fearless, unconscious

of himself, as ignorant of the world as he is unspotted by it, but

engagingly wide-awake, serene in watching its mysterious actions.

"Are you the one who killed the swan?" Gurnemanz asks him sternly.

And he answers, unabashed, quite as Siegfried might have done:

"Certainly! Whatever flies I shoot on the wing!" But at once after

this the difference between the two is manifest. To both whole

regions of emotion are unknown, but certain emotions which are

outside the nature of one, are potentially the very strongest in

the other. Siegfried is not pitiful. The strong, radiant being

is incomplete on that side, so that the Christian heart winces

a little, here and there, at the bright resoluteness with which

he pursues his course when it involves, for instance, death to

the little foster-father, unrighteous imp though he be, or horror

to Brünnhilde, captured by violence and offered to his friend.

Whereas Parsifal, when Gurnemanz now makes plain to him the cruelty

of his thoughtless action, when he points out the glazing eye,

the blood dabbling the snowy plumage of the noble swan, faithful

familiar of the lake, killed as he circled in quest of his mate,

is seized with a passion of realizing pity, impulsively breaks

and flings from him his bow, and hides his eyes from the work of

his hands. "How--how could you commit such a wrong?" Gurnemanz

pursues unrelenting, even after these expressions of contrition.

"I did not know," Parsifal answers. Then to the amazement of all

are revealed the most extravagant ignorance and simplicity ever met.

"Where do you come from?" "I do not know." "Who is your father?"

"I do not know." "Who directed you here?" "I do not know." "What is

your name?" "I have had many, but no longer remember any of them."

"Truly," grumbles Gurnemanz, "I have so far never in my life met

with any one so stupid--except Kundry." Very sagely, he leaves off

questioning the fool; but when the others, after reverently taking

up the dead swan, have departed with it for burial, he addresses

him: "Of all I have asked you, you know nothing. Now tell me what

you do know! For it can hardly be but that you know something."

Whereupon very simply and obediently the boy begins: "I have a

mother. Her name is Herzeleide. (Heart's-sorrow.) We lived in the

woods and on the wild moor...." And it appears from his own ingenuous

narrative and the additions of Kundry, who in her rangings has

seemingly had opportunities to watch him, that he is the son of

the hero Gamuret, slain in battle before his birth, and that, in

terror of a like early death for him, his mother has reared him in

solitude, far from arms and reports of war, in absolute ignorance

of the world. One day, he tells in joyous excitement, bright-gleaming

men passed along the forest's edge, seated upon splendid animals;

his instant wish was to be like them, but they laughed and galloped

away. He ran after them, but could not overtake them. Up hill and

down dale he travelled, for days and nights. With his bow he was

compelled to defend himself against wild beasts and huge men....

"Yes!" throws in Kundry eagerly, as if at the recollection of splendid

fights witnessed, "he made his strength felt upon miscreants and

giants. They were all afraid of the truculent boy!" He turns upon

her a vaguely pleased wonder: "Who is afraid of me? ... Tell me!"

"The wicked!" He seems trying to grasp a wholly new idea presented

to him. "Those who threatened me were wicked? Who is good?" Gurnemanz

in reply reminds him of his mother, who is good, and from whom

he has run away; she no doubt is seeking him in sorrow. Kundry

brusquely interrupts: "Her sorrow is ended. His mother is dead!"

And, at his incredulous cry of horror: "I was riding past and saw

her die. She bade me take to you, fool, her last blessing." Parsifal

springs upon this bearer of evil tidings with the instinctive attempt

to shut off the breath that could frame such terrible words. Gurnemanz

forcibly disengages her, and, overpowered by the shock and weight of

his pain, Parsifal sinks in a swoon. Tenderly at once both servants

of the Grail care for him. Kundry hastens for water with which to

wet his temples, and, as he revives, offers him drink. Gurnemanz

is struck by the magnanimity of her action. "That is right," he

nods his approval, "that is in accordance with the gracious spirit

of the Grail. We banish evil when we return good for it." Kundry

turns sadly away: "I never do good! ... All I desire is rest!...

Rest!" And while Gurnemanz is still occupied with restoring Parsifal,

she slowly walks, as if powerfully drawn and intensely resisting,

toward a tangled copse. She appears struggling with inexpressible

weariness; the music gives a hint of something unnatural and evil

in the spell of sleep falling leadenly upon her, expressing at

the same time an irresistible element in it of attraction. The

dark, wild-haired messenger of the Grail, the despised subordinate,

suddenly assumes to our sense a much greater importance than up

to this moment. Her personality looms large with an unexplained

effect of tragedy. "Only rest! Rest for the weary one!" she murmurs

yearningly; "sleep! Oh, let nobody wake me!" Terror checks her for

a moment: "No! No! I must not sleep!" she shudders, "I am afraid!"

She falls to violent trembling. But whatever it is compelling her is

too strong at last. Her arms fall unnerved, her head bows languidly,

and she moves feebly whither she is drawn. "Useless resistance!

... The hour is come. Sleep.... Sleep.... I must!" Having reached

the thicket she drops on the earth among the bushes.

The sun is now high, the king is borne homeward from the bath. The

thought has struck Gurnemanz that here under his hands is surely

as exquisite a _Thor_ as could well be, and the experiment suggests

itself of taking him to the temple, where, as he tells him, if he

be pure, the Grail will be to him meat and drink. He places the

arm of the still strengthless youth about his neck, and gently

upholds him as they start on their way. "Who is the Grail?" asks

Parsifal, as they walk. "That may not be put into words," replies

Gurnemanz, "but, if you are of the chosen, you cannot fail to learn.

And, see now! I believe I know who you are. No road leads through

the land to the Grail, and no one could find the way except Itself

guided him...." "I am scarcely moving," says the wondering boy,

"yet it seems to me we have already gone a long way...."

And, indeed, the forest has been miraculously gliding past. It ends

before a granite wall in which a great portal stands open. This

gives entrance into ascending rocky galleries; sounds of clarions

come stealing to the ear; church-bells are heard--and we are presently

translated into the interior of the Castle of the Grail, the great

domed hall.

Parsifal entering with Gurnemanz stops still beside the threshold,

spell-bound in presence of all the lofty beauty: "Now watch with

attention," his guide instructs him, before leaving him where he

stands, "and let us see, if you are a simple soul and pure, what

light shall be vouchsafed you."

The scene now enacting itself before him is well calculated to

strike the imagination of the boy from the lonely moors. The knights

of the Grail, beautiful in their clear robes, enter in procession,

chanting. When they cease, the singing is taken up by younger voices,

of personages unseen up in the dome, and, after them, by children's

voices from the airy summit of the dome, floating, angelic. The

wounded king is brought in on his litter, and laid upon the high

canopied seat before the altar, upon which the shrine is placed

enclosing the Grail. The knights have ranged themselves along tables

prepared with silver goblets. In the silence of recollection which

falls upon all, a voice is heard, as if from the grave: "My son

Amfortas, are you at your post?" It is the aged Titurel, whose

resting-place is a recess behind the altar and the raised seat.

There he is kept alive solely by the contemplation of the Grail,

mystical means of life and strength. "Are you at your post? Shall I

look upon the Grail once more and live?" But long-gathering despair

to-day reaches its climax in Amfortas, at the necessity to perform

the rite required. The torture to him cannot be measured of the

vision which creates ecstasy in the others. "Woeful inheritance

fallen to me!" he complains, in his passion of revolt against this

divine infliction, "that I, the only sinner among all, should be

condemned to be keeper of holiest holies, and call down blessings

upon those purer than I!" But the worst of his anguish is still

that when the holy blood glows in the Cup, and, in sympathy, the

blood gushes forth anew from the wound in his side--the wound made

by the same Spear--the consciousness ever returns to burning life

that, whereas those holy drops were shed in a heavenly compassion

for the misery of man, these are unregenerate blood, hot with sinful

human passion and longing, which no chastening has availed to drive

out. The wretched king is praying for the mercy of deliverance

through death, when, from the high dome, the words rain softly of

the promise of redemption--through the Fool. Recovering courage,

Amfortas proceeds with the rite. While he kneels in prayer before

the Chalice, which young acolytes have taken from the shrine and

reverently uncovered, a mysterious darkness gathers over all. A

ray of light suddenly falls through this, upon the Chalice, which

begins softly to glow, and brightens to a deep luminous purple-red.

Amfortas lifts it and waves it over the kneeling people. The words

of the Last Communion are heard, sung by the soaring voices in

the dome: "Take my body--Take my blood--For the sake of our love!

Take my blood--Take my body--And remember me!"

The ceremony accomplished, Amfortas sets down the Cup, which begins

to pale; as it fades, the twilight lightens. When the common light

of day has completely returned, the knights sit down to the repast of

consecrated Bread placed for them, and Wine poured, by the acolytes.

At the end of it, they earnestly grasp one another's hands in renewal

of their bond of brotherhood.

Amfortas is perceived to be suffering from the renewed bleeding

of his wound. He is laid upon the litter once more and borne away.

The knights depart in orderly procession, the hall is gradually

deserted.

Parsifal remains standing on the same spot. He has hardly moved,

except, when Amfortas's anguished cry rang out, to clutch at his

heart. Gurnemanz, when he sat down at the table with the other

knights, signed to him to come and share in the holy feast, but

he did not stir. The impression can be apprehended of the solemn

scene upon the white page of the boy's mind. A spirit of religion

has breathed through it all, so exalted, so warm, so personal; the

passionate mediæval Christianity which expressed itself in crusades

and religious orders and knight-errantry. The cry of the Saviour

(_Erlösung's Held_, Hero of Redemption, the poet characteristically

calls him) has rung so piercingly, there seems but one answer from

a humanly constituted simple heart: "Did you indeed suffer so much

and die for love of me and my brothers? How then can I the most

quickly spend and scatter all my strength and blood in gratitude

to you?" Parsifal has brought to these things a consciousness not

blurred and overscored by worldly knowledge and desires, a native

capacity for love of others uninterfered with by the developed

consideration of self. His fresh instinct has gathered the meaning

of what he sees, novel to him as it is; "wise through compassion,"

he has gotten the measure and character perfectly of Amfortas's

sufferings, foreign as they are to his experience; he has gotten

the spirit of the facts of Christ. One especial message, over and

above the rest, he has received to himself, shot into his heart

upon a ray from the glowing Grail held before his gaze by Amfortas:

that the Saviour embodied in the Grail must be delivered from the

sin-sullied hands now holding it. He has seemed to hear the appeal

of the Saviour, poignant, to be so delivered. He is left, when

the vision fades, with the sense of this necessity--involving for

himself, though he knows not how, a duty and a quest: Amfortas

must be healed, the Sacred Treasure must be taken into keeping

by purer hands.

Gurnemanz approaches him hopefully: "Well, did you understand what

you saw?" But Parsifal, still in his trance of wonder, only shakes

his head. It is too deep for words, what he has felt.

To Gurnemanz he now seems a hopeless and unprofitable fool, who

has no place in the noble company. "You are a fool, it is a fact,

and you are nothing else!" he declares. Opening a side-door, he

without further ceremony pushes him out by the shoulders, with a

sour little joke: "Take my advice: Let the swans alone hereafter,

and, gander that you are, find yourself a goose!" As he turns from

the door, there falls from above, as if some echo of it had clung

to the high dome after all the singers had left, the strain: "Wise

through compassion.... The immaculate fool...."