The Hall of Minstrels in the Wartburg, where the famous song-tournaments
were held. Such a tournament is directly to take place, and Elizabeth
for the first time after many days will preside over it. She enters
the hall while it is still empty of guests, and looks around with
glad affectionate eyes, like one returning home after long exile.
She is sincere as she is innocent, the white princess, "une âme
sans détours," and speaks the truth of her heart with wonderfully
little circumlocution, as to herself now in her salutation of the
hall, so to others later. "Once more I greet you, beloved hall,--oh,
joyously greet you, place ever dear! In you reawaken echoes of his
singing, and draw me from my melancholy dream. When he departed
from you, how desolate did you appear to me! Peace deserted me,
joy deserted you! But now that my breast rides high with gladness
you appear to me proud again and splendid as of yore. The one who
gives new life both to you and to me no longer tarries afar. All
hail to you, beloved hall, all hail!"
Wolfram, who loves Elizabeth, but in such unworldly, elevated,
self-abjuring wise that he can for the sake of happiness to her set
wholly aside hopes, desires, and jealousies of his own, finds for
Tannhäuser this opportunity of seeing the Princess alone. He leads
him into her presence and effaces himself, while their interview
lasts, among the arches at the back of the hall.
Tannhäuser, flushed and radiant, magnificent in his festival robes
of a noble minstrel-knight, casts himself impetuously at her feet.
His sudden appearance startles her painfully. Her manner speaks a
confusion almost tremulous: "Father in Heaven!... Do not kneel!...
It is not meet that I should see you here!"--"What else so meet?
Oh, do not leave," he cries ardently, "and suffer me to remain
thus at your feet!" Her timidity wears away like dew in sunshine;
we fancy the play of faint gracious smiles upon her next words.
"Stand up, then! Not in this place must you kneel, for this hall
is your rightful kingdom. Oh, rise to your feet! Take my thanks for
having come back to us. Where did you tarry so long?" Tannhäuser
rises slowly. As when the Landgrave asked him the same question,
a shadow falls across his countenance, his answer is vague and
mysterious. "Far from here, in distant, distant lands. Heavy oblivion
has dropped between to-day and yesterday. All memory of the past has
quickly faded from me, and one thing only I know: that I had not
hoped ever again to bow before you, or ever again to lift my eyes to
you."--"What was it then that brought you back?"--"A miracle it was,
an inconceivable, highest miracle!"--"Oh, from the depths of my heart
I give thanks to God for that miracle!" she exclaims, and confused at
her own fervour catches herself back, only to proceed further, with
the candour of an angel: "Your pardon, if I hardly know what I am
about! I move as if in a dream, and am feather-brained as a child,
given over, hand-bound, in thrall to a miraculous power! Hardly do
I recognise myself; oh, do you help me to solve the enigma of my
heart!" Not only with the candour of an angel, but the simplicity
of very high rank, accepting the prerogative of her station to
step forward a little way to meet the favoured lover, she lays
before him the puzzle over the small difficulty of which her purity
and greatness make one unable to smile. "To the wise songs of the
minstrels I was wont to listen often and with delight. Their singing
and their descanting appeared to me a charming pastime. But what
strange new life did your song awake in my breast! Now it pierced
me through like pain, now roused me to mad joy. Emotions I had
never felt! Desires I had never known! Things that until then had
seemed to me lovely lost their charm by comparison with delights I
had not even a name for! Then, when you went from among us, peace
and happiness were gone too. The minstrels' songs seemed to me
an uninspired affair, dim of meaning, languid of execution. My
dreams were full of dull pain, my waking hours a dejected dream.
All capacity for joy forsook my heart. Heinrich, Heinrich, what
had you done to me?" The "singer bold," the "daring minstrel,"
is of a candour matching her own. "Oh, give praise to the god of
Love!" he cries; "He it was who touched my strings! He spoke to
you through my songs, and it is he who has brought me back to you!"
They unite in joyful praise of the hour which has revealed this
miracle-working of Love's.
Wolfram watching them from his distance sighs gently: "Thus fades
from all my life the light of hope!" Tannhäuser, encountering him
as he hastens away, lets a wave of his joy overflow in an impetuous
embrace of the friend.
Elizabeth stands on the terrace overlooking the castle-court and
the valley to watch the lover out of sight, moved and simply happy
as a woman who is not a saint. Her whiteness loves that colour;
her paleness warms itself at that glow; her gentleness glories
in that force. She makes no question but that he is worthy of her
love. Her high spirituality has intuition no doubt of the vast
potentialities of good in that superabundant life, which of itself
seems a virtue as well as a charm.
When the Landgrave enters she cannot bear his searching eyes upon
her transparent face, and hides it against his breast. "Do I find
you in this hall which for so long time you have avoided? You are
lured at last by the song-festival we are preparing?" he questions
her. She cannot answer, she falters: "My uncle!... Oh, my kind
father!"--"Are you moved at last," he asks kindly, "to open your
heart to me?" She lifts her face and bravely raises her eyes. "Look
into my eyes, for speak I cannot!" He reads, and does not press
her. "Let then for a brief space longer your sweet secret remain
unspoken. Let the spell remain unbroken until yourself you have
power to loose it. Be it as you please! Song, which has awakened
and set working such wonders, shall to-day unfold the same and
crown them with consummation. Let the Lovely Art now take the work
in hand. The nobles of my lands already are assembling, bidden by
me to a singular feast. In greater numbers they flock than ever
before, having heard that you are to be Princess of the gathering."
The Hall of Minstrels gradually fills with these same nobles and
their ladies. They salute the Landgrave and the Princess, and take
their places to the well-known, long-loved march. The minstrels have
seats apart from the rest, facing their audience. The Landgrave
addresses them nobly, with gracious compliment for the skill shown
theretofore by them in singing as in fighting, for their victorious
championship of virtue and the true faith, high tradition and all
things lovely. Let them offer the guests to-day a banquet of song,
upon the occasion of the return among them of the "daring singer"
whose absence they so long had deplored, whom a wonderful mystery
has brought back into their neighbourhood. He sets to the
song-contestants as their task to define the nature of love. He
who shall most worthily besing it shall receive the prize from
Elizabeth's hand. Let his demand be bold as he will, the Landgrave's
care it shall be to see his wish granted.
Lots are drawn. Fortune appoints Wolfram to open the song-feast.
He preludes pensively, and sets forth in an improvisation of slow
and stately gait his delicate dreamer's sentiments: Glancing around
this noble assemblage, his heart kindles at sight of so many heroes,
valiant, German, and wise,--a proud oak-forest, verily, splendid,
fresh and green. And among them fair and virtuous ladies, fragrant
garland of beauteous flowers. The eye swoons, drunken with gazing,
the poet's song grows mute before such splendour of loveliness. He
fixes his eyes, then, upon one only of the stars in that dazzling
firmament. His spirit is forced to worship and bow in prayer. And,
behold, the vision he has of a miraculous fount, from which his spirit
may draw sacred joys, his heart receive ineffable refreshment. And
never would he wish to trouble that fountain, never with criminal
presumption stir those waters,--but offer himself up to it in
self-sacrificing adoration, and shed for its sake the last of his
blood. From these words the company may apprehend what he conceives
to be the nature of love at its purest.
There is warm applause from the noble knights and ladies, whether
because they understand the star to be Elizabeth, and the fountain
the pure love she inspires, or because it was the ideal of that
period of song-contests and Courts of Love and chivalry to love with
a reverence that precluded any near approach to the lady elected
for adoration. A poet might marry and have seven children, while
regarding with exalted passion and celebrating in enraptured
song,--making into his star, his sacred fountain, his Muse, some
dazzling remote princess, held to be too fair and good by far for
human nature's daily food. The audience, when Wolfram resumes his
seat, cry: "So it is! So it is!" and loudly praise his song.
Tannhäuser has lent ear somewhat listlessly. This hall has been
called his rightful kingdom; he sits among the other minstrels
consciously like a young monarch. At the closing figure of Wolfram's
rhapsodical rhetoric, the image of the fount, a shadowy smile of
superiority has dawned upon his face. As the applause dies, he
grasps his harp and rises to take exception to Wolfram's definition.
Such a song-feast was in fact a song-debate. His words come warm
and ready: "I too, Wolfram, may call myself so fortunate as to
behold what you have beheld. Who is there unacquainted with that
fountain? Hear me loudly exalt its virtue! But yet can I not approach
those waters without sense of warm longing. That burning thirst I
must cool. Comforted I set lips to the spring. In full draughts
I drink joy, unmixed with doubt or fear, for inexhaustible is the
fountain, even as inextinguishable is my desire. That my longing
therefore may be prolonged eternally, eternally I drink refreshment
at the well. Know Wolfram, thus do I conceive of love's truest
essence!"
There is deep silence when he has ended. One person only in the
large assemblage has given a sign of approval, made a little gesture
of assent, and that is Elizabeth, at bottom a very simple normal
woman, who does not recognise herself as a star or a sacred well
unapproachable to the one she loves. But as all refrain, she timidly
checks herself, and waits to hear the rest.
Walther has taken his harp, has risen; in growing excitement, touched
with indignation, he sweeps the strings: "The fountain spoken of by
Wolfram, by the light of the soul I too have looked into its depths!
But you, who thirst to drink at it, you, Heinrich, know it verily
not! Permit me to tell you, accept the lesson: That fountain is true
virtue. Devoutly you shall worship it and sacrifice to its limpid
purity. Should you lay lip to it, to cool your unhallowed passion,
nay, should you but sip at the outermost brim, forever gone were
its miraculous power! If you shall gain life from that fountain,
through the heart, not the palate, must you seek refreshment!"
Again there is lively applause. Tannhäuser springs to his feet,
the old contemptuousness toward these companions,--compends of
density, conventionality, and hypocrisy!--curving his lip. "Oh,
Walther, singing as you have done, how direly have you misrepresented
love! Through such languors and timidities as you describe, the
world would unmistakably go dry! To the glory of God in his exalted
distance, gaze at the heavens, gaze at its stars. Pay tribute of
worship to such marvels, because they pass your comprehension. But
that which lends itself to human touches, which lies near to your
heart and senses, that which, formed of the same clay as yourselves,
in a softer shape nestles against your side, the tribute called
for by that is hearty pleasure of love. Enjoyment, I say, is the
essence of love!"
At this, which falls upon all ears present with the effect of rank
blasphemy, Biterolf rises in wrath. "Out, out, to fight against
us all. Who could be silent hearing you? If your arrogance will
vouchsafe to listen, hear, slanderer, me too! When high love inspires
me, it steels my weapons with courage; to save it from indignity
proudly would I pour forth my last blood. For the honour of women
and of lofty virtue I unsheathe my knightly sword,--but that which
your youth is pleased to call pleasure is cheap enough and worth
no single blow!" The audience cheer him enthusiastically: "Hail,
Biterolf, our good blade!" Tannhäuser can no longer contain himself.
It is now again quite as it used to be, when never could he live
at peace with these purblind tortoises, dull of wit to the point
of amazement, and yet pretending to pronounce upon things, pass
judgment upon others. What can there be but warfare forever between
him and them? But that Biterolf, this war-worn, middle-aged, rugged
minstrel should take it upon himself to instruct Heinrich Tannhäuser,
pupil of Venus, in matters of love! His retort comes quick, from the
shoulder, so to speak, though the form is not dropped of fitting his
words to chords of the peaceful harp: "Ha, fond braggart, Biterolf! Is
it you, singing about love, grim wolf? But you can hardly have meant
that which I hold worthy to be enjoyed. What, you poverty-stricken
wight--what pleasure of love may have fallen to your share? Not rich
in love your life has been! And such joys as may have sprouted
along your path, indeed, were hardly worthy of a blow!"--"Let him
not be allowed to finish! Forbid his insolence!" cry the incensed
nobles, who had suffered Biterolf's personal attack, but find
insufferable this of the over-splendid, over-bearing, over-confident
youth. Biterolf's sword has leaped from its scabbard. The Landgrave
orders it back. "Preserve peace, you singers!"
A hush falls as Wolfram takes the floor again. He had sacrificed
every selfish hope to serve both Elizabeth and Tannhäuser, had
employed himself to further their union. What now is happening is
plainly terrible to him. His opinion of the friend has undergone
in the last moments a grievous subversion. He has been wounded to
the soul by the bold and profane tone of Tannhäuser's argument.
His sensibility detects an atmosphere of sin about this novel love's
advocate, and as a good and pious knight he is forced to array
himself against the friend, to uphold Ideal Love in antagonism to
the Carnal Love he has just heard exalted. "Oh, Heaven, hear my
prayer and consecrate my song!" he sings, a pale flame informing his
song, as, imaginably, his cheek and eye; "Let me see evil banished
from this pure and noble circle! To you, Highest Love, let my song
resound, inspired, to you that in angelic beauty have penetrated
deep into my soul. As a messenger from Heaven do you appear to us;
I follow from afar. You guide us toward the regions where immortally
shines your star!"
Tannhäuser, exasperated, reckless, frenzied with that temperamental
need of his to dominate, that impatience of being lessoned, losing
sight of all but one thing, that it shall be proved to them they
can teach nothing about love to him, the lover of the very Goddess
of Love, seizes his harp, his sword in this duel, and breaks forth
in his impassioned Praise of Venus,--the song we heard in the heart
of her Hill, when he celebrated her at her own bidding, in conclusion
begging so lamely for his dismissal. "To you, Goddess of Love,
shall my song resound! Loud shall your praises now be sung by me!
Your sweet beauty is the source of all that is beautiful, and every
lovely miracle has its origin in you! He who aglow has enfolded
you in his arms, he knows, and he alone, what love is! Oh, you
poor-spirited, who have never tasted love, go,--to the Hill of Venus
repair!"
The last words have the effect of a thunder-clap, in the consternation
they produce. Tannhäuser in the drunkenness of his pride had forgotten
what this revelation would mean in the ears he trumpeted it to; in
his long sojourn in the pagan underworld, where his moral judgment
had become dulled and perverted, had forgotten, apparently, how
the Christian world regarded such commerce with it as his words
betrayed. That mysterious Hörselberg looming in the distance was
in popular thinking the very ante-chamber of Hell; its pleasures,
paid in the world to come with eternal damnation, were rewarded in
this world with excommunication and death. One who had frequented
it was sin-polluted, sin-drenched, he poisoned the air with sin.
All shrink back at his announcement as from a leper. The women
flee precipitately from the contamination of his neighbourhood.
It is like a flight of gorgeous birds. The men's instant and only
thought is to immolate him, cleanse the earth of the inexpressible
blot upon it that he is. "He has luxuriated in the pleasures of
Hell! He has dwelled in the Hill of Venus! Abominable! Accursed!
Bathe your swords in his blood! Hurl him back into the fiery lake!"
Tannhäuser stands with drawn sword facing their multitude. They
are advancing toward him, his doom seems sealed,--when Elizabeth's
body is found interposed shield-wise between him and their swords.
Their hands are necessarily stayed. "What do we see?" their wondering
question runs, "What? Elizabeth? The chaste virgin protecting the
sinner?"--"Back!" the meek maiden commands with vigour enough at
this pass, "or I shall not regard death! What are wounds from your
swords beside the death-stroke I have received from him?" Tannhäuser
starts like one awakening. He had not thought of this aspect of
his action; the pride relaxes suddenly that had stiffened him.
"Elizabeth!" her uncle argues with her, and the others add their
voices to his, "What must I hear? How has your heart allowed itself
to be stultified, that you should attempt to save from punishment the
man who, added to all else, has so dreadfully betrayed you?"--"What
does it matter about me?" she cries; "But he--his soul's salvation!
Would you rob him of his soul's eternal salvation?" He has cast
away all chance of that, they affirm; never can he gain salvation.
The curse of Heaven is upon him, let him die in his sins! At their
threatening approach, she spreads her arms resolutely before him.
She towers tall and white, she speaks with strange authority. "Back
from him! Not you are his judges! Cruel ones, cast from you the
barbarous sword, and give heed to the word of the stainless virgin!
Learn through me what is the will of God. The unhappy man whom
a potent dreadful enchantment holds bound, what, shall he never
come to Heaven through repentance and expiation in this world? You
who are so strong in the pure faith, do you apprehend so ill the
mind of the Most High? Would you take away the hope of the sinner?
State then what wrong he has done to you. Behold me, the maiden,
whose blossom he shattered with a swift blow, me, who loved him to
the depths of being, and whose heart he pierced with a jubilant
laugh... I plead for him, I plead for his life! Let his feet be
turned into the path of penitence. Let the courage be restored to
him of the faith that for him too the Saviour died!" In a spasm
of realisation and self-horror the unhappy Tannhäuser hides his
face and sinks to the earth. The angry lords have calmed under
the Princess's exhortation. They see in her an angel descended
from Heaven to announce the holy will of God. Who could persist
in violence after hearing the supplications of an angel?
Tannhäuser has come at last completely to himself, to a clear vision,
by light of that heavenly goodness, of what he has been, what he
has done. Sapped of its pride, his spirit grovels helplessly in
the lowest depths of abasement. "To lead the sinner to salvation,
the God-sent came to me, but I, alas, to touch her impiously, I
lifted upon her eyes of vice. Oh, Thou, far above the vale of earth,
who didst send to me this angel of salvation, have mercy upon me
who, ah! so deeply steeped in sin, did such ignoble wrong to the
mediatrix of Heaven!"
The Landgrave decides upon the course to be taken. An abominable
crime has been committed; in hypocritical disguise the accursed
son of sin has slipped into their midst. Among them he may not
remain, the displeasure of Heaven already lowers upon this roof
which too long has covered him. One road is open to the sinner,
which, while rejecting him, the Landgrave points out--let him take
advantage of it to his welfare! Numerous bands of penitents are
starting from this region on pilgrimage to Rome for the great Pardon.
The older have left already; the younger are still gathering in
the valley. Let Tannhäuser join them, go with them to the Holy
City, fall upon his knees and do penance for his sin. Let him cast
himself before him who speaks the decrees of God upon earth, entreat
his blessing, and never return if he fail to obtain it. For if
their vengeance stay its hand at the prayer of an angel, their
swords will not fail to reach him if he continue in his sin. The
chant comes wafted from the distance of those younger pilgrims
gathering for departure: "At the great feast of peace and pardon,
humbly confess your sins. Blessed is the firm in faith, he may
be absolved through contrition and penance."
A ray of hope illumines Tannhäuser's face. He starts up from his
knees, and with a wild cry, "To Rome!" rushes forth from the Hall.