A restless, passion-tossed prelude. The "Grail" subject distorted, the
"Spear" motive thrust in discordant, the "Faith and Love" theme
fluttering like a wounded dove in pain, fierce bursts of passion, wild
shocks of uncontrolled misery, mingling with the "carnal joy" music of
Klingsor's magic garden and the shuddering might of his alchemy.
The great magician, Klingsor, is seen alone in his dungeon palace--harsh
contrast to the gorgeous halls of Montsalvat. Here all is built of the
live rock, an impenetrable fastness, the home of devilish might and
terrible spells.
Klingsor is aware of the coming struggle, and he means to be ready for
it. He owns the sacred spear wrested from Amfortis; he even aspires to
win the Grail; he knows the "guileless one" is on his way to wrest that
spear from him. His only hope is in paralyzing the fool by his
enchantments as he paralyzed Amfortis, and the same woman will serve his
turn.
"Kundry!" The time is come, the spells are woven--blue vapors rise, and
in the midst of the blue vapors the figure of the still sleeping Kundry
is seen. She wakes, trembling violently; she knows she is again under
the spell she abhors--the spell to do evil, the mission to corrupt.
With a shuddering scream she stands before her tormentor, denying his
power, loathing to return to her vile mission, yet returning, as with a
bitter cry she vanishes from his presence.
Parsifal has invaded Klingsor's realm; the evil knights have fled before
his prowess, wounded and in disorder. Kundry is commissioned to meet the
guileless youth in the enchanted garden, and, all other allurements
failing, to subdue him by her irresistible fascinations and hand him
over to Klingsor.
In a moment the scenery lifts, and a garden of marvelous beauty and
extent lies before us. The flowers are all of colossal dimensions--huge
roses hang in tangled festoons, the cactus, the lily, the blue-bell,
creepers, and orchids of enormous size and dazzling color wave in
midair, and climb the aromatic trees.
On a bright hill appears Parsifal, standing bewildered by the light and
loveliness around him. Beautiful girls dressed like flowers, and hardly
distinguishable from them at first, rush in, bewailing their wounded and
disabled knights, but, on seeing Parsifal, fall upon their new prey,
and, surrounding him, sing verse after verse of the loveliest ballet
music, while trying to embrace him, and quarreling with each other for
the privilege.
About that wonderful chorus of flower-girls there was just a suggestive
touch of the Rhine maidens' singing. It belonged to the same school of
thought and feeling, but was freer, wilder--more considerable, and
altogether more complex and wonderful in its changes and in the
marvelous confusion in which it breaks up.
The "guileless one" resists these charmers, and they are just about to
leave him in disgust, when the roses lift on one side, and, stretched on
a mossy bank overhung with flowers, appears a woman of unearthly
loveliness. It is Kundry transformed, and in the marvelous duet which
follows between her and Parsifal, a perfectly new and original type of
love duet is struck out--an analysis of character, unique in musical
drama--a combination of sentiment and a situation absolutely novel,
which could only have been conceived and carried out by a creative
genius of the highest order.
First, I note that the once spellbound Kundry is devoted utterly to her
task of winning Parsifal. Into this she throws all the intensity of her
wild and desperate nature; but in turn she is strangely affected by the
spiritual atmosphere of the "guileless one"--a feeling comes over her,
in the midst of her witchcraft passion, that he is in some way to be her
savior too; yet, womanlike, she conceives of her salvation as possible
only in union with him. Yet was this the very crime to which Klingsor
would drive her for the ruin of Parsifal. Strange confusion of thought,
feeling, aspiration, longing--struggle of irreconcilable elements! How
shall she reconcile them? Her intuition fails her not, and her tact
triumphs. She will win by stealing his love through his mother's love.
A mother's love is holy; that love she tells him of. It can never more
be his; but she will replace it, her passion shall be sanctified by it;
through _that_ passion she has sinned, through it she, too, shall be
redeemed. She will work out her own salvation by the very spells that
are upon her for evil. He is pure--he shall make her pure, can she but
win him; both, by the might of such pure love, will surely be delivered
from Klingsor, the corrupter, the tormentor. Fatuous dream! How, through
corruption, win incorruption? How, through indulgence, win peace and
freedom from desire? It is the old cheat of the senses--Satan appears as
an angel of light. The thought deludes the unhappy Kundry herself; she
is no longer consciously working for Klingsor; she really believes that
this new turn, this bias given to passion, will purify both her and the
guileless, pure fool she seeks to subdue.
Nothing can describe the subtlety of their long interview, the
surprising turns of sentiment and contrasts of feeling. Throughout this
scene Parsifal's instinct is absolutely true and sure. Everything Kundry
says about his mother, Herzeleide, he feels; but every attempt to make
him accept her instead he resists. Her desperate declamation is
splendid. Her heartrending sense of misery and piteous prayer for
salvation, her belief that before her is her savior could she but win
him to her will, the choking fury of baffled passion, the steady and
subtle encroachments made while Parsifal is lost in a meditative dream,
the burning kiss which recalls him to himself, the fine touch by which
this kiss, while arousing in him the stormiest feelings, causes a sharp
pain, as of Amfortas's own wound, piercing his very heart--all this is
realistic, if you will, but it is realism raised to the sublime.
Suddenly Parsifal springs up, hurls the enchantress from him, will forth
from Klingsor's realm. She is baffled--she knows it; for a moment she
bars his passage, then succumbs; the might of sensuality which lost
Amfortas the sacred spear has been met and defeated by the guileless
fool. He has passed from innocence to knowledge in his interview with
the flower-girt girls, in his long converse with Kundry, in her
insidious embrace, in her kiss; but all these are now thrust aside; he
steps forth still unconquered, still "guileless," but no more "a fool."
The knowledge of good and evil has come, but the struggle is already
passed.
"Yes, sinner, I do offer thee Redemption," he can say to Kundry; "not in
thy way, but in thy Lord Christ's way of sacrifice!"
But the desperate creature, wild with passion, will listen to no reason;
she shouts aloud to her master, and Klingsor suddenly appears, poising
the sacred spear. In another moment he hurls it right across the
enchanted garden at Parsifal. It can not wound the guileless and pure
one as it wounded the sinful Amfortas. A miracle! It hangs arrested in
air above Parsifal's head; he seizes it--it is the sacred talisman, one
touch of which will heal even as it inflicted the king's deadly wound.
With a mighty cry and the shock as of an earthquake, the castle of
Klingsor falls shattered to pieces, the garden withers up to a desert,
the girls, who have rushed in, lie about among the fading flowers,
themselves withered up and dead. Kundry sinks down in a deathly swoon,
while Parsifal steps over a ruined wall and disappears, saluting her
with the words: "Thou alone knowest when we shall meet again!"
* * * * *
The long shadows were stealing over the hills when I came out at the
second pause. Those whom I met and conversed with were subdued and
awed. What a solemn tragedy of human passion we had been assisting at!
Not a heart there but could interpret that struggle between the flesh
and the spirit from its own experiences. Not one but knew the
desperately wicked and deceitful temptations that come like
enchantresses in the wizard's garden, to plead the cause of the devil in
the language of high-flown sentiment or even religious feeling.
Praise and criticism seemed dumb; we rather walked and spoke of what we
had just witnessed like men convinced of judgment, and righteousness,
and sin. It was a strange mood in which to come out of a theater after
witnessing what would commonly be called an "Opera." I felt more than
ever the impossibility of producing the _Parsifal_ in London, at Drury
Lane or Covent Garden, before a well-dressed company of loungers, who
had well dined, and were on their way to balls and suppers afterward.
I would as soon see the Oberammergau play at a music-hall.
No; in _Parsifal_ all is solemn, or all is irreverent. At Bayreuth we
came on a pilgrimage; it cost us time, and trouble, and money; we were
in earnest--so were the actors; the spirit of the great master who had
planned every detail seemed still to preside over all; the actors lived
in their parts; not a thought of self remained; no one accepted applause
or recall; no one aimed at producing a personal effect; the actors were
lost in the drama, and it was the drama and not the actors which has
impressed and solemnized us. When I came out they asked me who was
Amfortas? I did not know. I said "the wounded king."
As the instruments played out the Faith and Love motive for us to
reenter, the mellow sunshine broke once more from the cloud-rack over
city, and field, and forest, before sinking behind the long low range of
the distant hills.