There was nothing in the surroundings of our ancestors to encourage

such a species of indirection. The natural powers which confronted

them oftenest were inimical. They did not live in the sunlight of

Nature's smile, but in the shadow of her frown. The simple right to

exist had daily to be conquered. The vague apprehensions of a sinless,

an absolute and omnipotent Deity, which flitted furtively across their

minds, took deeper and deeper root when the logic of necessity began to

taint their dynasty of gods with weakness and crimes. But, like the

Greeks, they could give such a conception neither form, habitation, nor

name. It remained hovering in the background. As their physical life

was a ceaseless struggle with Nature in her sternest aspects, and as

the more cruel of those aspects were connected with the phenomena of

winter, it was natural that when the conception of overshadowing Fate

had to be personified in the process of mythological construction, the

Nornir should have been imagined as daughters of the giants of the

North--harsh, cruel, vengeful, implacable. The terrible Fimbul winter

was to precede Ragnarök. All their training taught them to look the

actual in the face. They lived in war, and death possessed terror only

to those who could not die in battle. Destruction was a conception

with which they were familiar; destruction was the logical outcome of

all activities. So soon as they began to contemplate a race of gods

who were offenders against that moral law which was the outgrowth of

the primitive religious instinct, just so soon such a people had to

provide for a catastrophe which would resolve the discord. The Greek

tragedian made Prometheus the symbol of humanity and achieved his

aim by a reconciliation with offended Deity. The Norse myth-maker

chose the chief of the gods as his representative, raised the issue

between him and unpersonified moral law, and compelled the god to go

down to destruction with all his race to satisfy a vast and righteous

necessity. "If," says Felix Dahn, "a religion has become thoroughly

corrupt, then, unless the nation professing it is to be destroyed along

with its civilization, a new religion, satisfying to the needs of the

period, must either be introduced from without--as Christianity was

introduced in the Roman world in the first centuries of the Empire--or

the existing religion must be purified and reconstructed; as was the

case with Christianity in the sixteenth century through the Protestant

Reformation, and also, indeed, through the very material Catholic

improvements achieved by the Tridentine Council.

"But beside these two there is a third means of resolving the

difficulty; this third was seized upon by the Germanic consciousness.

_It is the tragical remedy._

"The Germanic gods, too, placed themselves in irreconcilable and

unendurable opposition to morality; and the Germanic conscience

condemned them every one to destruction--to death! _That is the

meaning of the Götterdämmerung_; it is a peerlessly great moral deed

of the Germanic race, and it stamps Germanic mythology with its tragic

character.

"Destruction because of an irreparable rupture with established and

peaceful order in Religion, Morality, or Law, is essentially tragical.

"The _Götterdämmerung_ a sacrifice? A stupendous deed of morality? Aye,

indeed, that it is!"[D]

V.

We are henceforth to observe Wotan in his conduct when brought face

to face with the consequences of his violations of moral law. That

conduct it is which reflects the real tragedy in "The Niblung's Ring."

Bound by the contract whose runes were cut in the haft of his spear,

the god could not again possess himself of the ring, which was now

become doubly a menace. If it were again to fall into the hands of

Alberich, whom he had so cruelly wronged, the desire for vengeance

would spur that mischievous Niblung to seize the dominion which had

been forfeited. To prevent such a catastrophe, Wotan would beget a new

race of beings and endow them with a magic sword. This was to be the

extent of his activity in the development of his plot. As a Volsung he

wandered through the forests with Siegmund, his son born of woman. At

an early age this son had lost his mother and been separated from his

twin-sister. Then his father left him mysteriously to be seasoned to

his task by hardships. At the climax of his distress, the culmination

of his need, he was to arm himself with the divine sword which the god

had thrust up to the hilt in a tree, around which was built the hut of

that very enemy of the Volsung race, who had carried off the sister

and married her against her will. The achievement of the sword was

to be the sign of Siegmund's fitness for the enterprise. Of his own

free-will the divinely-begotten hero was to acquire the ring, and rid

the world of the curse by restoring it to its rightful owners. How vain

a plot! The first step in its development shatters the whole elaborate

fabric! Both of the children forfeit their lives to outraged law; the

god is compelled to destroy the very agencies on which he had built his

hopes. The curse under whose fatal influence he had fallen because of

wrong-doing was not to be averted by so shallow a subterfuge; but even

if such an outcome had been possible, the plan would have split on the

rock of newly offended morality.

In this outline of the contents of "Die Walküre" I have but hinted at

its incidents, yet we have before us a whole vast act of the Wotan

tragedy, and one, too, that is pregnant with consequences to the

tragical scheme of the myth-maker. I do not ask that the occasional

interpretations of Wagner's music which I attempt be accepted as

literal expositions of the composer's purposes; but we can benefit

in our understanding of the scope and progress of his tragedy by

discovering symbols for its great philosophical moments in the musical

investiture. In this view of the case observe how appropriate is

the instrumental introduction to the first act. We have gone beyond

the hand-books in seeing a reflection of the purity and quietude of

the Golden Age in the introduction to the prologue. Its antithesis

is presented in the introduction to the first drama of the trilogy.

Again Wagner makes nature reflect the mental and moral states of his

personages. Again he presents a musical mood-picture. And again the

musician is invited to discover that, in spite of the contrast between

the objects of his musical delineation, the technical means resorted to

are the same. There the peacefully undulating _major_ harmonies over

a sustained bass note--a pedal-point, if you will--pictured the age

of sinlessness; the harmlessness of the untainted, uncoveted virgin

gold; the gentle flux and reflux of the element in which it was buried;

the careless innocency of its unsuspicious and playful guardians.

Here wildly flying _minor_ harmonies under a sustained note--again a

pedal-point--picture the storm which buffets the exhausted, unprotected

Siegmund, and impels him to seek refuge in Hunding's hut.

If this parallel is merely fanciful, it at least invites such an

exercise of the fancy in the listeners as will better help them to

appreciate the interdependence of the arts which Wagner consorts in

his dramas than any amount of structural dissection and analysis. If

you wish you may note that in addition to the music which aims merely

at imitative delineation of a thunder-storm (the rushing figure in the

basses, the incessant _staccato_ patter of the sustained note, the

attempts to suggest flashes of lightning in short and rapid figures

in the high register of the instruments, the crashing and rumbling of

thunder, and the howling of the wind in the chromatic passages), the

music also presents a pompous phrase with which, in the scene of the

prologue where Thor created the rainbow bridge, the Thunderer summoned

the elements to his aid, and at the close a heavy-footed phrase which

may be identified with the weary Siegmund.

If these two preludes be accepted as broadly and comprehensively

delineative of moods in the theatre and personages of the play,

another significant parallel will now present itself. It was to a

phrase which has the rhythm afterwards associated with the Niblungs in

their capacity as smiths (see Chapter I.)--the hammering rhythm--that

Alberich disclosed his wicked nature and resolve when he shook his

fist at the nixies. Observe how the element of danger to the Volsung

pair is introduced in the first scene of the tragedy. It enters

with the sinister Hunding, who, as the unconscious instrument of

Fate and Fricka's vengeance, brings death to Siegmund. In the music

which precedes Hunding's entrance there are only strains of pathetic

tenderness which invite sympathy for the unhappy children of Wotan,

and which we are asked by the analyst and commentator to associate

with the compassion which they feel for each other, and the growth of

that feeling into the more ardent emotion of love. The phrase which

ushers in Hunding is in sharp contrast; if is gloomy in harmony

and orchestration, and publishes the evil in his heart, not only by

its dark colors, but also by employing the threatening rhythm which

Alberich used against the Rhine daughters. The incidents which serve

to complete the first great step in the drama so far as Wotan, the

hero, is concerned, can now be hastily reviewed. Hunding discovers his

guest to be the enemy of his race; the laws of hospitality protect

him for the night, but he must fight on the morrow. Siegmund's need

has reached its climax. But Sieglinde, after putting Hunding to sleep

with a draught, returns to him and discloses the mystery of the sword.

Mutually they confess their love, and discover their relationship in

the moment when the magic sword is won. A new thought prevents that

terrible discovery from checking the progress of their passion. _The

race of the Volsungs must be perpetuated._ If you want to learn how

powerful an element this thought is in the old legend from which

Wagner borrowed the episode, you must study it in the Volsunga

Saga, where it is consorted with elements which largely atone for

the features so offensive and so much criticised in Wagner's drama.

There Signy (Wagner's Sieglinde) desiring to avenge herself on her

husband Siggeir (Hunding), who had murdered all the race but her and

Sigmund, and kept her in loveless wedlock, tried in vain to rear a

son of sufficient hardihood to perform the deed of vengeance. At

last, fearful that the Volsungs might become extinct, she changed

semblance with a witch-wife, and in this guise visited Sigmund at his

hiding-place in the woods. When their son grew to manhood he and his

father avenged Signy's wrongs. But when they offered her great honors

Signy told Sigmund: "I went into the woods to thee in witch-wife's

shape, and Sinfjötli (Siegfried) is the son of thee and me both; and

therefore has he this great hardihood and fierceness, because he is

the son of Välse's son and Välse's daughter. For naught else have I

so wrought that King Siggeir might get his bane at last; and merrily

now will I die with the King though I was naught merry to wed him;"[E]

and she entered the burning palace and died with the King and his

men. The motive here is the same as in the objectionable episode in

Wagner, but it is presented more forcibly and, at the same time, less

offensively--or, at least, with less show of moral depravity. But the

sin is speedily expiated. Fricka, the patron goddess of marriage,

demands that Siegmund shall become her victim; and Fricka's right

cannot be gainsaid by the representative of Law. Wotan pronounces the

oath that Fricka demands. The Volsung is doomed; the plan of the god

frustrated. The first act of the tragedy is complete; the second stage

of the development of Wotan's tragical character is entered upon. These

are the essential features of that stage:

In despair the god surrenders his plan, invokes the consequences of his

guilty deed, and pronounces a blessing on the inimical agency which has

been established for his punishment. He turns his longing gaze towards

that outcome of the terrible conflict in which he became involved

because of his greed of power, which his own wisdom, clarified by the

mystic words of Erda, recognizes as inevitable.

Unhappily for the popular understanding of the tragedy, the scene in

which this stupendously significant phase in the celestial action

of the drama is disclosed is one that is generally sacrificed to

theatrical exigencies. It is presented in the long address in which

Wotan countermands the order previously given for the death of Hunding,

and commands that the death-mark be placed on Siegmund. From this

recital we learn that the Valkyrior had been born to Wotan by Erda

as part of his scheme to perpetuate his dominion. They were to fill

Valhalla with heroes against the great battle which he knew would

come. We also learn that as Wotan had begotten a new race, in the hope

of preventing the baneful ring from falling again into the hands of

Alberich, so Alberich, in turn, had begotten a son to labor for its

return. But as Alberich had foresworn love, he wooed a woman with

gold. Again, here in the counter-plot, the greed of gold usurps the

place sanctified to love. Thus there are pitted against each other the

Volsungs, beloved progeny of the god, and Hagen (whom we shall meet

actively engaged in the contest later), the loveless offspring of the

Niblung. And the demi-god it is who is doomed. Wotan is called upon

to perform his act of renunciation. As things go in the theatre, his

recital is thought overlong and undramatic, and the thoughtless laugh

at the spectacle of a sad god. Can we forget that it is at this supreme

moment that the god embodies that which is at once the loftiest and

the most profoundly melancholy conception of the Germanic conscience?

He recognizes the necessity and the justice of the destruction of his

race. Listen to his words:

"Begone, then, and perish,

Thou gorgeous pomp,

Thou glittering disgrace

Of godhood's grandeur!

Asunder shall burst

The walls I built!

My work I abandon,

For one thing alone I wish--

The end--

The end--"

(_He pauses in thought._)

"And to the end

Alb'rich attends!

Now I perceive

The secret sense

Of the Vala's 'wildering words:

'When Love's ferocious foe

In rage begetteth a son,

The night of the gods

Draws near anon.'"[F]

And now observe how the logic of Wagner's constructive scheme marshals

the symbols of the chief things which are in Wotan's thoughts while

he contemplates past, present, and future--the wicked cause and the

terrible effect. The curse, with death in its train, confronts him:

[Illustration: score]

the Nomir and their all-wise mother revisit his fancy:

[Illustration: score]

the ceaseless, tireless energy of the Niblung, which will not cease

till the work of destruction be complete, pursues him with its

rhythmical scourge as the Furies pursued Orestes:

[Illustration: score]

and the image of Valhalla rises in his far-seeing mind, not as a castle

in its present grandeur (see Chapter I.), but in ruins; the rhythm

of the musical symbol is shattered; its solid, restful, simple major

harmony is destroyed:

[Illustration: score]

All this because of the accursed gold (closing cadence _a_).

The daughter to whom the god confides the whole depth of his misery is

of all his daughters the dearest. She has no higher ambition than to

be the embodiment of Wotan's will. Unconsciously to both, the god, in

his divine resignation, is merely prefiguring the sacrifice to which,

in the providence of a higher power than the Lord of Valhalla, that

daughter has been chosen. But the god has not yet learned the full

bitterness of his cup. He loves the Volsung, and is obliged to destroy

at a blow the object of his love and the agent of his plan. In doing

this the irresistible might of law bears down his will. That will is

known to Brünnhilde. In defiance of Wotan's commands she attempts

to shield the Volsung; and to bring the combat between Hunding and

Siegmund to the conclusion inexorably demanded by that law of purity

which the hero unwittingly violated, the god is himself compelled

to interfere, and to cause the sword, designed as the symbol of the

Volsung power, to be shattered on the spear with which Wotan exercises

dominion.

Love, for a second time, feels the weight of Alberich's curse. Now

the beloved daughter falls under the condemnation of the law. But the

god is becoming unconsciously an agent in a plan of redemption, which

belongs to a loftier ethical scheme than was possible before. Wotan

is about to disappear as an active agent from the scene. His plot is

wrecked. The representative of his will, the object of his tenderest

paternal affection, unknown to him, but inspired wholly by a love void

of all selfishness, is about to take up the task surrendered by the

god, and carry it out to a conclusion different from and yet like that

imagined by the god. Before the punishment is visited upon her, the

intensity of that love, turned through sympathy towards Sieglinde,

has for a moment endowed her with prophetic powers. She hails the

hero yet unborn, and persuades Sieglinde to save her own life for his

sake. Then she accepts her punishment. She is bereft of her divinity,

put into a magic sleep, and left by the way-side to be the prey of

the first passer-by. But the love of the father, awakened to tenfold

power by the bitterness of his own fate and the knowledge that his

child's disobedience was but the execution of his own will, shields her

from dishonor by surrounding her with a wall of fire, which none but

a freer hero than the god himself, and one for whom the divine spear

has no terrors, shall pass. The god's egotism is completely broken,

the reconciliation between his offended majesty and the offender

established. The punishment of Brünnhilde is but the chastisement of

love. Can there be any doubt of this after the musical proclamation

contained in the finale of "Die Walküre?"

VI.

I am presuming, to a great extent, upon the reader's familiarity with

the incidents of the dramas constituting the tragedy. It is the action

which takes place where we have not been in the habit of looking for

it that I am seeking to discover. "Siegfried," the second drama of

the trilogy, is almost wholly devoted to preparation for the fateful

outcome. To this fact is due much of its cheerfulness of tone. It is a

period of comparative rest. The celestial plot has entered upon a new

phase, and in this drama the new combination of characters is formed

for the development of that new phase. The ethical drama which the play

symbolizes might be described as follows:

The hero has been born and bred under circumstances which have

developed his freedom in every direction. The representative of

the evil principle seeks to direct his heroic powers towards an

advancement of the sinister side of the counter-plot; but in vain. By

his own efforts he endows himself with the magic sword, and in the

full consciousness of his free manhood he achieves for himself the

adventures and the happiness which were denied to the god. He gains the

ring and tastes the delight of love.

At first Siegfried appears simply as a wild forest lad, who has grown

up with no sympathetic acquaintance beyond the beasts and birds with

which he is wont to associate in their haunts. In this character the

composer pictures him musically by means of the merry hunting-call

which he is supposed to blow on his horn (see Chapter I.). Most of

the music which is associated with him in the first act of the drama,

in which this horn-call enters so largely, is markedly characteristic

of the impetuous nature of the forest lad, with his contempt for

dissimulation and his rough, straight-forward energy. But a different

side of his nature is disclosed when, having learned the story of his

birth and acquired possession of his father's sword, remade by himself,

he becomes a part of the sylvan picture of the second act, which lends

so much charm to the "Siegfried" drama. Here, again, is scenic music

of the kind which each of the dramas possesses, and which has so often

set us to wondering at Wagner's marvellous faculty for juggling with

the senses--making our ears to see and our eyes to hear. Siegfried has

been brought before the cave--where Fafner, in the form of a dragon,

is guarding the ring and the hoard--by Mime, who has planned that the

lad shall kill the dragon and then himself fall a victim to treachery.

Siegfried throws himself on a hillock at the foot of a tree and listens

to nature's music in the forest. And such music! Music redolent of that

sweet mystery which peopled the old poets' minds with the whole amiable

tribe of fays and dryads and wood-nymphs. The spirit which lurks under

gnarled roots and in tangled boughs, in hollow trees and haunted forest

caves, breathes through it. The youth is brooding over the mystery of

his childhood, and he utters his thoughts in tender phrases, while the

mellow wood-wind instruments in the orchestra identify his thoughts

with the dead parents whom he never knew. He wonders what his mother

looked like, and pathetically asks whether all human mothers die when

their children are born. Suddenly the sunlight begins to flicker along

the leafy canopy; a thousand indistinct voices join in that indefinable

hum, of which, when heard in reality and not in the musician's

creation, one is at a loss to tell how much is actual and how much the

product of imagination, both sense and fancy having been miraculously

quickened by the spirit which moves through the trees.

At last all is vocal, and Siegfried's ear is caught by the song of

the bird to which we too have been listening. In his longing for

companionship he wishes that he might understand and converse with his

feathered playmate. Might he not if he were able to whistle like the

bird? Now note the naïve touch of musical humor with which Wagner, the

tragedian, enlivens the scene. Siegfried cuts a reed growing beside a

rivulet and fashions a rude pipe out of it. He listens, and when the

bird quits singing he attempts to imitate its "wood-note wild." But

his pipe is too low in pitch and out of tune. He cuts it shorter and

raises its pitch half a tone. Again he cuts it, with the same result;

then squeezes it impatiently, and renders it still more "out of tune

and harsh." He throws it away, confesses his humiliation by the bird,

then reaches for his horn. With its merry call he wakes the echoes,

disturbs the sleep of the dragon, and precipitates the combat which

ends in his equipment with _Tarnhelm_ and ring, and his receipt of the

injunction from the bird (which now he understands through the magic of

the dragon's blood touching his lips) to slay Mime and waken Brünnhilde

on the burning mountain.

We now catch our last glimpse of Wotan as a personage in the play.

He has not been active in the plot since he was obliged to destroy

his own handiwork. Twice he appeared in the character of a seemingly

unconcerned spectator wandering over the face of the earth, and once he

even offered to help Alberich recover the ring from Fafner. He aroused

the dragon and suggested that Alberich warn him of threatened danger,

and ask the ring as a reward. His present concern is to learn whether

the danger threatening the gods is yet to be averted. By chanting of

powerful runes he summons Erda, of ancient wisdom. But she refuses to

speak. Now he tells her that he no longer grieves over the approaching

doom of the gods; his will, newly enlightened, has decreed that the

catastrophe shall overwhelm the gods, but also that the world, which in

his despair he had surrendered to the hate of the Niblung, shall become

instead the heritage of the Volsung who has won the ring. A single act

remains to be done: the free-agency of Siegfried must be tested. The

youth follows his feathered guide up the mountain to find the promised

bride. Wotan bars his way with his spear. Siegfried hews the shaft

through the middle. On the runes cut into that shaft rested Wotan's

dominion. They were the bond by which he governed. Its destruction

symbolizes the approaching end of the old order of things. The musical

phrase, typical of that compact, accompanies him, in broken rhythm,

as he gathers up the pieces of the spear and departs. Prophecy and

fulfilment are indicated by the recurrence of the phrase of Erda and

her daughters, the Nornir, and its inversion, which symbolizes the

twilight of the gods.

VII.

All the adventures of Siegfried in this part of the drama, from the

forging of the sword to the awaking of Brünnhilde, Wagner derived in

almost the exact shape in which he presents them from the Scandinavian

legends which tell of Sigurd. In the death-like sleep of Brünnhilde,

the stream of fire around her couch, the passage of that stream by

Siegfried, as later in the immolation of the heroine, there are so

many foreshadowings of the mystery of the Atonement that I scarcely

dare attempt a study of it. Let me but call attention to the fact that

the fiery wall in the old legends always denotes the funeral pyre;

that it was once customary to light the pyre with a thorn, and that

when the Eddas tell us that Odin put his child Brynhild to sleep by

pricking her in the temple with a sleep-thorn, the meaning is that

she died. I have said a foreshadowing of the Atonement because these

things are old Aryan possessions--much older than Christianity. The

infernal river of the Greeks, which Alkestis had to cross when she

went to the under-world on her mission of salvation, had a Greek name

(_Pyriphlegethon_), which meant "fire-blazing." It was not, however,

to lose myself in such speculations that I called up the old story,

but simply to show with what fine insight into dramatic possibilities

Wagner studied his sources. In the old Icelandic tale, some gossiping

eagles, whose language Sigurd had come to understand by drinking of

the blood of Regin and Fafnir, told him of a maiden who slumbered in

a hall on high Hindarfiall surrounded with fire. Thither Sigurd went,

penetrated the barrier of fire, found Brynhild, whom he thought to be

a knight until he had ripped up her coat of mail with his sword, and

awakened her. Learning the name of her deliverer, Brynhild cried out:

"Hail to thee, Day, come back!

Hail, sons of the Daylight!

Hail to thee, daughter of night!

Look with kindly eyes down

On us sitting here lonely,

And give us the gain that we long for."[G]

VIII.

We reach the last drama of the trilogy.

In the joy of his new-found love Siegfried forgets his mission.

Brünnhilde teaches him wisdom (recall how the ancient Teutons

reverenced the utterance of their women), and he gives her the baneful

circlet as the badge of his love. He goes out in search of adventure,

and, separated from the protecting influence of woman's love, he

falls a victim to the wiles of Hagen, the Niblung's son. Alberich had

warned Hagen that so great was Siegfried's love for Brünnhilde that

were she to ask it he would restore the ring to the Rhine nixies. This

must be prevented, and Hagen has a plan ready. With a magic drink he

robs Siegfried of all memory of Brünnhilde, and the hero, to gain a

new love, puts on his _Tarnhelm_ and rudely drags Brünnhilde from her

flame-encircled retreat.

To Wagner's skill in expressing the miraculous in music is due the

effectiveness of two scenes highly essential to the ethical scheme of

the tragedy and very difficult to present in a dramatic form. The music

accompanying the drink alone makes it possible to realize that the

fateful change has taken place in Siegfried. He looks into the horn and

pledges Brünnhilde:

"Were I to forget

All thou gav'st,

One lesson I'll never

Unlearn in my life.

This morning-drink,

In measureless love,

Brünnhild, I pledge to thee!"[H]

Niemann puts the horn from his lips, and we know that a change has

taken place in the man. It is the mystical property of that weird music

that brings us this consciousness. We could not believe it if acts or

words alone were relied on to make the publication.

Again has love been wronged. The guilt of a tragic hero may be

unconsciously committed; still he must yield to fate. Chance puts the

opportunity in the way of Siegfried to prevent the ring from falling

into the hands of the powers inimical to the gods; but he proudly puts

it aside because the demand of the Rhine daughters was coupled with a

threat. Brünnhilde had also spurned the opportunity, but in her case

the motive was her great love for Siegfried, which made her prize the

ring, as its visible sign, above the welfare of the gods. That love,

misguided, causes the death of the hero. Brünnhilde, learning of

Siegfried's unconscious treachery, gives her aid to the Niblung's son.

Only his death clears away the mystery. Then she expiates her crime and

his with her life, and from her ashes the Rhine daughters recover the

ring.

"The ultimate question concerning the correctness or effectiveness of

Wagner's system must be answered along with the question, Does the

music touch the emotions, quicken the fancy, fire the imagination? If

it does this we may, to a great extent, if we wish, get along without

the intellectual process of reflection and comparison conditioned upon

a recognition of his themes and their uses. But if we do this, we will

also lose the pleasure which it is the province of memory sometimes

to give;"[I] for a beautiful constructive use of the themes is for

reminiscence. The culminating scene of the tragedy furnishes us an

illustration of the twofold delight which Wagner's music can give: the

simply sensuous and the sensuous intensified by intellectual activity.

I refer to the death of Siegfried. As Siegfried, seated among Gunther's

men, who are resting from the chase, tells the story of his life, we

hear a recapitulation of the musical score of the second and third acts

of "Siegfried" the drama. He starts up in an outburst of enthusiasm as

he reaches the account of Brünnhilde's awaking, which is interrupted

by the flight of Wotan's ravens, who go to inform the god that the end

is nearing. He turns to look after the departing birds, when Hagen

plunges a spear into his back. The music to which the hero, regaining

his memory, breathes out his life, is that ecstasy in tones to which

Siegfried's kiss had inspired the orchestra in the last scene of the

preceding drama. Why is this? Because, as Siegfried's last thoughts

before taking the dreadful draught which robbed him of his memory

were of Brünnhilde, so his first thoughts were of her when his memory

was restored. Before his dying eyes there is only the picture of her

awaking, till the last ray of light bears to him Brünnhilde's greeting:

"Brünnhild!

Hallowed bride!

Awaken! Open thine eyes!

Who again has doomed thee

To dismal slumber?

Who binds thee in bonds of sleep?

The awakener came,

His kiss awoke thee;

Once more he broke

The bonds of his bride;

Then shared he Brünnhild's delight!

Ah! those eyes

Are open forever!

Ah! how sweet

Is her swelling breath!

Delicious destruction--

Ecstatic awe--

Brünnhild gives greeting--to me!"

This reminiscent love-music gives way to the Death March, which, from a

purely structural point of view, is an epitome of much that is salient

in the musical investiture of the entire tetralogy, yet in spirit is a

veritable apotheosis, a marvellously eloquent proclamation of antique

grief and heroic sorrow. This music loses nothing in being listened

to as absolute music. Never mind that in obedience to his system of

development Wagner has passed the life of Siegfried in review in

the score. The orchestra has a nobler mission here. It is to make a

proclamation which neither singers nor pantomimists nor stage mechanism

and pictures can make.

The hero is dead!

What does it mean to him?

Union with Brünnhilde--restoration to that love of which he had been

foully robbed.

What to his fellows in the play?

The end of a Teutonic hero of the olden kind. He is dead; they are

awed at the catastrophe and they grieve; but their grief is mixed with

thoughts of the prowess of the dead man and the exalted state into

which he has entered. A Valkyria has kissed his wounds, and Wotan has

made place for him at his board in Valhalla. There, surrounded by the

elect of Wotan's wishmaidens, he is drinking mead and singing songs of

mighty sonority--Viking songs like Ragnar Lodbrok's: "We smote with

swords."

Is there room here for modern mourning; for shrouding crape and

darkened rooms and sighs and tears and hopeless grief? No. The proper

expression is a hymn, a pæan, a musical apotheosis; and this is what

Wagner gives us until the funeral train enters Gutrune's house and the

expression of sorrow goes over to the deceived wife.

But what does this march mean to us who have been trying to study the

real meaning of the tragedy? The catastrophe which is to usher in

the new era of love. Search for a musical symbol for the redeeming

principle. It cannot appear in its fulness till the old order,

changing, gives place to the new; but still we may find it in the

prevision of a woman to whom the shadow of death gave mystical lore. A

new song was put into the mouth of Sieglinde when Brünnhilde acclaimed

her child, yet unborn, as destined to be the loftiest hero of earth.

She poured out her gratitude in a prophetic strain in which we may, if

we wish, hear the Valkyria celebrated as the loving, redeeming woman

of the last portion of the tragedy. Out of that melody, and out of a

phrase in the love duet in which Brünnhilde blesses the mother who

gave birth to the glorious hero, grew the phrase in which, in "Die

Götterdämmerung," Brünnhilde, Valkyria no longer, is symbolized in her

new character as loving woman. But when the flames from Siegfried's

funeral pile reach Valhalla, when by a stupendous achievement the

poet-composer recapitulates the incidents of the tragedy in his

orchestral postlude, while pompous brass and strident basses depict

the destruction of Valhalla, the end of the old world of greed of gold

and lust of power, this melody, the symbol of redeeming love, soars

high into ethereal regions on the wings of the violins, and its last

transfigured harmonies proclaim the advent of a new heaven and a new

earth under the dominion of love. 'Tis the "Woman's Soul" leading us

"upward and on:"

[Illustration: score]

FOOTNOTES:

[D] _Walhall. Germanische Götter und Heldensagen._ Felix Dahn and

Therese Dahn. Kreutznach, 1888.

[E] _Vide_ Magnusson and Morris.

[F] Professor Dippold's translation.

[G] Dippold. Wagner's poem, "The Ring of the Nibelung," p. 61.

[H] Professor Dippold's translation.

[I] See page 35.

CHAPTER V.

"PARSIFAL."

The last of Wagner's dramas is not only mystical in its subject,

but also in the manner in which it confronts the critical student.

In Bayreuth it exerts a most puissant influence upon the spectator

and listener; but when one has escaped the sweet thraldom of the

representation, and reflection takes the place of experience, there

arise a multitude of doubts touching the essential merit of the drama.

These doubts do not go to the effectiveness of "Parsifal" as an

artistic entertainment. If they did they would arise in the course of

the representation and hinder enjoyment. Against what, then, do they

direct themselves?

An answer to this question must precede our study of the drama.

I.

"Parsifal" is not a drama in the ordinary acceptation of the term;

yet it is a drama in the antique sense. It is a religious play; but,

again, not a religious play in the general sense in which Wagner's

mythological tetralogy may be said to be a religious play; it is

specifically a Christian play. It is contemplation of it in this

light which gives the student pause. There are indications in the

records of Wagner's intellectual activity that he wrote it to take

the place of two dramas which had occupied his mind many years before

"Parsifal" was written. The first of these dramas, which he sketched

in 1848, was a tragedy entitled "Jesus of Nazareth;" the second, which

he planned in 1856, was entitled "The Victors," and was based on a

Hindu legend. Its hero was to be Chaka-Munyi--the Buddha. In a manner,

it may be said, these two dramas were blended in "Parsifal," but,

strangely enough, that blending was accomplished so as to bring into

prominence a conception of religion more in harmony with the feeling of

Buddhistic, or mediæval asceticism than with the sentiments of modern

Christianity. Wagner's Jesus of Nazareth was a purely human philosopher

who preached the saving grace of love, and sought to redeem his time

from the domination of conventional law--the offspring of selfishness.

His philosophy was socialism imbued with love. Wagner's Buddha, on the

other hand, was the familiar apostle of abnegation and asceticism. The

heroism of the lovers Ananda and Prakriti was to have been displayed in

their voluntary renunciation of the union, towards which love impelled

them. They were to accept the teachings of the Buddha, take the vow of

chastity, and live thereafter in the holy community.

When Wagner came to write his Christian drama he put aside his human

Christ, accepted the doctrine of the Atonement with all its mystical

elements, but endowed his hero with scarcely another merit than that

which had become the ideal of monkish theologians under the influence

of fearful moral depravity and fanatical superstition, as far removed

from the teachings and example of his original hero as the heavens

are from the earth. After having eloquently proclaimed the ethical

idea which is at the basis of all the really beautiful mythologies

and religions of the world, and embodied it in "The Flying Dutchman,"

"Tannhäuser," and "The Niblung's Ring"--the idea that salvation

comes to humanity through the redeeming love of woman--he produced a

drama in which the central idea, so far as the dramatic spectacle is

concerned, is a glorification of a conception of sanctity which grew

out of a monstrous perversion of womanhood, and a wicked degradation of

womankind.

This, I say, is the case "so far as the dramatic spectacle is

concerned." Of course there is much more in "Parsifal" than a

celebration of the principal feature in mediæval asceticism, but I am

speaking now of the things which fill the vision during representation,

which inspire a feeling of awe at the time, but afterwards irritate and

confound the reflective faculty. So far as the spectacle is concerned,

the heroism of Parsifal is not that of the Divine Being, of whom Wagner

does not hesitate to make him a symbol, but that of a desert recluse.

This contradiction of the modern sense of propriety is accentuated by

the means resorted to by Wagner for the sake of identifying the hero

with his lofty prototype. In the third act, scenes are borrowed from

the life of Christ, and Parsifal is made to play in them as the central

figure; Kundry anoints the feet of the knight and dries them with

her hair; Parsifal baptizes Kundry and absolves her from sin. These

acts, and the resistance of Kundry's seductions in the Magic Garden,

make up, for the greater part, the sum of the acts of a hero in whom

the spectator wishes to see, on the one hand, some of the attributes

of the heroes of the profoundly poetical romances from which the

subject-matter of the drama was drawn, or, on the other, some evidences

of that nobility and that gentleness of conduct, and that fine sanity

of thought which marked the life of Him of whom it has been said that

he was

"The best of men

That e'er wore earth about him--

A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,

The first true gentleman that ever breathed."

These things, taken in connection with the adoration of the Holy Grail,

which makes up so much of the action of the drama, and the worship of

the Sacred Lance, seem to us of the nineteenth century like little

else than relics of the monkish superstitions of the early Middle

Ages. Under them, it is true, there is much deep philosophy, and the

symbolism of the drama is surcharged with meaning; but a recognition

of the paradox is necessary, the better to appreciate the fact that

the essence of "Parsifal" lies less in what is seen on the stage than

in what the things seen stand for. To appreciate the work at its full

worth it must be accepted for the lesson which it inculcates, and

that lesson must be accepted in the spirit of the time which produced

the materials of the drama. The ethical idea of the drama is that it

is the enlightenment which comes through conscious pity that brings

salvation. The allusion is to the redemption of man by the sufferings

and compassionate death of Christ; and that stupendous tragedy is the

pre-figuration of the mimic tragedy which Wagner has constructed. The

spectacle to which he invites us, and with which he hopes to impress us

and move us to an acceptance of the lesson underlying his drama, is the

adoration of the Holy Grail, cast in the form of a mimicry of the Last

Supper, bedizened with some of the glittering pageantry of mediæval

knighthood and romance. The trial to which the hero is subjected is

that with which the folk-lore of all times and peoples, as well as

their monkish legends, have made us familiar: the hero proves his

fitness for his divine calling, and accomplishes it by withstanding the

temptations which Ulysses withstood on the Delightful Island where he

met Calypso, to which Tannhäuser succumbed in the grotto of Venus.

Though "Parsifal" endures a separation of its poetic, scenic, and

musical elements less graciously than any other drama of its creator,

it is the music which must be relied on to bring about a reconciliation

between modern thought and feeling, and the monkish theology and relic

worship which I have discussed. The music reflects the spirit of

that Divine Passion which is the kernel of theological Christianity.

There is extremely little music in the score, which is descriptive of

external things--less than in any other of Wagner's works except "Die

Meistersinger." It is like that of "Tristan und Isolde," which deals

much more with mental and psychic states than with the outward things

of nature. It is music for the imagination rather than the fancy. In

listening to it one can be helped by bearing in mind the distinction so

beautifully made by Ruskin:

"The fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the

outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail.

"The imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt,

but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted in its giving out of

outer detail.

"Fancy, as she stays at the externals, can never feel. She is one of

the hardest-hearted of the intellectual faculties, or, rather, one of

the most purely and simply intellectual. She cannot be made serious,

no edge-tool but she will play with; whereas the imagination is in all

things the reverse. She cannot be but serious; she sees too far, too

darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly ever to smile. There is something

in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, that we shall not be

inclined to laugh at.

"Now observe, while as it penetrates into the nature of things, the

imagination is pre-eminently a beholder of things as they are, it

is, in its creative function, an eminent beholder of things when and

where they are not; a seer, that is, in the prophetic sense, calling

the things that are not as though they were; and forever delighting

to dwell on that which is not tangibly present.... Fancy plays like

a squirrel in its circular prison and is happy; but imagination is a

pilgrim on the earth, and her home is in heaven."

The fundamental elements of the music of "Parsifal" are suffering and

aspiration. When they are apprehended the ethical purpose of the drama

becomes plain. But not till then.

II.

The investigations of scholars determined long ago that the legend

which is at the bottom of Wagner's drama is formed of two portions

which were once distinct. One of these portions is concerned with

the origin and wanderings of the Holy Grail prior to the time when it

became the object of the Quest which occupied so much of the attention

of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table; the second portion is

concerned with that Quest. The relative age of the two portions of the

legend and the genesis of each have caused much controversy, which has

thrown a great deal of light on mediæval civilization. We are little

concerned in that controversy, however, except so far as it enlightens

us as to the real nature of the legend, and helps us to understand how

the Grail became the loftiest symbol of Christian faith, and the Grail

Quest the highest duty of Christian knighthood.

Formerly it was believed that the Grail was the product of Christian

legends which had become grafted on the Arthurian romances. Now it

is asserted, and with much show of probability, that the Grail, like

those romances, is Celtic in origin, and became what it is represented

in the legend by being endowed with a symbolism which originally it

lacked. For our view of the case, since we are not concerned with

literary criticism, this, too, is a matter of indifference, except so

far as it helps us to understand a proposition much broader and more

significant. The Holy Grail and the Seeker after it are both relics

of what, long before Christianity was in existence, was a universal

possession among Aryan peoples. Each has a multitude of prototypes

among the mythological apparatus and personages of the peoples of

the Indo-European family. To the class of popular heroes which figure

in the tales whose essential elements Von Hahn has formulated in his

_Arische Aussetzung und Rückkehr Formel_ (see Chapter IV.), Parsifal

belongs as well as Siegfried. A parallel between the two might be

carried through many details of their early life and riper adventures.

Both are born to a mother, far from her home, of a father who is dead;

both are brought up in a wilderness; both are in youth passionate

and violent of disposition; both are thrown for companionship on the

animals of the forests in which they are reared. There are other

elements held in common by the tales of which Wagner makes no mention

in his version of the Percival legend. A significant one is the mending

of a broken sword, a talisman, which act in the old Percival legends,

as well as in the tale of Siegfried, is the sign of the hero's election

to a high mission; but this need not now detain us.

Wagner has been much criticized for changing the name of his hero

from Percival or Percivale, as we know it in English literature, and

Parzival, as he found it in the greatest of all the Grail epics, that

of Wolfram von Eschenbach, to Parsifal. Criticism of this kind is

often wasted. In making the change Wagner exercised a poet's privilege

for an obvious purpose--he made the name an index of his hero's moral

character. The suggestion came from Görres. According to this scholar,

whose derivation has long been set aside as fanciful, _Fal_ in the

Arabian tongue signifies "foolish," and _Parsi_ "pure one." By changing

the order of the words we obtain Parsi-fal--pure, or guileless, fool.

It is thus that Kundry expounds his name to the hero in Wagner's drama,

when she tells him the story of his birth. In Wolfram's poem he is also

called foolish because his mother dressed him in motley when he left

her, broken-hearted, to go out into the world in search of knighthood.

The French Perceval signifies simply one who goes "through the Valley."

A Welsh tale of at least equal antiquity with the preserved French

romances calls the hero Peredur, which has been interpreted into "the

seeker after the basin or the dish," this signification being again in

harmony with the principal incident of the French form of the legend,

_greal_ in old French meaning a dish. Wolfram, under the influence

of his model, claims nothing for the name of his hero except that

it means "right through the middle," but Meyer-Markau, who seems to

have accepted the theory that the tale is originally Keltic, strove

to give dramatic propriety to the name by pointing out that in Welsh,

Breton, and Cornish, _par_ signifies lad; _syw_, in Welsh, clad or

decorated, and _fall_, scantily, poorly, ill, foolishly, wretchedly.

Out of these words, then, he compounded _Par-syw-fall_, a lad who is

ill-clad. Plausibility, if nothing else, is lent to this derivation by

the circumstances under which the hero's mother sent him out into the

world. In the hope that the rude treatment which would be heaped upon

him would return him to her arms, she dressed him in fool's clothing:

"'Thorenkleider soll mein Kind

An seinem lichten Leibe tragen:

Schlägt und rauft man ihn darum,

So kommt er mir wohl wieder.'

Weh, was litt die Arme da!

Nun nahm sie grobes Sacktuch her

Und schnitt ihm Hemd und Hose draus

In einem Stück, das bis zum Knie

Des nackten Beins nur reichte.

Das war als Narrenkleid bekannt.

Oben sah man eine Kappe."[J]

III.

Interesting as this speculation is, however, we are now concerned only

with one element of it. Whatever his name may signify, it is obvious

that Parsifal was an innocent, a _simplex_, a fool. It is this trait

which enables us to identify him with his prototype in Aryan folk-lore.

He is the hero of what the English folk-lorists call "The Great Fool

Tales," and the Germans "_Dümmlingsmärchen_." In the following outline

of a very old poetic narrative of the Kelts, called by students "The

Lay of the Great Fool," may be found all that part of Parsifal's

youthful history which, in Wagner's drama, is learned either from his

own lips or those of Kundry:

Once there were two knightly brothers, of whom one was childless while

the other had two sons. A strife breaks out between them, and the

father is slain with his sons. The wicked knight then sends word to

the widow that if she should give birth to another son, he, too, must

be put to death. She does give birth to a son, and to save his life

sends him into the wilderness to be reared by a kitchen wench who has

a love-son. The lads grow up strong and hardy. One day the knightly

lad runs down a deer, kills it, and of its skin makes himself a motley

suit of clothes. He slays his foster-brother for laughing at him in

his strange dress, catches a wild horse, rides to his uncle's palace,

and though when asked his name he can only answer "Great Fool," he is

recognized. Thus his adventures begin. He avenges the wrongs of his

mother. This Great Fool is the original Seeker after the Grail.

IV.

Among the oldest manuscripts which contain the Quest story there are

two which make no mention of the Holy Grail as a Christian relic or

symbol. The most interesting of these is Welsh, and is known as

the Mabinogi (_i. e._, the Juvenile Tale) of "Peredur, the Son of

Evrawc." It is an Arthurian story, and the majority of its adventures

are identical with those of Percival. Its beginning is a parallel of

"The Lay of the Great Fool." The Holy Grail of the Percival romances

is replaced by a bleeding lance, a bloody head on a salver, and a

silver dish. These talismans are brought into the hall of a castle

belonging to a lame king, and are greeted with loud lamentations by the

assembled knights. In the French romances the talismans are the Holy

Grail and the bleeding lance, the latter being identified, as in Sir

Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur," with the spear with which Longinus

opened the side of the crucified Christ. As Percival is condemned in

these romances for a long time to wander in fruitless search of this

castle, because having seen the wonders he did not ask their meaning,

so Peredur, in the Welsh romance, is cursed in the Court of King Arthur

for a similar neglect. Had he asked, the lame king would have got well

of his wound, and Peredur would have proved his fitness to avenge the

death of his cousin, who was the lame king's son, and had been killed

by the sorceresses of Gloucester. After many trials, tallying with

those of Percival in the French romances and Parzival in Wolfram's

poem, Peredur finds the castle again (where he had on his first visit

united the pieces of a broken sword and cut through an iron staple,

as Siegfried split the anvil), is recognized as the nephew of the

king, and avenges his cousin's death by leading Arthur and his knights

against the sorceresses of Gloucester. There are some allusions to the

Christian religion in the old tale, but essentially it is pagan. The

bloody head and bleeding lance are part of ancient British legendary

apparatus.

A bleeding lance, says Mr. Alfred Nutt,[K] is the bardic symbol of

undying hatred of the Saxon. Here it bled till the death of Peredur's

cousin was avenged. The bloody head was the head of that cousin.

V.

We find in Parsifal on his entrance only a thoughtless, impetuous

forest lad, unlearned in the affairs of life, utterly unconscious of

its conventions--in short, another young Siegfried. He is the hero of

the "Great Fool" stories, but in the process of Christianizing the

character a new meaning has been given to the epithet. He is a chosen

vessel for a divine deed, because he is a pure or guileless fool. In

this, though the suggestion was derived from the old Aryan folk-tales,

we are obliged to see a new, a Christian symbolism, the spirit of

which may be found in Christ's words, "Whosoever shall not receive the

kingdom of God as a _little child_ shall not enter it." In Wagner's

conception of the legend it was necessary that the hero be one as

guiltless of all knowledge of sin as he was of the necessity and nature

of salvation. Enlightenment was to come to him through compassion or

fellow-suffering, and this enlightenment was to enable him in turn

to resist temptation and bring surcease of suffering to Amfortas,

Kundry, and the community of Grail knights. In his musical phrase as

it enters the drama with him one may hear chiefly his youthful energy,

but also a certain innate dignity, a germ of nobility which contains

the possibility of the stupendous proclamation which greets him on

his entrance into the Castle of the Grail in the last act. But there

is another element in the typical music of "Parsifal" which chiefly

we recognize in its bright, assertive, militant rhythm. It is the

chivalric element which may also be noticed in the brilliant phrase

with which Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, is greeted by the populace

in the earlier drama of Wagner's. This kinship need not be set down as

fanciful. There are few features of Wagnerian study more interesting

than the tracing of spiritual and material parallels between the

composer's own melodies. As a writer uses forms of expression which

resemble each other to express related ideas, so Wagner has frequently

recurred in his later works to melodic phrases and modulations which

he had used with like intent many years before. In two cases he made

a direct quotation. Hans Sachs's allusion to the story of Tristram

and Iseult in Act III. of "Die Meistersinger" is accompanied by the

fundamental melody of "Tristan und Isolde," and the swan which Parsifal

kills comes fluttering across the scene and dies to a reminiscence of

the swan harmonies in "Lohengrin."

In his character as the mystically chosen Agent of the Grail and the

instrument of salvation, Parsifal is also typified in the music by the

phrase to which the oracular promise which appeared on the Holy Vessel

is repeated in the first scene, and again with great solemnity in the

ceremony of the Adoration of the Grail.

VI.

Prototypes of the Quest of the Grail and of the Quester have been found

in popular tales which have nothing to do with Christianity. Until the

talisman became a symbol of religion, the object of the search for it

was simply the performance of a sacred duty by the hero to his family,

by avenging a death, healing the lingering illness of a relative, or

in some instances (which connect the Grail legends with stories of

the Barbarossa kind) to bring freedom to individuals whose lives have

been miraculously and burdensomely prolonged. The talisman itself is

to be found in a multitude of forms, from the dawn of literature down

to today. To recognize it we must study its properties rather than its

shape or material. In the legend of the Holy Grail it is the chalice

used by Christ

"At the last sad supper with his own,"

in which afterwards his blood was caught. In one form of the

legend--that which is most familiar, because of Tennyson's "Idyls of

the King"--this cup is carried to Great Britain by Joseph of Arimathea

and deposited at Glastonbury. In another form, which was that adopted

by Wagner, it is given into the keeping of Titurel, who builds a

sanctuary for it on Monsalvat (the Mountain of Salvation), where it is

guarded by a body of knights obviously organized on the model of the

Knights Templars of the Crusades. It is not always a cup. Wolfram von

Eschenbach describes it as a jewel. But whether stone or cup (and we

shall find prototypes of both forms) its miraculous properties are of

two kinds.

The first of these properties is purely physical: the talisman feeds

its possessor; the second is spiritual: the talisman is a touchstone,

an oracle. In the perfect form of the legend both these properties are

united, as we see in Wagner's drama: the Grail chooses those who are

to serve it, and nourishes them miraculously. It also predicts the

coming of Parsifal. This is the case, too, in Wolfram's poem, where

the names of the elect appear in glowing letters upon the jewel, and

its guardian knights, whom Wolfram calls _Templeisen_, are fed by it,

this miraculous power being refreshed every Friday by the coming of

a dove bringing the sacred host and placing it upon the jewel, which

Wolfram calls the "Graal," in defiance of the etymology which makes

the word mean dish. Wolfram calls it "_lapsit exillis_;" but Wolfram,

though he composed the grandest of all mediæval poems, could neither

read nor write, so his Latin has caused not a little brain-cudgelling

among the learned. A most ingenious guess is that of Professor Martin,

who thinks _lapsit exillis_ is a corruption of _lapsi de Cælis_--that

is, the stone of him who fell from heaven. In support of this there

is the poem about the contest of the minstrels in the Wartburg, which

describes the Grail as a jewel which fell from the crown of Lucifer

when the Archangel Michael tore it from his head. This origin of the

Grail connects it with the black stone in the Kaaba at Mecca, which was

originally white, but has been blackened by the sins of mankind. The

legend says that it was once the angel set as a guard over Adam. He was

cast down from heaven in the form of a stone for being derelict in duty.

The Grail's property of furnishing sustenance is the possession of so

many talismans of ancient story that it would be a waste of space to

enumerate them all. The most striking examples must suffice. A horn was

the earliest drinking-vessel. The horn which the nymph Amalthea gave to

Hercules, whose memory we still preserve in those pretty toys called

cornucopias--horns of plenty--is easily recalled in this connection.

The Grail is nothing else than the Philosopher's Stone which was to

transmute all baser metals into gold; it is the stone which Noah was

commanded to hang up in the Ark that it might give out light; it is

the goblet which Oberon gave to Huon of Bordeaux, which in the hands

of a good man became filled with wine; it is the golden cup which was

given to Hercules by the sun-god Helios; it is the cup of Hermes, which

played a part in the Eleusinian mysteries; it is the magic napkin or

table-cloth of Aryan fairy-lore which produced all manner of food

simply for the wishing; it has its fellows in three of the thirteen

Rarities of Kingly Regalia which were preserved in Arthur's Court at

Caerleon, viz., the horn of Bran the Hardy of the North--the drink

that might be desired of it would appear as soon as wished for; the

Budget or Basket of Gwyddno with the High Crown--provision for a single

person if put into it multiplied a hundredfold; the table-cloth (in one

manuscript it is called the dish) of Rhydderch the Scholar--whatever

victuals or drink were wished thereon were instantly obtained. It is

the stone in the serpent's tail told about in the old Welsh story of

Peredur, the virtue of which was that it would give as much gold to

the possessor as he might desire. It is the magic ring Draupnir of

Scandinavian mythology which every ninth night dropped eight other

rings of equal weight and fineness.

But of prototypes of this class the most striking in its relation to

the Holy Grail is found in the legendary lore of the primitive home of

the Aryan race. Long ago the Holy Grail was the Golden Cup of Jamshid,

King of the Genii in Persia, the power of which extended his career

over seven hundred years, and then left him to die because he failed

to look upon it for ten days. Here we have a parallel of the legend of

Joseph of Arimathea, of whom it is said that the Jews having thrown

him into a subterranean prison after he and Nicodemus had prepared

the body of Christ for burial, Christ appeared to him and brought the

chalice which he had used at the Last Supper, and in which Joseph had

caught the blood which flowed from his wounds. The sight of this dish

kept Joseph alive forty-two years, until he was released by the Emperor

Vespasian, who had been miraculously cured of leprosy in his youth by

a touch of the kerchief of Veronica with which Christ wiped his face

while on his way to Calvary. Like Joseph of Arimathea, Wagner's Titurel

lives in his grave, being sustained by the Grail until Amfortas refuses

longer to unveil it.

The second property of the Grail, its spiritual property, is also found

in the talismans of ancient folk-lore. It was possessed by the silver

cup which Joseph in Egypt had put into Benjamin's sack that he might

be brought back to him. "Up, follow after the men; and when thou dost

overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for

good? Is not this it in which my lord drinketh and whereby, indeed,

he divineth?"[L] There is a Hebrew legend (told in the _Clavicula

Salomonis_) to the effect that "the supernatural knowledge of Solomon

was recorded in a volume which Rehoboam inclosed in an ivory ewer and

deposited in his father's tomb. On repairing the sepulchre, some wise

men of Babylon discovered the cup, and having extracted the volume,

an angel revealed the key to its mysterious writing to one Troes, a

Greek, and hence the stream of occult science which has so beneficially

unfolded the destinies of the West."[M] There is a parallel story in

Greek literature telling how, warned by the Delphic oracle, Aristomenes

secreted an article while the Lacedemonians were storming the fortress

of Mount Ira. The article was to be a talisman for the future security

of the Messinians. When, later, the talisman was exhumed it was "found

to be a brazen ewer containing a roll of finely-beaten tin on which

were inscribed the mysteries of the great divinities."[N] The Holy

Grail is a divining-cup: it speaks oracularly, like its prototypes. It

was not only the chalice from which Christ drank at the Last Supper,

but also the dish which discovered Judas as the future betrayer of his

master: "He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall

betray me."[O]

VII.

The Grail romances, as we possess them, were written within the fifty

years compassing the last quarter of the twelfth and the first quarter

of the thirteenth centuries--that is to say, while the third and fourth

crusades were in progress, and the memory of the supposed discoveries

of the sacred cup and lance were still fresh in the minds of Europeans.

This fact furnishes ample suggestion as to how such talismans as I have

mentioned became transformed into the relics of Christ's passion. It

was by a literary process that has always been familiar to the world.

The species of belief or superstition which inspired the transformation

is not yet dead. If we are to believe Father Ignatius the miracle of

the Grail vision was repeated but recently at Llanthony Abbey in Wales,

where an Episcopal monk saw the chalice shining through the oaken doors

of the cabinet which enclosed it. That is a Christian form of the

belief; evidences of a pagan may be observed in nearly all civilized

communities almost any date. When you see a baby cutting its teeth upon

a red bit of bone, or ivory shaped like a branch of coral and tricked

out with bells, you see a relic of an unspeakably ancient superstition

closely allied to the belief in these miraculous talismans. When you

see a baby with a string of red coral beads around its neck you see

another. In Wagner, as in Tennyson, the Grail shines red:

"Fainter by day, but always in the night

Blood-red, and sliding down the blacken'd marsh

Blood-red, and on the naked mountain-top

Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below

Blood-red."

Now note this truth of vast significance: the essential element in the

Grail, whether seen as a chalice or as a salver containing a head,

_is the blood_. The meaning of this need not be sought far. The human

imagination cannot be projected into the past sufficiently far to

picture the time when the awful idea of a bloody atonement did not

confront humanity. Hence it is that in pagan mythology blood is the

symbol of creative power, as the cups, horns, dishes, ewers, were

symbols of fecundity, abundance, and vivification. The essence of the

Grail myth is the reproductive power of the blood of a slain god. The

application which lies so near in a study of the Christian symbolism

of the Grail cannot fail. I omit it in order to trace the evolution

of the idea in a pagan talisman whose history the ingenuity of Dr.

Gustave Oppert, a German _savant_, has disclosed to us. When Perseus

cut off the head of the Medusa he placed the bleeding member on the

sward near the sea-coast. The blood transformed the grass that it dyed

into a red stone which was found to have marvellous healing power.

This belief is expressed in the poems descriptive of the virtues of

stones which are attributed to Orpheus. Dr. Oppert traces the record

touching the curative powers of coral into the book of a Christian

bishop of the twelfth century, and thence into a Latin work printed

in Strassburg in 1473, in which allusions to the Orphic songs and

the Christian religion are blended. Wolfram's alleged model, Kyot,

professes to have derived his account of the Grail from the book of a

pagan called Flegetanis, written in Arabic and deposited at Toledo.

Now, Dr. Oppert finds an Arabic physician and philosopher of the tenth

century who describes coral as having a strengthening and nourishing

influence upon the heart, which belief seems recognized again in a bit

of mediæval etymology which compounds the word of _cor_ and _alere_.

Mediæval Latin poems express the belief that peculiar properties of

sustenance are possessed by coral, and, finally, in a book entitled

_Musæum Metallicum_ it is defined as a memorial of the blood of Christ.

In its physical attributes coral and the Grail are now identical. Had

Dr. Oppert wished, he might have gone further and quoted Pliny's remark

that the Indian soothsayers and diviners "look upon coral as an amulet

endowed with sacred properties and a sure preservative against all

dangers; hence it is that they equally value it as an ornament and as

an object of devotion."[P] Here spiritual properties are attributed

to it; but also physical. Pliny says that calcined coral is used

as an ingredient for compositions for the eyes; that it makes flesh

(very significant this) in cavities left by ulcers. In his day it was

hung about the necks of infants to preserve them against danger. The

Romans thought that it preserved and fastened the teeth of children

when hung about their necks. Paracelsus prescribed coral necklaces as

preservatives "against fits, sorcery, charms, and poison," and an old

English writer makes it disclose the presence of sickness in a wearer

by turning pale and wan. Here it is a touchstone, and this superstition

has penetrated to the United States. In our day I have been told by

devoted mothers that coral beads strengthen the eyes. When the present

Crown-prince of Italy was born in Naples the municipality presented the

royal babe with a coral cradle.

Thus much for the genesis of the Grail, its Quest, and its Quester. We

have seen that they are all relics of a time antedating Christianity;

but that fact only adds interest to them, for even in their pagan

guises they show those potential attributes which adapted them to

receive the lofty symbolism which they acquired under the influence of

Christianity.

VIII.

It is in the prelude to the drama that the fundamental elements of

suffering and aspiration are most eloquently proclaimed. The visible

symbol of suffering among the personages of the play is Amfortas. He,

too, has come into the Christianized legend from the secular romances

and folk-tales. In the earlier forms he is simply the representative

of unsatisfied vengeance, symbolized in the bardic emblem of the

bleeding lance. In the French romances and Wolfram's poem he is a royal

fisherman--a singular fact, which critics with a taste for hidden

meanings have sought to explain by references to the circumstance

that in the early Church a fish was a symbol for Christ, the letters

composing its name in Greek, ICHTHYS, being the initial letters of the

brief but comprehensive creed, _Iesous Christos, Theou Yios, Soter_

(Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour). But always, even in the Welsh tale,

he is a sufferer whose healing depends on the asking of a question by

a predestined hero. In the Mabinogi of Peredur and the French romances

the question goes simply to the meaning of the talismans which are

solemnly displayed. Wolfram deepens the ethical significance of the

question immeasurably by changing it to "What ails thee, uncle?" It is

the sympathy thus manifested that brings the fisher-king's sufferings

to an end; and the failure to ask the question on the first visit,

through a too literal interpretation of the advice given while Parzival

was receiving his education in chivalry, is the cause of the long

wanderings and many trials which test and temper the religious nature

of Parzival. Wagner, by ignoring the question which plays so important

a role in all the other versions, and making the healing of Amfortas

depend upon a touch of the sacred lance, has gained a theatrical effect

at the expense of a profoundly beautiful ethical principle. He has also

laid himself open to a charge of inconsistency which, strangely enough,

seems to have escaped the attention of his many inimical critics in

Germany. The prohibited question is the dramatic _motif_ upon which the

story of Percival's son, Lohengrin, is reared:

"Nie sollst du mich befragen,

Noch Wissens Sorge tragen,

Woher ich kam der Fahrt,

Noch wie mein Nam' und Art!"

The reason of the prohibition may be learned from Wolfram von

Eschenbach. The sufferings of Amfortas having been needlessly prolonged

by Parzival's failure to ask the healing question, the Knights of the

Grail thereafter refused to permit themselves to be questioned:

"Als die Taufe nun geschen,

Fand am Grale man geschrieben:

'Welchen Templer Gottes Hand

Fremdem Volk zum Herren gäbe,

Fragen sollt' er widerraten

Nach seinem Namen und Geschlecht,

Und dann zum Recht ihm helfen.

Wird die Frage doch gethan,

So bleibt er ihnen länger nicht.'

Weil der gute Amfortas

So lang im bittern Schemerzen lag,

Und ihn die Frage lange mied,

Ist ihnen alles Fragen leid:

All des Grales Dienstgesellen

Wolln sich nicht mehr fragen lassen."[Q]

Wagner utilized the _motif_ in "Lohengrin," but ignored it in

"Parsifal."

The suffering of Amfortas, which came upon him because he, the King of

the Grail, fell from the estate of bodily purity enjoined by the rules

of the order, receives more eloquent expression than any of the other

feelings which enter the drama. In Wagner's philosophical scheme it,

as well as the tortures of conscience felt by Parsifal when Kundry's

impure kiss awakens him to consciousness of transgression, recalls the

vicarious suffering of Christ on the Cross. In the personal history of

Parsifal, furthermore, it is associated with the death-agonies of his

mother, who died because he left her to go in search of knighthood.

The name of this mother Wagner changes so that it becomes a symbol of

pain. It is Herzeleide--that is, Heart's-sorrow, or Heart's-suffering,

the antithesis of our sweet English word Heart's-ease. The phrases

which give the predominant mood of agony and pain to the music of the

drama, which, as I have already said, reflect the spirit of theological

Christianity, salvation through sacrifice, are these:

_First._ The melody to which in the ceremony of the Adoration of the

Grail the sacramental formula is pronounced: "Take ye My Body, take My

Blood, in token of our Love."

_Second._ The personal melody of Amfortas.

_Third._ The symbol of Herzeleide. Parsifal's mother, does not enter

the drama, but is only spoken of; yet a typical phrase is allotted to

her, and is introduced for the first time under circumstances that

are profoundly poetical and pathetic. Parsifal is being questioned by

Gurnemanz. To all interrogations save one he has the single answer, "I

do not know." Asked his name, he answers: "Once I had many, but now I

remember none." This answer is accompanied by the Herzeleide phrase. To

find the clue to this somewhat enigmatic proceeding resort must be had

to Wagner's model Wolfram, where it is said of the lad's mother that

"A thousand times she said tenderly:

'_Bon fils, cher fils, beau fils._'"

These were the names which Parsifal once knew but had forgotten. They

are associated in his mind with his mother, and therefore the allusion

is accompanied by the Herzeleide phrase.

_Fourth._ The phrase to which in the memorial ceremony of Christ's

suffering the words are sung:

"For a world that slumbered

With sorrows unnumbered

He once His own blood offered."

It is this phrase that lends such great poignancy to the music which

accompanies Parsifal and Gurnemanz as they walk towards the Castle of

the Grail.

In the prelude suffering has its expression in the first of these

phrases, whose concluding figure in the second part reaches an

expression of agony like the cry that rent the air of Calvary even

as the curtain of the temple was rent in twain: "_Eli, Eli, lama

sabachthani?_" Aspiration is proclaimed by the symbol of the Grail

itself, the familiar Amen formula of the Dresden Court Church, an

ethereal phrase which soars ever upward towards the zenith of tonality.

The melody of Faith is marked by lofty firmness, and derives a peculiar

emphasis from successive repetition in remote keys.

For the prelude, whose melodic material has been thus marshalled, we

have Wagner's own poetic exposition:

"Strong and firm does Faith reveal itself, elevated and resolute even

in suffering. In answer to the renewed promise the voice of Faith

sounds softly from dimmest heights--as though borne on the wings of

the snow-white dove--slowly descending, embracing with ever-increasing

breadth and fulness the heart of man, filling the world and the whole

of nature with mightiest force; then, as though stilled to rest,

glancing upward again towards the light of heaven. Then once more

from the awe of solitude arises the lament of loving compassion, the

agony, the holy sweat of the Mount of Olives, the divine sufferings of

Golgotha; the body blanches, the blood streams forth and glows now with

the heavenly glow of blessing in the chalice, pouring forth on all that

lives and languishes the gracious gift of Redemption through Love. For

him we are prepared, for Amfortas, the sinful guardian of the shrine

who, with fearful rue for sin gnawing at his heart, must prostrate

himself before the chastisement of the vision of the Grail. Shall there

be redemption from the devouring torments of his soul? Yet once again

we hear the promise and--hope!"

IX.

The first act of the drama treats of the election of the hero, the

guileless simpleton of the talismanic oracle. In the second stage of

the action the hero is proved by temptation. All the elements here are

derived from legendary stories, but in their combination Wagner has

proceeded with remarkable dramatic power, freedom, and ingenuity. The

apparatus is magical. Klingsor, a pervasive personage in mediæval

sorcery; Kundry, the repulsive messenger of the Grail no longer, but a

supernaturally beautiful siren; a magic garden and castle, and a bevy

of maidens, whose office it is to stimulate the senses by suggesting an

appeal to all of them at once (they are half human, half floral)--these

are the agencies of Parsifal's temptation. The prototype of the scene

in old mythologies and folk-lore is a visit to a bespelled castle

where generally the hero succumbs to sensual weakness of some kind;

he eats of proffered food and loses his speech; or he asks a question

which is _tabu_; or he fails to ask a question which is commanded; or

falls asleep; or fails to bring away a talisman which has opened the

castle to him; or he falls as Tannhäuser fell. As a rule the castle

vanishes at the end of the adventure, as it does in "Parsifal," when

the hero resists Kundry's love-spell, seizes the lance which the

magician launches against him, and with it makes the sign of the

cross and pronounces a formula of exorcism. Often the purpose of the

visit is to release a damsel who is bespelled or imprisoned. Students

of comparative folk-lore have found the mythological essence of the

stories of this class to lie in a visit to the underworld. Siegfried

achieved an analogous adventure when he penetrated the wall of fire,

and awakened Brünnhilde from the spell of sleep in which she was held.

Klingsor is remotely connected with the history of two other dramas

of Wagner. In the poem describing the Contest of Minstrelsy held

in the Wartburg which Wagner blended with the legend of Tannhäuser,

Klingsor is a magician and minstrel of Hungary, and to him Heinrich von

Effterdingen, otherwise Tannhäuser, appeals when defeated by Wolfram

von Eschenbach, who is not only the author of the poem "Parzival," but

also the tuneful minstrel who sings a woful ballad to the evening star

in Wagner's opera. In his epic Wolfram makes Klingsor a nephew of the

renowned magician Virgilius of Naples.[R]

Cyriacus Spangenberg, who wrote a book on the Art of the Master-singers

in 1598, devotes several pages to Klingsor, describing him as the

greatest master-singer of his age, who met all comers in poetical

combat and overthrew them to the number of fifty-two. He was finally

confounded by Wolfram von Eschenbach, who discovered his dependence on

the Powers of Evil, and put both him and his familiar, a devil called

Nazian, to shame by singing the glories of the Son of God become Man.

"Kundry," says Mr. Alfred Nutt, "is Wagner's greatest contribution to

the legend. She is the Herodias whom Christ, for her laughter, doomed

to wander till He come again." The manner in which Wagner compounded

this, his most striking and original dramatic character, is the most

marvellous of his poetical achievements in the drama. Kundry draws her

elements from the Grail romances, from Christian legends, from fairy

tales, and from the profoundest depths of the poet's imagination. In

the Welsh tale her prototype is the hero's cousin, who is under a

spell, and in accordance with the popular tale formula appears as a

loathly damsel until her kinsman achieves the vengeance demanded by

family ties. Then she appears in her true form as a handsome youth.

In Wolfram, Kundrie la Sorcière is only the Grail Messenger, and as

such is hideous of appearance; the temptress of the Magic Garden is

a beauteous damsel named Orgeluse. Wagner united both attributes in

his creation. As a penitent, seeking atonement for sin committed, she

is a loathly damsel in the service of the Grail. As a siren she is a

tool of Klingsor, to whose power she is subject while asleep. She has

innumerable prototypes in fairy-lore, who are released from wicked

spells by the kisses of handsome princes, the fidelity of husbands, or

the granting of their wills, as in "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine." In

Wagner, the dissolution of the spell releases her from a double curse.

The suggestion to make use of the Herodias legend lies near enough

in both the Mabinogi of Peredur and Wolfram's epic. The Templeisen,

as Wolfram calls his Knights of the Grail, were an order obviously

patterned after the Knights Templars, who were accused among other

things of having secretly worshipped a head which they credited with

the virtues of the talismans that I have discussed. Their patron saint

was John the Baptist, and when the vessel of green glass, so long and

piously revered as the _santo catino_, was brought back by crusaders

seven hundred years ago, it was deposited in the Chapel of St. John

at Genoa. A relic of the John the Baptist cult has survived among

the Knights Templar, a branch of the Order of Free Masons, to this

day. That the talisman of a bloody head upon a salver in the Welsh

tale should have suggested the Herodias legend is obvious enough.

Wagner's transformation of the legend, accomplished for the purpose

of identifying his Kundry with Herodias, is extremely suggestive and

felicitous. According to the old tale, Herodias was in love with the

prophet of the New Dispensation. After the dance before Herod and its

awful consequences, she secretly crept to the head upon the salver

for the purpose of covering it with tears and kisses. At that moment

a blast issued from the dead lips which sent Herodias flying off into

space. Thus she is still driven forward, permitted to rest only from

midnight to dawn, when she sits cowering under willow and hazel copses,

and bemoans her fate. In Wagner she becomes a Wandering Jewess. She saw

Christ staggering under the burden of the Cross and laughed. His glance

fell upon her, and doomed her to wander ceaselessly without the sweet

refuge of tears, subject to the powers of evil, yet longing to make

atonement by deeds of virtue. These characteristics Wagner developed

with marvellous dramatic power in the music which he associates with

her, and which is equally wild and hysterical, whether it picture her

flying along on a horse doing errands in the service of the Grail,

or in one of those fits of mad laughter to which the curse makes her

subject.

Yet Kundry, to proceed with Mr. Nutt, "would find release and salvation

could a man resist her love spell. She knows this. The scene between

the unwilling temptress, whose success would but doom her afresh,

and the virgin Parsifal thus becomes tragic in the extreme. How does

this affect Amfortas and the Grail? In this way: Parsifal is the pure

fool, knowing naught of sin or suffering. It had been foretold of him

that he should become 'wise by fellow-suffering,' and so it proves.

The overmastering rush of desire unseals his eyes, clears his mind.

Heart-wounded by the shaft of passion, he feels Amfortas' torture

thrill through him. The pain of the physical wound is his, but far

more, the agony of the sinner who has been unworthy of his high trust,

and who, soiled by carnal sin, must yet daily come in contact with the

Grail, symbol of the highest purity and holiness. The strength of the

new-born knowledge enables him to resist sensual longing, and thereby

to release both Kundry and Amfortas."

X.

In spite of this, however, and more than this, in spite of all the

religious mysticism with which the work can be infused by the analyst

and interpreter, I cannot but question the right of "Parsifal" to

be considered as in any sense a reflex of the religious feeling of

to-day. It is beautiful in much of its symbolism, and it is profound;

but it is too persistently mediæval in its dramatic manifestations to

satisfy the intelligence of the nineteenth century. The adoration of

the relics of Christ's passion, and the idea that all human virtues are

summed up in celibate chastity, were products of an age whose theories

and practices as regards sex relationship can have no echo in modern

civilization. Wolfram von Eschenbach's married Parzival, who clings

with fond devotion to the memory of the wife from whose arms he had to

tear himself in order to undertake the quest, and who loses himself

in tender brooding for a long time when the sight of blood-spots on

the snow suggests to his fancy the red and white of his wife's cheeks,

seems to me to be a much more amiable and human hero than the young

ascetic of Wagner's drama.

FOOTNOTES:

[J] _Parzival, von Wolfram von Eschenbach._ Dr. Gotthold Bötticher.

Berlin, 1885.

[K] _Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail._ David Nutt. London, 1888.

[L] Genesis xliv., 4 and 5.

[M] Mr. Price's Preface in Warton's _History of English Poetry_, vol. i.

[N] Mr. Price's note in Warton, vol. i.

[O] Matthew xxvi., 23.

[P] Natural History, Book XXXII., chap. ii.

[Q] Bötticher's Translation Book XVI.

[R] The stories concerning Virgil and his connection with the Black Art

are admirably discussed in Mr. J. S. Tunison's study, _Master Virgil,

the Author of the Æneid as he seemed in the Middle Ages_. Second

Edition. Robert Clarke & Co. Cincinnati, 1890.

* * * * *

BY ANNA ALICE CHAPIN

WONDER TALES FROM WAGNER. Told for Young People. Illustrated.

Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.25.

Miss Chapin's idea of reducing to a compact and readable form the

more or less involved stories of Wagner's operas is one that met with

pronounced success in her first book, "The Story of the Rhinegold."

Although announced as "for young people," it was received with marked

favor by older lovers of Wagner, who found in it an intelligent,

consecutive, and concise guide to the narrative covered by the

Nibelungen cycle. "Wonder Tales from Wagner" is planned upon much

the same lines, and forms an invaluable companion volume to its

predecessor. Told with singular simplicity and grace, these stories

of the old gods have all the charm of modern fairy-tales and are,

moreover, of great assistance in the study of Wagner and Wagner's

operas.

THE STORY OF THE RHINEGOLD. (Der Ring des Nibelungen.) Told for Young

People. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.25.

The legend of the Rhinegold is both interesting and dramatic, and it

has lost nothing of either quality in the hands of Miss Chapin. It may

have been written with the hope of explaining the music of Wagner to

young folks, but we imagine that old people will find in it a great

deal of much-needed information.--_N. Y. Herald._

The stories on which Wagner founded his great operas are told in a

clear, beautiful, story-telling manner that claims and holds the

attention. The musical motif of each development of the stories is

given, and greatly adds to the value of the book.--_Outlook_, N. Y.

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

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THE BROWNING LETTERS

THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,

1845-1846. Illustrated with Two Contemporary Portraits of the

Writers, and Two Facsimile Letters. With a Prefatory Note by

R. BARRETT BROWNING, and Notes, by F. G. KENYON, Explanatory of

the Greek Words, Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, Deckel

Edges and Gilt Tops, $5.00; Half Morocco, $9.50.

Many good gifts have come to English literature from the two Brownings,

husband and wife, besides those poems, which are their greatest. The

gift of one's poems is the gift of one's self. But in a fuller sense

have this unique pair now given themselves by what we can but call the

gracious gift of these letters. As their union was unique, so is this

correspondence unique.... The letters are the most opulent in various

interest which have been published for many a day.--_Academy_, London.

We have read these letters with great care, with growing astonishment,

with immense respect; and the final result produced on our minds is

that these volumes contain one of the most precious contributions to

literary history which our time has seen.--_Saturday Review_, London.

We venture to think that no such remarkable and unbroken series of

intimate letters between two remarkable people has ever been given

to the world.... There is something extraordinarily touching in the

gradual unfolding of the romance in which two poets play the parts of

hero and heroine.--_Spectator_, London.

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