 |
Herauf! Herauf! Zu mir!
Dein Meister ruft dich, Namenlose,
Urteufelin! Höllenrose!
Herodias warst du, und was noch?
Gundryggia dort, Kundry hier!
Hieher! Hieher denn, Kundry!
Dein Meister ruft; herauf!
Arise! Arise! To me!
Your master calls you, nameless one,
First she-devil! Rose of Hades!
Herodias were you, and what else?
Gundryggia then, Kundry here!
Come here! Come here now, Kundry!
Your master calls: arise!
[Parsifal, Act 2]
|
This web-page will look much better
in a browser that supports worldwide web standards although it is
accessible to any browser. You appear to be using an older browser
that does not support current standards. Please consider upgrading
your browser. We suggest the latest version of any
one of the following: MS Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari or
Firefox.
An introduction to Richard Wagner's Kundry
 n Wagner's last music-drama
Parsifal, we encounter a mysterious creature called
Kundry. In the domain
of the Grail, this Kundry appears as a wild
woman, an unkempt, shabby and repulsive crone. On the other side of
the mountains, however, in the magic
garden of the sorcerer Klingsor, she appears as a beautiful maiden. In this
article, I shall try to identify the many elements that were
combined to create the most complex character in all of Wagner's
dramatic works. Further articles will explore some of these
elements in detail.
 agner's Kundry can be related to several female characters
who appear in his Percevalian sources;
although it is important to appreciate that Wagner also added
elements from completely different literary and mythical
traditions; notably, the exotic Herodias. The Percevalian sources included, as I
have described in a separate article,
Wolfram's Parzival,
Chrétien's Perceval and
the anonymous Welsh/Breton Peredur. In addition, Wagner, in the late
1860's, had a copy of Perlesvaus, or The High
History of The Holy Grail, although it
has not been established that he knew this book before writing the
Prose Draft of 1865.
Right: A dark-skinned Condrie abuses Parzival in this painting from
Ludwig's castle of Neuschwanstein.
 ne of the archetypes of this tradition that caught
Wagner's imagination was that of the Loathly
Damsel. This creature appears at critical points in all four of
these poems. Generally she brings news (in German, "news" or
"information" is Kunde, whence Kundry), explains what has happened, and hints
at what might happen later. Wolfram
presents Condrie la sorziere as the High Messenger of the
Grail. In Perlesvaus, perhaps taking a hint
from an unimportant line in Chrétien's
poem, she becomes the Bald Damsel, who is also lady Fortune. In
Wolfram it is Sigune who becomes bald.
ne element, found only in the Welsh/Breton
Peredur and in the allegorical
Perlesvaus, seems to
have been particularly important
for Wagner: the repulsive, filthy Loathly
Damsel is also the beautiful Grail
Bearer who is seen at the Grail Castle.
This dual nature of the character as she appears in these two
poems, is also found in other medieval literature, notably in
Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale. Wagner kept this element of
duality; although in his version, it is Condrie la
sorziere who is seen at the Grail
Castle, and her beautiful transformation is controlled by
Klingsor. Here
Klingsor seems to
be based on Wolfram's Clinschor who has cast a
spell over the proud and beautiful Orgeluse.
olfram's account of the
first visit of the sheltered youth to the Grail Castle was based upon an earlier version
of this incident in the poem by Chrétien
(summary).
Left: The Grail bearer as portrayed by Arthur Rackham.
 any things are unclear in Chrétien's account, not least the phenomena seen
by Perceval at the
Grail Castle, including the beautiful
maiden who bears the Grail. The poet died
leaving his poem for others to complete, which they did in various
ways (the so-called Continuations). As in the modern
detective story, we can see that Chrétien was building up to an ending in which
these mysteries would be explained both
to the young hero and to the reader (as they are explained by the
hermit in Wolfram's completion of the
story).
 hrétien does not
explicitly state that the Grail was the
source of the food that was served to Perceval and the others present in the hall;
although the passage has often been read that way, and later
authors developed the horn of plenty aspect of the
Grail. Perhaps the original of
this Grail was a Celtic vessel that provided limitless food, such
as that from which, in an Irish tale, the daughter of Lugh fed
Conn?
 or is it clear whether the radiance that appears
when the Grail enters emanates from the
cup itself or from the girl who
bears it. It is possible that the original Grail Bearer was a goddess and it might be that,
through misreading of this passage, the divinity had been
transferred from the girl to the vessel itself. The remaining
question is: which goddess?
Right: Waltraud Meier as Kundry, Bayreuth 1989.
 oomis believed that
he had found the origin of the Loathly
Damsel in Celtic tales ¹. He pointed out similarities between her description
as found in the Welsh text of Peredur and Irish adventures, suggesting
that the Loathly Damsel is one aspect of
the Sovereignty of Ireland, who may be identified with the
goddess Eriu. Her role in the myth of Irish kingship is
to personify the land; her metamorphosis from hag to beautiful
maiden represented the change from winter to spring, when
vegetation appears out of the dead land. In order to win her, the
aspiring king must embrace her winter aspect, and marry her in the
spring to ensure the fertility of the land. This is one version of
the myth of the Waste Land. It is in her
winter aspect that Eriu appears in the story of Niall, and it is in her spring aspect that she
appears in the tale of Conn, in which she
offers the hero drink from a golden cup.
 he story of Perceval is the story of Conn reversed: Perceval fails the test. Instead of the Loathly Damsel becoming a beautiful goddess, the
beautiful girl becomes an ugly creature who pours scorn on the
Quester for his failure. It is possible to see traces of this myth
in Wagner's Parsifal: Kundry's
kiss; the arrival of the hero at the edge of the forest as
winter changes to spring; Kundry's assistance in the anointing of Parsifal as king.
Left: Winkelmann as Parsifal and Materna as Kundry, Bayreuth 1882.
©Richard- Wagner- Gedenkstätte.
agner's dramatic genius can be seen in his
ability to select from sources and to
make new connections between their elements. Drawing on diverse
sources, Wagner made some radical changes to Wolfram's story, simplifying the plot and
reducing many simple characters to a few complex ones.
agner adopted the Christianised version of the Grail, rather than the mysterious stone described
in Wolfram's account. By 1865 he had
discarded the Question entirely; after
considering several alternatives, he made the recovery of the
spear the focus of the story, removed
Gawain and his quest,
and later changed some of the names (although the names in the
Prose Draft are still those taken from
Wolfram). Wagner merged two of Wolfram's characters to make a composite called
Gurnemanz, and
merged at least three of the female characters into a composite
called Kundry. He
linked together the Grail, the spear and the wild woman: when Titurel arrived in the
mountains with the holy relics, he found Kundry: Der fand, als er die Burg
dort baute, sie schlafend hier im Waldgestrüpp, erstarrt, leblos,
wie tot .
ike the young Parsifal, the wild woman has many names. The many
elements in Wagner's Kundry included another archetype found in
literature from the Middle Ages onwards: the Wandering Jew. In Wagner's poem, Kundry becomes a reincarnation of Herodias who, because she had laughed at the
Saviour's suffering, was cursed to wander through the world until His return. She
is not only cursed to wander, but also always to tell the truth;
and she cannot weep, only laugh her accursed laugh. Another
Herodias can be found in Heine's poem Atta Troll; this former princess of Judea
does not wander the world, but rides, laughing, with the Wild
Hunt across the sky. She appears as a cruel rose in
Mallarmé's Les fleurs (1864):
 L'hyacinthe, le myrte à l'adorable éclair
Et, pareille à la chair de la femme, la rose
Cruelle, Hérodiade en fleur du jardin clair,
Celle qu'un sang farouche et et radieux arrose!
n her Cambridge
Handbook, Lucy Beckett entirely misses the point of the
Herodias reference,
but makes an interesting observation about the reference to
Mary Magdalen. Beckett reminds us
that in 1848 Wagner had sketched a scenario for a play called
Jesus of Nazareth, which includes a scene in which the
penitent Magdalen kneels in
repentance before Jesus on the shore of Lake Gennesareth; later in
the play she was to anoint his head and wash his feet, just as
Kundry does toward
Parsifal in the
opera. Although Wagner repeatedly denied that Parsifal was a Christ-
figure (I never gave the Saviour a thought , he said), this
image had stayed with him and was incorporated by him into the
Good Friday scene.
n Die Sieger, an opera that
Wagner never completed, a chaste young man called Ananda receives into the religious community
a beautiful girl called Prakriti, who has passionately loved him; but
Shakyamuni, the future Buddha
persuades him to renounce her. The Buddha reveals that in an earlier
incarnation, Prakriti had rejected, with mocking laughter, the
love of a young man. Prakriti is a parallel to Mary Magdalen in the sense that both are outcasts.
By absorbing these two outcast women, in their different ways
excluded and despised by patriarchal societies, who by their
associations with the Buddha and Christ respectively introduce
further religious iconography to Wagner's drama, Kundry gained a
further dimension.
|
Left: Cartoon by M. Kringle, in Klier, 1985.
he last word shall belong to Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose essay From
Chrétien de Troyes to Richard
Wagner (in The View From
Afar) provoked me to look more closely at the origins of
Kundry.
We may
ask ... whether Wagner, by making Kundry a double creature, was not unconsciously
going back to a very ancient tradition, of which only a vestige
survives in Wolfram. Celtic literature sometimes describes an old,
repulsive hag who offers herself to the hero and then, when he
accepts her, turns into a radiant beauty - an image, we are told,
of the sovereignty that a pretender to the throne must win.
Furthermore, in order to construct the character of Kundry, Wagner blended into
one, four heroines of Chrétien and
Wolfram: the 'hideous damsel' already
mentioned; the Maiden-who-never-laughs, except to tell Perceval of his promised
destiny [Wolfram's Cunneware]; the cousin [Wolfram's Sigune] who tells him that his mother is dead and
who, in Wolfram, is the first to call him
by his name; and the 'wicked maiden' ... Orgeluse. According to
Wolfram [she is] indirectly responsible
for the treacherous blow that strikes Anfortas down.
|
Footnote
1: Here it should be noted that Wagner's main source of Celtic
legends was a Breton collection that included the Peredur. His Bayreuth library contains some
volumes of Erin, a collection of Irish folktales and
legends in German translation.
|
