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A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a low dry garret, Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. [T.S.Eliot, The Fire Sermon from
The
Waste Land, 1922.]
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In course of time, the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature. They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of vegetation, the birth and death of living creatures, as effects of the waxing or waning strength of divine beings, of gods and goddesses, who were born and died, who married and begot children, on the pattern of human life. Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather supplemented, by a religious theory. For although men now attributed the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding changes in their deities, they still thought that by performing certain magical rites they could aid the god, who was the principle of life, in his struggle with the opposing principle of death.
f Wagner's Parsifal is, as the composer
would have us believe, a profoundly Christian work, then as such it does not seem to
fit into any Christian dramatic or musical sacred tradition. It has
been regarded as a kind of miracle play
, which makes use of
Christian symbols, although it also takes ideas from Buddhism. The present article will consider the
evidence for regarding Wagner's Parsifal as neither
Christian nor Buddhist, but as a sacred drama in an Indo-European
tradition that began thousands of years before either of those
religions had been established. The article draws on ideas about
primitive religion and kingship developed by Sir James Frazer, a
pioneer of anthrolopogy, and Jessie L. Weston, a scholar greatly
influenced by Frazer, who was the first translator of Wolfram's poem Parzival into
English.
common feature of kingship in primitive societies
is the intimate association of the king with the land. The king is
often regarded as the temporary incarnation of a god whose youth,
vigour and virility are essential to the kingdom:
herefore, in such societies, the king is only
allowed to rule for a fixed term, after which he is killed (usually
by his successor) and replaced. In the most extreme cases, the term
is one year, so that the death of the old king coincides with the
passing of the old year. J.G.Fraser notes that such annual regicide
seems to have been common in Western Asia and particularly in
Phrygia, where the king-priest was slain in the character of
Attis, a god of vegetation.
o what does this have to do with Wagner's drama? In
the three decades between the composer's discovery of Wolfram's Parzival and the completion of his own
poem, Wagner rejected Wolfram's account
and selected elements from the Grail
literature. One such element is that of an old king, a character
who appears in several of the Grail
romances. In Chrétien's story, he is the
father of the Grail king; in Wolfram's account, his grandfather. In Wagner's
poem, the old king Titurel lies in
a tomb and is kept alive by the sight of the Grail alone. It may be that Chrétien was the first author to locate two
kings in the Grail castle, perhaps as
the result of merging two earlier stories; in any case, the
double-king element was adopted both by Wolfram and by Wagner. In a later form of the
story, developed in The Quest of the
Holy Grail, there are three kings; all of them are
wounded. The life of one, Mordrains, has been preternaturally
prolonged and his youth is restored by the completion of the
quest.
essie Weston distinguished
between the Maimed King and the Fisher
King, in her analysis of the Grail
legend and its possible ritual origin:
n the earliest (Gawain) form of the Grail romances, according to Weston, the lord of
the Grail castle was neither old nor
infirm, but dead. It was on account of the death of this knight
that misfortune had fallen upon the land. In all of the Perceval versions, however, it was the
king who had been wounded (or, in the case of the Didot Perceval only, grown old) and
this was the cause of the wasting of the land. To achieve the quest
and revive the land, either the king had to be healed, or restored
to youth and vigour, or a young and vigorous successor had to
undertake the burden of kingship.
agner seems to have distilled the essence of the
story. He tells us that he
rejected Wolfram's account and recognised that, even in
Chrétien's account, the Question was an unnecessary complication. In his
Parsifal, the collapse of the Grail community is a result of Anfortas' wound, which is both
physical and spiritual. In place of asking a Question, the destined successor has to fulfil a
quest through which the symbols of
cup and lance are reunited, and the Maimed King is both
healed and succeeded.
n Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie, the brother of Joseph
is called Bron. When the company of the Grail are starving, Bron is
told to catch a fish, which feeds them in a ritual meal. After
this, Bron is known as the Rich Fisher. Joseph, the original Winner
of the Grail, and his brother Bron are
another example of the double-king element found in later versions
of the story. The fisherman element is found in all of the Perceval versions. In Chrétien's Perceval, for example, the hero meets the
Grail king when he is fishing from a boat.
It may be significant that the Grail
castle is always located close to water (and in at least two
cases, on an island). The fish is a traditional fertility symbol,
perhaps as a result of its fecundity, a characteristic that it
shares with another Grail symbol, the
dove.
Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind Wo weilest du? [T.S.Eliot, The Burial of the Dead
from The Waste Land, 1922. The work quoted is Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde.]
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essie Weston identified
three stages of development in the medieval Grail romances. In the first of them, the hero was
Gawain (or the Welsh Gwalchmai) and the land had been wasted
as a consequence of the mysterious death of an unnamed knight. In
this form of the legend, the body of the dead knight lies on a
scarlet cloth upon a bier in the Grail
castle. Another feature specific to the Gawain version is that the Grail- bearer weeps piteously.
he best- known version of this form is known as the
First Continuation to Perceval;
which is not consistent with Chrétien's
unfinished poem. It appears to be based on an independent story.
Gawain fails to ask about the
Grail (by which he would have restored the
Waste Land) but he does ask about the spear, which brings about a partial
restoration.
n the later German text Diu Crône (The Crown), from about
1230, the lord of the Grail castle is
old and weak. After Gawain has asked
the Question, removing the enchantment
from the Waste Land, we are told that the king and his attendants
were in fact dead, but held in semblance of life until the task was
completed.
n the second stage of development, the Widow's Son
displaced Gawain as the primary
hero. J.L. Weston pointed to a distinctive
feature common to the otherwise differing Perceval versions: the sickness and
disability of the ruler of the Waste Land, who is called the
Fisher King. According to Weston, the element of the Waste Land declined in
importance during the development of this form until, in Wolfram's Parzival, the healing of the Fisher King appears to be an end in itself.
riginally, the distress of the land was a direct
result of the death of the king, or the injury or aging of the
king; but in Chrétien's account, the
disaster only develops after the failure of Perceval to ask the Question on his first visit to the Grail castle and in the Perlesvaus, the wasting is a
direct consequence of Perceval's
failure. The Welsh version, Peredur son
of Evrawg, is a confused tale, possibly based upon an
imperfect recollection either of Chrétien's poem or an earlier version of the
same form, perhaps the prose original referred to by Chrétien, and also possibly the Third
Continuation. Like Perlesvaus, it is a revenge
story.
he Grail romances are
characterised by a tension between the theme of revenge and the
theme of healing. This tension points to at least two distinct,
original sources:
n the final stage, the themes of vengeance and
healing, together with such elements as the wasting of the land and
the Question, have disappeared and what
remains is a spiritual quest. As in Perlesvaus, the story is dominated
by moralising and Christian allegory. The hero is now Galahad, son
of Lancelot. In The Quest of the
Holy Grail, there are two wounded kings at the Grail castle, and the title of Fisher King is variously applied to both of them.
The virgin Galahad, who was born at the Grail castle, has never failed and achieves the
quest in fulfilment of his destiny.
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Right: Sir Galahad, by G.F. Watts (1817-1904).
[J.L.Weston, The Grail and the Rites of
Adonis.]
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he cult of the god known to the Sumerians and
Akkadians as Dumuzi-abzu, but better known under his Syrian name of
Tammuz, may be traced back to about 3000 B.C. Dumuzi is a Sumerian
deity of the marshes. His name means "quickener of the young in the
mother womb of the deep," and he is generally seen as a fertility
deity. His sister, Geshtinanna, is the power in the grape, and his
female consort is Inanna, who in the earliest period symbolizes the
"storehouse of dates." Dumuzi, Inanna, and Geshtinanna, as well as
Duttura, the mother of Dumuzi, and Ereshkigal, the sister of Inanna
and goddess of the underworld, are prominent in several
mythological cycles and mythical dramas. In a pantheon containing
thousands of deities, these serve as examples of the reigning
symbolism of fertility. As the god of the harvest, Dumuzi was
required, like Osiris of Egypt, to conquer death by emerging from
the Underworld. The surviving Sumerian and Akkadian texts contain
many lamentations for Dumuzi, who left the surface of the earth
once a year, with disastrous consequences for animal and vegetable
life. A Sumerian text, The Descent of Inanna, tells of how
the goddess descends into the underworld to bring back the god,
ensuring seasonal fertility. There is a shorter Akkadian text,
found in both Babylonia and Assyria, telling essentially the same
story, although the names are changed to Ishtar and Tammuz.
Dumuzi-Tammuz appears to have been more than a seasonal god,
however; he was believed to participate in the reproductive
activities of all forms of life.
he Phrygian cult of Attis may be as old as that of
Dumuzi-Tammuz and both may have derived from the worship of a
common predecessor. Or, despite their common features, they may
have developed independently:
he death and resurrection of Attis were annually
mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring, usually at the
vernal equinox. Attis was said to have been a fair young shepherd
or herdsman beloved by Cybele, the Mother of the Gods. There are
two different accounts of his death: in one he castrated himself
under a pine-tree and bled to death. This version may have been
invented to explain the self-castration of his priests. In the
other, he was, like Adonis, killed by a wild boar, and hence his
followers abstained from pork. He was subsequently changed into a
pine-tree and therefore such a tree, decorated with violets, was
venerated during the spring festival.
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. [T.S.Eliot, Death by Water from
The
Waste Land, 1922.]
I weep for Adonais -- he is dead! O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost that binds so dear a head! [P.B.Shelley, Adonais,
1821.]
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he cult of Adonis seems to have originated in
Phoenicia and spread first to Cyprus and then throughout the Greek
world in about the 7th century B.C. The name or title Adonis was
also applied to Tammuz, Adon being the Syrian word meaning
Lord. Originally, Adonis was the lover of the goddess
Astarte, who became identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite. He
was said to have been a mortal who was killed by a wild boar, who
may have been Aphrodite's jealous husband, Ares. The intercession
of Aphrodite persuaded Zeus to allow Adonis to return from the
underworld for a portion of the year. The dispute between Aphrodite
and Persephone for possession of Adonis is a curious parallel to
that between Ishtar and Ereshkigal for Tammuz. It is possible that
the Phrygian Adonis was originally a river-god; the river Nahr
Ibrahim, which reaches the sea just south of Byblus, bore in
antiquity the name Adonis and there is a complex of temples to
Astarte around the gorge of the river. The spring rain colours the
river red with clay washed from the hills; this is still referred
to as the blood of Adonis. His rites usually ended with the effigy
of the god being cast into the sea or a river; this is still echoed
in vernal folk-customs in many lands.
raser records that the worship of Adonis as a
corn-spirit, i.e. a spirit of harvest, in the month of Tammuz
(July) persisted in Syria into the Middle Ages. An Arabic writer of
the tenth century recorded: In the middle of this month is the
festival of el-Bûgât, that is, of the weeping women, and this is
the Tâ-uz festival, which is celebrated in honour of the god Tâ-uz.
The women bewail him, because his lord slew him so cruelly, ground
his bones in a mill, and then scattered them to the
wind.
[The Golden Bough]. This
propitiation of the corn-god may be ultimately derived from an
older, primitive belief that the spirits of animals and vegetation
had to be appeased by those who ate them.
essie Weston identified the
following points of contact between the Adonis ritual and the
Gawain form of the story of the
Grail castle: the waste land; the
slain king (or knight); the mourning, with special insistence on
the part played by women; and the restoration of fertility
.
Another point is worth noting: the dove was
sacred to Adonis and doves were sacrificed during his rites.
essie Weston traced the
possible origins of the medieval Grail
romances through Gnostic mystery religions back to the fertility
rites and initiation ceremonies of ancient vegetation cults.
Independently, evidence for the oriental origin of elements of the
grail legends was gathered by L.E. Iselin (Der morgenländische
Ursprung der Grallegende, 1909). Since Wagner's text draws
upon these Grail romances and because
Wagner selected elements that connect these romances with the
rituals of Indo-European mystery religions,
then it is justifiable to regard his Parsifal as belonging
to a religious tradition that is at least five thousand years
old.
n this perspective, Parsifal is the story
of a failed initiation into a mystery religion. It tells of an
infirm king who is, at first, neither healed nor replaced by a
vigorous successor and how, as a result, the land becomes a Waste
Land and the people of the Grail castle
decay. The old king, his father, dies before the quest has been
completed. The Grail-bearer, who is also
the messenger of the Grail, weeps bitterly
on a spring morning. The symbols of
cup and spear are reunited to assure the renewed fertility
of land and people.
hen I wrote the first version of the article above,
in December 1996, it was my intention to explore the connections
between T.S. Eliot's most famous poem and Wagner's last
music-drama. In his own notes on The Waste Land Eliot
informs us: Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of
the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss
Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail
legend: From Ritual to Romance ... To another work of
anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our
generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have
used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who
is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the
poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
learly Eliot was influenced by Frazer's
anthropological writings both directly and through J.L. Weston. Similarly his relationship to Wagner
is both direct (the poem quotes Tristan und Isolde and
Das Rheingold; it also quotes Verlaine's poem about Parsifal) and
through the Wagnerian J.L. Weston.
Furthermore, Eliot's poem is connected to Wagner's last music-drama
by drawing on a common myth, the Grail legend. It might be
fortuitous that the quotation from Petronius with which Eliot
prefaced his poem is singularly appropriate to Kundry: Said the
boys, "What do you want, Sibyl?"; she answered, "I want to
die"
.
o there are threads connecting Eliot's Grail poem
and Wagner's Grail drama. Unfortunately those threads have led some
to believe that Wagner had built his Parsifal upon the
myth of the Waste Land, i.e. the variant of the Grail legend in
which the land (and the vegetable and animal life of that land)
suffers as a result of the king's sickness. In some versions of the
myth, it is specifically the infertility of the
king that causes the infertility of the crops and livestock of
the kingdom. Wagner's treatment of the Grail legend is not,
however, based on the Waste Land variant. If Wagner had wanted to
stress the sexual aspect of the king's injury, then he would have
made the wound one through the genitals and not through the side,
which is where the Prose Draft locates
the (physical) wound. It is the same wound as the Redeemer
received upon the Cross
.
herefore the implication in Harry Kupfer's Berlin
production that Amfortas' problem is one of sexual dysfunction is
an idea that Kupfer has added himself, rather than his
interpretation of Wagner's text. Wagner is not concerned with any
link between the king and his kingdom although he is concerned with
the indirect results of the king's sickness on the community of
Monsalvat; it is because the king will not perform the Grail
ceremony that the community fails to function. The problem that
must be solved, or the need that must be addressed, is not
infertility that affects the king and the land, rather it is the
king's realisation of his own inadequacy that leaves the knights
leaderless. There is no evidence, in the Prose Drafts or Poem,
that the domain of the Grail becomes a Waste Land. Yet it has
become a cliché of stage productions that the third act (and in
some productions also the first act) of Parsifal is set in
a bleak waste land. This contradicts not only Wagner's stage
directions but also his poem (libretto).
Emphasis on the Eliot connection reached its apogee in the Niklaus
Lehnhoff production (soon to be re- staged in Chicago). For all its
merits, Lehnhoff's production is an example of how not to
produce Wagner's dramas. It imposes ideas and references that would
not have been recognised by Wagner not as a means by which to make
Wagner's own ideas intelligible to a modern audience but
instead of presenting his ideas.
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