Wagner's Sources

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Wagner's Grail Studies

uring his Dresden years (1843-49) Richard Wagner found many ideas for stage works in medieval literature. Some of those ideas he would develop into operas or music-dramas (such as Lohengrin, the Ring, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal) while others remained no more than possible subjects for musical and dramatic treatment (such as Wieland der Schmied). The starting point for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, as every Wagnerian surely knows, was a Middle High German epic, the Nibelungenlied. Wagner's studies for the Ring did not end there, however; he proceeded to read other medieval sagas, studies of medieval literature by scholars such as the Grimm brothers and not least the Old Norse Eddas. As far as scholars have been able to discover, Wagner's first contact with the myth of Parsifal was the poem Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which he read at Marienbad in 1845. The first opera that resulted from his reading of Wolfram was Lohengrin, which was in outline based upon the last section of Wolfram's poem. More than a decade later, when Wagner returned to Parzival ¹, he found (as he wrote to Mathilde Wesendonk) the poem unsatisfactory as the basis of an opera. As with the Ring, Wagner began to explore other versions of the same legend. Of the many versions of the Percevalian myth, at least three were available to him (in the 1860's and 1870's): Wolfram's Parzival (in various translations including that by Görres), Chrétien's Perceval (in the modern French translation by Potvin) and the anonymous Peredur (in the French translation by de Villamarque).

olfram's work is based on an unfinished poem by Chrétien de Troyes, together with at least two other sources that have not survived. There is some evidence, although only at third hand, that Wagner had read Chrétien's Perceval: The Story of the Grail and its so-called Continuations, in a modern French version, in 1872. (This is mentioned in Du Moulin Eckhart's biography of Cosima, in which he records that Wagner had studied the Grail legend in Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troyes, and now again the remarkable and unique book by Görres, which is more invention than fact, has stimulated his creative processes ...). 

hrétien had drawn upon a tradition of Celtic stories, including possibly an early version of Peredur son of Evrawc; or, alternatively, the tale of Peredur might have been based on an imperfect recollection of Chrétien's poem. This story appeared in the Comte de Villemarque's Contes populaires des anciens Bretons,which Wagner is known to have read while in Paris in 1860. Chrétien's Perceval (or li Contes del Graal or Perceval le Gallois) roughly follows the story of Peredur (or the reverse) up to and including the meeting with the hermit on Good Friday.

he same Celtic stories inspired other writings in which the Grail became a Christian symbol. This variation was also adopted by some of the authors who attempted to complete Chrétien's unfinished poem. Wagner may have found this interpretation, which he claimed for his own, there or possibly in a summary of another work: Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie. This poem tells the story of Joseph and his family, guardians of the Christian Grail; its first part is based on the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. There are two sequels, the poems Merlin and Perceval, the second of these either not written by de Boron or completed by another hand. Although there is no evidence that Wagner had any direct knowledge of Robert de Boron -- whose writings were rediscovered in the early 19th century and first published in modern French in 1841 -- indirect knowledge of de Boron's work cannot be ruled out.

rail romances were by no means the only sources drawn upon by Wagner as he developed his libretto. There are other works of literature (in various genres including poems, novels and scriptures) that beyond all reasonable doubt provided ideas for Wagner's libretto: three of them are the medieval romance Roman d'Alexandre, the religious poem Barlaam und Josaphat and the 19th century novel, Le juif errant. In a separate article the current author discusses the influence of the Buddhist literature of northern India on the text of Parsifal, with particular reference to two incidents in the opera that derive from these sources.

agner was reticent about his sources, even dismissive of the influence of Wolfram. He told Cosima that Wolfram's text had nothing to do with Parsifal; when he read the epic, he first said to himself that nothing could be done with it, but a few things stuck in my mind - the Good Friday, the wild appearance of Condrie. That is all it was. In particular, he found the Question an unsatisfactory element of the plot. But Wolfram was without doubt important as a stimulus for his thinking and further reading.

A Note on Wagner's Bayreuth Library

agner's Bayreuth library as preserved at Haus Wahnfried contains only one text of Chrétien's Perceval. If it is the edition that Wagner studied in 1872, then several interesting points can be noted. The book is Ch. Potvin's Perceval le Gallois and consists of seven volumes, published between 1866 and 1871, containing the following:

• Vol. i:   Le roman en prose. According to Sebastian Evans, in his Introduction, his translation of the anonymous Perlesvaus was made from the first volume of Potvin, published in 1866.
• Vol. ii-iii:  Perceval, believed to be entirely by Chrétien de Troyes. 1866.
• Vol. iv: The First Continuation, an anonymous story about Gawain. There are several versions of this continuation. Although it is not present in the manuscript translated by Potvin, two of the manuscripts contain an interpolation that tells the same story as de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie, although in much less detail. 1866.
• Vol. v:  The Second Continuation, by one Gautier or Wauchier de Denain. According to Jessie L. Weston, the First and Second Continuations are not so much a completion of Chrétien, as a retelling of a Grail story in which Gawain, not Perceval, is the hero. Weston believed the original of this story to have been composed by a Welsh poet, Bleheris, Blihis or Bréri. The original ending was not included in the manuscript translated by Potvin, but it has survived in a single manuscript. 1868.
• Vol. vi:   Gerbert de Montreuil's Continuation, incomplete. The ending of this Continuation may have been discarded and lost; it now forms a bridge between the extant Second and Third Continuations. 1870. The original version was probably written in parallel with and independently of:
• Vol. vii:  The Third Continuation, by Manessier, apparently derived in part from Perlesvaus and from the Quest of the Holy Grail. 1870.

he first point to note is that Lucy Beckett was wrong in her assertion that the Continuations were not differentiated in the text Wagner would have read; they were published in separate volumes, and the change in style from volume iii to volume iv (since the First Continuation has the character of an oral recitation) would have been fairly obvious. But Beckett is correct when she writes that the First Continuation identifies the bleeding spear with that of Longinus, while the Second says that the cup contains the blood of Christ; important because neither of these features appear in Perceval . This interpretation of the Grail is also found in other versions of the story, although even in the early romances there is considerable variation in the concept of the Grail: according to Wolfram it is a stone that fell from heaven.

uch more importantly, Wagner's bookshelf contains volume i, Perlesvaus. Although this account of the Grail legend has many parallels with Wolfram's poem (for example, in the emphasis on healing the Grail king -- the theme of the Waste Land is missing), it differs from the latter (and from Chrétien) in two important respects: the Grail king is not physically wounded, but has fallen into languishment, i.e. he is spiritually disabled; and there is a unique emphasis on the failure of the Quester. Both elements may be detected in Wagner's poem.

  noted in the accompanying article on Kundry, an interesting feature of Perlesvaus (also present in Peredur) is that the Grail-bearer and the Loathly Damsel (or High Messenger) are one and the same. The last point to note was made by Jessie Weston in her book From Ritual to Romance. In the manuscript translated by Potvin, the First Continuation states that the Grail-bearer weeps piteously.

t is tempting to conclude that Wagner's version of the story was influenced by his reading of the first volume of Potvin. Unfortunately, however, none of Potvin was published before 1866, and we have Wagner's Prose Draft of 1865 which contains all of the elements mentioned above. If Wagner was familiar with Perlesvaus in 1865, it must have been as a result of reading secondary sources such as San-Marte's Parzival-study.

Summary of Sources

t might be useful to list the most significant sources of Parsifal. A "definitive" list would be difficult to produce and is unlikely to be beyond criticism. Although there is much that is relevant in the reading matter mentioned in the copious biographical documentation (much of it recorded by Cosima or by Richard Wagner himself), it is likely that he read many other things that have not been recorded: books, articles in periodicals, journals or newspapers. Nor do we always know what ideas he received second-hand, in conversation with Cosima (who was also well-read, especially in the French classics) or with one of his friends and acquaintances, or in correspondence. So any list of sources must be to some extent speculative, concerning what Wagner read and when, and selective, since the relative importance of source material is subjective; it depends upon what the commentator considers Wagner's drama to be about. For what it is worth, then, here is my list: