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But what happens in
Parsifal ?
The Inner Action of the Drama
ct 1 - In the first act,
in the "holy ground" outside the Grail castle, Parsifal feels an intimation of
pity after killing the
swan. (The scene with the
swan is peripheral to the outer
action but crucial to the inner.)
n witnessing Amfortas' agony during the
Grail ceremony in the castle, he feels a compulsive pain in
his own heart, but he does not yet dare to ask the
"redeeming question": his
compassion is still dull
and inarticulate. (The
motivation seems to have become confused: would Amfortas be relieved of his agony
if Parsifal asked the
cause of it at this point? Or must he wait for the return
of the spear which he lost to
Klingsor when he succumbed
to Kundry? Die Wunde
schliesst der Speer nur, der sie schlug
. (Only the
spear that struck it heals the
wound.) The answer lies in the interrelationship of
pragmatic and symbolic elements, which is the principle
underlying the dramatic structure of Parsifal: the
spear that heals the wound is to be
interpreted as a symbol of compassion, the reversal of
will
as Schopenhauer
understood it. This compassion is not a negative
emotion but insight into the suffering of the world, and
the only consolation for it is recognition of the lack of
any consolation, in other words, resignation.)
ct 2 - In the
second act, Parsifal, the
pure fool, is made cosmically clear-sighted
by Kundry's kiss. He feels in himself the
temptation, the longing and suffering of Amfortas, and perceives the world
as the aggregation of common guilt and an unending circle
of misery, which can be broken only by compassion and renunciation, by
rejection of the will and its blind urging and
compulsion.
ct 3 - The events
of the third act, Kundry's
baptism, Amfortas's healing and the
redemption of the Grail from guilt-stained hands
- the
hands of Amfortas as the
representative of a world of entanglement and compromises -
are nothing more than the fulfilment of what is already
foreseeable at the end of the second, once Parsifal has regained the spear. (Parsifal's wanderings in search of
the Grail, which are portrayed in
the prelude to the third act,
are a check on the progress of the action but do not affect
the outcome.¹)
ut although the last act is
uneventful by the normal dramatic criteria it is
not just a ritual, the mere enactment and symbolic
representation of a long foregone conclusion. It presents a
third stage in the inner action: the compassion that is a dull
sensation in the first act, and widens into recognition,
cosmic perception [Welthellsicht] in the second,
is at last directed outwards in the third as a deed of
redemption. Parsifal becomes the Grail King, not an anchorite, and does not
turn his back on the world.
From Richard Wagner's
Music Dramas, Carl Dahlhaus.
Postscript: Eternal Justice
Other commentators disagree to a lesser or greater
extent with the views expressed above. Ulrike Kienzle, in a
perceptive study of Parsifal entitled Das
Weltüberwindungswerk, takes another view of the
symbolism of the spear. She notes
that when the spear is used as a
weapon it only wounds the individual (first Amfortas and then Klingsor) who wields it, that is,
the aggressor. Therefore it is possible to see the spear as a metaphor for what Schopenhauer called eternal
justice
. This aspect of Schopenhauer's philosophy can be found
presented in another of Wagner's dramas; it forms part of
the Wahn monologue
in Die
Meistersinger:
Driven to flight he deludes himself that he is the hunter;
does not hear his own cry of pain; when he digs into his own flesh
he is deluded that he gives himself pleasure!
According to Schopenhauer our individual existence is only apparent (in the world as representation), not real; there is no separation of existence in the eternal world (as will). When we injure others, we only harm ourselves; when we bite into the flesh of another being, we dig into our own flesh.
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