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So what is the
message of Parsifal ?
The Meaning of the Drama
t
was recently pointed out to me that nowhere among the thousands of words present on this
web site was there any clear statement about the message of Parsifal or what
Wagner meant by his last major work. This page is an attempt to fill that gap.
fter
being puzzled by Parsifal for twenty years after first seeing a performance, in
1996 I began to study the work in depth. This investigation was prompted by the experience
of attending a performance of Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival of that year.
After four years of studying what had been written about the work, not least by Wagner
himself, and what Wagner had been reading in the years preceding his first sketch for
Parsifal I arrived at some conclusions. These included a reconstruction of that
first sketch and an understanding of what Wagner was trying to convey to his audience
through poetry, music and dramatic action. The three most important messages that I have
found in the work are summarised below. Each of them derives from the philosophy of
Arthur Schopenhauer, to whose works (and in particular his
essay, On the Basis of Morality) the reader is directed for further insight.
he
primary purpose of the drama is to convey to the audience the importance of
compassion -- which is the only valid basis for morality, according to
Schopenhauer. This teaching was accepted by his disciple
Richard Wagner. It is through compassion for the suffering of other beings that the fool
acquires wisdom and becomes a sage. It is through the perfection of wisdom that he is able to bring salvation.
here is a
Schopenhauerean metaphor in the work that is so explicit that anyone who has read Schopenhauer will have no difficulty in detecting it. Her name is
Kundry. She represents, on one level, the human predicament
in relation to what Buddhists call samsara: the cycle of birth, suffering,
death and rebirth. In the first act she is wild and restless, striving for (but unable to
find) a balm that will cure suffering; as Kundry confesses,
she can help nobody -- not even herself. By the third act, however, Kundry is calm, peaceful, quiet; she has almost escaped from her
cyclic existence by the denial of the will. Here is the metaphysical message of
Parsifal: stop striving, deny the will, accept that suffering is an inevitable
part of life and that desires can never be fully satisfied.
ertain
passages in Wagner's text clearly were intended to communicate Schopenhauer's summary of his ethics. This is the ethical message of
the work: injure no one; on the contrary, help others as much as possible
. This
formula becomes, in Parsifal, the teaching of the Grail.
You should know that all things in the world are impermanent -- meeting inevitably means parting. Do not be troubled, for this is the nature of life. Diligently practising right effort, you must seek deliverance immediately. In the light of wisdom, destroy the darkness of ignorance. Nothing is secure. Everything in life is precarious. Always wholeheartedly seek the path of deliverance.
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