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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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