Jessie L. Weston on
Parsifal
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Introduction
 he name of Jessie
L. Weston is familiar to scholars of European
literature on account of her studies of medieval
literature in relation to Celtic and Germanic
mythology, and in particular for her books and
articles about the Grail legend. In Legends of
the Wagner Drama Weston discussed the relation
between various Wagner dramas and those medieval
poems and sagas on which, in her view, Wagner had
based his dramas. In her treatment of
Parsifal, extracts from which follow
below, Weston compares and contrasts the action of
Wagner's drama with the
poem Parzival of the
German poet-knight Wolfram
von Eschenbach and with the earlier
Perceval or Li Conte del Graal of
the French poet Chrêtien de
Troyes, together with other, lesser poems of
the same period. Weston is perceptive in
identifying the elements of these sources that were
adopted and adapted by Wagner. She also indicates
where Wagner has deviated from the story as told by
Wolfram for purposes of
his own that Weston does not attempt to explain.
Weston's interpretation of Parsifal has
been (and continues to be) highly influential for
the understanding of Wagner's last drama throughout
the English speaking world. Quotations from
Wolfram's poem were taken
from Miss Weston's own English translation.
Parsifal
Extracts from Weston's Legends of the
Wagner Drama
he keynote of the
drama is struck in the peace of the opening scene;
the repose of the Grail
watchers, the solemn call to prayer from the
castle, and the rising sun flashing the lake mists
in the background. Wagner has followed his source
[i.e. Wolfram] in placing
the mysterious castle in the midst of a forest, and
representing its discovery as a task in which both
human skill and energy are unavailing. Both in the
poem and in the drama the guidance must come from
above; and the fact that Wagner apparently
considers the guiding power to be the Grail itself, while Wolfram believes the guidance to
come directly and immediately from God, is
apparently due to the more definitely Christian
character ascribed to the Grail by the dramatist.
he name of the
castle, Monsalvat, is of
course derived from the Monsalväsch of the
Parzival (a name peculiar to the legend),
where the derivation appears to be 'Mont Sauvage',
from the wild and lonely character of the
surrounding district, a feature emphasized in the
poem; but some scholars would explain the terms
rather as signifying Mount of Healing (or
Salvation), a rendering to which Wagner, from the
form given to the name, seems to incline.
 to its
locality Wolfram is by no
means explicit: he certainly never says it is in
Northern Spain, where Wagner places it; according
to his statements it was within thirty-six hours'
ride from Nantes. Writers later than Wolfram, however, do locate the
Grail Castle in Spain, and
the idea seems to have originated with the writer
of Der jünger Titurel, a poem which deals
very fully with the Grail
and its guardians, and, long attributed to Wolfram, is now known to be the
work of a certain Albert von Scharffenburg, a very
inferior poet.
his location of the
Grail Castle in Spain is of
course favoured by those scholars who regard the
Grail myth as of Oriental
origin, and the Spanish Moors the medium of
communication to Europe; but as a matter of fact
there is practically no evidence to connect the
Grail with Spain, saving
the statement, which Wolfram refers, and probably
correctly, to his French source, that the legend of
the Grail was originally
found in an Arabic manuscript at Toledo. The truth
of this statement may be gauged by the fact that
the same manuscript is stated to have contained the
story of Parzival, the Aryan-Celtic origin
of which is beyond doubt. It is much more in
accordance with the general indications of the
legend to believe that the poets imagined the
castle to be situated in the northwest of
France. 
 ut in the process
of development which the legend has undergone, the
nature of the castle to which the hero pays at
first an abortive, and afterwards a successful,
visit has passed through various transformations.
At first it probably symbolised the abode of the
departed, and was as such identical with the castle
of Brynhild which figures in the
Thidreksaga [the saga of Dietrich von
Bern] and the Nibelungenlied; and the
hero's task was to break the spell of death or
slumber binding the inhabitants. In the performance
of this task certain talismans not infrequently
played an important part; gradually these talismans
became Christianised; and now in the Grail legends we have
two castles -- one, that of the
Grail, the other, retaining
its pre-Christian character, being known by varying
names, the Castle of Maidens, the Château Merveil,
or as here, Klingsor's Castle. Such a
bespelled castle is undoubtedly an original and
essential feature of the Perceval story.
he
Parzival gives no account of the building
of Monsalväsch, such as Wagner puts into the mouth
of Gurnemanz, but
simply speaks of Titurel as being first king
and ruler of the Grail and
its knights; but elsewhere Wolfram is more explicit. Among
the works which the poet-knight has left are poems,
or songs, dealing with the loves of Sigune and Schionatulander,
four in all, but critics are doubtful whether more
than the first two can be rightly ascribed to
Wolfram. In the first of
these poems, which are classed together under the
name of Titurel, we find the old king,
oppressed with the infirmities of age, resigning
his kingdom to his son Frimutel, and telling him
that he received the Grail
from the hands of angels, that he was the first
mortal to whose charge it was committed, and that
the rules for the order of Grail knights were found on the
mystic stone. There is no mention of the Spear here, nor of the building of
Monsalväsch, the reason probably being that both
castle and weapon were older than the Grail myth, and the writer accepted
them as he found them.
 t is doubtful
whether the Titurel preceded or followed
the Parzival; probably the latter, and
Wolfram's intention was
to fill up lacunae in the history of Sigune, who plays an
important part in the Parzival. Its
statements agree with those of the more important
work, and a common source is evidently at the root
of both.
he old knight
Gurnemanz, who is
so prominent in the drama, is also a characteristic
figure in the original Perceval legend, where his
office is to instruct the hero in knightly customs
and bearing -- instruction of which he has much
need. The Welsh (Peredur) version represents
this character as identical with the Fisher-King,
and as uncle to the hero; but he is, as a rule,
distinct from both, and the relationship of uncle
rather pertains to the Hermit, also an essential
character of the legend, whose office it is to
direct the hero's spiritual development, whereas
the old knight's teaching is directed rather to his
outward bearing (combined in the case of Gurnemanz of Graharz with
a good deal of ethical teaching).
n Chrêtien's poem the name of the
knight is Gonemans de Gelbort; Gerbert, one of
Chrêtien's continuators,
calls him Gornumant, of which form Gurnemanz is obviously
the German rendering. It will be seen that in the
drama Wagner has united the characters of these two
instructors in the person of his rather didactic
old knight: the Gurnemanz of the
First Act answering to Gurnemanz of Graharz, who
appears in the Third Book of the poem and not
again, though he is frequently alluded to as a
model of knightly wisdom, skill and courtesy; the
Gurnemanz of the
Third Act answering to the Hermit
Trevrezent, who
in the Ninth Book of the poem unfolds to Parzival the mystery of
the Grail, and restores him
to faith in God.
 nd here it may be
well to remark that Wagner's treatment of the
Perceval legend
differs in some essential characters from his
treatment of the other legends he has dramatised;
he has handled it with far more freedom and
boldness, and, while adhering faithfully to the
spirit of the original, he has
recast the incidents with great gain to the
dramatic form, and in more than one detail with a
happy insistence on what was probably an original
feature of the legend. The result of this treatment
has been that, though the story of Parzival is really longer
and more full of incident than is that of
Siegfried, the salient points are so happily
brought out, and the balance of the whole is so
well preserved, that, though treated in
one drama instead of in
two, it in no way suffers from
compression. It is a new rendering
of an old myth ...
he Fisher-King, the
wounded lord of the Grail,
appears in every version of the Grail myth; in the English Sir
Percyvelle, in which the Grail does not appear, alone is he
missing. Belonging to that part of the Perceval legend which has
been most strongly and directly affected by the
development of the Grail
myth, the character of the wounded king has now
become so closely associated with the Christian
talisman, that even when the earlier form of the
legend has become obscured, and Perceval himself has
ceased to be par excellence the
hero of the quest, the wounded king, the Rich
Fisher (varying names for the same character),
still retains his connection with the object of
that quest.
a rule the
king is represented [in the romances] as an old
man; that Anfortas, in the
Parzival, appears in the prime of life and
manly beauty is due to the youth-bestowing
properties of the Grail;
Trevrezent, the
Hermit, who is spoken of throughout as an aged man,
is Anfortas'
younger brother. In his
representation of the Grail
king, Wagner has, on the whole, followed the
indications of his source; one generation has been
dropped out, and Amfortas appears as
Titurel's son, and
not his grandson, thus heightening the tragic
effect of the king's refusal to unveil the Grail; and the relationship between
himself and Parsifal no longer exists.
The distinctive feature of Wolfram's version, and that which
has given Wagner the hint for the colouring 'motif'
of his drama, lies in the fact that he represents
Anfortas as
wounded in punishment for an unlawful love; in
other versions the king is wounded in battle, or
accidentally, by handling a mysterious sword
destined for the use of another. This change,
thoroughly in harmony with the high spiritual and
ethical treatment which raises Wolfram's version of the legend
so immeasurably above those of the French poets,
has been utilised by Wagner to the great benefit of
the character of Amfortas, which in the
drama possesses a significance altogether lacking
in the legend.
 hy Wagner changed
the name of the king from Anfortas
to Amfortas does not appear: the
original form is supposed to have been derived from
the French Enfertez = the sick man, with
Provençal ending -as; names derived from Provençal
French being a marked feature in Wolfram's poem.
n his account of
the weapon with which the king has been wounded
Wagner departs boldly from his source, and from
what was almost certainly the oldest form of the
story. For we are here confronted with what was
evidently one of the original features of the
legend; in most of the earlier forms, e.g. in
Chrêtien, in
Peredur, and in
the [prose] Perceval, we find a bleeding
Lance accompanied by another talisman, which latter
is eventually identified with the Grail. The Spear is in Chrêtien the subject of a longer
digression and explanation than is the Grail itself; and while Perceval goes in quest of
the Grail, and to ask the
question which will heal
the wounded king, Gawain goes in search of the
Spear...
e not infrequently
meet with the statement, in print, that it was
Chrêtien de Troyes who
first identified the Spear
with the Spear of Longinus,
and the Grail with the
vessel of the Last Supper; but both these
statements are incorrect. True, the Spear is so spoken of in the
introduction to Chrêtien's poem, and Spear and Grail are alike Christian symbols
in the minds of Chrêtien's continuators; but the
introduction is no less the work of a hand other
than Chrêtien's, than is
the continuation (or, to be more correct,
continuations), and he himself gives no account of
the origin of either.
he fact seems to be
that the Spear was, as
Wolfram represents, the
weapon with which the king was wounded; and
although Wagner has radically changed the character
of the weapon, yet in representing the Spear, rather than the Grail, as the object of the hero's
quest, and the animating motive the desire of
healing the maimed king, he is probably reproducing
with fidelity original features of the story. No
one can quarrel with Wagner for having represented
both Spear and Grail under the more fully
developed Christian character in which they are
most familiar to us; the fact that he has done so
bears out the contention advanced above, that in
the Parsifal Wagner has been singularly
happy in emphasizing the spiritual significance of
the legend without detriment to its original
form.
he episode of the
swan, with which the
hero makes his entry upon the scene, was doubtless
suggested by a beautiful passage in the poem, where
Wolfram depicts the child
Parzival as
slaying the birds in pure thoughtlessness, and then
overwhelmed with remorse for the harm he has
unwittingly done:
But when the feathered songster
of the woods at his feet lay dead,
In wonder and dumb amazement
he bowed down his golden head,
And in childish wrath and sorrow
tore the locks of his sunny hair;
... and his heart was with sorrow filled,
And the ready tears of childhood
flowed forth from their fountains free
As he ran to his mother, weeping,
and bowed him beside her knee.
"What aileth thee, child?" quoth the
mother,
"but now wast thou gay and glad";
But childlike, he gave no answer,
scarce wist he what made him sad!
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he identification
of the swan as the bird of the
Grail is a later feature,
due to the connection with the myth of the
swan-knight, who, in the latest forms of the story,
became identified with Lohengrin, Parzival's son, and
appointed heir to the Grail
kingdom. The bird of the Grail is, more correctly, the
dove,
the badge of the Grail
knights in the poem as in the drama; but Wolfram alone knows of this
feature, and we cannot consider it part of the
original legend...
n the legend
Parzival is not,
as in the drama, driven from the hall with
contumely but awakes in the morning to find himself
alone in the castle, all the inhabitants having
vanished; and it is as he rides forth from the
castle that an unseen hand raises the drawbridge,
and the voice of one unseen pours mockery upon him
for his failure to ask the mystic question:
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Goose that thou art, ride onward,
to the sun's hate hast thou been born!
Thy mouth hadst thou thought to open,
of these wonders hadst asked thine host,
Great fame had been thine. But I tell thee,
now hast thou this fair chance lost!
Left: The Grail Temple, Bayreuth 1882.
After the design by Paul von Joukowsky.
©Cologne Theatre Museum.
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- words in which we find the source of Gurnemanz's taunt, cast
by Wagner in a more homely and proverbial form. The
whole incident has an unmistakable 'folk-lore'
flavour about it, though perhaps it is more common
[in folk-tales] to find that not the folk alone,
but castle or palace itself, has vanished, and the
hero awakes to find himself lying on bare
ground.
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