Jesus of Nazareth - Buddha (The Victors) - Parsifal - continued

Jesus of Nazareth (WWV 80)

he crucial importance of Schopenhauer's philosophy for Wagner's world-view, informed his later study of the Saviour, an investigation which increasingly appears to us "Bayreuthians" as the noblest task one might set oneself. If we find the opinion and the theory of the first [Christian] believers - that Jesus issued from the royal house of David - uncritically accepted in the draft discussed above, then we can set against it the later opinion that: Jesus was not of Jewish descent, since the inhabitants of Galilee were on account of their mixed origins despised by the Jews [see Matthew 4:15]. But gladly we may conclude, as advised by our Master, that everything concerning the historical facts about Jesus can be left for the historian to determine, while we prefer to contemplate the image of the Redeemer².

A sinless divine nature took upon itself the tremendous sins of all existence and expiated them with his own painful death. By this expiatory death itself, everything which breathes and lives should be allowed to know it is redeemed. Thus he is to be understood as an example and as a model worthy of imitation. These words of Wagner's, which we recall here in order to understand core ethical contents of the draft for Jesus of Nazareth, show us at the same time the basic tendency out of which the stage-dedicatory festival-drama [i.e. Parsifal] grew, so that they seem worthy of consideration in that context too.

The Victors (WWV 89)

f we consider, however, that Schopenhauer's and Wagner's respective paths to the acquisition of a purified world-view were guided by Brahminism and Buddhism, then it might seem advisable also to consider the influence of Indian wisdom on the stage-dedicatory festival-drama [i.e. Parsifal]. Later we will consider whether the direct source of the poetic conception of Klingsor's magic garden might be found in Indian legends. Before proceeding with that investigation, I wish to consider the sketch of The Victors [Die Sieger], in particular concerning the subject of Buddhism. This sketch is printed in the Drafts, Thoughts and Fragments compiled from papers left unpublished by Wagner. It was committed to paper on 16 May 1856 in Zurich. I am grateful for the information kindly provided by a noble friend of the artist³ (who reported to us in her Memoirs of an Idealist about Wagner's suffering in Paris), that Wagner took the material of The Victors from a story in Burnouf's Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism. She writes: For Wagner, as for any poet, inspiration could be found in concrete material. Transformed by his great genius, this brief narrative about the Buddha assumed great philosophical and poetic proportions.

he persons of the drama given by the sketch are: Shakyamuni, Ananda, Prakriti, her mother, Brahmins, disciples, people. It is widely known that Buddha is a generic name meaning: the one awakened to awareness, or the enlightened one. This title is mainly used when referring to the above-mentioned Shakyamuni, of the lineage of Shakya. He was the founder of a new religion that grew out of Brahminism. In this story, Ananda is his first disciple and his constant companion on his journeys through the country.

ccording to the teachings which prevailed in India before the time of the Buddha, the path of redemption could only be found by the Brahmins. So the only hope for those born into other castes was that, as the reward for good works, they might be reborn as Brahmins. Far beneath all other castes were the Pariahs and Chandalas, with whom the Brahmins were allowed no contact. Shakyamuni appeared as the liberator of these outcasts for whom the Brahmins had neither mercy nor compassion.

ccording to Wagner his drama is set at the time of the last journey of the Buddha [before his final enlightenment]. Wagner wanted to show the Chandala maiden Prakriti full of [sexual] love for Ananda and in her spiritual struggle with the pangs of love. Ananda, however, responds to her advances with weeping and runs away from her. A comparison with the scene between Parsifal and Kundry in the second act of the stage-dedication festival-play is unavoidable - also where dramatic structure is concerned - when we read in the sketch:

Prakriti goes to Buddha, under the tree at the city's gate, to plead for her union with Ananda. He asks if she is willing to fulfil the conditions of such a union? Dialogue with twofold meaning, interpreted by Prakriti in the sense of her passion; she sinks horrified and sobbing to the ground, when she hears at length that she must share Ananda's vow of chastity.

n the further course of the drama, the Buddha responds to the reproaches of the Brahmins concerning his contact with a Chandala maiden and he attacks the idea of caste. The Buddha goes on to reveal Prakriti's existence in an earlier birth, in a dramatically pivotal narration. It is because, when she was the daughter of a Brahmin, she had proudly rejected the son of a Chandala king, he relates, and because she had mocked the unfortunate young man, that she has been reborn as a Chandala maiden. In her present life it is intended that she would herself experience the agonies of hopeless love. Her redemption can be found in renunciation and full acceptance in the Buddha's community. Indian legends tell of many conversions made by the Buddha, in which the unfortunate one was told how all their suffering is only the necessary consequence of and penalty for sins committed in their previous lives, and how their atonement for these sins leads them on the path of redemption. In the sketch by Wagner discussed here, after the Buddha's narration, Prakriti announces herself ready to make the vow demanded by him, by answering his question with a joyful yes. She is then welcomed by Ananda as a sister. The Buddha then announces his last teachings, and now that everything has become clear to him, goes on his way to the place of his final and complete enlightenment.

f we compare Wagner's sketch with the more extensive account of the legend in Burnouf's book (pages 183-187 of the second edition [or pages 205-209 of the first edition]), then we find almost complete agreement, which is not surprising, given the flow of the narrative. In the legend that equivocal discussion under the tree by the city gates is already of substantial importance. According to Burnouf:

The Buddha uses Ananda's motivation and the excited state of Prakriti's mind as means to the end of their conversion, by successively addressing to her deliberate but ambiguous questions, which she interprets in terms of her passion, after which he interprets her answers in a religious sense. In this way she is gradually led to a realization of her own nature and to hope of finding peace in ascetic life. Then he asks whether she is ready to follow Ananda, i.e. to follow his example, and whether she wishes to wear his clothes, i.e. whether she wants to put on religious clothing, etc. ⁴

urnouf lets the original legend speak only rarely, mostly retelling it in his own words and compressed. A substantial change that appears in Wagner's sketch concerns the Buddha's revelation of Prakriti's experiences in a previous life. According to the legend, which is clearly intended to proselytize, in her former life it was not Prakriti who rejected the suit of the Chandala king but her father, a haughty Brahmin, who did so without her knowledge. Since the Buddhist religion does not know of any visiting of the sins of the father upon the children, there is no sin of Prakriti in the legend, such as becomes clearly visible in Wagner's sketch. This reworking by the dramatist is carried out completely in the spirit of the Buddhist myth. Indeed, I am inclined to say that this Indian legend communicated by Burnouf was one that had been adapted to the end of proselytizing and that Wagner, by transforming it poetically, has in all probability recovered its original form. The primary purpose of the legend, in the version retold by Burnouf, is the condemnation of the hypocrisy of the Brahmins, and for this purpose the conversation between Prakriti's father and the Chandala king is more appropriate than the psychologically important conversation between the king and Prakriti.

hus the reworking of the legend by Wagner touched upon elements that appear significant when we compare the sketch and his stage-dedicatory festival-play. The sin for which Prakriti must atone, like that of Kundry, was essentially one of contempt for the suffering of others. In both cases, desire and longing are revealed as obstacles to redemption, which Ananda and Parsifal successfully overcome by their resistance, and in both cases we are shown how their great compassion reveals the path. That which in the sketch only appears within the limitations of historical context, would be revealed in the stage-dedicatory festival-play as the purely-human, freed from all convention. Here not only was the fate of individual protagonists widened in its significance to embrace everyone, but also the truth of eternal justice [Wahrheit ewiger Gerechtigkeit], which had been partly revealed in the historical-religious clothing of Buddhism, presented itself in the work of art, unconcealed and luminous, to the receptive.

he theory of metempsychosis, which is common to all Indian religions, states that all the suffering one has caused to a living being, one will oneself have to suffer in future lives, even if one has atoned in this world⁵. The inner core of a living being, its karma, is not destroyed on the death of an individual, but survives and at once seeks another dwelling place. The nature of this new incarnation is determined by the condition of the personal record associated with this inner core, in terms of good and bad actions in previous lives. According to whether their karma is of good or bad quality, thus is determined the fate of man, so that one falls low, another is raised up, one is wretched, another is fortunate (words of the Buddha).

Parsifal (WWV 111)

t might be the task of the philosophy of the future, itself inclining towards Buddhism's esoteric theory of palingenesis - as Schopenhauer's genius recognized - to climb from the deepest valleys of physical research up to the furthest heights of metaphysical realization and to combine modern scientific theories with the wise doctrine of karma. We are permitted to perceive in the picture created by the word-tone poet that which a philosophical system will probably never be able perfectly to teach us, and which religious allegory only could communicate symbolically. So we can be satisfied with Wagner's utterance:

Where religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for art to save the core of religion by recognizing the figurative value of the mythic symbols which the former would have us believe in a literal sense, and by revealing the deep truth hidden in them through ideal representation.

he often repeated designation of Kundry as female Ahasuerus actually explains very little. Because the legend of the Wandering Jew tells us only that death is something similar to sleep, without thereby suggesting any deeper truth. The phenomenon does not change. It is only for the Flying Dutchman that this comparison is meaningful, not for Kundry. The truth (recognized by the Buddha), that only the phenomenon is destroyed by death -- while our true nature, so long as if affirms life, must seek a new incarnation to arrive at a new phenomenon -- is made visible in Kundry. The philosopher [i.e. Schopenhauer] tried to explain to us this persistence of our true nature through changing of the phenomenon, by the following analogy: as our sleep is between yesterday and today, so is our death between previous and present incarnations. The artist avails himself of this analogy, when Kundry complains:

If you knew the curse,
which compels me asleep, awake,
through death and back to life,
in pain and laughter,
in ever new forms to suffer anew,
tortured by unending existence!

arlier, when she was woken by Klingsor's necromancy, we heard the words sleep and death juxtaposed. Her sounds are hoarse and broken, as if trying to regain the power of speech, and she brokenly manages to utter these words: Darkest night! Madness! O rage! O misery! Sleep ... sleep ... Deep sleep! Death! To Klingsor's: There another woke you? Eh?, she answers: Yes! My curse! Oh! Longing - longing! The object of her longing is revealed to us by the motif of the Saviour's Lament sounding in the orchestra, accompanying Klingsor's words, confirming her sinful desire for the knights of the Grail.

I long only for rest, only rest,
O my weariness.
To sleep!
O that I might never wake again!
No! Not sleep!
Horror seizes me!
Resistance is futile!
Now it is time,
to sleep - to sleep - I must.

ith these words [in act one] Kundry expresses her fear of the death- like sleep, of Klingsor, or - more deeply understood - of the curse that condemns her to be tortured by unending existence. Rest! Rest! oh, my weariness! - It is not death-like sleep that she seeks , i.e. the death of the phenomenon, the death of the individual in which the will is not destroyed, but rather eternal sleep, i.e. her final release from dying and living, death and rebirth. Therefore she complains [in act two]:

O eternal sleep,
my only salvation,
how, how can I win you?

Klingsor's words: Your master calls you, nameless one, immediately suggest that he is referring to her transcendental being, a nature characterised by the names that follow: Primeval devil-woman! Rose of Hell! Although she is one being, she has appeared in different forms, as distinct phenomena. Klingsor cannot name them all but he continues:

You were Herodias, and who else?
Gundryggia there, Kundry here!

ans von Wolzogen and after him Löffler have explained the meaning and thus the choice of these names according to their respective investigations. The original Herodias legend was summarised by Löffler, as follows,: Herodias burned with love for John the Baptist, a love which he did not return; when she covers the head carried on the plate with her tears and kisses, it resists her and begins violently to blow: the ungodly one is blown into the air where she floats without support; so now, from midnight to cockcrow, she sits sighing in oaks and hazels. Wagner converted the offense against the prophet [John the Baptist] into an offense against the Saviour, although he keeps the name Herodias. Her offense against the Saviour, recalled for us by Kundry:

I saw Him - Him -
and ... laughed!
Then I met His gaze!

would have been the first occasion and actual cause of her endless agony, as in the sketch for The Victors the causative action was Prakriti's sin in scorning her suitor. Löffler says: the names change: Herodias, Gundryggia, Kundry; the substance remains the same . I should like to put it a little differently: the features (thus also the substance) change: e.g. Herodias, Gundryggia, Kundry: the nature remains the same. In my attempt to interpret this case [of Kundry] the following lines have been found especially helpful:

Gurnemanz: Yes, one under a curse she might be.
Here she lives today - perhaps reborn,
to expiate sin committed in an earlier life.

e have to understand Kundry's "laughter" not only as laughter at and mockery of the appearance of the Redeemer but also and indeed primarily as an expression of desire. Ever thirsting for the fount of perdition⁶, her being repeatedly finds new embodiment. Despite sleep and waking, death and life, the nameless one, the primeval she-devil, rose of hell, sins again in accordance with the nature of her being.

The composed wonder is the highest and most necessary product of artistic and representational skill (Wagner, Opera and Drama, G.S. IV 101). Such a composed wonder - which however by no means is to be seen as a miracle but rather as an intelligible representation of reality - is employed by Wagner, when he lets the memories of earlier existences persist, disregarding the possibility that these memories might be erased by each successive death. Thus as Kundry recalls the sins she has committed in an earlier life, so Klingsor can recall Kundry's names in some of her earlier incarnations, just as the Buddha in his narration was able to describe Prakriti in a previous existence.

lso the communication of the ideality of time and space should not be ignored. It is recognisably represented both in the first and third acts of Parsifal. This composed wonder presents us with the Grail domain as the domain of perfect ideality⁷. Of course it is only with the greatest caution that one should attempt to explain a work of art in terms of abstract concepts, since, as has been pointed out again and again, the contents of a true work of art cannot reveal any abstract concept but can only suggest, because the artwork is able to represent directly that which, in terms of abstract concepts, cannot be proven. Anyone who ignores this, might find it difficult to defend themselves against the charge of presumptuous superficiality, no less than that of reducing religious allegories to plain rationalism. Concerning the theory of palingenesis⁸ I should like to point out that it would be insufficient to consider only those of Parsifal's sins for which he could atone by his reaction to the sight of Amfortas in pain, while we are compelled deeply to reflect on these words of Parsifal:

Ah! What sins, what offending guilt
must this fool's head
bear from all eternity;
then no penance, no atonement,
can excuse my blindness ...

The words that follow a little later, addressed by Gurnemanz to Parsifal, while he sprinkles Parsifal's head with water from the holy spring,

Be blessed, you pure one, through purity!
Thus may every trace of guilt
and worry leave you!

appear as an answer to that painful outburst of the intended Grail king. Only now is Parsifal absolved and healed. In this respect he does not resemble Jesus of Nazareth, who did not have to wander the paths of error and suffering. Wagner said: since the Saviour was without sin, incapable of sinfulness, we recognize that in him the will had been completely broken already before his birth. These words apply only to Jesus and not to the sinner Parsifal. Although Parsifal differs in this case, he resembles another, Shakyamuni, who also became wise through compassion and thus became the Buddha.  

Above: In this mural from Cambodia we see an episode from the life of the Buddha. On his first outing from the palace the future Buddha, the prince Shakyamuni, meets with instances of old age, sickness and death. He also sees an ascetic hermit.

ccording to Buddhist legend, Shakyamuni was born a son of the king Sudhodana and received the name Siddhartta; but he is more often referred to, in accordance with his descent, as Shakyamuni or Gautama. Wise Brahmins, who were consulted by Sudhodana, predicted that the prince would become a most powerful king, provided he did not become a hermit. When the king asked how the latter was to be prevented, they answered that the prince must not be allowed to see any of these four things: no man weakened by old age, no sick person, no dead body and no hermit. Despite all precautions taken by his father, however, one day the prince happened to see a man bent by old age: at which he grieved over the transience of human strength and beauty. He saw a sick man, at which he was seized by deep compassion. He saw a dead body, at which he was seized by deep grief, and with it lost all desire for life. Finally, when he saw the peace and blessedness of a hermit, he renounced all splendour and wealth, in order to experience all kinds of suffering and testing, in pursuit of a single goal: to become Buddha and thus redeemer of all beings who are subjected to desire and pain, birth and death. The final tests which Shakyamuni overcame, in his awareness of visible and recognized misery, remind us of Parsifal's resistance [to the temptations of Klingsor's magic garden], which was made possible by the power of his compassion.

or the purposes of this article, we will give particular attention to the temptations and struggles, by which Mára (who can be compared to Klingsor) attempts to overcome the Bodhisat. Bodhisat meant, one striving after the Buddhahood⁹ and therefore it is used to designate the Buddha before the time of his "perfection". While he sat under the holy Bodhi-tree, Mára wanted to strike him in the back but the radiant beauty of the Bodhisat dazzled Mára's eyes and so restrained his movements. He tried now to destroy his enemy with the help of natural forces. He conjured up an enormously furious storm, by which even the strongest trees were uprooted and great rocks were torn out of the ground; but in the vicinity of the Bodhisat, the storm turned into a refreshing breeze, which hardly stirred the leaves of the holy tree, beneath which the Bodhisat remained in undisturbed peace and became as clear as the midday sun.

hen Mára provoked a terrible thunderstorm but neither lightning accompanied by roaring thunder nor floods could harm the Bodhisat. He was merely refreshed as if by a light shower and his happy smile was like the silver light of the full moon in a cloudless sky. Mára seized stones and rocks which he cast at the Bodhi-tree, in an attempt to smash to pieces the one who was seeking the Buddhahood. He flung sharp swords and pointed arrows so that they rained down around the Bodhisat; but all of them were transformed into buds and blossoms, or into garlands of flowers, which fell like friendly floral tributes at his feet. The face of the Bodhisat now resembled a golden mirror, in which was reflected his deep composure; it shone as clearly as the flower petals of a water-lily. Mára wanted to destroy him by fire; but the burning coals, which should have burned him, were transformed in the proximity of the Bodhi-tree into precious ruby stones; the glowing ashes became fragrant sandalwood powder; the white-hot sand became pearls; the smoke, which should have surrounded him in darkness and choked him, was dispersed by his shining appearance like morning mist by the rising sun.

ára now ordered his entire army against the Bodhisat. He mounted his elephant, brandished his mighty discus which, as he came near to the prince, Mára threw at him with all his force. This weapon was so powerful that it could have split a mighty mountain in twain; despite this, Mára was not able to wound the prince who sought to bring redemption. Through his great merit the weapon flew slowly, like a dry leaf, through the air and stopped, remaining suspended over the head of the Bodhisat; who reached his hand down to the earth, to the accompaniment of a loud thunderclap and as sheets of fire shot up out of the earth. Mára's army fled; he was himself thrown to the ground and forced to recognise the greater power of the Bodhisat.

ára's daughters, who were called Desire, Disorder and Lust¹⁰, now made a last attempt. They transformed themselves into the forms of six hundred wonderfully beautiful maidens of various ages and dressed seductively. The maidens approached the prince, praising his beauty, flattering him and teasing him with all kinds of questions. But the Bodhisat was not distracted by them and, after they had persevered with their arts of seduction for a long time, they left him alone.¹¹

here is not necessarily any specific reference here, in which the weapon thrown by Mára can be identified with the holy spear, or his daughters with the girls in Klingsor's magic garden¹². On the other hand it might benefit a wider view to compare the absolution of Kundry by Parsifal with those legends, which tell of how the Buddha admitted to his community both Prajapati, the faithful nurse of his childhood, and Yasodhara, formerly his wife¹³, giving as his reason: Should the teachers of mankind come into the world only for the redemption of men? I say to you, the highest wisdom can be as easily revealed to the woman as to the man. Both can enter into Nirvana. Richard Wagner's essay On the Womanly in the Human¹⁴, on which he was working when death took him from us, refers to the Buddha's initial exclusion of women from the possibility of true holiness, and the remaining fragment closes with the words: It is a beautiful feature of the legend, that shows the Victoriously Perfect [a title of the Buddha] at last determined to admit the woman.

The Need for Redemption

declared the purpose of this study to be an examination of specific factors, which might help to guide us towards an appreciation of the sum of the metaphysical, or more properly emotional, contents of Wagner's dramas. We see now the possibility of the performance of all of these dramas, a process that already began in 1886 in Bayreuth, so that in 1891 there could be performed the three works Tannhäuser, Tristan and Parsifal, which between them encompass the high points of the metaphysical-religious world-view of the artist.

o we must continue to investigate the common contents of the dramas. We conclude our study with words of the Master, which offer to us the possibility of answering every one of our questions. He says: That which, as simplest and most touching of religious symbols, unites us in the common practice of our faith and which, revealed anew in the tragic teachings of great spirits, uplifts us to the heights of compassion, is the knowledge, given in manifold forms, of the need for redemption.. If we want to understand the the shared and collective significance of Wagner's dramas, we have to put this idea in the center and imagine around it the ideality of those dramas as forming concentric circles.

e recognize these ideas both in the dramas of Wagner's first period, in which they are expressed with unconscious necessity, and in the later works, in which conscious artistic effort reveals them to us. These ideas speak to us in the lament of the Flying Dutchman, then they grow silent and speak to us again in other forms, other words, other tones, probably at the most extreme in the spiritual struggle of Tannhäuser, or in the death-seeking delirium of Tristan. They arrive in their final and most satisfactory form in the stage-dedicatory festival-play, with the soft, hardly audible words: redemption to the Redeemer! Softly sounding and hardly audible, they can be heard in Bayreuth by those who will listen, although not outside where they are drowned by the noise of the world. There, not here, that one, not this, becomes the truth, which Wagner so intimately felt and so touchingly expressed:

We already feel that we partake of this redemption in solemn hours when all the world's appearances dissolve away, as in a prophetic dream. Then no more do we fear the appearance of that yawning abyss, the gruesome monsters of the deep, the craving monstrosities of the self-devouring will, which the day - alas! the history of mankind, had forced upon us. Then we are able to hear the lament of nature, pure and yearning for peace, ring out: fearless, hopeful, all-assuaging, world-redeeming. Hearing this lament, the soul of all mankind is purified and made conscious of its own high calling, to redeem like-suffering nature. It now soars above the abyss of semblances, and, released from all that awful chain of becoming and passing away, the restless will, fettered by itself alone, finds its freedom.