With the foundation of the Bayreuth theater in 1872 and the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, there began to form around Wagner in Bayreuth a group of followers known as the “Bayreuth circle.” The publication organ of the Bayreuth circle was the Bayreuther Blätter, which was published from 1878 to 1938. With this periodical the members of the Wagner circle intended to discuss and spread Wagner’s views on art and society. The composer, however, never fully identified himself with what was published in the journal, which remained the pet project of Hans von Wolzogen (he remained the sole editor up to the time of his death in 1938). Over the years the connection between the journal and Wagner’s writings became more and more tenuous.
Wagner’s Parsifal, the “stage-consecration festival-play” (Bühnenweih-festspiel) of Bayreuth, assumed special significance for the members of the early Bayreuth circle, as it embodied Wagner’s late views on art and the regeneration of modern society. Wagner’s Schopenhauerian interpretation of the Christian religion theorized how redemption would reside in the renunciation of the Will and by acquiring compassion with all living things, as in Parsifal’s compassion with Amfortas and resultant regeneration of the Grail Realm. Through experiencing this final drama, the audience was to become, like Parsifal, wise through compassion. Of all of the music dramas, Parsifal was most closely associated with Bayreuth as the Master’s last work and ultimate dramatic statement, and through its religious subject matter Parsifal led the Bayreuth circle to resemble a sacred cult.
In the following excerpts from an article that originally appeared in the Bayreuther Blätter, Hans von Wolzogen assumes the role of spokesperson for the Bayreuth circle, speaking ex cathedra to propound a correctly orthodox interpretation of Parsifal.1 He is replying to another critic, Paulus Cassel, and sets him straight on various points of the drama, defending Wagner against what he perceives as irresponsible, uninformed misinterpretations of the drama on the part of Cassel and others. In his discussion of Parsifal, Wolzogen emphasizes the symbolic and ethical significance of the drama in his analysis of the two central symbols, the Grail and the Spear. In both cases, Wolzogen argues for the higher moral and ethical significance of Wagner’s drama.
The first excerpt concerns the Grail, the central symbol of the drama. Wolzogen attributes Cassel’s lack of understanding to his failure to grasp the correct religious significance of the dramatic features. Accordingly, Wolzogen stresses the symbolic, and with it, the higher moral and ethical significance of the Grail, and to substantiate this he traces the representations of the Grail through archaic folklore, the Christian versions, and the medieval romances, among others. Wolzogen carefully distinguishes the different forms that the Grail has assumed throughout the transmission of the legend: the Kelch (chalice), the Schüssel (bowl or serving dish), the Schale (basin, larger than a cup), and the stone of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s version.
Wolzogen grasps the opportunity for a pseudo-scholarly folkloric exegesis that encompasses etymological derivations, following the Grail through Celtic, Nordic, Egyptian, Chinese, Mexican, Greek, Jewish, Indian, and Persian rites, demonstrating the regressive interest of nineteenth-century thinkers in primal materials. Regardless of the validity of Wolzogen’s analyses when evaluated by modern critical standards, the importance of his thought lies in his assertion of the higher, ethical significance of the Grail and its universality. Wolzogen (sharing Wagner’s disdain for traditional Wissenschaft) scoffs at the scholar for proposing the wrong (a historical) prototype of the Grail. The mention of the bloodless meal is also a reference to Wagner’s concern, in the later writings, that pious care for all living things should be practiced through vegetarianism.
The next excerpt concerns a common topic of Wagner scholarship, the changes that the composer made to Wolfram’s version of the Parzival legend. The medieval romance Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach provided the main source material for Wagner’s drama, though Wagner felt that Wolfram had gotten the legend all wrong and thus warranted correction (as a result, Wagner has frequently been charged with distortion of his medieval sources). The case in point is the use of the Spear, which, Cassel had claimed, renders Parsifal’s character development unnecessary, arguing that the two stipulations for Parsifal’s healing of Amfortas—his character progression and the recovery of the Spear—render each other superfluous. Wolzogen takes care to justify Wagner’s changes with reference to dramatic necessity. Wolzogen appeals to the strict dramatic determination of the course of events, following Wagner’s theoretical premise of tightly knit dramatic causality. As in the excerpts on the Grail, Wolzogen argues here, too, for the higher ethical significance of Wagner’s work as compared to his archaic or medieval sources. His references to the importance of the “deed” echo Wagner’s revision of dogmatic religion, appealing to a more active kind of Christianity. Parsifal symbolized the regeneration of modern society through a Schopenhauerian kind of compassion with all living beings.
HANS VON WOLZOGEN
Parsifal Criticism
From the pages of the Bayreuther Blätter (1887)
Three years after the text of Parsifal appeared, the professor and preacher Paulus Cassel, known to be an especially well-read expert and syncretist of mythological subject matter, published a fairly lengthy study of the legends of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, the Grail, and Parsifal in a newly founded Berlin periodical, Musikwelt (Fall 1881, nos. 1-9), under the title “Aus dem Königreiche des Gral.” When in this article he finally got around to discussing Wagner’s treatment of the material, he could have been expected to deliver a really solid presentation of the musical-dramatic use of the legends that many would find enlightening, and on the same interesting and informative basis as his preceding articles. At any rate, we did not know how far the abilities of this scholar, so well versed in matters relating to the understanding of our German music, would extend. On the other hand, one could hope that he would of course understand and appreciate the religious aspect of the work, which can be fully comprehended by the emotions only through the music.
Let us first examine his interpretation of the Grail, which differs from all of the usual ones.
If we trace the Grail through the older variations of the legends that allude to it or relate to it, then we find among others its mythological prototype in the Gaelic North as the purification vessel of the maternal goddess Ceridven, to whose cult later the order of the Druidic bards of the “Cauldron of Ceridven” was consecrated. In this cauldron the juice of particular herbs was brewed. This vessel refers back to various related phenomena in the myths of many peoples. We know the legend from the Edda about how Odin cleverly steals the magic mead of poetry (Begeisterungstrank), the Odhroerir (that is, a “sensation-stirrer” or stimulant) of Kvasis’s blood from the care of Gunnlödh in the lair of Riesenheim. The Egyptian Odin-Hermes, Thot, passes the cup of grace in the Realm of the Dead. He is the dog-god, whose star, Sirius, is thought to be the harbinger of the deluge and the star of rain. Hu, the husband of Ceridven, the Gaelic “lord of the deep”—who, like Hermes and Odhin, was also a rain- and water-god—corresponds to Thot-Hermes as a god of death. The fertilization of the earth by water for revival (rejuvenation, rebirth) is the initial idea for the worship of a sacred vessel. In our Nordic mythology the guardian at the rainbow bridge, Heimdallr, is supposed to be a son of nine mothers. A bardic song “Quarry of the Deep” says: “I fight for the glory of the teaching, the first word of which was revealed by the cauldron that was warmed by the breath of the nine maidens. Is it not the cauldron of the lord of the deep?” The realm of water is at the same time the realm of the deep, of death, as all life is thought to have evolved from there. It was the true home of all belief in mysteries; and even more it offered significant points of contact for the secret cult, as the realm of water became a realm of wine, beverages that have been prepared by humans, and thereby the mystery of nature further developed into a celebration of culture, human ability, and knowledge, the superiority of spirit over nature.
The union of people who work together for the welfare of the whole, as in the practices of agriculture and viniculture, also leads to a worshipping community, which gradually assumes the character of mysteries through the celebratory connection with the mysterious life of nature itself. The simple form of production and the enjoyment of the products of nature already acquired a spiritual significance. In China the sacred meal with bread and wine is celebrated in remembrance of Confucius. The Mexicans believed that in the consecrated bread they were eating the god himself and named it Tuokualo (god-meal). Soma and Hom of the Indians and Persians were also divine beings that were partaken of with intoxicating drink. At first the mysteries of Eleusis celebrated only the drink “Kykeon” (in the holy bowl) and “Sesam” (bread in the holy chest), that is, the gifts of Dionysos and Demeter; afterward these gods themselves were celebrated, enjoyed through their gifts. Through this communal enjoyment each felt himself initiated into the sacred essence of nature, sworn into a higher spiritual brotherhood, and now celebrated the god as Dionysos Isodaites, the god of the same love-feast. Pythagoras and Plato, the greatest philosophers of Greece, joined into these mysteries, with their schools. As opposed to the bloody sacrifices of battle advocated by the cult of heroism, the bloodless meal was introduced there. In it was established the union of man with his fellow human beings through pious protection of all that is living. This ancient vegetarianism recurs as a moral precept among the Pythagoreans and later Platonists. The Jewish Essenes adopted the same idea in their secret society, and the teaching of Christ was more than symbolically sealed with the bloodless meal, instead of the sacrificial Easter lamb of the Jews. While in this manner the ancient service of the holy vessel achieved higher and higher ethical significance, the festive celebratory meals of the first human community came to the Christians as sacred feasts of brotherly love (Agapai) and formed in their legends the symbol of the Grail. This is what we see now in the Grail Castle of our Parsifal, radiating its light over the bread and wine of the love-feast to spread sustenance and blessings: the heathen cauldron has been transformed into the bowl of the Christian Eucharist.
In the story of the magician Merlin from the chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth (twelfth century) we already find Joseph of Arimathea in the desert ordained by Christ to guard the Eucharistic meal with the golden chalice. This Eucharistic vessel—which is also the basin into which Christ’s blood is said to have flowed from the cross—surfaces for the first time after that under the name Grail in the Old French romance Joseph d’Arimathie, by Robert de Boron.2 Then Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram’s predecessor in the Parzival literature, has the Grail of Joseph of Arimathea, to which he adds the bloody lance.3 In Wolfram, by contrast, the Grail is a stone, a glowing Lapis erilis, which nevertheless, just like the ancient bowl of myth, also gives food and drink, grants health and youth; its power is renewed every year on Good Friday through the host placed on it by heaven.4 This stone comes from the southern sources of the Grail legend, where evidently Oriental star- and stone-worship had been influential. Wolfram names Kiot as his authority, who in turn had relied on the Spanish-Arabian half-Jew Flegetanis (Felek-daneh, that is, astronomer). Flegetanis is said to have read the name of the Grail in the stars. When the author of the Jüngeren Titurel came along, this precious stone evolved into the basin, in which Christ performed the Last Supper, and which was brought by angels to Titurel.5 If the knighthood of the Templeisen, with its kings from Titurel’s family called to guard the Grail, is for the medieval world a depiction of the Oriental Templar order, one can point to the fact that for the cult of the Templars not the Oriental stone but rather the Christian chalice plays a sacred role. The chalice with two torches, just like the glowing Grail, was the main feature of the Templar building in Syria.6 The Templars were also accused of worshipping a bloody head in a bowl (the head of John the Baptist)—a symbol that recurs in the Gaelic form of the legend, as shown to us by the far newer collection called the Mabinogion.7 In this way the sacred vessel also comes from the South as from the North, for the two to combine to form the basin of the Grail. The word Grail is, accordingly, traced back to the Old French graal, greal, gradal; in Old Spanish, grial; Provencal, grazal; Old Catalonian, grasal, that is, vessel, dish, basin. Uhland cites a Testamentum comitis Everardi from the year 873, in which the plate is designated with garalis. The roots of these words have been identified with the Greek gra-o, that is, graso (gnaw, eat), the same word that is to be found in Slavic kros and in our colloquial speech krasen (schmausen). The main root would thus be gar, with the original meaning: schlingen, schlucken; from which also gara, garos, giré, that is, drink, derives directly; and the Greek gras, Old Roman gras, graz, and grad, are further permutations.
By contrast, Professor Cassel (without any evidence relating to the legend) presents his own unique and striking discovery: that according to a Roman custom introduced by the emperor Aurelius and transmitted by Constantine to Byzantium, bread by the name of panes gradiles was distributed to the populace from the steps of the palace. This Byzantine panes gradiles is supposed to have been the prototype of the Grail by virtue of its significance and name. He considers that fact so sound that wherever he does not find this view shared and the Grail is portrayed instead as a vessel or bowl, he automatically feels the foundation of the legend or literature has been shaken. Thus he takes great exception to Wagner’s Grail, which is designated “an ancient crystal basin.” As far as he is concerned, this serves as proof that Wagner’s Parsifal is untrue to the genuine spirit of the Christian legend. To the discoverer of the panes gradiles, any gentle swaying of the vessel in Wagner’s drama rocks the very foundation of the Grail Castle. He finds that thereby “a magic game is played” which so confuses him that in the sublime scene of the love-feast he can only glimpse unmotivated glaring light. He can explain this in no other way than by saying it is an operatic craving for decorative and machinistic stage effects. Isn’t it lamentable that even such experienced and gifted men as our clerical mythologist can be so taken in by preconceived notions as to view a great work of art from the outset with a half-closed look of doubt and distrust?…
The learned scholar also failed to grasp Parsifal’s folly, because Wagner’s version lacks the question that is talked about so much in Wolfram. Immediately the whole work again enters that shady and evil realm of opera, so that he complains loudly about “the distortion of the hero, the most beautiful character of the Middle Ages.” “There is not a trace of the thought that encompasses Parcival’s question;8 the most important thing is to have fancy scenery, spectacles, ‘gloomy lighting,’ and above all, that lastly ‘the Grail glows’!” He sees no further and knows nothing else, but he is learned in folklore research and believes that as such he is allowed to pronounce his critical verdict about our stage consecration festival play even before it has been performed. In what kind of light he wishes to thereby be regarded is illuminated by a later postscript that especially needs to be taken into consideration as he explains: “I have spoken not so much as a critic of Wagner’s work as an apologist of Wolfram—or, to express myself more precisely, as a rescuer of the ’simplicity’ of Parcival himself.” And as this rescuer of simplicity he then continues:
I cannot believe that if Richard Wagner had known the sublime idea of simplicity represented by Parcival—to which alone the significance of the question can be reduced—he would have concerned himself with the mythological story about the lance that wounds and heals, and which belongs to a totally different complex of ideas. For does the question have any meaning whatsoever in his Parsifal anymore, if it can’t have any effect and needs to wait until the recovery of the lance? And then why is Parsifal’s not asking so severely reprimanded?! Nothing would have been gained if he had asked, and nothing lost if he didn’t ask. If Wagner had correctly grasped the power and significance of the “simplex”—and it is as morally as it is poetically glorious—then he would have just let Klinschor [Klingsor] keep the lance. It has absolutely no dramatic justification.
If the scholar could not find “any trace” of the “thought” that “encompasses Parcival’s question”—and even less because in Wagner’s Parsifal it is not a matter of this “question,” because this question is not even an issue—then we must think of what this question really means in order to arrive at some “dramatic justification” for the lance. For the epic poet, the question contains the formulaic symbol of something silent; it is not a question posed to find out something not previously known. For when Wolfram’s Parcival, on his final return to the Grail Castle, asks Anfortas:9 “Uncle, what is ailing you?” he already knows what ails Anfortas; but to fulfill the prophecy—that by his question the uncle will be cured—he must ask, despite his knowledge.
What else could the question signify but compassion? But just the feeling of compassion alone cannot redeem the suffering of Amfortas. For the epic poet the compassion, according to the symbolism of legends, must be clothed in the form of the question, which has taken up a specific expression; and indeed, an expression from the mouth of the one human being, who out of childlike simplicity through error and struggles, just as the promise predicts, achieves the fulfillment of his healing mission: Parcival. For the dramatist the mere expression does not suffice; for him the compassion must become a deed. The question, the symbolic word, becomes the recovery of the stolen Spear, an actual symbol. It is not the compassion alone or its expression, but rather the deed of compassion that heals and redeems. This is what the scholar has not understood, if he can ask in astonishment what the foolish Parsifal is supposed to do at his first visit to the Grail Castle; because then—even if he were no fool, but already “wise through compassion”—he could not have cured Amfortas, for this can be accomplished only by the Holy Spear. For him the two stipulations of the cure—the “pure fool” and the touching of the wound with the Spear—comprise two separate issues, so that one renders the other superfluous. This is how he “understands” the content of the great despairing lament of Amfortas, which seems to him full of misunderstanding, and he paraphrases it with the following nice words: “Amfortas loses himself in the thoughts that Wagner added, and that were borrowed from mythology, that the spear that wounds should also heal, and thereby Parcival’s healing is lost. For in Wagner’s version it depends on the spear, not on the person.”
In Wolfram’s version, the saying inscribed on the Grail promises only who will come and ask the question, but not the nature of this person (“wise through compassion”). The question is, as mentioned, the symbol of the nature of the compassionate pure one. When the promised helper, the young Parcival, arrives at Monsalvat, but does not ask the question, he is reproached for being hardhearted; since everyone knows that he is the helper, and they see that he does not help. In Wagner’s version it is different. Here Parsifal is not promised by name, but rather just as one “made wise through compassion, a pure fool.” Gurnemanz is the only one who, since he has recognized in Parsifal a pure fool, believes that he has found in him the one whose compassion with Amfortas, when he sees him, will make him wise, and thus the helper. But he is disappointed when Parsifal, even after seeing Amfortas, remains the unwise fool. This is where the privilege of the dramatist comes in. He must have Parsifal undergo a character development to become the helper and healer through suffering and deeds. The pure fool must fight to win the wisdom from compassion. Only in this way does he also acquire the power to regain the Holy Spear. On his first visit to the Grail Castle, Parsifal is not yet the helper. He becomes this through the course of the drama, to then return with the symbol of the healing (the Spear), and carry out the redeeming deed of compassion. If he had become wise on his first visit he would nevertheless, even with this knowledge, have sought to alleviate the cause of this suffering by regaining the Spear from Klingsor. The helper must act in order to be able to help. That he delayed the redeeming deed through his folly, that he had to remain so deeply ensnared in his faulty and idle lack of compassion—that drives him to despair even after he has recovered the Spear; and then the others feel compassion for him, whereas in Wolfram’s version they curse him.
In this way everything in Wagner’s dramatic depiction in Parsifal changes through the vital deepening of the ethical significance of the legendary transmission, and thereby the necessary transformation of question into deed. But one learned authority [Cassel] says to this that the lance, the symbol and means of the deed, “has absolutely no dramatic justification”!
In his early prose sketches for Parsifal, Wagner used Wolfram von Eschenbach’s spelling of the hero’s name, “Parzival”; in 1877 he switched to “Parsifal” for the verse text. In the quarrel over philological accuracy between Wolzogen and Paulus Cassel the two critics use another, cognate spelling of the name, “Parcival.” In this excerpt I have retained their inconsistencies.
1. The article was reprinted in Wagneriana: Gesammelte Aufsätze über R. Wagners Werke vom Ring bis zum Gral (Leipzig, 1888), 133-62. The excerpts presented here are taken from pages 133-38 and 147-50.
2. Robert de Boron: French poet of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century; author of Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin.
3. Chrétien de Troyes: medieval French poet whose romance of Perceval in Li Contes del Graal served as the source for Wolfram’s Parzival.
4. Wolfram von Eschenbach (ca. 1170-1220), the German knight and poet (probably Bavarian), was the author of Parzival, Wagner’s main source for Parsifal.
5. Der jüngere Titurel (The younger Titurel): poem by Albrecht von Scharfenberg (written ca. 1260-75) in which the poet speaks through the persona of Wolfram; based on Wolfram’s Titurel fragment and on his Parzival.
6. Knights Templar: military order of the Middle Ages, founded after the First Crusade of 1096 to ensure the safety of Europeans who made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land after it was conquered.
7. Mabinogion: a collection of medieval Welsh folktales.
8. “Anfortas” is the Grail King in Wolfram’s version; Wagner changed the name to “Amfortas,” in 1877, at the same time he switched from “Parzival” to “Parsifal.”