IIPARSIFAL: A MYSTIC MELODRAMA

I will open my dark saying upon the harp.—Psalm xlix.

I will open my dark saying upon the harp.

—Psalm xlix.

When a certain famous Wagner conductor was in New York not long ago, he related to musical friends an astonishing story. He had seen, he declared, the manuscript autobiography of Richard Wagner at Wahnfried, in Bayreuth, which is to remain unpublished until the expiration of a certain period. This conductor did not hesitate to clear up a mystery that, nevertheless, has been an open secret in Germany for many years—Wagner’s parentage. The conductor said that Wagner admitted he was the son of Ludwig Geyer. Ludwig Geyer, painter, poet, dramatist, composer, actor, stage manager,—a versatile man in everything,—was of Hebraic ancestry. Wagner, therefore, had a moiety of the blood, and his son Siegfried more than his father, for Cosima Liszt (von Bülow) Wagner’s maternal grandparents were the Jewish bankers Bethmann of Frankfort-on-the-Main. Mr. Henry T. Finck—whose Wagner biography still remainsthe standard one in the language—once remarked upon the fact that at Wahnfried, Bayreuth, the pictures of Wagner’s mother and Ludwig Geyer may be seen, but that of his reputed father is not on view. Nietzsche, often a prejudiced witness when his antipathies are aroused, wrote: “Was Wagner German at all? We have some reasons for asking this. It is difficult to discern in him any German trait whatsoever. Being a great learner, he has learned to imitate much that is German—that is all. His character itself is in opposition to what has been hitherto regarded as German—not to speak of the German musician! His father was a stage player named Geyer. A Geyer is almost an Adler—Geyer and Adler are both names of Jewish families.” The above was written about 1887-1888. Setting aside the statement that Wagner was un-German as meaningless,—men of genius are generally strangers to their nation,—the other assertion only shows that Nietzsche was in possession of the secret. He was an intimate of the Wagner household and knew its history.

And what does this prove? Only that the genius of Richard Wagner, tinctured with Oriental blood, betrayed itself in the magnificence of his pictorial imagination, in the splendor of his music, in its color, glow, warmth, and rhythmic intensity. It also accounts for his pertinacity, his dislike of Meyerbeer and Heineand Mendelssohn. He was essentially a man of the theatre, as was Meyerbeer, though loftier in his aims, while not so gifted melodically. In sooth, he owes much to the Meyerbeer opera and the Scribe libretto,—Scribe, who really constructed one of the first viable dramatic books—withal old-fashioned—for musical setting.

And nothing is more useless than to pin Wagner down to his every utterance in poem or speech. As Bernard Shaw has acutely pointed out, Wagner—versatile, mercurial, wonderful Wagner—was a different being every hour of the day. He explained matters to suit his mood of the moment,—a Schopenhauerian one hour, a semi-Christian the next. Liszt, Glasenapp, Heckel, Feustel, all show different portraits of this man. A German democrat he was—and a courtier, an atheist, and yet a mystic. Wagner was all things to all men, like men of his supple imagination.

He abused conductors for playing excerpts from his music in concert, and then conducted concerts devoted to his own works. He wrote pamphlets on every subject, and with the prerogative of genius contradicted them in other pamphlets. He was not always a Wagnerian, and at times he differed with himself in the interpretation of his compositions. He was a genius beset by volatile moods, a very busy man of affairs, and a much-suffering creature. Wandering about the world for a half-centurydid not improve his temper, and yet next to Nietzsche there is no one whose judgments on Wagner’s music I would regard with more suspicion than—Richard Wagner’s. He was a born satirist. He loved to play practical jokes, and it would not be surprising if some day we should learn that Parsifal was one of his jokes on an epical scale. Remember how he mocked Mozart and Beethoven and the symphonic form in his own C major symphony, as if to say, “I, too, can cover the symphonic canvas!” No, Wagner is a dangerous authority to quote upon Wagner.

Though Liszt was only two years older than Wagner, he was a musician of experience when Wagner was still a youth. While at the age of eighteen Wagner published his first sonata, opus 1, which was written under the direct influence of Haydn and Mozart, Liszt at the same age had already sketched a great revolutionary symphony, the slow movement of which, on Liszt’s own showing, has survived in his eighth symphonic poem, Héróïde Funèbre. By reference to these two early works, it is easy to determine which of these two masters was the first to open up new paths. Similarly we find that, during the Rienzi period, Liszt had already adopted new forms for his compositions of that date. In Wagner’s later works there often appear themes which note for note have been anticipated by Liszt. Compare, for their thematic formation, musical construction, and generalcoloring, Orpheus and Tristan and Isolde, the Faust symphony and Tristan, the Faust symphony and Die Walküre, Benediction de Dieu dans le Solitude and Isolde’s Liebestod, Die Ideale and the Ring,—Das Rheingold in particular,—Invocation and Parsifal, Hunnenschlacht and Kundry-Ritt, The Legend of Saint Elizabeth and Parsifal, Christus and Parsifal, Excelsior and Parsifal, not to mention many others.

The principal theme of the Faust symphony is to be found in Die Walküre, and one of its most characteristic themes appears note for note as theBlickmotive in Tristan and Isolde. The Gretchen motive in Wagner’s A Faust Overture is also derived from Liszt, and the opening theme of the Parsifal prelude closely follows the earlier written Excelsior of Liszt. It was during a rehearsal at Bayreuth in 1876 that Wagner suddenly seized Liszt by the arm and exclaimed, “Now, papa, here comes a theme which I got from you!” “All right,” replied the amiable Liszt, “one will then at least hear it.” The theme in question is the one in the fifth scene of the second act, which serves to introduce and accompany Sieglinde’s dream-words, “Kehrte der Vater nun heim?” This theme—see page 179 of Kleinmichael’s piano score—appears at the beginning of Liszt’s Faust symphony, which Wagner had heard at a festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein in 1861, and during which he burst forthwith these words, “Music furnishes us with much that is beautiful and sublime; butthismusic is divinely beautiful.” Wagner owed much to Liszt besides money, sympathy, and a wife.

Even in the matter of the Niebelungenlied Wagner was anticipated by Friedrich Hebbel, whose somewhat prosaic dramatic version was first given at Weimar, in the Grand Ducal Theatre, May 16, 1861. The author’s wife, a well-known actress, essayed the principal rôle. A critic said of this Trilogy, “No one hitherto has collated the whole dramatic treasure of the Niebelung legends and made it playable upon the modern stage.” Yet, who to-day remembers Hebbel, and who does not know Wagner’s Trilogy?

But this indebtedness of one genius to another is often sadly misinterpreted. Handel helped himself, in his accustomed royal manner, to what he liked, and the tunes of many composers whose names are long since forgotten are preserved in his scenes like flies in amber. Shakespeare did not hesitate to appropriate from Plutarch and Montaigne, from Bandello and Holinshed,—yet he remains Shakespeare. Wagner, perhaps, was not cautious; and Liszt is too important a composer to have been thus treated, too important, and also too much of a contemporary. Why should we cavil? Wagner made good use of his borrowings, and it is in theirindividual handling and development that he still remains Richard Wagner.

Richard Strauss once said: “How necessary to every composer who writes for orchestra the contact with that body is, I will show you in one example. It is well known that when Wagner conducted for the first time Lohengrin, many years after its completion, he exclaimed, ‘Too much brass!’ In his exile he also wrote Tristan and Isolde, a tone-poem which makes over-great demands upon the orchestra and the singers. Parsifal, however, he wrote at Bayreuth. He had regained intimate feeling again with the orchestra and the stage. Hence I recognize in Parsifal a model of instrumental reserve.”

This quite bears out Arthur Symons’s contention that the best way to study a great artist is in the works of his decline, when his invention is on the wane. Another thing, and this should settle the controversy over that much discussed phrase, “Bühnenweihfestspiel,” Hanslick, Wagner’s heartiest opponent, wrote in 1882: “I must say at once that the ecclesiastic scenes in Parsifal did not at the performance produce nearly as offensive an effect as they do on one who merely reads the text-book. The actions we see are of a religious character, but with all their dignified solemnity they are nevertheless not in the style of the church, but entirely in the operatic style. Parsifal is andremains an opera, even though it be called a Bühnenweihfestspiel.”

Touching on the acrimonious controversy over Parsifal’s blasphemy, I may only say—to every one their belief. No one is forced to see the melodrama, for a mystic melodrama it is, with the original connotations of the phrase. The entire work is such a jumble of creeds that future Bauers, Harnacks, Delitzsches, and other ethical archæologists will have a terrible task if the work is taken for a relic of some tribal form of worship among the barbarians of the then remote nineteenth century. Here in America, the Land of the Almighty Hysteria, this artificial medley of faded music and grotesque forms is sufficiently eclectic in character to set tripping the feet of them that go forth upon the mountains in search of new, half-baked religions.

And now to a complete analysis of the work, an analysis, be it said, first made at Bayreuth in August, 1901. That it may prove unpleasant reading for some I do not doubt. I only hope that I shall not be accused of artistic irreverence. The personal equation counts for something in criticism. I cannot admire Parsifal, and I am giving my reasons for this dislike. There is no reason why the criticism that has so royally acclaimed the beauty of Wagner’s other music-dramas should be suspected in the case of Parsifal. Why should Parsifal be hedged as if of“sacred character”? If you tell a Parsifalite that the opera is blasphemous, he proves volubly, ingeniously, that it is pure symbolism, that Saracenic, Buddhistic, any but Christian, ceremonial is employed. But if you turn the tables, and assert that Parsifal is not sacred, that it should be enjoyed and criticised like Tristan and Isolde, the Parsifalite quickly jumps the track and exclaims, “Sir, there is sacred atmosphere in Parsifal, and not in Tristan!” Oh, this sacred atmosphere! It is worse than Nietzsche’s Holy Laughter! The question may be summed up thus: If Parsifal is blasphemous, it should not be tolerated; if it is not a representation of sacred matter, then we have the privilege of criticising it as we do a Verdi or a Meyerbeer opera; and Meyerbeer was an inveterate mocker of religious things—witness Les Huguenots, Robert le Diable, Le Prophète. How about Halévy’s La Juive? Parsifal, so it appears to me, is more morbid than blasphemous.

Ready-made admiration is dangerous. It behooves us to study Parsifal for ourselves, and not accept as gospel the uncritical enthusiasms of the Wagnerite who is without a sense of the eternal fitness of things. One ounce of humor, of common sense, puts to flight the sham ethical and the sham æsthetical of the Parsifal worshippers. And level-headed study should prove of profit. The composition is a miracle of polyphonicarchitecture—and it is also the weakest that its creator ever planned.

PARSIFAL

Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentilBabil et la luxure amusante et sa penteVers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tenteD’aimer les seins légers et ce gentil babil.Il a vaincu la femme belle au cœur subtilÉtalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante;Il a vaincu l’enfer, et rentre dans sa tenteAvec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril.Avec la lance qui perça le flanc suprême!Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-mêmeEt prêtre du très-saint trésor essentiel;En robe d’or il adore, gloire et symbole,Le vase pur où resplendit le sang réel,—Et, ô ces voix d’enfants chantant dans la coupole.—Paul Verlaine.

Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentilBabil et la luxure amusante et sa penteVers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tenteD’aimer les seins légers et ce gentil babil.

Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil

Babil et la luxure amusante et sa pente

Vers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tente

D’aimer les seins légers et ce gentil babil.

Il a vaincu la femme belle au cœur subtilÉtalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante;Il a vaincu l’enfer, et rentre dans sa tenteAvec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril.

Il a vaincu la femme belle au cœur subtil

Étalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante;

Il a vaincu l’enfer, et rentre dans sa tente

Avec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril.

Avec la lance qui perça le flanc suprême!Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-mêmeEt prêtre du très-saint trésor essentiel;

Avec la lance qui perça le flanc suprême!

Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-même

Et prêtre du très-saint trésor essentiel;

En robe d’or il adore, gloire et symbole,Le vase pur où resplendit le sang réel,—Et, ô ces voix d’enfants chantant dans la coupole.—Paul Verlaine.

En robe d’or il adore, gloire et symbole,

Le vase pur où resplendit le sang réel,

—Et, ô ces voix d’enfants chantant dans la coupole.

—Paul Verlaine.

Parsifal was published in book form on December 25, 1877. The first act was completed during the winter of 1877-1878, and the instrumentation of the prelude finished by December 25, 1878. The spring and summer of 1878 were devoted to the second act, a sketch of which was prepared October 11 of the sameyear. The third act was finished by April 25, 1879, and from 1878 to 1882 the gigantic task of orchestration was undertaken. In the copying of this Wagner was assisted by the late Anton Seidl and Engelbert Humperdinck. The entire first act was not completed until the spring of 1880. In a villa near Naples he finished the second act, with its garden scene; and in Palermo, January 13, 1882, the sacred music-drama was given its final form. July 28 of the same year Parsifal was first performed at Bayreuth, with Materna as Kundry, Winklemann as Parsifal, Reichmann as Amfortas; Kindermann sang the phrases allotted to Titurel, and Scaria was Gurnemanz. The Klingsor was Karl Hill. Hermann Levi conducted. Thus much for dry statistics.

“Besides my Siegfried,” Wagner wrote August 9, 1849, to Uhlig, “I have in my mind two tragic and two comic subjects; but not one of them seems to me to be suitable for the French stage. I have just found a fifth one; it is indifferent to me in what language it will appear first; it is Jesus of Nazareth. I have the intention to offer it to the French and thus to get rid of the whole affair, for I foresee the indignation this project will excite in my collaborator.” Wagner’s plan was to make a play in which Christ would be tempted by Mary Magdalen. This idea was abandoned. With the conception of Tristan and Isolde came the scheme for aParsifal. He wrote of this to Liszt in 1876, being full of Schopenhauer and Buddhism at the time. The Victors was the sketch found among his papers, the hero of which is the Eastern prince Ananda, who rejects the love of the beautiful Princess Prakriti, and by this act of renunciation achieves his and the woman’s redemption. Parsifal is not far removed from this sketch. In 1857 near Zurich Wagner became obsessed by the idea, and on a Good Friday the genesis of Parsifal occurred. In 1864 this sketch, at the request of Ludwig II, was carefully developed, and became the complete music-drama.

Wagner has rooted his story in the old legends and history of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troies. The latter wrote his poem in 1175, Perceval the Gaul; or, the Story of the Grail; the former was composed between 1201 and 1210. But the story was centuries old before Chrétien handled it, its origin probably being Provençal. And before that it may have sprung from the Moorish, from the Egyptian, from the Indian, from the very beginnings of literature, for it is but the old story of might warring against right, evil attempting to seduce good. It crops out in a modified form in the Arthurian cycle, for the Round Table and the Grail are united in one. Whether Perceval, Parzival, or Parsifal, we find the guileless young hero fighting against wrong and resisting evil. Thereis even a Romance of Peredur to be found in the Mabinogion or Red Book, a collection of Welsh romances. Some believe this Peredur to be the prototype of the French Perceval. In all these poems there is a Kundry, or Kondrie, or Orgeleuse, a sorceress; and a King who has sinned—Le Roi Pécheur. The Knighthood of the Grail is a consecrated community that worships the sang-real, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, which some say was caught up in a goblet after the soldier Longinus pierced the side of the Saviour on Calvary. This lance also plays an important part in the poems, and in Wagner’s music-drama. Montsalvat is a beautiful temple in a far-away land—presumably Spain—where the knights of the Grail, or Graal, meet to receive spiritual nourishment from the holy chalice containing God’s blood. Every year a white dove descends from heaven to lend new powers and strength to the miraculous vase inclosing the blood. These knights are vowed to chastity, and it was a sin against chastity committed by Amfortas that caused the monarch all his suffering. Kundry it was who tempted the King. Klingsor, the enchanter, a eunuch by his own act, prompts Kundry to all this evil. Gurnemanz, the aged servitor of the Grail, and Titurel, the dead King, though miraculously alive, father of Amfortas, make up the rest of the characters in this strange drama of pity and renunciation.

Wagner saw many opportunities in the legends and poems, and as was his wont synthesized them in the shape we know as Parsifal. His Parsifal is a born innocent, a pure fool. Wagner pretended to derive the word from Parsi-fal or Fal-Parsi—i.e.Pure Fool—born after the death of his father, Gamuret, and living alone with his mother, Herzeleide, in the woods. Attracted by a cavalcade of shining knights he follows it and finally enters the domain of the Grail. Let us leave him there and consider that curious composition of the poet-musician—Kundry. Wagner found some of her characteristics in the old poems, but to him belongs the credit of creating the woman we see in his drama. She is Kundry the enchantress, Herodias, who laughed at Christ, who had John the Baptist beheaded—“she is said to have laughed when she bore aloft the head,” and it breathed upon her, thus condemning her to eternal wandering. Besides this, Kundry is also Gundryggia of the Northern nymphs, the slaying Valkyr. A type of the eternal temptress, and yet a Magdalen, Wagner calls her the Rose of Hell, the She Devil, a tempestuous spirit, a perpetual seducer. She is under Klingsor’s rule, though she humbly serves the Grail Knights in their estate when she is not asleep. Asleep, Klingsor can summon her as he wills, and then, instead of the Beneficent Kundry, she becomes the Demon Kundry.

Now follows the story of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, which I condense with the help of Maurice Kufferath’s version and from the epitomes of von Wolzogen, Albert Heintz, and many others. It is assumed before the curtain rises that the spectator is acquainted with the tale of the foolish lad Parsifal and his roaming in the forest, bow and arrow in hand, in pursuit of the “shining men mounted upon noble steeds.” He loses his way and enters the region of the Grail. At this point the curtains part and we see a deep wood in a mountainous district. The book of the play tells us of the scene of action: “The domains and Castle Montsalvat of the Guardian of the Grail, with scenery characteristic of the northern mountains of Gothic Spain. Later Klingsor’s enchanted castle on a southern slope of the same mountains, looking toward Moorish Spain.” The scene in Act I represents a clearing upon the border of a beautiful lake. It is morning. Stretched in slumber upon the ground are Gurnemanz, a pious, hale old servant of the Grail, and two squires. Brass music awakens them, and after prayer they prepare to attend the King Amfortas, who is at the very moment approaching the lake for his bath—he suffers cruelly from his wound. Two knights appear and inform the others of this suffering. The balsam of Gawain is without effect. Suddenly there appears on the edge of the forest a terrible figure. It is Kundry. Wagner thusindicates her appearance: “in wild garb fastened high with a hanging girdle of snakes’ skins; black hair, flowing in loose tresses; dark brown, reddish complexion, piercing black eyes, at times flaming wildly, but oftener fixed as in death.” She brings from Arabia a balsam to soothe the King’s pain. Enter Amfortas. He seeks the cool of the forest after his night of agony. The lake, too, will give him some surcease to his pain. But Gurnemanz knows better: “But One thing helpeth—One the helper,” he mutters. Amfortas repeats the prophecy that once in letters of fire appeared about the rim of the Grail vase: “Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Thor, harre sein, den ich erkor;” that is, “By pity waken’d the blameless Fool, him await my chosen tool.” The King longs for death. Kundry offers him the balsam. “Of what use the balm? All is useless; rather a bath in the waters of the lake.” The litter bearing the royal sufferer moves sadly and slowly away, while Kundry crouches down like a hunted wild animal. The squires tease her until Gurnemanz recalls to them that even beasts are sacred within the territory of the Grail. Then follows a long recital by the elder man, who, in reply to questions, relates the story of Amfortas and his sin.

Klingsor, enraged at being denied admission to the Order of the Grail after his mad act of self-mutilation, raised by his infernal arts a magic castle and gardens not far from Montsalvat.This he filled with lovely girls, who tempted the Knights of the Round Table. Amfortas resolved to destroy this Castle of Perdition. Armed with the sacred lance which pierced the Saviour’s side he laid siege to Klingsor’s abode. Unluckily for him a supernaturally beautiful woman, Kundry, was sent by Klingsor,—whose heart was black with envy,—and waylaid by her Amfortas succumbed to her fascinations. As he was clasped in her embrace the spear dropped and was seized by Klingsor, who gave him a fatal thrust in the side. No alleviation was there for this pain. Even the mystic bread which he occasionally dared to dispense to his knights did not bring ease. Klingsor kept the sacred spear, and by its aid hoped some day to capture Montsalvat itself.

When Gurnemanz finishes this harrowing tale the four squires kneel and sing the above prediction, “Durch Mitleid wissend.” Cries are suddenly heard, and knights rush in to inform their horrified hearers that a blasphemer has dared to enter the sacred park and shoot one of the swans. The culprit is dragged in. It is Parsifal, with his bow and arrow. The swan lies in death throes before him. While vainly endeavoring to discover his name, his identity, Gurnemanz reproaches him for having shed innocent blood, and points out to him the heinousness of his offence. Parsifal is overcome with shame—and pity. Here is first indicatedthe cardinal trait of his character. He relates to Gurnemanz the little he knows of his early life—with which the reader is already acquainted—and tells of his mother Herzeleide. Kundry sneeringly interrupts. His mother is dead from sorrow at her boy’s desertion. Parsifal, raging, throws himself upon the woman, but is dragged away. The truth forcing itself upon him, he grows faint and is revived by water from a spring. At this juncture Kundry grows sleepy. Well she knows—though the others do not—that her master is about to summon her. Filled with despair she staggers into the bushes and is seen no more. Gurnemanz, his heart revived by the pure foolishness of the lad, begins to hope anew, and the King’s litter returning to the palace, he again questions Parsifal. “What is the Grail?” asks in turn the youth. Then the pair appear to move slowly, and the scene changes, to the accompaniment of the sombre “Verwandlungsmusik,” from the forest to rocky galleries, finally to the Byzantine hall of the Holy Grail. All this is accomplished by scenery which moves in grooves. Parsifal questions Gurnemanz as to this phenomenon. “I slowly tread, yet deem myself now far,” he says. “Thou seest, my son, to space time changeth here,” answers Gurnemanz, which is a choice metaphysical morsel for the admirers of Kant and Schopenhauer.

Now begins the most solemn scene of the music-drama. To the pealing of bells, the intoningof trumpets and trombones, the scene of the Holy Grail is inaugurated. Into the vast hall files the cortége of the sick monarch, and the Grail Knights, wearing white coats of arms, a dove embroidered upon a red mantle, advance in double lines and group themselves about the table. They chant, and boys’ voices from the middle part of the dome reply, while children’s voices in the cupola high above join in a celestial chorus. After a profound silence the voice of Titurel issues from his tomb behind the throne. The dead man is revived by the potency of the Grail. He bids his erring son to perform the sacred office, to uncover the Holy Grail. Then follows a dramatic episode. Conscious of his unworthiness and showing his bleeding side, Amfortas long resists the request of his father. It is a part of his expiation that, sinner as he is, he must officiate at the solemn sacrifice. His protests are not heeded. The children’s voices from the cupola recall the prediction, “Durch Mitleid wissend.” Exhausted, pale, and suffering untold agonies, Amfortas lifts the crystal vase, the Grail. A ray of piercing pure light falls from above on the chalice—the hall is now dark—which becomes luminous and glows with purple splendor. Amfortas sings, “Take this bread, it is my flesh; take this wine, it is my blood which love has given thee.” The singing by the various choirs breaks forth anew, and as daylight returns the holy ceremonies concludewith the kiss of peace by the brethren. The King is carried away, the knights withdraw as the voices from the cupola sing, “Happy in faith, Happy in love.” Parsifal, who has been staring about him all this time, is interrogated by Gurnemanz. The latter has not noticed the convulsive start made by the pure fool when he sees Amfortas fall back upon his couch. Pity has entered his heart, though he is not able to voice this sentiment to Gurnemanz. The latter, angered by such seeming stupidity, thrusts him roughly from the hall, bidding him go seek a goose for his gander. Then, saddened by this fresh disappointment, the old man stands alone in the hall. Like a gleam of hope an alto voice from the mysterious height repeats the prediction, “Durch Mitleid wissend,” and is joined by boys’ voices. To this music the curtains close.

As in the Rheingold, where Nibelheim follows Walhalla, Wagner gains a violent contrast by placing the action of the second act in Klingsor’s dread castle. The scene represents the magician’s laboratory—a sort of Faust-like chamber at the top of a tower. The place is in semi-darkness, a well-like abyss to the left evoking a feeling of anticipation. A narrow staircase ascends to an aperture in the wall, an azure slit of the sky being revealed. The floor is strewn with implements of sorcery, and on the steps Klingsor, an Arabian, and fierce looking man with a black beard, is seated gazing into a wizard’smetallic mirror. By its aid he perceives Parsifal approaching the castle, having already forgotten his experiences in Montsalvat and haled by Klingsor’s spell. With a cry of satisfaction the magician leaves his vantage post, descends, and approaches the chasm. Throwing incense into it he begins his cabalistic spells; “Up, Kundry, ascend from the gulf! Come to me. Thy master calls thee, thou nameless one, primal fiend, rose of hell! Thou who wert Herodias, and what more! Once Gundryggia, now Kundry; up, up, to thy master; obey him who has sole power over thee!”

A lovely woman appears enveloped in a misty veil. It is Kundry. She screams, a blood-curdling scream which modulates into a feeble, whimpering moan. The dialogue which ensues is not a pleasing one. Klingsor berates the woman for serving the knights like a beast of burden, as reparation for her crime against Amfortas. She sneers at his lost powers, and absolutely refuses to seduce the approaching Parsifal. But in vain she resists her master. A sound of battle is heard. Single-handed, Parsifal, without, routs the feeble, enslaved knights of Klingsor. From his window in the battlements the wizard views the strife with satisfaction. He would be pleased to see his weak servitors killed by this robust, handsome youth. Kundry vanishes to prepare for her fell work of destruction. The towersinks to strange, thunderous noises, and we behold Parsifal in a many-colored tropical garden, dense with flowers of an unearthly hue and splendor. Almost immediately he is surrounded by girls, living flowers who coquet, tease, and lure him to ravishing music. The scene is a gay one. Parsifal repulses one group after another, when suddenly a voice sings, “Parsifal, stay.” He is deeply moved. “Parsifal? Thus once my mother called me.” He remembers his name at last. Thus does Wagner subtly indicate the growing knowledge that passion reveals. A scene of temptation follows that has no parallel in art or literature. Lulling the youth’s chaste suspicions by telling him of his mother Herzeleide, she at last wins him to her side and imprints upon his lips his mother’s kiss, her own magic kiss. Instead of succumbing Parsifal leaps to his feet and presses his heart. He cries in agony, “Amfortas! the wound—the wound! It burns within me, too.” Kundry’s kiss shows him what the entire Grail did not know—that she was the cause of the King’s downfall. He understands all now, and his one thought is to go to the King and relieve his pain. He is the poor fool who pities. Mad and desperate, Kundry detains him. She believes that he can, if he so wills it, release her from Klingsor’s hideous spell. He is to be her saviour; a second one, not the real Jesus at whom she laughed and meeting whose reproachfulgaze she forever after wandered. She is the real Woman who laughed. Her laughter shudderingly resounds throughout hell, whenever a sinner yields to her seductions. But Parsifal is different. Perhaps, being a frequenter of the Grail land, and a very Erda for wisdom, Kundry knows of the prediction. She weaves a web of voluptuous beauty; Parsifal escapes its blandishments. Then finding that this fails, she curses him, with furious and hysterical curses. “Renounce desire; to end thy sufferings thou must destroy their source.” Thus Parsifal enjoins her. But Kundry will not be convinced. “My kiss it was that made thee clear-sighted. My embrace would make thee divine.” He asks for the road to Amfortas. She curses him. “Never, never, shall thou find that road again. The Saviour’s curse gives me power. Wander!” She frantically summons Klingsor, who appears upon the terrace with poised spear. The flower girls rush in, and Klingsor hurls the weapon at the audacious intruder. But it whizzes over Parsifal’s head, where floating in the air he seizes it and makes the sign of the cross. A cataclysm ensues. The castle and garden sink into the earth, accompanied by volcanic explosions, the flower girls become withered hags, and all the enchanting vista of flowers is transformed into an arid waste. Kundry falls to the ground prostrated. Parsifal, surveying this desolate ruin from the shatteredramparts, utters to Kundry these prophetic words, “Thou knowest where to find me.” Immediately the curtains veil this effective scene.

Act III brings us back to the Grail confines, where a tender, idyllic landscape on the edge of a forest discloses a hermit’s hut, with a spring hard by. It is a spring morning. Gurnemanz, now a white-haired, sorrowful old man, has relinquished all hope of a saviour for the King. He feels that unless death intervenes, Klingsor will become master of the Grail, for he knows nothing of the stirring events in the preceding act. A low cry in the bushes apprises him of Kundry’s presence. She is half dead, but is revived by the old hermit. She feebly moans, “Service, service,” and then rises and goes to the hut, where she gets a pitcher. This she carries to the spring, and fills. Gurnemanz marvels at her altered and penitential appearance. But she makes signs. One is approaching. A stranger knight in coal black armor, with visor down and spear in hand, is seen. He gravely advances. Gurnemanz asks his name. The stranger shakes his head. Adjured to remove his armor, as it is Good Friday, and no Christian knight must bear arms on that holy day, the stranger obeys. He plants his spear in the ground, removes his shield and sword, unfastens his armor, takes off his helmet, and kneels in fervent prayer beforethe lance. At once he is recognized by Gurnemanz as the youth who killed the swan, and the lance is also remarked with keen emotion. “Oh, blessed day,” cries the old man, who knows that his King’s saviour is now at hand. Now follows a series of pictures. They move before the eyes like some strange dream in a land where life has resolved itself into processional attitudes. One dissolves into another. The kneeling knight recalls an Albrecht Dürer, and his blessing by Gurnemanz, his baptism of the repentant Kundry,—who utters but two words during the act,—and the washing of his feet Magdalen-like, are all accompanied by music that is almost gesture, and with gestures that are almost musical. Gurnemanz informs Parsifal that Amfortas is in sad extremities, his father, Titurel, no longer strengthened by the Grail, is really dead, and the King refuses to perform the sacred office. It is this great hour of need in which Parsifal appears. Parsifal tells Gurnemanz of his weary wanderings over the earth in search of Montsalvat. Sorely beset by foes, yet he dare not use the sacred spear. It has been kept intact from worldly stain or strife. Then follows the soothing Good Friday magic music episode, when all nature puts on its sweetest attire to give thanks to the Saviour who suffered. Bells are heard. It is noon. As in the first act, but by a different route and accompanied by other music, thescene slowly changes to the domed Temple of the Holy Grail. The funeral services of Titurel are being held. The hall is full of mourning knights. Amfortas, his agony at its apex, refuses to unveil the Grail, and begs his companions to slay him, for he can no longer endure his pain and shame. Parsifal enters, accompanied by Gurnemanz. He witnesses the King’s paroxysm, and then advances to him. With the point of the lance he heals the wound. Kundry dies on the altar steps, and Parsifal, now King of Montsalvat, mounts the step and lifts on high in silent invocation the crystal vase. Mystic voices in the cupola sing “Wondrous work of mercy. Salvation to the Saviour.” Thus the mystic melodrama ends.

In the first draft of his poem Wagner ended the play with these words:—

Great is the charm of desire,Greater is the power of renunciation.

Great is the charm of desire,

Greater is the power of renunciation.

In all the complicated web of this drama Pity and Renunciation are the two principal motives. Wagner drew his themes from all sources,—sagas, legends, poems, and histories. He incorporated episodes from the Saviour’s life, and boldly utilized the theme of the Last Supper. The blood of Christ which Joseph of Arimathea is said to have received in a chalice becomes the comforting and eucharistic Grail. Then side by side with all these conflicting stories he places thesemi-Saracenic Klingsor, the very embodiment of a magician of the Dark Ages, and Kundry, the type of the woman of all times, the wandering Jewess, the Magdalen. Parsifal is a mediæval Jesus; the knights of the Holy Grail, Apostles transposed to a later epoch. As it suited him Wagner violently tossed about and made sport of the poetic ideas of Chrétien de Troies and Wolfram von Eschenbach. He Wagnerized everything he touched. The result is Parsifal.

If the poem is charged to the full with Semitic, Buddhistic, Patristic, Christian, and Schopenhauerian philosophies, the play affords the great master fresco painter superb opportunities for scenic display. The son of Geyer, himself a scene painter, dramatist, poet, and composer, did not fail to take advantage of the chance to indulge his taste for luxuriant, glowing colors, for sensational contrasts, lofty spaces, and all the moving magnificence of panoramic display. There are many tableaux in this drama, genuinely a static drama. In Act I we see Gurnemanz surrounded by the tender squires, while Kundry cowers in the foreground. “Doch Vater sag, und lehr’ uns fein; du kanntest Klingsor, wie mag das sein?” The tableau of the killed swan, with Parsifal admonished by Gurnemanz, is another noteworthy grouping. Nothing is so impressive, however, as the spectacle of the sick King being raised, as he elevates the Grail.Klingsor’s tower is as sinister as an etching by Salvator Rosa. The flower garden, first with the damsels and then desolate, gives two striking pictures. Parsifal stands spear in hand. “Du weisst: we einzig du mich wiedersiehst!” The praying knight in Act III; Parsifal in white baptismal robe, recalling Ary Scheffer’s portrait of Christ, and last of all the noble harmonies of the last scene, the descending dove and the mystic chant:—

Höchsten Heiles Wunder,Erlösung dem Erlöser.

Höchsten Heiles Wunder,

Erlösung dem Erlöser.

TO A KINGLY FRIEND

O König! holder Schirmherr meines Lebens!Du höchster güte wonnereichster Hort!Was du mir bist, Kann staunend ich nur fassen,Wenn mir sich zeigt, was ohne dich ich war.Du bist der holde Lenz, der neu mich schmückte,Der mir verjüngt der Zweig und Aeste Saft:—Richard Wagner.

O König! holder Schirmherr meines Lebens!Du höchster güte wonnereichster Hort!

O König! holder Schirmherr meines Lebens!

Du höchster güte wonnereichster Hort!

Was du mir bist, Kann staunend ich nur fassen,Wenn mir sich zeigt, was ohne dich ich war.

Was du mir bist, Kann staunend ich nur fassen,

Wenn mir sich zeigt, was ohne dich ich war.

Du bist der holde Lenz, der neu mich schmückte,Der mir verjüngt der Zweig und Aeste Saft:—Richard Wagner.

Du bist der holde Lenz, der neu mich schmückte,

Der mir verjüngt der Zweig und Aeste Saft:

—Richard Wagner.

One is filled with admiration at Wagner’s deft use of thematic material in the score of Parsifal. Despite the exegetical enthusiasm of von Wolzogen,Heintz, and Kufferath, a very few motives suffice the master for his polyphonic skill in development. And they are principally in the prelude—now unhappily a familiar concert room number. I say unhappily because no composer’s music is less adapted to concert than Wagner’s. Divorced from the context of gesture, speech, scenic display, his music becomes all profile. One misses the full, rich, significant glance of the eye. Wagner is a weaver, not a form-maker. He can follow a dramatic situation, or burrow deeply into the core of morbid psychology; but let him attempt to stand alone, to write music without programme or the fever of the footlights—then he is the inferior of several men, the inferior of Liszt, Tschaïkowsky, and Richard Strauss; not to mention Beethoven, Schubert, or Chopin. I know that this opinion ill accords with the belief of many, yet I do not think it can be disputed. His preludes and overtures, containing as they do the leading motives of his dramas, are of interest only for that reason. Considered as absolute music they are not noteworthy, notwithstanding their coloring and grandiose themes. So is it with Parsifal—even more so. The work preëminently smells of the lamp. It lacks spontaneity. Its subject is extremely undramatic. Nothing happens for several hours,—nothing but discourses, philosophical and retrospective. Never has Wagner so laboriouslybuilt a book. It is a farrago of odds and ends, the very dust-bin of his philosophies, beliefs, vegetarian, anti-vivisection, and other fads. You see unfold before you a nightmare of characters and events. Without simplicity, without lucidity, without naturalness—Wagner is the great anti-naturalist among composers—this book, through which has been sieved Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Schopenhauerism, astounds one by its puerility, its vapidity. Yet because of his musical genius, Wagner is able to float this inorganic medley, and at times makes it almost credible. It is an astounding feat of the old hypnotist—for hypnotist he is in Parsifal as in no other composition. By sheer force of his musical will, this Klingsor of Bayreuth hypnotizes his hearers with two or three themes not of themselves remarkable, as Charcot controls his patients with a shining mirror.

Wagner always selected librettos that threw up a lot of dust for the erudite. His Tristan demands much delving, and with the Ring and its complementary literature we shall never finish. The plain fact in the case is this: Parsifal, despite all its wealth of legend, its misty, poetic allusiveness, its manufactured mysticism, is simple old-fashioned opera. And its versequâverse is very bad. The Wagnerites reject this statement as does the devil holy water. Supposing you enter the Wagner theatre, your brain cells unencumbered with the memories of Perceval, Parzival,Parsifal, Fal-Parsi, and the rest of the philological mystification, what do you see?—and remember that the ideal drama should set forth without previous knowledge or explanation its dramatic content.

You see an old-fashioned and very tedious opera—setting aside some of the music; and there is throughout an abuse of thetremolothat sounds suspiciously Italian. You see a lot of women-hating men, deceiving themselves with spears, drugs, old goblets, all manners of juggling formulas, and yet being waited upon by a woman—a poor, miserable witch. You see a silly youth treated as if he had murdered a human being because he shot a swan. You see this same dead bird borne away on a litter of twigs, to noble, impressive music like a feathered Siegfried. Surely Wagner was without a sense of the humorous; or was he parodying his own Death of Siegfried, as Ibsen parodied Ibsen in A Wild Duck? You see a theatrically imposing temple, modelled after the Duomo of Siena, wherein a maniacal King raves over an impossible wound, and performs ceremonies recalling the Roman Catholic communion service. In Act II you are transported to the familiar land of Christmas pantomime. There a bad magician seeks to destroy the castle of the noble knights, and evokes a beautiful phantom to serve his purpose. There are spells, incantations, blue lights, screaming that makes the blood run cold, and thewhole bagful of tricks that Weber, Marschner, and even Mozart delighted in. Follows fast the magic garden, and the sirens with rose petals on head. The foolish boy still eludes temptation. Even the beautiful witch cannot lure him. All is fairy play, pantomimic transformations, castles that crumble, thunder-riven gardens, and the whizzing of a malignant lance. Even that old Gounod ruse, the sign of the cross, is employed, and with overpowering effect. Now what possesses a generation which knows Darwin, has read Herbert Spencer, and can follow with delight the unerring logic of events that unroll themselves in the Ibsen plays—what possesses this generation of ours to sit enthralled before all this nebulosity?

The third act is but a faintreplicaof the first—without its vigor or novelty. Here the librettist is in sore straits. So he drags in Magdalen washing the feet of Parsifal which is offensively puerile. We again see the scenery acting, pantomimic scenery, and once more we are transported to the Hall of the Holy Grail, where the music of Allegri, Palestrina, and Vittoria is marvellously mimicked. Wagner, not being a strikingly original theme-maker, always borrowed,—borrowed even from Berlioz,—and the results of his borrowings are often greater than the originals. In a beatific blaze of glory—after Parsifal has healed the King—this sacred melodrama ends, and the spectator, drugged bythe music, confused by the bells chanting the tortuous story, and his eyes intoxicated by feasts of color, staggers away believing that he has witnessed a great work of art. So he has,—the art of debauch in color, tone, and gesture. “The highest perfection of an art,” says Ehlert, “is not always and necessarily the greatest massing together of forces. It depends upon entirely different conditions. The flower of an art arises only when a positively artistic individuality creates that particular work for which it possesses the most marked and exclusive vocation.” Now Wagner heaps up one art, one idea, upon another. He little cared for the dramatic proprieties or the feelings of his audience when he composed Kundry, a ridiculous hag, an Astarte, a Herodias, a Meg Merrilies, and a Mary Magdalen in one. She is Azucena when she reveals to Parsifal his parentage—perhaps Wagner had heard of Il Trovatore!—and she plays Potiphar’s wife to this effeminate lad. She is of the opera operatic. And Klingsor—is he a creation, this hater of men and women?—why, he is nothing else but any giant or any enchanter in any fairy tale. Parsifal, when he is not a simulacrum of Christ in white baptismal robes, is a peculiarly foolish bore. Without Siegfried’s buoyancy, Wagner tried hard to dower him with Siegfried’s youth. But he is only an emasculate Siegfried. The corpse of Titurel is a horrible idea—yet it fits in this bogie-man’s play.Wagner, after all, was the creature of his century, an incurable Romantic, with all the love of the Romantics for knights, mediæval mysteries, maidens in distress,—in this case a callow boy,—magicians, and dead men who tell tales. The scenery, too, never comes up to one’s realization, and as usual Wagner oversteps the mark by surrounding his hero with too many women. The duo with Kundry is much more effective. The eye and the ear can grasp the situation—a stirringly dramatic one, despite the morbid imagination of the poet who could in his search for voluptuous depravity mingle a mother’s with a courtesan’s kiss. Here Paris itself is surpassed in the piquant and decadent. Wagner’s admiration for Baudelaire’s poetry shows itself in this incident. By the magic of his mother’s name, Kundry evokes a maudlin filial passion, and with his mother’s name on her lips she kisses the youth into the first consciousness of his virility—or a semblance of it, for at no time is Parsifal a normal young man. His act of renunciation, in his particular case, denies life.

Again I ask, What is the lure that gathers multitudes to witness this most nonsensical, immoral of operas? The answer is, The Music, always The Music. Not Wagner at the flood-tide of his musical passion, nor the composer of Tristan and Isolde, or the Ring or Die Meistersinger; yet an aged wizard who had retained his old arts of enchantment, and so great are theythat at times he not only makes one forget his book, but even the poverty of his themes—Parsifal is not musically original; rather it is an extraordinary synthesis of styles, an unique specimen of the arts of combination, adaptation, and lofty architectonics. Let us glance at the score.

Never has Wagner been so bald in his exposition as in the prelude. But its simplicity is deceptive. The Love theme,—in A flat, by von Wolzogen named the Love Feast motive,—the Grail Hope theme, the Dresden Amen, and the Faith theme,—these and a subsidiary theme, the Saviour’s Lament, about comprise this overture. And the figure of the Saviour’s agony contains a few of the most poignant bars Wagner ever penned. This short episode is infinitely more sincere than the Faith motive—“What expression would a man like Wagner find for such an experience?” asks Ehlert. The Speech of Promise,i.e.the prediction “Durch Mitleid wissend,” is charmingly prophetic, but the first section of Act I drags both dramatically and musically. I am never disappointed in the Kundry music, for I have long known it in Liszt’s B minor sonata, and before Liszt it may be found in the opening bars of Chopin’s B minor sonata. There is much Liszt in this score. The trick of the twice repeated modulation into the upper diminished third, as in the case of the Faith theme, is an old Lisztian device. Kundry’schief motive is to be found in the B minor sonata. It is not very characteristic, nor is the evocation of Arabia. Kundry enters on Valkyrie pinions, and the best thing she does is her shuddering screech—that same cry of distress so cleverly utilized by Massenet in Le Cid. Wagner draws heavily upon the second act of Die Walküre. Indeed Parsifal is full of Wagner quotations: Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, Die Meistersinger—there is much in Gurnemanz’s bars—and even Götterdämmerung—the Rhine daughters’ music is heard in the garden scene. Amfortas’s suffering motive is not very convincing, nor are we impressed by the Forest Murmur with its canonicappoggiaturas. Ever this essential turn! As in the Good Friday magic spell—written years before the opera—the composer echoes Siegfried and Die Meistersinger,—the first fine, careless rapture of his wood-music he never recaptured. And this is quite natural. An old man, Wagner had reached the end of his ammunition. Many blank cartridges are fired in Parsifal. The Sorcery motive with its Chopin-like chromaticism has meaning; but I confess I do not care for Parsifal’s motive, beautifully as it is developed. It lacks the bold, lusty, clean-cut vigor of his young Siegfried’s horn call. Wagner musically was always true to himself. He unconsciously divined the effeminacy of Parsifal’s nature, and his music is a truer psychological barometer than all thelearned pundits who write reams about the purity of Parsifal. Kundry’s Service theme—in “helpful” thirds—is by no means so exquisitely musical as the Mitleid motive in Die Walküre. And what could be more absurd than the use of the Saviour’s Lament motive as the dead swan is reverently carried away. The Herzeleide motive is lovely music, especially when it is thrown into high relief during the next act by Kundry’s blandishments. The fleeting appearance of the Lohengrin Swan motive is a very happy idea.

We have now reached the last part of the first act with itsGlockenthema, its laments of Amfortas,—the accents of woe are genuine,—and the magnificent tonal panorama of boys’ voices, bells, choral music. Here, not without reverence, the composer has successfully emulated the service of Rome. The tripartite choral divisions recall both Goethe’s Faust and the spherical order of voices, and the antiphonal choirs of mediæval cathedrals. The effect is indescribable, especially when the pure, sexless boys’ voices are hearda capella. The consummation of this mystical ecstasy is reached when the Grail vase is slowly waved aloft. One realizes that Wagner’s genius, which so often gravitates pendulum-wise between the sublime and the ridiculous, here approaches the former.

Act II, in which the ruling key seems to be B minor,—as A flat predominates the precedingact,—naturally introduces fewer new motives. The Klingsor theme, first heard in Gurnemanz’s slightly tedious recital, and the Kundry theme are most in evidence in the stormy prelude. To be quite frank I always find the Flower Girls’ music a disappointment. The Caress valse theme is a trifle commonplace, and only Wagner’s polyphonic skill lends the music some dignity. The evocation of Kundry by Klingsor in the opening scene is full of demoniacal grandeur. Wagner is nothing if not operatic, and here he shows that his old Weber skin has not been completely shed. Kundry’s galloping motive, also employed for Parsifal, is the familiar Valkyrie figure modified. I heard the Erl-King storm through several bars, and the triplet figuration of the Flower Girls is from a trio in one of Schumann’s symphonies—the B flat, if I remember aright.

The crowning scene of this act—one is tempted to say of the entire work, for Wagner spreads his music thin over a wide surface—is the duo of Parsifal and Kundry. Herein the entire gamut of passion, maternal, exquisite, voluptuous, is traversed by a master hand. And never has Wagner’s touch been so sure. Intellectually nothing could be more complete than this delineation, morbid and morose as it occasionally is. In a dramatic sense it saves the opera. We hear the Parsifal, the Herzeleide motives—and a supplementary Herzeleide theme. The outburst of Parsifal after the kiss with its memoriesof Amfortas’s suffering is wonderful. The Saviour’s theme, Kundry’s Yearning theme and Self-Abandonment motive, are all made up of familiar material. Here the spinning of the web into something strange and touching is the principal virtue, not the themes themselves. Klingsor’s sudden appearance and the hurled lance which is carried out in the score by harpsglissandothrough two octaves, the mourning cries of the pretty girls, and Parsifal’s final words—all these kaleidoscopic effects impress one considerably; action is paramount. Parsifal’s music in Es startt der Blick dumpff auf das Heil’sgefäss may arouse the indignation of the purist with its direct succession of the G flat major and D minor triads (page 187 of the vocal score); but to modern ears his scheme of harmonization is as normal as the book is abnormal. In a Wagner opera, or, if you will, a music-drama, everything must be accepted, dissonantal harmonies as well. This composer follows every curve of his poem, and when a situation demands jarring ugliness, he freely offers it. Who to-day shall say what is or what is not ugly music?

The music of the last act presents little novel thematic material. In the gloomy prelude we find epitomized the wandering of Parsifal in search of the Grail domain, in conjunction with the funeral music of Titurel. Again the static and contemplative forms a contrast to the rapidaction of the preceding scene. The very pauses seem pregnant with music. And I must halt here a moment to lay my tribute of admiration at the feet of Milka Ternina, whose Kundry is a dramatic and musical creation of rare imagination and technical skill. She presents three different women—we are perplexed to say whether Kundry defiant, or Kundry seductive, or Kundry repentant is the most wonderful. But Ternina is always wonderful! It is in this scene, with its sun-smitten meadows, its worshipping knight and mournful penitent, that I agree with those commentators who perceive the profound influence exerted upon Wagner by early German and Flemish religious pictorial art. Parsifal’s attitudes here would suit a Gothic triptych—as M. Charles Tardieu so happily expresses it. There is little movement, all gesture has been transferred to the orchestra, and the spectator seems to be participating in one of those miracle plays or viewing the stiff pictures of a Cimabue or a woodcut after Dürer. The moving forest and the final scene lose because of repetition. But what was the poet to do? Only in Act II does he escape the lack of variety. For instance, in Act I Parsifal stands for a long time immobile, with his back to the audience, while Kundry, in the last act, utters but two words. She is a pantomimic lay figure kept on the stage to emphasize the resemblance between Jesus and Parsifal. And the feet washing episodeis absolutely unnecessary. It does not help the story. Nowhere but in Wagner would all this mish-mash of gospel narrative, mediæval romance, and Teutonic philosophy be tolerated. Yet the Wagnerites sit through it all as if listening to a new evangel of art, philosophy, and religion. Perhaps they are. In America, where new religions sprout daily as do potatoes in a dark cellar, slighter causes have led to the foundation of a religion—witness the rise and growth of Mormonism. If religion could ever become moribund, perhaps in Wagner’s Parsifal would be found the crystallization of many old faiths, presented in a concrete, though Wagnerized, form. “I know of but one thing more beautiful than Parsifal,” wrote Alfred Ernest, and approvingly quoted by M. Kufferath, “and that is any low mass in any church.” And in this sentence the French author puts his finger on the weak spot of Parsifal—its lack of absolute sincerity. No matter how great an art work it may be, it yet lacks the truthful note that is to be found at any low mass in a Roman Catholic church—about the most unadorned service I can remember. With all its grandeur, its pathos, its conjuring of churchly and philosophical motives, its ravishing pictures and marmoreal attitudes, Parsifal falls short of the one thing—faith, a faith you may find in any roadside Bavarian cabin. We have seen that it is weakest musically in the Faith motive of theprelude, and ethically it suffers from the same sterility. All the scholarly efforts to make the work an ethical, philosophical, and an artistic message are futile. Parsifal, even if it will “enjoy a small immortality,” must remain an opera, a cunning spectacle devised by a man of genius in the twilight of his powers. It is Wagner’s own Götterdämmerung, the sunset music of his singular career.

But if this Parsifal music lacks the virile glow and imaginative power of his earlier music, it is none the less fascinating. Over all hovers, like the dove in the temple, a rich mellowness, a soothing quality that is the reverse of his stormy, disquieting, youthful art. It really seems as if Pity, pity for the tragedy of existence, for the misery of all animated beings, had filled parts of the score with a soothing balm. The muted pauses, the golden stream of tone, and the almost miraculous musicianship fill the listener with awe. Never before has Wagner’s technical mastery come to such a triumphant blossoming. And the partition is covered with miniatures that excite admiration both for their workmanship and their musical meanings. It was Nietzsche who first called critical attention to the Lilliputian delicacy of Wagner’s music. A fresco painter, he yet finds time to execute the most minute and tender jewel-like bits, that are lost sight and sound of at the first hearing. Never has Wagner’s instrumentationbeen so smoothly sonorous, so well mixed, so synthetic. It recalls richly embroidered altar cloths or Gobelin tapestry. Weaving similes force themselves upon the hearer when describing this marvellous and modern polyphonic art. But how tell of the surge and undertow of his melting, symphonious narrative! It flashes with all the tints of a Veronese, of a Makart, and then appear in processional solemnity the great flat spaces and still figures of some mediæval, low-toned, distemper painter. Painting and weaving—always these two arts! But there is not the same passionate excess in decoration, the same tropical splendor, that we find in the earlier Wagner. Venus wooes Tannhäuser in more heated accents than does Kundry Parsifal. And Kundry isthedepraved woman of all art, for Kundry’s quiver of temptations is more subtle, more decadent.

The correspondence of King Ludwig and Wagner, of Ludwig and Josef Kainz, the actor, throws much light on the enigmatic character of Parsifal. Wagner needed money and encouragement, badly. So it is not difficult to conceive of him playing up to every romantic extravagance of the young king—“le seul vrai roi de ce siècle,” as Paul Verlaine poetically called the monarch, whose madness admirably matched his own. Read in this sense, the psychology of Kundry’s kiss and its repelling effect and its arousing of pity for Amfortas in Parsifalis no longer a mystery. Wagner never erred in his morbid musical psychology, and he thus symbolized Amfortas—Wagner—as being rescued from suffering by Parsifal—Ludwig. Wagner had been ever an ungrateful man, but for the King he entertained the most exalted sentiment of gratitude. There is a psychiatric literature on this esoteric subject in German and French beginning with Oskar Panizza, ending with the remarkable study of Hanns Fuchs, entitled Richard Wagner.

Parsifal will long remain a rare and stimulating spectacle to those for whom religious feeling must be dramatized to be endurable. The stern simplicities of doctrinal truths have no attraction for such. Wagner, luxuriously Byzantine in his faiths, erected a lordly pleasure drama in which the mystically inclined, the admirer of theatrical pomps, and the esoteric worshipper could all find solace, amusement, and consolation. Yet Parsifal’s pale virtue can never stir us to higher issues, as do the heroic sacrifices of Tannhäuser or Senta. Parsifal is the predestinated one, predestined to save the life of the King. Lacking freedom of will, he is not a human being that provokes our sympathy—but why demand logic, even dramatic logic, of Wagner? He was first a musician, then a poet and a philosopher; and in the last of these three was least. Parsifal is his final offering to the world. It is the work of a man who had outlived his genius.Nietzsche quotes with approval the exclamation of a musician: “I hate Wagner, but I no longer stand any other music.” We are all Wagnerians whether we rebel at Parsifal or not.

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