United States or Saint Barthélemy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He rushed to the rescue, and caught sight of Klingsor, laughing as he disappeared carrying the Spear, with which he had wounded Amfortas. And now, possessed of the Spear, it was Klingsor's boast that he should soon be in possession of the Chalice likewise, the Holy Grail itself.
Her sure foundation was but made ground, after all, and the people in Klingsor's garden were more fortunate, however barren the sands from which they conjured their paradise. The lodge was still and silent; her fit of weeping over, Caroline made no sound, and within the room, as without in the garden, was the blackness of storm.
In the second act we are in Klingsor's magic castle. The sorcerer, knowing of the approach of Parsifal, summons Kundry to her task, and with many sighs she has to submit to her master. Parsifal vanquishes the knights who guard the castle, and enters the enchanted garden, a wilderness of tropical flowers, vast in size and garish in colour.
However, I am willing to believe that Siegfried, when he kisses Brünnhilde on Hinde Fell, and Parsifal, when Kundry kisses him in Klingsor's magic garden, has each his full faculties set in action for the first time. And then?
He reflected the spirit of the gruesome text assigned to him so admirably that Wagner was delighted; but afterward he complained that Hill's fine impersonation was not so widely appreciated as it deserved to be; and why? Apparently, because Klingsor's melodic intervals were not pleasing, nor his sentiments sympathetic.
The second act reveals Klingsor's enchanted palace. The magician gazing into a mirror sees Parsifal approaching, and knows he is the redeemer who has been promised. He summons Kundry before him, and commands her to tempt him with her spells. She struggles against the task, for in her soul the powers of good and evil are always contending for the mastery.
But, even as the road to the Castle of the Grail was difficult to find, the road to Klingsor's castle was easy and overeasy; it would seem that for the feet of a votary of the Grail all roads led to it. Parsifal had seen it shining afar, and with childish shouts of delight is drawing near.
The fruit of her experience with man is, as it affects the two sides of her, a mixture of sinister cynicism and ineffable pity. "Woe! Woe!" she laments, at Klingsor's mocking mention of Amfortas. "Weak, he too! Weak all of them! Through me, to my curse, all lost as I am lost! Oh, eternal sleep, only balm, how, how shall I win you?"
The sweet, broad, diatonic idiom, the humor, the sleepy Bavarian accent, the pert, naïve, little folk-tunes it employed, the tranquil, touching, childlike tones, the close of "Tod und Verklärung," with its wondrous unfolding of corolla upon corolla, were refreshing indeed after all the burning chromaticism of Wagner, the sultry air of Klingsor's wonder-garden.
All creation gives thanks for this, all the short-lived things that bloom; for to-day all Nature, absolved from sin, regains her day of Innocence." Kundry has slowly raised her head and fixed upon Parsifal her prayerful wet eyes. Either from his recent contemplation of the flowery lea, or some occult association of her personality with the past, the flowers of Klingsor's garden come into his mind.
Word Of The Day