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The author, or authors, of the famous "Nibelungenlied" are unknown; but the work remains to us as the greatest epic of Germany. Foremost in point of fame stands Wolfram von Eschenbach, author of the familiar "Parzifal." In depicting his characters, he strikes a note of idealistic beauty. Another great poet was Gottfried of Strasburg, almost as famous as Wolfram, and in some respects his opposite.
I had watched the young baritone Mitterwurzer with great interest in some of his parts he was a strangely reticent man, and not at all sociably inclined, and I had noticed that his delightfully mellow voice possessed the rare quality of bringing out the inner note of the soul. To him I entrusted Wolfram, and I had every reason to be satisfied with his zeal and with the success of his studies.
Elizabeth prays for him in her solitude, but her prayers apparently are of no avail. At last he returns dejected and hopeless, and in his wanderings meets Wolfram, another minstrel, also in love with Elizabeth, to whom he tells the sad story of his pilgrimage. He determines to return to the Venusberg. He hears the voices of the sirens luring him back.
The duke, saved from death by the timely arrival of Wolfram, exclaims 'Blest hour! and then, in a moment, begins to ponder, and agonise, and dream: And yet how palely, with what faded lips Do we salute this unhoped change of fortune! Thou art so silent, lady; and I utter Shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost, Arisen out of hoary centuries Where none can speak his language.
The suggestion made above as to the probable existence in the primitive ritual of a substitution ceremony, seems to me to provide a possible explanation of the feature found alike in Wolfram, and in the closely allied Grail section of Sone de Nansai; i.e., that the wound of the King was a punishment for sin, he had conceived a passion for a Pagan princess.
Such a song-feast was in fact a song-debate. His words come warm and ready: "I too, Wolfram, may call myself so fortunate as to behold what you have beheld. Who is there unacquainted with that fountain? Hear me loudly exalt its virtue! But yet can I not approach those waters without sense of warm longing. That burning thirst I must cool. Comforted I set lips to the spring.
At last, on our return to Konigsberg, and particularly under the guardianship of Moller, the question as to what was to be done was more earnestly considered. Finally, Minna and I were offered a fairly good engagement in Danzig, through the influence of my brother-in-law Wolfram and his wife, who had gone there.
And in "Tristan" we commence with a fleshly love, as intense as that Tannhäuser knew; but by reason of its own energy, its own excess, it rises to a spiritual love as free from grossness as any dreamed of by Elizabeth or Wolfram, and far surpassing theirs in exaltation.
These, however, were seized upon by certain poets of the time, probably Henry of Ofterdingen, Wolfram of Eschenbach, and others, and reduced to the epic form, in which they have come down to us under the titles of the Heldenbuch and the Nibelungen Lied. They contain many singular traits of a warlike age, and we have proof of their great antiquity in the morals and manners which they describe.
Even the crusaders, who travelled so far and saw so much, are not recognizable as such in these poems. The epic poetry, which describes armor and costumes so fully, does not attempt more than a sketch of outward nature; and even the great Wolfram von Eschenbach scarcely anywhere gives us an adequate picture of the scene on which his heroes move.
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