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He seizes it and makes the sign of the Cross. The gardens and castle disappear. Parsifal and Kundry are alone in a desert. She sinks to the ground with a mournful cry, and turning from her, his last words are, "Thou knowest where only thou canst see me again." In the third act we are again in the land of the Grail.
But he wished her to remain on the stage till she had played Kundry; but if she were going to leave the stage she did not care to delay, nor did she care for the part of Kundry. The meaning of the part escaped her.... So the time had come for her to offer herself to Owen. Whatever his desires might be, his honour would force him to say Yes. So there was no escape.
The knight upon this, still without a word, drives the haft of his spear into the ground, lays down his arms and sinks upon his knees in prayer before the Spear. The removal of his helmet has revealed the face of Parsifal, but another Parsifal, even as Kundry is another.
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.
Kundry, ceasing from her moans, has begun to laugh, and as Klingsor continues his report of the skirmish laughs more and more uncontrollably. "They yield, they flee, each of them carries home his wound! Ha! How proudly he stands upon the rampart! How the roses bloom and smile in his cheeks, as, in childlike amazement, he gazes down upon the solitary garden! ... Hey! Kundry!"
"By this sign I dispel your sorceries! As this Spear shall close the wound it made, let this lying splendour fall to wreck and desolation!" As if shaken by an earthquake, the palace crumbles to ruin; the garden withers away and turns to a barren waste; like broken and wilted flowers the women are seen bestrewing the ground; Kundry falls to earth with a great cry.
Kundry hurries with water from the cell, but Gurnemanz stops her; he has in thought larger purifications for the pilgrim in whom his prophetic mind discerns one ordained to fulfill this very day a sacred office. "So let him be made clean of all stain, let the dust be washed from him of his long wandering."
For instance, Gurnemanz's long narrative, into which is introduced all the motives of the opera is merely beautiful musical handicraft, and I cannot accept handicraft, however beautiful, for inspiration. I rank much higher the entrance of Kundry her evocation of Arabia.... That is a real inspiration! The over-praised choruses are beautiful, but again I have to make reservations.
For the first time touched with timidity, he turns towards the blossoming bower from which the voice had come. The branches part, and reveal Kundry, youthful, gorgeously apparelled and superlatively beautiful, lying upon a flowery bank. "Did you mean the name you spoke for me, who have no name?" Parsifal asks, standing shyly apart.
But these points, and many others, may go as, comparatively, nothings. The first act of "Parsifal" is unsurpassable, the second is an anti-climax, and the third, excepting the repentance of Kundry, which is pathetic, and strikes one as true, a more saddening anti-climax.
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