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Updated: May 24, 2025
Now, if we ask ourselves what Siegfried did, the answer is, that he forged the sword, killed the dragon and released Brunnhilde. But if, in like manner, we ask ourselves what Parsifal did, is not the answer, that he killed a swan and refused a kiss and with many morbid, suggestive and disagreeable remarks? These are the facts," he would say; "confute them who may, explain them who can!"
And, so perfectly do all the arts flow into one, the picture impresses one chiefly by its rhythm, the harmonies of its convention. The lesson of "Parsifal" is the lesson that, in art, rhythm is everything. Every moment in the acting of this drama makes a picture, and every movement is slow, deliberate, as if automatic.
There is only one deadly sin to deny life, as Nietzsche says: carefully to pull up all the weeds in one's garden, but to plant there neither flower nor tree and this is what "Parsifal" glorifies and advocates. Now, far be it from me to go hunting a moral tendency in a work of art, and to praise or blame the art as I chance to like or dislike the tendency.
Hale did the same years ago for American readers in a sympathetic article, The Fantastical Jules Laforgue. He also translated with astonishing fidelity to the letter and spirit of the author, his incomparable Lohengrin, Fils de Parsifal. I regret having it no longer in my possession so that I might quote from its delicious prose.
As Amfortas and Gurnemanz kneel to do him homage, Kundry dies at his feet in the joy of repentance. Titurel rises from his coffin and bestows a benediction. Parsifal ascends to the altar and raises the Grail in all its resplendent beauty.
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.
The idea of long wandering as a penalty, symbolized in "The Wandering Jew," "The Flying Dutchman," and the character of Kundry, in "Parsifal," has application in the legend of Peter Rugg.
The casket and chains, however, are preserved in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg to this day, and there have been seen, doubtless, by many who are reading these lines. There is nothing in "Parsifal," neither personage nor incident nor thing, no principle of conduct, which did not live in legendary tales and philosophical systems long before Christianity existed as a universal religion.
I was not able to detect in the vocal parts of "Parsifal" anything that might with confidence be called rhythm or tune or melody; one person performed at a time and a long time, too often in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but he only pulled out long notes, then some short ones, then another long one, then a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or two and so on and so on; and when he was done you saw that the information which he had conveyed had not compensated for the disturbance.
Compare with this the scene in the third act of Parsifal. The verdant landscape is here no mere theatrical decoration; if it were, we should scarcely go into a theatre to see what can be seen in far greater perfection in any green place on a spring morning. It is the dramatic representation of an idea perhaps suggested to Wagner by Goethe's Faust, but as old as Christianity itself.
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