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Modern German drama has found the highest art it has ever attained in the compositions of Richard Wagner, whose operas are entirely German and National, and mostly founded on the old German legends. Tannhauser is taken from the epic poem of "Parzifal," written by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the Middle Ages.
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.
Lohengrin, which is touched on in the "Parzifal," Wagner also found in the poem of an obscure Bavarian poet; and a more complete account of the celebrated "Swan Knight" appears in a collection of stories edited by the brothers Grimm. Lohengrin is a Knight of the Holy Grail, so part of the legend is borrowed from ancient Britain.
But here in "Parzifal" we are in a mere vague world of anywhere, the world of Keltic and Oriental romance become mere cloudland to the Thuringian knight. And similarly have the heroes of other nations, the Arthurs, Gawains, Gachmurets, of Wales and Anjou, become mere vague names; they have become liquified, lost all shape and local habitation.
Indeed by the side of "Parzifal" everything seems artistic; Hartmann von Aue reads like Chaucer, "Aucassin et Nicolette" is as living as "Cymbeline," "Chevy Chase" seems as good as the battles of Homer.
Parzifal himself merely wanders about vaguely, without doing any specified thing. The fact is that in this poem all has become purely ideal; ideal to the point of utter vacuity: there is no connection with any human business.
All has disappeared, melted away; Christianity and Paganism themselves have melted away or into each other, as in the easy meeting of the Pagan Feirefis and the Christian Parzifal, and in the double marriage of Gachmuret with the Indian Belakane and the Welsh Herzeloid; there remains only a kind of Buddhistic Nirvâna of vague passive perfection, but without any renunciation; and in a world devoid of evil and full of excellent brocade and armour and eatables, and lovely maidens who dress and undress you, and chastely kiss you on the mouth; a world without desire, aspiration, or combat, vacantly happy and virtuous.
Is it possible that strong men have wept and fainted at a mere woman's name, like the Count of Nevers in "Flamenca," or that their mind has swooned away in months of reverie like that of Parzifal in Eschenbach's poem; that worldly wise and witty men have shipped off and died on sea for love of an unseen woman like Jaufre Rudel; or dressed in wolf's hide and lurked and fled before the huntsmen-like Peire Vidal; or mangled their face and cut off their finger, and, clothing themselves in rags more frightful than Nessus' robe, mixed in the untouchable band of lepers like Ulrich von Liechtenstein?
The German Wachtlieder are even more explicit. "He must away at once and without delay," sings the watchman in a poem of Wolfram, the austere singer of Parzifal and the Grail Quest; "let him go, sweet lady; let him away from thy love so that he keep his honour and life.
This is the most remarkable characteristic of "Parzifal," and what makes it so typical of the process of growing inane through overmuch alteration, which prevented the mediæval epics ever turning into an Iliad or an Odyssey; this that it is essentially idle and all about nothing.
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