Isolde resolves to wipe out what she conceives to be her disgrace by slaying Tristan and herself. Brangane tries to persuade her that the crown of Cornwall will bring her honor, and when Isolde answers that it would be intolerable to live in the presence of Tristan and not have his love, she hints that her mother had not sent her into a strange land without providing for all contingencies. Isolde understands the allusion to her mother's magical lore, and commands that a casket be brought to her. Brangane obeys with alacrity and exhibits its contents: lotions for wounds, antidotes for poisons, and, best of all,—she holds a phial aloft. Isolde will not have it so; she herself had marked the phial whose contents were to remedy her ills. "The death draught!" exclaims Brangane, and immediately the "Yo, heave ho!" of the sailors is heard and the shout of "Land!" Throughout this scene a significant phrase is heard—the symbol of death:—

[Musical excerpt]

Also the symbol of fate—a downward leap of a seventh, as in the last two notes of the brief figure illustrative of the glance which had inspired Isolde's fatal love.

At sight of land Tristan leaves the helm and presents himself before Isolde. She upbraids him for having avoided her during the voyage; he replies that he had obeyed the commands of honor and custom. She reminds him that a debt of blood is due her—he owes her revenge for the death of Morold. Tristan offers her his sword and his breast; but she declines to kill the best of all Marke's knights, and offers to drink with him a cup of forgiveness. He divines her purpose and takes the cup from her hand and gives this pledge: Fidelity to his honor, defiance to anguish. To his heart's illusion, his scarcely apprehended dream, will he drink the draught which shall bring oblivion. Before he has emptied the cup, Isolde snatches it from his hands and drains it to the bottom. Thus they meet their doom, which is not death and surcease of sorrow, as both had believed, but life and misery; for Brangane, who had been commanded to pour the poison in the cup, had followed an amiable prompting and presented the love-potion instead. A moment of bewilderment, and the fated ones are in each other's arms, pouring out an ecstasy of passion. Then her maids robe Isolde to receive the king, who is coming on board the ship to greet his bride.

In the introduction to the second act, based upon this restless phrase,—

[Musical excerpt]

we have a picture of the longing and impatience of the lovers before a meeting. When the curtains part, we discover a garden before the chamber of Isolde, who is now Cornwall's queen. It is a lovely night in summer. A torch burns in a ring beside the door opening into the chamber at the top of a stone staircase. The king has gone a-hunting, and the tones of the hunting-horns, dying away in the distance, blend entrancingly with an instrumental song from the orchestra which seems a musical sublimation of night and nature in their tenderest moods. Isolde appears with Brangane and pleads with her to extinguish the torch and thus give the appointed signal to Tristan, who is waiting in concealment. But Brangane suspects treachery on the part of Melot, a knight who is jealous of Tristan and himself enamoured of Isolde. It was he who had planned the nocturnal hunt. She warns her mistress, and begs her to wait. Beauty rests upon the scene like a benediction. To Isolde the horns are but the rustling of the forest leaves as they are caressed by the wind, or the purling and laughing of the brook. Longing has eaten up all patience, all discretion, all fear. In spite of Brangane's pleadings she extinguishes the torch, and with wildly waving scarf beckons on her hurrying lover. Beneath the foliage they sing their love through all the gamut of hope and despair, of bliss and wretchedness. The duet consists largely of detached ejaculations and verbal plays, each paraphrasing or varying or giving a new turn to the outpouring of the other, the whole permeated with the symbolism of pessimistic philosophy in which night, death, and oblivion are glorified, and day, life, and memory contemned. In this dialogue lies the key to the philosophy which Wagner has proclaimed in the tragedy. In Wagner's exposition of the prelude we saw that he wishes us to observe "the one glimmering of the highest bliss of attainment" in the "surrender of being," the "final redemption into that wondrous realm from which we wander farthest when we try to take it by force." For this realm he chooses death and night as symbols, but what he means to imply is the nirvana of Buddhistic philosophy, the final deliverance of the soul from transmigration. Such love as that of Tristan and Isolde presented itself to Wagner as ceaseless struggle and endless contradiction, and for this problem nirvana alone offers a happy outcome; it means quietude and identity.

In vain does Brangane sing her song of warning from the tower; the lovers have been transported beyond all realization of their surroundings; they sing on, dream on in each other's arms, until at the moment of supremest ecstasy there comes a rude interruption. Kurwenal dashes in with a sword and a shout: "Save thyself, Tristan!" the king, Melot, and courtiers at his heels. Day, symbol of all that is fatal to their love, has dawned. Tristan is silent, though Marke bewails the treachery of his nephew and his friend. From the words of the heart-torn king we learn that he had been forced into the marriage with Isolde by the disturbed state of his kingdom, and had not consented to it until Tristan, whose purpose it was thus to quiet the jealous anger of the barons, had threatened to depart from Cornwall unless the king revoked his purpose to make him his successor, and took unto himself a wife. Tristan's answer to the sorrowful upbraidings of his royal uncle is to obtain a promise from Isolde to follow him into the "wondrous realm of night." Then, seeing that Marke does not wield the sword of retribution, he makes a feint of attacking Melot, but permits the treacherous knight to reach him with his sword. He falls wounded unto death.

The last act has been reached. The dignified, reserved knight of the first act, the impassioned lover of the second, is now a dream-haunted, longing, despairing, dying man, lying under a lime tree in the yard of his ancestral castle in Brittany, wasting his last bit of strength in feverish fancies and ardent yearnings touching Isolde. Kurwenal has sent for her. Will she come? A shepherd tells of vain watches for the sight of a sail by playing a mournful melody on his pipe:—

[Musical excerpt]

Oh, the heart-hunger of the hero! The longing! Will she never come? The fever is consuming him, and his heated brain breeds fancies which one moment lift him above all memories of pain and the next bring him to the verge of madness. Cooling breezes waft him again toward Ireland, whose princess healed the wound struck by Morold, then ripped it up again with the avenging sword with its telltale nick. From her hands he took the drink whose poison sears his heart. Accursed the cup and accursed the hand that brewed it! Will the shepherd never change his doleful strain? Ah, Isolde, how beautiful you are! The ship, the ship! It must be in sight. Kurwenal, have you no eyes? Isolde's ship! A merry tune bursts from the shepherd's pipe:—

[Musical excerpt]

It is the ship! What flag flies at the peak? The flag of "All's well!" Now the ship disappears behind a cliff. There the breakers are treacherous. Who is at the helm? Friend or foe? Melot's accomplice? Are you, too, a traitor, Kurwenal? Tristan's strength is unequal to the excitement of the moment. His mind becomes dazed. He hears Isolde's voice, and his wandering fancy transforms it into the torch whose extinction once summoned him to her side: "Do I hear the light?" He staggers to his feet and tears the bandages from his wound. "Ha! my blood! flow merrily now! She who opened the wound is here to heal it!" Life endures but for one embrace, one glance, one word: "Isolde!" While Isolde lies mortally stricken upon Tristan's corpse, Marke and his train arrive upon a second ship. Brangane has told the secret of the love-draught, and the king has come to unite the lovers. But his purpose is not known, and faithful Kurwenal receives his death-blow while trying to hold the castle against Marke's men. He dies at Tristan's side. Isolde, unconscious of all these happenings, sings out her broken heart, and expires.

And ere her ear might hear, her heart had heard, Nor sought she sign for witness of the word; But came and stood above him, newly dead, And felt his death upon her: and her head Bowed, as to reach the spring that slakes all drouth; And their four lips became one silent mouth. {2}

Footnotes:

{1} "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," by H. E. Krehbiel.

{2} Swinburne, "Tristram of Lyonesse."



CHAPTER XIV

"PARSIFAL"

A lad, hotfoot in pursuit of a wild swan which one of his arrows has pierced, finds himself in a forest glade on the side of a mountain. There he meets a body of knights and esquires in attendance on a king who is suffering from a wound. The knights are a body of men whose mission it is to succor suffering innocence wherever they may find it. They dwell in a magnificent castle on the summit of the mountain, within whose walls they assemble every day to contemplate and adore a miraculous vessel from which they obtain both physical and spiritual sustenance. In order to enjoy the benefits which flow from this talisman, they are required to preserve their bodies in ascetic purity. Their king has fallen from this estate and been grievously wounded in an encounter with a magician, who, having failed in his ambition to enter the order of knighthood, had built a castle over against that of the king, where, by practice of the black art and with the help of sirens and a sorceress, he seeks the ruin of the pure and celestial soldiery. In his hands is a lance which once belonged to the knights, but which he had wrested from their king and with which he had given the dolorous stroke from which the king is suffering.

The healing of the king can be wrought only by a touch of the lance which struck the wound; and this lance can be regained only by one able to withstand the sensual temptations with which the evil-minded sorcerer has surrounded himself in his magical castle. An oracle, that had spoken from a vision, which one day shone about the talisman, had said that this deliverer fool, an innocent simpleton, pity had made knowing:—

[Musical excerpt—"Durch mitleid wissend, der reine Thor, harre sein' den ich erkor." THE ORACLE]

For this hero king and knights are waiting and longing, since neither lotions nor baths nor ointments can bring relief, though they be of the rarest potency and brought from all the ends of the earth. The lad who thus finds himself in this worshipful but woful company is himself of noble and knightly lineage. This we learn from the recital of his history, but also from the bright, incisive, militant, chivalresque music associated with him:—

[Musical excerpt—THE SYMBOL OF PARSIFAL]

But he has been reared in a wilderness, far from courts and the institutions of chivalry and in ignorance of the world lying beyond his forest boundaries. His father died before he was born, and his mother withheld from him all knowledge of knighthood, hoping thus to keep him for herself. One day, however, he saw a cavalcade of horsemen in brilliant trappings. The spectacle stirred the chivalric spirit slumbering within him; he deserted his mother, followed after the knights, and set out in quest of adventure. The mother died:—

[Musical excerpt—THE SYMBOL OF HERZELEIDE]

In the domain whither his quarry had led the lad, all animals were held sacred. A knight (Gurnemanz) rebukes him for his misdeed in shooting the swan, and rue leads him to break his bow and arrows. From a strange creature (Kundry),—

[Musical excerpt—THE PENITENT KUNDRY]

in the service of the knights, he learns of the death of his mother, who had perished for love of him and grief over his desertion. He is questioned about himself, but is singularly ignorant of everything, even of his own name. Hoping that the lad may prove to be the guileless fool to whom knowledge was to come through pity, the knight escorts him to the temple, which is the sanctuary of the talisman whose adoration is the daily occupation of the brotherhood. They walk out of the forest and find themselves in a rocky defile of the mountain. A natural gateway opens in the face of a cliff, through which they pass, and are lost to sight for a space. Then they are seen ascending a sloping passage, and little by little the rocks lose their ruggedness and begin to take on rude architectural contours. They are walking to music which, while merely suggesting their progress and the changing natural scene in the main, ever and anon breaks into an expression of the most poignant and lacerating suffering and lamentation:—

[Musical excerpt—SUFFERING AND LAMENTATION]

Soon the pealing of bells is heard:—

[Musical excerpt]

and the tones blend synchronously and harmonously with the music of their march:—

[Musical excerpt—FUNDAMENTAL PHRASE OF THE MARCH]

At last they arrive in a mighty Byzantine hail, which loses itself upward in a lofty, vaulted dome, from which light streams downward and illumines the interior. Under the dome, within a colonnade, are two tables, each a segment of a circle. Into the hall there come in procession knights wearing red mantles on which the image of a white dove is embroidered. They chant a pious hymn as they take their places at the refectory tables:—

[Musical excerpt—"Zum letzten Liebesmahle Gerustet Tag fur Tag." THE EUCHARISTIC HYMN]

The king, whom the lad had seen in the glade, is borne in on a litter, before him a veiled shrine containing the mystical cup which is the object of the ceremonious worship. It is the duty of the king to unveil the talisman and hold it up to the adoration of the knights. He is conveyed to a raised couch and the shrine is placed before him. His sufferings of mind and body are so poignant that he would liever die than perform his office; but the voice of his father (Titurel), who had built the sanctuary, established the order of knighthood, and now lives on in his grave sustained by the sight of the talisman, admonishes the king of his duty. At length he consents to perform the function imposed upon him by his office. He raises himself painfully upon his couch. The attendants remove the covering from the shrine and disclose an antique crystal vessel which they reverently place before the lamentable king. Boys' voices come wafted down from the highest height of the dome, singing a formula of consecration: "Take ye my body, take my blood in token of our love":—

[Musical excerpt—THE LOVE-FEAST FORMULA]

A dazzling ray of light flashes down from above and falls into the cup, which now glows with a reddish purple lustre and sheds a soft radiance around. The knights have sunk upon their knees. The king lifts the luminous chalice, moves it gently from side to side, and thus blesses the bread and wine provided for the refection of the knights. Meanwhile, celestial voices proclaim the words of the oracle to musical strains that are pregnant with mysterious suggestion.

Another choir sturdily, firmly, ecstatically hymns the power of faith:—

[Musical excerpt—THE SYMBOL OF FAITH]

and, at the end, an impressive antiphon, starting with the knights, ascends higher and higher, and, calling in gradually the voices of invisible singers in the middle height, becomes metamorphosed into an angelic canticle as it takes its flight to the summit. It is the voice of aspiration, the musical symbol of the talisman which directs the thoughts and desires of its worshippers ever upward:—

[Musical excerpt—THE SYMBOL OF THE HOLY GRAIL]

The lad disappoints his guide. He understands nothing of the solemn happenings which he has witnessed, nor does he ask their meaning, though his own heart had been lacerated with pain at sight of the king's sufferings. He is driven from the sanctuary with contumely.

He wanders forth in quest of further adventures and enters the magical garden surrounding the castle of the sorcerer. A number of knights who are sent against him he puts to rout. Now the magician summons lovely women, clad in the habiliments of flowers, to seduce him with their charms:—

[Musical excerpt—KLINGSOR'S INCANTATION]

They sing and play about him with winsome wheedlings and cajoleries, with insinuating blandishments and dainty flatteries, with pretty petulancies and delectable quarrellings:—

[Musical excerpt—"Komm, Komm, holder Knabe," THE SEDUCTIVE SONG OF THE FLOWER MAIDENS]

But they fail of their purpose, as does also an unwilling siren whom the magician invokes with powerful conjurations. It is Kundry, who is half Magdalen, half wicked sorceress, a messenger in the service of the pious knights, and as such hideous of aspect; a tool in the hands of the magician, and as such supernaturally beautiful. It was to her charms that the suffering king had yielded. To win the youth she tells him the story of his mother's death and gives to him her last message and—a kiss! At the touch of her impure lips a flood of passion, hitherto unfelt, pours through the veins of the lad, and in its surge comes understanding of the suffering and woe which he had witnessed in the castle on the mountain. Also a sense of his own remissness. Compassionate pity brings enlightenment; and he thrusts back the woman who is seeking to destroy him. Finding that the wiles of his tool have availed him naught, the wicked magician himself appears to give battle, for he, too, knows the oracle and fears the coming of the king's deliverer and the loss of the weapon which he hopes will yet enable him to achieve the mystical talisman. He hurls the lance at the youth, but it remains suspended in midair. The lad seizes it, makes the sign of the cross, speaks some words of exorcism, and garden, castle, damsels—all the works of enchantment disappear.

Now the young hero is conscious of a mission. He must find again the abode of the knights and their ailing king, and bring to them surcease of suffering. After long and grievous wanderings he is again directed to the castle. Grief and despair have overwhelmed the knights, whose king, unable longer to endure the torture in which he has lived, has definitively refused to perform his holy office. In consequence, his father, no longer the recipient of supernatural sustenance, has died, and the king longs to follow him. The hero touches the wound in the side of the king with the sacred spear, ends his dolors, and is hailed as king in his place. The temptress, who has followed him as a penitent, freed from a curse which had rested upon her for ages, goes to a blissful and eternal rest.

* * *

Such is the story of Wagner's "Parsifal." It is the purpose of this book to help the musical layman who loves lyric drama to enjoyment. Criticism might do this, but a purpose of simple exposition has already been proclaimed, and shall be adhered to lest some reader think that he is being led too far afield. In this case the exposition shall take the form of a marshalling of the elements of the story in two aspects—religious and legendary. Careful readers of English literature will have had no difficulty in recognizing in it a story of the quest of the Holy Grail. Tennyson will have taught them that the hero is that

Sir Percivale Whom Arthur and his knighthood called the Pure;

that the talismanic vessel is

the cup itself from which our Lord Drank at the last sad supper with His own;

that the lance which struck and healed the grievous wound in the side of the king is the spear with which the side of the Christ was pierced on Calvary. It is also obvious that the king, whose name is Amfortas, that is, "the powerless one," is a symbol of humanity suffering from the wounds of slavery to desire; that the heroic act of Parsifal, as Wagner calls him, which brings release to the king and his knights, is renunciation of desire, prompted by pity, compassion, fellow-suffering; and that this gentle emotion it was that had inspired knowledge simultaneously of a great need and a means of deliverance. The ethical idea of the drama, as I set forth in a book entitled "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama" many years ago, is that it is the enlightenment which comes through pity which brings salvation. The allusion is to the redemption of mankind by the sufferings and compassionate death of Christ; and that stupendous tragedy is the prefiguration of the mimic drama which Wagner has constructed. The spectacle to which he invites us, and with which he hoped to impress us and move us to an acceptance of the lesson underlying his play, is the adoration of the Holy Grail, cast in the form of a mimicry of the Last Supper, bedizened with some of the glittering pageantry of mediaeval knighthood and romance.

In the minds of many persons it is a profanation to make a stage spectacle out of religious things; and it has been urged that "Parsifal" is not only religious but specifically Christian; not only Christian but filled with parodies of elements which are partly liturgical, partly Biblical. In narrating the incidents of the play I have purposely avoided all allusions to the things which have been matters of controversy. It is possible to look upon "Parsifal" as a sort of glorified fairy tale, and to this end I purpose to subject its elements to inquiry, and shall therefore go a bit more into detail. Throughout the play Parsifal is referred to as a redeemer, and in the third act scenes in which he plays as the central figure are borrowed from the life of Christ. Kundry, the sorceress, who attempts his destruction at one time and is in the service of the knights of the Grail at another, anoints his feet and dries them with her hair, as the Magdalen did the feet of Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Parsifal baptizes Kundry and admonishes her to believe in the Redeemer:—

Die Taufe nimm Und glaub' an den Erloser!

Kundry weeps. Unto the woman who was a sinner and wept at His feet Christ said: "Thy sins are forgiven. . . . Thy faith hath saved thee. Go in peace." At the elevation of the grail by Parsifal after the healing of Amfortas a dove descends from the dome and hovers over the new king's head. What saith the Scripture? "And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him." (St. Matthew iii. 16.) It would be idle to argue that these things are not Biblical, though the reported allusions to Parsifal as a redeemer do not of necessity belong in the category. We shall see presently that the drama is permeated with Buddhism, and there were a multitude of redeemers and saviours in India besides the Buddha.

Let us look at the liturgical elements. The Holy Grail is a chalice. It is brought into the temple in solemn procession in a veiled shrine and deposited on a table. Thus, also, the chalice, within its pall, is brought in at the sacrament of the mass and placed on the altar before the celebrant. In the drama boys' voices sing in the invisible heights:—

Nehmet hin mein Blut Um unserer Liebe willen! Nehmet hin meinem Leib Auf dass ihr mein gedenkt!

Is there a purposed resemblance here to the words of consecration in the mass? Accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes. Hoc est enim Corpus meum. Accipite, et bibite ex eo omnes. Hic est enim Calix sanguinis mei! In a moment made wonderfully impressive by Wagner's music, while Amfortas bends over the grail and the knights are on their knees, a ray of light illumines the cup and it glows red. Amfortas lifts it high, gently sways it from side to side, and blesses the bread and wine which youthful servitors have placed beside each knight on the table. In the book of the play, as the hall gradually grows light the cups before the knights appear filled with red wine, and beside each lies a small loaf of bread. Now the celestial choristers sing: "The wine and bread of the Last Supper, once the Lord of the Grail, through pity's love-power, changed into the blood which he shed, into the body which he offered. To-day the Redeemer whom ye laud changes the blood and body of the sacrificial offering into the wine poured out for you, and the bread that you eat!" And the knights respond antiphonally: "Take of the bread; bravely change it anew into strength and power. Faithful unto death, staunch in effort to do the works of the Lord. Take of the blood; change it anew to life's fiery flood. Gladly in communion, faithful as brothers, to fight with blessed courage." Are these words, or are they not, a paraphrase of those which in the canon of the mass follow the first and second ablutions of the celebrant: Quod ore sumpsimus Domine, etc., and: Corpus tuum, Domine, etc.? He would be but little critical who would deny it.

Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that Wagner wished only to parody the eucharistic rite. He wanted to create a ceremonial which should be beautiful, solemn, and moving; which should be an appropriate accompaniment to the adoration of a mystical relic; which should, in a large sense, be neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Buddhistic; which should symbolize a conception of atonement older than Christianity, older than Buddhism, older than all records of the human imagination. Of this more anon. As was his custom, Wagner drew from whatever source seemed to him good and fruitful; and though he doubtless thought himself at liberty to receive suggestions from the Roman Catholic ritual, as well as the German Lutheran, it is even possible that he had also before his mind scenes from Christian Masonry. This possibility was once suggested by Mr. F. C. Burnand, who took the idea from the last scene of the first act only, and does not seem to have known how many connections the Grail legend had with mediaeval Freemasonry or Templarism. There are more elements associated with the old Knights Templars and their rites in Wagner's drama than I am able to discuss. To do so I should have to be an initiate and have more space at my disposal than I have here. I can only make a few suggestions: In the old Welsh tale of Peredur, which is a tale of the quest of a magical talisman, the substitute for the grail is a dish containing a bloody head. That head in time, as the legend passed through the imaginations of poets and romances, became the head of John the Baptist, and there was a belief in the Middle Ages that the Knights Templars worshipped a bloody head. The head of John the Baptist enters dimly into Wagner's drama in the conceit that Kundry is a reincarnation of Herodias, who is doomed to make atonement, not for having danced the head off the prophet's shoulders, but for having reviled Christ as he was staggering up Calvary under the load of the cross. But this is pursuing speculations into regions that are shadowy and vague. Let it suffice for this branch of our study that Mr. Burnand has given expression to the theory that the scene of the adoration of the grail and the Love Feast may also have a relationship with the ceremony of installation in the Masonic orders of chivalry, in which a cup of brotherly love is presented to the Grand Commander, who drinks and asks the Sir Knights to pledge him in the cup "in commemoration of the Last Supper of our Grand Heavenly Captain, with his twelve disciples, whom he commanded thus to remember him." Here, says Mr. Burnand, there is no pretence to sacrifice. Participation in the wine is a symbol of a particular and peculiarly close intercommunion of brotherhood.

To get the least offence from "Parsifal" it ought to be accepted in the spirit of the time in which Christian symbolism was grafted on the old tales of the quest of a talisman which lie at the bottom of it. The time was the last quarter of the twelfth century and the first quarter of the thirteenth. It is the period of the third and fourth crusades. Relic worship was at its height. Less than a hundred years before (in 1101) the Genoese crusaders had brought back from the Holy Land as a part of the spoils of Caesarea, which they were helpful in capturing under Baldwin, a three-cornered dish, which was said to be the veritable dish used at the Last Supper of Christ and his Apostles. The belief that it was cut out of a solid emerald drew Bonaparte's attention to it, and he carried it away to Paris in 1806 and had it examined. It proved to be nothing but glass, and he graciously gave it back to Genoa in 1814. There it still reposes in the Church of St. John, but it is no longer an object of worship, though it might fairly excite a feeling of veneration.

For 372 years Nuremberg possessed what the devout believed to be the lance of Longinus, with which the side of Christ was opened. The relic, like most objects of its kind (the holy coat, for instance), had a rival which, after inspiring victory at the siege of Antioch, found its way to Paris with the most sacred relics, for which Louis IX built the lovely Sainte Chapelle; now it is in the basilica of the Vatican, at Rome. The Nuremberg relic, however, enjoyed the advantage of historical priority. It is doubly interesting, or rather was so, because it was one of Wagner's historical characters who added it to the imperial treasure of the Holy Roman Empire. This was none other than Henry the Fowler, the king who is righteous in judgment and tuneful of speech in the opera "Lohengrin." Henry, so runs the story, wrested the lance from the Burgundian king, Rudolph III, some time about A.D. 929. After many vicissitudes the relic was given for safe keeping to the imperial city of Nuremberg, in 1424, by the Emperor Sigismund. It was placed in a casket, which was fastened with heavy chains to the walls of the Spitalkirche. There it remained until 1796. One may read about the ceremonies attending its annual exposition, along with other relics, in the old history of Nuremberg, by Wagenseil, which was the source of Wagner's knowledge of the mastersingers. The disruption of the Holy Roman Empire caused a scattering of the jewels and relics in the imperial treasury, and the present whereabouts of this sacred lance is unknown. 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. The hero in his first estate was born, bred, went out in search of adventure, rescued the suffering, and righted wrong, just as Krishna, Perseus, Theseus, OEdipus, Romulus, Remus, Siegfried, and Wolf-Dietrich did before him. He is an Aryan legendary and mythical hero-type that has existed for ages. The talismanic cup and spear are equally ancient; they have figured in legend from time immemorial. The incidents of their quest, the agonies wrought by their sight, their mission as inviters of sympathetic interest, and the failure of a hero to achieve a work of succor because of failure to show pity, are all elements in Keltic Quester and Quest stories, which antedate Christianity. Kundry, the loathly damsel and siren, has her prototypes in classic fable and romantic tale. Read the old English ballad of "The Marriage of Sir Gawain." So has the magic castle of Klingsor, surrounded by its beautiful garden. It is all the things which I enumerated in the chapter devoted to "Tannhauser." It is also the Underworld, where prevails the law of taboo—"Thou must," or "Thou shalt not;" whither Psyche went on her errand for Venus and came back scot-free; where Peritheus and Theseus remained grown to a rocky seat till Hercules came to release them with mighty wrench and a loss of their bodily integrity. The sacred lance which shines red with blood after it has by its touch healed the wound of Amfortas is the bleeding spear which was a symbol of righteous vengeance unperformed in the old Bardic day of Britain; it became the lance of Longinus which pierced the side of Christ when Christian symbolism was applied to the ancient Arthurian legends; and you may read in Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" how a dolorous stroke dealt with it by Balin opened a wound in the side of King Pellam from which he suffered many years, till Galahad healed him in the quest of the Sangreal by touching the wound with the blood which flowed from the spear.

These are the folklore elements in Wagner's "Parsifal." It is plain that they might have been wrought into a drama substantially like that which was the poet-composer's last gift to art without loss of either dignity or beauty. Then his drama would have been like a glorified fairy play, imposing and of gracious loveliness, and there would have been nothing to quarrel about. But Wagner was a philosopher of a sort, and a sincere believer in the idea that the theatre might be made to occupy the same place in the modern world that it did in the classic. It was to replace the Church and teach by direct preachments as well as allegory the philosophical notions which he thought essential to the salvation of humanity. For the chief of these he went to that system of philosophy which rests on the idea that the world is to be redeemed by negation of the will to live, the conquering of all desire—that the highest happiness is the achievement of nirvana, nothingness. This conception finds its highest expression in the quietism and indifferentism of the old Brahmanic religion (if such it can be called), in which holiness was to be obtained by speculative contemplation, which seems to me the quintessence of selfishness. In the reformed Brahmanism called Buddhism, there appeared along with the old principle of self-erasure a compassionate sympathy for others. Asceticism was not put aside, but regulated and ordered, wrought into a communal system. It was purged of some of its selfishness by appreciation of the loveliness of compassionate love as exemplified in the life of Cakya-Muni and those labors which made him one of the many redeemers and saviours of which Hindu literature is full. Something of this was evidently in the mind of Wagner as long ago as 1857, when, working on "Tristan und Isolde," he for a while harbored the idea of bringing Parzival (as he would have called him then) into the presence of the dying Tristan to comfort him with a sermon on the happiness of renunciation. Long before Wagner had sketched a tragedy entitled "Jesus of Nazareth," the hero of which was to be a human philosopher who preached the saving grace of love and sought to redeem his time and people from the domination of conventional law, the offspring of selfishness. His philosophy was socialism imbued by love. Before Wagner finished "Tristan und Isolde" he had outlined a Hindu play in which hero and heroine were to accept the doctrines of the Buddha, take the vow of chastity, renounce the union toward which love impelled them, and enter into the holy community. Blending these two schemes, Wagner created "Parsifal." For this drama he could draw the principle of compassionate pity and fellow-suffering from the stories of both Cakya-Muni and Jesus of Nazareth. But for the sake of a spectacle, I think, he accepted the Christian doctrine of the Atonement with all its mystical elements; for they alone put the necessary symbolical significance into the principal apparatus of the play—the Holy Grail and the Sacred Lance. {1}

Footnotes:

{1} "Parsifal" was performed for the first time at the Wagner Festival Theatre in Bayreuth on July 28, 1882. The prescription that it should belong exclusively to Bayreuth was respected till December 24, 1903, when Heinrich Conried, taking advantage of the circumstance that there was no copyright on the stage representation of the work in America, brought it out with sensational success at the Metropolitan Opera-house in New York. The principal artists concerned in this and subsequent performances were Milka Ternina (Kundry), Alois Burgstaller (Paraifal), Anton Van Rooy (Amfortas), Robert Blass (Gurnemanz), Otto Gorlitz (Klingsor) and Louise Homer (a voice).



CHAPTER XV

"DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NURNBERG"

The best definition of the true purpose of comedy which I know is that it is to "chastise manners with a smile" (Ridendo castigat mores); and it has no better exemplification in the literature of opera than Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg." Wagner's mind dwelt much on Greek things, and as he followed a classical principle in choosing mythological and legendary subjects for his tragedies, so also he followed classical precedent in drawing the line between tragedy and comedy. "Tannhauser," "Tristan und Isolde," "Der Ring des Nibelungen," "Parsifal," and, in a lesser degree, "Lohengrin," are examples of the old tragedy type. To them the restrictions of time and space do not apply. They deal with large passions, and their heroes are gods or godlike men who are shattered against the rock of immutable law—the "Fate" of the ancient tragedians. His only significant essay in the field of comedy was made in "Die Meistersinger," and this is as faithful to the old conception of comedy as the dramas mentioned are to that of tragedy. It deals with the manners, vices, and follies of the common people; and, therefore, it has local environment and illustrates a period in history. It was conceived as a satyr-play following a tragedy ("Tannhauser"), and though there can be no doubt that it was designed to teach a lesson in art, it nevertheless aims primarily to amuse, and only secondarily to instruct and correct. Moreover, even the most cutting of its satirical lashes are administered with a smile.

As a picture of the social life of a quaint German city three and a half centuries ago, its vividness and truthfulness are beyond all praise; it is worthy to stand beside the best dramas of the world, and has no equal in operatic literature. The food for its satire, too, is most admirably chosen, for no feature of the social life of that place and period is more amiably absurd than the efforts of the handicraftsmen and tradespeople, with their prosaic surroundings, to keep alive by dint of pedantic formularies the spirit of minstrelsy, which had a natural stimulus in the chivalric life of the troubadours and minnesingers of whom the mastersingers thought themselves the direct and legitimate successors. In its delineation of the pompous doings of the mastersingers, Wagner is true to the letter. He has vitalized the dry record to be found in old Wagenseil's book on Nuremberg, {1} and intensified the vivid description of a mastersingers' meeting which the curious may read in August Hagen's novel "Norica." His studies have been marvellously exact and careful, and he has put Wagenseil's book under literal and liberal contribution, as will appear after a while. Now it seems best to tell the story of the comedy before discussing it further.

Veit Pogner, a rich silversmith, desiring to honor the craft of the mastersingers, to whose guild he belongs, offers his daughter Eva in marriage to the successful competitor at the annual meeting of the mastersingers on the feast of St. John. Eva is in love (she declares it in the impetuous manner peculiar to Wagner's heroines) with Walther von Stolzing, a young Franconian knight; and the knight with her. After a flirtation in church during divine service, Walther meets her before she leaves the building, and asks if she be betrothed. She answers in the affirmative, but it is to the unknown victor at the contest of singing on the morrow. He resolves to enter the guild so as to be qualified for the competition. A trial of candidates takes place in the church of St. Catherine in the afternoon, and Walther, knowing nothing of the rules of the mastersingers, some of which have hurriedly been outlined to him by David, a youngster who is an apprentice at shoemaking and also songmaking, fails, though Hans Sachs, a master in both crafts, recognizes evidences of genius in the knight's song, and espouses his cause as against Beckmesser, the town clerk, who aims at acquiring Pogner's fortune by winning his daughter. The young people, in despair at Walther's failure, are about to elope when they are prevented by the arrival on the scene of Beckmesser. It is night, and he wishes to serenade Eva; Sachs sits cobbling at his bench, while Eva's nurse, Magdalena, disguised, sits at a window to hear the serenade in her mistress's stead. Sachs interrupts the serenader, who is an ill-natured clown, by lustily shouting a song in which he seeks also to give warning of knowledge of her intentions to Eva, whose departure with the knight had been interrupted by the cobbler when he came out of his shop to work in the cool of the evening; but he finally agrees to listen to Beckmesser on condition that he be permitted to mark each error in the composition by striking his lap-stone. The humorous consequences can be imagined. Beckmesser becomes enraged at Sachs, sings more and more falsely, until Sachs is occupied in beating a veritable tattoo on his lap-stone. To add to Beckmesser's discomfiture, David, Sachs's apprentice and Magdalena's sweetheart, thinking the serenade intended for his love, begins to belabor the singer with a chub; neighbors join in the brawl, which proceeds right merrily until interrupted by the horn of a night watchman. The dignity and vigor of Wagner's poetical fancy are attested by the marvellous chose of the act. The tremendous hubbub of the street brawl is at its height and the business of the act is at an end. The coming of the Watchman, who has evidently been aroused by the noise, is foretold by his horn. The crowd is seized with a panic. All the brawlers disappear behind doors. The sleepy Watchman stares about him in amazement, rubs his eyes, sings the monotonous chant which publishes the hour of the night, continues on his round, and the moon shines on a quiet street in Nuremberg as the curtain falls.

In the third act Walther, who had been taken into his house by Sachs and spent the night there, sings a recital of a dream; and Sachs, struck by its beauty, transcribes it, punctuating it with bits of comments and advice. Beckmesser, entering Sachs's shop when the cobbler-poet is out for a moment, finds the song, concludes that it is Sachs's own composition, and appropriates it. Sachs, discovering the theft, gives the song to Beckmesser, who secures a promise from Sachs not to betray him, and resolves to sing it at the competition. The festival is celebrated in a meadow on the banks of the Pegnitz River, between Furth and Nuremberg. It begins with a gathering of all the guilds of Nuremberg, each division in the procession entering to characteristic music—a real masterpiece, whether viewed as spectacle, poetry, or music. The competition begins, and Beckmesser makes a monstrously stupid parody of Walther's song. He is hooted at and ridiculed, and, becoming enraged, charges the authorship of the song on Sachs, who coolly retorts that it is a good song when correctly sung. To prove his words he calls on Walther to sing it. The knight complies, the mastersingers are delighted, and Pogner rewards the singer with Eva's hand. Sachs, at the request of the presiding officer of the guild, also offers him the medal as the insignia of membership in the guild of mastersingers. Walther's experience with the pedantry which had condemned him the day before, when he had sung as impulse, love, and youthful ardor had prompted, leads him to decline the distinction; but the old poet discourses on the respect due to the masters and their, work as the guaranty of the permanence of German art, and persuades him to enter the guild of mastersingers.

"Die Meistersinger" is photographic in many of its scenes, personages, and incidents; but so far as the stage pictures which we are accustomed to see in the opera-houses of New York and the European capitals are concerned, this statement must be taken with a great deal of allowance, owing to the fact that opera directors, stage managers, scene painters, and costumers are blithely indifferent to the verities of history. I have never seen a mimic reproduction of the church of St. Catherine on any stage; yet the church stands to-day with its walls intact as they were at the time in which the comedy is supposed to play. This time is fixed by the fact that its principal character, Hans Sachs, is represented as a widower who might himself be a suitor for Eva's hand. Now the veritable Sachs was a widower in the summer of the year 1560. I visited Nuremberg in 1886 in search of relics of the mastersingers and had no little difficulty in finding the church. It had not been put to its original purposes for more than a hundred years, and there seemed to be but few people in Nuremberg who knew of its existence. It has been many things since it became secularized: a painter's academy, drawing-school, military hospital, warehouse, concert-hall, and, no doubt, a score of other things. When I found it with the aid of the police it was the paint-shop and scenic storeroom of the municipal theatre. It is a small building, utterly unpretentious of exterior and interior, innocent of architectural beauty, hidden away in the middle of a block of lowly buildings used as dwellings, carpenter shops, and the like. That Wagner never visited it is plain from the fact that though he makes it the scene of one act of his comedy (as he had to do to be historically accurate), his stage directions could not possibly be accommodated to its architecture. In 1891 Mr. Louis Loeb, the American artist, whose early death in the summer of 1909 is widely mourned, visited the spot and made drawings for me of the exterior and interior of the church as it looked then. The church was built in the last half decade of the thirteenth century, and on its water-stained walls, when I visited it, there were still to be seen faint traces of the frescoes which once adorned it and were painted in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; but they were ruined beyond hope of restoration. In the Germanic Museum I found a wooden tablet dating back to 1581, painted by one Franz Hein. It preserves portraits of four distinguished members of the mastersingers' guild. There is a middle panel occupied by two pictures, the upper showing King David, the patron saint of the guild, so forgetful of chronology as to be praying before a crucifix, the lower a meeting of the mastersingers. Over the heads of the assemblage is a representative of the medallion with which the victor in a contest used to be decorated, as we see in the last scene of Wagner's comedy. One of these decorations was given to the guild by Sachs and was in use for a whole century. At the end of that time it had become so worn that Wagenseil replaced it with another.

Church and tablet are the only relics of the mastersingers left in Nuremberg which may be called personal. I had expected to find autobiographic manuscripts of Sachs, but in this was disappointed. There is a volume of mastersongs in the poet-cobbler's handwriting in the Royal Library of Berlin, and one of these is the composition of the veritable Sixtus Beckmesser; but most of the Sachs manuscripts are in Zwickau. In the Bibliotheca Norica Williana, incorporated with the Municipal Library of Nuremberg, there are several volumes of mastersingers' songs purchased from an old mastersinger some 135 years ago, and from these the students may learn the structure and spirit of the mastersongs of the period of the opera as well as earlier and later periods, though he will find all the instruction he needs in any dozen or twenty of the 4275 mastersongs written by Hans Sachs. The manuscript books known serve to prove one thing which needed not to have called up a doubt. In them are poems from all of the mastersingers who make up the meeting which condemns Walther in St. Catherine's church. Wagner has adhered to the record. {2} The most interesting of Sixtus Beckmesser's compositions is "A New Year's Song," preserved in the handwriting of Sachs in the Royal Library at Berlin. This I have translated in order to show the form of the old mastersongs as described by the apprentice, David, in Wagner's comedy, and also to prove (so far as a somewhat free translation can) that the veritable Beckmesser was not the stupid dunce that Wagner, for purposes of his own, and tempted, doubtless, by the humor which he found in the name, represented him to be. In fact, I am strongly tempted to believe that with the exception of Sachs himself, Beckmesser was the best of the mastersingers of the Nuremberg school:—

A NEW YEAR'S SONG By Sixtus Beckmesser

(First "Stoll") Joy Christian thoughts employ This day Doth say The Book of old That we should hold The faith foretold; For naught doth doubt afford. The patriarchs with one accord Lived hoping that the Lord Would rout the wicked horde. Thus saith the word To all believers given.

(Second "Stoll") God Council held, triune, When soon The boon The son foresaw: Fulfilled the law That we might draw Salvation's prize. God then An angel sent cross moor and fen, ('Twas Gabriel, heaven's denizen,) To Mary, purest maid 'mongst men. He greeted her With blessings sent from heaven.

(The "Abgesang") Thus spake the angel graciously: "The Lord with thee, Thou blessed she; The Lord's voice saith, Which breathes thy breath, That men have earned eternal death. Faith Saves alone from sin's subjection; For while weak Eve God's anger waked, 'Twas, Ave, thine the blest election To give the world peace and protection, Most blessed gift To mortals ever given!"

In Nuremberg the veritable Hans Sachs wrote plays on Tannhauser, Tristan, and Siegfried between three and four hundred years before the poet-composer who put the old cobbler-poet into his comedy. Very naive and very archaic indeed are Hans Sachs's dramas compared with Wagner's; but it is, perhaps, not an exaggeration to say that Sachs was as influential a factor in the dramatic life of his time as Wagner in ours. He was among the earliest of the German poets who took up the miracle plays and mysteries after they had been abandoned by the church and developed them on the lines which ran out into the classic German drama. His immediate predecessors were the writers of the so-called "Fastnacht" (Mardi-gras) plays, who flourished in Nuremberg in the fifteenth century. Out of these plays German comedy arose, and among those who rocked its cradle was another of the mastersingers who plays a part in Wagner's opera,—Hans Folz. It was doubtless largely due to the influence of Hans Sachs that the guild of mastersingers built the first German theatre in Nuremberg in 1550. Before then plays with religious subjects were performed in St. Catherine's church, as we have seen, the meeting place of the guild. Secular plays were represented in private houses.

Hans Sachs wrote no less than 208 dramas, which he divided into "Carnival Plays," "Plays," "Comedies," and "Tragedies." He dropped the first designation in his later years, but his first dramatic effort was a Fastnachtspiel, and treated the subject of Tannhauser and Venus. It bears the date February 21, 1517, and was therefore written 296 years before Wagner was born. Of what is now dramatic form and structure, there is not a sign in this play. It is merely a dialogue between Venus and various persons who stand for as many classes of society. The title is: "Das Hoffgesindt Veneris," or, as it might be rendered in English, "The Court of Venus." The characters are a Herald, Faithful Eckhardt, Danheuser (sic), Dame Venus, a Knight, Physician, Citizen, Peasant, Soldier, Gambler, Drunkard, Maid, and Wife. The Knight, Citizen, and the others appear in turn before Venus and express contempt for her powers,—the Knight because of his bravery, the Physician because of his learning, the Maid because of her virtue, the Wife because of her honor. Faithful Eckhardt, a character that figures in many Thuringian legends, especially in tales of the Wild Hunt, warns each person in turn to beware of Venus. The latter listens to each boast and lets loose an arrow. Each boaster succumbs with a short lamentation. When the play opens, Danheuser is already a prisoner of the goddess. After all the rest have fallen victims, he begs for his release, and they join in his petition. Venus rejects the prayer, speaks in praise of her powers, and calls on a piper for music. A general dance follows, whereupon the company go with the enchantress into the Venusberg. The last speech of Venus ends with the line:—

So says Hans Sachs of Nuremberg.

There is but a single scene in "The Court of Venus." In other plays written in after years, no matter how often the action demanded it, there is neither change of scenes nor division into acts; and the personages, whether Biblical or classical, talk in the manner of the simple folk of the sixteenth century. Sachs's tragedy, "Von der strengen Lieb' Herrn Tristrant mit der schonen Konigin Isalden" ("Of the strong love of Lord Tristram and the beautiful Queen Iseult"), contains seven acts, as is specified in the continuation of the title "und hat sieben Akte." It was written thirty-six years later than the carnival play and three years after the establishment of a theatre in Nuremberg by the mastersingers. Each act ends with a triple rhyme. Though Sachs uses stage directions somewhat freely compared with the other dramatists of the period, the personages all speak in the same manner, and time and space are annihilated in the action most bewilderingly. Thus, no sooner does Herr Tristrant volunteer to meet Morhold der Held to settle the question of "Curnewelshland's" tribute to "Irland" than the two are at it hammer and tongs on an island in the ocean. All the other incidents of the old legends follow as fast as they are mentioned. Tristrant saves his head in Ireland when discovered as the slayer of Morhold by ridding the country of a dragon, and is repeatedly convicted of treachery and taken back into confidence by Konig Marx, as one may read in Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." Sachs follows an old conclusion of the story and gives Tristrant a second Iseult to wife, and she tells the lie about the sails. The first Iseult dies of a broken heart at the sight of her lover's bier, and the Herald in a speech draws the moral of the tale:—

Aus dem so lass dich treulich warnen, O Mensch, vor solcher Liebe Garnen, Und spar dein Lieb' bis in die Eh', Dann hab' Ein lieb' und keine meh. Diesselb' Lieb' ist mit Gott und Ehren, Die Welt damit fruchtbar zu mehren. Dazu giebt Gott selbst allewegen Sein' Gnad' Gedeihen und milden Segen. Dass stete Lieb' und Treu' aufwachs' Im ehlich'n Stand', das wunscht Hans Sachs.

One of the most thrilling scenes in "Die Meistersinger" is the greeting of Hans Sachs by the populace when the hero enters with the mastersingers' guild at the festival of St. John (the chorus, "Wach' auf! es nahet gen den Tag"). Here there is another illustration of Wagner's adherence to the verities of history, or rather, of his employment of them. The words of the uplifting choral song are not Wagner's, but were written by the old cobbler-poet himself. Wagner's stage people apply them to their idol, but Sachs uttered them in praise of Martin Luther; they form the beginning of his poem entitled "The Wittenberg Nightingale," which was printed in 1523.

To the old history of Nuremberg written by Wagenseil, Wagner went for other things besides the theatre and personages of his play. From it he got the rules which governed the meeting of the mastersingers, like that which follows the religious service in the church of St. Catherine in the first act, and the singular names of the melodies to which, according to David, the candidates for mastersingers' honors were in the habit of improvising their songs. In one instance he made a draft on an authentic mastersinger melody. The march which is used throughout the comedy to symbolize the guild begins as follows:—

[Musical excerpt]

Here we have an exact quotation from the beginning of the first Gesetz in the "Long Tone" of Heinrich Muglin, which was a tune that every candidate for membership in the guild had to be able to sing. The old song is given in full in Wagenseil's book, and on the next page I have reproduced a portion of this song in fac-simile, so that my readers can observe the accuracy of Wagner's quotation and form an idea of the nature of the poetic frenzy which used to fill the mastersingers, as well as enjoy the ornamental passages (called "Blumen" in the old regulations) and compare them with the fiorituri of Beckmesser's serenade.

There is no doubt in my mind but that Wagner's purpose in "Die Meistersinger" was to celebrate the triumph of the natural, poetical impulse, stimulated by healthy emotion and communion with nature, over pedantry and hide-bound conservatism. In the larger study of the opera made in another place, I have attempted to show that the contest is in reality the one which is always waging between the principles of romanticism and classicism, a contest which is essentially friendly and necessary to progress. The hero of the comedy is not Walther, but Sachs, who represents in himself both principles, who stands between the combatants and checks the extravagances of both parties. {3}

Like Beethoven in his "Leonore" overtures written for the opera "Fidelio," Wagner constructs the symphonic introduction to his comedy so as to indicate the elements of his dramatic story, their progress in the development of the play, and, finally, the outcome. The melodies are of two sorts conforming to the two parties into which the personages of the play can be divided; and, like those parties, the melodies are broadly distinguished by external physiognomy and emotional essence. Most easily recognized are the two broad march tunes typical of the mastersingers and their pageantry. One of them has already been presented. Like its companion,—

[Musical excerpt]

which opens the prelude, it is a strong, simple melody, made on the intervals of the diatonic scale, square-cut in rhythm, firm and dignified, and, like the mastersingers, complacent and a trifle pompous in stride. The three melodies which are presented in opposition to the spirit represented by the mastersingers and their typical music, are disclosed by a study of the comedy to be associated with the passion of the young lovers, Walther and Eva. They differ in every respect—melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic,—from those which stand for the old guildsmen and their rule-of-thumb notions. They are chromatic, as see this:—

[Musical excerpt]

and this (which is the melody which in a broadened form becomes that of Walther's prize song):—

[Musical excerpt]

and this, which is peculiarly the symbol of youthful ardor:—

[Musical excerpt]

Their rhythms are less regular and more eager (note the influence of syncopation upon them); they are harmonized with greater warmth and infused with greater passion. In the development of the prelude these melodies are presented at first consecutively, then as in conflict (first one, then another pushing forward for expression), finally in harmonious and contented union. The middle part of the prelude, in which the opening march tune is heard in short, quick notes (in diminution, as the theoreticians say) maybe looked upon as caricaturing the mastersingers, not in their fair estate, but as they are satirized in the comedy in the person of Beckmesser.

Footnotes:

{1} "Joh. Christophori Wagenseilii De Sacri Rom. Imperii Libera Civitate Noribergensi Commentatio. Accedit, De Germaniae Phonascorum Von Der Meister-Singer Origine, Praestantia, Utilitate, et Institutis, Sermone Vernaculo Liber. Altdorf Noricorum Typis Impensisque Jodoci Wilhelmi Kohlesii. CID ICD XCVII."

{2} I quote from Wagenseil's book—he is writing about the history of the mastersingers: "Nach der Stadt Mayntz, hat in den Statten Nurnberg und Strassburg / die Meister-Singer-Kunst sonderlich floriret / wie dann auchXII. Alte Nurnbergische Meister annoch im Beruff sind; so mit Namen geheissen / 1. Veit Pogner. 2. Cuntz Vogelgesang. 3. Hermann Ortel. 4. Conrad Nachtigal. 5. Fritz Zorn. 6. Sixtus Beckmesser. 7. Fritz Kohtner. 8. Niclaus Vogel. 9. Augustin Moser. 10. Hannss Schwartz. 11. Ulrich Eisslinger. 12. Hannss Foltz."

{3} "In the musical contest it is only the perverted idea of Classicism which is treated with contumely and routed; the glorification of the triumph of Romanticism is found in the stupendously pompous and brilliant setting given to the mastersingers' music at the end. You see already in this prelude that Wagner is a true comedian. He administers chastisement with a smile and chooses for its subject only things which are temporary aberrations from the good. What is strong, and true, and pure, and wholesome in the art of the mastersingers he permits to pass through his satirical fires unscathed. Classicism, in its original sense as the conservator of that which is highest and best in art, he leaves unharmed, presenting her after her trial, as Tennyson presents his Princess at the close of his corrective poem, when

"All Her falser self slipt from her like a robe, And left her woman, lovelier in her mood Than in her mould that other, when she came From barren deeps to conquer all with love."

—"Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," by H. E. Krehbiel, p. 95.



CHAPTER XVI

"LOHENGRIN"

In the last hundred lines of the last book of his epic poem to which Wagner went for the fundamental incidents, not principles, of his "Parsifal," Wolfram von Eschenbach tells the story of one of the Grail King's sons whom he calls Loherangrin. This son was a lad when Parzival (thus Wolfram spells the name) became King of the Holy Grail and the knights who were in its service. When he had grown to manhood, there lived in Brabant a queen who was equally gifted in beauty, wealth, and gentleness. Many princes sought her hand in marriage, but she refused them all, and waited for the coming of one whom God had disclosed to her in a vision. One day a knight of great beauty and nobley, as Sir Thomas Mallory would have said, came to Antwerp in a boat drawn by a swan. To him the queen at once gave greeting as lord of her dominions; but in the presence of the assembled folk he said to her: "If I am to become ruler of this land, know that it will be at great sacrifice to myself. Should you nevertheless wish me to remain with you, you must never ask who I am; otherwise I must leave you forever." The queen made solemn protestation that she would never do aught against his will. Then her marriage with the stranger knight was celebrated, and they abode together long in happiness and honor. But at the last the queen was led to put the fatal question. Then the swan appeared with the boat, and Loherangrin, for it was he, was drawn back to Montsalvat, whence he had come. But to those whom he left behind he gave his sword, horn, and ring.

There are other mediaeval poems which deal with the story of Lohengrin, more, indeed, than can or need be discussed here. Some, however, deserve consideration because they supply elements which Wagner used in his opera but did not find in Wolfram's poem. Wagner went, very naturally, to a poem of the thirteenth century, entitled "Lohengrin," for the majority of the incidents of the drama. Thence he may have drawn the motive for the curiosity of Elsa touching the personality of her husband. Of course, it lies in human nature, as stories which are hundreds if not thousands of years older attest; but I am trying, as I have been in preceding chapters in this book, to account for the presence of certain important elements in Wagner's opera, and so this poem must also be considered. In it Lohengrin rescues Elsa, the Duchess of Brabant, from the false accusations of Telramund, the knight having been summoned from Montsalvat (or "Monsalvasch," to be accurate) by the ringing of a bell which Elsa had taken from a falcon's leg. The knight marries her, but first exacts a promise that she will never seek of him knowledge of his race or country. After the happy domestic life of the pair has been described, it is told how Lohengrin overthrew the Duke of Cleves at a tournament in Cologne and broke his arm. The Duchess of Cleves felt humiliated at the overthrow of her husband by a knight of whom nothing was known, and wickedly insinuated that it was a pity that so puissant a jouster should not be of noble birth, thereby instilling a fatal curiosity into the mind of the Lady of Brabant, which led to questions which Lohengrin answered before the emperor's court and then disappeared from view. From "Der jungere Titurel," another mediaeval poem, came the suggestion that the mysterious knight's prowess was due to sorcery and might be set at naught if his bodily integrity were destroyed even in the slightest degree. In the French tale of "Le Chevalier au Cygne," as told in the "Chansons de geste," you may read the story of Helyas, who was one of seven children of King Oriant and Queen Beatrix, who were born with silver chains around their necks. The chains being removed with evil purpose, the children turned into swans and flew away—all but one, Helyas, who was absent at the time. But Helyas got possession of all the chains but one, which had been wrought into a cup, and one day, when he heard the sound of wings, and six swans let themselves down into the water, he threw the chains around their necks, and they at once assumed the forms of his brothers. Also how, one day, Helyas, from the window of his palace, saw a swan drawing a boat, and how he donned his armor, took a golden horn, and was drawn away to Nimwegen, where Emperor Otto was holding court. There he found that the Count of Blankenbourg had accused his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Bouillon, of having poisoned her husband, and had laid claim to the duchy. There was to be a trial by ordeal of battle, and while the duchess waited for the coming of a champion, lo! there was the sound of a horn, and Helyas came down the river in a boat drawn by a swan, undertook the cause of the innocent lady, slew her accuser, and married her daughter. For long she was a good and faithful wife, and bore him a child who became the mother of Godfrey de Bouillon, Baldwin de Sebourg, and Eustace de Boulogne. But one day she asked of her lord his name and race. Then he bade her repair to Nimwegen, and commending her and her daughter to the care of the emperor, he departed thence in a swan-drawn boat and was never seen more.

Here we have the essentials of the story which Wagner wrought into his opera "Lohengrin" Only a few details need be added to make the plot complete. The meeting of Lohengrin and Elsa takes place on the banks of the river Scheldt in Brabant. The King has come to ask the help of the Brabantians against the Huns, who are invading Germany. He finds Brabant in a disturbed state. The throne is vacant; Count Frederick of Telramund, who has his eyes upon it, had offered his hand in marriage to Elsa, who, with her brother, Gottfried, had been left in his care on the death of their father, but had met with a refusal. He had then married Ortrud, a Frisian princess. She is the last of a royal line, but a pagan, and practises sorcery. To promote the ambition of herself and her husband, she has changed Gottfried into a swan by throwing a magical chain about his neck, and persuaded Telramund to accuse Elsa of having murdered the boy in the hope of enjoying the throne together with a secret lover. The King summons Elsa to answer the charge and decrees trial by ordeal of battle. Commanded to name her champion, she tells of a knight seen in a dream: upon him alone will she rely. Not until the second call of the Herald has gone out and Elsa has fallen to her knees in prayer does the champion appear. He is a knight in shining white armor who comes in a boat drawn by a swan. He accepts the gage of battle, after asking Elsa whether or not she wants him to be her husband if victorious in the combat, and exacting a promise never to ask of him whence he came or what his name or race. He overcomes Telramund, but gives him his life; the King, however, banishes the false accuser and sets the stranger over the people of Brabant with the title of Protector. Telramund is overwhelmed by his misfortunes, but Ortrud urges him to make another trial to regain what he has lost. The knight, she says, had won by witchcraft, and if but the smallest joint of his body could be taken from him, he would be impotent. Together they instil disquiet and suspicion into the mind of Elsa as she is about to enter the minster to be married. After the wedding guests have departed, her newly found happiness is disturbed by doubt, and a painful curiosity manifests itself in her speech. Lohengrin admonishes, reproves, and warns in words of tenderest love. He had given up greater glories than his new life had to offer out of love for her. A horrible fear seizes her: he who had so mysteriously come would as mysteriously depart. Cost what it may, she must know who he is. She asks the question, but before he can reply Telramund rushes into the room with drawn weapon. Elsa has but time to hand Lohengrin his sword, with which he stretches the would-be assassin dead on the chamber floor. Then he commands that the body be carried before the King, whither he also directs her maids to escort his wife. There is another conclave of King and nobles. Lohengrin asks if he had acted within his right in slaying Telramund, and his deed is approved by all. Then he gives public answer to Elsa's question:

In distant lands, where ye can never enter, A castle stands and Montsalvat its name; A radiant temple rises from its center More glorious far than aught of earthly fame. And there a vessel of most wondrous splendor, A shrine, most holy, guarded well doth rest, To which but mortals purest service render— 'Twas brought to earth by hosts of angels blest! Once every year a dove from heaven descendeth To strengthen then its wondrous powers anew: 'Tis called the Grail—and purest faith it lendeth To those good knights who are its chosen few. To serve the Grail whoe'er is once elected Receives from it a supernatural might; From baneful harm and fraud is he protected, Away from him flees death and gloom of night! Yea, whom by it to distant lands is bidden As champion to some virtuous cause maintain, Well knows its powers are from him never hidden, If, as its knight, he unrevealed remain. Such wondrous nature is the Grail's great blessing, Reveal'd must then the knight from mortals flee: Let not rest in your hearts a doubt oppressing,— If known to you he saileth o'er the sea. Now list what he to you in troth declareth: The Grail obeying here to you I came. My father Parzival, a crown he weareth, His knight am I and Lohengrin my name! {1}

A prohibition which rests upon all who are served by a Knight of the Grail having been violated, he must depart from thence; but before going he gives his sword, horn, and ring to Elsa, and tells her that had he been permitted to live but one year at her side, her brother would have returned in conduct of the Grail. The swan appears to convey him back to his resplendent home. Ortrud recognizes the chain around its neck and gloats over her triumph; but Lohengrin hears her shout. He sinks on his knees in silent prayer. As he rises, a white dove floats downward toward the boat. Lohengrin detaches the chain from the neck of the swan. The bird disappears, and in its place stands Gottfried, released from the spell put upon him by the sorceress. The dove draws the boat with its celestial passenger away, and Elsa sinks lifeless into the arms of her brother.

In this story of Lohengrin there is an admixture of several elements which once had no association. It is the story of an adventure of a Knight of the Holy Grail; also a story involving the old principle of taboo; and one of many stories of the transformation of a human being into a swan, or a swan into a human being. This swan myth is one of the most widely spread of all transformation tales; it may even be found in the folk-stories of the American Indians. To discuss this feature would carry one too far afield, and I have a different purpose in view.

* * *

The two Figaro operas, the discussion of which opened this book, were composed by different men, and a generation of time separated their production. The opera which deals with the second chapter of the adventures of Seville's factotum was composed first, and is the greater work of the two; yet we have seen how pleasantly they can be associated with each other, and, no doubt, many who admire them have felt with me the wish that some musician with sufficient skill and the needful reverence would try the experiment of remodelling the two and knitting their bonds closer by giving identity of voice to the personages who figure in both. The Wagnerian list presents something like a parallel, and it would be a pleasant thing if two of the modern poet-composer's dramas which have community of subject could be brought into similar association, so that one might be performed as a sequel to the other. The operas are "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal." A generation also lies between them, and they ought to bear a relationship to each other something like that existing between "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia." Indeed, the bond ought to be closer, for one man wrote books and music as well of the Grail dramas, whereas different librettists and different composers created the Figaro comedies. But it will never be possible to bring Wagner's most popular opera and his "stage-consecrating play" into logical union, notwithstanding that both deal with the legend of the Holy Grail and that the hero of one proclaims himself to be the son of the hero of the other. Wagner cast a loving glance at the older child of his brain when he quoted some of the "swan music" of "Lohengrin "in "Parsifal"; but he built an insurmountable wall between them when he forsook the sane and simple ideas which inspired him in writing "Lohengrin" for the complicated fabric of mediaeval Christianity and Buddhism which he strove to set forth in "Parsifal." In 1847 Wagner was willing to look at the hero of the quest of the Holy Grail whom we call Percival through the eyes of his later guide, Wolfram von Eschenbach. To Wolfram Parzival was a married man; more than that—a married lover, clinging with devotion to the memory of the wife from whose arms he had torn himself to undertake the quest, and losing himself in tender brooding for days when the sight of blood-spots on the snow suggested to his fancy the red and white of fair Konwiramur's cheeks. Thirty years later Wagner could only conceive of his Grail hero as a celibate and an ascetic. Lohengrin glories in the fact that he is the son of him who wears the crown of the Grail; but Parsifal disowns his son.

This is one instance of the incoherency of the two Grail dramas. There is another, and by this second departure from the old legends which furnished forth his subject, Wagner made "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal" forever irreconcilable. The whole fabric of the older opera rests on the forbidden question:—

Nie solist du mich befragen, noch Wissen's Sorge tragen, woher ich kam der Fahrt, noch wie mein Nam' und Art. {2}

So impressed was Wagner with the significance of this dramatic motive sixty years ago, that he gave it a musical setting which still stands as the finest of all his many illustrations of the principle of fundamental or typical phrases in dramatic music:—

[Musical excerpt—"Nie sollst du mich befragen"]

And no wonder. No matter where he turned in his studies of the Grail legend, he was confronted by the fact that it was by asking a question that the seeker after the Grail was to release the ailing king, whom he found in the castle in which the talismans were preserved, from his sufferings. In the Welsh tale of Peredur and the French romances the question went only to the meaning of the talismans; but this did not suffice Wolfram von Eschenbach, who in many ways raised the ethical standard of the Grail legend. He changed the question so as to make it a sign of affectionate and compassionate interest on the part of the questioner; it was no longer, "What mean the bloody head and the bleeding lance?" but "What ails thee, uncle?"

Wagner was fond, a little overfond, indeed, of appealing to the public over the heads of the critics, of going to the jury rather than the judge, when asking for appreciation of his dramas; but nothing is plainer to the close student than that he was never wholly willing to credit the public with possession of that high imaginativeness to which his dramas more than those of any other composer make appeal. His first conception of the finale of "Tannhauser," for instance, was beautiful, poetical, and reasonable; for the sake of a spectacle he reconstructed it after the original production and plunged it into indefensible confusion and absurdity.

A desire to abstain as much as possible from criticism (that not being the purpose of this book) led me to avoid mention of this circumstance in the exposition of "Tannhauser"; but I find that I must now set it forth, though briefly. In the original form of the opera there was no funeral procession and no death of the hero beside the bier of the atoning saint. The scene between Tannhauser and Wolfram was interrupted by the tolling of a bell in the castle to indicate the death of Elizabeth and the appearance of a glow of rose-colored light across the valley to suggest the presence of Venus. By bringing the corpse of Elizabeth on the stage so that Tannhauser might die by its side, Wagner was guilty of worse than an anachronism. The time which elapses in the drama between Elizabeth's departure from the scene and her return as a corpse is just as long as the song which Wolfram sings in which he apostrophizes her as his "holder Abendstern"—just as long and not a moment longer. There is no question here of poetical license, for Wolfram sings the apostrophe after her retreating figure, and the last chord of his postlude is interrupted by Tannhauser's words, "Ich horte Harfenschlag!" Yet we are asked to assume that in the brief interim Elizabeth has ascended the mountain to the Wartburg, died, been prepared for burial, and brought back to the valley as the central object of a stately funeral.

It would have been much wiser to have left the death of Elizabeth to the imagination of the public than to have made the scene ridiculous. But Wagner was afraid to do that, lest his purpose be overlooked. He was a master of theatrical craft, and though he could write a tragedy like "Tristan und Isolde," with little regard for external action, he was quite unwilling to miss so effective a theatrical effect as the death of Tannhauser beside Elizabeth's bier. After all, he did not trust the public, whose judgment he affected to place above that of his critics, and for this reason, while he was willing to call up memories of his earlier opera by quoting some of its music in "Parsifal," he ignored the question which plays so important a role in "Lohengrin," and made the healing of Amfortas depend upon a touch of the talismanic spear—a device which came into the Grail story from pagan sources, as I have already pointed out.

Now, why was the questioning of Lohengrin forbidden? Wolfram von Eschenbach tells us, and his explanation sufficed Wagner when he made his first studies of the Grail legends as a preparation for "Lohengrin." It was the Holy Grail itself which pronounced the taboo. An inscription appeared on the talisman one day commanding that whenever a Knight of the Grail went into foreign lands to assume rule over a people, he was to admonish them not to question him concerning his name and race; should the question be put, he was to leave them at once. And the reason?

Weil der gute Amfortas So lang in bittern Schmerzen lag, Und ihn die Frage lange mied, Ist ihnen alles Fragen leid; All des Grales Dienstgesellen Wollen sich nicht mehr fragen lassen.

The same explanation is made in the mediaeval poem "Lohengrin." We are not called upon to admire the logic of Wolfram and the Knights of the Grail, but nothing could be plainer than this: The sufferings of Amfortas having been wofully prolonged by Parzival's failure to ask the healing question, the Knights of the Grail were thereafter required by their oracular guide to prohibit all questioning of themselves under penalty of forfeiture of their puissant help. When Wagner wrote his last drama, he was presented with a dilemma: should he remain consistent and adhere to the question as a dramatic motive, or dare the charge of inconsistency for the sake of that bit of spectacular apparatus, the sacred lance? He chose inconsistency and the show, and emphasized the element of relic worship to such a degree as to make his drama foreign to the intellectual and religious habits of the time in which he wrote. But this did not disturb him; for he knew that beauty addresses itself to the emotions rather than the intellect, and that his philosophical message of the redeeming power of loving comnpassion would find entrance to the hearts of the people over all the obstacles that reason might interpose. Yet he destroyed all the poetical bonds which ought or might have existed between "Parsifal" and "Lohengrin."

It was Wagner who created the contradiction which puts his operas in opposition by his substitution of the sacred lance as a dramatic motive for the question. But poets had long before taken the privilege of juggling with two elements of ancient myths and folk-tales which are blended in the story of Lohengrin. Originally there was no relationship between the Knight of the Holy Grail and the Swan Knight, and there is no telling when the fusion of the tales was made. But the element of the forbidden question is of unspeakable antiquity and survives in the law of taboo which exists among savages to-day. When Wagner discussed his opera in his "Communication to My Friends" he pointed out the resemblance between the story of Lohengrin and the myth of Zeus and Semele. Its philosophical essence he proclaimed to be humanity's feeling of the necessity of love. Elsa was "the woman who drew Lohengrin from the sunny heights to the depths of earth's warm heart. . . . Thus yearned he for woman—for the human heart. And thus did he step down from out his loneliness of sterile bliss when he heard this woman's cry for succor, this heart cry from humanity below." This is all very well, and it would be churlish to say that it is not beautifully reflected in Wagner's drama; but it does not explain the need of the prohibition. A woman who loves must have unquestioning faith in her husband—that is all. But there are two ancient myths which show that the taboo was conceived as a necessary ingredient of the association of divine men with human women. Let both be recalled, for both have plainly gone over into the mediaeval story.