Читать книгу The Wagnerian Romances - Gertrude Hall Brownell - Страница 4

Table of Contents

The story of the Holy Grail and its guardians up to the moment of Parsifal's appearance upon the scene, is—we gather it from Gurnemanz's rehearsal of his memories to the youthful esquires—as follows: At a time when the pure faith of Christ was in danger from the power and craft of His enemies, there came to its defender, Titurel, angelic messengers of the Saviour's, and gave into his keeping the Chalice from which He had drunk at the Last Supper and into which the blood had been gathered from His wounds as He hung upon the Cross; likewise the Spear with which His side had been pierced. Around these relics Titurel built a temple, and an order of knighthood grew. The temple, Monsalvat, stood upon the Northern slope of mountains overlooking Gothic Spain. No road led to its doors, and those only could find their way to it whom the Holy Spirit guided; and those only could hope to be so guided, and could belong to the brotherhood, who were pure in heart and clean of the sins of the flesh. The knights were mystically fed and strengthened by the vision of the Chalice—which is called the Grail; the duties of the Order were "high deeds of salvation," comprehending warfare upon Christ's enemies, at home and in distant lands.

On the southern slope of the mountain, facing Moorish or heathen Spain. Klingsor had gone into hermitage, in an attempted expiation of evil committed down in the heathen world. What his sin had been, Gurnemanz says, he knows not; but he aspired to become a holy man, he wished to join the brotherhood of the Grail. Finding it impossible to subdue sin in himself by the spirit, he sought, as it were, a mechanical substitute for virtue, by which, however, he failed to attain his object, for his sacrifice called forth from Titurel only contempt, and he was rejected from the Order. He turned all the strength of his rage then to acquiring black arts by which to ruin the detested brotherhood. On the southward mountainside, he created by sorcery a wonderful pleasure-palace and garden, in which uncannily beautiful women grew. This lay in the path of the knights of the Grail, a temptation and a trap, and one so effectual that he who permitted himself to be lured into it was lost; there had been no exception, safety lay singly in avoidance. Titurel having reached so great an age that he had no longer strength to perform the service of the Grail, invested with the kingly office Amfortas, his son. The latter undertook at once the removal of the standing danger to his knights, the destruction of Klingsor. Armed with the Sacred Spear, he fared forth. … Alas! even before the walls of the enchanted castle had been reached, his followers, among whom Gurnemanz, missed him. A woman of dreadful beauty had ensnared him. In her arms he forgot everything, he let the Spear drop from his hand. … A great cry, as of one mortally hurt, Gurnemanz relates, was suddenly heard. He rushed to the rescue, and caught sight of Klingsor, laughing as he disappeared carrying the Spear, with which he had wounded Amfortas. And now, possessed of the Spear, it was Klingsor's boast that he should soon be in possession of the Chalice likewise, the Holy Grail itself. And the wound of Amfortas would not heal, and an apprehension was that never could it heal, save at the touch of the Spear which made it. And this, who could conquer it back? Yet the knights were not wholly without hope, for, Amfortas once praying before the despoiled sanctuary, and imploring a sign of pardon, a holy dream-face had appeared to him and delivered the dim but comforting oracle: "Wise through compassion. … The immaculate Fool. … Await him. … My appointed one. … "

Thus matters stand when the curtain rises for us upon the forest surrounding the Castle of the Grail. The introductory music is wholly religious, composed principally of the so moving phrase of the Last Communion, the Grail-motif and the Faith-music. The latter opens with what has the effect of a grand declaration, as if it might be understood to say: "I believe in God the Father! I believe in God the Son! I believe in God the Holy Ghost!" and fell to worshipping prayer.

The grey-haired Gurnemanz and two young boys of the Order are discovered sleeping. At the clarion-call from the Castle, they start awake and kneel at their morning devotions. The lake is near where the sick King is carried daily for the bath. Forerunners of his cortège pass, and are questioned by Gurnemanz concerning his condition. No, the healing herb, obtained at such price of courage and cunning, has not helped him. (For, though their drugs prove still and ever useless, the devoted followers will not give up the search for earthly relief.) This discouraged answer is hardly given, when another appears who has been ranging afar in search of a remedy—Kundry, arriving like the whirlwind, on a mare that staggers reaching the goal. Spent with speed, the strange wild woman totters to Gurnemanz and presses on him a crystal phial: Balsam! If this does not help, Arabia holds nothing more from which health can be hoped! Felled by fatigue, she drops on the ground, refusing any further speech. When the king is now brought in upon a litter and halts on his way to the lake for a moment's rest, receiving from Gurnemanz the balsam, he thanks the woman, as one who has often before done him such service. She rejects his thanks roughly, as if almost they hurt: "No thanks! No thanks! What good will it do? Away! Away! To the bath!"

The young esquires, lingering after the king has been borne onward, eye her as she lies on the ground like a wild beast, and voice their suspicion of her, founded, after the fashion of youth's judgements, upon her looks. They believe those potions of hers will finally destroy the king altogether. Gurnemanz checks them, reminding them heatedly of her services, beyond all that any other could perform. "Who, when we are at loss how to send tidings to brethren warring in distant lands, we scarcely even know where—who, before we have come to any resolve, flies to them and returns, having acquitted herself of the task aptly and faithfully? … " "But," they object, "she hates us! See how malignantly she glowers at us! She is a heathen, a sorceress!" "One she may be, perhaps, labouring under a curse," Gurnemanz goes thus far with them; "she lives here, it may be, a penitent, to expiate some unforgiven sin of her earlier life." He tells how, so long ago as at the time of the building of the temple, Titurel first found her among the tangled growth of the forest, rigid in death-like sleep. "I myself," he continues, "discovered her but recently in the like condition. It was soon after the calamity had befallen, brought upon us by the evil one over the mountain." And turning to Kundry, as if the thought had but just occurred: "Hey! Tell me, you! Where were you roaming when our master lost the Spear?" The woman gazes gloomily, and preserves a silence which we afterwards see to be significant. "Why did you not help us at that time?" "I never help!" she exclaims darkly, and turns away. "If she is as faithful as you say, and as daring, and full of resource," suggests ironically one of the young esquires, "why not send her after the lost Spear?" "That!" Gurnemanz replies sadly, "is another matter. That nobody can achieve!" And, the memory of the past rising strong within him, he relates to the questioning young fellows, new in the brotherhood and ignorant of its history, the events set down in their order a little way back. He has repeated to them the mysterious promise of help: "Wise through compassion. … The immaculate Fool. … Await him. … My appointed one. … " And they, impressed, are saying it after him, when, at the words "Der reine Thor," the pure—the clean-lived—the immaculate Fool, a commotion develops in the direction of the lake-side, cries of "Woe! A pity! A shame! Who did it?" A great wild swan flies in sight, sinks to earth hurt to death by an arrow, and the king's esquires bring in, chiding and accusing him, a tall, innocent-eyed, fresh-cheeked boy, armed with bow and arrows—Parsifal. Rustic enough is his outfit, but his bearing unmistakably that of the high-born, as Gurnemanz does not fail to remark. A sturdy, brave, gay-hearted strain has ushered him in, and for just a moment he stands quite like a brother of Siegfried's, fearless, unconscious of himself, as ignorant of the world as he is unspotted by it, but engagingly wide-awake, serene in watching its mysterious actions. "Are you the one who killed the swan?" Gurnemanz asks him sternly. And he answers, unabashed, quite as Siegfried might have done: "Certainly! Whatever flies I shoot on the wing!" But at once after this the difference between the two is manifest. To both whole regions of emotion are unknown, but certain emotions which are outside the nature of one, are potentially the very strongest in the other. Siegfried is not pitiful. The strong, radiant being is incomplete on that side, so that the Christian heart winces a little, here and there, at the bright resoluteness with which he pursues his course when it involves, for instance, death to the little foster-father, unrighteous imp though he be, or horror to Brünnhilde, captured by violence and offered to his friend. Whereas Parsifal, when Gurnemanz now makes plain to him the cruelty of his thoughtless action, when he points out the glazing eye, the blood dabbling the snowy plumage of the noble swan, faithful familiar of the lake, killed as he circled in quest of his mate, is seized with a passion of realizing pity, impulsively breaks and flings from him his bow, and hides his eyes from the work of his hands. "How—how could you commit such a wrong?" Gurnemanz pursues unrelenting, even after these expressions of contrition. "I did not know," Parsifal answers. Then to the amazement of all are revealed the most extravagant ignorance and simplicity ever met. "Where do you come from?" "I do not know." "Who is your father?" "I do not know." "Who directed you here?" "I do not know." "What is your name?" "I have had many, but no longer remember any of them." "Truly," grumbles Gurnemanz, "I have so far never in my life met with any one so stupid—except Kundry." Very sagely, he leaves off questioning the fool; but when the others, after reverently taking up the dead swan, have departed with it for burial, he addresses him: "Of all I have asked you, you know nothing. Now tell me what you do know! For it can hardly be but that you know something." Whereupon very simply and obediently the boy begins: "I have a mother. Her name is Herzeleide. (Heart's-sorrow.) We lived in the woods and on the wild moor. … " And it appears from his own ingenuous narrative and the additions of Kundry, who in her rangings has seemingly had opportunities to watch him, that he is the son of the hero Gamuret, slain in battle before his birth, and that, in terror of a like early death for him, his mother has reared him in solitude, far from arms and reports of war, in absolute ignorance of the world. One day, he tells in joyous excitement, bright-gleaming men passed along the forest's edge, seated upon splendid animals; his instant wish was to be like them, but they laughed and galloped away. He ran after them, but could not overtake them. Up hill and down dale he travelled, for days and nights. With his bow he was compelled to defend himself against wild beasts and huge men. … "Yes!" throws in Kundry eagerly, as if at the recollection of splendid fights witnessed, "he made his strength felt upon miscreants and giants. They were all afraid of the truculent boy!" He turns upon her a vaguely pleased wonder: "Who is afraid of me? … Tell me!" "The wicked!" He seems trying to grasp a wholly new idea presented to him. "Those who threatened me were wicked? Who is good?" Gurnemanz in reply reminds him of his mother, who is good, and from whom he has run away; she no doubt is seeking him in sorrow. Kundry brusquely interrupts: "Her sorrow is ended. His mother is dead!" And, at his incredulous cry of horror: "I was riding past and saw her die. She bade me take to you, fool, her last blessing." Parsifal springs upon this bearer of evil tidings with the instinctive attempt to shut off the breath that could frame such terrible words. Gurnemanz forcibly disengages her, and, overpowered by the shock and weight of his pain, Parsifal sinks in a swoon. Tenderly at once both servants of the Grail care for him. Kundry hastens for water with which to wet his temples, and, as he revives, offers him drink. Gurnemanz is struck by the magnanimity of her action. "That is right," he nods his approval, "that is in accordance with the gracious spirit of the Grail. We banish evil when we return good for it." Kundry turns sadly away: "I never do good! … All I desire is rest! … Rest!" And while Gurnemanz is still occupied with restoring Parsifal, she slowly walks, as if powerfully drawn and intensely resisting, toward a tangled copse. She appears struggling with inexpressible weariness; the music gives a hint of something unnatural and evil in the spell of sleep falling leadenly upon her, expressing at the same time an irresistible element in it of attraction. The dark, wild-haired messenger of the Grail, the despised subordinate, suddenly assumes to our sense a much greater importance than up to this moment. Her personality looms large with an unexplained effect of tragedy. "Only rest! Rest for the weary one!" she murmurs yearningly; "sleep! Oh, let nobody wake me!" Terror checks her for a moment: "No! No! I must not sleep!" she shudders, "I am afraid!" She falls to violent trembling. But whatever it is compelling her is too strong at last. Her arms fall unnerved, her head bows languidly, and she moves feebly whither she is drawn. "Useless resistance! … The hour is come. Sleep. … Sleep. … I must!" Having reached the thicket she drops on the earth among the bushes.

The sun is now high, the king is borne homeward from the bath. The thought has struck Gurnemanz that here under his hands is surely as exquisite a Thor as could well be, and the experiment suggests itself of taking him to the temple, where, as he tells him, if he be pure, the Grail will be to him meat and drink. He places the arm of the still strengthless youth about his neck, and gently upholds him as they start on their way. "Who is the Grail?" asks Parsifal, as they walk. "That may not be put into words," replies Gurnemanz, "but, if you are of the chosen, you cannot fail to learn. And, see now! I believe I know who you are. No road leads through the land to the Grail, and no one could find the way except Itself guided him. … " "I am scarcely moving," says the wondering boy, "yet it seems to me we have already gone a long way. … "

And, indeed, the forest has been miraculously gliding past. It ends before a granite wall in which a great portal stands open. This gives entrance into ascending rocky galleries; sounds of clarions come stealing to the ear; church-bells are heard—and we are presently translated into the interior of the Castle of the Grail, the great domed hall.

Parsifal entering with Gurnemanz stops still beside the threshold, spell-bound in presence of all the lofty beauty: "Now watch with attention," his guide instructs him, before leaving him where he stands, "and let us see, if you are a simple soul and pure, what light shall be vouchsafed you."

The scene now enacting itself before him is well calculated to strike the imagination of the boy from the lonely moors. The knights of the Grail, beautiful in their clear robes, enter in procession, chanting. When they cease, the singing is taken up by younger voices, of personages unseen up in the dome, and, after them, by children's voices from the airy summit of the dome, floating, angelic. The wounded king is brought in on his litter, and laid upon the high canopied seat before the altar, upon which the shrine is placed enclosing the Grail. The knights have ranged themselves along tables prepared with silver goblets. In the silence of recollection which falls upon all, a voice is heard, as if from the grave: "My son Amfortas, are you at your post?" It is the aged Titurel, whose resting-place is a recess behind the altar and the raised seat. There he is kept alive solely by the contemplation of the Grail, mystical means of life and strength. "Are you at your post? Shall I look upon the Grail once more and live?" But long-gathering despair to-day reaches its climax in Amfortas, at the necessity to perform the rite required. The torture to him cannot be measured of the vision which creates ecstasy in the others. "Woeful inheritance fallen to me!" he complains, in his passion of revolt against this divine infliction, "that I, the only sinner among all, should be condemned to be keeper of holiest holies, and call down blessings upon those purer than I!" But the worst of his anguish is still that when the holy blood glows in the Cup, and, in sympathy, the blood gushes forth anew from the wound in his side—the wound made by the same Spear—the consciousness ever returns to burning life that, whereas those holy drops were shed in a heavenly compassion for the misery of man, these are unregenerate blood, hot with sinful human passion and longing, which no chastening has availed to drive out. The wretched king is praying for the mercy of deliverance through death, when, from the high dome, the words rain softly of the promise of redemption—through the Fool. Recovering courage, Amfortas proceeds with the rite. While he kneels in prayer before the Chalice, which young acolytes have taken from the shrine and reverently uncovered, a mysterious darkness gathers over all. A ray of light suddenly falls through this, upon the Chalice, which begins softly to glow, and brightens to a deep luminous purple-red. Amfortas lifts it and waves it over the kneeling people. The words of the Last Communion are heard, sung by the soaring voices in the dome: "Take my body—Take my blood—For the sake of our love! Take my blood—Take my body—And remember me!"

The ceremony accomplished, Amfortas sets down the Cup, which begins to pale; as it fades, the twilight lightens. When the common light of day has completely returned, the knights sit down to the repast of consecrated Bread placed for them, and Wine poured, by the acolytes. At the end of it, they earnestly grasp one another's hands in renewal of their bond of brotherhood.

Amfortas is perceived to be suffering from the renewed bleeding of his wound. He is laid upon the litter once more and borne away. The knights depart in orderly procession, the hall is gradually deserted.

Parsifal remains standing on the same spot. He has hardly moved, except, when Amfortas's anguished cry rang out, to clutch at his heart. Gurnemanz, when he sat down at the table with the other knights, signed to him to come and share in the holy feast, but he did not stir. The impression can be apprehended of the solemn scene upon the white page of the boy's mind. A spirit of religion has breathed through it all, so exalted, so warm, so personal; the passionate mediæval Christianity which expressed itself in crusades and religious orders and knight-errantry. The cry of the Saviour (Erlösung's Held, Hero of Redemption, the poet characteristically calls him) has rung so piercingly, there seems but one answer from a humanly constituted simple heart: "Did you indeed suffer so much and die for love of me and my brothers? How then can I the most quickly spend and scatter all my strength and blood in gratitude to you?" Parsifal has brought to these things a consciousness not blurred and overscored by worldly knowledge and desires, a native capacity for love of others uninterfered with by the developed consideration of self. His fresh instinct has gathered the meaning of what he sees, novel to him as it is; "wise through compassion," he has gotten the measure and character perfectly of Amfortas's sufferings, foreign as they are to his experience; he has gotten the spirit of the facts of Christ. One especial message, over and above the rest, he has received to himself, shot into his heart upon a ray from the glowing Grail held before his gaze by Amfortas: that the Saviour embodied in the Grail must be delivered from the sin-sullied hands now holding it. He has seemed to hear the appeal of the Saviour, poignant, to be so delivered. He is left, when the vision fades, with the sense of this necessity—involving for himself, though he knows not how, a duty and a quest: Amfortas must be healed, the Sacred Treasure must be taken into keeping by purer hands.

Gurnemanz approaches him hopefully: "Well, did you understand what you saw?" But Parsifal, still in his trance of wonder, only shakes his head. It is too deep for words, what he has felt.

To Gurnemanz he now seems a hopeless and unprofitable fool, who has no place in the noble company. "You are a fool, it is a fact, and you are nothing else!" he declares. Opening a side-door, he without further ceremony pushes him out by the shoulders, with a sour little joke: "Take my advice: Let the swans alone hereafter, and, gander that you are, find yourself a goose!" As he turns from the door, there falls from above, as if some echo of it had clung to the high dome after all the singers had left, the strain: "Wise through compassion. … The immaculate fool. … "