Читать книгу The Wagnerian Romances - Gertrude Hall Brownell - Страница 6

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Again the Domain of the Grail, where, on the outskirts of the forest, beside a spring, the old-grown Gurnemanz has built himself a hermit's cell. It is long after and much is changed. There is sadness in the air, but it is of an unfretful gentle sort, almost sweet; the sadness of a solitude visited by high thoughts, memories of calamity softened in retrospect, present crosses made supportable by faith and the light cast on the path already of an approaching event which is to mark a new epoch in the life of the Order. A sadness in the air and a something holy. It is Spring-time and it is Good-Friday; the trees are in blossom and the meadow at the forest's edge is spotted with new flowers. We are never, through the first part of the act, left unconscious for long of the sweetness of surrounding nature and the hour; it comes like whiffs of perfume, every now and then, reminding us that the earth has renewed herself and the day is holy, until at last these stray intimations have led to a clear and rounded statement in the Good-Friday Charm.

Forth from his cell comes Gurnemanz, to be recognized as a knight of the Grail only by the straight under-tunic of the Order. He has heard a groan, not to be mistaken for the cry of a hurt animal. As it is repeated, it strikes his ear as a sound known to him of old. Anxiously searching among the matted thorn-trees, he discovers Kundry, as once before, rigid and to all appearance dead. He chafes and calls and brings her back to consciousness. She is the Kundry of the first act, but so changed—pale with the strained pallor of one lately exorcised; the wildness and roughness all gone out of her face, and in its place a strange rapt fixity; in her bearing an unknown humility. In silence she recovers remembrance of the facts of her existence; mechanically orders her hair and garments, and without a word leaves Gurnemanz to set about the work of a servant. As she is moving towards the hut, he asks: "Have you no word for me? Is this my thanks for having waked you once more out of the sleep of death?" And she brings forth brokenly the last words she is heard to utter: "To serve! … To serve! … " the only need now of her being. "How different her bearing is," Gurnemanz muses, "from what it used to be! Is it the influence of the holy day?" She brings from the cell a water-jar, and, gazing off into the distance while it fills, sees among the trees some one approaching, to which, by a sign, she calls Gurnemanz's attention. He marvels at the figure in sable armour; but we, saddened and slowed as it is, have recognized the Parsifal-motif heralding it. The sable knight is faring slowly on his way, with closed helmet, bowed head and lowered spear, unconscious of his observers, until, when he drops on a grassy knoll to rest, Gurnemanz greets and addresses him: "Have you lost your way? Shall I guide you?" Receiving no answer to this or the questions which follow, save by signs of the head, he with the bluffness we remember offers a reprimand: "If your vow binds you not to speak to me, my vow obliges me to tell you what is befitting. You are upon a consecrated spot, it is improper here to go in armour, with closed helmet, with shield and spear. And of all days upon this one! Do you not know what holy day it is?" The knight gently shakes his head. "Among what heathen have you lived, not to be aware that this is the most holy Good-Friday? Lay down, forthwith, your arms! Do not offend the Lord, who on this day, unarmed in very truth, offered His sacred blood in atonement for the sins of the world!" The knight upon this, still without a word, drives the haft of his spear into the ground, lays down his arms and sinks upon his knees in prayer before the Spear. The removal of his helmet has revealed the face of Parsifal, but another Parsifal, even as Kundry is another. The stage-directions have no word concerning it, but it must be in accordance with the custom of Bayreuth that the latter Parsifal presents a resemblance to the traditional representations of the Saviour; the idea being, we must think, to indicate, stamped on the exterior man, this soul's aspiration towards likeness with the Divine Pattern; or, perhaps, visibly to state that here, too, is a gentle and selfless lover of men, all of whose forces bent on a mission of deliverance.

Gurnemanz, watching him attentively, recognises the slayer, long ago, of the swan, the stupid boy whom he had turned out of the temple. Then he recognises, too, the Spear.

Parsifal, rising from his prayer, gazes quietly around him and recognises Gurnemanz. To the question of the latter, how and whence he comes, he replies: "I am come by ways of wandering and pain. Can I believe myself at last delivered from them, since I hear once more the rustle of this forest, and behold you, worthy elder? Or am I still baffled in my search for the right road? Everything looks changed. … " "What road is it you seek?" Gurnemanz inquires. "The road to him whose profound wail I heard of yore in wondering stupidity, and the instrument of whose healing I now dare believe myself elected to be. … " All this long time he has vainly sought the road back to the Grail, whether hindered by Kundry's curse, or cut off by some stain left upon his nature from his brief hour in the deadly garden, which must be cleansed by such prolonged ordeal. He relates the desperate battle in all his wanderings to keep safe the Sacred Spear—which, behold, he is now bringing home! Gurnemanz's joy bursts forth unbounded. Then he, too, makes his friend even over the past. Since the day of his presence among them, the trouble then revealed to him has increased to the last point of distress. Amfortas, revolting against the torments of his soul, and desiring naught but death, refuses to perform the office of the Grail, by which his life would be prolonged. The knights, deprived of their heavenly nourishment, deprived of a leader, have lost their old strength and courage. They seek their sustenance of herbs and roots, like the animals, in the forest. No longer are they called to holy warfare in distant lands. Titurel, unrenewed by the vision of the Grail, is dead. … At the relation of these mournful events, grief assails Parsifal, who holds himself responsible for all this wretchedness, by reason of his long-delayed return, which he must regard as a consequence of sins and folly of his own—grief beyond what the human frame is fitted to endure, and he is again swooning, as at the evil news in the first act. Kundry hurries with water from the cell, but Gurnemanz stops her; he has in thought larger purifications for the pilgrim in whom his prophetic mind discerns one ordained to fulfill this very day a sacred office. "So let him be made clean of all stain, let the dust be washed from him of his long wandering." They ease him upon the moss beside the consecrated spring, remove his greaves and coat of mail. As he revives a little, he asks faintly: "Shall I be taken to-day to Amfortas?" Gurnemanz assures him that he shall, for on this day the burial of Titurel takes place, which Gurnemanz must attend, and Amfortas has pledged himself, in honour of his father, to uncover once more the Grail. Kundry during this, on her knees, has been bathing the pilgrim's feet. He watches her, at her devoted lowly task, in wonder: "You have washed my feet," he speaks; "let now the friend pour water on my head!" Gurnemanz obeys, besprinkling him with a baptismal intention. Kundry takes from her bosom a golden phial, and, having poured ointment on his feet, dries them, in the custom of the day when she was Herodias, with her long hair; by this repetition of a famous act intending perhaps to signify that she is a sinner and that he has raised her from sin. "You have anointed my feet," speaks Parsifal again; "let now the brother-at-arms of Titurel anoint my head, for on this day he shall hail me as king." Whereupon Gurnemanz anoints him as king. Kundry has been gazing with a devout hushed face. There is no sign that he recognises her, but, as if his soul recognised some quality of her soul, as if some need in her called to him, he dips water from the sacred well and sprinkles her head: "My first ministration shall be this: I baptize thee! Have faith in the Redeemer!" And Kundry, the curse being lifted which had dried up in her the fountain of tears, bows to the earth abundantly weeping.

At this point it is that the vague waftures of sweetness which have been fitfully soliciting us all through these scenes, concentrate themselves and make their call irresistible. Parsifal becomes aware of it. With his sense of the absolution from sin for both of them, in baptism, invaded by deep peace, he gazes around him in soft enchantment: "How more than usual lovely the meadows appear to me to-day! True, I have known wonder-flowers, clasping me with eager tendrils so high as my head; but never had I seen blades, blossoms, flowers, so mild and tender, nor ever did, to my sense, all nature give forth a fragrance so innocently sweet, or speak to me with such amiable confidence!" "That," explains Gurnemanz, "is Good-Friday's Charm. … " "Alas!" wails Parsifal, "that day of supreme agony! Ought not on this day everything which blooms and breathes to be steeped in mourning and tears?" "You see," replies Gurnemanz, "that it is not so. They are the sinners' tears of repentance which today bathe meadow and plain with a holy dew; that is why they look so fresh and fair. To-day all created things rejoice upon the earth once trodden by the Saviour's feet, and wish to offer Him their prayers. Beyond them it is to see Him upon the Cross, wherefore they turn their eyes to redeemed man. Man feels himself delivered from the burden and terror of sin, through God's sacrifice of love made clean and whole. The grasses and flowers become aware of this, they mark that on this day the foot of man spares to trample them, that, even as God with a heavenly patience bears with man and once suffered for his sake, man in pious tribute treads softly to avoid crushing them. All creation gives thanks for this, all the short-lived things that bloom; for to-day all Nature, absolved from sin, regains her day of Innocence." The exquisiteness of this passage, the Good-Friday Spell (Charfreitag's Zauber), can hardly be conveyed; if one says the music is worthy of the theme, one has but given a hint of the overearthly quality of its sweetness.

Kundry has slowly raised her head and fixed upon Parsifal her prayerful wet eyes. Either from his recent contemplation of the flowery lea, or some occult association of her personality with the past, the flowers of Klingsor's garden come into his mind. "I saw them wither who had smiled on me. May they not also be hungering for redemption now? … Your tears, too, are turned to blessed dew. … You weep, and see, the meadow blooms in joy!" He stoops and kisses her gently upon the forehead.

Bells are heard summoning the knights to the Castle. Gurnemanz brings from the cell the mantle of a knight of the Grail, and places it upon Parsifal's shoulders. Parsifal grasps the Spear, and the three vanish from sight among the trees. Again, but from the opposite direction, we approach the Castle; the sound of bells increases as we pass through the granite portal and the vaulted corridors. We are once more in the domed hall. All is as we left it, save for the tables, which, become useless, are no longer there. Again the doors open at the back and from each issues forth a company of knights, the one bearing the bier of Titurel, the other carrying the litter of Amfortas and the shrine of the Grail, while they chant, in question and response, a song of reproachful tenor. "Whom do you bring, with tokens of mourning, in the dark casket?" "The funereal casket holds the hero into whose charge the very God entrusted Himself. Titurel we bring." "Who slew him, whom God Himself held in His care?" "The killing burden of age slew him, when he no longer might behold the Grail." "Who prevented him from beholding the glory of the Grail?" "He whom you carry, the sinful Keeper." The latter they now urge to fulfill his promise of exposing the Grail, and, deeply moved by the sight of his father's face and the outburst of lamentation which follows the folding back of the pall from it, he appears on the point of satisfying them; but, as in their eagerness they hem him around with injunctions almost threatening, he is seized with a revulsion once more against the task imposed on him. He springs from his high seat and stands among them begging that rather they will kill him. "Already I feel the night of death closing around me, and must I be forced back into life? You demented! Who shall compel me to live? Death alone it is in your power to give!" He tears open his garment and offers his breast. "Forward, heroes! Slay the sinner with his affliction! The Grail perchance will glow for you then of Itself!"

But the knights shrink away. Then it is that Parsifal, who with Gurnemanz and Kundry has entered unnoticed, advances and with the point of the Sacred Spear touches Amfortas's wound. "One weapon alone avails. The wound can be closed only by the Spear which made it. Be whole, pardoned and absolved, for I now hold the office in your stead!" Amfortas's countenance of holy ecstasy proclaims the instant virtue of the remedy. As Parsifal holds up to the enraptured gaze of the knights the Spear which he has brought back to them, the Parsifal-motif is heard again, for the last time, triumphant, broad, and glorious. He proceeds to perform the rite which had been the duty of Amfortas. A glory rains upon the altar. At the glowing of the Grail, Titurel, returning for a moment to life, lifts himself on his bier with a gesture of benediction. As Parsifal moves the Chalice softly above the kneeling assembly, a white dove descends from on high and floats above his head. Kundry, with her eyes turned toward all these luminous things, sinks softly upon the altar-steps, the life-giving Grail having given her life too, in the form of desired death. With the interwoven Grail and Faith and Spear music letting down as if a curtain of silver and azure and gold, the poem closes.

One has heard it objected, as at least strange, that when the search after knowledge is so unquestionably meritorious, and study, as we count it, one of the conditions of progress, and learning a lamp to our feet, an ideal should be made of total ignorance, such as Parsifal's. But surely the point is a different one. The point is not Parsifal's ignorance—except, perhaps, in so far as it made for innocence—but the qualities which he possessed, and which one may possess, in spite of ignorance. It is a comparison of values which is established. Through the object-lesson of Parsifal, Wagner is saying, after his fashion and inversely, what Saint Paul says: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, … though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, … and have not charity, I am nothing; … it availeth me nothing." The supremacy of charity, love of others, is the point illustrated.

One tributary to the mighty stream of our interest in the opera of Parsifal has its spring in the date of its appearance. It comes as the poet's last word. What a procession of heroes has passed before us—beautiful, brave, romantic—how fit, every one, to capture the imagination! Towering a little above the rest, Siegfried, the Uebermensch, the Overman. But finally, with the effect of a conclusion reached, a judgement, the hero whose heroism differs in quality from that of the others, the lowly of heart, whose dominant trait is Mitleid, compassion, sympathy with the woes of others, who pities swans and women and the sinful and the suffering, and gives his strength to helping them, and sanctifies himself for their sake.

THE RHINE-GOLD