Part 1 (2/2)
And, at his incredulous cry of horror: ”I was riding past and saw her die She bade s upon this bearer of evil tidings with the instinctive attempt to shut off the breath that could fraes 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 hich to wet his temples, and, as he revives, offers hinaniht,” he nods his approval, ”that is in accordance with the gracious spirit of the Grail We banish evil e return good for it” Kundry turns sadly away: ”I never do good!All I desire is rest!
Rest!” And while Gurne Parsifal, she sloalks, as if powerfully drawn and intensely resisting, toward a tangled copse She appears struggling with inexpressible weariness; theunnatural and evil in the spell of sleep falling leadenly upon her, expressing at the same time an irresistible eleer of the Grail, the despised subordinate, suddenly assureater ie with an unexplained effect of tragedy ”Only rest! Rest for the weary one!” she ly; ”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 tre at last Her aruidly, and she moves feebly whither she is drawn ”Useless resistance!
The hour is co reached the thicket she drops on the earth a is borne hoht has struck Gurnemanz that here under his hands is surely as exquisite a _Thor_ as could well be, and the experi him to the temple, where, as he tells him, if he be pure, the Grail will be to hithless 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 knoho you are No road leads through the land to the Grail, and no one could find the way except Itself guided hi boy, ”yet it see way”
And, indeed, the forest has been ranite wall in which a great portal stands open This gives entrance into ascending rocky galleries; sounds of clarions co to the ear; church-bells are heard--and we are presently translated into the interior of the Castle of the Grail, the great do with Gurnemanz stops still beside the threshold, spell-bound in presence of all the lofty beauty: ”Noatch with attention,” his guide instructs hi him where he stands, ”and let us see, if you are a siht shall be vouchsafed you”
The scene now enacting itself before hiination of the boy frohts 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 froelic 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 theoblets In the silence of recollection which falls upon all, a voice is heard, as if frorave: ”My son Aed titurel, whose resting-place is a recess behind the altar and the raised seat
There he is kept alive solely by the conteth ”Are you at your post? Shall I look upon the Grail oncedespair 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 ainst this divine infliction, ”that I, the only sinner a all, should be condes upon those purer than I!” But the worst of his anguish is still that when the holy blood glows in the Cup, and, in syushes forth anew from the wound in his side--the wound made by the sa life that, whereas those holy drops were shed in a heavenly coenerate blood, hot with sinful hu has availed to drive out The wretched king is praying for the h doh the Fool Recovering courage, Amfortas proceeds with the rite While he kneels in prayer before the Chalice, which young acolytes have taken froathers 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
A people The words of the Last Co 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 cereins to pale; as it fades, the twilight lightens When the cohts 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
A of his wound He is laid upon the litter once hts depart in orderly procession, the hall is gradually deserted
Parsifal re on the sauished cry rang out, to clutch at his heart Gurnehts, signed to him to come and share in the holy feast, but he did not stir The impression can be apprehended of the solee of the boy's h it all, so exalted, so warm, so personal; the passionate mediaeval Christianity which expressed itself in crusades and religious orders and knight-errantry The cry of the Saviour (_Erlosung's Held_, Hero of Rede 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 ratitude 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 h cootten the s, foreign as they are to his experience; he has gotten the spirit of the facts of Christ One especial e, over and above the rest, he has received to hi Grail held before his gaze by Amfortas: that the Saviour embodied in the Grailit He has seenant, to be so delivered He is left, when the vision fades, with the sense of this necessity--involving for hih he knows not how, a duty and a quest: Amfortasby 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 co else!” he declares Opening a side-door, he without further ceremony pushes him out by the shoulders, with a sour little joke: ”Take ander that you are, find yourself a goose!” As he turns from the door, there falls froh doh compassion The ie of scene shows the interior of the tohere Klingsor practises his dark arts A strain already known catches our attention (the Sorcery-motif), and we become ahat influences were at work in Kundry when her weariness succusor's hotly bloo the second act stands in picturesque contrast to the tender and thoughtful , as it does, lawlessness, cold evil passions riding the soul hideously at a gallop It has souely in common with portions of the Venus-music in Tannhauser,--perhaps its effect at once unbridled and joyless
The sorcerer has fro, who, thrust out froic of the place, found the path to it obliterated He had coreat task to perform
But, even as the road to the Castle of the Grail was difficult to find, the road to Klingsor's castle was easy and overeasy; it would seem that for the feet of a votary of the Grail all roads led to it Parsifal had seen it shi+ning afar, and with childish shouts of delight is drawing near Klingsor, divining in hierous, resorts, to ether sure, to what are his supreme methods He calls to his assistance once reat Amfortas had been vanquished With ums, he summons that Formidable Feminine: ”Nameless one! Most ancient of Devils! Rose of hell! Herodias!” and a the wail of a slave haled to the market-place, rises the form of Kundry She appears like one but half roused fro with a terrible drea soive to his first words of ironical congratulation, is in broken exclaht Madness Oh, wrath! Oh, misery! Sleep! Sleep! Deep sleep! Death!” and, in a subsequent outburst: ”The curse!
Oh, yearning! Yearning!”
Her history and hints of her extraordinarily co and the scene later, with Parsifal The er of the Grail was anciently Herodias, and hed ”Then,”
she herself relates, ”He turned His eyes upon me” Under the curse involved in her action and the reoes, as she describes it, seeking Hiain She tries in every ation of self, but the old nature is still not well out of her, the nature of Herodias, and, at intervals, an infinite weariness of welldoing overtakes her, a revival of the passions of her old life, and with the cessation of struggle against them she falls into a death-like sleep In this condition, as if it represented a laying-off of the arhteousness, her spirit is at the sor can conjure it up and force it to his own uses
In the centuries she has lived, she has borne many names She has but recently been the teher half of her dual nature, has, as the servant and er of the Grail, striven to ht, for the mischief done by her in her other state The curse under which she lives has peculiar laws of its own, of which we just vaguely feel thewith intensity, in her Herodias part, the surrender of the man to whose seduction she applies herself, yet with the other side of her, the side of the penitent, which never quite slumbers, she even more ardently and fundamentally desires his victory over her arts, for, with her own frustration, she would be delivered froue of centuries of tormented earthly existence, find rest Which is to say, perhaps, that if once th and purity, see an adequate approach to the Christ-spirit shi+ning out of whatsoever eyes, her redeh centuries of alternate effort and relapse, would be consu, faith in the existence of perfect goodness, the evil within her, so long vainly fought, would die, and her long trial be at end So she approaches every new adventure with, under her determined wiles, the hope of failure; and when her subject is still and ever found weak in her hands, experiences despair And when a hero such as Amfortas, undertaken with the undercurrent sense that he perhaps is the unconquerable, whose resistance shall arly falls in her arms, the triumph of one side of her nature, and the despair of the other, express thehter
The fruit of her experience with man is, as it affects the two sides of her, a mixture of sinister cynicissor'smention of Ah me, to my curse, all lost as I am lost! Oh, eternal sleep, only balm, ho shall I win you?”
One can suppose in this Kundry, setting aside all details of personal history, an intended personification of the abstraction--(_Namenlose_,--Naht, two of her broad traits, the best perhaps and the worst: the passion for serving, tending, protecting,herself er, by reth This inveterate spirit of seduction it sor apostrophises as ”Most Ancient of Devils,” and ”Rose of hell”
The character of Kundry has many aspects, exhibited here and there by a flash, but, when all is said, and before all else, e are watching is an upward-struggling huress could never move us as it does did we not feel in her simply our sister
We saw her, forspent, crawl into the thicket to sleep Now, Klingsor who can command her while in that state, has co of Parsifal The idea is to her, all heavy and clogged with sleep, the personality of the _Gralsbotin_ still in the ascendant, one of horror only With wails of protest at having been waked, and lamentation over what is proposed, she refuses to obey, rejecting Klingsor's claim to be her estion: ”He who should defy you would set you free Try it then with the boy at hand!” she stubbornly refuses ”He is even now clis her hands ”Woe! Woe! Have I waked for this? Must I, indeed? Must I?” At which first intisor ceases to press his authority, and adopts a differentto the battleure: ”Ha! He is beautiful, the boy!”
”Oh! Oh!” moans Kundry, ”woe is me!”