A Pagan Spoiled: Sex and Character in Wagner's Parsifal

Speranza

Anthony Winterbourne, A Pagan Spoiled: Sex and Character in Wagner's Parsifal

This is a philosophical reading of Wagner's last music-drama.

The book argues that the dramatic focus is the character of Kundry, rather than Parsifal himself.

This interpretation is defended through an analysis of the sexual dynamics underpinning the action, and through an examination of the religious and psychological symbolism of both the Holy Grail and the lance often associated with the Crucifixion.

By giving due weight to these themes in particular, the complexity of Wagner's final work is seen to resolve into a feminization of the nature of religious redemption.

The argument is introduced with an overview of themes and responses in relation to Parsifal and its sources, including its sexual symbolism and the particular relationship between sexuality and sin. While it is clear that nineteenth-century fin de siècle preoccupations still resonate, as in the ambiguity of Wagner's view of Kundry, the work continues to impress mainly as drama qua sacred action.
The book then examines the extent to which Wolfram von Eschenbach's version of the Parsifal legend found its way into Wagner, placing emphasis on the very different dramaturgical roles played by the Grail and the lance respectively. The latter's sexual connotations, as well as its eventual healing function, provide evidence that it is the lance, and not the Grail itself, that is the symbolic heart of the work. Here also the key concept of sexual indiscretion, manifest through the destinies of Kundry and Klingsor, is developed.
Kundry's character is seen to express itself in three modes. The first is the apparent historical, female guilt that she carries, transmitted via the doctrine of metempsychosis; the second is her sexuality, in her role as femme fatale; and the third is her strangeness as the heathen penitent in relation to the male Christian ascetics by whom she is surrounded. The last two aspects have provided evidence for interpretations of Kundry as either anti-Semitic, or antifeminist, or both--view which the author challenges.
In conclusion, the author suggests that the heterogeneity of religious impulses in the work converge in the concept of redemption. A profoundly paradoxical resolution is mooted, indicating that insofar as Parsifal is truly the core of the work, it is Buddhist-Schopenhaurian, not Christian. And yet taking Kundry as its focus, the drama becomes fully Christian, for it is in the repentance of sins already committed, rather than in sexuality denied as in Parsifal's chastity, that Wagner's Christian resolution of the drama demands the death of Kundry as a heathen redeemed.

Anthony Winterbourne was born in London and holds degrees in philosophy from the University of Bristol. He published numerous papers in epistemology and metaphysics during his years as a lecturer, as well as a book on Kant's theory of space and time. He now devotes his time to writing, and his most recent book concerned the moral context of The Ring. He is currently planning a further volume on Wagner, looking in particular at the composer's female characters. Dr. Winterbourne is also embarking on a conceptual reconstruction of early Germanic paganism.