Speranza
_http://www.monsalvat.no/grkmyths.htm_
(http://www.monsalvat.no/grkmyths.htm)
"Parsifal and Greek
Myth"
© Derrick Everett
Cosima
Wagner wrote in her diary on 29 October 1872:
"In the afternoon R[ichard]
told me that he
had been thinking about the bloody lance in
Parzival and
had been led by it to the
Greek mysteries."
"Wagner was fascinated by
classical Greece."
"In particular, Wagner was interested in two aspects
of the ancient Greek
culture."
"Firstly in the social and religious
role of the Greek theatre."
"Secondly in the myths that had provided the
content of Greek poetry and
drama."
"Myths were, as Wagner expressed
it in Oper und Drama, true for all time.
It was the task of the poet to
create art from the inexhaustible content of
myth.
"In 1849 Wagner
sketched his own drama on the subject of [Achille]" (WWV
81).
"It
was probably while reading about this hero of the Trojan War, that
Wagner
encountered the story of [Achille] and [Telefo]."
Apollodorus writes in
his "Bibliotheca":
"[Telefo], son of [Ercole] and Auge, was a king in
Asia Minor."
"After nearly making the same mistake as [Edipo], of
marrying his own
mother, [Telefo] married a daughter of King
[Priamo].:
"As an ally of the Trojans, his kingdom was attacked by the
Greeks (or
Achaeans) and in the fighting, [Telefo] was wounded in the thigh
by the spear
of [Achille = that will belong to PARSIFAL]."
"After
the Greeks had withdrawn, [Telefo]'s wound would not heal."
"[Achille]
healed him by scraping off the rust of his Pelian
spear."
Accordingly, on being healed, Telefo showed the course to
steer, and the
accuracy of his information was confirmed by Calcha by
means of his own
art of divination.
"The cure of a wound by an
application to it of rust from the weapon which
inflicted the hurt is not
to be explained, as
Plinio supposed, by any
medicinal property inherent in
rust as such, else the rust from any weapon would
serve the purpose.
It is
clearly a folklore remedy based on the principle
of sympathetic
magic."
---
Everett closes his note with a consideration of
[Prometeo].
"On 28 February 1877, Richard gave Cosima to read the second
Prose Draft of
Parsifal, which he had just completed. She recorded her
reactions in her
diary: This is bliss, this is solace, this is sublimity
and devotion! -- The
Redeemer unbound!
"[Pometeo], like Amfortas and
[Telefo], had a wound that would not heal."
Cosima Wagner wrote in her
dairy on Nov. 29, 1871: "R[ichard] says to me,
"Prometheus' words, 'I took
knowledge away from Man' came to my mind and
gave me a profound insight;
knowledge, seeing ahead, is in fact a divine
attribute, and man with this
divine attribute is a piteous object, he is like
Brahma before the Maya
spread before him the veil of ignorance, of deception;
the divine privilege
is the saddest thing of all."
"[Prometeo], unbound, appeared on the title
page of the first edition of
Friedrich Nietzsche's first book. The ideas
presented in that book, The Birth
of Tragedy, were either ideas that
originated with Wagner, or which
Nietzsche developed during and after
conversations with Wagner."
----
By courtesy of R. H.:
The belief in the use of sympathetic magic for wounds survived a remarkably
long time, and was still current in the 17th century when it was studied by
that wise fool Sir Kenelm Digby.
There is a brief account
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_of_sympathy
which links to a more
thorough discussion in T.J. Pettigrew's book _On superstitions connected with
the history and practice of medicine and surgery_, 1844.
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