Speranza
Parsifal: Erlösung, Frevlerin, biet' ich auch dir.
(Parsifal
act two)
We talk of the fact that in both, Parsifal and Die
Sieger, more or less the same theme (the redemption of a woman) is treated.
[Cosima's Diaries, entry for 6th January 1881]
The ending of Wagner's Parsifal challenges
all involved with the work, whether audience or production team. Wagner's text
tells of redemption and in his music all seems to be resolved. All too often,
however, the ending of the work seems to be unsatisfactory, and the audience are
left to puzzle over the last lines of the text. Perceived difficulties with the
ending of Parsifal have prompted the invention of various endings that do not
follow Wagner's detailed stage directions. In order to interpret and present the
ending of the work effectively and meaningfully, we need to consider who is
redeemed, what this redemption might mean, and the nature of Parsifal's
mission.
Then, at a time when the world was most harsh and hostile, and when
the faithful were hard pressed by the unbelievers and were in great distress,
there sprang up in certain divinely inspired heroes, filled with holy charity,
the desire to seek out the vessel - that mysteriously consoling relic of which
there was ancient report - in which the Saviour's blood (Sang réale, whence San
Gréal - Sanct Gral - The Holy Grail) had been preserved, living and divinely
potent, for mankind in dire need of redemption.
That which, as simplest and most touching of religious symbols, unites us
in the common practice of our faith and which, revealed anew in the tragic
teachings of great spirits, uplifts us to the heights of compassion, is the
knowledge, given in manifold forms, of the need for redemption. We already feel
that we partake of this redemption in solemn hours when all the world's
appearances dissolve away, as in a prophetic dream. Then no more do we fear the
appearance of that yawning abyss, the gruesome monsters of the deep, the craving
monstrosities of the self-devouring will, which the day - alas! the history of
mankind, had forced upon us. Then we are able to hear the lament of nature, pure
and yearning for peace, ring out: fearless, hopeful, all-assuaging,
world-redeeming. Hearing this lament, the soul of all mankind is purified and
made conscious of its own high calling, to redeem like-suffering nature. It now
soars above the abyss of semblances, and, released from all that awful chain of
becoming and passing away, the restless will, fettered by itself alone, finds
its freedom.
[Religion and Art]
...knowledge [Erkenntnis] affords the
possibility of the suppression of willing, of salvation [Erlösung] through
freedom, of overcoming and annihilating the world.
[The World as Will and
Representation, volume I, chapter 60, translated by E.F.J.Payne]
The usual translation of
Erlösung as Redemption is inexact.
The English word carries a meaning of buying
back that is only one of the meanings of the German word. Erlösung is literally
release or delivery.
In the case of Amfortas, he is released from his
obligations: Denn ich verwalte nun dein Amt, says his deliverer from agony (die
Not, die Höllenpein, zu diesem Amt verdammt zu sein!). In the passage quoted
from Schopenhauer, above, Payne has translated Erlösung as salvation. Where
Wagner (post-1864) used the same word, then probably we should interpret it in
the Schopenhauerian sense: of overcoming the world and of annihilating it (as
our representation).
ne of the threads that runs through the opera is the
need for redemption of mankind and of nature. In the last act, for example,
Parsifal gazes on the beauty of the spring meadows and remembers the unnatural
blooms of Klingsor's magic garden: Ich sah sie welken, die einst mir lachten: ob
heut' sie nach Erlösung schmachten?.
Kundry
is living an unending life of constantly alternating rebirths as the result of
an ancient curse which, in a manner reminiscent of the Wandering Jew, condemns
her, in ever-new shapes, to bring to men the suffering of seduction;
redemption[Erlösung], death, complete annihilation is vouchsafed her only if her
most powerful blandishments are withstood by the most chaste and virile of men.
So far, they have not been. After each new and, in the end, profoundly hateful
victory, after each new fall by man, she flies into a rage; she then flees into
the wilderness, where by the most severe atonements and chastisements she is,
for a while, able to escape from the power of the curse upon her; yet it is
denied to her to find salvation by this route. Within her, again and again,
arises a desire to be redeemed [erlös't] by a man, this being the only way of
redemption [Erlösung] offered by the curse: thus does innermost necessity cause
her repeatedly to fall victim anew to the power through which she is reborn as a
seductress. The penitent then falls into a deathly sleep: it is the seductress
who wakes, and who, after her mad frenzy, becomes a penitent again.
So when Parsifal arrives in the magic garden,
she asks him:
Bist du Erlöser, was bannt dich, Böser, nicht mir auch zum Heil
dich zu einen? and hopes to be redeemed by him: in dir entsündigt sein und
erlös't!.
A few minutes later she hints, perhaps ironically, that he has a
higher task:
Die Welt erlöse, ist dies dein Amt?
But it is not Parsifal who
redeems -- or is it? -- or is he, without knowing it, the agent of the Grail?
In
a sense, Kundry delivers PARSIFAL.
KUNDRY takes the innocence from Parsifal although he
retains his purity.
He is no longer the pure fool (reiner Tor), but the Pure One
(der Reiner).
Her kiss, Wagner told King Ludwig, has brought Parsifal the
knowledge of good and evil.
The most difficult aspect of the last act of
Parsifal is Wagner's treatment of Kundry.
After being a focus of the dramatic
action in the first two acts, she is subdued, calm, almost silent throughout the
third act, although she participates like a penitent Magdalen in the
symbol-laden action. She silently acknowledges Parsifal as her Redeemer and his
first action as the enlightened and anointed king is to baptise this heathen
woman. If this is meant to be a Christian baptism, which signifies a new
beginning, then it seems strange that before the day is over Kundry has died.
The redemption that the enlightened hero brings her, it would appear, is escape
from samsara, the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. From then on Kundry is
absent from the music but mentioned in the stage directions when, her eyes fixed
on Parsifal, she falls lifeless to the ground.
Clearly Wagner had some
Schopenhauerian concept of Kundry, who might even be considered to represent
suffering humanity. There can be no doubt that Kundry's existence and her escape
from that existence were conceived by Wagner in relation to the ideas about
Buddhism (samsara, nirvana) that he had found in Schopenhauer's writings and in
books to which Schopenhauer led him. In any attempt to interpret Kundry's
cyclical existence and her redemption in Buddhist terms, we must keep in mind
that Wagner saw Buddhism only in relation to Schopenhauer's philosophy. While
working on the poem of Parsifal he might also have been thinking about his next
project Die Sieger and it is possible that Kundry absorbed some of the heroine
of that unfinished drama, the outcast maiden Prakriti.
The Grail is delivered by Parsifal from the
guilt-stained hands of Amfortas. It is released from the shrine and, at
Parsifal's command, is never more to be locked away (Nicht soll der mehr
verschlossen sein). In other words, the Grail is freed to work for the
redemption of Mankind and Nature without constraint.
This final line of the
work, Redemption to the Redeemer, expresses the fact that Parsifal has now
fulfilled the request vouchsafed to him in his vision of the Redeemer which
followed Kundry's kiss. When, in horror, he tears himself from Kundry's arms and
feels Amfortas' wound in his heart, he is (according to the stage directions)
completely lost to the world. He sees the Grail before him and hears the
'Saviours cry' [das Heilandsklage] ... The hands which are defiled and guilty
are those of Amfortas, the sinful guardian of the sanctuary, as Wagner called
him in a programme note dating from 1882. Redemption comes about when Parsifal,
having resisted Kundry's attempt at seduction, brings back the sacred lance and
replaces Amfortas as head of the Grail community. In this way he brings
Redemption to the Redeemer.
[Richard Wagner: Theory and Theatre, Dieter
Borchmeyer, tr. Stewart Spencer, Oxford, 1991, pages 388-9]
Certainly
that is one way of looking at it. Although one might be allowed some
reservations before accepting Borchmeyer's claim that the Redeemer in Parsifal
is none other than Christ emerges unequivocally from every passage in which the
term occurs. It might be argued that when Wagner means to refer to Christ (who
is never mentioned by that title), he refers to the Saviour (der Heiland). The
term redeemer (Erlöser) appears to be more ambiguous, especially when Kundry
gets the idea that Parsifal might be her redeemer and even more so when she
tells him, redeem the world, if that's your mission. When Kundry perceives
Parsifal as a potential redeemer, she introduces the idea (blasphemous or
heretical to a mainstream Christian) that the Saviour might not be the only
redeemer. Can we be certain that it is Christ, or the Christian God, who redeems
her in the Good Friday meadow?
There
are at least three elements in the ending, each of which needs to be studied in
a careful reading of the text and perhaps also in the light of the performance
tradition. We need to consider the nature of Parsifal's mission, whether it is
achieved at the end of the drama and if so, what is the result.
he first and
most obvious choice would be to focus upon the healing of Amfortas, since in the
most literal reading of the text, this is Parsifal's mission; as he himself
realises at the moment of the kiss. The only person who seems to benefit
directly is Amfortas; but if we regard the health and vigour of the Grail King
as intimately connected to the fertility of the land and the well-being of his
people, then Parsifal also brings healing to the kingdom when he heals Amfortas.
This interpretation is grounded in some of Wagner's sources, such as the First
Continuation to Chretien's Perceval.
he ending is not that simple, however,
because the resolution of Wagner's story is richer than that of any of his
sources. Although when Parsifal is enlightened by the kiss his first thought is
of the suffering Amfortas, he does not know, at that moment, what his mission
might be. Only when he arrives at the domain of the Grail on Good Friday and
meets Gurnemanz does Parsifal realise that he is to become Grail king. If we
consider that Parsifal's mission is the redemption of the Grail, rather than the
redemption of Amfortas (which occurs as a side-benefit of the redemption of the
Grail), then the focus of the final scene should be upon the transfer of
Amfortas' kingly and priestly role to his young and virile successor (Denn ich
verwalte nun dein Amt). Amfortas' suffering was necessary, it seems, because it
evoked compassion in his successor (Gesegnet sei dein Leiden, das Mitleid's
höchste Kraft, und reinsten Wissens Macht dem zagen Toren gab!). For the land
and its people, the healing of the king is unimportant if there is a
successor.
ut are we only concerned with the domain of the Grail here? Wagner
said, What is important is not the question, but the recovery of the spear
(Cosima's Diary, 30 January 1877). Obviously the recovery of the spear is
important as a means to the end of healing Amfortas. Parsifal's arrival at the
Grail Castle with the spear can also be seen as symbolising that he is the
destined successor to Amfortas. But the connection of the spear with the Grail
should also be considered. At the centre of the resolution of the work is the
reunion of two symbols: the spear, representing the male principle, and the
Grail, representing the female principle. (O! Welchen Wunders höchstes Glück!
Der deine Wunde durfte schliessen, ihm seh' ich heil'ges Blut entfliessen in
Sehnsucht nach dem verwandten Quelle, der dort fliesst in des Grales Welle.).
The unhealthy situation of a male brotherhood of knights in one castle and a
castle of maidens on the other side of the mountains has been swept away. The
Grail had been locked in its shrine and the knights had been inward-looking,
only concerned with their own problems. Now the Grail will be revealed to
mankind, as the community of the Grail turns outward.
Torchmeyer is convinced
that the end of Parsifal is a restitutio in integrum in which the Grail
community is re-established, Klingsor's contrastive world is exorcized and
nature is restored to its Paradisal innocence.
He refers to the idea found both
in early Christianity and in Stoicism (relevant because of Wagner's interest in
the writings of Marcus Aurelius) of
'αποκατάστασις πάντον
-- a renewal of the
world through the cyclical restitution of a perfect primordial state.
In the
ending of the Ring there is a new beginning (which can be traced, in that drama,
back to the Eddic poem Volüspá in which the universe, i.e. the worlds connected
by the world-ashtree, is destroyed at Ragnarök, only to begin anew), in which as
in Isaiah 65:17 there are new heavens (the old gods are destroyed) and a new
earth (in which there are, so far, no rulers). As Borchmeyer points out (Richard
Wagner: Theory and Theatre, page 391), the idea of
'αποκατάστασις
is better
symbolised by a spiral than it is by a circle. After the cosmic conflagration of
Götterdämmerung, or after the return of Parsifal with the spear (and, just as
importantly, with Kundry), there is a new beginning, in which it must be hoped
the mistakes of the previous cycle (such as the exclusion of women from the
Temple) will not be repeated.
omething that Borchmeyer does not mention is
that the Ring was begun by Wagner in a Young Hegelian world- view, so that it is
natural to see in its cyclical aspect the influence of Hegel's philosophy of
history. This is especially significant in its emphasis on the role of the
(Hegelian) hero, who destroys the old world and makes a new beginning, in effect
taking society to the next level. Hegel's heroes, however, were individuals like
Julius Caesar or Napoleon, rather different from Wagner's Siegfried or Parsifal.
Despite this, it is possible to see the influence of this idea of the hero
completing the cycle, both in the Ring and in Parsifal, long after Wagner had
moved from a Hegelian world-view to one that was strongly influenced by
Schopenhauer. It was also influenced by Buddhism, which is also cyclical, so
that it is possible (although a radical interpretation) to see Parsifal as the
Buddha of a new age, as Shakyamuni is the Buddha of our present age.
here
seem to be three levels of meaning in the resolution of the work, each of which
was, or could have been, the conclusion of a simpler story. In order to
understand and present the final scene of Parsifal, it is necessary to
distinguish these three levels of Wagner's story and combine them effectively.
Most modern productions either focus on one of the three aspects of the scene,
or side-step the issue entirely by imposing a new ending. By giving
consideration to the three components of the resolution of the work, together
with the difficult but secondary questions of what happens to Kundry and
Amfortas respectively, an intelligent director should be able to produce a
staging that will fulfil Wagner's intentions -- without leaving the audience
confused about what happens at the end and
why.
There are four possible endings, depending on whether
Kundry or Amfortas live or die. This assumes no radical changes to the ending,
such as returning to Wagner's 1865 idea of resurrecting Titurel (Titurel rises
from his coffin and gives his blessing).
Kundry dies, Amfortas is healed and
lives, Parsifal assumes the office of Grail King: this is Wagner's own ending.
Therefore it is unlikely to be favoured by the current generation of opera
producers. Before dismissing this ending, however, it should be noted that it is
the logical conclusion of all that has gone before, seen from a Schopenhaurian
viewpoint (or equally, from a Buddhist perspective). If Amfortas lives, it seems
to be unnecessary for Parsifal to take over his office. In some of the medieval
sources, after healing the Grail King, the hero retires to live as a hermit. But
it would be more in keeping with Wagner's text to assume that it is the healed
Amfortas who leaves at the end, perhaps to become a hermit
himself.
Both Kundry and Amfortas die, Parsifal assumes the office of
Grail King: it is not necessary for the Grail King to live once a successor has
arrived. In some of Wagner's sources, the Grail King is healed, only to die
peacefully a few days later.
The healing that Parsifal brings, is revealed to be
death.
From a viewpoint of Schopenhaurian pessimism, this ending would be
satisfactory.
The old order has gone, and a new order begins under the rule of
Parsifal.
Amfortas is relieved of his office and dies, the reborn
Kundry lives, Parsifal assumes the office of Grail King: this is the inversion
of Wagner's ending.
Therefore it is currently very popular with opera producers.
The only argument that this author can see in favour of this ending, is that
Kundry might be reborn to some purpose, at the sight of the Grail.
From a
Christian perspective, she would have been saved through faith; from a Buddhist
perspective, she might be on the road to enlightenment and an eventual escape
from samsara.
Both the reborn Kundry and the healed Amfortas live:
this is the feel-good ending.
Although it would be inconsistent with Wagner's
text (both of Parsifal and Lohengrin), it would be consistent with his sources
to allow Amfortas to continue as Grail King, either keeping Parsifal as heir
apparent, or allowing him to reject the crown (as he did in a recent ENO/SFO/LOC
production) and to leave Monsalvat.
If Parsifal does take over the office
of Grail King, his alternatives are either
(a) to remain in the temple (as in
Wagner's stage directions), or
(b) to take the Grail and leave, followed by
Kundry and some of the knights (this was very effective in Harry Kupfer's
Copenhagen production).
The last of these seems to be the most positive
ending.
On one level, it emphasizes that the Grail community, for so long turned
inward, now turns outward (although there are other ways of showing this
change). On another level, it corrects a weakness inherent in the Grail legend.
In Robert de Boron's Perceval (at least it has been attributed to de Boron), for
example, the sorcerer Merlin announces to Arthur and his knights of the Round
Table that their companion Perceval has succeeded, and has become Lord of the
Grail. From now on he will renounce chivalry and will surrender himself entirely
to the grace of his Creator. At this news, Arthur and his knights weep; for
their brotherhood has lost its spiritual purpose, and become worldly. The
withdrawal of Perceval from the world is a lost opportunity; if he had brought
back the Grail to the court of Arthur, the world might have been changed. By
doing so, however, Perceval would have become God's representative on earth, a
possibility that the medieval authors did not wish to contemplate. In Wagner's
version, as we know from another of his stage works, Lohengrin, the Grail
community under Parsifal remains hidden from the world, but its members can be
sent out into the world, to anyone in need of their
help.
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