PARSIFALIA -- Kundry's Kiss brings Parsifal the knowledge of good and evil

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.