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"Vendit Alexander claves, Altaria, Christum, Emerat ista prius, vendere juste potest."

"At length the poison which the Pope had meant for a rich cardinal, in order to make himself master of his wealth, brought upon himself well-deserved death." The Pope's butler had been bribed and exchanged the poison-cup intended for the Pope's victim for the Pope's cup, and the Pope took his own medicine.

On the basis of Alegretti's notes, Ranke has drawn a fine pen-picture of the reign of terror which Caesar Borgia, the favorite son of Alexander VI, inaugurated at Rome. "With no relative or favorite would Caesar Borgia endure the participation of his power. His own brother stood in his way: Caesar caused him to be murdered and thrown into the Tiber. His brother-in-law was assailed and stabbed, by his orders, on the steps of his palace. The wounded man was nursed by his wife and sister, the latter preparing his food with her own hands, to secure him from poison; the Pope set a guard upon the house to protect his son-in-law from his son. Caesar laughed these precautions to scorn. 'What cannot be done at noonday,' said he, 'may be brought about in the evening.' When the prince was on the point of recovery, he burst into his chamber, drove out the wife and sister, called in the common executioner, and caused his unfortunate brother-in-law to be strangled. Toward his father, whose life and station he valued only as a means to his own aggrandizement, he displayed not the slightest respect or feeling. He slew Peroto, Alexander's favorite, while the unhappy man clung to his patron for protection, and was wrapped within the pontifical mantle. The blood of the favorite flowed over the face of the Pope.--For a certain time the city of the apostles and the whole state of the Church were in the hands of Caesar Borgia. . . . How did Rome tremble at his name! Caesar required gold, and possessed enemies. Every night were the corpses of murdered men found in the streets, yet none dared move; for who but might fear that his turn would be next? Those whom violence could not reach were taken off by poison. There was but one place on earth where such deeds were possible--that, namely, where unlimited temporal power was united to the highest spiritual authority, where the laws, civil and ecclesiastical, were held in one and the same hand."

What elements of appalling greed and levity had entered the holiest transactions of the Church can be seen from the following summing up of the situation daring Luther's time: "A large amount of worldly power was at this time conferred in most instances, together with the bishoprics; they were held more or less as sinecures according to the degree of influence or court favor possessed by the recipient or his family. The Roman Curia thought only of how it might best derive advantage from the vacancies and presentations; Alexander extorted double annates or first-fruits, and levied double, nay, triple tithes; there remained few things that had not become matter of purchase. The taxes of the papal chancery rose higher from day to day, and the comptroller, whose duty it was to prevent all abuses in that department, most commonly referred the revision of the imposts to those very men who had fixed their amounts. For every indulgence obtained from the datary's office, a stipulated sum was paid; nearly all the disputes occurring at this period between the states of Europe and the Roman Court arose out of these exactions, which the Curia sought by every possible means to increase, while the people of all countries as zealously strove to restrain them.

"Principles such as these necessarily acted on all ranks affected by the system based on them, from the highest to the lowest. Many ecclesiastics were found ready to renounce their bishoprics; but they retained the greater part of the revenues, and not unfrequently the presentation of the benefices dependent on them also. Even the laws forbidding the son of a clergyman to procure induction to the living of his father, and enacting that no ecclesiastic should dispose of his office by will , were continually evaded; for as all could obtain permission to appoint whomsoever he might choose as his coadjutor, provided he were liberal of his money, so the benefices of the Church became in a manner hereditary.

"It followed of necessity that the performance of ecclesiastical duties was grievously neglected. . . . In all places incompetent persons were intrusted with the performance of clerical duties; they were appointed without scrutiny or selection. The incumbents of benefices were principally interested in finding substitutes at the lowest possible cost; thus the mendicant friars were frequently chosen as particularly suitable in this respect. These men occupied the bishoprics under the title of suffragans; the cures they held in the capacity of vicars."

Leo X is the Pope that excommunicated Luther. Ranke describes the closing hours of his life. The Pope had been extremely successful in his political schemes. "Parma and Placentia were recovered, the French were compelled to withdraw, and the Pope might safely calculate on exercising great influence over the new sovereign of Milan. It was a crisis of infinite moment: a new state of things had arisen in politics--a great movement had commenced in the Church. The aspect of affairs permitted Leo to flatter himself that he should retain the power of directing the first, and he had succeeded in repressing the second." "He was still young enough to indulge the anticipation of fully profiting by the results of this auspicious moment. Strange and delusive destiny of man! The Pope was at his villa of Malliana when he received intelligence that his party had triumphantly entered Milan; he abandoned himself to the exultation arising naturally from the successful completion of an important enterprise, and looked cheerfully on at the festivities his people were preparing on the occasion. He paced backward and forward till deep in the night, between the window and the blazing hearth--it was the month of November. Somewhat exhausted, but still in high spirits, he arrived at Rome, and the rejoicings there celebrated for his triumph were not yet concluded, when he was attacked by a mortal disease. 'Pray for me,' said he to his servants, 'that I may yet make you all happy.' We see that he loved life, but his hour was come, he had not time to receive the sacrament nor extreme unction. So suddenly, so prematurely, and surrounded by hopes so bright! he died-'as the poppy fadeth.'" In the record of Sanuto, who is witness for these events, there is a "Lettera di Hieronymo Bon a suo barba, a di 5 Dec." which contains the following: "It is not certainly known whether the Pope died of poison or not. He was opened. Master Fernando judged that he was poisoned, others thought not. Of this last opinion is Master Severino, who saw him opened, and says he was not poisoned."

Out of such conditions grew Luther's work. But on these conditions Catholic critics of Luther maintain a discreet--shall we not say, a guilty?--silence. Few Catholic laymen to whom the horrors of Luther's life are painted with repulsive effect know the horrors which Luther faced. They are only told that Luther attacked "Holy Mother." They are not told that "Holy Mother" had become the harlot of the ages.

Catholic writers make thorough work in explaining the reasons for Luther's "defection" from Rome. They apply to Luther's stubborn resistance the law of heredity: Luther's wildness was congenital. Some have declared him the illegitimate child of a Bohemian heretic, others, the oaf of a witch, still others, a changeling of Beelzebub, etc.

Many of these writers, giving themselves the airs of painstaking investigators who have made careful research, repeat the tale of Barbour, viz., that Luther was born in the day-and-night room of an inn at Eisleben. If this is so, Luther's mother must have been a traveler on the day of her first confinement. If this were so, the fact could, of course, be easily explained without dishonor to Luther's mother: she merely miscalculated the date of the birth of her first-born,--not an unusual occurrence. Carlyle believed this story, but gave it an almost too honorable turn, by likening the inn at Eisenach to the inn at Bethlehem.

The journey of Luther's mother to Eisleben which compelled her to put up at an inn is, likewise, imaginary. Melanchthon, Luther's associate during the greater part of the Reformer's life, investigated the matter and states that Luther was born at his parents' home in Eisenach during their temporary sojourn in that city, prior to their removal to Mansfeld.

These stories about the place and manner of Luther's birth originated in the seventeenth century. They were unknown in Luther's time. Generations after a great man has died gossip becomes busy and begins to relate remarkable incidents of his life. Lincoln did not say or do one half of the interesting things related about him. He has been drawn into that magical circle where myths are formed, because his great name will arouse interest in the wildest tale. That is what has happened to Luther. These "myths" are an unconscious tribute to his greatness. One might let them pass as such and smile at them.

But the Catholic version of Luther's birth is needed by their writers as a corollary to another "fact" which they have discovered about Luther's father Hans. Hans Luther, so their story runs, was a fugitive from justice at the time of his Martin's birth. In a fit of anger he had assaulted or slain a man in his native village of Moehra, and abandoning his small landholdings, he fled with his wife, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Color is lent to this story by the discovery that the Luthers at Moehra were generally violent folk. Research in the official court-dockets at Salzungen, the seat of the judicial district to which Moehra belonged, shows that brawls were frequent in that village, and some Luthers were involved in them. Now follows the Catholic deduction, plausible, reasonable, appealing, just like the "assumption" of Mary: "Out of the gnarly wood of this relationship, consisting mostly of powerful, pugnacious farmers, assertive of their rights, Luther's father grew."

This story was started in Luther's lifetime. George Wicel, who had fallen away from the evangelical faith, accused Luther of having a homicide for a father. In 1565, he published the story under a false name at Paris, but gave no details. In Moehra nothing was known of the matter until the first quarter of the twentieth century. This circumstance alone is damaging to the whole story. Luther was during his lifetime exposed to scrutiny of his most private affairs as no other man. If Wicel's tale could have been authenticated, we may rest assured that would have been done at the time.

Writers belonging to a church that is rich in legends of the saints and in relics ought to know how a tale like Wicel's can assume respectability and credibility in the course of time. It is not any more difficult to account for these tales about Hans Luther's homicide than for the existence in our late day of the rope with which Judas hanged himself, or the tears which Peter wept in the night of the betrayal, or the splinters from the cross of the Lord, or the feathers from the wings of the angel Gabriel, and sundry other marvels which are exhibited in Catholic churches for the veneration of the faithful.

No historian that has a reputation as a scholar to lose to-day credits the story of Hans Luther's homicide. It is improbable on its face. The small landholdings of Hans at Moehra are not real, but irreal estate. Nobody has found the title for them. There is, however, a very good reason why Hans should want to leave Moehra. He was, according to all that is known of his father's family, the oldest son. According to the old Thuringian law the home place and appurtenances of a peasant freeholder passed to the youngest son. McGiffert regards the custom as "admirably careful of those most needing care." Luther's father, on coming of age, was by this law compelled to go and seek his fortune elsewhere, because opportunity for rising to independence there was none for him at Moehra.

If Hans was a fugitive from justice, he was certainly unwise in not fleeing far enough. For at Eisenach, whither he went, he was still under the same Saxon jurisdiction as at Moehra. He seems to have had no fear of abiding under the sovereignty which he is claimed to have offended. This observation has led one of the most exact and painstaking of modern biographers of Luther, Koestlin, to say that the homicide story, if it rests on any basis of fact, must either refer to a different Luther, or if to Hans, the incident cannot have been a homicide. It should be remembered that there is no authentic record which in any way incriminates Hans Luther.

Lastly, this homicide Hans Luther, eight years after coming to Mansfeld, is elected by his fellow-townsmen one of the "Vierherren," or aldermen, of the town. Only most trusted and well-reputed persons were given such an office. A homicide would not have been allowed to settle at Mansfeld, much less to govern the town. Any rogue in the town that he had to discipline in his time of office would have thrown his bloody record up to him.

All this, however, is a desperate attempt to find proof against an assumed criminal by circumstantial evidence. No direct evidence has ever been available to implicate Luther's father in a village brawl. As to the Lutherzorn, Luther has in scores of places explained the real reason of it: Luther did not inherit, but Rome roused it. This Lutherzorn may arise in any person that is not remotely related to the Luthers after reading Catholic biographies of Martin Luther.

Catholics argue that Luther's cheerless boyhood, the poverty of his parents, the hard work and close economy that was the order in the home at Mansfeld, the harsh and cruel treatment which Luther received from parents that were given to "fits of uncontrollable rage" induced in Luther a morose, sullen spirit. He became brooding and stubborn when yet a child. He was a most unruly boy at school. His character was not improved when he was sent abroad for his education and had to sing for his bread or beg in the streets. His rebellious spirit found nourishment in these humiliations. Owing to his melancholy temperament and gloomy fits, he made no friends. He felt himself misunderstood everywhere. Even the little season of sunshine that came into his young life at the Cotta home in Eisenach did not cure him of the morbid feeling that nobody appreciated him. He began to loathe the studies which he was pursuing in accordance with the wish of his father. To certain occurrences, like the slaying of a fellow-student, an accident with which he met on a vacation trip, and a sudden thunderstorm, he gave an ominous interpretation which deepened his despondency. At last he determined, "inconsiderately and precipitately," to enter a cloister. His friends "instinctively felt he was not qualified or fitted for the sublime vocation to which he aspired, and they accordingly used all their powers to dissuade him from the course he had chosen. All their efforts were fruitless, and from the gayety and frolic of the banquet" which he had given his fellow-students as a farewell party "he went to the monastery." He was so reckless that he took this step even without the consent of his parents. "He knew little about the ways of God, and was not well informed of the gravity and responsibilities of the step he was taking." "He was not called by God to conventual life; . . . he was driven by despair, rather than the love of higher perfection, into a religious career." Catholics feel so sure that they have a case against Luther that in all seriousness they ask Protestants the question: Did he act honestly when he knelt before the prior asking to be received into the order?

Luther has later in life given various reasons for entering the monastery. His case was not simple, but complex. One reason, however, which he has assigned is the severe bringing up which he had at his home. Hausrath is satisfied with this one reason, and many Catholic writers adopt his view. But this remark of Luther is evidently misapplied if it is made to mean that Luther sought ease, comfort, leniency in the cloister as a relief from the hard life which he had been leading. Luther had grasped the fundamental idea in monkery quite well: flight from the secular life as a means to become exceptionally holy. He sought quiet for meditation and devotion, but no physical ease and earthly comforts. He knew of the rigors of cloister-life. He willingly bowed to "the gentle yoke of Christ"--thus ran the monkish ritual--which the life of an eremite among eremites was to impose on him. His hard life in the days of his boyhood and youth had been an unconscious preparation for this life. He had been strictly trained to fear God and keep His commandments. The holy life of the saints had been held up to him as far back as he could remember as the marvel of Christian perfection. Home and Church had cooperated in deepening the impressions of the sanctity of the monkish life in him. When he saw the emaciated Duke of Anhalt in monk's garb with his beggar's wallet on his back tottering through the streets of Magdeburg, and everybody held his breath at this magnificent spectacle of advanced Christianity, and then broke forth in profuse eulogies of the princely pilgrim to the glories of monkish sainthood, that left an indelible impression on the fifteen-year-old boy. When he observed the Carthusians at Eisenach, weary and wan with many a vigil, somber and taciturn, toiling up the rugged steps to a heaven beyond the common heaven; when he talked with the young priests at the towns where he studied, and all praised the life of a monk to this young seeker after perfect righteousness; when in cloister-ridden Erfurt he observed that the monks were outwardly, at least, treated with peculiar reverence, can any one wonder that in a mind longing for peace with God the resolve silently ripened into the act: I will be a monk?

Nor did he act precipitately. As shown, the thought of this act had been quietly forming in him for years. When he made his rash vow to St. Anna, he still allowed two weeks to pass before he put his resolution into action. Try and picture to yourself his state of mind during those fourteen days! Moving about in his customary surroundings, he was daily probing the correctness of his contemplated change of life. He fought a soul-battle in those days, and the remembrance of his father made that battle none the easier. From the Catholic standpoint Luther deserves an aureole for that struggle. After entering the cloister, he was still at liberty for a year and a half to retrace his fatal step. But his first impressions were favorable; monkery really seemed to bring him heart's ease and peace, and there was no one to disabuse his mind of the delusion. After nearly two years in the monastery, while sitting with his father at the cloister board on the event of his ordination to the priesthood, he declares to his father that he enjoys the quiet, contemplative life that he has chosen. Surely, he made a mistake by becoming monk, but Catholics cannot fault him for that mistake. If the life of monks and nuns is really what they claim that it is: the highest and most perfect form of Christianity, they should consistently give any person credit for making the effort to lead that life. In fact, they ought all to turn monks and nuns to honor their own principles.

Monasticism is a pagan shoot grafted on a Christian tree. At its base lies the heathenish notion that sin can be extirpated by severe onslaughts upon the body and the physical life. It has existed in Buddhism before some Christians adopted it. In the early days of Christianity it was proclaimed as superior wisdom by the Platonic philosophers. Like many a lie it has been decked out with Bible-texts to give it respectability, and to soothe disquieted consciences. The Scripture-sayings regarding fasting, sexual continence, chastity, crucifying the flesh, etc., are made to stand sponsor for this bastard offspring of the brain of Christian mystics.

With excellent discrimination Mosheim has traced the origin of monasticism to the early Christian fathers. The earliest impulses to monasticism are contained in such writings as the Epistle to Zenas, found among the writings of Justinus, the tracts of Clement of Alexandria on Calumny, Patience, Continence, and other virtues, the tracts of Tertullian on practical duties, such as Chastity, Flight from Persecution, Fasting, Theatrical Exhibitions, the Dress of Females, Prayer, etc. These writings "would be perused with greater profit, were it not for the gloomy and morose spirit which they everywhere breathe. . . . In what estimation they ought to be held, the learned are not agreed. Some hold them to be the very best guides to true piety and a holy life; others, on the contrary, think their precepts were the worst possible, and that the cause of practical religion could not be committed to worse hands. . . . To us it appears that their writings contain many things excellent, well considered, and well calculated to kindle pious emotions; but also many things unduly rigorous, and derived from the Stoic and Academic philosophy; many things vague and indeterminate; and many things positively false, and inconsistent with the precepts of Christ. If one deserves the title of a bad master in morals who has no just ideas of the proper boundaries and limitations of Christian duties, nor clear and distinct co for Cosima Liszt Wagner's maternal grandparents were the Jewish bankers Bethmann of Frankfort-on-the-Main. Mr. Henry T. Finck--whose Wagner biography still remains the standard one in the language--once remarked upon the fact that at Wahnfried, Bayreuth, the pictures of Wagner's mother and Ludwig Geyer may be seen, but that of his reputed father is not on view. Nietzsche, often a prejudiced witness when his antipathies are aroused, wrote: "Was Wagner German at all? We have some reasons for asking this. It is difficult to discern in him any German trait whatsoever. Being a great learner, he has learned to imitate much that is German--that is all. His character itself is in opposition to what has been hitherto regarded as German--not to speak of the German musician! His father was a stage player named Geyer. A Geyer is almost an Adler--Geyer and Adler are both names of Jewish families." The above was written about 1887-1888. Setting aside the statement that Wagner was un-German as meaningless,--men of genius are generally strangers to their nation,--the other assertion only shows that Nietzsche was in possession of the secret. He was an intimate of the Wagner household and knew its history.

And what does this prove? Only that the genius of Richard Wagner, tinctured with Oriental blood, betrayed itself in the magnificence of his pictorial imagination, in the splendor of his music, in its color, glow, warmth, and rhythmic intensity. It also accounts for his pertinacity, his dislike of Meyerbeer and Heine and Mendelssohn. He was essentially a man of the theatre, as was Meyerbeer, though loftier in his aims, while not so gifted melodically. In sooth, he owes much to the Meyerbeer opera and the Scribe libretto,--Scribe, who really constructed one of the first viable dramatic books--withal old-fashioned--for musical setting.

And nothing is more useless than to pin Wagner down to his every utterance in poem or speech. As Bernard Shaw has acutely pointed out, Wagner--versatile, mercurial, wonderful Wagner--was a different being every hour of the day. He explained matters to suit his mood of the moment,--a Schopenhauerian one hour, a semi-Christian the next. Liszt, Glasenapp, Heckel, Feustel, all show different portraits of this man. A German democrat he was--and a courtier, an atheist, and yet a mystic. Wagner was all things to all men, like men of his supple imagination.

He abused conductors for playing excerpts from his music in concert, and then conducted concerts devoted to his own works. He wrote pamphlets on every subject, and with the prerogative of genius contradicted them in other pamphlets. He was not always a Wagnerian, and at times he differed with himself in the interpretation of his compositions. He was a genius beset by volatile moods, a very busy man of affairs, and a much-suffering creature. Wandering about the world for a half-century did not improve his temper, and yet next to Nietzsche there is no one whose judgments on Wagner's music I would regard with more suspicion than--Richard Wagner's. He was a born satirist. He loved to play practical jokes, and it would not be surprising if some day we should learn that Parsifal was one of his jokes on an epical scale. Remember how he mocked Mozart and Beethoven and the symphonic form in his own C major symphony, as if to say, "I, too, can cover the symphonic canvas!" No, Wagner is a dangerous authority to quote upon Wagner.

Even in the matter of the Niebelungenlied Wagner was anticipated by Friedrich Hebbel, whose somewhat prosaic dramatic version was first given at Weimar, in the Grand Ducal Theatre, May 16, 1861. The author's wife, a well-known actress, essayed the principal r?le. A critic said of this Trilogy, "No one hitherto has collated the whole dramatic treasure of the Niebelung legends and made it playable upon the modern stage." Yet, who to-day remembers Hebbel, and who does not know Wagner's Trilogy?

But this indebtedness of one genius to another is often sadly misinterpreted. Handel helped himself, in his accustomed royal manner, to what he liked, and the tunes of many composers whose names are long since forgotten are preserved in his scenes like flies in amber. Shakespeare did not hesitate to appropriate from Plutarch and Montaigne, from Bandello and Holinshed,--yet he remains Shakespeare. Wagner, perhaps, was not cautious; and Liszt is too important a composer to have been thus treated, too important, and also too much of a contemporary. Why should we cavil? Wagner made good use of his borrowings, and it is in their individual handling and development that he still remains Richard Wagner.

Richard Strauss once said: "How necessary to every composer who writes for orchestra the contact with that body is, I will show you in one example. It is well known that when Wagner conducted for the first time Lohengrin, many years after its completion, he exclaimed, 'Too much brass!' In his exile he also wrote Tristan and Isolde, a tone-poem which makes over-great demands upon the orchestra and the singers. Parsifal, however, he wrote at Bayreuth. He had regained intimate feeling again with the orchestra and the stage. Hence I recognize in Parsifal a model of instrumental reserve."

This quite bears out Arthur Symons's contention that the best way to study a great artist is in the works of his decline, when his invention is on the wane. Another thing, and this should settle the controversy over that much discussed phrase, "B?hnenweihfestspiel," Hanslick, Wagner's heartiest opponent, wrote in 1882: "I must say at once that the ecclesiastic scenes in Parsifal did not at the performance produce nearly as offensive an effect as they do on one who merely reads the text-book. The actions we see are of a religious character, but with all their dignified solemnity they are nevertheless not in the style of the church, but entirely in the operatic style. Parsifal is and remains an opera, even though it be called a B?hnenweihfestspiel."

Touching on the acrimonious controversy over Parsifal's blasphemy, I may only say--to every one their belief. No one is forced to see the melodrama, for a mystic melodrama it is, with the original connotations of the phrase. The entire work is such a jumble of creeds that future Bauers, Harnacks, Delitzsches, and other ethical archaeologists will have a terrible task if the work is taken for a relic of some tribal form of worship among the barbarians of the then remote nineteenth century. Here in America, the Land of the Almighty Hysteria, this artificial medley of faded music and grotesque forms is sufficiently eclectic in character to set tripping the feet of them that go forth upon the mountains in search of new, half-baked religions.

And now to a complete analysis of the work, an analysis, be it said, first made at Bayreuth in August, 1901. That it may prove unpleasant reading for some I do not doubt. I only hope that I shall not be accused of artistic irreverence. The personal equation counts for something in criticism. I cannot admire Parsifal, and I am giving my reasons for this dislike. There is no reason why the criticism that has so royally acclaimed the beauty of Wagner's other music-dramas should be suspected in the case of Parsifal. Why should Parsifal be hedged as if of "sacred character"? If you tell a Parsifalite that the opera is blasphemous, he proves volubly, ingeniously, that it is pure symbolism, that Saracenic, Buddhistic, any but Christian, ceremonial is employed. But if you turn the tables, and assert that Parsifal is not sacred, that it should be enjoyed and criticised like Tristan and Isolde, the Parsifalite quickly jumps the track and exclaims, "Sir, there is sacred atmosphere in Parsifal, and not in Tristan!" Oh, this sacred atmosphere! It is worse than Nietzsche's Holy Laughter! The question may be summed up thus: If Parsifal is blasphemous, it should not be tolerated; if it is not a representation of sacred matter, then we have the privilege of criticising it as we do a Verdi or a Meyerbeer opera; and Meyerbeer was an inveterate mocker of religious things--witness Les Huguenots, Robert le Diable, Le Proph?te. How about Hal?vy's La Juive? Parsifal, so it appears to me, is more morbid than blasphemous.

Ready-made admiration is dangerous. It behooves us to study Parsifal for ourselves, and not accept as gospel the uncritical enthusiasms of the Wagnerite who is without a sense of the eternal fitness of things. One ounce of humor, of common sense, puts to flight the sham ethical and the sham aesthetical of the Parsifal worshippers. And level-headed study should prove of profit. The composition is a miracle of polyphonic architecture--and it is also the weakest that its creator ever planned.

PARSIFAL

Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil Babil et la luxure amusante et sa pente Vers la chair de gar?on vierge que cela tente D'aimer les seins l?gers et ce gentil babil.

Il a vaincu la femme belle au coeur subtil ?talant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante; Il a vaincu l'enfer, et rentre dans sa tente Avec un lourd troph?e ? son bras pu?ril.

Avec la lance qui per?a le flanc supr?me! Il a gu?ri le roi, le voici roi lui-m?me Et pr?tre du tr?s-saint tr?sor essentiel;

En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole, Le vase pur o? resplendit le sang r?el, --Et, ? ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole. --PAUL VERLAINE.

THE BOOK

Parsifal was published in book form on December 25, 1877. The first act was completed during the winter of 1877-1878, and the instrumentation of the prelude finished by December 25, 1878. The spring and summer of 1878 were devoted to the second act, a sketch of which was prepared October 11 of the same year. The third act was finished by April 25, 1879, and from 1878 to 1882 the gigantic task of orchestration was undertaken. In the copying of this Wagner was assisted by the late Anton Seidl and Engelbert Humperdinck. The entire first act was not completed until the spring of 1880. In a villa near Naples he finished the second act, with its garden scene; and in Palermo, January 13, 1882, the sacred music-drama was given its final form. July 28 of the same year Parsifal was first performed at Bayreuth, with Materna as Kundry, Winklemann as Parsifal, Reichmann as Amfortas; Kindermann sang the phrases allotted to Titurel, and Scaria was Gurnemanz. The Klingsor was Karl Hill. Hermann Levi conducted. Thus much for dry statistics.

"Besides my Siegfried," Wagner wrote August 9, 1849, to Uhlig, "I have in my mind two tragic and two comic subjects; but not one of them seems to me to be suitable for the French stage. I have just found a fifth one; it is indifferent to me in what language it will appear first; it is Jesus of Nazareth. I have the intention to offer it to the French and thus to get rid of the whole affair, for I foresee the indignation this project will excite in my collaborator." Wagner's plan was to make a play in which Christ would be tempted by Mary Magdalen. This idea was abandoned. With the conception of Tristan and Isolde came the scheme for a Parsifal. He wrote of this to Liszt in 1876, being full of Schopenhauer and Buddhism at the time. The Victors was the sketch found among his papers, the hero of which is the Eastern prince Ananda, who rejects the love of the beautiful Princess Prakriti, and by this act of renunciation achieves his and the woman's redemption. Parsifal is not far removed from this sketch. In 1857 near Zurich Wagner became obsessed by the idea, and on a Good Friday the genesis of Parsifal occurred. In 1864 this sketch, at the request of Ludwig II, was carefully developed, and became the complete music-drama.

Wagner has rooted his story in the old legends and history of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chr?tien de Troies. The latter wrote his poem in 1175, Perceval the Gaul; or, the Story of the Grail; the former was composed between 1201 and 1210. But the story was centuries old before Chr?tien handled it, its origin probably being Proven?al. And before that it may have sprung from the Moorish, from the Egyptian, from the Indian, from the very beginnings of literature, for it is but the old story of might warring against right, evil attempting to seduce good. It crops out in a modified form in the Arthurian cycle, for the Round Table and the Grail are united in one. Whether Perceval, Parzival, or Parsifal, we find the guileless young hero fighting against wrong and resisting evil. There is even a Romance of Peredur to be found in the Mabinogion or Red Book, a collection of Welsh romances. Some believe this Peredur to be the prototype of the French Perceval. In all these poems there is a Kundry, or Kondrie, or Orgeleuse, a sorceress; and a King who has sinned--Le Roi P?cheur. The Knighthood of the Grail is a consecrated community that worships the sang-real, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, which some say was caught up in a goblet after the soldier Longinus pierced the side of the Saviour on Calvary. This lance also plays an important part in the poems, and in Wagner's music-drama. Montsalvat is a beautiful temple in a far-away land--presumably Spain--where the knights of the Grail, or Graal, meet to receive spiritual nourishment from the holy chalice containing God's blood. Every year a white dove descends from heaven to lend new powers and strength to the miraculous vase inclosing the blood. These knights are vowed to chastity, and it was a sin against chastity committed by Amfortas that caused the monarch all his suffering. Kundry it was who tempted the King. Klingsor, the enchanter, a eunuch by his own act, prompts Kundry to all this evil. Gurnemanz, the aged servitor of the Grail, and Titurel, the dead King, though miraculously alive, father of Amfortas, make up the rest of the characters in this strange drama of pity and renunciation.

Klingsor, enraged at being denied admission to the Order of the Grail after his mad act of self-mutilation, raised by his infernal arts a magic castle and gardens not far from Montsalvat. This he filled with lovely girls, who tempted the Knights of the Round Table. Amfortas resolved to destroy this Castle of Perdition. Armed with the sacred lance which pierced the Saviour's side he laid siege to Klingsor's abode. Unluckily for him a supernaturally beautiful woman, Kundry, was sent by Klingsor,--whose heart was black with envy,--and waylaid by her Amfortas succumbed to her fascinations. As he was clasped in her embrace the spear dropped and was seized by Klingsor, who gave him a fatal thrust in the side. No alleviation was there for this pain. Even the mystic bread which he occasionally dared to dispense to his knights did not bring ease. Klingsor kept the sacred spear, and by its aid hoped some day to capture Montsalvat itself.

When Gurnemanz finishes this harrowing tale the four squires kneel and sing the above prediction, "Durch Mitleid wissend." Cries are suddenly heard, and knights rush in to inform their horrified hearers that a blasphemer has dared to enter the sacred park and shoot one of the swans. The culprit is dragged in. It is Parsifal, with his bow and arrow. The swan lies in death throes before him. While vainly endeavoring to discover his name, his identity, Gurnemanz reproaches him for having shed innocent blood, and points out to him the heinousness of his offence. Parsifal is overcome with shame--and pity. Here is first indicated the cardinal trait of his character. He relates to Gurnemanz the little he knows of his early life--with which the reader is already acquainted--and tells of his mother Herzeleide. Kundry sneeringly interrupts. His mother is dead from sorrow at her boy's desertion. Parsifal, raging, throws himself upon the woman, but is dragged away. The truth forcing itself upon him, he grows faint and is revived by water from a spring. At this juncture Kundry grows sleepy. Well she knows--though the others do not--that her master is about to summon her. Filled with despair she staggers into the bushes and is seen no more. Gurnemanz, his heart revived by the pure foolishness of the lad, begins to hope anew, and the King's litter returning to the palace, he again questions Parsifal. "What is the Grail?" asks in turn the youth. Then the pair appear to move slowly, and the scene changes, to the accompaniment of the sombre "Verwandlungsmusik," from the forest to rocky galleries, finally to the Byzantine hall of the Holy Grail. All this is accomplished by scenery which moves in grooves. Parsifal questions Gurnemanz as to this phenomenon. "I slowly tread, yet deem myself now far," he says. "Thou seest, my son, to space time changeth here," answers Gurnemanz, which is a choice metaphysical morsel for the admirers of Kant and Schopenhauer.

Now begins the most solemn scene of the music-drama. To the pealing of bells, the intoning of trumpets and trombones, the scene of the Holy Grail is inaugurated. Into the vast hall files the cort?ge of the sick monarch, and the Grail Knights, wearing white coats of arms, a dove embroidered upon a red mantle, advance in double lines and group themselves about the table. They chant, and boys' voices from the middle part of the dome reply, while children's voices in the cupola high above join in a celestial chorus. After a profound silence the voice of Titurel issues from his tomb behind the throne. The dead man is revived by the potency of the Grail. He bids his erring son to perform the sacred office, to uncover the Holy Grail. Then follows a dramatic episode. Conscious of his unworthiness and showing his bleeding side, Amfortas long resists the request of his father. It is a part of his expiation that, sinner as he is, he must officiate at the solemn sacrifice. His protests are not heeded. The children's voices from the cupola recall the prediction, "Durch Mitleid wissend." Exhausted, pale, and suffering untold agonies, Amfortas lifts the crystal vase, the Grail. A ray of piercing pure light falls from above on the chalice--the hall is now dark--which becomes luminous and glows with purple splendor. Amfortas sings, "Take this bread, it is my flesh; take this wine, it is my blood which love has given thee." The singing by the various choirs breaks forth anew, and as daylight returns the holy ceremonies conclude with the kiss of peace by the brethren. The King is carried away, the knights withdraw as the voices from the cupola sing, "Happy in faith, Happy in love." Parsifal, who has been staring about him all this time, is interrogated by Gurnemanz. The latter has not noticed the convulsive start made by the pure fool when he sees Amfortas fall back upon his couch. Pity has entered his heart, though he is not able to voice this sentiment to Gurnemanz. The latter, angered by such seeming stupidity, thrusts him roughly from the hall, bidding him go seek a goose for his gander. Then, saddened by this fresh disappointment, the old man stands alone in the hall. Like a gleam of hope an alto voice from the mysterious height repeats the prediction, "Durch Mitleid wissend," and is joined by boys' voices. To this music the curtains close.

A lovely woman appears enveloped in a misty veil. It is Kundry. She screams, a blood-curdling scream which modulates into a feeble, whimpering moan. The dialogue which ensues is not a pleasing one. Klingsor berates the woman for serving the knights like a beast of burden, as reparation for her crime against Amfortas. She sneers at his lost powers, and absolutely refuses to seduce the approaching Parsifal. But in vain she resists her master. A sound of battle is heard. Single-handed, Parsifal, without, routs the feeble, enslaved knights of Klingsor. From his window in the battlements the wizard views the strife with satisfaction. He would be pleased to see his weak servitors killed by this robust, handsome youth. Kundry vanishes to prepare for her fell work of destruction. The tower sinks to strange, thunderous noises, and we behold Parsifal in a many-colored tropical garden, dense with flowers of an unearthly hue and splendor. Almost immediately he is surrounded by girls, living flowers who coquet, tease, and lure him to ravishing music. The scene is a gay one. Parsifal repulses one group after another, when suddenly a voice sings, "Parsifal, stay." He is deeply moved. "Parsifal? Thus once my mother called me." He remembers his name at last. Thus does Wagner subtly indicate the growing knowledge that passion reveals. A scene of temptation follows that has no parallel in art or literature. Lulling the youth's chaste suspicions by telling him of his mother Herzeleide, she at last wins him to her side and imprints upon his lips his mother's kiss, her own magic kiss. Instead of succumbing Parsifal leaps to his feet and presses his heart. He cries in agony, "Amfortas! the wound--the wound! It burns within me, too." Kundry's kiss shows him what the entire Grail did not know--that she was the cause of the King's downfall. He understands all now, and his one thought is to go to the King and relieve his pain. He is the poor fool who pities. Mad and desperate, Kundry detains him. She believes that he can, if he so wills it, release her from Klingsor's hideous spell. He is to be her saviour; a second one, not the real Jesus at whom she laughed and meeting whose reproachful gaze she forever after wandered. She is the real Woman who laughed. Her laughter shudderingly resounds throughout hell, whenever a sinner yields to her seductions. But Parsifal is different. Perhaps, being a frequenter of the Grail land, and a very Erda for wisdom, Kundry knows of the prediction. She weaves a web of voluptuous beauty; Parsifal escapes its blandishments. Then finding that this fails, she curses him, with furious and hysterical curses. "Renounce desire; to end thy sufferings thou must destroy their source." Thus Parsifal enjoins her. But Kundry will not be convinced. "My kiss it was that made thee clear-sighted. My embrace would make thee divine." He asks for the road to Amfortas. She curses him. "Never, never, shall thou find that road again. The Saviour's curse gives me power. Wander!" She frantically summons Klingsor, who appears upon the terrace with poised spear. The flower girls rush in, and Klingsor hurls the weapon at the audacious intruder. But it whizzes over Parsifal's head, where floating in the air he seizes it and makes the sign of the cross. A cataclysm ensues. The castle and garden sink into the earth, accompanied by volcanic explosions, the flower girls become withered hags, and all the enchanting vista of flowers is transformed into an arid waste. Kundry falls to the ground prostrated. Parsifal, surveying this desolate ruin from the shattered ramparts, utters to Kundry these prophetic words, "Thou knowest where to find me." Immediately the curtains veil this effective scene.

In the first draft of his poem Wagner ended the play with these words:--

Great is the charm of desire, Greater is the power of renunciation.

In all the complicated web of this drama Pity and Renunciation are the two principal motives. Wagner drew his themes from all sources,--sagas, legends, poems, and histories. He incorporated episodes from the Saviour's life, and boldly utilized the theme of the Last Supper. The blood of Christ which Joseph of Arimathea is said to have received in a chalice becomes the comforting and eucharistic Grail. Then side by side with all these conflicting stories he places the semi-Saracenic Klingsor, the very embodiment of a magician of the Dark Ages, and Kundry, the type of the woman of all times, the wandering Jewess, the Magdalen. Parsifal is a mediaeval Jesus; the knights of the Holy Grail, Apostles transposed to a later epoch. As it suited him Wagner violently tossed about and made sport of the poetic ideas of Chr?tien de Troies and Wolfram von Eschenbach. He Wagnerized everything he touched. The result is Parsifal.

H?chsten Heiles Wunder, Erl?sung dem Erl?ser.

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