Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner

Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Parsifal, by Retold by Oliver Huckel This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Parsifal A Drama by Wagner
Author: Retold by Oliver Huckel
Release Date: March 19, 2004 [EBook #11633]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PARSIFAL: A DRAMA BY WAGNER
RETOLD BY OLIVER HUCKEL

BOOKS BY DR. HUCKEL
MENTAL MEDICINE Some practical suggestions from a spiritual standpoint (Cloth, $1.00 net)
THE MELODY OF GOD'S LOVE An interpretation of the Twenty-Third Psalm (Cloth, 75 cts. net)
WAGNER'S MUSIC DRAMAS Retold in English Verse
PARSIFAL TANNH?USER LOHENGRIN RHEINGOLD WALK��RE
(Each, cloth, 75 cents net)
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
[Illustration]

Parsifal
A MYSTICAL DRAMA BY RICHARD WAGNER RETOLD IN THE SPIRIT OF THE BAYREUTH INTERPRETATION BY
Oliver Huckel
MDCCCCX
1903
T.Y. Crowell & Co.
Composition and plates by D.B. Updike

To my Wife
IN LOVING MEMORY OF BAYREUTH DAYS
O.H.

CONTENTS
FOREWORD

PART I The Coming of Parsifal

PART II The Tempting of Parsifal

PART III The Crowning of Parsifal

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Parsifal in Quest of the Holy Grail
Monsalvat, the Castle of the Grail
The Communion of the Holy Grail
Parsifal healing King Amfortas
Parsifal revealing the Holy Grail
ILLUSTRATED BY FRANZ STASSEN

FOREWORD
The Parsifal of Richard Wagner was not only the last and loftiest work of his genius, but it is also one of the few great dramas of modern times,--a drama which unfolds striking and impressive spiritual teachings. Indeed, Parsifal may be called Richard Wagner's great confession of faith. He takes the legend of the Holy Grail, and uses it to portray wonderfully and thrillingly the Christian truths of the beauty, the glory, and the inspiring power of the Lord's Supper, and the infinite meaning of the redeeming love of the Cross. He reveals in this drama by poetry and music, and with a marvellous breadth and depth of spiritual conception, this theme (in his own words): "The founder of the Christian religion was not wise: He was divine. To believe in Him is to imitate Him and to seek union with Him.... In consequence of His atoning death, everything which lives and breathes may know itself redeemed.... Only love rooted in sympathy and expressed in action to the point of a complete destruction of self-will, is Christian love." (Wagner's Letters, 1880, pages 270, 365, 339.)
The criticism has sometimes been made that the basic religious idea of Parsifal is Buddhistic rather than Christian; that it is taken directly from the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who was perhaps as nearly a Buddhist as was possible for an Occidental mind to be; that the dominating idea in Parsifal is compassion as the essence of sanctity, and that Wagner has merely clothed this fundamental Buddhistic idea with the externals of Christian form and symbolism. This criticism is ingenious. It may also suggest that all great religions in their essence have much which is akin. But no one who reads carefully Wagner's own letters during the time that he was brooding over his Parsifal can doubt that he was trying in this drama to express in broadest and deepest way the essentials of Christian truth. Christianity has no need to go to Buddhism to find such a fundamental conception as that of an infinite compassion as a revelation of God.
The legend of the Grail, as Wagner uses it, has in it the usual accompaniments of mediaeval tradition,--something of paganism and magic. But these pagan elements are only contrasts to the purity and splendor of the simple Christian truth portrayed. The drama suggests the early miracle and mystery plays of the Christian Church; but more nearly, perhaps, it reminds one of those great religious dramas, scenic and musical, which were given at night at Eleusis, near Athens, in the temple of the Mysteries, before the initiated ones among the Greeks in the days of Pericles and Plato. Here at Bayreuth the mystic drama is given before its thousands of devout pilgrims and music-lovers who gather to the little town as to a sacred spot from all parts of the world,--from Russia, Italy, France, England, and America,--and who enter into the spirit of this noble drama and feast of music as if it were a religious festival in a temple of divine mysteries.
The sources of Wagner's story deserve a few words. The legend of the Holy Grail took many forms during the Middle Ages. It was told in slightly varying way in the twelfth century by the French writers Robert de Borron and Chrestien de Troyes, and in the early thirteenth century by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the strong German speech of Thuringia. The substance of these legends was that the precious cup, used for the wine at the