Parsifal | Page 7

of the loveliest ballet music,
while trying to embrace him, and quarreling with each other for the
privilege.
About that wonderful chorus of flower-girls there was just a suggestive
touch of the Rhine maidens' singing. It belonged to the same school of
thought and feeling, but was freer, wilder--more considerable, and
altogether more complex and wonderful in its changes and in the
marvelous confusion in which it breaks up.
The "guileless one" resists these charmers, and they are just about to
leave him in disgust, when the roses lift on one side, and, stretched on a
mossy bank overhung with flowers, appears a woman of unearthly
loveliness. It is Kundry transformed, and in the marvelous duet which
follows between her and Parsifal, a perfectly new and original type of
love duet is struck out--an analysis of character, unique in musical
drama--a combination of sentiment and a situation absolutely novel,
which could only have been conceived and carried out by a creative
genius of the highest order.
First, I note that the once spellbound Kundry is devoted utterly to her
task of winning Parsifal. Into this she throws all the intensity of her
wild and desperate nature; but in turn she is strangely affected by the
spiritual atmosphere of the "guileless one"--a feeling comes over her, in
the midst of her witchcraft passion, that he is in some way to be her
savior too; yet, womanlike, she conceives of her salvation as possible
only in union with him. Yet was this the very crime to which Klingsor
would drive her for the ruin of Parsifal. Strange confusion of thought,
feeling, aspiration, longing--struggle of irreconcilable elements! How
shall she reconcile them? Her intuition fails her not, and her tact
triumphs. She will win by stealing his love through his mother's love. A
mother's love is holy; that love she tells him of. It can never more be
his; but she will replace it, her passion shall be sanctified by it; through

that passion she has sinned, through it she, too, shall be redeemed. She
will work out her own salvation by the very spells that are upon her for
evil. He is pure--he shall make her pure, can she but win him; both, by
the might of such pure love, will surely be delivered from Klingsor, the
corrupter, the tormentor. Fatuous dream! How, through corruption, win
incorruption? How, through indulgence, win peace and freedom from
desire? It is the old cheat of the senses--Satan appears as an angel of
light. The thought deludes the unhappy Kundry herself; she is no longer
consciously working for Klingsor; she really believes that this new turn,
this bias given to passion, will purify both her and the guileless, pure
fool she seeks to subdue.
Nothing can describe the subtlety of their long interview, the surprising
turns of sentiment and contrasts of feeling. Throughout this scene
Parsifal's instinct is absolutely true and sure. Everything Kundry says
about his mother, Herzeleide, he feels; but every attempt to make him
accept her instead he resists. Her desperate declamation is splendid.
Her heartrending sense of misery and piteous prayer for salvation, her
belief that before her is her savior could she but win him to her will, the
choking fury of baffled passion, the steady and subtle encroachments
made while Parsifal is lost in a meditative dream, the burning kiss
which recalls him to himself, the fine touch by which this kiss, while
arousing in him the stormiest feelings, causes a sharp pain, as of
Amfortas's own wound, piercing his very heart--all this is realistic, if
you will, but it is realism raised to the sublime.
Suddenly Parsifal springs up, hurls the enchantress from him, will forth
from Klingsor's realm. She is baffled--she knows it; for a moment she
bars his passage, then succumbs; the might of sensuality which lost
Amfortas the sacred spear has been met and defeated by the guileless
fool. He has passed from innocence to knowledge in his interview with
the flower-girt girls, in his long converse with Kundry, in her insidious
embrace, in her kiss; but all these are now thrust aside; he steps forth
still unconquered, still "guileless," but no more "a fool." The
knowledge of good and evil has come, but the struggle is already
passed.

"Yes, sinner, I do offer thee Redemption," he can say to Kundry; "not
in thy way, but in thy Lord Christ's way of sacrifice!"
But the desperate creature, wild with passion, will listen to no reason;
she shouts aloud to her master, and Klingsor suddenly appears, poising
the sacred spear. In another moment he hurls it right across the
enchanted garden at Parsifal. It can not wound the guileless and pure
one as it wounded the sinful Amfortas. A miracle! It hangs arrested in
air above Parsifal's head; he