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Richard Wagner
Parsifal Synopsis |  |
A lad, hotfoot in pursuit of a wild swan which one of his arrows has
pierced, finds himself in a forest glade on the side of a mountain.
There he meets a body of knights and esquires in attendance on a
king who is suffering from a wound. The knights are a body of men
whose mission it is to succor suffering innocence wherever they may
find it. They dwell in a magnificent castle on the summit of the
mountain, within whose walls they assemble every day to contemplate
and adore a miraculous vessel from which they obtain both physical
and spiritual sustenance. In order to enjoy the benefits which flow
from this talisman, they are required to preserve their bodies in
ascetic purity. Their king has fallen from this estate and been
grievously wounded in an encounter with a magician, who, having
failed in his ambition to enter the order of knighthood, had built
a castle over against that of the king, where, by practice of the
black art and with the help of sirens and a sorceress, he seeks the
ruin of the pure and celestial soldiery. In his hands is a lance
which once belonged to the knights, but which he had wrested from
their king and with which he had given the dolorous stroke from
which the king is suffering.
The healing of the king can be wrought only by a touch of the lance
which struck the wound; and this lance can be regained only by one
able to withstand the sensual temptations with which the evil-minded
sorcerer has surrounded himself in his magical castle.
This hero king and knights are waiting and longing, since
neither lotions nor baths nor ointments can bring relief, though
they be of the rarest potency and brought from all the ends of the
earth. The lad who thus finds himself in this worshipful but woful
company is himself of noble and knightly lineage.
He has been reared in a wilderness, far from courts and the
institutions of chivalry and in ignorance of the world lying beyond
his forest boundaries. His father died before he was born, and his
mother withheld from him all knowledge of knighthood, hoping thus
to keep him for herself. One day, however, he saw a cavalcade of
horsemen in brilliant trappings. The spectacle stirred the chivalric
spirit slumbering within him; he deserted his mother, followed after
the knights, and set out in quest of adventure. The mother died.
In the domain whither his quarry had led the lad, all animals were
held sacred. A knight (Gurnemanz) rebukes him for his misdeed in
shooting the swan, and rue leads him to break his bow and arrows.
in the service of the knights, he learns of the death of his mother,
who had perished for love of him and grief over his desertion. He is
questioned about himself, but is singularly ignorant of everything,
even of his own name. Hoping that the lad may prove to be the
guileless fool to whom knowledge was to come through pity, the
knight escorts him to the temple, which is the sanctuary of the
talisman whose adoration is the daily occupation of the brotherhood.
They walk out of the forest and find themselves in a rocky defile
of the mountain. A natural gateway opens in the face of a cliff,
through which they pass, and are lost to sight for a space. Then
they are seen ascending a sloping passage, and little by little the
rocks lose their ruggedness and begin to take on rude architectural
contours. They are walking to music which, while merely suggesting
their progress and the changing natural scene in the main, ever and
anon breaks into an expression of the most poignant and lacerating
suffering and lamentation.
At last they arrive in a mighty Byzantine hail, which loses itself
upward in a lofty, vaulted dome, from which light streams downward
and illumines the interior. Under the dome, within a colonnade, are
two tables, each a segment of a circle. Into the hall there come
in procession knights wearing red mantles on which the image of a
white dove is embroidered. They chant a pious hymn as they take
their places at the refectory tables.
The king, whom the lad had seen in the glade, is borne in on a
litter, before him a veiled shrine containing the mystical cup which
is the object of the ceremonious worship. It is the duty of the
king to unveil the talisman and hold it up to the adoration of the
knights. He is conveyed to a raised couch and the shrine is placed
before him. His sufferings of mind and body are so poignant that
he would liever die than perform his office; but the voice of his
father (Titurel), who had built the sanctuary, established the order
of knighthood, and now lives on in his grave sustained by the sight
of the talisman, admonishes the king of his duty. At length he
consents to perform the function imposed upon him by his office. He
raises himself painfully upon his couch. The attendants remove the
covering from the shrine and disclose an antique crystal vessel
which they reverently place before the lamentable king. Boys' voices
come wafted down from the highest height of the dome, singing a
formula of consecration: "Take ye my body, take my blood in token
of our love":
A dazzling ray of light flashes down from above and falls into the
cup, which now glows with a reddish purple lustre and sheds a soft
radiance around. The knights have sunk upon their knees. The king
lifts the luminous chalice, moves it gently from side to side, and
thus blesses the bread and wine provided for the refection of the
knights. Meanwhile, celestial voices proclaim the words of the
oracle to musical strains that are pregnant with mysterious
suggestion.
Another choir sturdily, firmly, ecstatically hymns the power
of faith, and, at the end, an impressive antiphon, starting with the knights,
ascends higher and higher, and, calling in gradually the voices of
invisible singers in the middle height, becomes metamorphosed into
an angelic canticle as it takes its flight to the summit. It is
the voice of aspiration, the musical symbol of the talisman which
directs the thoughts and desires of its worshippers ever upward.
The lad disappoints his guide. He understands nothing of the solemn
happenings which he has witnessed, nor does he ask their meaning,
though his own heart had been lacerated with pain at sight of the
king's sufferings. He is driven from the sanctuary with contumely.
He wanders forth in quest of further adventures and enters the
magical garden surrounding the castle of the sorcerer. A number of
knights who are sent against him he puts to rout. Now the magician
summons lovely women, clad in the habiliments of flowers, to seduce
him with their charms.
They sing and play about him with winsome wheedlings and cajoleries,
with insinuating blandishments and dainty flatteries, with pretty
petulancies and delectable quarrellings.
But they fail of their purpose, as does also an unwilling siren whom
the magician invokes with powerful conjurations. It is Kundry, who
is half Magdalen, half wicked sorceress, a messenger in the service
of the pious knights, and as such hideous of aspect; a tool in the
hands of the magician, and as such supernaturally beautiful. It was
to her charms that the suffering king had yielded. To win the youth
she tells him the story of his mother's death and gives to him her
last message and--a kiss! At the touch of her impure lips a flood of
passion, hitherto unfelt, pours through the veins of the lad, and in
its surge comes understanding of the suffering and woe which he had
witnessed in the castle on the mountain. Also a sense of his own
remissness. Compassionate pity brings enlightenment; and he thrusts
back the woman who is seeking to destroy him. Finding that the wiles
of his tool have availed him naught, the wicked magician himself
appears to give battle, for he, too, knows the oracle and fears the
coming of the king's deliverer and the loss of the weapon which he
hopes will yet enable him to achieve the mystical talisman. He hurls
the lance at the youth, but it remains suspended in midair. The lad
seizes it, makes the sign of the cross, speaks some words of exorcism,
and garden, castle, damsels--all the works of enchantment disappear.
Now the young hero is conscious of a mission. He must find again
the abode of the knights and their ailing king, and bring to them
surcease of suffering. After long and grievous wanderings he is
again directed to the castle. Grief and despair have overwhelmed the
knights, whose king, unable longer to endure the torture in which he
has lived, has definitively refused to perform his holy office. In
consequence, his father, no longer the recipient of supernatural
sustenance, has died, and the king longs to follow him. The hero
touches the wound in the side of the king with the sacred spear,
ends his dolors, and is hailed as king in his place. The temptress,
who has followed him as a penitent, freed from a curse which had
rested upon her for ages, goes to a blissful and eternal rest.
Richard Wagner Facts and Information
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