W. J. Henderson

The Holy Grail!—I trust
We are green in heaven's eyes.

Tennyson, The Holy Grail.

It was the night before Christmas. The city of Gotham was surfeited with the vast spectacle of wealth in its annual orgy of expenditure. Women had careered madly through the savings of a twelvemonth; and desperate husbands, driven almost to the abyss of insanity, had plunged blindly into the vortex of buying, and mortgaged the labor of the next half-year. It was the merry Yule-tide, when every self-respecting New Yorker feels that it is incumbent upon him to assume a bank account, if he have it not, and to buy for his neighbor Christmas gifts more expensive than the neighbor can buy for him.

On the eve of Christmas Day it seemed as if half the city had turned to its last madness, for Wagner's "Parsifal," torn from the holy seclusion of Baireuth by the ruthless hand of an American showman (from Vienna), was produced at the Metropolitan Opera-House for the first time in the New World. The fiat had gone forth that all prices of admission were to be doubled at the box office; and it was no secret that sidewalk venders of tickets were charging five times the figures nominated in the bond. It had been made known that the performance would begin at five of the clock in the afternoon, and that after the first act there would be an intermission of nearly two hours for rest and refreshment.

Restaurateurs in the neighborhood of the opera-house had sung their "Laus Deo" and marked up their schedule of charges. Society had been vainly interrogated by reporters as to how it intended to dress for a solemn festival, split between afternoon and evening. Trumpeters had been secured to blow selected motives to warn the faithful to their seats, and it had been published in very large type that against the singers engaged in the production had been launched the curse of Wahnfried. Nothing had been neglected that might add fresh fire to the flaming fever of extravagance.

At the appointed hour the ceremonial of the intoning of the motives was performed, and a little later the curtains swung wide to disclose the sylvan retreat near the Castle of Monsalvat. The deed was accomplished. The black Alberich of the Yankee ooze had wrested from its Baireuth bed the Rheingold of the Wagner family, and the gods of the Wahnfried hearthstone shivered in their DÄmmerung.

A vast and strange assemblage sat in bewildered silence at the performance, and, having heard the martial pÆans of much free advertising, went away thrilled with the belief that it had assisted at the introduction to America of the "masterpiece" of Wagner. O ye Norse gods and little fish-maidens! There was a Wagner once—but no matter.

What kind of impression did this drama make upon the unprejudiced and equipoised mind? What is the real truth about this huge ragoÛt of mysticism and orchestration which in the looming shadows of the Festspielhaus is called "sacred"? The story of "Parsifal" has been told over and over again. The themes are becomingly catalogued in the handbooks of Wolzogen, Heinz, and Kufferath. The very boarding-school girls smirk at one another as they hum "Der Reine Thor," and rosy-cheeked boys can whistle the Klingsor theme. There is no need to rehearse here either the story or the music. But let us come at once to some conclusions drawn from a cool, dispassionate study of a dozen performances of "Parsifal" beyond the factitious influences created by the Baireuth exaltation.

"Parsifal" is the child of Wagner's artistic decrepitude. It is a decrescendo in inspiration, a ritardando in invention. More than any other drama of Wagner does it rely upon the dazzling of the eye to dull the keenness of the musical ear. It is a most imposing pageant set to unimposing music. Wagner fired heaven once with the immolation of BrÜnnhilde. It was not to be done again. The light on the Holy Grail is white and cold.

The entire machinery of the familiar Wagnerian drama is here; but the scene painter, the stage manager, the mechanician, and the electrician bravely hold up the hands of the musician. Cast any aged rags of scenery on the stage; let the lights be as dim and flickering as the dying fancies of Adrian; let the actors be of the breed of the subsidized provincial German theatre, and yet the last act of "Tristan und Isolde" will peal its eloquence into the heart and blast the soul with the lightnings of genius. Give the first act of "Die WalkÜre," most hackneyed of all great acts, the tottering timbers of battered scenes, a moonlight of such Prussian blue as never was on sea or land, and still the might and power of its pulsating passion will conquer.

But strip "Parsifal" of its scenic and mechanic glories, and you will lay bare the skeleton of a system with only a few shreds of the flesh left upon it. The poem of "Parsifal" is almost utterly devoid of those great basic elements which make human life dramatic for men and women. Nowhere in it do we see, as in Wagner's other works, the primeval man and woman at gaze upon each other in the naked barbaric splendor of desire. Instead of the one passion which makes plays, we are asked to consider the suffering of a man who is as remote from our common sympathies as his figure is from our eyes when it lies recumbent in the seat behind the altar of the Grail.

Amfortas is held up as typical of the sufferings of humanity under the curse of carnal sin. TannhÄuser is more eloquent than a thousand of him. We see TannhÄuser in the grip of the temptress; of the sin of Amfortas we hear talk, talk, talk; while the sufferer himself is carried about upon a litter,—a charnel-house sight,—making his unending moan to the patient stars.

The hero of the story, young Parsifal, comes before us looking like young Siegfried and wearing a musical tag of similar style. In the last act he is bearded and armored, again like Siegfried, and his theme is exfoliated in an umbrageous harmony of trumpets and trombones. But what a tenuous echo he is, after all! Siegfried blazes with all the glory of manhood: he has hot blood in his veins; and he carves his way through fire and the wrath of a god to the mountain of his heart's desire.

Parsifal loves no woman. He cannot, for he is the embodiment of ascetic, or at least monastic, denial. The one emotion which he submits for our hearts is pity, a most excellent emotion and admitted to be akin to love. A highly respected sister-in-law of love it may be; but love is love, and spins the big round world down the grooves of time.

As an ethical basis of this drama, we are asked to accept a philosophy of pity, founded on the ethics of Arthur Schopenhauer and amplified by the adoption of certain of the teachings of Buddha. Instead of those beautiful doctrines of redemption through the love and self-sacrifice of woman, so eloquently preached in some of Wagner's other dramas, we are besought to look upon woman as a temptress, and renunciation of love as the highway to heaven.

As the exemplar of the claim of pity, we are presented with the picture of the wounded Amfortas, who is a lay figure of incomprehensible personality. He is shown in the first act, and the pity doctrine is further preached in the pother made over the killing of the swan (such a big, fat, able-bodied swan!). As the master of evil we behold Klingsor, who comes before us in the first scene of the second act with more paraphernalia of slate-green walls, blue smoke, and exclamatory incantations than Faust ever had in his salad days at the Paris Grand Opera.

Kundry, the only woman in the play, is an ill-made muddle of inhumanity, who never commands a single instant of sympathy. She strives by service to atone for her sins, which are committed under the spell of Klingsor. She has neither love nor passion. Gurnemanz, the aged knight, is a wearisome talker. He tells the story of his life or any one else's life to whomsoever will listen. The audience cannot escape.

With the exception of Klingsor and his "flower-girls"—a charming euphemism—these puppets are shown to us in the first scene, in which the necessary explanations are made in long-winded speeches, mostly by Gurnemanz, seated on a rock and reciting like weary Wotan in Act II. of "Die WalkÜre." When this doddering graphophone comes to lead Parsifal to the castle of the Grail, Wagner sorts over his old plans and specifications and selects Siegfried's Rhine Journey.

But this time it is a sedate and pious progress finishing with bells and chorals. Nevertheless, it is one of the fine spots in the work. When the bells are in tune, it is imposing. The scenery changes in an ingenious and effective panorama.

Then comes the crown of the act and the noblest scene in the work,—the unveiling of the Grail and the ceremony of the Last Supper. This is not the time for a discussion of the propriety of putting such matters on the stage. Suffice it to say, that here Wagner has accomplished one of the most triumphant demonstrations of the effectiveness of his organic union of the arts tributary to the drama. Music, text, action, scenic form and color, all work together in an irresistibly potent symphony of symbolism, which no reverent man can hear and see without emotion. It makes "Parsifal" almost persuasive.

The second act opens with the exhibition of Klingsor, as already noted. He is as unreal as the purple light which illumines Kundry when he summons her from the trapdoor in the stage. She rises like Mother Erda in "Siegfried," Act III., but, oh, so different! Away with such cheap and paltry claptrap as this scene! Poor Wagner, he had to write it to explain himself; and in "Parsifal" he needed a lot of explanation. Not all the Ellises nor Wolzogens in the world could blot out the Drury Lane stain of this one scene. Even the exclamatory "Ha, ha!" of the time-dishonored stage villain is not spared us.

The second scene of the act is the magic garden of flower-maidens, Venusberg, No. 2. No. 1 is much better, both dramatically and musically. This one is "TannhÄuser" and water, and very poor water at that. Yet it is the scene which will please the populace most, when the flower-girls are pretty and graceful, for their music is languorous and suggestive of Leo Delibes raised to the seventh power.

But there is nothing human in this whole scene. Kundry, unlike Venus, does not love the man she tempts. Venus is at the heart a passionate, despairing woman. Kundry is the deputed and bewitched instrument of a Wahnfried Cagliostro. Her deed is that of a woman of the pavement; her extenuation the pitiful and transparent fact that she plies her trade in a trance and under an irresistible spell. We see her put in the trance; we see her come out of it. Before and after it she is a rough and revolting yokel with tangled black locks and a gunny bag for her garb. In the trance she is transformed by the power of the magician to a beautiful blonde in a diaphanous dÉcolletÉ gown.

The symbolism of the whole scene is weak and tottering. The logic of the enlightenment of Parsifal by the long-drawn kiss with wind and string accompaniment (see "Siegfried," Act III.) is beyond finite conception. The symbolism of the waking of a sleeping Valkyr maiden by the first kiss of love is something that even the most hardened society woman might understand; but the employment of a courtesan's salute to enlighten a pure fool by pity is a device which swings futile between heaven and earth.

The last act is a flat desert of tedium, with oases of musical verdure. Gurnemanz has more opportunities to lecture on Amfortas, Good Friday, and similar topics, but even with the aid of Wagner's own musical illustrations he is uninteresting. The foot-washing episode is a pitiable and shocking plagiarism from the life of Christ. The central figure, with its beard, its long hair, and its light-tinted robe, is so like the Good Shepherd of the paintings that it suggests an automaton replica. And this is all so inessential. It is dragged in to give the thing a sacred atmosphere.

The really beautiful places in the first scene of the last act are the splendid proclamation of the Grail theme after the baptism of Parsifal—one of the few bursts of power which recall the Wagner of "Die WalkÜre"—and the ineffably lovely peacefulness of the Good Friday music. This indeed is an inspired page in the score; but it was written twenty-five years before the drama was produced.

The final scene is a weak and diluted repetition of the second scene of the first act. This time Parsifal unveils the Grail. The music is necessarily built of the same materials. It does not achieve its effect. Neither is the pictorial impression as deep. We have seen it all before. The gorgeous, pealing brass passage at the second entrance to the Grail hall is the most muscular thing in the whole act, but it stands by itself. It seems to have no logical place in the musical scheme.

The score of this drama is mostly a long, faint echo of Wagner's greatest works. Siegfried vainly strives to animate this Parsifalian puppet of renunciation with the blood of the Volsung woe. Cloudlike shreds of "Tristan und Isolde" struggle to float sunset tints across this pallid sky. All is copying, futile, without inspiration, without newness,—a hotch-potch of the old marketable materials made over with much constructive skill, but with commercial thrift and inartistic insincerity. There is hardly a note of honest Æsthetic conviction in the whole thing. One is inclined to think that Wagner did not believe in it himself.

These, then, are the conclusions gathered from performances in a common opera-house of Wagner's religious, symbolical, ethical, philosophical, and highly gilded summary of his artistic creed. When this work is played in Baireuth, where churchly airs are assumed and the people robe their spirits in sackcloth and ashes, the impression is different. But now that "Parsifal" has come out into the light of morning and faced the cold glare of the work-day world, it must be measured by the artistic standards which are applied to Wagner's other dramas. Weighed in the balance with "Tristan und Isolde" or any of the "Ring" works, except perhaps "Rheingold," to which it is artistically not a stranger, it must be found wanting. Beside "TannhÄuser," which treats the same subject, it is a mass of glittering artificialities. Wagner was wise in wishing that this drama should be preserved for home consumption.

II.—ETHICS AND ÆSTHETICS

The cut nails of machine divinity may be driven in, but they won't clinch.

Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Professor at the Breakfast Table, Ch. IV.

There was no question that Gotham—wicked, wayward Gotham—was much stirred up by this production. It was generally accepted as a kind of religious ceremony, as to which no right-minded gentleman should deliver himself of critical comment. Yet there were some picturesque exceptions to the general state. A few ministers of the Gospel sprang to the pulpit or the interviewer, and descanted in glowing terms on the outrageous irreligion of the thing, or rather on the sacrilege of the representation by "painted actors" of incidents in the life of Christ. Of course these gentlemen had not taken the trouble to study the work in the original, and some of them showed conclusively that they were utterly ignorant of it.

But this chanced to be one of those cases in which the pulpit is not immune. The ignorance of the reverend utterers of sweeping statements was blithely exposed by some of the men whose business it has been for many years to study the works of Wagner. Let us, then, in all justice and humility, with due observance of the Grail adorers on the one side and the objecting pulpit orators on the other, ask ourselves how much of real Christianity is disclosed in "Parsifal." How much more of German mystic philosophy, of mediÆvalism, of the teachings of Siddartha, and lastly of pure paganism? What is this work, after all, but a summary of the blind gropings of the imaginative Wagner after a philosophy beyond his reach?

Why all this pother about the sacrilege of putting the Holy Grail on the stage? Was there ever a Holy Grail? Is the green glass chalice which now reposes peacefully in Genoa a holy vessel? Did the blood of Christ ever sanctify it? Did Joseph of Arimathea catch the precious drops in it; and was it really the vessel used at the Last Supper of Jesus and his apostles?

The ceremony of the Last Supper is unquestionably represented in a crude manner in Wagner's drama, where it is mixed with a pictorial representation of the legendary tale that the Christians may make objection with good ground. The place which the communion occupies in the ceremonies of the Church is such that to see it made part of a public theatrical performance, no matter how solemn, or how artistic, or how honest in its purpose to treat holy things reverentially, must be repugnant to every Christian mind.

As to this, nothing more need be said. Of the effect of the representation on an audience there can be no doubt. It is impressive in the highest degree. The emotions caused by the unveiling scene are a tribute to the power of theatrical art. But let it be thoroughly understood that the stage picture and the music are the most influential elements. Taking that scene as a point of suggestion, let us ask ourselves how much of real Christianity there is in "Parsifal." Let us examine the ethics of the drama and probe its philosophy.

The doctrine of enlightenment by pity, preached so insistently in this drama, has no relation to Christianity. The religion of Jesus Christ knows of but one enlightenment, that by faith. It is "he that believeth," not he that pitieth. The enlightenment of faith enables the Christian to conceive God. But what do we find in "Parsifal"? A man has committed a mortal sin, in that he has fallen from that state of personal chastity in which the servants of the Holy Grail are required to live. The outward and visible sign of his fall is an immediate physical (with accompanying spiritual) punishment, inflicted by the impious hand of the Tempter himself.

Here Wagner follows the story as told by ChrÉtien des Troyes, and not the version of Wolfram von Eschenbach. ChrÉtien made the spear that with which Longinus pierced the side of the Saviour. Wolfram made it simply a poisoned lance. Wagner accepted the sacred spear, because he was always an eager searcher after ethical significance, even when there was less virtue in it than there is in this one. The wound of the sacred lance is more than physical; it is a mortal hurt of the soul. Wagner tells us that for such a wound there can be but one cure, a touch of the selfsame lance in the hands of one who has successfully withstood the temptation to which the sufferer fell a victim.

Very well. There is absolutely no authority for such a conclusion. It is a bit of mediÆval religious mysticism, an adaptation of the fabulous miracles. Wagner, however, has a right to manufacture miracles for a fabulous story. He has as much right to do it in the tale of the Holy Grail as he had in the matter of Hagen's wonder-working beverages in "GÖtterdÄmmerung."

But when he tells us that the reason for Parsifal's action is enlightenment by pity, he goes still farther away from the dogmas and doctrines of Christianity and moves through the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer toward the religion of the Buddha. It is a grave error to relegate to a secondary place the influence of Schopenhauer on Wagner and to credit the poet-composer with a direct entry into the teachings of the Gautama. We must bear in mind continually that Wagner got from Schopenhauer two great doctrines, one artistic, and the other ethical.

Schopenhauer propounded as the basis of his Æsthetic system the theorem that it is the business of art to represent to us the eternal essence of things by means of prototypes. The conditions of time and place, cause and tendency, must be cleared away, and the naked Eternal Idea underneath disclosed. The discernment and revelation of this Idea are the duty and privilege of art.

Wagner, then, sought to set forth his personages and their actions as symbolical. They were to be visual embodiments of Eternal Ideas. Amfortas is the sinner in the agony of his punishment. Parsifal is the savior, the pure one who can redeem; Klingsor is the evil one, and Kundry the unwilling slave of his power. If here we find ourselves involved in some contradictions, let us be patient. Wagner's logic is that of a poet and a musician. It will not stand the test of the metaphysician.

But to resume. The ethical doctrine which the composer obtained from Schopenhauer was more significant in its results. Schopenhauer's philosophic system need not be set forth here. Suffice it to say that ethically its only possible outcome was negative. The world is so bad that the chief end of man should be to get out of it.

To reach the state of mind in which that end is the chief object, one must rid himself of all desire and yearn to arrive at a complete negation of the will to live. Recall "Tristan und Isolde." The first step toward the negation of the will to live is perfect sympathy with suffering. Then comes asceticism, which leads directly away from life toward a condition of abstraction.

Here the thought touches the monasticism of the early Church and avows a kinship with the Buddhistic doctrine. Withdrawal from the world and safety by absorption into the universal unconsciousness were the Buddhist's hope of peace. But neither Gautama nor Schopenhauer had any definite, positive reason for this. Here the early monk, who was looking out for the salvation of his own precious soul and letting other people's souls take care of themselves, came nearer to the ideals of Wagner as set forth in "Parsifal."

No, Schopenhauer did not teach Wagner the doctrine of "enlightenment by pity," for with Schopenhauer pity was not enlightenment, but the beginning of a personal abstraction. A man was sorry for others because they were in the world, the very worst place a man could inhabit. His sensuous nature made him like the things he found here (such as flower-maidens, for example); and his duty was to mortify the flesh, get rid of all his mortal appetites, live in asceticism, and die as soon as possible. Wagner was fond of grafting his own ideas on the philosophical systems of bigger men than himself. So he invented this doctrine of enlightenment. How he worked out his psychologic plan we shall see presently.

No doubt Wagner had his eye on Buddhism when he wrote "Parsifal." It is history that he once contemplated a Buddhistic drama, called "The Victors," in which he was to preach the doctrine of fleshly renunciation and salvation through the mortification of desire. But he abandoned the scheme. The story was Eastern, and he did some delving in Oriental literature.

How the "Four Sublime Verities" of Gautama, the founder of the Buddhistic religion, must have appealed to him! These were, first, that pain exists; second, that the cause of pain is desire or attachment; third, that pain can be ended by Nirvana; and fourth, how to attain Nirvana.

The way to Nirvana is hard, much harder than the path to the Christian Heaven, for the man must walk it without aid. There is no vicarious sacrifice in the religion of Siddartha. You must walk the wine-press alone, and drink of the dregs of life. All the best of the Ten Commandments are found in the precepts of this religion. Added to them are minor commands looking to complete abstraction.

For example, a Bhikshu (an order of monk) is forbidden to look at or converse with a woman lest emotion should disturb the serene indifference of his soul. He must not even save his mother if she is drowning, except with a long stick reached toward her.

"To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock," seems to have been the chief business of the founder. Thus is he always represented cross-legged and contemplative, with eyes downcast, "cleaving with the thunderbolt of science the mountain of ignorance," and perceiving the illusory nature of all things. So he comes at last to that state in which he breaks the bonds binding him to existence and enters into the complete Nirvana.

In this religion pity is pre-eminent, for it is sympathy with suffering. But it does not confine itself to human beings. Animals are also to share our sympathies, and here we meet with the foundation of Wagner's idea in "Parsifal" of the sacredness of the life of dumb creatures in the realms of the Holy Grail. But now let us see how Wagner works out his jumble of religious and philosophic doctrines.

Parsifal is a pure fool. Weigh that, first of all. He knows nothing; yet when he enters the flower-garden he compliments the women on their beauty, and fails to understand what they want of him. O wise young judge! this pure fool, who does not know what is the matter with Amfortas, and therefore has no desire to aid him, must be enlightened by pity. So Wagner sets Kundry to work to tell him the story of his mother's sufferings, and she ends the narration by printing a long kiss upon his lips. Wagner was fond of long kisses set to music, and he used one in "Siegfried" as an awakener.

Now what happens? This salacious kiss of an unchaste woman, imprinted on the lips of a youth who was, according to Wagner's delineation of him, as innocent as a child of eight or ten, instantly opens up to him the entire experience of Amfortas, and fills him with pity and horror! That is, indeed, a miracle. And to make the thing psychologically more absurd, Wagner shows us this "pure fool" battling madly with the simultaneous working of these two emotions. What has become of the enlightenment by pity? Plainly the enlightenment comes first and the pity afterward! Furthermore, Parsifal prays to the Redeemer for forgiveness for his failure to understand the scene in the hall of the Grail. But, as H. E. Krehbiel pertinently asked in an article in the "New York Tribune," what could the boy have done when he had not yet got the sacred spear from Klingsor?

What a hold, then, the Buddhistic ideas, toward which Wagner was led by Schopenhauer, had taken upon him! The religion of the crucial scene of the drama is not Christian at all. The outward and visible signs of the scene are purely pagan, but the underlying philosophy is Buddhistic. It is the final issue of the dreams which this master visionary had in his mind when he planned "The Victors." The only remnant of Christian story in this act is the reminiscence of the drama which Wagner once planned relating to the Saviour.

In his "Jesus of Nazareth" he intended to show Mary of Magdala in love with the Divine One. Wagner was no fool. Nor was he a madman, as Nordau has tried to show. But he was first, last, and all the time a theatrical thinker. His imagination dwelt in the show-house, and all was grist that came to his mill. If he had thought the meditations of the Creator good material for a music drama, he would have laid his artistic hands upon the eternal throne itself.

Thus, he shrank not from grafting spectacular show, Schopenhauerian ethics, and Buddhistic dogmas on the legend of the Holy Grail. As a matter of absolute fact, the Christian elements in this drama are almost wholly spectacular and in the nature of accessories. If ministers of the Gospel desire to be shocked by "Parsifal,"—and they have reason to be, if they look for it in the right place,—let them consider the place which the Holy Grail and the ceremony of the communion occupy in this play.

They are merely stage devices to heighten the picture of the suffering of Amfortas, and to impress upon our minds the vital need of the enlightenment of the pure fool. The processional of the Grail is spectacle pure and simple. The eating of the Last Supper is spectacle pure and simple. It has absolutely nothing to do with the story of the drama.

The unveiling of the Grail is necessary because it shows how Amfortas is made to suffer agony. But it is no assistance to such Christian ethics as there are in this muddle. If Amfortas has an incurable wound, which is merely the outward symbol of conscience, he ought not to need the sight of the Grail to make him feel worse. The thought of his unworthiness to be a member of the chaste brotherhood should be enough.

The foot-washing incident is theatricalism of the crassest kind. Can any one show that it has a direct connection with the development of the story? The argument in its favor is that it shows Kundry as a penitent, and establishes her in relations of atonement with Parsifal. Quite unnecessary, for the significance of the second act is that Parsifal, having resisted her tempting, is spiritually her master and also her redeemer. The act of absolution is made possible by his triumph over the flesh. He could have baptized her and bidden her trust in the Lord without offering us a portrait of the Saviour as represented in the seventh chapter of St. Luke:—

"And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,

"And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment."

Wagner brings on the tears after the foot-washing, so that he can show us how Kundry was released from the curse of laughter. Or was the curse imposed solely that this theatrical picture might be introduced?

The sacred spear has some connection with the story, but the weapon is not an important feature of Christianity. There is even room for doubt as to whether there ever was a sacred spear at all. The wound certainly existed; but who can vouch for the preservation of the spear as an object of reverence? So let us for the present dismiss the profound religious basis of Richard Wagner's "Parsifal." Buddha and Arthur Schopenhauer taught the dramatist more essentials than the Holy Bible did. The foundations of the drama rest on the philosophy of negation. The Christianity is merely ornamental, spectacular, and delusive.