Tuesday, August 29 – Wednesday, August 30:
Kundry has again vanished, fallen into a sleep of death. Klingsor has again won power over her soul: he needs the help of this the most wondrous of womanly beings to deliver his main blow. At his castle, in an inaccessible dungeon, he sits in his magician’s workshop: he is the daemon of hidden sin, the raging of impotence against sin. Using his magician’s power, he conjures Kundry’s soul to him; her spirit appears in the depths of a dark cave. From the conversation of the two the following relationship emerges. Kundry is living a never-ending life of constantly alternating re-births as the result of an ancient curse which, in a manner reminiscent of the Wandering Jew, condemns her, in new shapes, to bring to men the suffering of seduction; redemption, death, complete extinction is vouchsafed her only if her most powerful blandishments are withstood by the most chaste and virile of men. So far, they have not been. After each new and, in the end, profoundly hateful victory, after each new fall by man, she flies into a rage; she then flees into the wilderness and by the most severe atonements and chastisements is for some time able to escape the power of the curse upon her; yet it is denied to her to find salvation in this way. Within her again and again unconsciously arises the desire to be delivered by a man, this being the sole manner of deliverance indicated to her by the curse: thus does innermost necessity cause her constantly to fall victim anew to the power which drives her to be reborn as a seductive woman. The penitent then falls into a death-like sleep: it is the seductress who wakes, and who, after her mad frenzy, becomes again a penitent. As no one but a man can deliver her, she has taken refuge as a penitent with the Knights of the Grail; here, amongst them, must the redeemer be found. She serves them with the most passionate self-sacrifice: never, when she is in this state, does she receive a loving look, being no more than a servant and scorned slave. Klingsor’s magic has found her out; he knows the curse and the power through which she can be forced into his service. To avenge the dreadful disgrace he once suffered from Titurel, he traps and seduces the noblest Knights of the Grail into breaking their vow of chastity. What, however, gives him power over Kundry, this most exquisite instrument of seduction, is not solely the magic power through which he has mastery over the curse weighing upon Kundry, but the most powerful assistance he finds in Kundry’s own soul. — Since only one man can redeem her, and she therefore feels given to him in complete submission, her experience of the weakness of these men cannot but fill her with strange bitterness: feeling that only that man can destroy and deliver her who withstands the full force of her feminine charms, she is again and again lured by something deep down in her soul to undertake the test anew: but mixed with this is her scorn, her despair at being subjugated to this feeble breed, and a fearful blazing hatred which disposes her for the destruction of men, but which at the same time repeatedly re-arouses her wild loving desire in a consuming, fearfully fiery manner to that fit of ecstasy by means of which she can work magic, at the same time, however, becoming the slave of it. Her latest task, under Klingsor’s guidance, has been the seduction of Anfortas. The sorcerer’s one wish was to have Anfortas in his power: he planned for him the same disgrace that, in raving blindness, he once inflicted on himself: he managed to lure the Keeper of the Grail himself into the arms of the wondrously seductive woman Kundry was recreated as, and while he was lost in her embrace, the knights now subservient to Klingsor fell upon him; they were not allowed to kill him; the vigilant Gurnemans, calling upon the aid of the Grail, was successful in freeing the already wounded Anfortas. Thus was Klingsor deprived of the prize of his venture: Kundry, to her distress, had fared better in proving her power anew! After violent ravings, she again awoke penitent. From one state to the next, she carries no real consciousness of what has passed: to her it is like a dream experienced in very deep sleep which, on waking, one has no recollection of, only a vague, impotent feeling prevailing deep down inside. Yet she gazes with both sadness and scorn at the wounded man, whom she, penitent now, again serves with most passionate devotion, but — without hope, without respect. Now it is necessary for Klingsor to have Parzival in his power. He knows the prophecies there are about this wonder-child. He fears that he may have been summoned to deliver Anfortas and take his place with a power that cannot be overcome. Against him it is that Kundry is now to exert all her power. Summoned by Klingsor, Kundry’s soul trembles. She resists. He threatens. She curses. Fearful secrets. Finally, discord in Kundry’s soul: hope for deliverance through defeat: — but then an insane desire to enjoy love for a last time. Klingsor’s laugh. — Sound of weapons. From outside, the threatening voice of Parzival. Kundry disappears. ‘To work!’ Klingsor springs on to the wall; he watches the fight between Parzival and the enchanted knights. Klingsor laughs at their loutish jealousy as they defend the way to the she-devils they love: he delights when they are overcome by Parzival and killed or put to flight. He grants it to all Knights of the Grail to kill each other in this fashion. His gaze follows Parzival now striding, childishly proud, through the open gate, now turning towards the garden. ‘Ah, childish offspring! Be summoned for what you may: you are still too stupid, and you are forfeit to me. Here, eternal Lord of the Grail, you will come to a sweet end.’ — He vanishes. —
Parzival has entered Klingsor’s wonderful magic garden: his astonishment at the unutterable charm is mingled with an uneasy feeling of alarm, hesitation and horror. But he is not to compose himself: from various directions, singly, beautiful women rush in, their hastily donned attire disordered, their hair dishevelled, etc. They have heard sounds of fighting: waking, they have found themselves abandoned by their lovers; some have run to the battlements, seen the fight, and report to the other women that their lovers have been fought with, put to flight, indeed, laid low by the bold stranger. Lamentation and imprecations: they rush at Parzival. Their threats, reproaches, lamentations are mollified at the sight of the hero and the realization of how handsome, how child-like and artless he is. Some mock him, others invite him to make reparation for their lost lovers: soon he is being flattered and petted. Amazed, but wholly artless, Parzival abandons himself to what he takes to be a childish game without any thought of there being a serious side to the situation. Soon jealousy and argument arise amongst the women: some, having withdrawn into arbours, now return with hair charmingly adorned, and in daintily neat attire; they are scorned by the others, but imitated. The coquettish game for Parzival’s favour degenerates into quarrelling and wrangling. Parzival still responds as if to childish play: refuses to understand anything and treats nothing seriously. Their derision turns against him: their scolding and mockery make him almost angry: he is about to flee. Then he hears the loud, loving sound of a woman’s voice calling him by name. He stops, shaken, believing it to be his mother, and stands, greatly affected, rooted to the spot. The voice admonishes Parzival to stay: here he will experience great happiness: she orders the women to leave the youth; he is for none of them: their lovers have been preserved: they would fain return and urge them to be at peace. Hesitatingly the women obey: dejectedly they leave Parzival, each secretly preferring him to her own lover: gently and flatteringly they leave him and go separate ways. Parzival, now sure that he is dreaming, gazes timidly to see where the voice has come from. Then, in a grotto, upon a couch of flowers, he sees a young woman of the greatest beauty, Kundry, in new, wholly unrecognizable guise. Still standing far off, he asks in amazement if it was she who called. Kundry: Did he not know that she had long been awaiting him here? What then had brought him here if not the wish to find her? Parzival, wondrously attracted, approaches the grotto. His emotions are mingled with vast unease; his earlier cheerful artlessness deserts him; a deep seriousness descends upon him, a vague feeling of there being a most momentous decision at hand. The wonderful woman knows how to stir the tenderest chords of his emotion by touching intimately and solemnly on his memories of childhood; evening, morning, night — the complaints fond embraces of his mother; the longing of that distant, forsaken woman for her son, her languishing, despair and death. Parzival, overcome by fearful emotion and overwhelming melancholy, sinks weeping at the beautiful woman’s feet: he is tormented by dreadful remorse. Bending over him, she puts her arms gently about his neck. Soothing and chiding of his immoderate grief. Not all that could make him happy was contained in his mother’s love: the last breath of motherly longing is the benediction of the first kiss of love. Bending her head above his, she now presses her lips to his in a long kiss. Suddenly the youth springs up with an expression of utter terror. With this kiss a dreadful change has taken place in him: he puts his hand to his heart; there suddenly he feels the wound of Anfortas burning; hears rising from deep within him Anfortas’ _ lamentation. ‘The wound! The wound is bleeding here! Miserable one, and I could not help you!’ To the horror and amazement of the beautiful woman he responds with a cold stare: the mysterious happening witnessed at the Castle of the Grail claims him entirely; transferred wholly into the soul of Anfortas, he feels Anfortas’ enormous suffering, his dreadful self-reproach; the unspeakable torments of yearning love, the unholy terrors of sinful desire, even there, beholding the wondrous Grail, permeated by the gleam of its sublime ecstasy, annihilated by the Divinity of its world-redeeming balm. He invokes the Grail, the Blood of the Redeemer: he hears Divine lamentation over the fall of the Chosen One; he hears the Saviour’s cry for the relic to be freed from the custody of besmirched hands: and he himself has experienced this monstrous suffering, he himself has witnessed the agonies of the guilt-laden man: to his innermost being there has been a loud appeal for deliverance, and he has remained dumb, has fled, wandered, child-like, dissipating his soul in wild, foolish adventures! Where is there a man sinful and wretched as he? How can he ever hope to find forgiveness for his monstrous neglect of duty? — The woman, amazed and lost in passionate admiration, seeks vainly to silence him. He sees her every gaze, hears her every word, as if from Anfortas’ soul: this is how the wretched woman looked, this is how she spoke, this is how she twined her arm about his neck; these are the fearful agonies he has had to bear away with him as his reward! ‘Corrupter, depart from me!’ Now the woman’s soul blazes with insane desire. ‘Cruel one! If you feel the agonies of others, then feel also mine! In you I am to find deliverance, in you alone to die! For you I have waited throughout eternities of misery: to love you, to be yours for one hour, can alone repay me for torments such as no other being has ever suffered!’ — Parzival: ‘You will be damned, with me, for eternity if for but one instant I forget my mission in your arms! I have been sent for your salvation also. Madwoman, do you not realize that your thirst is only increased by drinking: that your desire is extinguished only through lacking appeasement?’ All the torments of the human heart lie open to him: he feels them all and knows the only way of ending them. The woman: ‘So it was my kiss that made you see clearly? Oh, fool! Embrace me now in love, so shall you be this very day God himself. Take me only for one hour to your heart, and let me then be damned for eternity! — I want no deliverance: I want to love you!’ Parz. ‘I will love and deliver you if you will show me the way to Anfortas.’ She rages. “Never shall you find it. Let him who has fallen perish.’ He persists. She demands as payment an hour of love. He repulses her. She beats her breast, calls madly for help. She is still powerful enough, she says, to lead him astray so that he will never find the Castle of the Grail: she curses the tracks and paths! Klingsor appears on the tower of the castle: men-at-arms come running: Parzival recognizes the lance with which Anfortas was wounded, wrests it from the knight: “With this sign I banish you. As the wound shall close that this spear made, let all here perish, and this splendour fall in ruins!’ — He brandishes the lance: with a fearful noise the castle crumbles, the garden withers and becomes a desert. Parzival, from afar, gazing back at Kundry who has collapsed screaming: ‘You know where you can see me again!’ He hastens away through the ruins.
At Monsalvat there is grief and confusion. Anfortas can no longer be moved to preside over the office of the Grail. Tormented beyond all bounds, he wishes to obtain death by defiance: he no longer wishes to behold the Grail, which seems to have wrapped even its miraculous power in mourning, its gleam, since Parzival’s presence, having grown steadily fainter. For long now, the sacred vessel has remained locked in its shrine. All are starving and demoralized. The knights are obliged to seek profane food; their strength is waning; they are no longer sent out. Titurel, deprived of the sight of the life-giving relic, himself incapable of still performing the office, has died. Anfortas longingly awaits his own death. The knights besiege his chamber, assail him, weeping and threatening: steadfastly he refuses: he wants to die. - Gurnemans, under such circumstances rapidly aged and become almost a childish old man, has retired to the sacred spring at the edge of the forest, there to die a hermit. Not long before, he has again discovered Kundry, lying, as always, in death-like sleep; after again awakening her, he notices a great change in contrast to previously: awaking, she is not amazed, does not curse, but, on the contrary, attends him gently and constantly. But no word is to be got out of her: she seems utterly to have lost her tongue. — One beautiful spring morning Kundry is drawing water at the spring for Gurnemans who is lying before his hut in prayer. Slowly from the distance Parzival is seen approaching: he is all in black armour; with head bowed and lance lowered, he approaches dreamily and sinks down on a grassy seat near the spring. His visor is shut. Gurnemans notices and addresses him. To all questions, Parziv. only shakes his head sadly. At last Gurnemans, put out, rebukes him for stopping here with helmet closed and armed with shield and lance. Does he not know what day it is? — ‘No’ — Where does he come from then? He can hardly have lived amongst Christians not to know that today is most holy Good Friday? — Parz. is long silent. Then he opens his helmet, removes it from his head, drives the lance into the ground, lays shield and sword before it, sinks to his knees, and fixing his eyes fervently on the blood-stained point of the lance, prays earnestly. — Gurnemans gazes at him with emotion, believes he recognizes him and summons Kundry as witness. She, with a quiet nod, affirms him to be the same who once appeared by the lake and killed the swan. Parzival is questioned. He too recognizes the old man and now tells how long he has wandered vainly searching for the Castle of the Grail where he has a great offence to atone for. He had despaired of ever again finding the way; by penances of every kind he had wished to partake of the grace to be guided aright: in vain: his works were not so powerful as the magic which condemned him to wander! Can the old man give him news? Gurnemans answers sadly that his tidings will not cheer him, and reports all the wretched events at Monsalvat. Parziv., tormented by remorse at not having alleviated this distress long before, chides his blindness, his childish foolishness, and, overcome with grief, falls back in a swoon. Kundry leaps forward: she fetches water in a large bowl. Gurnemans restrains her: there, by the spring itself, shall the pilgrim be bathed: he will, he suspects, today have a high office to perform; for that he must be purified, and all the dust of his long wandering washed from him. Both gently escort the revived Parzival to the spring. Parzival asks if the old man will escort him to Anfortas? Gurn: Certainly, we will go together to the castle today: the funeral rites of Titurel, my dear master, are being celebrated. Anfortas has vowed to expose the Grail once more for the canonization of his father who has died through his fault. Meanwhile Kundry has loosed his greaves and is now bathing his feet; he gazes at her with amazement and emotion, and then asks Gurnemans to moisten his head also with the holy water: the latter consecrates him for his appointed task, sprinkling his head with water. Then Parziv. sees Kundry produce a golden phial from her bosom, pour precious balm from it on to his feet, anoint them and then dry them with her hair. ‘If you anoint my feet, so let Gurnemans anoint my head also: for I am to be King!’ Gurnemans takes and anoints his head and pronounces the blessing. Softly and unnoticed, Parzival scoops water from the spring in the bowl and moistens Kundry’s head with it: ‘My first duty I discharge thus: be baptized and believe in the Redeemer.’ — Kundry lowers her head and appears to weep. — With gentle delight Parzival gazes at wood and meadow. How wonderfully all is in bloom and speaking to him in soft colours, sweet shapes and gentle fragrance: never has he seen the meadow so beautiful. Gurne: ‘It is the magic of Good Friday, lord.’ Parz. ‘The day of greatest grief? Ought not all creation rather to be mourning?’ — Gurnem: ‘You see it is not so: today all animal creation is glad to gaze up at the Redeemer. Not being able to see him upon the cross, it gazes up at Man Redeemed; who, through God’s loving sacrifice, has a feeling of holiness and purity, the meadow flowers notice that man does not trample them today, but, as God took pity on mankind, spares them: now all that is blooming and soon to die, gives thanks; it is Nature’s Day of Innocence.’ Kundry, slowly raising her head, gazes up at Parzival earnestly and calmly beseeching. Parz. ‘Today is the great Day of Innocence: rise up and be blissful.’ — He kisses her on the brow. — Ringing of bells, chorus of men’s voices approaching from afar. — Gurnemans: ‘The hour is come: midday, as before. Follow me.’ Parzival, armed by them both, solemnly takes the lance and, with Kundry, follows Gurnemans. — As the singing swells and the bells sound louder, the scene gradually changes as in Act 1. In the corridors — processions of knights in mourning garb. Nearer at hand — lamentations for the dead. — A funeral procession. — Then, return to the Great Hall. Dirges sung by bass, tenor and soprano voices: in place of the table before the baldachin, the catafalque. Enter procession of knights: from the other side, Anfortas, on his sick bed, behind Titurel’s coffin: in front, the shrine containing the Grail. Dim twilight. When, with all in their places, the lid of the coffin is removed — a violent burst of lamentation: Anfortas raises himself from his sick-bed under the baldachin. Such is his despair that he condemns the knights for wishing to force him again to work the magic of the Grail, here, in sight of the father he has killed! His wound, since the ending of reanimation through the Grail, has moved fatally close to his heart: another day perhaps, and death will be assured. Why this fearful cruelty of casting him once again back into life? — He again refuses. Attempts at compulsion. Muttering and threats from the knights. Anfortas: ‘Madmen, with what will you threaten me, when death is my deliverance?’ — Then Parzival steps forward. ‘Live, Anfortas, live in repentance and atonement. Your wound I close thus:’ He touches Anfortas’ thigh with the spear. Parzival goes on to describe to him his suffering, his error, his inner agony: from all shall he now be delivered: the magic to which you succumbed is broken; strong is the magic of him who desires, but stronger is that of him who denies. “Thanks be to your suffering: it has made me a fellow-sufferer; be thankful for my foolishness, through which I was able to attain to knowledge. I can perform the Office, and shall, so that you may be delivered!’ — Anfortas, suddenly healed, has taken and elevated the Grail from its shrine: the Grail now gleams forth at its brightest; a halo is spread over all around; Titurel rises from his coffin and gives his blessing. Anfortas leads Parzival to his place beneath the baldachin: — Kundry embraces Parzival’s feet and silently sinks lifeless before him. A white dove descends from the cupola and circles above Parzival. — Anfortas on his knees before him in homage. —
Well, that was help in need!