Saturday, September 2:
What to do about the blood-stained lance? — The poem says the lance is supposed to have been produced at the same time as the Grail, and clinging to the tip was a drop of blood. — Anyway, this is the one which has caused Anfortas’ wound: but how does this hang together? Great confusion here. As a relic, the lance goes with the cup; in this is preserved the blood that the lance made to flow from the Saviour’s thigh. The two are complementary. — So, either this: —
The lance has been entrusted to the knights at the same time as the Grail. When trouble presses hard it is even borne into battle by the Keeper of the Grail. Anfortas, in order to break Klingsor’s magic, which is so fatal to the knights, has taken it from the altar and set off with it against the arch-foe. Succumbing to seduction, he let shield and spear fall, the sacred weapon was stolen from him and used to wound him as he turned to flee. (Perhaps because Klingsor is anxious to have Anfortas in his power alive, he commands the lance to be used against him, knowing that it wounds but does not kill. Why?) The healing and deliverance of Anfortas is now logically only possible if the lance is rescued from impious hands and reunited with the Grail.
Or this: —
On being entrusted with the Grail, the knights were also promised the lance: only it must first be won by hard fighting. Were it one day to be united with the Grail, then nothing more could assail the knights. Klingsor has found this lance and is keeping it, partly because of its powerful magic — it is capable of wounding even the godliest of men if any fault attach to him — and partly to withhold it from the Community of the Grail, for, by winning it, they would be invincible. Anfortas has now gone forth to deprive Klingsor of this lance: seduced by love, he is wounded by Klingsor’s hurling the lance at him. — The continuation now remains the same: it has got to come into the knights’ possession. — Klingsor hurls the spear at Parzival: he catches it; he knows about it, knows its power, its significance. —
Which is better, Cos‘? — ?
Oh, anything, anything is better than to be so Godforsaken as I was yesterday! — How I ‘complained’! — — I expect I had been working too hard. I am, I’m afraid, still always too passionate in all that I do, — even my work: I had merely finished a day too early: now I was having to atone for it. My suffering had got very much worse. —
Well, today you are going to Baron Augus! He is someone I have also come to know. It is the affable who are dangerous; one credits them with depths, with a divine needs-must, and then, occasionally, is ashamed for having gone much too far. Only one have I found with this divine needs-must in his soul: my Parzival, my son in the Holy Spirit. —
Oh, if only the magic word could be found to enlighten your people concerning you completely! What they know of you remains defective, only half complete. Now they’re dragging you around. I am deeply humiliated by their being allowed to! But that you should not really be letting yourself be dragged but, to deaden your suffering, your weakness, should now be trying to make yourself believe that it is all right like this too, and this and that has indeed its own truth too, and everything that I know of, and what they say to you: — then I could, and can, not look on any more: then nothing has any sense for me any more, and my love seems weakness even to me. To me you then seem wholly lost, completely unfaithful.
Oh — to work!! —