It is useless to quibble about this, seeking to explain away plain things:  the truth remains that “Siegfried” is a glorification of one view of life, “Parsifal” of its direct opposite and flat contradiction; and anyone who accepts the one view must needs loathe the other as sinful.  To me the “Siegfried” view of life commends itself; and I unhesitatingly assert the sinfulness of the “Parsifal” view.  The two operas invite comparison; for at the outset their heroes seem to be the same man.  Siegfried and Parsifal are both untaught fools; each has his understanding partly enlightened by hearing of his mother’s sufferings and death (compare Wordsworth’s “A deep distress hath humanised my soul"); each has his education completed by a woman’s kiss.  All this may seem very profound to the German mind; but to me it is crude, a somewhat too obvious allegory, partly superficial, partly untrue, a survival of windy sentimental mid-century German metaphysics, like the Wagner-Heine form of “The Flying Dutchman” story, and the Wagner form of the “Tannhaeuser” story.  However, I am willing to believe that Siegfried, when he kisses Bruennhilde on Hinde Fell, and Parsifal, when Kundry kisses him in Klingsor’s magic garden, has each his full faculties set in action for the first time.  And then?  And then Siegfried, with his fund of health and vitality, sees that the world is glorious, and joyfully presses forward more vigorously than ever on the road that lies before him, never hesitating for a moment to live out his life to the full; while Parsifal, lacking health and vitality—­probably his father suffered from rickets—­sees that the grief and suffering of the world outweigh and outnumber its joys, and not only renounces life, but is so overcome with pity for all sufferers as to regard it as his mission to heal and console them.  And having healed and consoled one, he deliberately turns from the green world, with its trees and flowers, its dawn and sunset, its winds and waters, and shuts himself in a monkery which has a back garden, a pond and some ducks.  There is only one deadly sin—­to deny life, as Nietzsche says:  carefully to pull up all the weeds in one’s garden, but to plant there neither flower nor tree—­and this is what “Parsifal” glorifies and advocates.

Now, far be it from me to go hunting a moral tendency in a work of art, and to praise or blame the art as I chance to like or dislike the tendency.  I am in a state of perfect preparedness to see beauty in a picture, even if the subject is to me repulsive.  But in the case of a picture it is possible to say, “Yes, very pretty,” and pass on.  In the case of a story, a play, or a music-drama, you cannot.  You are tied to your seat for one or two or three mortal hours; and however perfect may be the art with which music-drama or play or story is set before you, if the subject revolts or bores you, you soon sicken of the whole business.  And in the highest kind of story, play, or music-drama,