Sir Percivale
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called the Pure;

that the talismanic vessel is

the cup itself from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with His own;

that the lance which struck and healed the grievous wound in the side of the king is the spear with which the side of the Christ was pierced on Calvary.  It is also obvious that the king, whose name is Amfortas, that is, “the powerless one,” is a symbol of humanity suffering from the wounds of slavery to desire; that the heroic act of Parsifal, as Wagner calls him, which brings release to the king and his knights, is renunciation of desire, prompted by pity, compassion, fellow-suffering; and that this gentle emotion it was that had inspired knowledge simultaneously of a great need and a means of deliverance.  The ethical idea of the drama, as I set forth in a book entitled “Studies in the Wagnerian Drama” many years ago, is that it is the enlightenment which comes through pity which brings salvation.  The allusion is to the redemption of mankind by the sufferings and compassionate death of Christ; and that stupendous tragedy is the prefiguration of the mimic drama which Wagner has constructed.  The spectacle to which he invites us, and with which he hoped to impress us and move us to an acceptance of the lesson underlying his play, is the adoration of the Holy Grail, cast in the form of a mimicry of the Last Supper, bedizened with some of the glittering pageantry of mediaeval knighthood and romance.

In the minds of many persons it is a profanation to make a stage spectacle out of religious things; and it has been urged that “Parsifal” is not only religious but specifically Christian; not only Christian but filled with parodies of elements which are partly liturgical, partly Biblical.  In narrating the incidents of the play I have purposely avoided all allusions to the things which have been matters of controversy.  It is possible to look upon “Parsifal” as a sort of glorified fairy tale, and to this end I purpose to subject its elements to inquiry, and shall therefore go a bit more into detail.  Throughout the play Parsifal is referred to as a redeemer, and in the third act scenes in which he plays as the central figure are borrowed from the life of Christ.  Kundry, the sorceress, who attempts his destruction at one time and is in the service of the knights of the Grail at another, anoints his feet and dries them with her hair, as the Magdalen did the feet of Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee.  Parsifal baptizes Kundry and admonishes her to believe in the Redeemer:—­

    Die Taufe nimm
  Und glaub’ an den Erloser!