The same explanation is made in the mediaeval poem “Lohengrin.”  We are not called upon to admire the logic of Wolfram and the Knights of the Grail, but nothing could be plainer than this:  The sufferings of Amfortas having been wofully prolonged by Parzival’s failure to ask the healing question, the Knights of the Grail were thereafter required by their oracular guide to prohibit all questioning of themselves under penalty of forfeiture of their puissant help.  When Wagner wrote his last drama, he was presented with a dilemma:  should he remain consistent and adhere to the question as a dramatic motive, or dare the charge of inconsistency for the sake of that bit of spectacular apparatus, the sacred lance?  He chose inconsistency and the show, and emphasized the element of relic worship to such a degree as to make his drama foreign to the intellectual and religious habits of the time in which he wrote.  But this did not disturb him; for he knew that beauty addresses itself to the emotions rather than the intellect, and that his philosophical message of the redeeming power of loving comnpassion would find entrance to the hearts of the people over all the obstacles that reason might interpose.  Yet he destroyed all the poetical bonds which ought or might have existed between “Parsifal” and “Lohengrin.”

It was Wagner who created the contradiction which puts his operas in opposition by his substitution of the sacred lance as a dramatic motive for the question.  But poets had long before taken the privilege of juggling with two elements of ancient myths and folk-tales which are blended in the story of Lohengrin.  Originally there was no relationship between the Knight of the Holy Grail and the Swan Knight, and there is no telling when the fusion of the tales was made.  But the element of the forbidden question is of unspeakable antiquity and survives in the law of taboo which exists among savages to-day.  When Wagner discussed his opera in his “Communication to My Friends” he pointed out the resemblance between the story of Lohengrin and the myth of Zeus and Semele.  Its philosophical essence he proclaimed to be humanity’s feeling of the necessity of love.  Elsa was “the woman who drew Lohengrin from the sunny heights to the depths of earth’s warm heart. . . .  Thus yearned he for woman—­for the human heart.  And thus did he step down from out his loneliness of sterile bliss when he heard this woman’s cry for succor, this heart cry from humanity below.”  This is all very well, and it would be churlish to say that it is not beautifully reflected in Wagner’s drama; but it does not explain the need of the prohibition.  A woman who loves must have unquestioning faith in her husband—­that is all.  But there are two ancient myths which show that the taboo was conceived as a necessary ingredient of the association of divine men with human women.  Let both be recalled, for both have plainly gone over into the mediaeval story.