A Letter from Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck

Introduction: An Informative Letter

he following notes concern the extract from a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck reproduced on the preceding page. Wagner's letters to Mathilde are of great value in understanding his Parsifal. This letter in particular, when read with an awareness of what Wagner had been reading and writing elsewhere during the years 1854-1860, not only explains several aspects of Parsifal but also opens up a perspective on the work that is at odds with its interpretation in the 20th century. In order to show why this true, unfortunately, it will be necessary to venture out into the deep waters of philosophy and religion.

nyone who has read Lucy Beckett's book on Parsifal will know that, in her interpretation, the work is thoroughly and exclusively Christian. So much so, she tells her readers, that Nietzsche was understandably shocked by Wagner's apparent conversion to the slave-morality of Christianity. For Nietzsche, when Wagner wrote about purity he was promoting chastity, a subject on which, Nietzsche remarked with typical sarcasm, Wagner was a leading authority. Beckett's view of Parsifal is often encountered; most recently it was summarised in the program book for the latest Covent Garden production, which states that Beckett's book is recognised as the standard work on the opera. Although her book does indeed contain much interesting and relevant information about Parsifal, this note will show where Beckett's "proposed interpretation" is fundamentally wrong.

ucy Beckett's view of Parsifal is one that is rooted in the English tradition. Initially at least Parsifal was received in England as a work of Christian mysticism. A century ago it was not unusual for English Wagnerians to prepare for a performance of Parsifal, in Bayreuth or elsewhere, with prayer and fasting. Beckett follows Jessie L. Weston in regarding Parsifal as a work in which there is a tension between pagan elements (drawn from Celtic and Germanic mythology) and Christian elements, a tension that originates in Wagner's medieval sources. Weston took the view that the primary source and inspiration for Wagner's last drama was Wolfram's Parzival and this was uncritically accepted by Beckett. While this misunderstanding is excusable where Weston — who was relying on Wagner's own account in his autobiography — was concerned, it is inexcusable that Beckett — writing half a century later — ignored other medieval sources that relate to the inner and the outer action of Parsifal. It is at best a half-truth. 

nother interpretation of Parsifal has been influential during the last thirty years. It was put forward by Robert Gutman in the last chapter of his Richard Wagner: the Man, his Mind and his Music. In this bizarre interpretation, which seems to be accepted as absolute truth by the current generation of stage directors, Wagner created Parsifal as the gospel of Nazism, an ideology that Gutman and his followers believe to have been Wagner's invention. In this interpretation, when Wagner's text refers to purity, he means racial purity. In Parsifal, according to Gutman, Wagner set forth a religion of racism under the cover of Christian legend. Parsifal is an enactment of the Aryan's plight, struggle, and hope for redemption, a drama characterized not only by the composer's naively obscure and elliptical literary style, but also by the indigenous circumlocutions of allegory, the calculated unrealities of symbolism, and, especially, the sultry corruptions of decadence. Strong stuff, indeed, and even more fundamentally wrong than Beckett's interpretation. As this letter of August 1860 reveals.

Metempsychosis

Only a profound acceptance of the doctrine of metempsychosis has been able to console me by revealing the point at which all things finally converge at the same level of redemption, after the various individual existences - which run alongside each other in time - have come together in a meaningful way outside time. (Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, August 1860)

he more perceptive of his biographers recognise that the most important event in Richard Wagner's life was his discovery, in the autumn of 1854, of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, whose book The World as Will and Representation changed Wagner's life by changing his understanding of the universe. In the course of a year he read the book four times and also (according to a letter he wrote to Hans von Bülow) read Schopenhauer's Parerga and Paralipomena and then (according to Wagner's Annals) some of his minor works. These probably included his essay On the Basis of Morality, in which the philosopher argues that the only true basis of morality is compassion, and On the Will in Nature, which provided (in its 1854 edition and subsequent revisions) a reading list of books and articles about Oriental religions. One of the books recommended was Burnouf's Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism. It was in this book that Wagner found the story that was to be the basis of his sketch for a Buddhist drama, Die Sieger (The Victors). He was also fascinated to read, in this and other books recommended by Schopenhauer, about reincarnation. In his recent book on Parsifal, Peter Bassett explains:

Wagner was especially attracted to the story's secondary theme of reincarnation as a vehicle for his compositional technique of Emotional Reminiscence, usually referred to by the term 'leitmotiv'. "Only music", he said, "can convey the mysteries of reincarnation". Die Sieger was never developed beyond a sketch but some of its ideas were used again in Parsifal, and Prakriti [the outcast maiden] reappeared (transformed) as Kundry. Wagner's fascination with Buddhism intensified as the years went by and coloured his general philosophy. It is seen most vividly in Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde (where, for example, one finds a correlation between Truth, Nirvana and Night) but there are also traces in Der Ring des Nibelungen. In 1856, the same year as Die Sieger, Wagner drafted a Buddhist ending for the Ring, with Brünnhilde achieving enlightenment (becoming a Buddha herself) and attaining Nirvana. That ending was subsequently replaced by the present one.

ust over four years later, in August 1860, Wagner wrote to Mathilde Wesendonck that he had accepted the doctrine of metempsychosis, Seelenwanderung. This was a doctrine that, according to Schopenhauer, was found not only in Indian religions but throughout the ancient world, for example taught by the Greek thinkers Pythagoras¹ and Plato. (Schopenhauer added, with his usual dry humour, that reincarnation would be a good thing if it meant that one could remember the Greek grammar that one had learned in an earlier existence!). Clearly Wagner was influenced by Schopenhauer's summary of the Vedic doctrine of metempsychosis:

This teaches that all sufferings inflicted in life by man on other beings must be expiated in a following life in this world by precisely the same sufferings. It goes to the length of teaching that a person who kills only an animal, will be born as just such an animal at some point in endless time, and will suffer the same death... The highest reward awaiting the noblest deeds and most complete resignation, which comes also to the woman who in seven successive lives has voluntarily died on the funeral pyre of her husband, and no less to the person whose pure mouth has never uttered a single lie — such a reward can only be expressed by the myth only negatively in the language of this world, namely by the promise, so often recurring, of not being reborn any more ... or as the Buddhists, admitting neither Vedas nor castes, express it: You shall attain to Nirvana, in other words, to a state or condition in which there are not four things, namely: birth, old age, disease and death. (The World as Will and Representation, tr. E.F.J. Payne)

Parsifal's Purity

hen Nietzsche read the text of Parsifal, he interpreted Wagner's references to purity in terms of chastity. The Grail community were pure in the sense that they abstained from sex and all forms of sensuality, and this was the source of their power and strength. By deserting the Grail in the service of love (Minne dienst), Amfortas had lost that protection and therefore he was wounded by the spear when he tried to use it against Klingsor. Nietzsche's reading was understandable but wrong.

hen Gutman read the text of Parsifal, he interpreted Wagner's references to purity, following a suggestion by Adorno and notes made by Wagner in 1882, in terms of race. The Grail community were pure in the sense that they had pure blood, untainted by that of inferior races. By his erotic misadventure with the mysterious seductress (Kundry), Amfortas had lost the protection of the Grail etc. Gutman's reading was understandable but wrong.

t is incredible what interpretations can be imposed on Parsifal if one ignores what Wagner actually wrote about it! In this letter to Mathilde, Wagner states clearly and unambiguously that when he refers to the purity of Parsifal, he means the hero's karma (i.e. merit or demerit) acquired in previous lives, when the youth had those many names that he has now forgotten. It is through his merit (purity=karma or more accurately, karmic merit) that Parsifal is able to resist Kundry. It is on account of his merit (purity=karmic merit) that the Spear will not harm him, instead it rests in the air above his head (like the magic weapon did in the account of the life of the Buddha that Wagner, according to Karl Heckel, found in Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism). It is by means of his merit that Parsifal is able to find the path of salvation, at the end of which he achieves total enlightenment (perhaps even becoming a Buddha himself) after which, transferring his superabundance of merit (purity= karmic merit) to Kundry, allows her to achieve Nirvana. Osthoff is surely right when he states: her deliverance [Erlösung] is extinction [=Nirvana] in the Buddhist sense.

Time and Space

... but since time and space are merely our way of perceiving things ... (Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, August 1860)

agner's Parsifal is not a Buddhist drama, even if it draws on Buddhist traditions and makes use of Buddhist ideas (dharma). After 1860 Wagner continued to study the history of religions and in 1874 he acquired an edition of Sutras translated into English by M. Coomára Swámy. The "religion" of Parsifal, which Wagner referred to as a religion of compassion, is a synthesis of what Wagner saw as the common fundamentals of Buddhism and Christianity, i.e. the teachings of the historical Buddha and those of the historical Jesus, at best imperfectly preserved in the respective scriptures of Buddhism and the Christian Church. In essence, however, Parsifal is a work written under the influence of Schopenhauer, and in particular the ideas that the philosopher had described in On the Basis of Morality. In the appendix to that essay, Schopenhauer explained how his ideas about morality were a consequence of his metaphysics. Although Parsifal is more concerned with Schopenhauer's ethical teaching and less with his metaphysical teachings than is Tristan und Isolde, those metaphysical teachings are relevant to the former because they underpin the ethical teachings that are at its core. Therefore On the Basis of Morality is as important for an understanding of Parsifal as The World as Will and Representation is to both (even if Lucy Beckett might disagree).

hese brief notes cannot be expected to review Schopenhauer's metaphysics. The following are the relevant points to this discussion; the reader is recommended to read The World as Will and Representation for the full story. Schopenhauer's starting point is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a philosopher whom Schopenhauer greatly respected. This did not inhibit him from correcting what he regarded as Kant's errors, both in his metaphysical teachings and his ethical teachings. Kant taught that rational beings interpret the world through sensory phenomena (what our senses tell us about "things in themselves") and interpret this data using mechanisms hard-wired into our brains. These mechanisms (which in Schopenhauer's terms amount to "the world as representation") include a "world-view" that is defined by the a priori institutions of three-dimensional space and the dimension of time, together with some general concepts or "categories". As he developed his critique of Kant, Schopenhauer eventually arrived at a philosophy that was radically different from contemporary western philosophy, while still recognisably Kantian.

n Schopenhauer's development of Kant's ideas, there are no individuals, since the "principle of individuation" is no more that a concept hard-wired into our brains. There are no separate individuals, whether living beings or inanimate objects. Furthermore, events are neither separated in space nor ordered in time, since these dimensions are also no more than a priori fictions that our brains use to interpret sense-data. Developing ethical ideas from these metaphysical ideas, Schopenhauer arrived at the conclusion that what we do to others, we really do to ourselves, since there are no separate individuals. He also concluded that the world is characterised by suffering and that the only escape from suffering is to correct the error of existence. He was delighted to discover that these ideas, which he had developed from western philosophy, had been taught by the Buddha and his followers for more than two millenia. In other words, Schopenhauer's philosophy was a rational basis for something very close to Buddhism.

hus Wagner, following Schopenhauer and Kant, wrote that time and space are merely our way of perceiving things ... and in his Parsifal he shows what happens when someone receives a flash of enlightenment in which he sees, not the world as representation, but the world as will. In the shock and agitation that he is caused by Kundry's kiss, Parsifal sees beneath what Hindus call the veil of Maya; which was often mentioned by Schopenhauer as a metaphor for the illusions that hide from us the world-as-will:

The ancient wisdom of the Indians declares that it is Maya, the veil of deception, which covers the eyes of mortals, and causes them to see a world of which one cannot say either that it is or that it is not; for it is like a dream, like the sunshine on the sand which the traveller from a distance takes to be water, or like the piece of rope on the ground that he takes to be a snake. (These similes are repeatedly found in innumerable passages of the Vedas and Puranas.) ... The Vedas and Puranas know no better simile for the whole knowledge of the actual world, called by them the web of Maya, than the dream, and they use none more frequently... The Maya of the Indians, the work and fabric of which are the whole world of illusion, is paraphrased ² by amor...   (The World as Will and Representation, tr. E.F.J. Payne)

he illusion or delusion of our way of perceiving things is lifted, momentarily, from Wagner's hero in his first encounter with amor and he perceives that there are in reality no individuals, no separation in space or time. All things interpenetrate.

He has a presentiment that, however much time and space separate him from other individuals and the innumerable miseries they suffer, indeed suffer through him; however much time and space present these as quite foreign to him, yet in themselves and apart from the representation and its forms, it is the one will-to-live appearing in them all which, failing to recognize itself here, turns its weapons against itself, and, by seeking increased well-being in one of its phenomena, imposes the greatest suffering on another. He dimly sees that he, the bad person, is precisely this whole will; that in consequence he is not only the tormentor but also the tormented, from whose suffering he is separated and kept free only by a delusive dream, whose form is space and time. But this dream vanishes and he sees that in reality he must pay for the pleasure with the pain, and that all suffering which he only knows as possible actually concerns him as the will-to-live, since possibility and actuality, near and remote in time and space, are different only for the knowledge of the individual, only by means of the principium individuationis, and not in themselves. It is this truth which mythically ... is expressed by the transmigration of souls ... (Ibid)

ow Parsifal knows that he is one with Amfortas, he feels the pain in his own heart, he experiences the temptation and wounding of Amfortas as if it were happening to him here and now, because here is also there, now is also then. This revelation is impossible to describe in words but, as Schopenhauer revealed in The World as Will and Representation, of all the arts, music alone can express the "world-as-will" because it belongs to the "world-as-will". Here we have central ideas of Wagner's Parsifal that are ignored by those who, like Lucy Beckett, deny the influence of Schopenhauer on this most Schopenhauerian of all dramas.

The Beautiful Kundry

... the fabulously wild messenger of the Grail is to be one and the same person as the enchantress of the second act. Since this dawned on me, almost everything else about the subject has become clear to me. (Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, August 1860)

n his book Parzival und der Gral in der Dichtung des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, Wolfgang Golther attempted to establish what Wagner had written in the lost sketch of early May 1857. He realised that there was a basis for such a reconstruction in Wagner's letters to Mathilde. This letter of August 1860 tells us something of particular importance, namely, that in Wagner's original (1857) conception, Kundry did not appear in the second act. In other words, originally, the maiden whose kiss provoked in Parsifal his first taste of enlightenment was not Kundry. In a stroke of genius, now Wagner made the nameless maiden into a transformed Kundry, so that she became not only the source of the compassion that would enable his final enlightenment (exactly parallel to what happened to the Buddha Shakyamuni in the last act of Die Sieger) but also the source of his first taste of enlightenment.

here did Wagner get this idea? In his autobiography Wagner relates that on that spring morning in 1857, when he conceived his Parsifal, he had not looked at Wolfram's poem Parzival for twelve years. It was only after he had told Mathilde about his ideas, indeed after the crisis which forced him to relocate to Venice, that she found a new edition of Parzival and sent it to him. This enabled Wagner to refresh his acquaintance with the medieval romance. He would have found, among other details that are easily missed on a first reading, that there were two Condries. One of them was the hideous messenger of the Grail, a heathen sorceress (originally from India) and the other was "Condrie la Belle", sister of Gawain, who was one of the women imprisoned in Clinschor's magic castle. It is highly probable that this gave Wagner the idea of making his Kundry a double character, who appears in the domain of the Grail as the messenger but in the magic castle as a "fearfully beautiful" maiden. This maiden was originally the nameless princess who attempted to seduce Josaphat in another medieval poem, a key source that Weston, Beckett and other commentators have completely ignored.

Kundry's Restlessness

This woman suffers unspeakable restlessness and excitement; the old esquire had noticed this on previous occasions, each time that she had shortly afterwards disappeared. (Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, August 1860)

nce we realise that, in the 1857 conception of Parsifal, Kundry did not appear in the second act, then almost everything else about the subject becomes clear. In the original, therefore, Kundry appeared in the first act, when she suffered from unspeakable restlessness and excitement, and again in the third act, where as Gurnemanz remarks she is changed, peaceful, almost silent. What Wagner intended to show here, beyond any doubt, is the denial of the will. Amfortas' wound is a symbol of sickness in general, and his suffering (for which Kundry strives to find a cure) represents universal suffering. This is a central idea of Schopenhauer's philosophy: the world is characterised by suffering, the only cure for suffering is to end existence, but the only way to end existence (presupposing that there is such a thing as reincarnation, the wheel of saṃsarā, the cycle of death and rebirth) is not death, as Amfortas wrongly believes, but through the denial of the will to live. Eventually Kundry finds her escape by denying the will to live, which only becomes possible for her after Parsifal has freed her (and himself) from the illusions of Klingsor's garden, i.e. the world as representation.

n this note on Wagner's letter to Mathilde of August 1860 I have tried to show how important aspects of the work, ones that must be taken into account in any interpretation, have been overlooked by some earlier commentators such as Weston, only partially understood by other commentators such as Golther, and ignored by more recent commentators, notably Gutman and Beckett. A rejection of their respective interpretations, which inform many current productions of Wagner's Parsifal, and attention to what Wagner wrote to his beloved Mathilde, might allow audiences to discover Parsifal anew.