Monsalvat: the Parsifal home page | Wolzogen | Divine Blood
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Monsalvat: the Parsifal home page | Wolzogen | Divine Blood
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The incomparable thing about myth is that it is true for all time and its content, however much it might be compressed, is inexhaustible throughout the ages.
n the early
nineteenth century the desire for a German identity led scholars to seek for cultural origins.
The humiliating defeats of the disunited German states by Napoleon's armies were still fresh in
German memories. In its quest for national identity Germany turned to the literature of the
Middle Ages (such as the Nibelungenlied), to legends of heroes such as Barbarossa and in search of
whatever might remain of the culture of the old Germanic or Teutonic tribes. Scholars devoted
themselves to finding and translating old manuscripts relevant to German history, not just old
German sagas but the medieval literature of Scandinavia, such as the writings of Saxo and Snorri. Although
Christianisation had effectively destroyed all traces of the old Germanic religious beliefs,
except for accounts preserved in the writings of Roman authors such as Tacitus, it was believed
that something could be reconstructed from Scandinavian sources. The Grimm brothers discovered
in German folklore (Märchen) the diluted remains of tales that earlier had appeared in the sagas
and poems of northern Europe.
ven in
Scandinavia, which had been converted to Christianity in and around the 11th century, the
priests and monks had managed to destroy most traces of paganism. Some poems, either heroic or
religious, survived; but even the best manuscript (the Codex Regius) of the collection
of ON poems known as the Poetic Edda is incomplete. In addition to the heroic poems there are mythological
poems that provide some tantalising glimpses of the old Scandinavian religious beliefs and by
doing so shed some light on the beliefs of the Germanic tribes. Around 1200 AD the Icelandic
scholar Snorri Sturlason wrote a manual for poets which has become known as Snorri's
Edda or the Prose
Edda. This book gives a more extensive description of the mythology of pre-Christian
Scandinavia, the subject matter of the poetic tradition that Snorri was attempting to salvage
from oblivion. Unfortunately it is evident that Snorri's knowledge was partial and some of the
book seems to be no more than guesswork; in others words some of the mythological tradition had
already been lost. At that time, however, it is likely that many of the myths still survived in
the form of poems, some already written down. Although Snorri, who was not primarily concerned
with preserving the myths in prose, sometimes contradicts himself and although his accounts
often diverge from the poems, the Prose Edda gives a much more complete picture than
could be obtained from the few surviving poems and sagas alone. Other writers such as Saxo Grammaticus provide
some corroborating evidence about the gods, goddesses and creation myths.
ultures based
on agriculture and cities first appeared in the Bronze Age and these ideas spread from
Mesopotamia westward to the lands around the Mediterranean and eastward to India and China.
These urban-agricultural cultures had been established for centuries while further north, on
the Steppes of central Asia, nomadic horsemen still migrated with their livestock. Even as late
as 1206 AD (at about the same time Snorri was writing his Edda and Wolfram his Parzival) it was possible for warlike horsemen (the
Mongols) to appear as if from nowhere across the Steppes, killing and conquering where they
wished. Nearly three millenia earlier other tribes of horsemen had descended from the Steppes
into Persia and India, conquering the city states and subjugating the indigenous peoples.
he tribe that
conquered Persia were called the Iranians and that which invaded northwest India (in about 1600
BC) became known as the Aryans. It is possible that their cultures were very similar if not identical.
Unfortunately there is insufficient archeological evidence to establish exactly what the
original Aryan
culture was like. (Although Indian nationalists dispute that there was an Aryan invasion, there
are few non-Indian historians who doubt that it happened). What has survived from this period
is sacred literature, primarily four collections of religious books called the Vedas, including
the Rig Veda, written down in about 1500 BC or soon after, but which according to
Indian tradition is much older. This Vedic literature depicts the Aryans as warriors
driving horse-drawn chariots, who subdued the darker-skinned Dasas. The Aryans venerated the
cow, since they lived on milk, butter and beef, and the horse, which drew the chariots of
warriors and gods. Gradually the culture of the conquerors merged into that of the conquered;
the Aryans
spread eastwards, established petty kingdoms across northern India and developed a literature
which included the great epics of the Mahabharata
and the Ramayana. Both their
sacred literature and their secular epics were written in the Aryan language,
Sanskrit. In the late 18th century it was established that Sanskrit was related to both Latin
and Greek. Scholars were surprised to discover many connections between European languages
and mythologies, and what survives of Aryan language and
mythology. Naturally the belief arose that an Indo-Germanic culture (or a family of cultures)
had originated somewhere in Asia, perhaps in the Caucasus, whence it had spread westward into
Europe (with the Teutons), southward into Persia (with the Iranians) and eastward to India
(with the Aryans).
rom Old Norse
poems and from Snorri, Saxo and other medieval writers it is possible to establish not only some of the
ideas of the old Scandinavian religion as it had developed before the arrival of Christianity,
but also some aspects of its development. It is evident that there had been two pantheons of
Gods who had been merged together; this fusion was represented in mythological terms as a war
between the Æsir and the Vanir which ended in a truce and a union of the two pantheons.
The Æsir were the kind of gods that one might expect to be worshipped by warlike horsemen;
while the Vanir were the fertility gods of farmers and fishermen. Although Oðin was the
leader of the Æsir (and identified with the German god Wotan), archeological evidence
suggests that Oðin was less widely worshipped than his son Thor (identified with the
German god Donner) or the fertility gods Frey (=Froh) and his sister Freyja (=Freia). It is
likely that Oðin and Thor arrived in northern Europe with the Teutons and were grafted
onto the existing pantheon of fertility gods.
evertheless
many of the surviving myths feature Oðin. One of them, related by Snorri in the part of
his Prose Edda called Skáldskarpamál tells of how Oðin stole the
dwarfs' mead of poetry from the giant Suttung. Another character in this
myth is Kvasir, an individual known only from Snorri's Edda and his Heimskringla.
Snorri inconsistently refers to Kvasir variously as the wisest of the Æsir (possibly
confusing him with Mimir) given as hostage to the Vanir, as the wisest of the Vanir, and as a
creature created out of the fermented spittle with which the two parties sealed their alliance.
The name Kvasir is related to words in the Scandinavian languages and in Russian that mean
"fermented juice" although this might be no more than a reference to the myth.
he story of
the mead of poetry begins with the murder of the sage Kvasir. According
to Snorri: ... he was so wise that no one could ask him any questions to which he did not
know the answer. He travelled widely through the world teaching people knowledge, and when he
arrived as a guest to some dwarfs, Fialar and Galar, they called him to a private discussion
with them and killed him. They poured his blood into two vats and a pot [or cauldron]; the
latter was called Oðrerir, but the vats were called Son and Boðn. They mixed honey
with the blood and it turned into the mead, whoever drinks from which becomes a poet or a
scholar. The dwarfs told the Æsir that Kvasir had suffocated in intelligence because there
was no one there educated enough to be able to ask him questions.
Curiously, the names of
the three vessels appear elsewhere in relation to three subterranean fountains which (according
to Snorri) nourish the roots of the world-tree; they are also called the cauldron of
Hvergelmir, source of the great rivers; Mimir's well, which gives wisdom and to which Oðin
already had access by the forfeit of an eye; and Urd's well, from which the dead drink before
entering the underworld.
o begins the
story of the mead of poetry. We should keep in mind that the purpose of
Snorri's Edda was not to reawaken a dead religious tradition, but to preserve the
northern European tradition of skaldic poetry, which found its traditional subject matter in
mythology. In those poems there is an allusive device known as kennings. A kenning is
a form of periphrasis in which a metaphor is substituted for a simple term. For example,
"otter's ransom" is a kenning for "gold", in which the meaning is clear to a listener familiar
with the tale of the Otter (Otr) and Andvari's hoard of gold (which became the Nibelung hoard).
Kennings were an important part of the poet's trade. With the story of the mead of poetry Snorri was attempting to explain to the apprentice poet why the
kennings for poetry (his main subject) included "Kvasir's blood", "dwarf's ale", "Suttung's
drink", "Odin's mead", "sea of Hnitbjörg" and "liquid of Oðrerir, Boðn and
Son".
he story
continues with the murder of Gilling and his wife by the dwarfs, followed by the revenge of
their son Suttung, who spares their lives in exchange for the mead. Suttung retreats into the
mountain Hnitbjörg with his daughter Gunnlöð. In quest of the mead Oðin,
the shapechanger, arrives in the guise of Bölverk. He drills a hole into the mountain,
then changing himself into a snake slides down the hole into Gunnlöð's bedroom. The
stranger sleeps with her for three successive nights and each time she gives him mead to drink
from a different one of the vessels. Then Oðin turns himself into an eagle and flies back
to the Æsir, for whom he regurgitates the liquid, which has been blended in his stomach,
into waiting pots. Subsequently Oðin's valkyries use the mead to revive the dead heroes on
their arrival in Valhall. So this is not just the mead of poetry
(although that is the extent of Snorri's interest), it is also a drink of regeneration. Wagner
referred to the reviving mead served by the wish-maiden in Valhall when he wrote his Nibelung Mythus
-- in which the dying Siegfried greets Brünnhilde: Happy me thou chosest for husband,
now lead me to Valhall, that in honour of all heroes I may drink All-father's mead, pledged me
by thee, thou shining Wish-maid!
n the Eddic
poem Havamál, a compilation of sayings and narratives, Oðin relates part of
the story of the mead of poetry:
|
 |
| * One variant of the poem refers to the mead as Oðrerir,
which according to Snorri is the name of the pot, one of the three vessels. ** Possibly Gunnlöð's wedding ring; one interpretation of the poem is that Oðin took the form of her betrothed and that the feast was their wedding feast. |
urning from
the Scandinavian tradition to the Aryan tradition of the Indus valley, we find another story about a magic
drink. This is Soma: an exhilarating and intoxicating drink, sometimes described as a
drink of immortality, extracted from a plant of some kind. It is personified in the being Soma,
who descended from heaven. It is often referred to as "honey" but also as "fiery juice". The Rig Veda describes Soma as follows:
[RV 8.79.1]
he Rig
Veda also describes how the god Indra stole the drink of immortality. Riding on an eagle,
he took it from heaven. Intoxicated with the Soma, the god destroyed the fortresses of the
demons and released the waters. Then he gave the divine "fiery juice" to the ancestor of
mankind, Manu.
[RV 4.26.3-7]
in
the tale of the mead of poetry it is an eagle that carries the divine
drink. In this case, however, it seems that the eagle brings the plant that must be pressed
(perhaps with mortar and pestle), filtered and fermented to produce the drink. This fits better
with the (10th century AD) Old Norse kenning for poetry as "the seed of the eagle's beak"; a
kenning which Snorri did not explain. Another aspect of the Vedic tradition that can be related
to the tale of the mead of poetry is the three-day feast. The Rig
Veda describes the Soma ceremony as taking three days. The Soma was poured into three bowls
and the participants, like Oðin, drank of a different bowl on each of the three days.
t might be
tempting to conclude from the above that the Norse god Oðin (among the Teutons called
Wotan) is equivalent to the Vedic god Indra. It is more likely, however, from other
correspondences that Oðin is the equivalent of the Vedic wind-god Vata. The theft of the
divine drink was at some stage transferred from Indra (or an earlier god who became Indra) to
Oðin/Vata. The common motives of the eagle and the three-day feast strongly suggest that
the story of the mead of poetry as related by the Norse skalds was a
later version of the myth of the theft of Soma from heaven, written down about 2500 years
earlier in the Indus valley.
hen Indra
brought the "fiery juice" from heaven he gave it to Manu, the ancestor of mankind. It is
difficult to avoid drawing the parallel with Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and gave it
to man (or that of Tantalus, who stole the food of the gods). Unlike Indra, who rode on the
eagle, Prometheus was punished by Zeus, who commanded the eagle to eat the offender's liver,
which was renewed each night to be chewed again.
anu was the
ancestor of mankind as the only human survivor of the Great Flood. Therefore he is the same
mythical character whom the Sumerians called Utnapishtim and whom the Hebrews would call Noah
(although he is also equivalent to the Biblical Adam). Manu caught a little fish that warned
him about the coming deluge. So Manu was able to save himself and many other creatures. Then
lacking a wife he offered to the gods, who turned his offerings into a woman. This couple
generated the human race. In the Mahabharata, the fish is identified with the god
Brahma, while in the Puranas it is Matsya, the fish incarnation of the lord Vishnu.
he
Indo-Germanic universe seems to be cyclic. After periodic destruction the world begins anew.
What is common to these and other myths is that the world is destroyed (whether by war, fire,
flood, ice or pestilence) and with it the gods. Thus the purifying Ragnarök is
also Götterdämmerung. In the Norse myth, gods, giants and most other
creatures are destroyed; then (according to the poem Völuspá) a new Earth
rises from the waters, some of the gods return and (according to the poem
Vafthrúdnismál) from somewhere called Hodd-Mimir's grove there appear
Leifthrasir and Lif, the only surviving human couple. Whether they are to be identified with
the first couple Ask and Embla (in the poem Völuspá) is not clear; it is
possible to see in this pair a later tradition -- because it is unlikely to be coincidental
that the first letters of their names are also those of the Biblical Adam and Eve. Like Manu
and his unnamed wife, each of these couples represent the mythical ancestors of mankind. Into
the new Earth, from some hidden sanctuary in which they have been preserved in life by some
divinely potent sustenance, a human pair appear, to regenerate mankind.
n 1842
Richard Wagner, after spending several years of hardship and misery in Paris, returned to
Germany, taking up a post as assistant Kapellmeister in Dresden. In the summer of the following
year he spent a vacation at Teplitz, where he read the Grimm brothers' Deutsche Sagen
and Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, which revealed to the young composer the scanty fragments
of a vanished world
. Wagner was inspired to start on an ambitious programme of reading. He
purchased a small library of books, many of them expensive, not only works of medieval
literature and German history, but also works of classical authors. Wagner's domestic library
even boasted Homer in the original Greek and Saxo Grammaticus in Latin. He also borrowed and
read books from the Royal Library, well stocked with medieval sagas and histories.
well
as providing the material directly incorporated in Wagner's subsequent dramatic works, this
program of reading fuelled his imagination. Not least in a remarkable essay that he wrote in
the summer of 1848, The Wibelungen: World History as Told in Saga. The essay begins with a statement
of a belief in the origins of the Teutonic or Germanic tribes: Their coming from the East
has lingered in the memory of European peoples down to modern times; sagas preserve this
recollection, however imperfectly
. Specifically he identifies the Caucasus as the source of
the Indo-Germanic religions, languages and royalty. It was from the broad and fruitful
plains of Asia
, i.e. the Steppes, that warlike races had spread to dominate the peoples of
east and west alike. Wagner then narrows his focus to one particular royal lineage, the Franks,
whom he identifies with the Ghibelines, also known (in Germany) under the name of the
Wibelingen or Wibelungen. This provides a convenient if doubtful etymological connection with
the medieval story that was uppermost in Wagner's mind at the time, that of the
Nibelungenlied.
agner
continues with a sweeping and somewhat muddled summary of European history. Soon he finds it
necessary to point out that truth is not to be found in history but in legend and myth:
bare history hardly ever offers us, and always incompletely, the material for a judgement
of the inmost (and so to say, instinctive) motives of the ceaseless struggles of whole peoples
and races; that we must seek in religion and saga ... We may conclude that Wagner was
interested in history as long as it suited his purpose, but that in the end he always turned to
myth, legend, folklore and saga. The gods and heroes of its religion and saga are the
concrete personalities in which the spirit of the people (Volksgeist) portrays its essence to
itself; however sharp the individuality of these personages, their content (Inhalt) is of most
universal, wide-ranging type, and therefore lends these shapes a strangely lasting lease of
life ...
he hero
Siegfried (the Norse hero Sigurd the dragon slayer) was, he tells us, a sun-god; this implies
an identification with Balder, son of Oðin. The sun-god was, he believed, older than
either Zeus or Wotan, despite the fact that the latter was regarded as the highest god and
All-father. Furthermore, Wagner makes an identification between Siegfried and Christ (it is
possible that he was thinking of Balder, who died and rose again). Siegfried is the winner of
the Nibelung's Hoard; it is the epitome of earthly power and he who owns it, or governs by
it, either is or becomes a Nibelung
. Since the Franks were originally a tribe of the lower
Rhine, it was clear to Wagner that they were the original Nibelungs. In what Wagner supposed
was the original myth of the Franks, the sun-god had defeated the dragon of primeval night. By
this deed, Siegfried won the hoard which the dragon had guarded: it is the Earth itself
with all its splendour, which in joyous shining of the Sun at dawn of day we recognise as our
possession to enjoy, when night, that held its ghostly, gloomy dragon's wings spread fearsomely
above the world's rich stores, has finally been routed. This was, it seems, the original
idea from which Wagner began to develop his Nibelung Myth, which would be the basis
for his cycle of dramas Der Ring des Nibelungen.
he essay also
relates to another project of Wagner's at this time: a drama about Friedrich
Barbarossa, the once and future king who sleeps under a mountain. According to Wagner,
Barbarossa's claim to world-rule derived from his descent from a son of God, called by his
nearest kinsmen Siegfried, but Christ by the remaining peoples of the Earth
. Wagner's
account of the life of Barbarossa, which he intended to turn into an opera, ended with the
Emperor turning his gaze to the Orient. Wondrous legends had he heard of a lordly country
deep in Asia, in farthest India, of an ur-divine Priest-King who governed there a pure and
happy people, immortal through the nurture of a wonder-working relic called the Holy Grail.
The reference is probably to the legend of Prester John (who
is mentioned in Wolfram's Parzival as the son of the Grail Bearer and
Parzival's half-brother). Whether Barbarossa, who died during the disastrous third Crusade, had
intended to seek the kingdom of Prester John was
unimportant for Wagner; he was the first of many travellers to the east, of whom Wagner was
another, at least in spirit.
agner then
introduces another subject, one that unlike Barbarossa he was to succeed in making into an
opera, the legend of Lohengrin. A knight of the Grail once had
appeared in the Netherlands, only to return to the Orient, where the Grail was preserved in a castle on a lofty mount in India
. For Wagner it
was significant that the Grail myth had appeared in the late twelfth
century at the same time as the line of kings who were the heirs of Siegfried, winner of the
Nibelung Hoard, was approaching its end; the Nibelung's Hoard ... was losing more and more
in material worth to yield to a higher spiritual content
. The quest for the Grail would now replace the struggle for the Nibelung Hoard, symbolising the
ascendance of spiritual values over worldly ambitions.
ccentric as
it is, this essay is of interest because it ties together several of Wagner's projects at a
time when they were still forming in his head; where the stories of Barbarossa, Siegfried,
Lohengrin and the myth of the Grail were all interrelated. It is also
clear from this essay how myth and legend were for Wagner inseparable from (often radical)
political and religious ideas.
n 1190
Barbarossa died, like Parzival's father Gahmuret, in far Arabian land
. One of the
knights who had been on the Crusade, defending the Frankish kingdom of Outremer, was Wolfram's patron the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia. Both the Landgrave and
the poet appear as characters in Wagner's opera Tannhäuser. Although Wolfram seems to have only limited knowledge of the Arabic world his later
poems provide evidence of the respect in which the crusaders held their opponents the Saracens.
His most famous poem Parzival, one of the medieval epics that Wagner read in 1845, is
a rich tapestry woven from Christianity (sometimes with an heretical flavour), Islam and
chivalry.
he poem was
based on the unfinished Perceval of Chrétien de
Troyes. Like this source, Wolfram describes a mysterious object
called the Grail. Unlike Chrétien's Grail, however, Wolfram's Grail is a stone that was brought from heaven. It is guarded by a community of
Templars in their sanctuary at Munsalvæsche. When Parzival meets the old hermit on Good
Friday he is told about the stone: by virtue of this stone the Phœnix is burned to
ashes, from which he is reborn ... however ill a mortal may be, from the day on which he sees
the stone he cannot die for that week nor does he lose his colour. For if anyone, maiden or
man, were to look at the Grail for two hundred years, you would have to
admit that his colour was as fresh as in his early prime, except that his hair was grey!
So
this stone brought from heaven (like the Soma) and given into the keeping of a pious hero (like
Manu, who was perhaps the original Fisher King) has both
the power of regeneration and the power to sustain life without aging; but it does not have the
power to heal.
n re-reading
the poem in 1859, Richard Wagner realised that Wolfram's stone had
been inspired by tales of Mecca. Further, he believed that this was an earlier form of the Grail myth which had been brought back from the east and adapted for a
Christian audience. He wrote to Mathilde Wesendonk: One notices, unfortunately, that all our
Christian legends have a foreign, pagan origin. As they gazed on in amazement, the early
Christians learned, namely, that the Moors in the Caaba at Mecca (deriving from the pre-
Muhammadan religion) venerated a miraculous stone (a sunstone - or meteoric stone - but at all
events one that had fallen from heaven). However, the legends of its miraculous power were soon
interpreted by the Christians after their own fashion, by their associating the sacred object
with Christian myth, a process which, in turn, was made easier by the fact that an old legend
existed in southern France telling how Joseph of Arimathea had once fled there with the sacred chalice
that had been used at the Last Supper, a version entirely consonant with the early Christian
Church's enthusiasm for relics.
ccording to
Wolfram's old hermit, however, the Grail's
ability to provide sustenance depended on a bird that descended from heaven to the Grail with a wafer in its beak. Not an eagle as in the Indian legend of the
Soma, but a dove, brought to the Grail all
that is good on Earth of food and drink, of paradisal excellence ... whatever the Earth
yields
. Even though Wolfram's Grail was a
stone it retained the attributes of the Celtic horn of plenty with which other writers had
identified the Grail. In summary we can find in Wolfram's account of the Grail a powerful blend of
elements drawn from many different mythic traditions. Common to some of those traditions was a
substance or object, brought from heaven by a bird, with the power of regeneration and the
power to sustain life.
n the 1857
conception of Wagner's drama later to be called Parsifal, as I have described
elsewhere, it is likely that the pious hero Titurel, like the
swan, was just a symbol although an important one. By 1865 Wagner had
developed the story in detail. He considered the possibility of having the dead Titurel revived to life by the power of the Grail during the final scene of the drama but later
discarded the idea. Titurel appears in two poems by Wolfram (Titurel and Parzival). He is the first king of the
Grail and stem-father or patriarch of the Grail family, which includes
Anfortas (=Amfortas), Parzival (=Parsifal), Herzeloyde (=Herzeleide), Gurnemanz (=Wagner's act
1 Gurnemanz), Sigune (who also appears in both poems; one of the characters who became Kundry)
and Parzival's son Loherangrin (=Lohengrin). According to Wolfram
(and following him, Wagner) the Grail was sent into Titurel's keeping by God; in the same way as the god Indra gave the
Soma into the keeping of Manu. In a time of adversity, according to Wagner's Prose Draft, Titurel gathered about him a
body of holy knights to serve the Grail, and built, in wild, remote and inaccessible mountain forest, the Castle of Monsalvat
. There the animals too are holy. It is tempting to draw
a further parallel with the patriarch Manu, who rescued creatures from imminent destruction in
the Great Flood, in one account by withdrawing to a sanctuary inside a mountain, and who then
regenerated the world with the aid of the Soma.
nother
element of the story with which Wagner had difficulty was the healing and wounding spear. He had used it to connect the three acts of his drama, which in the
autumn of 1865 existed only as a Prose Draft. Taking a hint from Wolfram's poem Wagner had made use of the myth of Telephus, which he now tried to combine with the bleeding lance of Celtic
myth. Like the pestle and mortar that were used to extract the Soma, the spear and the Grail have been seen as sexual symbols. At the end of his 1877 poem/libretto Wagner wrote the
following lines for his spiritual hero:
O! Welchen Wunder's höchstes Glück! Der deine Wunde durfte schliessen, ihm seh' ich heil'ges Blut entfliessen in Sehnsucht nach dem verwandten Quelle, der dort fliesst in des Grales Welle. |
Oh! The highest joy of this miracle! From this weapon that has healed your wound, I see the holy blood flowing in yearning for the kindred fount that flows and surges in the Grail. |
he spear bleeds and the blood drips into the Grail, which
like Oðrerir is both a drinking vessel and a fountain or source or well. The allusion to
the Norse myth of the mead of poetry is as strong as, perhaps even
stronger than, the one to the Celtic myth of the spear that stood in a
cauldron. If the two symbols that Parsifal has reunited separately represent music and poetry,
then united they represent the total work of art. The moment of yearning of male for female,
wrote Wagner in his 1851 essay Opera and
Drama, is the creative moment of the understanding (diese Sehnsucht ist das
dichtende Moment des Verstandes
).
hree decades
later, in parallel with the long-delayed composition of his Parsifal, Richard Wagner
became preoccupied with the possibility of a regeneration of the human race. Like many
of his educated and intellectual contemporaries Wagner was affected by the ideas of that age;
he saw the advance of science -- in particular Darwinism -- and the retreat of religion as the
Bible became one compilation of ancient texts among many others, some, like the Rig
Veda, far more ancient. Above all, Wagner's imagination was fired by a book by Jean Antoine
Gleizès: Thalysia oder Das Heil der Menschheit (which title Ellis translated as
Thalysia or the Healing of Mankind). This book promoted vegetarianism, in other words abstinence from meat. By 1880 Wagner's revised
view of world history included the progressive degeneration of mankind, perhaps partly
(following Gobineau) the result of miscegenation but primarily (following Gleizès¹) as a result of changes in diet, the substituting of animal for
vegetable food
. To counteract the degeneration of the human race, seen as a corruption of
the blood, Wagner put his faith in the pure blood of the Saviour: the blood of the
Redeemer's self, which once poured its hallowing stream into the veins of his true heroes ...
in the Saviour's blood we must recognise the quintessence of free-willed suffering itself, that
godlike compassion which streams through all the human species, its fount and origin
. It is
clear that in 1880 if not earlier Wagner regarded this divine blood, the essence of voluntary
suffering, as the Soma brought from heaven, the blood that ran from the spear and the radiant
substance in the Grail by which its community were nourished and
regenerated.
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