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uddenly the youth springs up with an expression of utter terror. With this kiss a dreadful change has taken place in him: he puts his
hand to his heart; all of a sudden, he feels burning there the wound of Anfortas; hears rising from deep within him, Anfortas' lamentation. "The wound! The wound is bleeding
here! Miserable one, and I could not help you!" To the horror and amazement of the
beautiful woman, he gives her a cold stare: the mysterious events seen at the Grail Castle now claim him entirely; transferred wholly into
the soul of Anfortas, he feels Anfortas' enormous suffering, his dreadful self-reproach;
the unspeakable torments of yearning love, the unholy terrors of sinful desire, even
there, beholding the wondrous Grail, permeated by the gleam
of its sublime ecstasy, annihilated by the Divinity of its world-redeeming balm. He invokes the Grail,
the Pure Blood of the Redeemer: he hears the
Saviour's cry for the relic to be freed from the custody of besmirched hands: and he
himself has experienced this monstrous suffering, he himself has witnessed the
agonies of the guilt-stricken man: to his innermost being there has been a loud
appeal for deliverance and he has remained dumb, even fled, wandered, child-like,
dissipating his soul in wild, foolish adventures! Where is there a man as sinful and
wretched as he? How can he ever hope to find forgiveness for his monstrous neglect of
duty? -
he
woman, amazed and lost in passionate admiration, seeks vainly to silence him. He sees
her every gaze, hears her every word, as if from Anfortas' soul; this is how the wretched woman looked, this
is how she spoke, this is how she wrapped her arms around his neck; these are the
fearful agonies he has had to bear away with him as his prize! "Corrupter, depart
from me!" Now the woman's soul blazes with insane desire. "Cruel one! If you feel the
agonies of others, then feel also mine! In you I am to find deliverance, in you alone
to die! For you I have waited through eternities of misery: to love you, to be yours
for one hour, can alone repay me for torments such as no other being has ever
suffered!" -
arzival : "You will be damned, with me, for eternity if
for a moment I forget my mission in your arms! I have been sent for your salvation
also. Madwoman, do you not realise that you thirst is only increased by drinking:
that your desire is extinguished only through its frustration?" All the torments of
the human heart lie open to him: he feels them all and knows the only way of ending
them. The woman: "So was it my kiss
that made you see clearly? Oh, you fool! Embrace me now with love, so shall you be
God himself this very day. Take me for just one hour to your heart and let me be
damned for eternity! - I want no deliverance: I want to love you!" Parz. "I shall
love and deliver you if you will show me the way to Anfortas." She rages. "You will never find it. Let the
fallen one perish." He persists. She demands as payment an hour of love. He repulses
her. She beats her breast, calling madly for help. She is still powerful enough, she
says, to lead him astray so that he will never find the Grail
Castle: she curses the tracks and paths!
lingsor appears on the tower of the Castle: armed men rush in: Parzival recognises the spear with
which Anfortas had been wounded, and wrests it from
the knight: "With this sign I banish you all! As the wound that this spear once made shall close, let everything here perish, and its
splendour fall in ruins!" He brandishes the spear: the castle collapses with a frightful crash; the garden withers
to a desert. Parzival, from afar, gazing back at Kundry, who has collapsed screaming: "You know where you
can find me again!" He hastens away through the ruins.
