Between this point and the end of the act there is scarcely a fine
passage. Every phrase is insincere, not because Wagner wished to be
insincere, but because he tried to express dramatically a state of
mind which is essentially undramatic. Parsifal is supposed to
transcend almost at one bound the will to live, to rise above all
animal needs and desires; and though no human being can transcend the
will to live, any more than he can jump away from his shadow--for the
phrase means, and can only mean, that the will to live transcends the
will to live--yet I am informed, and can well believe, that those who
imagine they have accomplished the feat reach a state of perfect
ecstasy. Wagner knew this; he knew also that ecstasy, as what can only
be called a static emotion, could not be expressed through the medium
that serves to express only flowing currents of emotion; he himself
had pointed out, that for the communication of ecstatic feeling, only
polyphonic, non-climatic, rhythmless music of the Palestrina kind
served; and yet, by one of the hugest mistakes ever made in art, he
sought to express precisely that emotion in Parsifal's declamatory
phrases. The thing cannot be done; it has not been done; all
Parsifal's bawling, even with the help of the words, avails nothing;
and the curtain drops at the end of the second act, leaving one
convinced that the drama has untimely ended, has got into a
cul-de-sac.
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