And in a cul-de-sac it remains. There is much glorious
music in the last act; the "Good Friday music" is divine; the last
scene is gorgeously led up to; and the music of it, considered only as
music, is unsurpassable. But heard at the end of a drama so
gigantically planned as "Parsifal," it is unsatisfying and
disappointing. It is to me as if the "Ring" had closed on the music of
Neid-hoehle with the squabblings of Alberich and Mime. The powers that
make for evil and destruction have won; one knows that Parsifal is
eternally damned; he has listened and succumbed, even as Wagner
himself did, to the eastern sirens' song of the ease and delight of a
life of slothful renunciation, self-abnegation, and devotion to
"duty." The music of the last scene sings that song in tones of
infinite sweetness; but it cannot satisfy you; you turn from the
enchanted hall, with its holy cup and spear and dove, its mystic
voices in the heights, its heavy, depressing, incense-laden
atmosphere; and you hasten into the night, where the winds blow fresh
through the black trees, and the stars shine calmly in the deep sky,
just as though no "Parsifal" had been written.
"Parsifal" does not imply that Wagner in his old age went back on all
he had thought and felt before.
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