The rose is first learned, in every
wrinkle of its petals, petal by petal, before that reality is
elaborately departed from, in order that a new, abstract beauty may be
formed out of those outlines, all but those outlines being left out.
And "Parsifal," which is thus solemnly represented before us, has in it,
in its very essence, that hieratic character which it is the effort of
supreme art to attain. At times one is reminded of the most beautiful
drama in the world, the Indian drama "Sakuntala": in that litter of
leaves, brought in so touchingly for the swan's burial, in the old
hermit watering his flowers. There is something of the same universal
tenderness, the same religious linking together of all the world, in
some vague enough, but very beautiful, Pantheism. I think it is beside
the question to discuss how far Wagner's intentions were technically
religious: how far Parsifal himself is either Christ or Buddha, and how
far Kundry is a new Magdalen. Wagner's mind was the mind to which all
legend is sacred, every symbol of divine things to be held in reverence;
but symbol, with him, was after all a means to an end, and could never
have been accepted as really an end in itself.
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