ABSTRACT
Nietzsche accused Wagner, the author of the Ring, the anti-theological myth of the downfall of the gods, of “breaking down before the Cross” in Parsifal. That was as perverse, and revealed as great a deficiency in artistic understanding, as the contrary accusation that Wagner was an unscrupulous theatromane who dissipated Christian myths and symbols in order to make theatrical effects. Parsifal is a work of summation, in which the composer gathered and joined together the threads of his past. The subject had been in his mind since the mid-1840s, since the completion of Tannhauser and the conception of Lohengrin, and an inner connection with both those works is apparent. Parsifal, a figure from legend rather than the sagas, is a passive hero: the decisive deed that marks the drama’s turning point is a refusal. The action, into the centre of which he unwittingly stumbles, is nothing but the starting point and the external aspect of his progress towards knowledge.
