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| THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF RICHARD WAGNER |
THE WAGNERIAN ROMANCES
BY
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MCMVII
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
To
My Friend
JOHN SANBURN PHILLIPS
this book
is
gratefully dedicated.
INTRODUCTION
The attempt has been made in the following to give an idea of thecharm and interest of the original text of the Wagner operas, ofWagner's extraordinary power and fertility as a dramatist. It isnot critique or commentary, it is presentation, picture, narrative;it offers nothing that is not derived directly and exclusivelyfrom the Wagner libretti and scores.
The stories of the operas are widely known already, of course.As literature, however, one may almost say they are not known atall, unless by students of German. The translators had before thema task so tremendous, in the necessity to fit their verse-renderingof the master's poetry to extremely difficult music, that we respectthem for achieving it at all. None the less must the translationsincluded in our libretti be pronounced painfully inadequate. Togive a better, more complete knowledge of the original poems isthe object of these essays. The poems form, even apart from themusic, a whole beautiful, luminous, romantic world. One would notlose more by dropping out of literature the Idylls of the Kingthan the Wagnerian romances.
CONTENTS
Parsifal
The Ring of the Nibelung
The Rhine-Gold
The Valkyrie
Siegfried
The Twilight of the Gods
The Master-Singers of Nuremberg
Tristan and Isolde
Lohengrin
Tannhaeuser
The Flying Dutchman
Page1 PARSIFAL
Page 3PARSIFAL
I
The story of the Holy Grail and its guardians up to the momentof Parsifal's appearance upon the scene, is—we gather itfrom Gurnemanz's rehearsal of his memories to the youthfulesquires,—as follows: At a time when the pure faith of Christwas in danger from the power and craft of His enemies, there cameto its defender, Titurel, angelic messengers of the Saviour's,and gave into his keeping the Chalice from which He had drunk atthe Last Supper and into which the blood had been gathered fromHis wounds as He hung upon the Cross; likewise the Spear with whichHis side had been pierced. Around these relics Titurel built atemple, and an order of knighthood grew. The temple, Monsalvat,stood upon the Northern slope of mountains overlooking Gothic Spain.No road led to its doors, and those only could find their way toit whom the Holy Spirit guided; and those only could hope to beso guided, and could belong to the brotherhood, who were pure inheart and clean of the sins of the flesh. The knights