Parzival

by Wolfram von Eschenbach, A.T. Hatto

Composed in the early thirteenth century, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is the re-creation and completion of the story left unfinished by its initiator Chrétien de Troyes. It follows Parzival from his boyhood and career as a knight in the court of King Arthur to his ultimate achievement as King of the Temple of the Grail, which Wolfram describes as a life-giving Stone. As a knight serving the German nobility in the imperial Hohenstauffen period, the author was uniquely placed to describe the zest and colour of his hero's world, with dazzling depictions of courtly luxury, jousting and adventure. Yet this is not simply a tale of chivalry, but an epic quest for spiritual education, as Parzival must conquer his ignorance and pride and learn humility before he can finally win the Holy Grail.

Genres: Classics, Medieval, Fiction, Poetry, Arthurian, German Literature, Literature

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1215

About the author

Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.

Little is known of Wolfram's life. There are no historical documents which mention him, and his works are the sole source of evidence. In Parzival he talks of wir Beier ("we Bavarians") and the dialect of his works is East Franconian. This and a number of geographical references have resulted in the present-day Wolframs-Eschenbach, previously Obereschenbach, near Ansbach in Bavaria, being officially designated as his birthplace. However, the evidence is circumstantial and not without problems - there are at least four other places named Eschenbach in present-day Bavaria, and Wolframs-Eschenbach was not part of Bavaria in Wolfram's time.

The arms shown in the Manesse manuscript come from the imagination of a 14th-century artist, drawing on the figure of the Red Knight in Parzival, and have no heraldic connection with Wolfram.

Wolfram's work indicates a number of possible patrons (most reliably Hermann I of Thuringia), which suggests that he served at a number of courts during his life. In his Parzival he claims he is illiterate and recorded the work by dictation, though the claim is treated with scepticism by scholars.

Wolfram is best known today for his Parzival, sometimes regarded as the greatest of all German epics from that time. Based on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, le Conte du Graal, it is the first extant work in German to have as its subject the Holy Grail. In the poem, Wolfram's narrator expresses disdain for Chrétien's (unfinished) version of the tale, and states that his source was a poet from Provence called Kyot. Some scholars believe Wolfram might have meant Guiot de Provins (though none of the latter's surviving works relate to the themes of Parzival), however others believe Kyot was simply a literary device invented by Wolfram to explain his deviations from Chrétien's version.

Wolfram is the author of two other narrative works: the unfinished Willehalm and the fragmentary Titurel. These were both composed after Parzival, and Titurel mentions the death of Hermann I, which dates it firmly after 1217. Wolfram's nine surviving songs, five of which are dawn-songs, are regarded as masterpieces of Minnesang.

Reviews

[Jason]

Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is one of those stories where the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. I just want to preface this review by saying that any review of this book will be lacking, as the allusions, subtexts and connections made by Wolfram are truly astounding. This really is one of those books where each re-reading will bring out new ideas worth exploring further. My focus here will be relegated to one area that particularly struck me on my first reading.

Parzival, among other things, is in many respects a reflection of the collective western European conscience during the horror of the Crusades, as well as its sense of doubt that they were acting in God's will when they finally lost control of Jerusalem (about 20 years before Wolfram wrote Parzival). There is also a strong indication of the seeds of the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Europe's eventual secularism. I was originally attracted to the story because of the more mystical elements of it, in the allusions to various elements of Kabbalah and alchemy, and there is a lot I could say about that still, but my immediate focus shifted after finishing the book to more socio-historical concerns.

First of all, and significantly for a society which was extremely patriarchal, women are the true heroes here, showing the men through example how to live. It is said that only men seek the Grail, because women already possess it. While most women in the story are "free of falsity", humble and gentle (with the exception of Orgeleuse and Cundrie, who don't take shit from anyone but still teach much to the men around them - perhaps more than anyone else), the men are mostly prancing around the countryside looking to start shit for nothing more than vanity, pride and fame. The men wear a thin veneer of humility and honor through their knightly traditions and ways, but they are usually just going through the motions without understanding the underlying meaning, and will jump at the chance to deviate from those ways if it will benefit them in some way. The arc of the storyline itself is embedded in the names of the three main women in Parzival's life: Herzeloyde, his mother ("Heart's Sorrow"), Condwiramurs ("Love Leads the Way"), and Repanse de Schoye ("Overflowing Happiness").

There are also several political threads running through the story. Parzival's father, Gahmuret, claims he will only serve the best and most powerful lord, who ends up being Muslim. That alone must have raised some eyebrows among some of the elite who were familiar with Wolfram's book. This notion is later reinforced when Feirefiz, also a Muslim, is shown to be one of the most upstanding knights in the story, not to mention the fact that King Arthur, the ideal of European royalty, is sometimes portrayed as something of a reactionary dolt instead of as a true leader.

Now the Grail, in one of its main symbolic functions, represents a mobile altar where the Eucharist would be served, which would have been used anytime Mass was performed throughout the story. This effectively means that while Parzival is roaming the earth looking for the Grail, it is always right there, under his and the readers' noses, but we cannot see it for what it is initially (ever?). Blindness is infact a running theme throughout the novel. There is a narrative device which frames this wonderfully when in the beginning of Parzival's adventures he ignorantly kills Sir Ither, the Red Knight, by throwing a javelin through his eye, and at the end of the story, his brother Feirefiz is granted the ability to see the Grail when he becomes baptized.

I believe this story is where western Europe begins to show the extent of it's infatuation with Aristotle. Without going into too much detail for the sake of brevity, Plato essentially believed in ideal Forms as the true reality of our world and often reads more like a Taoist at times than what we might think of today as a philosopher, while his student Aristotle broke with this and said objects and things in and of themselves were the extent of our reality. Basically, it is the difference between "as above, so below", and "as below, so above". It might seem like a negligible difference at first, but there are very wide-ranging implications involved, especially if one assumes one or the other without ever really asking themselves why on anything more than a superficial level. This relates to the story insofar as the people who can no longer experience a mystical connection with God begin searching instead for God within physical objects, thus creating the need to search for a Grail. In the real world during this time, the Catholic Church was doing essentially the same thing by misinterpreting the idea of a Holy Land as an actual, physical location which God somehow needed us to take back for Him. This line of thinking continued after the Crusades in the form of Dante's vision of hell as a physical location (instead of as a spiritual orientation), and in the Protestant's general embrace of chiliasm, which had already been declared a heresy by the early Church. It is worth mentioning here that the Crusades began 50 years after the Great Schism, when the more scholastically inclined Western Church officially broke off from the more mystically inclined Eastern Churches. I believe this is at least part of the point which Wolfram was trying to make, albeit subtly because of the sensitivity of the issue, because his description of the Grail procession borrows much from the Byzantine Rite of St. John Chrysostom, which was (and still is) in use in the Orthodox Church. Wolfram was also writing his story only 3-5 years after the Fourth Crusade, in which the ancient seat of the Eastern Church, Constantinople, was sacked by Crusaders who were diverted from their original goal because of lack of funds. There is also the thread in the story of brother fighting brother based on ignorance and naivety, in Parzival's fight with his brother Feirefiz, but also in his encounters with Gawan and Ither, whom are his cousins. Wolfram purposefully made all of the main characters in the story related to each other to make a larger point about how, in his view, all humans were related as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. In this view, all war is reprehensible as an act of fratricide, and merely a replay of the story of Cain and Abel.

Of course, the seeds of the Renaissance, and ultimately, secular humanism as we know it today, go back much further than this, but this story in my mind really serves as a sort of tipping point in the history of this idea, where we see it transformed from the notion of a few people writing in books to an a priori way of looking at the world adopted by a whole society.

[Yules]

A medieval Arthurian epic about the knight Parzival, who becomes King of the Holy Grail.

It’s a tale of maturation since Parzival does not begin the adventure as a worthy hero. Actually the author initially calls him “orphaned of wit” and “he whom wisdom ignores.” His mistakes are sometimes humorous, proving that Quixote did not need an extra 400 years before stepping on stage; he was already here in 1200s Germany. It takes Parzival until the end of the epic to mature by suffering the consequences of his foolish choices.

But to be completely honest, I found the story confusing. Among many other things, I was bewildered by the “moral” that Parzival is meant to learn. When visiting an ailing king, the knight does not want to be rude and so refrains from asking about what ails him. This is seen as a momentous moral failure that gets him expelled from the castle and haunts him until the end of the tale. So the story seems to say that there is a virtue in asking about the cause of one’s suffering and that asking helps heal the sufferer.

Later on, however, the value of inquiry plummets. In the end, the Grail instructs its keepers that any foreign peoples they help should be advised against asking them their name and lineage: “All the fellow-custodians of the Grail want no questions asked of them.” So is asking questions a virtue, a sign of one’s empathy and desire to help? Or is it a prohibited intrusion, a bid for revelation to which the questioner is not entitled? Or is inquiring about name/lineage really very different from inquiring about a wound? We even learn that, as per chivalric code, “revealing one’s name is considered an admission of defeat and surrender” (from Cyril Edwards’ footnotes). Remember that knights are covered by helmets, so their refusal to suffer the “disgrace” of naming themselves leads many to kill close friends and family members, simply because they don’t recognize each other.

I admit I found the language rough going. Wolfram delights in convoluted syntax and needless overcomplications. Instead of something like, “the knight vacated his saddle and fell,” we’re told that the knight “was obliged to practise saddle-vacating” and “made acquaintance with falling.” Half the sentences are in the negative form. Rather than doing something, characters “do not hesitate” or “do not shun” or “do not forget” to do it. Sometimes the complex phrasing is truly ingenious, oftentimes it’s just cumbersome.

Also, for me, the story was highly disturbing, and I mean that along Freudian lines (though certainly not everyone interprets it as darkly as I do).

[Allison]

Another reviewer for this book wrote, "The more you put into Parzival, the more you get out." And I couldn't agree more. Waldorf students are all required to read this book in 11th Grade, and the comments from the students about the block and the book are quite mixed...although most are negative. This is a very dense and antiquated book, and to read it without a curriculum would take perseverance. However, once I broke into it, I began to enjoy it immensely. It's really just an Arthurian tale, but so old that the magic and the stories seem much more...true, somehow. And Parzival's character development, is, more or less, the basis for the entirety of Rudolph Steiner's theory of human development - it's all very interesting. And the story and characters can be connected to anything! The seven main women can represent the planets, which in turn represent different stages in Parzival's life. I had a wonderful and fascinating time reading this book, and I feel like anthroposophy has helped me understand it on a very deep level.

[Erik Graff]

Most persons know the literary sources of the grail legends from Malory's Death of Arthur, a very late, derivative source and, unless edited for modern readers, not very readable. For the early material, look into Chretien's uncompleted Perceval and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival. Chretien is short, sometimes even funny. Wolfram's is much longer, covering much more material and probably difficult in a translation which attempts to closely follow the poetic form of the original. Happily, this version is one quite accessible to the modern non-specialist.

[Doris]

It is my dream to be able to talk about this chivalric and epic work of a German clerc, and minstrel, Wolfram von Eschenbch, who living in Bavaria and in 13th century, was interested according to his mention in the prologue in a certain Kyoto of Provence,Kyoto the provins, as well as he mentions the work of Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval or the tale of the grail, neither this work or its author being known elsewhere, this translation by A. Hatto under my consideration in the introduction mentions different traditions of crossings and particular that of Tolede, an important centre of assembling of different travellers, minstrels and pilgrims. Still, we are left only to guess. The work of Parzival is finished and is the translation in English of the thirteen century an epic tale recounting feats and acts of valour of Gahmuret, young son of count of Anjou, in the Orient, and Parzival , his son of the woman named Herzeloyd. It is a chivalric and amorous adventure which led heroes first the father then the son to many adventures of incomparable valour Gahmuret, meeting his death in the Orient and married to a black Oriental princess , but first begetting on her a pie -bald son, who will be the king of the Orient thus succeeding his father on the Orient side, wheras Parzival will continue in the Christian tradition the link with christianity both ftom his mother and father and will also beget two sons the second of whom will later become Prestre Jean, give to our eyes mythical and extraordinary land of richness and marvellous temperament and of religious faith. Parzival is doomed to continue his quest , to enter multiple adventures , being attracted to women lascivious and breathtaking but resists and continues as far as the the castle of King fisher or King Amfortas where after watching this time Lapiz, sacred stone of mythic power, he doesn't pose the question and is doomed as in Chretien's to repeat his performance after a new set of adventures, in this work ended satisafactirily. Here ze have different approaches if style; Wolfram's epic Chrétien's romansque; he gave us the word roman or the novel ;la nouvelle:Gawain is present also and King Arthur's court as examples of incomparable valour and dexterity and perfect courtly manners . But what is the most important is with this Wolfram's tale is the Order of Templars which are to guard the stone, this lapiz and preserve it from immolation from non- initiated. Wolfram is explicit here Chrétien ze can guess fromPerceval's advisors Much has rested to imagination and wonder as a secret to the posterity.Wagner directly inspired from this work for his opera for his Parzival ., Jean Giono, a French writer wrote a novel with King Amfortas and his Parzival. T.S Eliott was also inspired by this work as well as by From Ritual to romance by Jenny Weston. The secret is still with us as it is very near us Eugene Green has wtitten a novel under a title Un conte du graal , set in contemporary Portugal, and in Lisabon explores initiation of a young man , Perceval in quest of his grail
Anyway this work of Parzival by Wofram von Eschanbach is extremely interesting and full of ideas nourishing imagination of the whole of Europe as his protagonists notably Gawain travelled down as far south of Europe and thus providing people of these regions to be directly implicated in this quest .His heroes traversed Central Europe This is a real epic and cultural tale whereas Chretien 's work is more poetic, wittier and symbolist. And Parzival is double in length than Chretien's work, more epic, more detailed, more civilisational.
And at last to end in a symbolist quest and fascination of the grail a poem by Paul Verlaine
Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil
Babil et la luxure amusante - sa perte
Vers la Chair de garçon vierge que cela tente
D'aimer les seins legers et ce gentil babil;

Il a vaincu La Femme belle, au coeur subtil,
Etalant ses bras frais et sa gorge excitante;
Il a vaincu l'Enfer et rentre sous sa tente
Avec un lourd trophee a son bras pueril,

Avec la lance qui perca le Flanc supreme!
Il a gueri le roi, le voici roi lui-meme,
Et pretre du tres saint Tresor essentiel.

En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole,
Le vase pur ou resplendit le Sang reel.
- Et, o ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole!

This symbolic poetry by Verlaine captures all the interest reported by Wagner from The Middle Ages and added symbols of diffuiculty with women that fall on the head of the chosen hero, with playing of innocence and fascination that this poem reveals especially playing with tropes in final terza. , heritage from Perceval by Chrétien de Troyes, but preserving seriousness and implacability of Wolfram's work which is chivalric value of the real and grave quest ,both important for future life in ts every aspect, where communal steps in for private and precarious. To that effaect, Paryival is a real chevalric epic, the one in details , its time is constituted chronologically, explanatory, whereas that of Chretien's plays with it. Parzival is certainly work at a crossroads, written in the13 the century , the beginning of it , so revaluing the act of valour and the gesture, it lances new things theplace of women in this men's world, their sides of the story.; the act valour being much more epic and hereditory in Wolfram's work whereas in Chrétien's it is subjected to the nascent romanesque style in which the hero's dexteriity is subject to his youth and ebulllience
An eternal quest of entering the world!

[Miriam Zon]

repanse de schoye einfach so hot dass feirefiz seine ehefrau vergisst und sich taufen lässt

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Wolfram von Eschenbach's early 13th century poem (rendered here from the Middle High German into modern English prose) chronicles the events of the title character's life from childhood to knighthood, and of his quest for and attainment of the Grail. Along with two chapters devoted to Parzival's father Gahmuret, and several throughout the middle of the story concerning Gawan, the book is a celebration of knighthood, most likely written from the point of view of one of its practitioners. More abstractly, it also approaches Jungian archetype territory and Joseph Campbell's ideas about Hero mythology; wrongs committed in ignorance block Parzival from obtaining the Grail when it is first revealed to him, and only after the quest's hardships have purged him of ignorance and sin is he rewarded with the earthly and spiritual sublimity of achieving his goal.

The Grail of this version is interesting in and of itself: Wolfram writes before the object had become wholly associated with either the last supper or Christ's crucifixion, and long before Mallory and Tennyson (or Terry Gilliam) stamped it into the culture's consciousness as a holy cup. Instead, here it is a stone, one that has both life-sustaining properties and the power to dispense enough food to supply the entire contingent of knights and ladies stationed at Munsalvaesche (the castle of the Grail's keeping). The king of this castle, Anfortas, (also known as the Fisher King), is gravely wounded - it is only the Grail that keeps him alive, albeit in excruciating pain. In Munsalvaesche, both king and subjects wait for someone to come who will ask the king the 'healing question' ('What is it that troubles you?'). Parzival, in his youthful ignorance, stumbles upon the castle and is shown the wonders of the Grail, but in order not to appear foolish, keeps his peace instead of asking the question that will bring the king relief. The following morning, he awakes to find his host gone, and as he rides out after him, he discovers that he can no longer find his way back to the castle. For the next four and a half years he wanders, dishonored, searching for the Grail. Only when the Grail calls to him, by virtue of Parzival's name appearing in writing on the stone, does his quest end.

There are several different translations of Parzival available, including this one by Mustard and Passage written in 1961. A.T. Hatto translated it for Penguin Classics in 1980, and in 2009, Oxford World's Classics published another version by Cyril Edwards. Using the look inside feature on Amazon, I compared several paragraphs side by side, and, although I suspect that they all have strengths and weaknesses, if I were forced to pick based on this tiny sample, I would probably go with the Hatto. But, as they are all priced similarly, the Oxford edition has the advantage of including a secondary work, which may make it the best value.

Translations aside, the question remains as to whom to recommend this work, aside from medievalists and scholars. Grail researchers will also be interested, but anyone attempting this book should know it not an effortless read - nowhere near as difficult as Chaucer's Canturbury Tales or Beowulf, the translators do still attempt to reproduce Wolfram's style, and all three translations I looked at mimic an older structural and syntactical arrangement. A brief example, as Parzival rides into Munsalvaesche for the first time:

'Little gaiety had there been here for many a day; the knights were too sad of heart. Yet they did not let Parzival feel this, and welcomed him, young and old alike. Many pages ran out to seize the bridle of his horse, each one trying to be the first, and held his stirrup for him to dismount. Some knights bade him enter the castle, and led him to his chamber, where they quickly and skillfully removed his armor. When they then looked upon the youth, with his boy's face, still beardless, and saw how beautiful he was, they confessed that he was indeed richly blessed.' (Mustard and Passage)

Some readers may find the re-telling of Parzival by Lindsay Clarke easier on the eye and ear (although there is no 'look inside' to see for sure) - and even Katherine Paterson's version for younger readers may be all the Parzival that anyone really needs. Still, there is an inherent medieval atmosphere in the translations that attempt to replicate the original author's style which is missing in Ms. Patterson's re-telling, although it's difficult to know how much currency that carries. I would probably recommend the others over the re-telling simply because it feels more 'authentic' - but these are translations we're talking about, so none of them are really any more authentic than the other.

In the end, I found 'Parzival' worthwhile mostly because I appreciate the familiarity with a foundational piece of Western literature, and also because I find it enjoyable to recognize links between modern era literature and its source material. I realize that that is a very narrow recommendation - I did like the book, but I wouldn't have considered it a five-star experience, despite its reputation. But, then again, as far as star ratings go, it seems ludicrous to assign a value to a work that has survived over 800 years--its very survival seems a better indication of its worth than a star rating by me. So I've opted out of rating this one, though if I'd been forced, I would have probably gone with four stars as an indication of its value to me.

[John Hatley]

I enjoyed reading this modern prose translation almost as much as I enjoyed the original verse form in Middle High German.

[Elizabeth LaPrelle]

This book is so beautiful. Don't bother if you don't want to wade through a bunch of medieval weirdness (what do they have against the Welsh? And is everybody that's ugly REALLY going to be evil, all the time?). But then again that's part of the fun. It's hard to tell how much of this is crazy worldbuilding by the author, and how much he's actually representative of the values of this time--either way, it makes a cultural thing that's pretty familiar (King Arthur! Britain!) and makes it seem incredibly foreign. Everything is over-the-top. I loved living in there.

[Suzannah]

I optimistically anticipate being able to review this in the not too distant future.

[Nicky]

Parzival took me far too long to read for me to really declare that I "liked it". Still, once I resolved to finish it already I got through it quite quickly, and it helps that, as with Chrétien's version of the story of the grail, Gawain has a large part to play.

Hatto's translation is quite readable, though I believe he tried to capture a lot of the original nature of Wolfram's writing, so it's not always straightforward and to the point. The footnotes are very helpful, especially when they indicate alternate translations and stuff like that.

The story itself, well, it's pretty much as you'd expect of a grail story of that period. Most of the knights are paragons of virtue, most of the names are unpronounceable (I seriously wonder how some of them came about), the son of a white man and a woman of colour comes out both black and white -- sort of like a raspberry swirl, I imagine, only black and white...

It gets points for the very positive portrayal of Gawain, and I was quite intrigued by the footnote which explained that Wolfram had to equivocate a bit because of the pro-Gawain audience. There's much less potential criticism of Gawain throughout, too. I already knew from my research on Heinrich von dem Türlin's work that Gawain was well thought of by the German audience of these texts (through Hartmann von Aue still has the hint of criticism of him from Chrétien in Iwein). This is just more proof, I suppose. Wonder what had him so well thought of in Germany, given the mockery of him in France.

[Amanda]

While the names in this thing are horrid to try to sound out (I really just give each character a nick name in my head), the story is well written and very well developed, especially compared to other Authorian Romances. Wolfram tries to give his characters motivation and explores the rationale behind the knights and their quests rather than just saying "it was done because knights did that kind of stuff, serious."

[Alice]

Don't talk to me about ciclul arthurian

[Adrian Colesberry]

Lots of violence. Weird, trippie fantasy sequences. Lots of hot ladies. A dude who's a virgin. Long descriptions of meals in lieu of sex. Overall, a very enjoyable read.

My favorite parts of this book were:
1. Wolfram's occasional, incredibly clunky self-referential comments.
2. The description of huge sword-wielding knights being fed the meat of tiny roasted songbirds by their lady.
3. The fact that they ride horses from Wales to France without getting on a boat. (Apparently the Christian assault on local legends had left everyone confused about basic facts of European geography.)
4. Spoiler Alert! The Holy Grail is guarded by one old man surrounded by dozens of beautiful semi-clad women.
5. Spoiler Alert! The Holy Grail is a jewel, not a cup. Who knew?

[Bine]

Am Anfang hatte ich ja meine argen Probleme mit Parzival, weil ich es als nicht besonders leserfreundlich empfand, jetzt aber, wo ich das große ganze hinter mir habe, finde ich die Konzeption einfach nur klasse und Wolfram von Eschenbach sowieso. Bisher mochte ich ja Gottfried immer sehr, sehr gerne, aber Wolfram mischt da doch sehr gut mit. Im Nachhinein hat Parzival wirklich schrecklich viel zu bieten. Vor allem die Gralsgeschichte habe ich sehr gerne gelesen, sowie alles über Clinschor und Schastel marveile.
Ich bin wirklich froh, es doch endlich zuende gelesen zu haben, rate euch aber auch, euch nebenbei Sekundärliteratur zu suchen, denn besonders dieses Zusammenspiel hat das Werk für mich so interessant gemacht. Ich empfehle euch da Bumke und Dallapiazza!

[Mina Francesca]

what. the. actual. fuck.

[Philip of Macedon]

Parzival may be the most complete rendition of the Perceval legend by a single author. Although it might be hard to attribute it to only Wolfram von Eschenbach, the 13th century German warrior-poet. I’ll get to that in a moment. Much of his version has no known precedent — there exists no other surviving manuscript by any other author in any other language that tells the early parts of this story — the story of Gahmuret, Parzival’s father. Wolfram may be the inventor of this.

We get a unique, “exotic” saga of Gahmuret’s adventures out east and eventual marriage to the Moorish Queen of Zazamanc. He wins much fame in jousts against besieging forces from Scotland and Normandy and Champagne and Spain. Gahmuret fathers his first son with this queen. This son will later be a significant figure in Parzival’s quest for the grail. Gahmuret goes on to later marry the queen of Wales, with whom he fathers Parzival. As far as I know, Wolfram invented this entire sequence and circle of characters.

There’s a scene early in book 2 of Parzival that could be called a medieval form of “fan service”. It’s sort of a nod to the die-hard fans of Arthurian lore, a scene that would only have been appreciated by those medieval Arthurian nerds in Wolfram’s audience. Gahmuret competes in a tournament (vesper joust) involving the fathers of many of the knights of Arthurian fame, as well as characters who would go on to become significant figures in those tales — Morholt of Ireland, killed later by Tristan; Tristan’s father Riwalin, King of Lohneis; Utherpendragon father of Arthur; Lot, father of Gawain; and Lac, father of Erec.

Chronologically, the events of Gahmuret’s time precede the era of the most famous Arthurian tales. Never before had so many significant figures of these myths appeared in a place that wasn’t Arthur’s court, nor was there a reason to bring them together until this tournament.

Once the story gets to Parzival’s life the events start to resemble those first told by the main source for this adaptation: Chrétien de Troyes. Wolfram follows Chrétien’s telling pretty closely for a long time, but he throws in his own products of the imagination and original side quests here and there. But he also throws in a surprise that still has scholars puzzled.

Wolfram claims to be illiterate, and it is thought that the way some names appear here support this statement — they seem phonetic instead of based on written text. He mentions this a few times, and if it’s true then it’s not known how he recorded the story. Even more amazingly, he would have to also have been able to understand and speak French without reading it, and to have heard the French versions of Parzival, before doing his own rendition in German.

But even more puzzling to scholars, Wolfram mentions a man named Kyot as the source of his story— after Parzival and Gawain have been sent off on their separate quests from Arthur’s court. At this point his story is still consistent with Chrétien. When Gawain comes to Kingrimusel’s castle to defend his honor he meets the sister of the king, and soon there develops the infamous scene of self defense with a chess board and its pieces. Wolfram makes countless references to the Nibelungenlied, in case we were to forget the nationality of the storyteller.

Kyot is mentioned as having read the tale of Parzival in a heathen tongue — Arabic, probably — and having translated it into French, from which Wolfram turned it into German. No historical record of a Kyot or his manuscript exists. Scholars are unsure if this man was made up by Wolfram or was a real person. Kyot learned the heathen tongue without the aid of black magic, Wolfram tells us.

Flegetanis is said to be a heathen scholar descended from Solomon, who originally wrote this tale of the grail. He had read it in the constellations, one of the hidden mysteries of the skies. “A host of angels left it on the earth and then flew away up over the stars.” He says the grail was to be serviced by noble men throughout the generations. The learned Kyot set out to find writings in Latin about this tale, to see if this were true. He came upon the tale in Anjou, and eventually translated it into French. For all we know, this legend is part of the lore, not a historical fact.

Medieval audiences didn’t seek out originality or newly crafted stories. Tales that were said to have come from a foreign source, or a discovered manuscript, or passed from generations of storytellers were deemed more exciting and palatable. The appearance of being inherited this way lended them an air of authenticity. This is reflected in the way these myths and romances and epics were composed — often the borrowing and reworking of motifs and themes and scenes and events and figures that had become common folk property.

Almost every named author of Arthurian legends I know of credited others for their work, even if they didn’t know the names of those others, and even if it might not be true that they were merely translating foreign sources. Geoffrey of Monmouth, when he wasn’t pulling straight from known sources like Nennius and Bede and Gildas, claimed to have been translating a British work into Latin; Chrétien de Troyes claimed, for each of his romances, to have found a book or have been told the story by someone else; Ulrich von Zatzikhoven claimed to be translating an Anglo-Norman poem found in the possession of the hostage Hugh de Morville; and here Wolfram is doing something similar. In all of these cases, the supposed original source has been lost, or never existed. Not only does Wolfram give us Kyot as his supposed source, but he goes one step further and makes Kyot’s work a translation and compilation of other works, originally written by Flegetanis, descendent of Solomon. There could be truth to some of these authors’ claims, but no records exist to prove it. Anyway, that’s enough of a diversion.

The Fisher King’s castle is Munsalvaesche. I don’t remember its name from Chrétien’s tale and the others, but its traits and mysteries here are largely the same. Parzival is given a sword with which he later wins fame. He does not inquire about Anfortas’s affliction or the grail or the bleeding lance, because of what he was taught as a young knight: “Stop asking so many stupid questions.”His lack of expressed curiosity dooms him to continued grief. This also makes Parzival the subject of people’s displeasure and annoyance, and he is looked down upon for this sin. We later learn that in the service of the grail Anfortas was pierced through the testicles by a poisoned spear of a heathen, and this is the source of his lifelong suffering. Having been shown the grail in person he could no longer die, and was thus doomed to live in anguish. Other familiar scenes return in Wolfram’s telling, like the Bed of Wonders, and many of the battles he fights are familiar.

Wolfram, like Gottfried von Strassburg, who was apparently not a fan of the former, had a unique voice in medieval literature. He makes his poem personal and often goes into an amusing aside about his failures with women and how down on his luck he’s been. He knows how to keep the audience’s attention though, and makes sure to draw all ears back to the story before he goes too far astray. His straying makes for an authentic medieval narrative experience, so I welcome it. With Parzival, all of Chrétien’s Arthurian romances had finally been adapted for German audiences. The German rendition of Cliges, however, has been lost to time.

Wolfram’s modifications to Chrétien’s details are numerous. Kei, the seneschal of Arthur, is given more depth and nuance in Wolfram’s version of this epic. He’s portrayed as an honorable man who is the first defense against false knights and base men for the king. True to his usual portrayal, he is still rude and mean toward those who he believes deserve it. We see he is also cruel toward those who don’t.

Like in Chrétien, Sir Gawan is tasked with finding the grail for the king who challenged him to battle for supposedly murdering his father. This king was earlier tasked with finding the grail after being defeated in a joust by Parzival. Parzival, meanwhile has been questing for years. He has grown to hate God in his sorrow and aimless, ongoing search for the Grail. The grail has become this unholy, holy thing that brings doom to all whose paths it crosses.

Parzival comes across his uncle Trevrizent who tells him about the Grail, and we learn a new variation of its mythos that we’ve never heard in any other version of the story: the Templar knights in service of the grail ride out for adventure. They are sustained by a stone which fell from the heavens. By the power of this stone the phoenix burns to ashes and then returns to life. Merely seeing the stone is enough to keep one young, or to return the old to youth, to keep one from harm for a long period of time, to keep one in health. The stone is called the Grail.

On Good Friday a dove flies down from Heaven and places a wafer on the grail from which all foods of the earth can be derived. Those who are to devote themselves in service to the stone are selected by the stone itself, which bears inscriptions in its side listing the names and lineages of those who will serve it. The angels who did not choose sides in the fight between Lucifer and the Trinity were compelled to descend to earth and care for this stone. The significance of the bleeding spear is that it is used to remove poison from Anfortas’s wound. It is laid beside it and draws out the ice — the ice being an elemental curse of the blood.

When Saturn reaches its zenith Anfortas’s suffering becomes its most severe. At this point the spear has to be inserted into his wound to pull out the freezing poison, hence its bleeding tip when Parzival sees it. Parzival learns that many in the service of the grail are his own family and lineage. His great grandfather was the first chosen to serve it. Anfortas is also his uncle, brother of Trevrizent. We soon learn Parzival’s whole family has some mystic, bloodline significance to the Grail, and the relations and wild knots begin unwinding into a coherent but surprising pattern. Parzival one day encounters his half brother Feirefiz in the woods, who becomes the only man to nearly beat him in battle. The relationship they develop seems to be the peak of Parzival’s bloodline continuity, the unity he needs to finally fulfill what the Grail requires…

This behemoth of a story is vast. It makes Percival’s already massive and mysterious adventure into a more expansive and more mysterious epic. It goes in strange directions sometimes, it introduces plot-lines that don’t always resolve, characters that don’t return, but that inject new layers to an already dense story. It is the sort of thing that could be reread immediately upon finishing, and I suspect new things would be discovered and noticed with each new reading. The web of character relations is worthy of study, and so are the tale’s encyclopedic allusions to other myths and legends. There’s so much here it takes a while to process. Given the time and attention it deserves, the book’s incredible qualities multiply, and seem all the more substantial. I think Parzival may be the best German contribution to the Arthurian literature, and stands as a peer of the other middle high German legends.

[Paul]

I've just finished reading this book for the 2nd time. It's been a much more attentive read than the one I gave it when I first bought the book in August 1990, and, accordingly, more rewarding. There is a great deal in this book, this story, if you know what to look for.

I hasten to say that I didn't know on my own what to look for. Indeed, I only heard of the book, and first sought out, because of Joseph Campbell's detailed discussion of it in Creative Mythology, volume 4 of his magnificent Masks of God series. In Campbell's view, Wolfram's Parzifal sets out, for the first time, the unique mythology underlying the civilization we call Western: the mythology of individualism. According to Campbell, it is a mythology that is not merely secular and not merely spiritual; it is both; and, at the time that Wolfram was writing, around 1200 AD, it was something altogether new in the world.

This new mythology of the individual was already being developed by poets in their handling of the exciting new material of the "matter of Britain": the tales of King Arthur and the knights of his Table Round. The material was enriched, kneaded, and pushed in different directions by artists in different traditions. In an initial oral period of development, ca. 550-1066, early stories about the exploits of a British warrior, Arthur, fighting the invading Angles, Jutes, and Saxons after the departure of the Romans, were circulated through the Celtic "mythogenetic zone" (Campbell's term) of Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and amalgamated with the already rich stock of stories about Celtic gods and heroes. A second oral period of development, ca. 1066-1140, was launched by the Norman conquest of England, when Anglo-Saxon kings and courts were displaced by a French-speaking aristocracy with strong Continental connections. This change prompted the British bards to reshape their material to appeal to the interest of their new audience in knights and chivalric honor. Finally, the material became committed to writing in a series of literary stages, ca. 1136-1230. Campbell lays out 4 of these:

Anglo-Norman patriotic epics
French courtly romances
Religious legends of the Grail
German biographical epics

Wolfram's Parzifal is one of these last, and represents, in Campbell's opinion, the climax and summit of the whole Arthurian corpus. As Campbell describes it, these German biographical epics differed from their predecessors in that they were neither political, like the Anglo-Norman patriotic epics, nor of courtly ideals and manners, like the French courtly romances, nor sacramental-ecclesiastical-ascetic, like the religious legends of the Grail. Rather, they were

psychological in the modern sense of treating of spiritual initiations generally available in this world an inevitable to anyone seriously sensitive to his own unfolding realizations of the mystery--and impulse--of existence. In the Queste the knights entered the forest individually, "there where they saw it to be thickest, in all those places where they found no way or path," and there was great promise in that start. However, it soon appeared that there was actually but one way to be followed, after all: the one straight path to Paradise, and not the several paths of the variously unfolding intelligible characters of each. Whereas in Wolfram the guide is within--for each, unique; and I see in this the first completely intentional statement of the fundamental mythology of modern Western man, the first sheerly individualistic mythology in the history of the human race: a mythology of quest inwardly motivated--directed from within--where there is no authorized way or guru to be followed or obeyed, but where, for each, all ways already found, known and proven, are wrong ways, since they are not his own.

So what's in this Parzifal that makes it so special? Well, the events in the book are mostly not original; Wolfram, like the other Arthurian poets, has taken already existing material and shaped it to his own ends. (Indeed, he attributes his whole tale to an otherwise unknown Provencal poet named Kyot, but the translator A. T. Hatto thinks that Kyot is himself a fiction.) The story of Parzifal (Percival to English speakers) had already been worked out: a noblewoman falls in love with a dashing knight who is later killed; fearful that the child of their union, a boy, will grow up to become a knight like his father and also be killed in combat, she moves far from courtly life to raise him in simplicity in the woods. She forbids her servants to even mention the existence of knights to her son, Parzifal. She raises him to be a pious Christian farmer. But one day he sees real knights riding through the forest, and is galvanized: he must become one of those! So he leaves his mother, who is heartbroken, and seeks his fortune. Raised far from court, he is ignorant of polite ways and becomes infamous for his clumsiness and gaffes. But, due to the stock he comes from, he also becomes the most formidable knight in the world, joining King Arthur's Table Round and taking on the supreme knightly challenge, the winning of the Holy Grail (called simply the Gral in this book).

But Parzifal is not the only hero of this tale. True to the Arthurian tradition, the stories and exploits of other knights are also presented, including those of Gahmuret, Parzifal's father, and of Gawain (in this book called Gawan), an older and more worldly knight--and the best, until Parzifal came along. While Parzifal's path becomes a spiritual one, to the Grail, Gawain's remains a secular one, focused on winning a woman he has fallen in love with. Both tasks are difficult, for different reasons: the Grail is hidden in an enchanted castle that cannot be found by looking for it; and Gawain's love, the duchess Orgeluse, finds him to be contemptible and ridiculous. (One of Gawain's great lines is something like, "Go ahead and hurt me--you're only damaging your own property, for I am yours.")

The entwining of these two tales, those of Parzifal and Gawain, shows great depth of thought and meaning. Stories that appear to be unconnected suddenly come together, revealing a deep master plan to the whole.

The reading itself is not that easy. The prose translation of the original poem is fine and itself very readable. The most difficult thing for me was keeping track of all the characters, of which there are a great number. Hatto provides as glossary of characters at the back of the book, and it runs to well over 100 names. Many of them are mere mentions here and there in the work, showing that it was part of a larger world already well known and well stocked with characters familiar from other poems, some of which are no longer extant. I made a separate list of my own, noting in which chapters they first make their appearances.

Another reading aid I made was a set of family trees, showing the connections between the various characters. The issue of kinship looms very large in this work, and characters are very aware of the issue of kinship an lineage, even as, it turns out, they sometimes do not recognize close family members for one reason or another! All of this no doubt has deep meaning, but I have barely started to reflect on it. Parzifal himself, crucially, is heir to not just one but two kingdoms, a spiritual an a secular, coming respectively from his mother's and his father's sides. This too seems very significant. I found myself referring to my family trees often as I read, and it helped me a lot.

Wolfram narrates his story with humor and zest. He was a knight himself and his accounts of the practices, equipment, and tactics of the knights radiate authority. He loves combat and valor, but he also loves women and loves love: some of the passages are surprisingly and intensely erotic--or I found them so, anyway. As a narrator he makes free to inject his personal opinions and amusing asides. He is skilled at wielding pungent metaphors and similes.

In all, this is a thoroughly worthwhile literary creation, filled with dazzling and intriguing events, and with, as Campbell suggests, a fundamental message that is earth-shaking. If Campbell is right, as I think he is, Wolfram is the preeminent poet of Western civilization, second not even to Dante. For Dante, brilliant though he is, remains firmly and first a Christian. Wolfram, writing about century earlier than Dante, while a Christian, is not merely a Christian. Parzifal's supreme feat is that he bends God and his Holy Trinity to his own will, and changes the rules set by God.

Think on that.

[Andrew Kanne]

I’m not sure what the publishing industry looked like in 1200s Germany, but Wolfram’s agent really should’ve hooked him up with an editor.

The Grail, in our culture, is literally iconic. This is the second story ever told of the Grail, and the first one to be completed. Wading through the introduction and acclimatizing to the language of a knightly epic took some work, but once the story got going it was funny and engaging. The first encounter Parzival has with the Grail is moving and hung in my imagination for a long time. Unfortunately the stuff after felt rushed and drawn out at the same time. Gawan was a great foil but his storyline felt largely anticlimactic.

The ending found some of the heat again but not all of the emotional and philosophical resonance that the first Grail encounter had. I would probably benefit from a lecture series on the book, as I’m sure there’s a ton I’m missing. All in all, it was mostly what I expected from a story from the 13th century, with moments that rise above my expectations sprinkled throughout.

[Jeremy]

I was prompted to read this because of immersing myself in Wagner's Parsifal. Prof Richard Bell, in another book I'm currently reading, commented that becoming acquainted with Wagner's Parsifal without already knowing Parzival is like reading the New Testament without any understanding the Old. I agree now. I loved this book, could obviously see all the source material that Wagner used (and didn't) but also fundamentally loved the chivalric, Arthurian, medieval romantic style. It is a masterpiece both for the early part of the 13th Century, as well as for today. My next read is the source material for Parzival - Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval; exciting!

[Martin Riexinger]

Klassiker zu rezensieren hat etwas bombastisch Peinliches, was ich hier schreibe, sind eher meine subjektiven Wahrnehmungen. An den Parzival machte ich mich, nachdem ich letztes Jahr mit großem Interesse und viel Freude das Nibelungenlied gelesen hatte. Wolframs Werk vermochte mich allerdings in seiner Gesamtheit nicht als literarisches Werk zu begeistern und war für mich primär kulturgeschichtlich interessant.

Einzelne Teile nehme ich davon aus, besonders die „Proto-Science-Fiction“ des Schastel Marveile und die komischen Elemente, die mit der „Tumbheit“ des jungen Parzivals verbunden sind. Manches wirkt wie ein Vorläufer von Grimmelshausens Simplicissimus. Zuweilen gleitet der Humor aber auch ins Alberne ab.
Allerdings stören die vielen erzählerischen Inkonsistenzen, die teilweise auf Fehldeutungen von Elementen im Perceval des Chrétien de Troyes geschuldet sind. Nicht zufällig gefiel mir das Werk von da an besser, wo diese Vorlage abbricht. Parzivals Verwandlung vom tumben Jungritter zum weisen König geschieht recht abrupt. Die Schilderungen von Kämpfen und Festen wirken sind (mit wenigen Ausnahmen) recht stereotyp.

Besonders interessant sind die einerseits wohlwollenden andererseits auf völliger Unkenntnis beruhenden Darstellungen von Muslimen. Trotz des religiösen Unterschieds folgen sie denselben ritterlichen Ehrbegriffen, was den selbstverständlichen Umgang mit ihnen ermöglicht. Ihre Religion wird allerdings als eine Fortsetzung des griechisch-römischen Heidentums aufgefasst.
Bemerkenswert ist auch die Darstellung des Sexualität, völlig selbstverständlich wird berichtet, wie Handlungsstränge mit Geschlechtsverkehr enden:
Ich wæne er kurzwîle pflag
unz an den mitten morgens tac
Details werden allerdings asugespart, mit der drastischen Ausnahme der einschlägien Bestrafung eines in flagranti aufgedeckten Ehebruchs.

Im Gegensatz zum Nibelungenlied erreichte ich nie den Punkt, von dem an ich den mittelhochdeutschen Text weitgehend ohne die neuhochdeutsche Übersetzung verstand. Leider ist diese zum Teil recht frei: Die Zeilen stimmen auch dort nicht überein, wo sich eine strikt paralelle Übersetzung gut hätte machen lassen, und oft wird ein negierter Ausdruck positiv übersetzt. Aber „âne haz“ umfasst doch wohl ein breiteres Spektrum an Möglichkeiten als „freundlich“.
Der Kommentarteil hilft dagegen sehr zum Verständnis der Symbolik und des geistesgeschichtlichen Hintergrunds. Er vermittelt zudem gut verständlich welche Fragen in der Mediävistik strittig und ungeklärt sind.

[Sarah]

"If vacillation dwell with the heart the soul will rue it. Shame and honour clash where the courage of a steadfast man is motley like the magpie. But such a man may yet make many, for Heaven and Hell have equal part in him. Infidelity's friend is black all over and takes on a musky hue, while the man of loyal temper holds to the white."

Parzival is a vastly interesting work, if not a little misleading in a way (which I'll explain later). Based on an incomplete work of de Troyes, Eschenbach's Arthurian tale adds a considerable amount to the lore which so often draws readers into this time period of literature. The author also seems to have an amusing amount of self-awareness, leading to surprisingly funny instances of self-irony. While there are times in which I felt Parzival rambles a little bit too long, I am willing to overlook the negatives in favor of the overall positive vibes I got from it.

The misleading element of this work is that half of the time, Parzival is actually about Gawan! While this is alright by me because Gawan is an interesting character and Eschenbach's take on him is quite unique, it really came out of nowhere... At least, from how I recall it happening. So a more accurate title for this work might be Gawan, ft. Parzival.

[Fini (Hozier’s Version)]

I hate this :)

[Illiterate]

This ramshackle grail quest links fulfillment to women, heathens, nature as well as knights, Christians, God.

[Brenden Quirk]

Great medieval romance, though it suffers a bit from an extended interlude about Gawan (this could have stood to be its own story, but that's not how they did things back in the day). This earlier story of the Grail itself is fun to read in light of the changes the story undergoes throughout its history (namely changing from a magic rock to the cup of Christ). It also makes me wonder how this story could be redone to include the later changes to Gawan's and Parzival's characters in Arthurian literature; it would certainly add an additional element of interpersonal drama to the kinship that the knights have in this telling. Overall enjoyable, if lengthy, romance.

Edit with additional points I wanted to mention:

Wolfram makes extensive references to the works of Hartmann von Aue and other major German romance authors, which I found to be a welcome part of the story. I was also a fan of his inclusion of his own opinion on what was going on in the story, it felt like he was telling a story, even though I was reading it.

Parzival's struggle with his faith after losing the Grail and being separated from his wife was fantastic plot point that a modern storyteller would have delved into much more, though Wolfram deals with it well himself.

The ending felt rather abrupt and almost unearned after spending so long with Gawan only for Parzival to start the Grail quest again in the penultimate book, but I need to reread Chretien's Perceval and its continuations before I blame Wolfram for the quicker wrap-up.

[Lada]

J'ai sur les genoux mon livre dans l'edition de Penguin, edite par Arthur Thomas Hatto. Le livre m'interesse uniquement comme une continuation et le reflet du travail de Chretien de Troyes, a
qui, Wolfram ,qui a ecrit son livre environ en 1205, ne se refere pas mais a un certain Kyot de Provence dont il a eu le manuscrit. Encore un livre qui n'est pas venu jusqu' a nos jours. L'originalite de l'histoire n'est pas requise au Moyen Age L'important c'est la narration et l'approche dans les faits narrateurs. L'approche de Wolfram est dans la narration de la pre-histoire de Parzival...une longue narration, comme d'un ancedent , celui du pere de Parzival, chevalier Gahmuret, cadet de la famille noble, chevalier des tournois, double de Perceval et aussi sa determination et sa preexistence jusqu' a ce qu'il ait engrosse la mere de Parzival Dame Herzeloyide avec qui il a vecu jusqu' a sa mort dans les faits d'armes guerrieres et avant elle il avait ete a l'Est conquerir d'autres terre, la Terre sainte et a eu une nouvelle famille, une princesse sarrasine dont il eu u pie bald fils, demi-frere de Parzival, qui deviendra Pretre Jean.
Le conte du Graal de Chretien est dans la mystere d'une connaissance initiatique, dans l'effet que ce mystere est present aupres du jeune et simple individu qui debute dans la vie. Il s'agit d' une creation originale du debut d'une progression lente vers la connaisaance, c'est un debut du roman romanesque, une poesie du mystere, celle de Wolfram est un travail d'une epopee un fait d'eclat, un geste a reconquerir. Il s'agit de retrouver pour Parzival la signifiacation d'une pierre, un lapis qu'il devait garder comme un roi futur, tel le Roi pecheur dont il a su guerir. Chez Chretien c'est gradalis, une graal, d'origine celtique, un plat magique. Chez Wolfram, c'est mystique lie aux chevaliers Templars et a la preservation de la chretiente dans la Terre Sainte


L'ordre de narration est un change et pour cause chez Wolfram par rapport a celui de Chretien. Pour en mentionner une importante est celle ou Perceval recontre sa cousine et la revelation de son nom qui lui vient apres l'echec au Chateau du Roi Pecheur, Chez Wolfram c'est tout au debut quand il s'est eloigne du manoir maternel, apres son aventure avec la dame de la tente. Et c'est un sens frappant, celui des approches differentes. Chretien comme romancier conteur, Wolfram comme racontant un geste epique,
Il y a des exemples du style de Wolfram, le dialogue et la narration faits pour eprouver son heros comme ses lecteurs futurs:
p. 15
If vacillation dwell with the heart the soul will rue it. Shame and honour clash where the courage of a steadfast man is motley like the magpie. But Such man may yet make merry, for Heaven and Hell have equl part in him.Infidelity's friend is black all over and takes on a murky hue, while the man of loyal temper holds to the white.


81

Bon fils, cher filz, bea filz that is what they used to call me, those who knew me at home. At wnat words she at once knew his nam. Now hear him namedby his true name, so that you may know who is lord of this story as he stands there talking with the girl. Upon my word you are Parzival! said she, of the re lips. Your name means pierce through the heart. great love ploughed just a furrow through your mother's heart. When he died, your father left sorrow for her portion. It is not to boast that Yi tell you but your mother is my mother's sister, and I will tell plainly who you are,,,

And name Perceval came to Perceval tout seul comme un eblouissement comme un effet d'echec precedent au Chateau du Graal...dont il a ete temoin de son apparition miraculeuse comme desa disparition egalement fantastique. Et le nom de Parzival lui a enseigne par sa cousine, ungeste epque raconte en cours de route.

Ces faits montrent pes differences d'approches de meme motifs themes qui menent aux genres differents

Parzival de Wolfram est une oeuvre lourde d'une epoque mystique et un travail de concurrences des fois differentes, d'une rivalite de fois, de rituels. Celle de Chretien est tout au debut, il brille d'une splendeur toute frais emoulue et gardant par la sous la plume d'un poete de talent ,la fraicheur d'un jeune homme qui defriche un inconnu tout seul devant ses lecteurs.Son nom se revele a lui comme dans un mystere, un enchantement de la lumiere, qui prend le lecteur au depourvu, pris de la curiosite de nouvelles connaissances. Parzival de Wolfram suit le role preetabli et sans choc de connaissance. Tout mene vers une connaissance de religion mystique qu'il va assumer etant viege et pur, le Chateau comme un Tempšle de la Purete, exempt de la Tentation.




YI have a wife, Ma'am, he replied whom I love more dearly than life itself. But even if I would still know a way of eluding you, if my rights are to be respected.
You must give up the MOORESS in favour of my love, said she....now divorce yourself from heathenry and love me asour rites enjoin, for I am desperately in love with you.


66

When the queen regained her senses and taken her babe to her arms she ans other ladies studied the little piddler between his legs. And what a fuss they had to make of him, seeing him shaped like a man!....The Queen lovedhim to kiss him, over and over again, Bon filz, cher filz, bea filz, shesaid with tender insistance,

She rejoiced in the birth of her son, yet her gay spirit was drowned at sorrow's ford.

L'oeuvre de Wolfram d?eschenbach est celui d'un serieux, travail ardu et chemin difficile acec beaucoup de personnages , une vraie epopees. Celle de Chretien est beaucoup plus balancee et reduites, harminieuse.

Je recommande Parzival comme une oeuvre exaltee qui a inspire les Romantiques en particulier le grand Wagner dans la creation de son opera et en effet il y a un poeme de P. Verlaine qui dans son Parzival a traite de ce chaste jeune homme qui a su resister les filles, leurs gentils babils, pour devenir le roi du graal
Cette oeuvre mystique attire specialistes par sa narration, cette magie de mots superflus et redondants et a meme fin rebute le large public ou L'Aventure est presente comme revalorisatrice et donc meritante aux services de hautes fins

[Lilja Risnes]

Snooooork😴😴😴😴😴

[William Bies]

It would be difficult to judge just how much of a cultural declension Miguel de Cervantes’ celebrated novel, Don Quixote—a staple of the curriculum of modern European literature in colleges these days—in fact represents. From a strictly literary point of view, a sensation, no doubt; who couldn’t be entertained, in a Voltairean fashion, by following the adventures (or perhaps one should say, misadventures) of the idealistic though hapless would-be knight-errant, Don Quixote, and his worldly-wise sidekick, Sancho Panza? Cervantes’ pioneering precedent for the modern novel set off a sea change in literary sensibilities, and not only in his native country of Spain. Yet, this too: one can be fairly sure that no real knight ever thought the way Don Quixote supposes he must have, quite apart from the circumstance of the protagonist’s naïveté. The author’s knowing humor conceals (as humor always does) a silent acknowledgment that something has gone badly wrong, namely, that by the late sixteenth century one could no longer quite believe in chivalry, if meant to be taken seriously.

Now fast forward almost three centuries, to the milieu of English Romanticism, as exhibited by John Keats, Walter Scott and Alfred Tennyson. Typical is Keats’ portrayal of chivalry in poems such as ‘Specimen of an Induction to a Poem’ (1817) and ‘Calidor’ (1817), which enjoys a favorable reputation among critics. Let us abstain from entering into a critical judgment on the poetic merit of Keats’ production. Suffice it to say that it suffers from an air of unreality, the inverse image so to speak of what one fastens upon in Cervantes—a youthful romanticization of the world of chivalry in the place of a jaded caricature. Scott’s artistry lends his depiction of medieval England shortly after the Norman conquest more historical substance, it is true, but it remains nonetheless a retrospective look. As for Tennyson, his extensive late work Idylls of the King (1869) fails to go beyond common tropes of conventional Arthurian romance.

What interests us at this juncture, however, is not the historiographic question concerning the way in which people in Western countries might remember the Middle Ages, ever since the revival in its fortunes stemming from the impulse imparted by the Romantic movement around the turn of the nineteenth century, but rather, the question as to what function the institution of knighthood played in the feudal society of its time. We have essayed a tentative approach towards an answer in the work we have reviewed immediately before, viz., the medieval historian Phyllis Jestice’s The Medieval Knight: The Noble Warriors of the Golden Age of Chivalry (2018, our review here). Our objective at present will be to investigate some works written contemporaneously with the actual existence of knights as an important factor in society, roughly from the era of Charlemagne (circa 742-814) to that of king Charles V of Habsburg (1500-1558), the last of the Holy Roman Emperors.

As every educated person knows, a great cycle of literature on chivalry was elaborated in medieval France, keeping more or less on track with the evolution of the institution itself during the course of several centuries. The chansons de geste begin in the late eleventh to early twelfth century with the Song of Roland, purporting to relate events from the legendary career of Charlemagne three hundred years before. The atmosphere is still quite rough, even grim; these are tales of heroic military exploits, nothing more. But by the high point towards the close of the twelfth century, in the person of the French poet Chrétien de Troyes one has moved on to a polished epic cycle of Arthurian romance, essentially as it persists up to our day, in which the contemporary chivalric ideal finds expression. We wish to suspend our disbelief over the increasingly fantastical elements; yet, it is clear that we shall wander only the farther from our announced goal, were we to pursue this literary avenue, for all the genuine artistic value it may proffer.

For this reason, we prefer to pivot to the parallel universe of medieval German literature. In Wolfram von Eschenbach (circa 1160-circa 1220), it seems, one can alight on a figure exactly of the kind we are seeking—a man who not only writes about chivalry but who himself was a knight bona fide and, indeed, who himself participated in the competitions of the Minnesänger of yore. The several songs of his that survive are regarded as masterpieces of their genre.

Von Eschenbach’s opus magnum, Parzival (completed certainly after the time-frame of 1203/1204), retells the Arthurian legend from his own perspective, critical of Chrétien de Troyes’ version. The scholarly consensus suggests that one cannot fully assess von Eschenbach’s authorial intentions without constant reference to what his French counterpart does. For the sake of the present purpose, nevertheless, we shall review von Eschenbach’s epic on its own right, independent of any parallels in Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian cycle there may be. This recensionist’s medieval German is far better than his medieval French and, anyway, Chrétien de Troyes’ oeuvre is simply too wide-ranging for him to have arrived at a conspectus of it. Thus, the proposed plan is forced upon him by necessity. Perhaps someone more erudite can in due course undertake to complete the analysis we here commence.

While theoretically also belonging to the period of Mittelhochdeutsch, the language von Eschenbach speaks (he grew up in the second half of the twelfth century) is notably harder to follow than either Meister Eckhart’s or Henry Suso’s, both of whom fall squarely within the fourteenth century. If one sticks with it, though, one soon picks up the antiquated vocabulary and becomes, so to speak, acclimated. The Deutscher Klassiker Verlag edition prints the original text verso along with a translation into modern German by Dieter Kühn recto, in 1400 pages, along with about four hundred pages of line-by-line commentary.

The early books will be typical of what a modern reader may be familiar with, up to about a third of the way through. We learn of Parzivâl’s ancestry, centering on his father Gahmuret's love affair with his mother Herzeloyde, and then can follow Parzivâl’s childhood and youthful exploits, once he becomes a knight.

In a departure from convention, the author, Wolfram von Eschenbach, will interject himself at critical moments, and offer observations on what his characters are doing as well as volunteer very personal confidences and his own general views on the subject of the romance. The first theme to register itself is that of the superiority of married love.

ich wil iu mêr von wîbes orden sagn. man und wîp diu sint al ein: als diu sunn diu hiute schein und ouch der name der heizet tac. den enwederz sich gescheiden mac: si blüent ûz eime kerne gar. des nemet künsteclîche war. [Book 3, §§172-173]

Yet he can be psychologically astute and critical:

lûter minne ich prîse und alle die sint wîse, ez sî wîp oder man: von den ichs ganze volge hân. swâ liep gein liebe erhüebe lûter âne trübe, da newederz des verdrüzze daz minne ir herze slüzze mit minne von der wanc ie flôch, diu minne ist ob den andern hôch. [Book 10, §533]

An element of supernatural causation enters about halfway, with the sorcerer Clinschor and with Parzivâl’s quest for the grail. The latter must undergo a process of spiritual growth, in order to repent of his proton pseudos and to learn the humility to become, at the end of the tale, worthy to wield the grail. Von Eschenbach’s artistry excels at showing how, under God’s guidance, everything conspires to work out well for those who trust in him and the evil of strife can be defeated.

To sum up: the construct Parzivâl represents the ideal knight, whom everyone of us other than Jesus can only approximate, to a greater or usually lesser extent. A knight’s two cardinal duties, to defend truth and to protect the defenseless, define his vocation. Maybe there have, after all, been no proper knights for more than five hundred years, nonetheless there is a crying demand in the predicament we face lately in our world for an original kind of knight whose weapons are truth and knowledge in the stead of the sword. The routine massacre of civilians that has become a common, and generally accepted (at least on the right), feature of warfare in our day wouldn’t happen if we had leaders in our country who respect truth. Somebody needs to point out to these great men (μεγάλοι, Matthew 20:25) that they are disrespecting truth.

Against Wolfram von Eschenbach’s ethical seriousness, Chrétien de Troyes merely plays with the idea of chivalry in the same way that the modern-day psychologist Jordan Peterson toys with scripture; Richard Wagner’s opera, Parsifal, distinguishes itself by being even worse, a distortion (had Nietzsche been capable of perceiving this, rather than attack Wagner he would have lauded him).

To wrap up, we wish to comment on the seeming paradox of why modern-day religious conservatives spurn chivalry. Despite misleading outward appearances of an association with historic Judaism resp. Christianity, the movement belongs rather to the milieu of the post-Napoleonic aristocratic reactionaries, later ardent anti-Communists. By the fifteenth century, anyway, the medieval order had collapsed, never to be restored. What then are the roots of modern religiosity, to the extent that it can genuinely be called religious at all? First of all, on the negative side, a forgetfulness both of patristics and of scholasticism (the so-called Oxford Movement spearheaded by John Henry Cardinal Newman turned out, predictably, to be ephemeral). If thus the time-honored heritage of the Latin church was largely displaced, what emerged to supplant it? Reformation and Counter-Reformation both obliterate the devotio moderna that came to prominence during the later medieval era, with Luther consciously and conspicuously so while among Catholics, perchance through inadvertence. Certainly, once, by the seventeenth century, the contest between the Jesuits and the Jansenists loomed so greatly in everyone’s eyes—each faction in its own way decidedly post-medieval in orientation—the older strands of the great spiritual tradition could only fall by the wayside. Baroque spirituality in the Tridentine church and Pietism in Protestant Germany cultivate a sensuous emotional response all but to the exclusion of an intellectual form of faith, and display as well a tendency to superstition in place of an elevated symbolist mentality (for the latter, let us refer to our review of the twelfth-century manual on the spiritual life known as the Speculum virginum, here). With the elimination of knighthood as a social function (except as a relic) and its replacement by the modern professional military, based upon infantry tactics, there was no locale in the body politic that could uphold an independent spiritual view of life against the centralization of the temporal power of the modern state, so practically speaking patriotism towards the nation-state assumes the coordinating role that devotion to God previously would have fulfilled. Hence, the characteristic virtues become duty, obedience (i.e., subservience) and efficiency rather than a tenacious adherence to what is right as enunciated by an absolute ethical standard. Christendom disintegrates into a paltry collection of national churches, explicitly subordinated to the secular state in Protestant lands, implicitly so in Catholic countries. Can we discern any signs of the former dispensation in Parzival, specifically? For one thing, Parzivâl will often go to Mass in the morning before riding out to battle against injustice, thus expressly acknowledging the spiritual authority to be higher than the temporal power (in other words, the very ordering that has been turned upside-down in modernity).

How does the demise of chivalry in the early modern period interact with the concurrent loss of mystical prayer, if it all? Are we now in a position to trace the determinants of the sixteenth-century shift from minnen to lieben? Let us draw out the etymologies of both terms: ‘minnen’ = ‘to keep in mind, to cherish’ from Proto-Germanic *minjōną, related to English ‘mind’; versus ‘lieben’ = ‘to love’ = ‘to experience a strong feeling or affinity for’, from Old High German ‘liob’ (around 800), related to Russian ‘ljubít’ (любить).

By surrendering to an emotivism, patriotism in the modern sense lowers everyone’s sights from a bracing striving after the infinite and transcendent to a dull contentment with the sublunary and a concomitant politicization, in which sacred things are pressed into the service of the profane. (Very telling examples of the said abuse can be culled ad libitum from President Trump’s State of the Union addresses, which the wildly cheering Republicans in Congress simply cannot get enough of.) The role of rampant consumerism is to lull everyone into complacency by papering over the emptiness of modern life and its dearth of zeal for the cause of God and his intervention in salvation history (Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, Harvard University Press, 2012).

Is there anything someone subject to the conditions of post-modernity can do to counter the baleful supremacy of patriotism or to restore a chivalrous attitude? Any pertinent lessons from Parzival itself? By far the profoundest betrayal one can mark in the right over the past twenty or thirty years is its abandonment of the very desirability of truth-telling (by selling itself out to big oil, for instance). In contrast, the highest praise von Eschenbach can bestow on a knight or a lady is to declare him or her ‘free of deceit’ (valsches vrîe).

got heizt und ist diu wârheit: dem was ie falschiu fuore leit. [Book 9, §462]

What would a renewed catholicity look like? It would want to promote inter-religious dialogue and mutual understanding across civilizations, not the washing out of doctrinal differences in ecumenism as it tends to be practiced by the liberal mainstream, on the one hand, or the deformation of culture into bigotry and xenophobia as we see occurring in the racialist white nationalism of the religious right, on the other (Charlie Kirk). A fundamental precondition of all this would be a purposeful reinstatement of a cognitive element to love, detachment from the idols of material success and worldly power, discernment of and obedience to God’s saving will for the world as a whole instead of the patriotic vaulting of the interests of the nation-state over the common good of mankind, which latter invariably conduces to protectionism in the economic sphere and to adventurous wars of aggression as the modus operandi in international affairs.

More deeply, how to overcome fragmentation of the universe of intellectual discourse and Taylor’s supernova? (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Harvard University Press, 2007.) To love in the sense of minnen is to be open to the entry of the kingdom of heaven into our world (ἡ δὲ Μαριὰμ πάντα συνετήρει τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα συμβάλλουσα ἐν ϰαρδίᾳ αὐτῆς, Luke 2:19).

Without a radical return to the authentic educative ideal none of this could be possible, hence what is mandatory would be a recovery of the liberal arts by which to forestall the trend we see all around us to reduce education to the acquisition of critical thinking skills and STEM competencies; i.e., the pursuit of wisdom rather than bald credentialism (which probably cannot be accomplished within the university system as we now have it, but fortunately today there are more resources with which to nourish lifelong learning than ever before if the communal will exists to encourage and sustain it).

Who is the Christ of the Second Coming? Not the exclusive property of any one religious group, but Wisdom sending forth her maidservants to all and sundry to prepare the way:

Is not Wisdom calling? Is not Understanding raising her voice?
On the heights overlooking the road, at the crossways, she takes her stand;
by the gates, at the entrance to the city, on the access-roads, she cries out,
I am calling to you, all people, my words are addressed to all humanity.
And now, my children, listen to me. Happy are those who keep my ways.
Listen to instruction and become wise, do not reject it.
Blessed, whoever listens to me, who day after day keeps watch at my gates to guard my portals.
For whoever finds me finds life, and obtains the favor of YHWH;
but whoever misses me harms himself, all who hate me are in love with death.
Wisdom has built herself a house, she has hewn her seven pillars,
she has slaughtered her beasts, drawn her wine, she has laid her table.
She has despatched her maidservants and proclaimed from the heights above the city,
Who is simple? Let him come this way.
(Proverbs 8:1-4, 32-36; 9:1-4)

Wither does it lead? ‘To do what is right, to love loyalty and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8), so as eventually to become a ‘partaker of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4, θείας ϰοινωνοὶ φύσεως).

To illustrate, the atheist who is animated by a passionate concern about the devastating impact of global warming on poor populations all over the earth is certifiably more Christlike than the right-wing climate science denier and professed believer in God who wants only to ransack the planet for his unbounded profit and self-aggrandizement, without caring in the least about the harmful consequences of his anti-climate policies for everyone else.

A key ingredient of the creative minority (Pope Benedict XVI), the knight as Kulturträger, where the culture in question would be mankind’s accumulated wisdom about good and evil, whose authority derives, not from high political or ecclesial office, but from his own demonstrated probity and a personal charisma letting shine the little lamp he has been vouchsafed (Matthew 5:14-16, you are light for the world. A city built on a hill-top cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub; they put it on the lamp-stand where it shines for everyone in the house. In the same way your light must shine in people’s sight, so that, seeing your good works, they may give praise to your Father in heaven). What we have at our hands here constitutes an eminently realistic proposal, far from a boyish fantasy but dead serious and in the very process of its realization. A tiny glimmer of hopeful light may be espied in the fact that, even as the post-modern world almost everywhere descends into a calamitous though not unprecedented darkness and as those public figures who are most reputed for their rectitude and piety are also those who scheme most nefariously and lie most openly and brazenly, a handful of brave women and men have stepped up to fight for truth and justice on behalf of the rest of us who may not be equipped or free to do so ourselves, among them Greta Thunberg, Heather Cox Richardson, Naomi Klein, Ezra Klein, Jamal Khashoggi and Alexei Navalny—a new order of knight suited to the exigency of the moment, late in time, and as we see, this being in reality an actual full-blown world-wide war already in progress—simultaneously material and spiritual—, the price of such non-violent witness can very well be to die a violent death.

[Elisa]

Dieser Versroman von W. v. Eschenbach ist eines der ganz großen Stücke der mittelalterlichen Literatur.

Die Geschichte handelt von dem Artusritter Parzival, der auszieht, um den Heiligen Gral zu finden.
Es beginnt mit den Abenteuern von Parzivals Vater Gahmuret, der Herzeloyde heiratet. Dann wird Parzival gezeugt. Der Vater begibt sich dann aber wieder auf Abenteuerfahrt und im Kampf stirbt er. Herzeloyde zieht den Jungen im Wald auf um ihn fern von jeglichen Rittertums hält, damit sie ihn nicht auch noch verliert! Doch Parzival bricht dennoch zum Artushof auf und nach anfänglichen Peinlichkeiten (seiner Unwissenheit und Naivität) wird er ein vollkommener Artusritter. Sein Lehrer allerdings lehrt ihn auch, keine unnötigen Fragen zu stellen, was sich später als folgenschwer herausstellt!!!

Parzival heiratet eine Königin und gewinnt damit ein Reich für sich. Er reist sehr viel und kommt nach einiger Zeit zur Gralsburg, wo er Zeuge merkwürdiger Vorkommnissen wird und den Gral erblickt. Der Burgherr Anfortas ist schwer krank, doch fragt der Held also Parzival nicht, woran er leidet, nicht wissend, dass er ihn mit dieser Frage hätte erlösen können!
Parzival kehrt zum Artushof zurück und wird als Ritter in die Tafelrunde aufgenommen. Eine Frau namens Kundrie verflucht ihn allerdings wegen seines Versagens auf der Gralsburg! Parzival wendet sich von Gott ab. Er begibt sich auf eine lange Reise, um den Gral wiederzufinden.
Es folgt ein Abenteuer des Artusritters Gawan, der sich am Ende ebenfalls auf die Gralssuche begibt. Parzival wird nach einigen Jahren der Suche von (dem Einsiedler) Trevrizent die Liebe zu Gott gelehrt und legt seinen Gotteshass ab. Es folgen weitere Abenteuer Gawans.
Parzival wird schließlich von Kundrie, die ihren Fluch bereut, erneut zur Gralsburg gebeten. Hier erlöst er Anfortas durch die Frage, was ihm fehle und wird zum neuen Gralskönig.

Ich finde es schon sehr interessant, wenn man solche literarischen Texte in der Schule liest und analysiert...das hat schon seine Vorteile.

Interessante Geschichte, ein bisschen schwer für diejenigen, die solche Texte eigentlich nicht lesen bzw keine literarischen Texte mögen...

[Julian Meynell]

This is a 13th century epic poem written by a German Night concerning the quest of Parzival (Percival as he is more commonly known) of the Arthurian round table for the Holy Grail. I am not familiar really with the original medieval Arthurian romances with the exception of Gawain and the Green Night which is a very original and idiosyncratic work. As such I can not really compare Parzival to other similar works.

It is an epic poem, although I read a prose translation of it. I am not sure if there is a verse translation available in English. I am not a big fan of prose translations of epic poems, even though they are not as faithful to the words, I feel that they mislead on the spirit. The translation I read was the one by Mustard and Passage and not the Penguin classics version. It is hard to evaluate a translation if you don't know the original language, but I suspect that this is an overly literal translation, which is obscure some of the are and the clarity of the original by being overly faithful.

The work is an interesting insight into the medieval mind and a reminder that in many ways we are further away from the modern west in 13th century Germany than we are in 5th century BC Greece or 18th century China. The book has a lot of combat as one would expect, but it is mostly through jousts and even the battles are very formalized. The code of chivalry dominates all, but we find in Eschenbach a kind and attractive code where its highest ideal is manifested in a loving and affectionate way. Eschenbach is an ever present author in the book coming across as idiosyncratic but very attractive figure, witty and kind.

The story itself concerns Parzifal's quest for the holy grail, his conversion to a true form of Christianity and his learning to be a knight. It is also an exploration of his love for his wife and the most moving moment is where he looks at blood drops in the snow which remind him of the beauty of his wife. Much of the story also concerns Gawan and his knightly adventures.

It is a very interesting and at times moving story although very medieval.