¹ Lachmann¹ gives the missing lines as 228, 27—229, 19. Ernst Martin gives them as 228, 28—229, 19. Both references are slightly inaccurate, it would seem, as neither embraces a complete set of couplets. I have not seen the MS.—The omission of this passage finds a parallel, in a series of MSS., in the total reworking of the passage that reports the joy of the women, when Parzival is born, at the sight of the man-child's viselîn (112, 21-27). The variant versions are quoted in full in Eduard Hartl, Die jüngeren *G-Handschriften des Wolframschen Parzival. 1. Abteilung (Berlin und Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1928), pp. 66-67.

² All my quotations from Parzival are based on Leitzmann's text. Zorn, here and in 1. 22, is the equivalent of anger, although the word is used by Wolfram to designate any violent state of agitation, as in 247, 7, where Parzival runs through all the empty rooms of the Grail Castle, shouting, finding not a soul.

³ This is the only occurrence of “redespæhe” in Parzival. But of “spæhe” and its derivatives we have eight instances which serve to shed light on our passage:

234, 22 dar an lac ein spæher vlîz—adj., referring to the two silver knives that can cut steel: “cunningly contrived.”

328, 15 sîn vel hât spashen glast—adj., referring to Feirefiz' magpie complexion, a miraculous phenomenon.

375, 2 an Kaukasas daz golt ist rôt,

dar ûz die heiden manege wât

würkent, diu vil spæhe hât—subst., extraordinary technical skill of oriental weavers applied to materials of fabulous costliness.

388, 26 mit spasher gelübede er si liez

von ira rîten in die stat—adj. Parzival has captured three knights of highest rank in the battle before Bearosche. He releases them on the extraordinary stipulation either to effect the ransom of their opposite number, King Meljanz, or to find the Grail for him.

418, 29 der herzoge Lidamus,

begunde ouch sîner rede alsus

mit spæhlîchen worten—adj. The term is used to introduce a 60-line speech which forms part of a dialogue in which two counsellors berate each other. Lidamus' speech is slick, fluent, fatuous, full of allusions, a clever line of bull, “Galimathias.” The complete self-assurance of the wealthy coward scores an essentially humorous effect. This is the only other instance in Parzival where the concept “spæhe” is used in application to manner of speech.

629, 26 (sîn werc vil spæhe brâhte)—subst., ingenious workmanship, referring to a very precious oriental cloth.

658, 20 als ir wol seht, diz spæhe werc.—adj., referring to the Magic Castle wrought by Klinschor's cunning.

813, 14 daz er des grâls niht sæhe.

daz dûhte al die ritter spæhe.—adj. The fact that to Feirefiz, the heathen, the Grail is not visible, strikes the knights as exceedingly strange.

⁴ The qualifications that make a messenger are emphasized in some of the mediaeval romances. I cite an instance in Wace's Brut to this effect. When the Trojans, on their way to Britain, cast anchor at the mouth of the Loire, the king sends a messenger to inquire of their purpose: “Humbert, ki bien saveit parler, / Fu a cel message porter” Le Roman de Brut de Wace par Ivor Arnold, 2 vols. (Paris, 1938), ll. 809-810. In the Roman de Thebes, ed. Leopold Constans, 2 vols. (Paris, 1890), when Tydeus delivers his message to Etiocles, the latter first compliments him on his adroitness as a messenger (ll. 1367-69) ; then, when the argument takes a more threatening turn, Etiocles replies: You know how to speak too proudly and insult people. He who made you his messenger did not want the matter to come to an amicable settlement (ll. 1395-97).

⁵ The build-up for the scene and the scene itself run from 37, 12 to 43, 30. Here is a brief summary: The Black Queen's (Belakane) City (Patelamunt) is besieged by two armies, a Scottish army and a Moorish army, far outnumbering the defenders. The distress of the City is at its height when Gahmuret arrives and offers to champion the Queen's cause. The captain of the garrison, Lahfilirost, plays host to Gahmuret and acquaints him with the disposition of the besieging forces. The next morning Gahmuret performs a series of brilliant exploits; he defeats and takes prisoner Hiuteger and Gaschier, the leaders of the Scottish troops, and he does the same with Razalic, the leader of the Moors, thus ending the war at one stroke. Having taken his pledge, Gahmuret sends the first defeated knight into the City at once. In the case of the second knight there is some delay: Gahmuret bids him first turn back and tell the Scottish troops that the war is over so far as they are concerned, all their leaders (except for Kailet, Gahmuret's kinsman, who would not fight him) having been captured. The same instructions to his troops delay the repairing of the Moorish leader to the City into the Captain's custody.

The humorous scene is developed as we see the impact of the succession of events on the mind of the Captain, Lahfilirost.

The arrival in the City of the first captured Scottish leader was witnessed with joy by the ladies (38, 14-15). But the arrival of the second Scottish leader (42, 7 f.) provokes a most surprising outburst of panic on the part of the Black Queen's captain. Instead of rejoicing, he flies into a fit of rage directed against himself. He acts like a lion on a rampage and tears his hair. The scene is humorously developed, but the Captain's consternation is real. What is the trouble? The shock of seeing two of the enemy's leaders captured in one morning is too much for him. Like Polycrates' friend he is overwhelmed by the excess of good fortune. “This can only lead to a dreadful end,” he laments. “Flushed with victory, my guest will not know when to stop. He will overdo, he will venture out too far and get himself killed. Such a rescuer the Gods sent me, and I am letting him perish! I shall feel disgraced, and rightly so, to the end of my life.” As he rages on in this fashion, the arms of the Moorish chieftain, his shield, helmet and sword, are brought into the City by a squire. When he recognizes these arms his eyes pop: anguish is transformed into jubilation. He dashes out of the City to find and embrace Gahmuret.

⁶ Maintenant cil s'an va amont

Der Percevalroman (Li Contes del Graal) von Christian von Troyes, herausgegeben von Alfons Hilka (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1932), ll. 3035-46.

⁷ The Legend of Sir Perchal (London: David Nutt, 1906-09), ii, 315.

⁸ Wolframs Stil und der Stoff des Parzival, Kais. Akad. der Wissenschaften in Wien, Phil. hist. Klasse Sitzungsberichte, 180. Band. 4. Abh. (Wien 1916).

⁹ A particularly amusing case is Singer's argument, pp. 96-97, relating to Wolfram's appellation of Segremors as roys, to be explained only, he thought, on the basis of a lost French original. Alfons Hilka, in a note to 1. 4220 (pp. 707-708) of his critical edition of Chrétien's Perceval, finds Singer's insistence on this point amusing, without attempting any specific refutation. It remained for Maurice Wilmotte to show that Chrétien's text—in the line directly preceding those quoted by Singer—supplies the key to the riddle with its word sequence “le roi / Sagremor” (11. 4219-20) which Wolfram mistook for a phrase (Le Poème du Gral, Le Parzival de Wolfram d'Eschenbach et ses sources Françaises, Paris, 1933).

¹⁰ “Schwer zu verstehen ist es allerdings, wie er, der arme Ritter, durch viele Jahre einen des Französischen kundigen Schreiber beschäftigen konnte, der ihn erst mit dem Inhalt der Quelle Stück für Stück bekannt machte und dann seine deutschen Verse aufzeichnete”—Richard Heinzel, “Über Wolframs von Eschenbach Parzival, Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Kais. Akademie d. Wiss., Band 130 (1893), p. 1.

¹¹ Förster, Golther, Sievers, Fourquet, Panzer, Schwietering, Mergell, among others.

¹² Wendelin Förster, Krislian von Troyes Wörterbuch (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1914), p. 190*, n.

¹³ “Panzers Erweis von Wolframs ausgedehnter Kenntnis französischer Dichtung bringt erneute Bestätigung, daß der Dichter nicht nur Französisch verstand sondern auch sprach, als wichtige Voraussetzung für sein freies Verhältnis zum französischen Original nicht nur dem Inhalt sondern auch dem fremden Wort und Namen gegenüber, dessen Klang ihn reizte mit den Lauten ein unverbindliches kaleidoskopartiges Spiel zu treiben”—Julius Schwietering, Parsivals Schuld (Frankfurt am Main, 1946), 31 pages, p. 11.

¹⁴ Wolfram d'Eschenbach et le Conte del Graal (Strasbourg, 1938).

¹⁵ Fourquet (p. 128) cannot understand why Parzival fails to charge Orilus with the killing of Schianatulander and to brand him as the foe of his house. This omission leads him to conjecture that most of the scattered references to Orilus and his brother Lehelin, in other parts of the poem, were inserted by Wolfram as after-thoughts, after completion of a first draft of the Parzival. But this whole edifice of ingenious conjecture is reared on a fallacious foundation: Fourquet fails to realize that in his fight with Orilus, Parzival has no idea of the identity of his opponent; he does not ask his name after vanquishing him, and, so far as our information goes, never finds out. We are not told whether he met Orilus in his sister Kunneware's company the next day, at Arthur's court, before Kundrie's arrival disrupted the festivities. Is there significance in the fact that when Parzival recites to Feirefiz the list of heroes subdued by his hand (772, 1 f.), the name of Orilus, along with some others, is missing?

The most important fact implicit in the Parzival-Orilus relation is this (and some readers might wish that Wolfram had chosen to develop it explicitly) : A kindly Providence kept Parzival throughout his career from staining his hand with any more blood-guilt after his murder of Ither. In all his subsequent fights he does not kill one of his adversaries! The Länderraub and Verwandtenrache motifs are not “blind motifs,” for all their failure to wind up in the conventional way. They point up the fact that Parzival's development is destined to take a wholly unexpected turn. In this case the mercy of Providence manifested itself by keeping Parzival unaware of the identity of his opponent. Had he known it was Orilus, killer of Schianatulander and arch-foe of his house, whom he was fighting, he would have been involved in a tragic dilemma. He would have been bound by the code of chivalry to exact blood-vengeance. Where would that have left Jeschute, for whose plight he was responsible? And how then, the next day, would he have faced Kunneware, the lady to whose service he was dedicated, had he learned that it was her brother he had slain? Only by skirting the edge of tragedy in complete unawareness is Parzival saved from these horrible consequences.

¹⁶ Wolfram von Eschenbach und seine französischen Quellen, ii. Teil: Wolframs Parzival (Münster in Westfalen: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1943), 364 pages.

¹⁷ Op. cit., pp. 87-88. Mergell apparently overlooked my paper, “Die epischen Zeitverhältnisse in den Graldichtungen Crétiens und Wolframs,” PMLA, liii (1938), 917-950. See the Excursus at the end of this paper.

¹⁸ We are first told in Book ii (66, 1 f.) that King Arthur has been engaged for more than two years in search for his mother abducted by

ein phaffe, der wol zouber las

mit dem diu vrouwe ist hin gewant (66, 4-5)

= Chrétien 7548-49:

Uns clers sages d'astrenomie,

que le reine i amena

(Hilka, incidentally, fails to call attention in the notes to this Chrétien passage to the striking correspondence of Wolfram's lines.) The second mention of the spell in Book vi, by Kundrie, 318, 16 f., makes us infer, of course, that Arthur's sister, Sangive, and her two daughters were included in the original abduction. But this gets us into chronological difficulty as regards Sangive's son Beacurs, mentioned in Book i, 39, 25—one year before the events of Book ii—as still unborn; for Beacurs does not grow up as an inmate of Schastel Marveil: he is present at Arthur's court with his brother Gawan in Book vi, 323, 1-2, and later.—A further difficulty: After the mention of Schastel Marveil by Kundrie, Klias reports that he missed out on this exploit and he mentions the four queens by name (334, 11 f.). Why do we hear not a word of Arthur's reacting to this news?

¹⁹ The story of the sword, however, is not self-contradictory, if the following, very brief sketch of the situation, is accepted as plausible. The visit to the Grail Castle involved a variety of dangers, more or less magically motivated. Under this head I would group three things: (1) the Fisher-King's warning: “Hüetet iuch, dâ gênt unkunde wege” (226, 6); (2) the treacherous sword; (3) the treacherous portcullis (247, 21 f.). The words with which Amfortas hands Parzival the sword, “herre, ich brâhtez in nôt / in maneger stat” (239, 25-26), give the impression that Amfortas has wielded this sword in many a fight. This, among other things, leads me to put the following interpretation on Sigune's words (253, 24-254, 16), as she warns Parzival against its treachery: There is a spell connected with the sword (engraved upon it, according to 490, 20-24). If you wield this sword, knowing its spell, it will see you through all your fights. But if, not knowing the spell, you wield it, it will break at the second stroke. Then, to get it made whole again, you must take it to a certain magic spring....

Having been warned by Sigune, Parzival did not use this sword in his fight with Orilus. He did, however, test it on a later occasion (434, 25—435, 1), and things happened as Sigune had predicted : the sword broke in two and Parzival had it made whole in the manner outlined by Sigune. From that time forth the Grail sword aided him in his deeds of prowess.

Everything then is clear except for one thing: where was this sword when Parzival fought his half-brother Feirefiz? (It was the sword taken from Ither that broke in that combat, 744, 10 f.) All would be simple if, like Gawan (335, 10 f.), Parzival were travelling with a group of pages, horses, and saddlebags. Then we would think of the Grail sword as among his baggage on the morning of his last fight. But such features of realism are completely ignored in the presentation of Parzival as the knight errant with no possessions whatever save the clothes on his body and the armor he is wearing and the horse he is riding.

²⁰ On two counts: (1) he recants (798, 11-22) not a previous assertion of fact but only a hypothetical conjecture (454, 26 f.; 471, 23 f.); (2) the recantation drives a wedge between lines that obviously belong together, disrupting the coherent exposition of a thought. Heinzel's explanation of the recantation (pp. 9-10) seems to me a classic example of finely-spun absurdity. He says in effect: We are supposed to think of the original guardians of the Grail as loyal, heavenly angels. Trevrezent invented the fib about their having been neutral angels, in order to associate the Grail with something tainted and compromised, hoping thereby to render it less desirable, i.e., to reduce the ardor of Parzival's hopeless quest. (In a bumbling way he was on the road to that modern device: substitution of another interest.)

²¹ There is hardly a monograph on Wolfram which does not suffer from inaccuracies that are the result of slips of memory regarding Wolfram's text. Scholars who work on other phases of the Grail Legend and take only an incidental interest in Wolfram are prone to take over some of these errors and add new ones. Thus the work of A. C. L. Brown, The Origin of the Grail Legend (Cambridge, Mass., 1943), an endeavor to establish its Celtic origin, which I am in no position to judge, is riddled with inaccuracies in its discussion of Wolfram's version. J. D. Brace's chapter on Wolfram, on the other hand, in his Evolution of Arthurian Legend, 2 vols. (Göttingen and Baltimore, 1923), gives an admirably reliable account.—I should qualify this, however, by remarking that his presentation of Parzival's guilt is out of balance: Bruce omits all reference to the fact that it was not a slaying per se but the slaying of a kinsman which looms in his confessor's, Trevrezent's, mind as Parzival's greatest offense, a point effectively developed by Mergell and Schwietering.

²² “Spranc” cannot be a synonym of “gienc.” “Spranc” is used to characterize the impetuous haste of Segremors, who rushes into Arthur's tent and pulls the covers off the sleeping king to tell his big piece of news. Cf. 284, 30-32:

Sô balde, daz er niht engienc,

beide lief unde spranc

Segremors.

Cf. also Parzival's retelling of the lance episode to Trevrezent, 294, 16: “ein knappe aldâ zer tür în spranc.”

²³ Oer Gral (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938), as reviewed by F. Ranke in A.f.d.A. 82. Band (1948), Heft 1 and 2, pp. 20-21. Yet an authority of Hilka's rank denies even this common assumption. Cf. op. cit., p. 734: “[bei Christian jedenfalls hat die Lanze nichts Christliches oder Legendarisches an sich, sie kann nur aus einem Märchenmotiv stammen].”

²⁴ In Weston, The Legend of Sir Perceval, i, 64, we find this statement: “Later on we learn that Herzeleide [sic] ... was herself, before her first marriage, Grail Bearer, in which office she was succeeded by her sister.” Miss Weston did not learn this from Wolfram. In Parzival, 809, 9-12, we read:

This slip on Miss Weston's part is clear evidence of the fact that she visualized the procession in which the grail was carried as a ritual of frequent occurrence.—Responsible for Miss Weston's slip is a line from Titurel about Sigune's mother, Schoisiane:

die sich der grâl zem êrsten hez tragen, daz was Schoisiane, (24, 4 Leitzmann). This line, like the Titurel fragments generally, poses a problem. Does it contradict the Parzival passage just quoted, or does it supplement it as regards an earlier period of Grail history? Schoisiane had been dead for some thirty years when Repanse de Schoie carried the Grail on the occasion of Parzival's first visit. We are not told how often or under what circumstances Schoisiane carried it. Its solemn installation in the great Temple described in Der Jüngere Titurel might have been such a hôchgezîl. In any case the problem must be reduced to this: The Titurel fragments presuppose familiarity with Wolfram's Parzival. They embroider freely on its themes in a complicated lyrical strophe form tending to a mood of static reverie, sharply differentiated from the dramatic narrative style of Parzival. Even assuming that the Titurel fragments are substantially Wolfram's own (can we ever be sure?), it is methodologically inadmissible, in case of apparent divergence, to accommodate the focus of Parzival to that of the Titurel fragments. Such attempts, like those of the gospel harmonizers, dull the edge of critical investigation.

²⁵ This is Lachmann's punctuation. It conforms to the logic of the situation. Leitzmann obscures it by reversing the period and comma of this and the following line. In many cases of the sort where the punctuation established by Lachmann seems obviously preferable, I ask myself: Did Leitzmann deviate from Lachmann merely in order to show that a different spacing of the major pauses is possible?

²⁶ It is this incident of the bloody spear emerging from the wound (in the presence of a select number of ministrants) rather than the carrying of the spear about the four sides of the hall which is touched upon, I believe, in the following lines, already quoted above:

(That evening, when they abandoned themselves to sorrow about the bloody spear, the Grail was carried forth because they relied on it for help.) If “um” has local significance, the allusion does not fit the scene in the great hall; if causally interpreted, on the other hand, it may well refer to the scene of lamentation described in Book v. In any case, the lines quoted are incompatible with the notion that the carrying of the spear on that occasion had any ritualistic significance.

²⁷ Other messages temporarily appear on the Grail according to 470, 21-30.

²⁸ There is one line in the scene of the lance that could be quoted in support of the ritual interpretation of this feature: “der site was ze trûren guot” (231, 19). “Site,” however, unlike the modern “Sitte,” does not necessarily involve the idea of a fixed custom. Its element of generalization is very much vaguer. In its context I take the line to mean simply: This way of doing was calculated to give a fresh impetus to their sorrow. Our line does not go to prove that Wolfram originally devised the scene in ritualistic terms and thought up the other explanation later. It could also be objected that in Book IX it is an iron spearhead that is thrust into the wound, whereas in Book V it is exhibited as affixed to a shaft. I do not think that such a rationalistic argument is in need of serious refutation. The copious amount of blood I would account for by the factor of hyperbole, so common with Wolfram.

²⁹ Richard Heinzel, one of the most erudite and respected Wolfram scholars of the last generation, comments on the function of Wolfram's lance in terms that should serve as a warning to students to check and recheck on the basis of Wolfram's text every alleged statement of fact put forward by scholars regarding Wolfram's version: “Das Herumtragen dieser Lanze ist sinnlos [!]. Denn sie ist bei Kiot [Wolfram] nicht wie bei Crestien ein heiliger Gegenstand, der sich gut in die Gralprozession einfügt ... sondern die Waffe, mit welcher Amfortas verwundet worden ist.... Unter diesen Voraussetzungen ist auch die Starke der Blutung unverständlich.... Das glaubt man nur von einer heiligen oder zauberhaften Waffe.... Ebensowenig passt zu Kiots [Wolframs] Vorstellung der Jammer, welcher sich beim Herein-und Umhertragen der Lanze erhebt.... Die Lanze wurde ja hereingebracht um die Leiden des Gralkönigs zu sänftigen [!]... nicht um an die Verwundung desselben zu erinnern [!]” (pp. 42-43).

³⁰ Wolfram says “diu ritterschaft” (229, 15) gave the mollifying explanation. I take this to mean that one of them spoke up, and the rest of them eagerly corroborated his version.

³¹ We also think of Obie kissing her lover Meljanz' wounded arm (396, 25-26).

³² I wish to register emphatic disagreement with Mergell's attempt (p. 297) to construe the stages of Gawan's adventures as a developing series leading to his purification, a process of Läuterung. Mergell formulates his scheme as follows: “Nach Dienst ohne Mineerfüllung in der Begegnung mit Obilot, Minneverlangen ohne ritterlichen Dienst in der Begegnung mit Antikonie vereinigt Gawan erst jetzt [in der Begegnung mit Orgeluse] ritterlichen Dienst und höfisches Werben um Minne in vorbildlicher Weise” (p. 276). This sounds appealing, but is quite wrong in my opinion. Gawan represents static perfection, in the secular sphere of chivalry. He manifests his perfection by his adventures (trials) which demonstrate the validity of his reputation of being the perfect knight. In this he stands in contrast to Parzival, who achieves a unique synthesis of secular and spiritual values, after years of dire purgatory, on the basis of the Christian triadic rhythm of innocence, guilt and purification.

³³ There is no problem about Sigune's opposite number in Chrétien's Grail poem. The maiden is Perceval's cosine germainne (l. 3600), like himself, therefore, closely related to the hermit and the Fisher-King (ll. 6415-19). She must be assumed to be in touch with the inmates of the Castle and to be completely conversant with the ritual enacted there.

³⁴ Can we strengthen our case by pointing to the following passage as another crucial instance of a slip of Wolfram's memory?

This passage seems to say: The Grail Company would have allowed Amfortas to die, as he wished, had it not been for a second message that appeared on the Grail, holding out hope that the man who failed to ask the question would come a second time—a hope that Trevrezent expressed to Parzival during his Good Friday visit. We turn back in vain, however, to Book ix, for the expression of any such hope!

This passage is really troublesome until we realize that the forgotten reference to an alleged second message holding out hope of a possible second coming of Parzival is the result of Leitzmann's punctuation. In Lachmann's text the first four lines read as follows:

si heten kumbers in erlôst,

wan der troestenlîche trôst,

den Trevrizent dort vorne sprach,

als er am grâle geschriben sach.

Lachmann renders the true sense of the passage, disposing of the figment of any second message appearing on the Grail. Any lingering doubts on the subject are dispelled by the line “als er am grâle geschriben sach” (788, 16). “Er,” that is Trevrezent, had been present, as one palliative after another for Amfortas' wound had been tried in vain (481, 18 f.) ; he had knelt with the rest in supplication before the Grail and had seen the handwriting upon it with the message of hope appear and disappear (483, 19 f.). Then he had retired, he tells Parzival, to his hermitage in the wilderness: “dô zôch ich mich dâ her” (484, 19). Obviously, this account leaves open no possibility of any second writing on the Grail that could have been seen by Trevrezent. Leitzmann's punctuation thus proves to be demonstrably wrong, disposing of any discrepancy between the earlier account of events and that contained in our passage.