o operas invite comparison; for at the outset
their heroes seem to be the same man. Siegfried and Parsifal are both
untaught fools; each has his understanding partly enlightened by
hearing of his mother's sufferings and death (compare Wordsworth's "A
deep distress hath humanised my soul"); each has his education
completed by a woman's kiss. All this may seem very profound to the
German mind; but to me it is crude, a somewhat too obvious allegory,
partly superficial, partly untrue, a survival of windy sentimental
mid-century German metaphysics, like the Wagner-Heine form of "The
Flying Dutchman" story, and the Wagner form of the "Tannhaeuser" story.
However, I am willing to believe that Siegfried, when he kisses
Bruennhilde on Hinde Fell, and Parsifal, when Kundry kisses him in
Klingsor's magic garden, has each his full faculties set in action for
the first time. And then? And then Siegfried, with his fund of health
and vitality, sees that the world is glorious, and joyfully presses
forward more vigorously than ever on the road that lies before him,
never hesitating for a moment to live out his life to the full; while
Parsifal, lacking health and vitality--probably his father suffered
from rickets--sees that the grief and suffering of the world outweigh
and outnumber its joys, and not only renounces life, but is so
overcome with pity for all sufferers as to regard it as his mission to
heal and console them. And having healed and consoled one, he
deliberately turns from the green world, with its trees and flowers,
its dawn and sunset, its winds and waters, and shuts himself in a
monkery which has a back garden, a pond and some ducks. There is only
one deadly sin--to deny life, as Nietzsche says: carefully to pull up
all the weeds in one's garden, but to plant there neither flower nor
tree--and this is what "Parsifal" glorifies and advocates.

Now, far be it from me to go hunting a moral tendency in a work of
art, and to praise or blame the art as I chance to like or dislike the
tendency. I am in a state of perfect preparedness to see beauty in a
picture, even if the subject is to me repulsive. But in the case of a
picture it is possible to say, "Yes, very pretty," and pass on. In the
case of a story, a play, or a music-drama, you cannot. You are tied to
your seat for one or two or three mortal hours; and however perfect
may be the art with which music-drama or play or story is set before
you, if the subject revolts or bor