re is much glorious
music in the last act; the "Good Friday music" is divine; the last
scene is gorgeously led up to; and the music of it, considered only as
music, is unsurpassable. But heard at the end of a drama so
gigantically planned as "Parsifal," it is unsatisfying and
disappointing. It is to me as if the "Ring" had closed on the music of
Neid-hoehle with the squabblings of Alberich and Mime. The powers that
make for evil and destruction have won; one knows that Parsifal is
eternally damned; he has listened and succumbed, even as Wagner
himself did, to the eastern sirens' song of the ease and delight of a
life of slothful renunciation, self-abnegation, and devotion to
"duty." The music of the last scene sings that song in tones of
infinite sweetness; but it cannot satisfy you; you turn from the
enchanted hall, with its holy cup and spear and dove, its mystic
voices in the heights, its heavy, depressing, incense-laden
atmosphere; and you hasten into the night, where the winds blow fresh
through the black trees, and the stars shine calmly in the deep sky,
just as though no "Parsifal" had been written.

"Parsifal" does not imply that Wagner in his old age went back on all
he had thought and felt before. Born in a time when the secret of
living had not been rediscovered, when folk still thought the victory,
and not the battle, the main thing in life, he always sought a creed
to put on as a coat-of-mail to protect him from the nasty knocks of
fate. Nowadays we do not care greatly for the victory, and we go out
to fight with a light heart, commencing where Wagner and all the
pessimists ended. Wagner wanted the victory, and also, lest he should
not gain it, he wanted something to save him from despair. That
something he found in pessimism. In his younger days--indeed until
near the last--he forgot all about it in his hours of inspiration, and
worked for no end, but for the sheer joy of working. But towards the
end of his life, when his inspiration came seldomer and with less
power, he worked more and more for the victory, and became wholly
pessimistic, throwing away his weapons, and hiding behind
self-renunciation as behind a shield. He won a victory more brilliant
than ever Napoleon or Wellington or Moltke won; and in the eyes of
all men he seemed a great general. But life had terrified him; he had
trembled before Wotan's--or Christ's--spear; in his heart of hearts he
knew himself a beaten man; and he wrote "Parsifal.