William Ashton Ellis
1904
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NOTE |
Many claims have been made about the Holy Grail, and among the strangest is that the Grail was fashioned from the gem found on Lucifer's crown when he fell from Heaven. Ancient astronaut theorists use this myth to connect the Grail to meteorites or even aliens. While there is an actual warrant for it in a medieval German text, the usual source given for it, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (c. 1205 CE), is not it. This appendix from William Ashton Ellis's Life of Richard Wagner (1904) explores how a much later medieval myth became embedded in retellings of Wolfram's great poem.
For this online edition, I have expanded some of Ellis's many abbreviations (used because this passage was originally an end note), made a few formatting edits, and I have removed a block of German text in favor of the English translation. The full version is here. |
In my last Appendix I referred to a hitherto uncleared-up sentence in no. 30 of Wagner’s letters to Uhlig (Aug. 24, 1851): “For God’s sake omit from the pfte score of Lohengrin the preliminary remarks in the Weimar textbook (concerning Meister Wolfram). They are not by me, and are worthless.” I then hazarded the conjecture that these peccant “remarks” might be traced to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein. Almost in the same breath I drew attention to Princess Carolyne’s departure from Wagner, in the Lohengrin analysis, with her “jewel that fell from Lucifer’s crown.” Little did I expect so soon to find the two points really one; for I had abandoned all hope of procuring that earliest public issue of the poem. Quite recently, however, I saw the rarity announced in the sale-catalogue of a German antiquarian, and strongly advised an English amateur of my acquaintance to secure the prize. This he has done, and kindly granted me a few days’ loan of the historic document on my readers’ behalf.
A large-quarto pamphlet of two dozen pages, with the text printed in double columns on flimsy paper (‘Roman’ type), this textbook bears the imprint of “Albrecht’s private Court-printinghouse.” Formally dated it is not; yet, above the list of dramatis personæ, the 3rd of its preliminary pages displays the words “Zum Erstenmale aufgeführt auf dem Grossherzoglichen Hof-Theater □ Weimar den 28. August 1850 □ unter der Direction des Herrn Hof-Capellmeister Dr. Franz Liszt,” thus stamping it as the first night’s ‘programme.’ […]
Page i, the ornamental title-page, bears a woodcut, Lohengrin approaching in a swan-drawn coracle, attended by the dove; in addition to his sword, the hero is given a lance with huge fluttering pennant (by way of sail?); besides the basinet, or iron skull-cap on his head, a change of headdress reposes on the tiny poop, a vizored helmet topped with peacock-plumes! Above the picture, “LOHENGRIN”; below it, “Romantische Oper in drei Acten, (lelzter Act in zwei Abtheilungen) von RICHARD WAGNER.--Als Manuscript gedruckt.” Even before acquaintance with the author’s letter cited in my last note, I didn’t like that bracketed clause, “the last act in two divisions,” more especially as the words “Erste Abtheilung” and “Zweite Abtheilung” are also intruded on the body of that act: now we find Wagner rightly lodging a protest against the severance itself, as to which he had never been consulted. The official textbook therefore makes a very bad start, with a false lead to other theatres.
If the Intendant may be held chiefly responsible for that unpunctilious announcement, another author must be sought for the gloss that stands in solitary salience on page 4, in imitation of Wagner’s own prefatory note to Tannhäuser (cf. ii, 98-9) and therefore to be mistaken for his handiwork. “Anmerkung:” or Note, it is baldly headed in thick type, and this is how it runs (in Anglice):—“In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s lofty poem ‘Parcival’ we read: ‘The holy Grail was the cup wherein was gathered the blood that flowed from the wound in the Redeemer’s side; it consisted of a jewel that dropped out of Lucifer’s crown as he fell to the abyss. Whoso looked on the Grail, died not; and whoso served it, remained free from every deadly sin. But the holy Grail chose its servitors itself, and gave them every earthly joy and heavenly happiness. It stood in a wondrous temple deep in a wood, and was tended by an elect pure knighthood.’”
No wonder Wagner disclaimed all connection with the above. In truth it is worthless, “taugt nichts,” as he said, and could but do him harm in the eyes of every scholar; for the peculiarity of Wolfram’s version of the legend is flatly contradicted in the first of these sentences erroneously attributed to him. As a fact, Wolfram’s variance with the usual traditions has supplied the learned with a never-ending problem, thus summarised by Miss Jessie L. Weston in a note to her wholly admirable English rendering of his Parsival (published 1894 by Alfred, alias David Nutt, himself a high authority):--
“The account of the Grail given by Wolfram is most startling, differing as it does from every other account which has come down to us. Wolfram evidently knows nothing whatever of the traditional ‘vessel of the Last Supper,’ though the fact that the virtue of the stone is renewed every Good Friday by a Host brought from Heaven seems to indicate that he had some idea of a connection between the Grail and the Passion of our Lord. Various theories have been suggested to account for the choice of a precious stone as the sacred talisman; Birch Hirschfeld maintains that it arose entirely from a misunderstanding of Chrêtien’s text, the French poet describing the Grail as follows:
‘De fin or esmeree estoit;
Pieres pressieuses avoit
El graal, de maintes manieres,
Des plus rices et des plus cieres
Qui el mont u en tiere soient.’
“But how Wolfram, who, in other instances appears to have understood his French source correctly, here came to represent an object of gold, adorned with many precious stones, as a precious stone, does not appear . . . and it is impossible to identify the stone of the Grail with any known jewel.” Again, in her introduction: “Wolfram’s presentment of the Grail differs in toto from any we find elsewhere; with him it is not the cup of the Last Supper, but a precious stone endowed with magical qualities”; to which I should add that Wolfram nowhere alludes to this stone as having erst adorned the rebel angel’s diadem.
Neither is it with Wolfram “the cup wherein the Redeemer’s blood was gathered,” nor does he once call it “Der heilige Gral,” but merely “der Gral,” though he often speaks of it as “pure,” “wondrous,” and so on. Not even as a “vessel” of any kind does he describe it, but simply as “a stone,” or “that thing men call the Grail”: by him and his alleged source, “Kiot the Provençal,” it plainly was not conceived as of any definite form or substance. This very amorphousness of Wolfram’s “Gral,” coupled with his story of its bringing to Earth by angels, is of considerable moment, as pointing to a meteorite for origin: such ‘stones fallen from the heavens’ having been objects of worship in many regions and at all ages, until the science of the last hundred years accorded them at once belief and rational explanation. But, the real Grail problem being far too intricate to deal with here, I must refer the reader to Mr Nutt’s illuminating Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail (1888) and Miss Weston’s translation aforesaid; more especially to the latter.
That “holy cup” formed from “a jewel that dropped out of Lucifer’s crown” not figuring in the text of Wolfram’s Parzival, whence can Princess Carolyne have derived it? Obviously from the loose presentment of a writer who should have known better, namely from the “Parcival, Rittergedicht von Wolfram von Eschenbach, Im Auszuge mitgetheilt von San Marte,” published in Magdeburg in 1832. As the very sub-title denotes, San Marte (alias Albert Schulz) gives mere “extracts” from Wolfram’s poem (four years later Schulz issued a first integral translation of it); these he unites into a connected story by means of a very free paraphrase, so free that he even tampers with his model’s facts without affording any indication that he is substituting a version of his own—a most reprehensible procedure for a first unearther. Thus, in midst of the narrative of his “book V.”—for he preserves his source’s divisions—he tells us that “The holy Grail is a stone of the most wondrous and mysterious kind. A number of angels having remained neutral and inactive during the battle of Lucifer and the rebel angels against God and the faithful heavenly hosts, after Lucifer’s fall they were condemned by God to support this stone, which had dropped from Lucifer’s crown, hovering between Heaven and Earth till the hour of redemption of sinful mankind. Then they brought it to Earth, and, formed into a costly vessel, it served for the dish out of which Christ ate the Pascal lamb, and in which Joseph of Arimathea received the Saviour’s blood. When Christianity began to spread more toward the West of Europe, at God’s command an angel bore the Grail to the young and pious Prince Titurel,” and so on.
Elective affinity must have drawn the princess to this jumbled primer, at a time when Simrock’s very close translation of the whole of Wolfram’s Parzival, from ancient German into modern, stood at her disposal (1st ed. 1842). There she would have missed in the text that cup and crown-jewel, but found a long note on the “Myth of the Grail” in Simrock’s appendix (quaintly called an Introduction), containing the following: “Information about the nature of the Grail, and why the angels brought it to earth, has been transmitted to us, indeed, but neither in Parzival nor yet in Titurel. ‘Sixty-thousand angels who wished to drive God from Heaven,’ we read in the Wartburgkrieg, ‘had a crown made for Lucifer. When the archangel Michael tore this from Lucifer’s head, a stone sprang loose from it, and that stone is the Grail.’” Now, that Wartburgkrieg (adapted by Wagner for act ii of his Tannhäuser) was written by a far inferior poet some fifty years after the death of Wolfram, who figures as one of its chief characters, and into whose mouth is put this fanciful tale.
It was most uncritical of San Marte, in the first instance, to interpolate it into Wolfram’s own account, and we can therefore appreciate Wagner’s agony of mind when he found the said “remarks” foisted on himself, as we have every reason to believe that he was well acquainted not only with the strict translation, but also with Simrock’s scholarly notes.
Why do I fasten this impertinent gloss so confidently on the poor princess? But is it not obvious? We meet the same remark about Lucifer’s crown in the Lohengrin et Tannhäuser even after Wagner had expunged it from the German version of the Carolysztian Lohengrin analysis that appeared in the lllustrirte, which Liszt himself had surely perused. A note of this nature is scarcely the thing an Intendant would add of his own free motion; whilst it is inconceivable that any native literary friend of Liszt’s (Franz Müller, for instance) should have airily quoted Wolfram from a mere story-book, when the original was doubly accessible. As for Liszt himself, antiquarian research was not in his line, nor does he ever shew much interest in German poets. The princess alone remains.—Much the same must be said about the spear and peacock’s feathers in the woodcut, since Carolyne had a pretty taste alike in pictures and symbology. Wagner’s hero, not having brought his horse with him, has no use for a lance; whereas the badge of Wolfram’s Grail-knights, as known well enough, was a snow-white dove. Whence the peacock-plumage then? From the hat worn by Anfortas, at the beginning of Wolfram’s book V, when in mufti as the “Rich Fisher”!—Beyond that we will not bully this too clever lady…
A large-quarto pamphlet of two dozen pages, with the text printed in double columns on flimsy paper (‘Roman’ type), this textbook bears the imprint of “Albrecht’s private Court-printinghouse.” Formally dated it is not; yet, above the list of dramatis personæ, the 3rd of its preliminary pages displays the words “Zum Erstenmale aufgeführt auf dem Grossherzoglichen Hof-Theater □ Weimar den 28. August 1850 □ unter der Direction des Herrn Hof-Capellmeister Dr. Franz Liszt,” thus stamping it as the first night’s ‘programme.’ […]
Page i, the ornamental title-page, bears a woodcut, Lohengrin approaching in a swan-drawn coracle, attended by the dove; in addition to his sword, the hero is given a lance with huge fluttering pennant (by way of sail?); besides the basinet, or iron skull-cap on his head, a change of headdress reposes on the tiny poop, a vizored helmet topped with peacock-plumes! Above the picture, “LOHENGRIN”; below it, “Romantische Oper in drei Acten, (lelzter Act in zwei Abtheilungen) von RICHARD WAGNER.--Als Manuscript gedruckt.” Even before acquaintance with the author’s letter cited in my last note, I didn’t like that bracketed clause, “the last act in two divisions,” more especially as the words “Erste Abtheilung” and “Zweite Abtheilung” are also intruded on the body of that act: now we find Wagner rightly lodging a protest against the severance itself, as to which he had never been consulted. The official textbook therefore makes a very bad start, with a false lead to other theatres.
If the Intendant may be held chiefly responsible for that unpunctilious announcement, another author must be sought for the gloss that stands in solitary salience on page 4, in imitation of Wagner’s own prefatory note to Tannhäuser (cf. ii, 98-9) and therefore to be mistaken for his handiwork. “Anmerkung:” or Note, it is baldly headed in thick type, and this is how it runs (in Anglice):—“In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s lofty poem ‘Parcival’ we read: ‘The holy Grail was the cup wherein was gathered the blood that flowed from the wound in the Redeemer’s side; it consisted of a jewel that dropped out of Lucifer’s crown as he fell to the abyss. Whoso looked on the Grail, died not; and whoso served it, remained free from every deadly sin. But the holy Grail chose its servitors itself, and gave them every earthly joy and heavenly happiness. It stood in a wondrous temple deep in a wood, and was tended by an elect pure knighthood.’”
No wonder Wagner disclaimed all connection with the above. In truth it is worthless, “taugt nichts,” as he said, and could but do him harm in the eyes of every scholar; for the peculiarity of Wolfram’s version of the legend is flatly contradicted in the first of these sentences erroneously attributed to him. As a fact, Wolfram’s variance with the usual traditions has supplied the learned with a never-ending problem, thus summarised by Miss Jessie L. Weston in a note to her wholly admirable English rendering of his Parsival (published 1894 by Alfred, alias David Nutt, himself a high authority):--
“The account of the Grail given by Wolfram is most startling, differing as it does from every other account which has come down to us. Wolfram evidently knows nothing whatever of the traditional ‘vessel of the Last Supper,’ though the fact that the virtue of the stone is renewed every Good Friday by a Host brought from Heaven seems to indicate that he had some idea of a connection between the Grail and the Passion of our Lord. Various theories have been suggested to account for the choice of a precious stone as the sacred talisman; Birch Hirschfeld maintains that it arose entirely from a misunderstanding of Chrêtien’s text, the French poet describing the Grail as follows:
‘De fin or esmeree estoit;
Pieres pressieuses avoit
El graal, de maintes manieres,
Des plus rices et des plus cieres
Qui el mont u en tiere soient.’
“But how Wolfram, who, in other instances appears to have understood his French source correctly, here came to represent an object of gold, adorned with many precious stones, as a precious stone, does not appear . . . and it is impossible to identify the stone of the Grail with any known jewel.” Again, in her introduction: “Wolfram’s presentment of the Grail differs in toto from any we find elsewhere; with him it is not the cup of the Last Supper, but a precious stone endowed with magical qualities”; to which I should add that Wolfram nowhere alludes to this stone as having erst adorned the rebel angel’s diadem.
Neither is it with Wolfram “the cup wherein the Redeemer’s blood was gathered,” nor does he once call it “Der heilige Gral,” but merely “der Gral,” though he often speaks of it as “pure,” “wondrous,” and so on. Not even as a “vessel” of any kind does he describe it, but simply as “a stone,” or “that thing men call the Grail”: by him and his alleged source, “Kiot the Provençal,” it plainly was not conceived as of any definite form or substance. This very amorphousness of Wolfram’s “Gral,” coupled with his story of its bringing to Earth by angels, is of considerable moment, as pointing to a meteorite for origin: such ‘stones fallen from the heavens’ having been objects of worship in many regions and at all ages, until the science of the last hundred years accorded them at once belief and rational explanation. But, the real Grail problem being far too intricate to deal with here, I must refer the reader to Mr Nutt’s illuminating Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail (1888) and Miss Weston’s translation aforesaid; more especially to the latter.
That “holy cup” formed from “a jewel that dropped out of Lucifer’s crown” not figuring in the text of Wolfram’s Parzival, whence can Princess Carolyne have derived it? Obviously from the loose presentment of a writer who should have known better, namely from the “Parcival, Rittergedicht von Wolfram von Eschenbach, Im Auszuge mitgetheilt von San Marte,” published in Magdeburg in 1832. As the very sub-title denotes, San Marte (alias Albert Schulz) gives mere “extracts” from Wolfram’s poem (four years later Schulz issued a first integral translation of it); these he unites into a connected story by means of a very free paraphrase, so free that he even tampers with his model’s facts without affording any indication that he is substituting a version of his own—a most reprehensible procedure for a first unearther. Thus, in midst of the narrative of his “book V.”—for he preserves his source’s divisions—he tells us that “The holy Grail is a stone of the most wondrous and mysterious kind. A number of angels having remained neutral and inactive during the battle of Lucifer and the rebel angels against God and the faithful heavenly hosts, after Lucifer’s fall they were condemned by God to support this stone, which had dropped from Lucifer’s crown, hovering between Heaven and Earth till the hour of redemption of sinful mankind. Then they brought it to Earth, and, formed into a costly vessel, it served for the dish out of which Christ ate the Pascal lamb, and in which Joseph of Arimathea received the Saviour’s blood. When Christianity began to spread more toward the West of Europe, at God’s command an angel bore the Grail to the young and pious Prince Titurel,” and so on.
Elective affinity must have drawn the princess to this jumbled primer, at a time when Simrock’s very close translation of the whole of Wolfram’s Parzival, from ancient German into modern, stood at her disposal (1st ed. 1842). There she would have missed in the text that cup and crown-jewel, but found a long note on the “Myth of the Grail” in Simrock’s appendix (quaintly called an Introduction), containing the following: “Information about the nature of the Grail, and why the angels brought it to earth, has been transmitted to us, indeed, but neither in Parzival nor yet in Titurel. ‘Sixty-thousand angels who wished to drive God from Heaven,’ we read in the Wartburgkrieg, ‘had a crown made for Lucifer. When the archangel Michael tore this from Lucifer’s head, a stone sprang loose from it, and that stone is the Grail.’” Now, that Wartburgkrieg (adapted by Wagner for act ii of his Tannhäuser) was written by a far inferior poet some fifty years after the death of Wolfram, who figures as one of its chief characters, and into whose mouth is put this fanciful tale.
It was most uncritical of San Marte, in the first instance, to interpolate it into Wolfram’s own account, and we can therefore appreciate Wagner’s agony of mind when he found the said “remarks” foisted on himself, as we have every reason to believe that he was well acquainted not only with the strict translation, but also with Simrock’s scholarly notes.
Why do I fasten this impertinent gloss so confidently on the poor princess? But is it not obvious? We meet the same remark about Lucifer’s crown in the Lohengrin et Tannhäuser even after Wagner had expunged it from the German version of the Carolysztian Lohengrin analysis that appeared in the lllustrirte, which Liszt himself had surely perused. A note of this nature is scarcely the thing an Intendant would add of his own free motion; whilst it is inconceivable that any native literary friend of Liszt’s (Franz Müller, for instance) should have airily quoted Wolfram from a mere story-book, when the original was doubly accessible. As for Liszt himself, antiquarian research was not in his line, nor does he ever shew much interest in German poets. The princess alone remains.—Much the same must be said about the spear and peacock’s feathers in the woodcut, since Carolyne had a pretty taste alike in pictures and symbology. Wagner’s hero, not having brought his horse with him, has no use for a lance; whereas the badge of Wolfram’s Grail-knights, as known well enough, was a snow-white dove. Whence the peacock-plumage then? From the hat worn by Anfortas, at the beginning of Wolfram’s book V, when in mufti as the “Rich Fisher”!—Beyond that we will not bully this too clever lady…
Source: William Ashton Ellis, Life of Richard Wagner, vol. 4 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1904), 478-482.
