rful chorus of flower-girls there was just a suggestive
touch of the Rhine maidens' singing. It belonged to the same school of
thought and feeling, but was freer, wilder--more considerable, and
altogether more complex and wonderful in its changes and in the
marvelous confusion in which it breaks up.

The "guileless one" resists these charmers, and they are just about to
leave him in disgust, when the roses lift on one side, and, stretched on
a mossy bank overhung with flowers, appears a woman of unearthly
loveliness. It is Kundry transformed, and in the marvelous duet which
follows between her and Parsifal, a perfectly new and original type of
love duet is struck out--an analysis of character, unique in musical
drama--a combination of sentiment and a situation absolutely novel,
which could only have been conceived and carried out by a creative
genius of the highest order.

First, I note that the once spellbound Kundry is devoted utterly to her
task of winning Parsifal. Into this she throws all the intensity of her
wild and desperate nature; but in turn she is strangely affected by the
spiritual atmosphere of the "guileless one"--a feeling comes over her,
in the midst of her witchcraft passion, that he is in some way to be her
savior too; yet, womanlike, she conceives of her salvation as possible
only in union with him. Yet was this the very crime to which Klingsor
would drive her for the ruin of Parsifal. Strange confusion of thought,
feeling, aspiration, longing--struggle of irreconcilable elements! How
shall she reconcile them? Her intuition fails her not, and her tact
triumphs. She will win by stealing his love through his mother's love.
A mother's love is holy; that love she tells him of. It can never more
be his; but she will replace it, her passion shall be sanctified by it;
through _that_ passion she has sinned, through it she, too, shall be
redeemed. She will work out her own salvation by the very spells that
are upon her for evil. He is pure--he shall make her pure, can she but
win him; both, by the might of such pure love, will surely be delivered
from Klingsor, the corrupter, the tormentor. Fatuous dream! How, through
corruption, win incorruption? How, through indulgence, win peace and
freedom from desire? It is the old cheat of the senses--Satan appears as
an angel of light. The thought deludes the unhappy Kundry herself; she
is no longer consciously working for Klingsor; she really believes that
this new t