; it was the essential that he sought and wished to put
upon the stage--the striving and yearning, and then the inevitable
acceptation of the burden of life; in other words, the entrance into the
life of resignation. That was what he sought in his own operas, and from
this ideal he had never wavered; all other art but this essential art
was indifferent to him. It was no longer the beautiful writing of
Wagner's later works that attracted him; he deemed this one to be,
perhaps, the finest, being the sincerest, and "Parsifal" the worst,
being the most hypocritical. Elizabeth was the essential penitent, she
who does penance not for herself, she has committed no sin, but the
sublime penitent who does penance for the sins of others. Not for a
moment could he admit the penitence of Kundry. In her there was merely
the external aspect. "Parsifal" was to Ulick a revolting hypocrisy, and
Kundry the blot on Wagner's life. In the first act she is a sort of wild
witch, not very explicit to any intelligence that probes below the
surface. In the second, she is a courtesan with black diamonds. In the
third, she wears the coarse habit of a penitent, and her waist is tied
with a cord; but her repentance goes no further than these exterior
signs. She says no word, and Ulick could not accept the descriptive
music as sufficient explanation of her repentance, even if it were
sincere, which it was not, and he spoke derisively of the amorous cries
to be heard at every moment in the orchestra, while she is dragging
herself to Parsifal's feet. Elizabeth's prayer was to him a perfect
expression of a penitent soul. Kundry, he pointed out, had no such
prayer, and he derisively sang the cries of amorous desire. The
character of Parsifal he could admit even less than the character of
Kundry. As he would say in discussion, "If I am to discuss an artistic
question, I must go to the very heart of it. Now, if we ask ourselves
what Siegfried did, the answer is, that he forged the sword, killed the
dragon and released Brunnhilde. But if, in like manner, we ask ourselves
what Parsifal did, is not the answer, that he killed a swan and refused
a kiss and with many morbid, suggestive and disagreeable remarks? These
are the facts," he would say; "confute them who may, explain them who
can!" And if it were urged, as it often was, that in Parsifal Wagner
desired the very opposite to what he had in Siegfried, the Parsifal is
opposed to Siegfried as Hamlet is opposed