Syphilis, sin and the social order: Richard Wagner's Parsifal

TLDR: Wagner's Parsifal as mentioned in this paper is a stage consecration festival play for his Bayreuth theatre, which is based on the story of the simple and pure young Parsifall's eventual redeeming of the sexual sin of Amfortas, the keeper of the Holy Grail.

Abstract: surprising focus of this discussion (by a literary theorist and a physician) of suffering and social decline in the context of sexually transmitted disease is Richard Wagner's last music drama, Parsifal, finally completed in 1882 and called a Biihnenweihfestspiel (a stage consecration festival play) for his Bayreuth theatre. Parsifal presents that familiar story of the simple and pure young Parsifal's eventual redeeming of the (sexual) sin of Amfortas, the keeper of the Holy Grail. Wagner's obvious source was the earlier romance of Wolfram von Eschenbach itself connected through its source, Chretien de Troyes, to stories of the worship of nature and the rites of godly death and rebirth that reverberate through early myths of Adonis to the Celtic legends of the maimed Fisher King ruling over the 'Waste Land' and on into Christian legend. Wagner's Amfortas also has a wound that, like Christ's, is in his side; in the sources, it is not. Wagner's transposition of the wound from the genital area to the chest, while obviously offering a gain in Christian symbolism, also serves to distract attention: it displaces, but never totally obliterates, the sexual origins of the injury. In Chretien's text, the Fisher King's incurable wound, euphemistically placed 'between his legs', is made by a javelin; in Wolfram's version, it is caused by a poisoned lance in his scrotum - and, of course, by the 'pursuit of love beyond the restraints of wedlock', which in turn 'brought harm to the world'.' Crime and punishment go together: a poisoned, festering wound in the genitals is deemed apt punishment for riding out alone to seek adventure 'under Love's compulsion'. That nothing could cure the wound is interpreted as a sign from God Himself. Though placed in his side, not lower, Amfortas's wound in Wagner's tale was nevertheless inflicted as he sank into the arms of the beautiful Kundry; it is also significant that it is made by his own spear - the sacred Spear of Longinus that had been given by the angels to his father, Titurel, along with the Holy Grail. Christian