Then all at once we meet her again, fearfully tired, wretched, pale and an object of horror: but once again untiring in serving the Holy Grail with doglike devotion, while all the time revealing a secret contempt for its knights: her eye seems always to be seeking the right one, -- and she has already deceived herself once – but did not find him. But not even she herself knows what she is searching for: it is purely instinctive.
{FEUER} When Parzival, the foolish lad, arrives in the land, she cannot avert her eyes from him: strange are the things that must go on inside her; she does not know it, but she clings to him. He is appalled – but he, too, feels drawn to her: he understands nothing. (Here it is a question of the poet having to invent everything!) Only the manner of execution can say anything here! – But you can gain an idea of what I mean if you listen to the way that Bruennhilde listened to Wotan. – This woman suffers unspeakable restlessness and excitement: the old esquire had noticed this on previous occasions, each time that she had shortly afterwards disappeared. This time she is in the tensest possible state. What is going on inside her? Is she appalled at the thought of renewed flight, does she long to be freed from it? Does she hope – for an end to it all? What hopes does she have of Parzival? Clearly she attaches unprecedented importance to him? – But all is gloomy and vague: no knowledge, only instinct and dusky twilight? – Cowering in a corner, she witnesses Anfortas’s agonized scene.: she gazes with a strangely inquisitive look (sphinx-like) at Parzival. He, too, is – stupid, understands nothing, stares in amazement – says nothing. He is driven out. The messenger of the Grail [P. 501] sinks to the ground with a shriek; she then disappears. (She is forced to wander again.)Now can you guess who this wonderfully enchanting woman is whom Parzival finds in the strange castle where his chivalrous spirit leads him? Guess what happens here, and how it all turns out.“ [677W-{8/60} Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 500-501]
[678W-{9/60}Music of the Future, PW Vol. III, p. 296]
[P. 296] {FEUER} “If we may broadly denote the whole range of Nature as an evolutionary march from unconsciousness to consciousness, and if this march is shown the most conspicuously in the human individual, we may take its observation in the life of the Artist as one of the most interesting, because in him and his creations the World itself displays itself and comes to consciousness. But in the Artist, too, the bent to re-present is by its nature thoroughly unconscious, instinctive; and even where he needs deliberation (Besonnenheit), to shape the picture of his intuition to an objective work of art by aid of his own familiar technique, the decisive choice of his expressional means will not be settled by Reflection proper, but rather by an instinctive bent that makes out the very character of his specific gift.” [678W-{9/60}Music of the Future, PW Vol. III, p. 296]
[679W-{9/60}Music of the Future, PW Vol. III, p. 302]
[P. 302] {FEUER} “Whereas the Frenchman, for instance – confronted with a fully developed, entirely self-contained and congruent form, and yielding a willing obedience to its seemingly unalterable laws – feels himself committed to a perpetual reproduction of that form, and thus (in a higher sense) to a certain stagnation of his inner productivity; the German, recognising all the advantages of such an attitude, would perceive withal its serious mischiefs; its lack of freedom would not escape him, and there would open up the outlook of an ideal art-form, embracing each eternal truth of every single art-form, but liberated from the fetters of the accidental and untrue. The
