ROSE OF HELL.(Kundry of Wagner's Parsifal)

DAVID J. BAKER LOOKS AT THE CONFLICTING FORCES THAT DRIVE KUNDRY, THE MOST DISTURBING FEMALE CHARACTER WAGNER EVER CREATED

The Kundry who bursts into the first scene of Parsifal -- unkempt, weather-beaten, wearing snakeskins -- seems nearly subhuman, and it is as a "beast," a "wild heathen," that the male characters speak of her. Later, under Klingsor's spell in the magical garden, she is transfigured into a voluptuous siren who lures Christian knights to their doom. She emerges at the end a bowed penitent, nearly mute, who fades away, released in death.

Klingsor calls her by a series of dire epithets -- including the Nameless, the Primeval Demon, Rose of Hell, Herodias -- but there is more to Kundry than raw infamy. She could be considered a Flying Dutchman in reverse. If Vanderdecken was condemned to sail the world until released by a faithful woman's love, Kundry is sentenced to perpetual time-travel until the right man appears. Compelled to submit her victims to sexual temptation, she can be released only by the one man capable of resisting her. Kundry doubts that such a male exists: she recollects Amfortas, "weak, like all of them, [and] all of them and myself [are] undone by my curse." Klingsor has acquired immunity, and hence power over Kundry, by his self-castration. Eventually the "innocent fool" Parsifal will lift the curse by resisting her advances.

What occurs in Parsifal, in the guise of a religious drama, is primarily a sexual struggle. Libidinous battle here takes the place of the adventure, combat and slaughter that define and mold heroes in so many legends and operas. Consider Siegfried, craftsman and warrior, who slays Fafner and Mime to win, for a time, treasures and love. We hear in the final act some references to Parsifal's adventurous journey, but we see none of it -- we see only the confrontation with Kundry. Parsifal wins salvation for himself and Kundry in the sexual arena, by overcoming and denying sex. It is never stated explicitly that the order of the Grail imposes vows of celibacy. But Gurnemanz reminds the young men that many of their community have been destroyed by Klingsor and the temptress who seduced Amfortas. Sex in their world is not just immoral -- it's fatal.

This symbolic minefield makes the drama ripe for psychoanalytic theorists. Jungians point out Kundry's aptness as Parsifal's "shadow" or his anima: his dark side or feminine side. Freudians have mined the incestuous overtones in the temptation scene, sometimes with heavy-handed literalism. Above all, the symbols in this drama suggest a castration anxiety. It's hard to miss the phallic symbolism of the spear taken from Amfortas -- a loss that has cost him his health and vigor. In its place, he is left with a gaping wound, "the wound that will never heal." A similar fate awaits Parsifal, unless he is able to resist the lethal female embrace. We need not go so far as to evoke the frightful images of female sex organs equipped with fangs -- the "vagina dentata" of misogynistic legend. Kundry is more the lure than the executioner; the latter duty falls to Klingsor, who, perhaps not incidentally, is castrated: it's all part of an association between sexuality and mutilation.

Could this really be Wagner speaking? The great glorifier of eros, the iconoclastic enemy of convention, was no puritan. His opera draws its characters and basic story from medieval sources, especially the Parsifal Grail legend by Wolfram von Eschenbach (who died about 1220), which could account for the primitive, superstitious, repressive mentality of this morality play.

And here, in Wolfram's poem, Wagner found Cundrie, a sorceress based on the "Loathly Damsel" in other Arthurian tales. She is a hideous, wise crone with magic powers, who curses Parzival for his indifference to Amfortas. This curse is what prompts the young man to seek the Grail. She later returns in tears to beg his forgiveness for misdeeds not specified. So this was one partial model, although this original, elderly Cundrie makes only two cameo appearances in the Wolfram poem.