All that lives, lives forever.
Only the shell, the perishable, passes away.
The spirit is without end, eternal, deathless.
Only the shell, the perishable, passes away.
The spirit is without end, eternal, deathless.
--The Bhagavad Gita
Parsifal, though overtly based on Christian myth, has hidden Hindu philosophic intentions. Years before writing Parsifal, Wagner had sketched a Hindu drama, The Victors, elements of which reappear in Parsifal.
In the end, however, Parsifal is not meant to be a religious work. It is intended as a work of art that appropriates the myths of religion for aesthetic purposes. Wagner wrote: "One could say that when religion becomes artificial it is for art to salvage the essence of religion by construing the mythical symbols which religion wants us to believe to be literal truth in terms of their figurative value, so as to let us see their profound hidden truth through idealized representation. Whereas the priest is concerned only that the religious allegories should be regarded as factual truths, this is of no concern to the artist, since he presents his work frankly and openly as his invention."
2 comments:
Message for the D.C. Court of Appeals: You will find in life that many trivial things that appear unrelated are, upon closer inspection, in fact related.
The conductor is Daniel Barenboim.
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