a vast number of proper names which are not to be found in Chrestien, and that these are nearly all of French, and especially Southern French and Provençal origin.—Simrock endeavoured to meet this argument in the fifth edition of his translation, but with little success.—Bötticher, whilst admitting the weight of Birch-Hirschfeld's arguments, points out the difficulties which his theory involves. If Wolfram simply misunderstood Chrestien and did not differ from him personally, why should he be at the trouble of inventing an elaborately feigned source to justify a simple addition to the original story? If he only knew of the Grail from Chrestien, what gave him the idea of endowing it, as he did, with mystic properties? Martin points out in addition (Zs. f. d. A., V. 87) that Wolfram has the same connection of the Grail and Swan Knight story as Gerbert, whom, ex hypothesi, he could not have known, and who certainly did not know him.—In his Zur Gralsage, Martin returned to the question of proper names, and showed that a varying redaction of a large part of the romance is vouched for by the different names which Heinrich von dem Türlin applies to personages met with both in Chrestien and in Wolfram. If, then, one French version, that followed by Heinrich, who is obviously a translator, is lost, why not another?
The first thorough comparison of Chrestien and Wolfram is to be found in Otto Küpp's Unmittelbaren Quellen des Parzival, (Zs. f. d. Ph. XVII., 1). He argues for Kyot's existence. Some of the points he mentions in which the two poems differ, and in which Wolfram's account has a more archaic character, may be cited: The mention of Gurnemanz's sons; the food producing properties of the Grail on Parzival's first visit; the reproaches of the varlet to Parzival on his leaving the Grail Castle, "You are a goose, had you but moved your lips and asked the host! Now you have lost great praise;"[1] the statement that the broken sword is to be made whole by dipping in the Lake Lac, and the mention of a sword charm by virtue of which Parzival can become lord of the Grail Castle; the mention that no one seeing the Grail could die within eight days. In addition Küpp finds that many of the names in Wolfram are more archaic than those of Chrestien. On the other hand, Küpp has not noticed that Chrestien has preserved a more archaic feature in the prohibition laid upon Gauvain not to leave for seven days the castle after he had undergone the adventure of the bed.
Küpp has not noticed that some of the special points he singles out in Wolfram are likewise to be found in Chrestien's continuators, e.g., the mention of the sons of Gurnemanz, by Gerbert.
- ↑ Cf. the reproaches addressed to Potter Thompson (supra, p. 198). That the visitor to the Bespelled Castle should be reproached, at once, for his failure to do as he ought, seems to be a feature of the earliest forms of the story. Cf. Campbell's Three Soldiers (supra, p. 196). If Wolfram had another source than Chrestien it was one which partook more of the unspelling than of the feud quest formula. Hence the presence of the feature here.
