simple beholding of it preserves men from death. This last characteristic would be thought in modern times a sufficient tribute to the original nature of the old pagan cauldron of increase and rejuvenescence. But Wolfram was of his time, and followed his models faithfully. Along with the lofty spiritual attributes of his Grail, he pictures in drastic fashion its food-dispensing powers. The mystic stone, fallen from Heaven itself, renewed each Good Friday by direct action of the Spirit, becomes all at once a mere victual producing machine. We can see how little Wolfram liked this feature of his model, and how he felt the contrast between it and his own more spiritual conception. But here, as elsewhere in the poem, he allowed much to stand against which his better judgment protested. His own share in the development of the legend must be gauged by what is distinctively his, not by what he has in common with others. Judged thus, he must be said to have developed the Christian symbolic side of the legend as much as the human philosophic side. If in Robert de Borron the Grail touches its highest symbolic level through its identification with the body of the dead and risen Lord, we can trace in Wolfram the germ of that approximation of the Grail-Quester to the earthly career of the Saviour which Wagner was to develop more than 600 years later.[1]
What influence Wolfram's poem, with its practical, human enthusiasm, its true and noble sexual morality, might have had on English literature is an interesting speculation. It would have appealed, one would think, to our race with its utilitarian ethical instinct, with its lofty ideal of wedded love. The true man, Parzival, should, in the fitness of things, be the English hero of the Quest, rather than the visionary ascetic Galahad. Mediæval England was dominated by France and knew nothing of Germany,
- ↑ J. Van Santen, Zur Beurtheilung Wolfram von Eschenbach, Wesel, 1882, has attacked Wolfram for his acceptance of the morality of the day, and has, on that ground, denied him any ethical or philosophic merit. The pamphlet is useful for its references, but otherwise worthless. The fact that Wolfram does accept Minnedienst only gives greater value to his picture of a nobler and purer ideal of love, whilst to refuse recognition of his other qualities on this account is much as who should deny Dante's claim to be regarded as a teacher and thinker because of his acceptance of the hideous mediæval hell.
