# Carl Jung's interpretation of Parsifal.



## RichardWagnerOfficial (Sep 11, 2021)

Posting this in case anyone is interested.



> From this point of view [that of the Taoist solution to the problem of opposites] it is not so difficult to see what the primordial image was that helped to solve the problem in Wagner's Parsifal. Here the suffering is caused by the tension of opposites represented by the Grail and the power of Klingsor, who has taken possession of the holy spear. Under the spell of Klingsor is Kundry, symbolizing the instinctive life-force or libido that Amfortas lacks. Parsifal rescues the libido from the state of restless, compulsive instinctuality, in the first place because he does not succumb to Kundry, and in the second because he does not possess the Grail. Amfortas has the Grail and suffers for it, because he lacks libido. Parsifal has nothing of either, he is nirdvandva, free from the opposites, and is therefore the redeemer, the bestower of healing and renewed vitality, who unites the bright, heavenly, feminine symbol of the Grail with the dark, earthly, masculine symbol of the spear. The death of Kundry may be taken as the liberation of libido from its naturalistic, undomesticated form (cf. the "bull's shape," par. 350, n. 93), which falls away as a lifeless husk, while the energy bursts forth as a new stream of life in the glowing of the Grail. By his renunciation of the opposites (unwilling though this was, at least in part), Parsifal caused a blockage of libido that created a new potential and thus made a new manifestation of energy possible. The undeniable sexual symbolism might easily lead to the one-sided interpretation that the union of spear and Grail merely signifies a release of sexuality. The fate of Amfortas shows, however, that sexuality is not the point. On the contrary, it was his relapse into a nature-bound, brutish attitude that was the cause of his suffering and brought about the loss of his power. His seduction by Kundry was a symbolic act, showing that it was not sexuality that dealt him his wound so much as an attitude of nature bound compulsion, a supine submission to the biological urge. This attitude expresses the supremacy of the animal part of our psyche. The sacrificial wound that is destined for the beast strikes the man who is overcome by the beast-for the sake of man's further development. The fundamental problem, as I have pointed out in Symbols of Transformation, is not sexuality per se, but the domestication of libido, which concerns sexuality only so far as it is one of the most important and most dangerous forms of libidinal expression. If, in the case of Amfortas and the union of spear and Grail, only the sexual problem is discerned, we get entangled in an insoluble contradiction, since the thing that harms is also the thing that heals. Such a paradox is true and permissible only when one sees the opposites as united on a higher plane, when one understands that it is not a question of sexuality, either in this form or in that, but purely a question of the attitude by which every activity, including the sexual, is regulated.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

RichardWagnerOfficial said:


> Posting this in case anyone is interested.


Very interested, but currently the wrong side of a few glasses of Scottish processed water. One needs to be fully _compos_ _mentis_ to imbibe the buddhist, Taoist, Jungian and atheist layers of Parsifal.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

HenryPenfold said:


> but currently the wrong side of a few glasses of Scottish processed water. One needs to be fully _compos_ _mentis_ to imbibe the ... Jungian


Wot?

No _Freud_ oysters?

It's off to the Skinner box with ya ...


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Prodromides said:


> Wot?
> 
> No _Freud_ oysters?
> 
> It's off to the Skinner box with ya ...


Certainly not! Deliberately eschewed!


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they will like. But somehow, a Jungian interpretation of Parsifal doesn't tell me anything about humanity.


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## RichardWagnerOfficial (Sep 11, 2021)

MarkW said:


> For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they will like. But somehow, a Jungian interpretation of Parsifal doesn't tell me anything about humanity.


Not a fan of philosophy?


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

RichardWagnerOfficial said:


> Not a fan of philosophy?


Only of the tautological school .......


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I would think a more interesting psychology would be on the brain's rejection of a huge block of text written by somebody who doesn't know about paragraphing.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> I would think a more interesting psychology would be on the brain's rejection of a huge block of text written by somebody who doesn't know about paragraphing.


Exactly, look at this recent post by Ethereality; https://www.talkclassical.com/72565-new-aesthetic-why-trade.html#post2139096


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

MarkW said:


> For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they will like. But somehow, a Jungian interpretation of Parsifal doesn't tell me anything about humanity.


How do you make sense of Parsifal?

(I just think it doesn't make sense at all! It's entertaining nonsense. )


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Couchie said:


> I would think a more interesting psychology would be on the brain's rejection of a huge block of text written by somebody who doesn't know about paragraphing.


The OP quoted passage, from Jung's _Psychological Types_, is exactly a hundred years old, originally in German, and taken from an academic treatise. Different times, different language, different audience from what we're used to here.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> How do you make sense of Parsifal?
> 
> (I just think it doesn't make sense at all! It's entertaining nonsense. )


I'm not entirely sure what I think of Jung's interpretation, but I do find it more illuminating than the above.

If nothing else, the notion that sexuality _per se_ is not the problem helps answer Nietzsche's scoffing critique of the opera: that the chaste Parsifal eventually becomes Lohengrin's father.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

amfortas said:


> , but I do find it more illuminating than the above.


If you're going to get defensive then let's quit here and now.

There's a lot of imaginative writing with philosophical undertones which can be entertaining and moving _until_ you read the philosophy critically, because when you do you you find the philosophy is half baked. Proust is like this IMO, as is Wagner in Parsifal. It's not for nothing that no one has ever convincingly made sense of Parsifal - what, exactly happened between Act 2 and Act 3 which lead to Parsifal becoming the redeemer? What did he learn when he kissed Kundry? These are difficult, IMO unanswerable, questions. Unanswerable because the opera is, in a real sense, nonsense.

I feel the same about Tristan by the way, I'm more positive about finding a coherent political reading of The Ring..


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

amfortas said:


> The OP quoted passage, from Jung's _Psychological Types_, is exactly a hundred years old, originally in German, and taken from an academic treatise. Different times, different language, different audience from what we're used to here.


Yes, people had attention spans back then, rather than iPhones. Get with the times, Jung!


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> If you're going to get defensive then let's quit here and now.


Cuts both ways. 



Mandryka said:


> There's a lot of imaginative writing with philosophical undertones which can be entertaining and moving _until_ you read the philosophy critically, because when you do you you find the philosophy is half baked. Proust is like this IMO, as is Wagner in Parsifal. It's not for nothing that no one has ever convincingly made sense of Parsifal - what, exactly happened between Act 2 and Act 3 which lead to Parsifal becoming the redeemer? What did he learn when he kissed Kundry? These are difficult, IMO unanswerable, questions. Unanswerable because the opera is, in a real sense, nonsense.


If a work of art which poses difficult, unanswerable questions is therefore nonsense, I'm surprised you don't extend your critique even more broadly. Plenty of works pose such questions, simply because they are not intended to be read "critically" as philosophical treatises.



Mandryka said:


> I feel the same about Tristan by the way, I'm more positive about finding a coherent political reading of The Ring..


Interesting, since George Bernard Shaw argued long ago that The Ring ultimately fails to take a coherent political stance.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> There's a lot of imaginative writing with philosophical undertones which can be entertaining and moving _until_ you read the philosophy critically, because when you do you you find the philosophy is half baked. Proust is like this IMO, as is Wagner in Parsifal. It's not for nothing that no one has ever convincingly made sense of Parsifal - what, exactly happened between Act 2 and Act 3 which lead to Parsifal becoming the redeemer? What did he learn when he kissed Kundry? These are difficult, IMO unanswerable, questions. Unanswerable because the opera is, in a real sense, nonsense.
> 
> I feel the same about Tristan by the way, I'm more positive about finding a coherent political reading of The Ring..


I think there is coherent message to Tristan, but rather than merely wade into its pessimistic waters, you must drown in them, an activity in which most do not want to participate. It's truth is simply that the insatiable cravings of the living are relieved only by death. In other Wagner operas, love is a redeeming force. In Tristan, it is an inconvenient instrument of death and destruction.

I agree it's difficult to make sense of Parsifal. It's also difficult to make sense of Jesus' parables and Buddhist Koans. They could be nonsense, or they could be attempts at describing the divinely indescribable. Perhaps the purpose is not to be understood, but to be contemplated and to inspire. And maybe someday some chap with a great and terrible amount compassion will be born who fully make sense of Parsifal and promptly goes on to save the world. Who knows?

The Ring is certainly a work I choose to be inspired by rather than seek to understand. Best wishes to all those who try, though.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Couchie said:


> And maybe someday some chap with a great and terrible amount of compassion will be born who fully make sense of Parsifal and promptly goes on to save the world. Who knows?


I'm getting to it; just give me some time!

Jeez, people are so impatient.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Carl Jung said:


> _From this point of view [that of the Taoist solution to the problem of opposites] it is not so difficult to see what the primordial image was that helped to solve the problem in Wagner's Parsifal. Here the suffering is caused by the tension of opposites represented by the Grail and the power of Klingsor, who has taken possession of the holy spear. Under the spell of Klingsor is Kundry, symbolizing the instinctive life-force or libido that Amfortas lacks. Parsifal rescues the libido from the state of restless, compulsive instinctuality, in the first place because he does not succumb to Kundry, and in the second because he does not possess the Grail. Amfortas has the Grail and suffers for it, because he lacks libido. Parsifal has nothing of either, he is nirdvandva, free from the opposites, and is therefore the redeemer, the bestower of healing and renewed vitality, who unites the bright, heavenly, feminine symbol of the Grail with the dark, earthly, masculine symbol of the spear. The death of Kundry may be taken as the liberation of libido from its naturalistic, undomesticated form (cf. the "bull's shape," par. 350, n. 93), which falls away as a lifeless husk, while the energy bursts forth as a new stream of life in the glowing of the Grail. By his renunciation of the opposites (unwilling though this was, at least in part), Parsifal caused a blockage of libido that created a new potential and thus made a new manifestation of energy possible. The undeniable sexual symbolism might easily lead to the one-sided interpretation that the union of spear and Grail merely signifies a release of sexuality. The fate of Amfortas shows, however, that sexuality is not the point. On the contrary, it was his relapse into a nature-bound, brutish attitude that was the cause of his suffering and brought about the loss of his power. His seduction by Kundry was a symbolic act, showing that it was not sexuality that dealt him his wound so much as an attitude of nature bound compulsion, a supine submission to the biological urge. This attitude expresses the supremacy of the animal part of our psyche. The sacrificial wound that is destined for the beast strikes the man who is overcome by the beast-for the sake of man's further development. The fundamental problem, as I have pointed out in Symbols of Transformation, is not sexuality per se, but the domestication of libido, which concerns sexuality only so far as it is one of the most important and most dangerous forms of libidinal expression. If, in the case of Amfortas and the union of spear and Grail, only the sexual problem is discerned, we get entangled in an insoluble contradiction, since the thing that harms is also the thing that heals. Such a paradox is true and permissible only when one sees the opposites as united on a higher plane, when one understands that it is not a question of sexuality, either in this form or in that, but purely a question of the attitude by which every activity, including the sexual, is regulated._


I find that Schopenhauer and Wagner conceived as the "Will" very generally as the metaphysical life-force and yearning of living entities, Nietzsche reduces it to the "Will to Power" and our psychologist friends Jung and Freud reduce it to the "libido". Not that power and sex are absent from Wagner, but I find something nobler in Wagner's overarching purpose than these reductions would have us believe.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Couchie said:


> I find that Schopenhauer and Wagner conceived as the "Will" very generally as the metaphysical life-force and yearning of living entities, Nietzsche reduces it to the "Will to Power" and our psychologist friends Jung and Freud reduce it to the "libido". Not that power and sex are absent from Wagner, but I find something nobler in Wagner's overarching purpose than these reductions would have us believe.


Great post, I understood at least 20% of it :tiphat:


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> There's a lot of imaginative writing with philosophical undertones which can be entertaining and moving _until_ you read the philosophy critically, because when you do you you find the philosophy is half baked. Proust is like this IMO, as is Wagner in Parsifal. It's not for nothing that no one has ever convincingly made sense of Parsifal - what, exactly happened between Act 2 and Act 3 which lead to Parsifal becoming the redeemer? What did he learn when he kissed Kundry? These are difficult, IMO unanswerable, questions. Unanswerable because the opera is, in a real sense, nonsense.


I find the charge that Parsifal is incomprehensible nonsense is quite interesting, since comprehension itself is a major theme of the opera. Parsifal's mother raises Parsifal in ignorance, to spare him from the horrors of knowledge of the world:

_For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. _
Ecclesiastes 1:18

Yet the Will drives Parsifal towards leaving his mother, towards seeking and understanding, as Kundry taunts him:

_I named you, foolish innocent,_
_"Fal parsi",_
_you innocent fool, "Parsifal"._
_Thus when he fell in Araby_
_your father Gamuret called his son,_
_to whom, still in his mother's womb,_
_he gave his dying greeting with this name._
_I waited for you here to tell you this:_
_what drew you here, if not the wish to know?_

Is the desire for comprehension yet another futile, insatiable, striving of the Will... or, like Parsifal, can we possibly be awakened in understanding?


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