Book XVI · LOHENGRIN, part 14 of 14

¶EXCURSUS D

¶THE WORKS OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH

¶Besides the Parzival, Wolfram's longest and, from every point of view, most important work, we possess seven songs belonging to the class known as Tage-or Wächter-Lieder; thus called because the secret lovers, who have indulged their passion during the hours of night, are warned by the call of the watchman from the ramparts of the approach of day and of the hour of parting. Though Wolfram made in these songs a concession to the lax morality of his day, the concluding lines of one of them clearly show how far superior to such unlawful passion he held the love of wedded wife and husband, such love as he has immortalised in Kondwiramur and Parzival. Beside these songs, we have the poems dealing with the loves of Siguné and Schionatulander, and classed together under the name of Titurel. Whether these are complete in themselves, and intended to serve as an explanatory addition to the Parzival, or whether they are fragments of an unfinished poem, does not very clearly appear; in any case they indicate a source identical with that of the Parzival.

¶Willehalm, Wolfram's other great epic poem, in nine books, deals with the history of William of Orange, a contemporary of Charlemagne, whose story belongs to this cycle of French Romance. The poem is clearly derived from the old French Chanson de Geste, Aliscans, and is originally founded on the prolonged struggle between the Saracen and Christian power in the South of France, a struggle which for poetical purposes has been condensed into two battles of Aliscans, or Alischanz, in the first of which the Christians are defeated, while in the second they are victorious. Whether this poem, too, is or is not unfinished, is a matter of debate among critics; judging from Wolfram's method in the Parzival, the fact that he leaves the fate of his hero 'Rennewart' in uncertainty, and does not even reveal the secret of his parentage and close connection with William's wife, seems to indicate that he did not finish the poem. Willehalm abounds in references to the Parzival, and in similar turns of thought and expression, and has some passages of great beauty. The Titurel is also written in a more elaborate metre than the other poems, and some doubt has been expressed as to which of these two represents Wolfram's latest work. The style of both is more finished than that of the Parzival, but they are both inferior alike in depth of thought and human interest to this, the greatest work of Germany's greatest mediæval poet.