What Parsifal Saw

Review of Tom Artin, What Parsifal Saw (Charleston, SC: Free Scholar Press, 2016), ISBN 978-0692705445, 104 pages, paperback, $15.

Tom Artin seems to be making a habit out of exploring Wagner’s operas through the lens of a seemingly old-fashioned depth psychology. At the surface level of the Wagnerian narrative, he deliberately latches onto allegories, symbols, and familiar icons, as well as a plethora of terms with double meanings. His aim is to dive from there to the deepest level of human emotions—to instinctual drives, primal fears, the formation of the earliest familial bonds, and the rise of culturally shared complexes. With this particular psychoanalytic orientation, he barely touches on the more current object-relations theories and sticks to his dogged exploration of depths. He is highly adept at it and is therefore entitled to

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his approach for the simple reason that one cannot argue with success. His findings are very enlightening. Complicated as the psychoanalytic rationales that he cites may be, his conclusions also make intuitive sense; they ring a bell, so to speak.

For me, however, there has been one exception among his many conclusions. Artin emphasized and reiterated Freud’s notion of the mother who introduces her son to sexual intercourse, sacrificing her own person in order to rescue him from the danger of masturbation. Mothers do indeed tend to sacrifice themselves to their children. But what this time failed to “ring a bell” in this melee of fantasies was the notion of a life-threatening danger of masturbation. Freud was entitled to his specific opinion, but by contrast Otto Fenichel in his article “On Masturbation” opined, “it is a means by which the child learns to control his sexual instincts.” Clearly masturbation lends itself to different kinds of fantasies. In this respect, masturbation is still relevant because it occurs in the groin area—the realm of both the magic spear and the Holy Grail where the drama takes place.

The book’s title is taken from the question with which Gurnemanz, one of the grail knights, challenged Parsifal: “Do you know what you saw?” Parsifal, the purely naïve fool, will come by the answer only after years of learning by experience and empathy. What he saw in the Grail ritual, albeit without realizing it, was the primal scene, which consists of the sexual intercourse between parents that frighten the child who witnesses it. And witnessing was quite easy during the cramped living conditions of the time. Artin went on to explain that no less important was the enhanced visibility of menstruation that existed due to the lack of hygienic pads that are available today. It was therefore easy for children to form a mix of fantasies concerning menstruation, copulation, and Oedipal urges. Wagner the composer, but even more so the librettist, provided the stage format in which these archaic issues could be played out. It was the Grail ceremony.

The Grail rite included uncovering it and letting it spread its glow throughout the temple to cause the transubstantiation of the bread and wine on the feast table. According to Artin, the whole ceremony of uncovering of the grail during pre-set times and letting it glow before covering it once again was based on the periodicity of menstruation. The vagina works like a clock that pre-ordains the flow of blood. At this point, it behooves us to recall that the flow of menstrual blood has evoked fears throughout history. In a clear-

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ly phobic reaction, the Jewish Talmud contains a whole array of laws concerning the safe avoidance of menstruating women. In current American politics, presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested that Fox anchorwoman Megyn Kelly was mean to him because she was bleeding from “wherever.”

Both the “wherever” and “whatever” aspects of the flow are actually relevant to our story. At this point, a fusion of images enters the story. The “wherever” is the groin area that refers not only to the vagina symbolized by the Holy Grail but also to the magic spear that stands for the penis. Furthermore, penetration during intercourse might injure both parties. Artin pointed out that vaginal bleeding during menstruation or defloration could suggest an injury. I would like to add that the central slit in the vaginal shape might also suggest a cut or an injury. As for the magic spear in the story, it too acts like a double-edged sword: its stab can injure but its blood flow can also cure, as underscored by Artin. This brings us to the “whatever” of the “wherever.” It certainly is blood—either menstrual or the blood of Christ that has healing properties. In this connection, I would like to suggest that the magic liquid could also be seen as the racially superior type of blood that flows in German veins. What is more, the “whatever” that comes out of the magic spears of males can include seminal flow that is a known life-giver in its own right.

Kudos to Tom Artin for providing us with such a discerning analysis of how different persons in the drama were sometimes merged together to become for example “a combined parent concept,” a single individual that includes both genders. Similarly, he articulated how different aspects of one person such as being a seductive as well as a self-sacrificing mother were split and represented by different personages. His discussion touches upon issues that recur in the field of literary criticism. To what degree is it valid to draw conclusions from the work of art about its author or, which may be even more problematic, draw conclusions from the author’s life and apply them to his artistic creation?

An added issue that served as a thorn in the side (not groin) of psychoanalysts is whether psychoanalysis should at all be applied to literature in a procedure that lacks access to free associations that is so important for actual clinical work. I surmise that the latter question represented defensive reactions by psychoanalysts trying to protect the scientific validity of their profession that came under questioning.

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The Talmud says that, since the destruction of the Temple, prophecy has been given to children and fools. I am no child but I would venture the prediction that a brighter future lies ahead for psychoanalytic theories applied to literature and to history than for the use of psychoanalysis in clinical practice. As part of this promising future, I would warmly welcome a new analysis by Tom Artin of another Wagner opera.

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