Love an Other

I have to say, Parzival compacts a great deal of themes into small lines. Wolfram’s concept Love is perhaps the most complex of them all. Love is the burden Gawan and Parzival endure because of their chivalric grace and nobility. The most notable passage about Love and the afflicted’s nobility is on page 271 when Wolfram interjects “Gawan cannot escape Love’s making him unhappy. So of what use is it if I interpose, however much I say? A man of worth should not fend off Love, if only because Love must help to save him.” (Von Ecshenbach 270-271) Wolfram attributes Gawan’s level of suffering to his elevated status, proclaiming that the best of the best anguish over love the way noble Gawan does.

Parzival’s Love anguish comes in perhaps the most symbolic of ways. He watches a falcon injury a goose from a flock, and three drops of blood from the wound form the likeness of his wife on the snow. Putting aside the strangeness of the image, the blood represents, in a tangible way, the torment Parzival feels being away from his wife. Also, the fact that Parzival has to be reminded of the way his wife looks in order to be anguished by her absence shows the sensibility of the poet as well as the court. In order to be fixated on a woman, a knight must either gaze upon her or carry with him a fetish, or love token in the case of the knights. The violence which causes the blood to represent the image of Parzival’s lady also hearkens back to the violence Parzival commits in his lady’s name. Love is inexorably linked to violence in Parzival’s world, by the nature of the jousting necessary to prove and win his love, and the fact that he sees his lady in blood symbolizes the suffering he and other knights endure because of their love.

What’s interesting about the obsessive gazing Parzival engages in is that once he engages in battle again and loses sight of the blood, “Mistress Reason restored him to his senses.” (Von Ecshenbach 151) Perhaps it is Parzival’s ignorance, his still child-like understanding of love, which causes him to gaze upon the figure of his lady with such obsessive fervor. Like Gawan, a more learned and more mature knight, Parzival’s love for his lady is described as a burden, but unlike Gawan, love incapacitates Parzival. “But Parzival sat there lost to the world, thanks to those spots of blood and imperious Love, who also robs me of my sense and sets my heart in turmoil.” (Von Ecshenbach 150) While Gawan’s love compels him to fight for his lady, Parzival becomes obsessive, ignoring the battle and acting in a way unbecoming of a knight.

In the same way, Herzeloyde also bears the burden of love but in a much more terminal fashion. The hermit tells Parzival “‘No sooner had you left your mother than she died – that was what she had for her love.’” (Von Ecshenbach 243) Her attachment to her son, perhaps caused by her unconventional fosterage, results in her being unable to bear Love’s burden and the hurt of Parzival’s absence. Herzeloyde and Parzival are both overwhelmed by the absence of the one they love, but it’s just too much for poor Herzeloyde. Although the fixation is similar, Parzival overcomes his obsession and moves on, whereas his mother dies. Also the interiority of Parzival’s obsession with the Gral mimics the internalization of Herzeloyde’s separation pains, in that she grieves Parzival’s absence so much that she drops dead because of it.

Wolfram’s opinion of Love, who causes such turmoil and strife, seems to be redeemed in Fierefiz. The heathen, or for our purposes the Other, is baptized because of his love for the lovely Repanse de Schoye. Although he has spent years jousting on behalf of ladies, he considered himself stronger than love. “The sight of her pierces my heart. I imagined myself so strong that no woman, wed or unwed, could rob me of my happiness.” (Von Ecshenbach 402) However, unlike the other figures in the poem, Feirefiz gets a better deal than the other love-suffering fools. With the baptism, not only is Feirefiz no longer a heathen, but he also immediately marries Repanse de Schoye. We hear no more of his suffering on behalf of love. The baptism acts as an extinguisher, quelling the fiery lust within Feirefiz and allowing him salvation. In the case of Feirefiz, the Other, the pains of love led him to deliverance from heathenism and to God.