The Parzival

Translated into English verse with introduction, notes, and connecting summaries. The main purpose of this work is to furnish English-speaking readers an adequate introduction to a poem which critics of many lands have agreed in calling one of the noblest literary creations of the Middle Ages. The only English translation of Wolfram's "Parzival", by Jessie L. Weston, appeared as long ago as 1894 and, while reproducing the thought of Wolfram with some fidelity, missed his spirit and metrical flavor entirely by the unfortunate choice of long lines in place of the rhyming couplets. We have made a line-for-line rendering of the passages translated, in as close an approximation to the rhythm, rhyme, and style as we could achieve. Although realizing that there is a school of critics that objects to this treatment of the medieval "vers de romance" and prefers a prose rendering, we are of the opinion that to divorce form from content, where the two are inseparable, would mean the destruction of the peculiar charm of this great poem. An approximation to the original form, even at the risk of being forced into occasional harshness in style — it must be borne in mind that Wolfram himself became famous for his stylistic pecularities — seems a far lesser evil than the complete sacrifice of that form. The genius of Wolfram's many- sided art cannot be caught in prose. The entire 25,000 lines have, however, not been translated here, for we felt that completeness might lessen the chance of winning new friends for Wolfram and his poem. Even some of the editions and translations intended for modern German readers who are not specialists follow a similar method. Nearly one-half of the work is offered here in translation, the rest being retold in prose summaries, so that no part of the story as a whole in its many phases is lost. The Lachmann system of numbering manuscript pages of thirty lines each has been adhered to because Parzival scholarship has adopted this plan.