PARZIVAL VOL. I BOOKS I.-IX. PARZIVAL A KNIGHTLY EPIC BY WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH TRANSLATED BY JESSIE L. WESTON VOL. I ANASTATIC REPRINT OF THE EDITION LONDON 1894. NEW YORK G. E. STECHERT & CO., 1912. TO THE MEMORY OF RICHARD WAGNER WHOSE GENIUS HAS GIVEN FRESH LIFE TO THE CREATIONS OF MEDIÆVAL ROMANCE THIS TRANSLATION IS DEDICATED CONTENTS BOOK PAGE INTRODUCTION ix I. GAMURET 1 II. HERZELEIDE 33 III. GURNEMANZ 63 IV. KONDWIRAMUR 101 V. ANFORTAS 127 VI. ARTHUR 157 VII. OBILOT 193 VIII. ANTIKONIE 227 IX. TREVREZENT 249 APPENDICES 289 NOTES 299 INTRODUCTION In presenting, for the first time, to English readers the greatest work of Germany's greatest mediæval poet, a few words of introduction, alike for poem and writer, may not be out of place. The lapse of nearly seven hundred years, and the changes which the centuries have worked, alike in language and in thought, would have naturally operated to render any work unfamiliar, still more so when that work was composed in a foreign tongue; but, indeed, it is only within the present century that the original text of the _Parzival_ has been collated from the MSS. and made accessible, even in its own land, to the general reader. But the interest which is now felt by many in the Arthurian romances, quickened into life doubtless by the genius of the late Poet Laureate, and the fact that the greatest composer of our time, Richard Wagner, has selected this poem as the groundwork of that wonderful drama, which a growing consensus of opinion has hailed as the grandest artistic achievement of this century, seem to indicate that the time has come when the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach may hope to receive, from a wider public than that of his own day, the recognition which it so well deserves.