Note 1 — From ‘Parzival,’ Book 3, lines 293-5001: Parzival takes leave of his mother, who has tried in vain to prevent his hearing of knighthood; the young ‘fool’ follows her directions all too literally.
Reading edition
The numbers refer to the original text, Bartsch’s edition; the translation is not a line-for-line version.
2. A famous wood in Bretagne—la forêt de Bréchéliant. Wolfram’s spelling is Prizljan, Hartmann’s Brezilian.
3. The blundering Parzival has now been instructed in the ways of knighthood by the gray-haired Prince Gurnemanz, who has told him to avoid asking questions about what he sees. With this caution in mind Parzival fails to inquire into the malady of the mysterious sick man in the Grail castle—a fateful error which involves him in long wanderings during which he despairs of God. The sick man is his uncle Anfortas, whom he is destined after a lapse of years, to heal by a simple question and to succeed as king of the Grail.
4. Green silk from Arabia.
5. The speaker is the wise old hermit Trevrizent, who has cleared up for Parzival the mystery of the Grail and led him to inward peace.
6. In Book 6 it is related that Parzival, riding away from the castle of the Grail, comes upon three drops of blood in the snow—the blood of a wild goose that had been attacked by a falcon. The red and white remind him of Kondwiramur and he sinks into a moody trance.