ART AND IMAGES IN PSYCHIATRY Parsifal Anselm Kiefer James C. Harris, MD What attitude is required if I am to be able to live in spite of evil?...[A] the year of Kiefer’s birth. In it, Jung writes that each genera- complete spiritual renewal is needed. And this cannot be given tion must determine for themselves how “to live in spite of gratis, each man must strive to achieve it for himself....Theeternal evil” (epigraph).1(p217) When Kiefer learned of Germany’s truths cannot be transmitted mechanically; in every epoch they must hidden past, he sought to confront it using literary, philo- be born anew from the human psyche. sophical, mythological, and theological sources. His search Carl Jung, After the Catastrophe,19451(p217) led to a series of paintings of the Parsifal legend. Like Parsi- fal, Kiefer was protected from exposure to aggression and Anselm Kiefer’s art is his vehicle for coming to terms with Ger- war during his youth and was propelled to find a deeper many’s wartime past. He was born March 8, 1945, as the last meaning in his life as he matured. In his Parsifal paintings, bombs were falling in Germany during World War II. Kiefer’s Kiefer examines the mythological archetype of a hero who generation was protected throughout childhood from refer- sought to heal an enduring wound; for Kiefer, that wound ences to Adolf Hitler and Germany’s role in the Holocaust. For was the Nazi past. German society, 1945 was year zero as it started to rebuild The setting he chose to engage past tragedy was an attic. from the wartime damage, to buildings and to the psyche. For For him, an attic served as a metaphorical storage place to en- his generation, the letters and belongings from the war years ter and confront discarded and repressed traumatic memo- were put away, and the memories of Germany’s wartime past ries of the Nazi past. The first victims of that Holocaust were were stored in societal attics of the mind. The details of this chronic mental patients and those with intellectual disabili- past were kept from his generation. ties deemed “life unworthy of life”2 whose deaths in gas cham- Carl Jung’s examination of the psychological aftermath bers were a rehearsal for what was to come later in the death of Germany’s defeat, After the Catastrophe, was published camps. Only by experiencing another’s pain through empa- Anselm Kiefer (born 1945), German. Parsifal, 1973. Oil on textured wallpaper mounted on nettle cloth, 300 × 533 cm. © 2013 Anselm Kiefer. All rights reserved. Photograph © 2013 Kunsthaus, Zürich, Switzerland. 656 JAMA Psychiatry July 2013 Volume 70, Number 7 jamapsychiatry.com Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 09/29/2021 Art and Images in Psychiatry thy could Parsifal restore the Grail, and only through existen- tial engagement through his art could Kiefer come to terms with the past. Kiefer’s sources for the Parsifal legend were Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epic story and Richard Wagner’s music drama. The tale is based on the ancient legend of a Holy Grail knight whose father, the knight Gurmanet, was killed in battle. Parsi- fal’s bereaved mother abandoned her royal life and retreated to the woods, taking him with her. There she resolved to keep her son from learning about aggression and war. Fearing his early death in combat, she tried to ensure that he would never learn about the chivalric traditions of hunting and armed con- flict. So successful was she that the adolescent Parsifal was fun- damentally naive about the world. Yet his innocence was lost when he encountered a group of knights in the forest and, un- thinkingly, joined their quest without ever saying goodbye to his mother. Soon afterward, mourning his departure, she died of grief. The key element in the Parsifal myth is how an innocent lacking in common sense is made wise by compassion. Kiefer sought to address the demoralization brought about when learning of the extent of Nazi atrocities by confronting the past in his art. He began at the age of 24 with his Occupations pho- tographs, which were a series of photographs of himself giv- ing the straight-armed Nazi salute as a parody to ridicule the Nazis in locations with historical significance in the different Detail of the Grail from Parsifal. cities that the Nazis had sought to occupy.3 These provoca- tive photographs are a reminder of what happened and the the same enchantress. In the midst of Kundry’s seductive kiss, need to come to terms with the past. As the series progresses Parsifal suddenly cries out in pain and rejects her. The pain he and is extended, the straight-armed salute depicted by Kiefer experiences, through empathy with Amfortas, is identical to begins to waver, suggesting a sense of shame. that of Amfortas’ pain. Because Parsifal resists temptation Kiefer completed 4 attic paintings of the Parsifal legend. through compassion for Amfortas’ suffering, he regains the The largest of these, Parsifal, depicts the final scene of Wag- Spear from the evil sorcerer. Cursed by the enchantress for re- ner’s music drama. The Knights kneel before Parsifal and sing jecting her, Parsifal wanders for many years but eventually finds “Höchsren Heiles Wunder! Erlösung dem Erlöser!” (“Highest, Ho- the Grail Castle. He heals Amfortas’ wound with the Spear and liest Wonder! Redemption to the Saviour!”); these words are is anointed redeemer, the successor to Amfortas and Guard- inscribed above the Grail in Kiefer’s painting (detail). Parsi- ian of the Grail. fal’s birth and attainment of chivalric status as a knight are de- Although Kiefer’s painting seems to reenact the Parsifal leg- picted in his other 3 Parsifal paintings, numbered Parsifal 1, 2, end, its setting in the attic of past memories and the way it is and 3.4 In Parsifal, the knight’s name is inscribed at the top cen- depicted give it a double-edged meaning. Despite the naming ter, and the name Amfortas, his predecessor as the leading Grail of the hero in the painting, the song of praise, and the depic- knight, is shown at the bottom. In the legend, Amfortas, long- tion of the Grail itself (detail), something is amiss. For this Grail time guardian of the holy relics (the Holy Grail and the Holy resides in an attic, out of conscious memory. How can this hid- Spear), is injured by the Holy Spear when it is wielded by an den Grail be restored to consciousness as a symbol of re- evil sorcerer who has taken the Spear from him. Amfortas lost newal? Unlike the traditional Grail, Kiefer’s Grail seems to over- the Spear to the sorcerer when he succumbed to the tempta- flow with blood. But is it the blood of the Savior or, instead, tions of Kundry, an enchantress, and was distracted. Thus, Am- the unredeemed blood of past German atrocities? Must those fortas bears a wound that will not heal. Afterward, Amfortas, atrocities be atoned for before the meaning of the Grail be guilty for having sinned, declares himself unworthy of per- restored by emotional confrontation with the wartime past? forming the Holy Office and refuses to conduct the Grail ritual Kiefer’s art in the ensuing decades addresses this task of entrusted to him, one that physically and spiritually sus- atonement.4 tained his fellow knights. Without joining in the holy rites, spiri- Carl Jung was attracted to the Parsifal legend long before tual desolation descends on the Grail knights. It is proph- Kiefer was. Jung’s engagement with the legend emerged dur- esized that only a fool made wise by compassion could regain ing his midlife crisis in the years before the First World War the Holy Spear and heal Amfortas’ wound. Parsifal is the cho- when he recorded a series of inner dialogues and elaborated sen innocent (lacking in common sense) who can heal Amfor- on them in his Liber Novus (Red Book).5 Jung wrote that those tas by regaining the Spear. Thus begins Parsifal’s quest to re- years of psychological turmoil resulted in all his later writing. claim the Holy Spear. Yet Parsifal also falls under the spell of Psychological Types (1921)6 was the first book he wrote after this jamapsychiatry.com JAMA Psychiatry July 2013 Volume 70, Number 7 657 Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 09/29/2021 Art and Images in Psychiatry prolonged period of active imaginative encounters. In Psycho- him that it be produced in the Bayreuth Festival Theatre that logical Types, Jung interprets Amfortas’ wound as psychologi- he designed, it was only produced there for the next 2 de- cal, not physical. In this book, the wound itself takes on mythic cades after his death. What appealed to Wagner in creating meaning, as Jung addresses the human tendency to psycho- his Parsifal was not a particular religion but religions as a logical dissociation and fragmentation when an individual is source of myths and symbols. In them, he found his means to unable to master life experiences or come to terms with psy- illustrate spiritual truths. In Parsifal, he draws on both Chris- chological trauma. tianity and Buddhism for his views on compassion—action For Jung, the legend of Parsifal and the Holy Grail largely based on empathy that emerges from “suffering with” an- has to do with mastering and resolving enduring uncon- other person. What is awakened in Parsifal is “a sense of scious maternal ties. Jung used the term incest symbolically fellow-suffering.”10(p237) Through his identification with Am- to describe psychological regression.