The widely distributed group of sagas which have been woven around the mythic knight with the swan (the old French Chevalier au cigne) can be traced back to very ancient Keltic traditions. The following is the version which has been made familiar by Wagner’s dramatisation of this theme. The story of Lohengrin, the knight with the swan, as transmitted by the medieval German epic [modernized by Junghaus, Reclam] and briefly rendered by the Grimm brothers, in their “German Sagas” (Part II, Berlin, 1818, p. 306) under the title: Lohengrin in Brabant.
The Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, without leaving other heirs than a young daughter, Els, or Elsam by name; her he recommended on his death bed to one of his retainers, Friedrich von Telramund. Friedrich, the intrepid warrior, became emboldened to demand the youthful duchess’ hand and lands, under the false claim that she had promised to marry him. She steadfastly refused to do so. Friedrich complained to Emperor Heinrich, surnamed the Vogler, and the verdict was that she must defend herself against him, through some hero, in a so called divine judgment, in which God would accord the victory to the innocent, and defeat the guilty. As none were ready to take her part, the young duchess prayed ardently to God, to save her; and far away in distant Montsalvatsch, in the Council of the Grail, the sound of the bell was heard, showing that there was some one in urgent need of help. The Grail therefore resolved to despatch as a rescuer, Lohengrin the son of Parsifal. Just as he was about to place his foot in the stirrup a swan came floating down the water drawing a skiff behind him. As soon as Lohengrin set eyes upon the swan, he exclaimed: “Take the steed back to the manger, I shall follow this bird wherever he may lead me.” Having faith in God’s omnipotence he took no food with him in the skiff. After they had been afloat on the sea five days, the swan dipped his bill in the water, caught a fish, ate one half of it, and gave the other half to the prince to eat. Thus the knight was fed by the swan.
Meanwhile Elsa had summoned her chieftains and retainers to a meeting in Antwerp. Precisely on the day of the assembly, a swan was sighted swimming up stream (river Schelde) and drawing behind him a skiff, in which Lohengrin lay asleep on his shield. The swan promptly came to land at the shore, and the prince was joyfully welcomed. Hardly had his helmet, shield and sword been taken from the skiff, when the swan at once swam away again. Lohengrin heard of the wrong which had been done to the duchess, and willingly consented to become her champion. Elsa then summoned all her relatives and subjects. The place was prepared in Mayence, where Lohengrin and Friedrich were to fight in the emperor’s presence. The hero of the Grail defeated Friedrich, who confessed having lied to the duchess, and was executed with the axe. Elsa was alloted to Lohengrin, they having long been lovers; but he secretly insisted upon her avoiding all questions as to his ancestry, or whence he had come, saying that otherwise he would have to leave her instantaneously and she would never see him again.
For some time, the couple lived in peace and happiness. Lohengrin was a wise and mighty ruler over his land, and also served his emperor well in his expeditions against the Huns and the heathen. But it came to pass that one day in throwing the javelin he unhorsed the Duke of Cleve, so that the latter broke an arm. The Duchess of Cleve was angry, and spoke out amongst the women, saying: “Lohengrin may be brave enough, and he seems to be a good Christian; what a pity that his nobility is not of much account for no one knows whence he has come floating to this land.” These words pierced the heart of the Duchess of Brabant, and she changed color with emotion. At night, when her spouse was holding her in his arms, she wept, and he said “What is the matter, Elsa, my own?” She made answer, “the Duchess of Cleve has caused me sore pain.” Lohengrin was silent and asked no more. The second night, the same came to pass. But in the third night, Elsa could no longer retain herself, and she spoke: “Lord, do not chide me! I wish to know, for our children’s sake, whence you were born; for my heart tells me that you are of high rank.” When the day broke, Lohengrin declared in public whence he had come, that Parsifal was his father, and God had sent him from the Grail. He then asked for his two children, which the duchess had borne him, kissed them, told them to take good care of his horn and sword which he would leave behind, and said: “Now, I must be gone.” To the duchess he left a little ring which his mother had given him. Then the swan, his friend, came swimming swiftly, with the skiff behind him; the prince stepped in and crossed the water, back to the service of the Grail. Elsa sank down in a faint. The empress resolved to keep the younger boy Lohengrin, for his father’s sake, and to bring him up as her own child. But the widow wept and mourned [72] the rest of her life for her beloved spouse, who never came back to her.
On inverting the Lohengrin saga in such a way that the end is placed first,—on the basis of the rearrangement, or even transmutation of motives, not uncommonly found in myths,—we find the type of saga with which we have now become familiar: The infant Lohengrin, who is identical with his father of the same name, floats in a vessel upon the sea and is carried ashore by a swan. The empress adopts him as her son, and he becomes a valorous hero. Having married a noble maiden of the land, he forbids her to enquire as to his origin. When the command is broken he is obliged to reveal his miraculous descent and divine mission, after which the swan carries him back in his skiff to the Grail.
Other versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan have retained this original arrangement of the motives, although they appear commingled with elements of fairy tales. The saga of the Knight with the Swan, as related in the Flemish People’s Book (Deutsche Sagen, I, 29), contains in the beginning the history of the birth of seven children, [73] borne by Beatrix, the wife of King Oriant of Flanders. The wicked mother of the absent king, Matabruna, orders that the children be killed, and the queen be given seven puppy dogs in their stead. But the servant contents himself with the exposure of the children, who are found by a hermit, named Helias, and are nourished by a goat until they are grown. Beatrix is thrown into a dungeon. Later on Matabruna learns that the children have been saved and her repeated command to kill them causes the hunter, who has been charged with the murder, to bring her as a sign of apparent obedience to her behest, the silver neck chains which the children wore already at the time of their birth. One of the boys, named Helias, after his foster father, alone keeps his chain, and is thereby saved from the fate of his brothers, who are transformed into swans, as soon as their chains are removed. Matabruna volunteers to prove the relations of the queen with the dog, and upon her instigation, Beatrix is to be killed, unless a champion arises to defend her. In her need, she prays to God, who sends her son Helias as a rescuer. The brothers are also saved by means of the other chains, except one, whose chain has already been melted down. King Oriant now transfers the rulership to his son Helias, who causes the wicked Matabruna to be burned. One day, Helias sees his brother, the swan, drawing a skiff on the lake surrounding the castle. This he regards as a heavenly sign, he arms himself and mounts the skiff. The swan takes him through rivers and lakes to the place where God has ordained him to go. Next follows the liberation of an innocently accused duchess, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga; and his marriage to her daughter Clarissa, who is forbidden to ask for her husband’s ancestry. In the seventh year of their marriage she disobeys and puts the question, after which Helias returns home in the swan’s skiff. Finally, his lost brother swan is likewise released.
The characteristic features of the Lohengrin saga,—that the divine hero disappears again in the same mysterious fashion in which he has arrived; also the transference of mythical motives from the life of the older hero, bearing the same name, to a younger one, a very universal process in myth-formation, are likewise embodied in the Anglian-Longobard saga of Scëaf, which is mentioned in the introduction to the Beowulf-Song, the oldest German epic, preserved in the Anglo-Saxon tongue (translated by H. v. Wolzogen, Reclam). The father of old Beowulf received his name, Scild Scéfing (meaning the son of Scëaf), because as a very young boy, he was cast ashore as a stranger, asleep in a boat on a sheaf of grain (Anglo-saxon, scéaf). The waves of the sea carried him to the coast of the country which he was destined to defend. The inhabitants welcomed him as a miracle, raised him, and later on made him their king, as an emissary of God. (Compare Grimm, German Mythology, I, p. 306; III, p. 391, and H. Leo: Beowulf, Halle, 1839.) What is told of the ancestor of the royal house, Scaf, [74] or Scëaf, appears in the Beowulf song transferred to his son, Scëafing Scild, according to the unanimous statement of Grimm (see above), and Leo (p. 24): His dead body is exposed at his behest, surrounded by kingly splendor, upon a ship without a crew, which is sent out into the sea. Thus he vanishes in the same mysterious manner in which his father arrived ashore; this trait being accounted for, in analogy with the Lohengrin saga, by the mythical identity of father and son.
A cursory review of these variegated hero myths forcibly brings out a series of uniformly common features, with a typical ground work, from which a standard saga, as it were, may be constructed. This schedule corresponds approximately to the ideal human skeleton which is constantly seen, with minor deviations, on transillumination of figures which outwardly differ from one another. The individual traits of the several myths, and especially apparently crude variations from the prototype, can only be entirely elucidated by the myth-interpretation. The standard saga itself may be formulated according to the following scheme:
The hero is the child of most distinguished parents; usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as continence, or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the parents, due to external prohibition or obstacles. During the pregnancy, or antedating the same, there is a prophecy, in form of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father, or his representative. As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds) and is suckled by a female animal, or by a humble woman. After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion; takes his revenge on his father, on the one hand, is acknowledged on the other, and finally achieves rank and honors. [75]
The normal relations of the hero towards his father and his mother regularly appearing impaired in all these myths, as shown by the schedule, there is reason to assume that something in the nature of the hero must account for such a disturbance, and motives of this kind are not very difficult to discover. It is readily understood—and may be noted in the modern epigones of the heroic age—that for the hero who is exposed to envy, jealousy and calumny to a much higher degree than all others, the descent from his parents often becomes the source of the greatest distress and embarrassment. The old saying that “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in his father’s house,” has no other meaning but this, that he whose parents, brothers and sisters, or playmates, are known to us, is not so readily conceded to be a prophet (Gospel of St. Mark, VI, 4). There seems to be a certain necessity for the prophet to deny his parents; also, the well-known opera of Meyerbeer is based upon the avowal that the prophetic hero is allowed, in favor of his mission, to abandon and repudiate even his tenderly beloved mother.
A number of difficulties arise, however, as we proceed to a deeper enquiry into the motives which oblige the hero to sever his family relations. Numerous investigators have emphasized that the understanding of myth formation requires our going back to their ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of imagination. [76] The fact has also been pointed out that this imaginative faculty is found in its active and unchecked exuberance only in childhood. Therefore, the imaginative life of the child should first be studied, in order to facilitate the understanding of the far more complex and also more handicapped mythical and artistic imagination in general.
Meanwhile the investigation of the juvenile faculty of imagination has hardly commenced, instead of being sufficiently advanced to permit the utilization of the findings for the explanation of the more complicated psychic activities. The reason for this imperfect understanding of the psychic life of the child is referable to the lack of a suitable instrument, as well as of a reliable avenue, leading into the intricacies of this very delicate and rather inaccessible domain. These juvenile emotions can by no means be studied in the normal human adult, and it may actually be charged, in view of certain psychic disturbances, that the normal psychic integrity of normal subjects consists precisely in their having overcome and forgotten their childish vagaries and imaginations: so that the way has become blocked. In children, on the other hand, empirical observation (which as a rule must remain merely superficial) fails in the investigation of psychic processes, because we are not as yet enabled to trace all manifestations correctly to their motive forces: so that we are lacking the instrument. There is a certain class of persons, the so-called psychoneurotics, shown by the teachings of Freud to have remained children, in a sense, although otherwise appearing grown up. These psychoneurotics may be said not to have given up their juvenile psychic life, which on the contrary, in the course of maturity, has become strengthened and fixed, instead of modified. In psychoneurotics, the emotions of the child are preserved and exaggerated, thus becoming capable of pathological effects, in which these humble emotions appear broadened and enormously magnified. The fancies of neurotics are, as it were, the uniformly exaggerated reproductions of the childish imaginings. This would point the way to a solution of the problem. Unfortunately, however, the access is still much more difficult to establish in these cases than to the child mind. There is only one known instrument which makes this road practicable, namely the psychoanalytic method, which has been developed through the work of Freud. Constant handling of this instrument will clear the observer’s vision to such a degree that he will be enabled to discover the identical motive forces, only in delicately shaded manifestations, also in the psychic life of those who do not become neurotics later on.
Professor Freud had the amiability to place at the author’s disposal his highly appreciated experience with the psychology of the neuroses; and on this material are based the following comments, on the imaginative faculty of the child as well as the neurotic.
The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of the most painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two generations. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very problem. For the young child, the parents are in the first place the sole authority, and the source of all faith. To resemble them, i.e., the progenitor of the same sex; to grow up like father or mother, this is the most intense and portentous wish of the child’s early years. Progressive intellectual development naturally brings it about that the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category to which the parents belong. Other parents become known to the child, who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes justified in doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with which he had invested them. Trifling occurrences in the life of the child, which induce a mood of dissatisfaction, lead up to a criticism of the parents, and the gathering conviction that other parents are preferable in certain ways, is utilized for this attitude of the child towards the parents. From the psychology of the neuroses, we have learned that very intense emotions of sexual rivalry are also involved in this connection. The causative factor evidently is the feeling of being neglected. Opportunities arise only too frequently when the child is neglected, or at least feels himself neglected, when he misses the entire love of the parents, or at least regrets having to share the same with the other children of the family. The feeling that one’s own inclinations are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea,—often consciously remembered from very early years,—of being a step-child, or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become neurotics, very frequently remember occasions of this kind, when the hostile behavior of the parents was interpreted and reciprocated by them in this fashion, usually under the influence of story books. The influence of sex is already evident, in so far as the boy shows a far greater tendency to harbor hostile feelings against his father than his mother, with a much stronger inclination to emancipate himself from the father than from the mother. The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly much less active in this respect. These consciously remembered psychic emotions of the years of childhood supply the factor which permits the interpretation of the myth. What is not often consciously remembered, but can almost invariably be demonstrated through psychoanalysis, is the next stage in the development of this incipient alienation from the parents, which may be designated by the term Family Romance of Neurotics. The essence of neurosis, and of all higher mental qualifications, comprises a special activity of the imagination which is primarily manifested in the play of the child, and which from about the period preceding puberty takes hold of the theme of the family relations. A characteristic example of this special imaginative faculty is represented by the familiar day dreams, [77] which are continued until long after puberty. Accurate observation of these day dreams shows that they serve for the fulfilment of wishes, for the righting of life, and that they have two essential objects, one erotic, the other of an ambitious nature (usually with the erotic factor concealed therein). About the time in question the child’s imagination is engaged upon the task of getting rid of the parents, who are now despised and are as a rule to be supplanted by others of a higher social rank. The child utilizes an accidental coincidence of actual happenings (meetings with the lord of the manor, or the proprietor of the estate, in the country; with the reigning prince, in the city. In the United States with some great statesman, millionaire). Accidental occurrences of this kind arouse the child’s envy, and this finds its expression in fancy fabrics which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank. The technical elaboration of these two imaginings, which of course by this time have become conscious, depends upon the child’s adroitness, and also upon the material at his disposal. It likewise enters into consideration, if these fancies are elaborated with more or less claim to plausibility. This stage is reached at a time when the child is still lacking all knowledge of the sexual conditions of descent. With the added knowledge of the manifold sexual relations of father and mother; with the child’s realization of the fact that the father is always uncertain, whereas the mother is very certain—the family romance undergoes a peculiar restriction; it is satisfied with ennobling the father, while the descent from the mother is no longer questioned, but accepted as an unalterable fact. This second (or sexual) stage of the family romance is moreover supported by another motive, which did not exist in the first (or asexual) stage. Knowledge of sexual matters gives rise to the tendency of picturing erotic situations and relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother, or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in the situation of secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs. In this way the primary or asexual fantasies are raised to the standard of the improved later understanding.
The motive of revenge and retaliation, which was originally to the front, is again evident. These neurotic children are mostly those who were punished by the parents, to break them of bad sexual habits, and they take their revenge upon their parents by their imaginings. The younger children of a family are particularly inclined to deprive their predecessors of their advantage by fables of this kind (exactly as in the intrigues of history). Frequently they do not hesitate in crediting the mother with as many love affairs as there are rivals. An interesting variation of this family romance restores the legitimacy of the plotting hero himself, while the other children are disposed of in this way as illegitimate. The family romance may be governed besides by a special interest, all sorts of inclinations being met by its adaptability and variegated character. The little romancer gets rid in this fashion for example of the kinship of a sister, who may have attracted him sexually.
Those who turn aside with horror from this corruption of the child mind, or perhaps actually contest the possibility of such matters, should note that all these apparently hostile imaginings have not such a very bad significance after all, and that the original affection of the child for his parents is still preserved under their thin disguise. The faithlessness and ingratitude on the part of the child are only apparent, for on investigating in detail the most common of these romantic fancies, namely the substitution of both parents, or of the father alone, by more exalted personages—the discovery will be made that these new and highborn parents are invested throughout with the qualities which are derived from real memories of the true lowly parents, so that the child does not actually remove his father but exalts him. The entire endeavor to replace the real father by a more distinguished one is merely the expression of the child’s longing for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to be the strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest and most beautiful woman. The child turns away from the father, as he now knows him, to the father in whom he believed in his earlier years, his imagination being in truth only the expression of regret for this happy time having passed away. Thus the overvaluation of the earliest years of childhood again claims its own in these fancies. [78] An interesting contribution to this subject is furnished by the study of the dreams. Dream-interpretation teaches that even in later years, in the dreams of the emperor or the empress, these princely persons stand for the father and the mother. [79] Thus the infantile overvaluation of the parents is still preserved in the dream of the normal adult.
As we proceed to fit the above features into our scheme, we feel justified in analogizing the ego of the child with the hero of the myth, in view of the unanimous tendency of family romances and hero myths; keeping in mind that the myth throughout reveals an endeavor to get rid of the parents, and that the same wish arises in the phantasies of the individual child at the time when it is trying to establish its personal independence. The ego of the child behaves in this respect like the hero of the myth, and as a matter of fact, the hero should always be interpreted merely as a collective ego, which is equipped with all the excellences. In a similar manner, the hero in personal poetic fiction, usually represents the poet himself, or at least one side of his character.
Summarizing the essentials of the hero myth, we find the descent from noble parents, the exposure in a river, and in a box, and the raising by lowly parents; followed in the further evolution of the story by the hero’s return to his first parents, with or without punishment meted out to them. It is very evident that the two parent couples of the myth correspond to the real and the imaginary parent couple of the romantic phantasy. Closer inspection reveals the psychological identity of the humble and the noble parents, precisely as in the infantile and neurotic phantasies.
In conformity with the overvaluation of the parents in early childhood, the myth begins with the noble parents, exactly like the romantic phantasy, whereas in reality adults soon adapt themselves to the actual conditions. Thus the phantasy of the family romance is simply realized in the myth, with a bold reversal to the actual conditions. The hostility of the father, and the resulting exposure, accentuate the motive which has caused the ego to indulge in the entire fiction. The fictitious romance is the excuse, as it were, for the hostile feelings which the child harbors against his father, and which in this fiction are projected against the father. The exposure in the myth, therefore, is equivalent to the repudiation or non-recognition in the romantic phantasy. The child simply gets rid of the father in the neurotic romance, while in the myth the father endeavors to lose the child. Rescue and revenge are the natural terminations, as demanded by the essence of the phantasy.
In order to establish the full value of this parallelization, as just sketched in its general outlines, it must enable us to interpret certain constantly recurring details of the myth which seem to require a special explanation. This demand would seem to acquire special importance in view of the fact that no satisfactory explanation of these details is forthcoming in the writings of even the most enthusiastic astral mythologists, or natural philosophers. Such details are represented by the regular occurrence of dreams (or oracles), and by the mode of exposure in a box and in the water. These motives do not at first glance seem to permit a psychologic derivation. Fortunately the study of dream-symbolisms permits the elucidation of these elements of the hero-myth. The utilization of the same material in the dreams of healthy persons and neurotics [80] indicates that the exposure in the water signifies no more and no less than the symbolic expression of birth. The children come out of the “water.” [81] The basket, box or receptacle [82] simply means the container, the womb; so that the exposure directly signifies the process of birth, although it is represented by its opposite.
Those who object to this representation by opposites should remember how often the dream works with the same mechanism (compare “Traumdeutung,” II edition, p. 238). A confirmation of this interpretation of the exposure, as taken from the common human symbolism, is furnished by the material itself, in the dream dreamt by the grandfather (or still more convincingly by the mother herself) [83] in the Ktesian version of Kyros before his birth; in this dream, so much water flows from the lap of the expectant mother as to inundate all Asia, like an enormous ocean. [84] It is remarkable that in both cases the Chaldeans correctly interpreted these water dreams as birth-dreams. In all probability, these dreams themselves are constructed out of the knowledge of a very ancient and universally understood symbolism, with a dim foresight of the relations and connections which are appreciated and presented in Freud’s teachings. There he says (“Traumdeutung,” 2d edition, p. 199) in referring to a dream in which the dreamer hurls herself in the dark water of a lake: Dreams of this sort are birth-dreams, and their interpretation is accomplished by reversing the fact as communicated in the manifest dream; namely, instead of hurling oneself into the water, it means emerging from the water, i.e., to be born. [85] The justice of this interpretation, which renders the water-dream equivalent to the exposure, is again confirmed by the fact that precisely in the Kyros saga, which contains the water-dream, the motive of the exposure in the water is lacking, while only the basket, which does not occur in the dream, plays a part in the exposure.
In this interpretation of the exposure as the birth, we must not let ourselves be disturbed by the discrepancy in the succession of the individual elements of the symbolized materialization, with the real birth process. This chronological rearrangement or even reversal has been explained by Freud as due to the general manner in which recollections are elaborated into phantasies; the same material reappears in the phantasies, but in an entirely novel arrangement, and no attention whatsoever is paid to the natural sequence of the acts. [86]
Besides this chronological reversal, the reversal of the contents requires special explanation. The first reason for the representation of the birth by its opposite,—the life threatening exposure in the water, is the accentuation of the parental hostility towards the future hero. [87] The creative influence of this tendency to represent the parents as the first and most powerful opponents of the hero will be appreciated, when it is kept in mind that the entire family-romance in general owes its origin to the feeling of being neglected, namely the assumed hostility of the parents. In the myth, this hostility goes so far that the parents refuse to let the child be born, which is precisely the reason of the hero’s lament, moreover, the myth plainly reveals the desire to enforce his materialization even against the will of the parents. The vital peril which is thus