WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH. - German poet, b. probably in present-day Wolfram-Eschenbach near Ansbach in Bavaria (the year of birth is not documented) into a family of the Bavarian lesser nobility, d. ca. 1218.
He lived for the most part as a wandering knight and singer at the courts of the German princes (he was also at the famous Wartburg castle of Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia [1190-1216], where at the time of the contest of the mastersingers he met Walther von der Vogelweide). Together with Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg, W. represents the classical period of Middle High German epic. But in comparison with Hartmann and Gottfried, who incline toward an art that is merely courtly and secular, W. knows how to fuse the worldly element with the religious, no less than heroic poetry with courtly poetry, or the type of the chivalric and adventurous romance with the domestic one, or the movement of art poetry with that of popular poetry, whence the singularity of his style. His masterpiece is the Parzifal, in 16 books, composed probably in the first decade of the 13th century: its source is Li conte del Graal or Perceval li Gallois (ca. 1170) by Chrétien de Troyes, while the book of Kyot, to which the poet often alludes (l. VIII, vv. 560 ff., 992; X, v. 605 etc.), is nothing but a fiction to justify to the public, according to traditional usage, the episodes and digressions freely created.
W. is in fact not an imitator but one of the most personal poets, who not only deepens and ennobles the fable of the original in the insistence on a higher chivalric ideal, but, transforming the Grail into a touchstone of moral nobility, or, better, into a symbol of the Savior, follows the human and spiritual journey of Parzifal from the darkness of sin through all the degrees of elevation and purification, which will make him at last worthy of becoming king of the Grail. W. also composed two other poems, Titurel and Willehalm of Orange, which nevertheless remained fragmentary (the last was perhaps interrupted by the poet's death); and he finally also left us seven lyrics of notable importance.
Bibliography5 works
Sergio Lupi