Introduction: The Status of the Hero

THE PREVIOUS TWO CHAPTERS have shown how material that might at first sight appear disjunctive in nature is combined in the opening and closing strophes of Lohengrin. This chapter turns to a similar problem that is raised, albeit on a different level, by the story of the hero that they frame. We have already seen how the blending of elements associated with “different” texts shapes the transition from the Wartburgkrieg to the account of Lohengrin's deeds at the beginning of the work, and the transition to the historical overview and epilogue at its end. These transitions unfold primarily in terms of the speaking voice and the act of narration, the presentation of which reflects how Wolfram is established as the narrator at the opening of the text and how an authorial voice intrudes at its close. This chapter, and the two that follow, turn to the intervening material. It, too, has given rise to impressions of difference and disjunction, but in this case their origins lie within the narrated world: in the hero as a literary character and in the story in which he participates. Most obviously, the Lohengrin narrative charts a movement between two distinct spheres of existence. The hero initially inhabits the realm of the Grail but leaves it, with the help of the swan, for a conventional social and geographical setting in Antwerp; his place in his new surroundings is confirmed by marriage to Elsam before he steps forward to play a decisive role in two battles against the enemies of Christendom; and finally, he returns to the Grail, again accompanied by the swan that appears at the necessary time.

It has become customary to see in this cycle of departure and return a source of conceptual gaps and breaks. In structural terms, for instance, Matthias Meyer argues that Lohengrin's provenance from the Grail leads into a love story that is to be separated from the “historical” parts of the narrative: