Feirefiz

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The duel between Parzival (r.) And Feirefiz. Cod. Pal. germ. 339, XV. Book, sheet 540v. Illustrated manuscript from Diebold Lauber's workshop , around 1443–1446: The illustrator shows Feirefiz as "Mohren" with a beard, turban and exotic armor, but without the eponymous "speckling".

Feirefiz (variants Feirafiz, Ferafiz, Firafiz ) is a character from the Parsifal - Roman Wolfram von Eschenbach . He is Parzival's half-brother, who emerged from the first marriage of Parzival's father Gahmuret to the Moorish queen Belakane. His birth is told in the first book, which contains the history of the protagonist.

About the name

The name Feirefiz can be derived from French and means something like "colorful son": veir or vair in Old French meant colorful or gray-white patterned , originally from fur , later also heraldic . The narrator had the idea here that a connection between parents of dark and white skin leads to a piebald child. Wolfram also takes up this idea in his Willehalm , where he (verse 386, 14-21) has a two-colored man named Josweiz appear, to whom he ascribes a white father and a mœrinne as mother.

On the meaning of the figure

Only at the end of the Parzival story does Feirefiz reappear, now as a grown man and hero. Parzival does not recognize him as his brother and a fight ensues, which the narrator breaks off when the half-brothers recognize each other. Feirefiz then becomes Parzival's companion and is by his side when he becomes King of the Grail . The heathen Feirefiz is baptized in order to marry the keeper of the Grail Repanse de Schoye. The couple moves to India and has a son, Jôhan , who is identified as the ancestor of the legendary Priest King John , who - according to tradition - was the Christian ruler of the "three India". With this, Wolfram claims to "explain the origins of the priest John and thus make this mysterious figure, about whom no one knew exactly, comprehensible" .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Schröder, The Names In 'Parzival' And In 'Titurel' Wolframs Von Eschenbach , de Gruyter, 1982, p. 32.
  2. ↑ so Joachim Bumke: Parzival and Feirefiz - Priest Johannes - Lohengrin. The open end of the “Parzival” by Wolfram von Eschenbach , in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 65/1991, 236–264, on p. 247f.

literature

  • Nicole Müller: Feirefiz - God's document . Bayreuth Contributions to Literary Studies, Vol. 30. Edited by Walter Gebhard, Michael Steppat and Gerhard Wolf. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna, 2008 ISBN 978-3-631-58164-3
  • Ulrich Müller: "Feirefiz Anschevin - considerations on the function of a character in a novel by Wolfram von Eschenbach", in: Ulrich Müller - Collected writings on literary studies. Göppingen (2010), pp. 163–174.
  • Joachim Bumke: Parzival and Feirefiz - Priest Johannes - Lohengrin. The open end of the “Parzival” by Wolfram von Eschenbach , in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 65/1991, pages 236–264
  • Cynthia B. Caples: Faces of the Hero: Feirefiz in Wolframs von Eschenbach “Parzival” , in: Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17/1975, pages 543-549
  • Clayton Gray Jr .: The Symbolic Role of Wolfram's Feirefiz , in: Journal of English and Germanic Philology 73/1974, pp. 363-374
  • Georg Keferstein: Feirefiz Anschewin , in: Deutsches Volkstum 19/1937, page 699–708
  • Hilda Swinburne: Gahmuret and Feirefiz in Wolfram's "Parzival" , in: Modern Language Review 51/1956, pp. 195-202
  • Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzival , revised and commented on by Karl Lachmann's edition by Eberhard Nellmann, transferred by Dieter Kühn, 2 volumes, volume 2: Commentary, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, page 487, 725f.