Kundry

Figures and characters

Appears in 11 videos · 22 passages, 14 of them in depth.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani mainly discusses Kundry in connection with Wagner's Parsifal, on which he comments at length in 2022 and 2024. He stresses the character's double nature. She is the wild girl, the messenger of the Grail, who looks for balms for the king's wound, and she is also the seductress bewitched by Klingsor who caused that wound by bringing about Amfortas's fall1 2. He describes her as a figure who passes through two thousand years of reincarnations: she was once Herodias and, for having laughed at Christ at Golgotha, she is condemned to laugh and to seduce compulsively3 4. He points to her strategy for seducing Parsifal, which works through his mother rather than through the body, and to the moment when she finally speaks his name in the second act5 6. He reads her dialogue with Klingsor as that of the pimp and the prostitute. He also notes her longing to sleep and to die, and then her transformation into a woman who says nothing but "to serve". Elsewhere he compares her to Nietzsche, who, like her, tries to escape the gaze of the crucified one7, and to the biblical Babylon, as a figure of the impure woman.

Summary produced automatically from 20 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Search these passages

Season 12 · 4 Jun 2024The matrix of all illusion: the past lived as present

17:20At once a wild girl who heals the wound and a seductress enthralled in Klingsor's service.
32:36Plunged into deep sleep, she longs only to sleep and die, like an extinguishing of the drives.
45:22Named Herodias, she transcends the centuries; her laugh before Christ condemned her to compulsive seduction.
1:43:33Her account of the child at his mother's breast, over a lullaby, reaches back to the furthest point of memory.
2:06:07She reconstitutes the primal scene of the parental couple.

Season 11 · 12 Dec 2022Hesitation fascinated by hearing and by sight: Siegfried and Perceval

59:29A hybrid forged over years, feral in a manner symmetrical to Parsifal, she seeks balm for the king.
1:09:57Bewitched by Klingsor, she caused the king's wound; she laughed at Golgotha and is condemned to laugh.
1:31:54Her strategy of seduction goes through the mother, not the body.

Season 12 · 30 May 2024From fidelity to grace - From substance to Subject

11:04The messenger of the Grail who brings balms is the same seductress who caused the wound.
1:33:06Under Klingsor's spell, she resists then plays her role as seductress; a dialogue between pimp and prostitute.

Season 12 · 21 Apr 2024Saving the saviour? Redemption - the end of the cycle or its new beginning?

15:36She attempts to seduce Parsifal in the name of his mother.
36:41Chief seductress who brings down Amfortas, and also the one who seeks balms for his wound.
1:21:09She finally utters the name of Parsifal in the second act.

Season 12 · 1 Apr 2024The quest for the Grail, sanctimony or sacrilege?

1:00:17Two thousand years of reincarnations: she laughed at Christ on Golgotha and is condemned to laugh.
1:51:18She seduces Parsifal by reminding him of his mother, then curses him.
2:02:46Transformed, she says nothing more than "to serve."

Season 13 · 27 May 2025Flagrante Delights

48:48Figure of the impure woman, like the biblical Babylon.

Season 12 · 14 Aug 2024TOO LATE?

7:02The seductress who names Parsifal in the second act.

Season 7 · 5 May 2020#7 • Harnessed to confinitude

1:42:27One of the hysterical women Nietzsche dislikes.

Season 5.2 · 25 Jan 2019#5.4 Introduction / Nature or Landscape?

1:02:26She recalls that Parsifal was raised away from shocks and wars.

Season 4 · 12 Nov 2017#4.2 Angélique (by Nerval)

59:58Chief seductress, who had been Herodias in a former life.

Talks · 19 Jun 2016At the bistro with Pagani: part 2

31:29Nietzsche tries, as she does, to escape the gaze of the crucified.