Essay by Sophia Bucior
Art by Alex Hoang
Imagine a sorceress.
Imagine her clothing, her hair, her features. Imagine her voice, imagine the words she uses, imagine the purpose behind her words. Imagine wherever it is she comes from — is it far away, or near? Imagine others’ reactions to the sorceress — are they delighted, shocked, mystified? Do they greet her as an old friend, or a stranger?
In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach imagined her thus: She enters on a mighty warhorse. Both the horse’s saddle and her own clothing are made of rich fabrics and leathers, in the styles of many different lands. She speaks and reads fluently the languages of all these lands, too. She wears her hair in a long black braid which reaches far down her back. Yet, “the maiden was not as a maid” (Wolfram B. VI L. 595). Though her attire and speech is human, she bears features of the wilderness: a lion’s claws, a dog’s nose, a boar’s tusks, and the ears of a bear. This is Cundrie, the sorceress. Cundrie is brash, outspoken, and straight-forward. She holds nothing back, even from King Arthur, and says what needs to be said to whomever needs to hear it. She is wise beyond description, and her audience knows that her words are always true. When she speaks, “the folk for her message sorrowed”, for they know to heed her words, no matter how dire (Wolfram B. VI L. 585). She brings shame to the hearts, the worlds, of her listeners, but only out of necessity. Her words are the key which characters need so desperately.
There is another sorceress. She is born in Italy in September of 1364, but moves to France soon after. She is the daughter of a nobleman of King Charles V’s court, and she is taught to read and write. She is brought up among scholars, artists, and nobles. She marries, has children. When she reaches adulthood, plague moves through France, taking with it her father and husband. She is alone with her three children. So, she writes. And writes. And writes. She writes to her male contemporaries, she shamelessly enters the world of men and speaks to them like Cundrie speaks in Parzival — she is scathing in her critiques of patriarchal society and misogynist male-authored texts. She dies in the 1430s, leaving behind an incredible body of work. Many claim she is the first author whose published work reflects the modern concept of feminism. This is Christine de Pizan.
Both Cundrie and Christine have magic woven into their words. Although Christine is a real historical figure and Cundrie comes alive only through a pen, their words are eerily similar. Their words are imbued with the power of the Wild Feminine. Though Parzival was written about 100 years before Christine was born, both she and Cundrie use words for the same purpose: holding the Masculine accountable, keeping it from pushing away the Feminine, and allowing both to work together in tandem.
First, we must understand the Wild Feminine as an archetype. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes of the “Wild Woman” as such: “It is not so coincidental that wolves and coyotes, bears and wildish women have similar reputations. They all share related instinctual archetypes, and as such, both are erroneously reputed to be ingracious, wholly and innately dangerous, and ravenous” (10). Throughout Parzival, Cundrie is characterized almost exactly thus. The “wild” aspect of the Wild Feminine is directly embodied in her animalistic features, and she is perceived by the court almost exactly as Estes describes, exemplified in lines 621 and 622 of Book VI: “So rode she unto the circle, and her coming did sorrow bring. / And fair joy did she put in peril—Then turned she unto the king.”
The court members, though they are familiar with Cundrie, fear her. It is as if they fear the words they know she will speak; as if they intrinsically know, deep in their souls, that she will unveil truths they don’t want to hear, truths they would rather sweep under the rug.
She addresses the court, letting her words fly:
‘Now sore shalt thou rue it, since I, for thy sake deny
My greeting unto King Arthur, and the knights of his company.
May thy fair face be dishonoured, and thy manhood I look on here.
Of forgiveness and joy were I merchant, in sooth shouldst thou buy them dear!
And I deem thou art but a monster, and myself shall far fairer be!
Speak, Sir Parzival, as I bid thee, and this riddle read thou to me,
When thou sawest the fisher sit there, joyless, of comfort reft,
Why didst thou not loose his sighing? Why was he in bondage left?’
‘For he showed thee of his sorrow—Oh! thou false and faithless guest,
For hadst thou had pity on him, his anguish had gotten rest.
I would that thy mouth might perish, yea, the tongue thy mouth within,
For e’en as the heart the tongue is, in thine heart is the root of sin.’
(Wolfram B. VI L. 645 – 655)
Parzival’s shame, along with the rest of the court’s, is palpable, and Parzival’s “sorrow” is noticed by many onlookers (Wolfram B. VI L. 715). Yet, Wolfram distinguishes that “true shame doth rewarding bring / And it crowneth the soul with honour as the circlet doth crown a king.” (B. VI L. 712 – 713). What one must understand about Cundrie, and the archetype of the Wild Feminine, is that although she is scary, brazen, and aggressive, these perceptions come from a root of intimidation — the Masculine being intimidated by the power of the Feminine. Why else would Arthur’s court rue her arrival, if not because they feared the honesty she would bring? Estes also writes of this archetype that “it means using words that summon up the opening of a passageway.” (12). Is it this passageway, this level of truth, that the Masculine is afraid of? This passageway which leads to a new, unknown, and most likely threatening realm? I argue yes.
Evelyn Jacobson writes specifically of Parzival: “Cundrie has been seen by critics as showing Parzival that things are not always what they seem, as exposing the superficiality of beauty, as revealing how Parzival has betrayed the promise of his beauty, as making him aware of his deficiencies so that he may overcome them” (3). I view Estes’ conceptualization of the passageway as akin to Jacobson’s notions of Cundrie’s reveal of the truth of the world to Parzival. The passageway is the descent, the work that must be done to step into one’s true self, and it is indeed intimidating.
David Fideler explains Cundrie’s part in Parzival’s descent and self-discovery well: “[Parzival’s] second meeting with Arthur represents the culmination of what most of his peers could possibly hope to achieve in life”, i.e, Parzival here, before Cundrie, has not yet begun his descent; he has not entered the gateway, as Estes names it (Fideler 202). He is situated within the world of society. Fideler continues, “yet precisely at this moment of societal triumph is Parzival denounced by Cundrie. Parzival realizes that he cannot merely rest content with his social achievement. While the others present at Arthur’s court cannot fathom Cundrie’s bitter denunciation of Parzival, he realizes he must correct the situation which has arisen.” (202). What is important to note from Fideler’s explanation is that Parzival leaves the sense of societal achievement behind in exchange for personal achievement. It is this personal achievement, the sense of being true to one’s inner self, that ultimately drives Parzival to be able to communicate with the Fisher King. Fideler importantly notices that Parzival “leaves the Arthurian circle with a sense of shame” (202), an important aspect of this personal journey. Cundrie’s blatant shaming of Parzival, and his subsequent shameful realization, is exactly why Arthur’s court fear Cundrie; her Wild Feminine characterization has the ability to instill this deep sense of shame within the Masculine.
Jacobson also further explains Cundrie’s character as being essential to Parzival’s journey of self discovery, stating that “Following Cundrie must… be seen as following the path of humility” (8). By Jacobson’s words, a beautiful image is created. One of embracing one’s true self, letting go of society’s expectations and customs, and delving into the world of the psyche, in which one can truly understand one’s full potential. Through Cundrie’s words and admonitions, Parzival has been shown the way into his soul: humility, acceptance, and accountability.
Thus, Cundrie uses her Wild power to shame Parzival, yet also imbue him with purpose. After his encounter with Cundrie, he is not only set out on the Grail quest, he is also set out on the quest for his soul. Estes writes that “When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes” (16). I take this assertion of intuition to be a leading facet of the gateway into the descent. Once Parzival has encountered Cundrie, once he has let her words sink in, he, like Estes describes, is on the path to seeing the world through not only his own eyes, but the eyes of his unconscious mind, and is therefore able to complete his quests.
Now, with an understanding of Cundrie, we may turn to Christine. The archetype of the Wild Feminine, after all, is not strictly isolated to literature; while I cite Cundrie as a literary example, I view Christine de Pizan as a beacon of the wild, powerful Feminine realized. Her 1405 novel The Book of the City of Ladies explicitly names and calls out male authors who have disregarded the achievements and intellect of women, and it directly refutes them through tales of both historical women and Chrisine’s female contemporaries. Like Cundrie, she shames and mocks the world of male “achievement”, stating of a book by one of her male contemporaries: “The book’s content did not seem very appealing unless you enjoy invective, and it seemed of no use whatsoever in terms of ethical and moral edification… But even though the text carried very little weight, it prompted in me an extraordinary thought: why is it that so many men— clerics as well as others— have always been so ready to say and write such abominable and hateful things about women and their nature?” (Christine 21).
Throughout her career, Christine was outspoken against the misogyny that dominated medieval writings. Charlotte Cooper-Davis describes Christine as a “reader who actively engaged with her sources through her writing.” (86). Her familiarity with various texts, both medieval and ancient, is evident within her works, which directly reference many authors and notable figures such as Boethius, Boccaccio, and Ovid. Christine is best remembered today for her critiques against misogyny and the way she used her writing to lift up, empower, and give women a voice within her world. Within The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine describes misogyny thus: “In fact, I could hardly find a scholarly book, regardless of its author, that did not contain some chapters or lines criticizing women… I lingered on this thought at such length that I seemed to sink into a trance, and the names of countless authors who had written on this subject trickled into my mind like drops from a bubbling fountain.” (22).
Of this “fountain”, Cooper-Davis writes that:
“The image of the ‘endless fountain’ of misogynistic literature is supremely evocative, as it encapsulates both the sheer volume of writing against women that circulated in the later Middle Ages and the impossibility of stemming its flow. Just as water in a fountain never ceases to run, misogyny too only engenders the writing of more misogyny. Like a fountain, this type of discourse is also loud – it generates a volume so great that anything that might attempt to speak against it will be drowned out.” (89).
Whereas for Parzival, the societal realm was Camelot, this insight from Cooper-Davis cements us within the societal realm of Christine, a non-fictional world in which misogyny is widely accepted and believed as gospel, and to speak out is dangerous and radical. Christine, then, was indeed a radical during this era; a defiant, well-versed woman in opposition to the male-dominated world. Cooper-Davis’s words also evoke echoes of Cundrie: how Cundrie herself is a walking contradiction, an animalistic, Wild Woman dressed in the finest and most fashionable silks, who is well educated and speaks many languages.
Besides City of Ladies, Christine’s 1401 work within the Debat Sur Le Roman de la Rose (Debate of the Romance of the Rose) is described by author David F. Hult in his translation of the Debate as an “adamant staking-out of a position as a woman in the male-dominated world of letters. More than a verbal protest against obscenity or misogyny (which it certainly is), the debate is an active counterassault against an entire intellectual establishment to which women were solely the object of discussion, and which greatly limited their ability to take up the subject position in speech” (1).
Christine no doubt has the makings of the Wild Feminine. Estes also speaks of wolves and Wild Women, creating a bridge between Cundrie and Christine for us: “both have been hounded, harassed, and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors. They have been the targets of those who would clean up the wilds as well as the wildish environs of the psyche, extincting the instinctual, and leaving no trace of it behind. The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar” (10). Cundrie, as discussed earlier, is indeed seen as devouring, devious, and overly aggressive, as well as Christine. What speaks especially true for Christine is Estes’ inclusion of the Wild Woman being seen as of “less value than those who are their detractors”, and being the “targets of those who would clean up the wilds”. Christine has faced both these dangers in presenting herself as a Wild Feminine, as many authors who criticized her work within the Debat almost say this word for word.
This was perfectly exemplified in 1401, when Gontier Col, one of the authors who stood against Christine, wrote an extremely condescending and harsh letter addressed to Christine in order to “lead [her] back to the real truth” (Hult 93). Col stated many criticisms against Christine and signed off his letter by stating, “there is one thing I do not wish to forget or leave unmentioned: that of you do not reverse your position and disavow what you have said, I shall undertake to come to [Jean de Meun’s] defence against your writings and any other ones whatsoever, being confident in good and true justice, and certain that truth, which does not retreat into hiding, will be with me” (Hult 94).
Though direct and cruel, Col’s words carry the same undertone of intimidation that was felt by Arthur, Parzival, and the court within Parzival. Imagine Col as a substitute for Arthur’s court. Would he not, when reading Christine’s admonition of the misogynistic aspects of Jean de Meun’s writings which he has grown to accept and appreciate, perhaps think: “So rode she unto the circle, and her coming did sorrow bring, / And fair joy did she put in peril…” (Wolfram B XI, L 621-622)? Christine does indeed put Col’s joy in peril, like Cundrie does to the court. Col, like many others in his time, lived in the realm of society, the same realm which Cundrie’s words take Parzival away from. I argue that Christine’s writings have the same purpose and effect as Cundrie’s, for those who, unlike Col, choose to listen.
Her first letter within the Debat, addressed to Jean de Montreuil in 1401, starts thus: “I, stirred up by an opinion that runs counter to your writings, concur with the preeminent, shrewd cleric to whom the letter in question is addressed and wish to state, proclaim, and maintain publicly that, with all due respect, it is most wrongly and without justification that you have given such unalloyed praise to the work in question, which may in my judgment more appropriately be labeled pure idleness than useful work.” (Hult 51). Christine’s motivations here are obvious, and her declaration that Jean is being driven by idleness is incredibly telling. It bears a stark resemblance to Cundrie’s shaming words to Parzival: “Speak, Sir Parzival, as I bid thee, and this riddle read thou to me, / When thou sawest the fisher sit there, joyless, of comfort rest, / Why didst thou not loose his sighing? Why was he in bondage left?” (Wolfram B. XI L.646-641).
We can gather from these excerpts that both Christine and Cundrie speak from a place that admonishes the act of living solely in the world of society, and being wilfully ignorant to the deeper world that Parzival ultimately ventures into. Christine seems to be shaming Jean for his lack of work in analyzing The Romance of the Rose, and that, like Col, he has failed to accept or examine any other possible opinions or perspectives that might enrich his views of literature. Christine’s words carry the same argument that Cundrie speaks in the passage above, in which she shames Parzival for his selfishness and unwillingness to put himself in the shoes of the Fisher King. One could easily imagine Cundrie saying to Parzival, “My motivation stems from nothing other than simply advocating pure truth” (Hult 60), a line which comes directly from Christine’s letter to Jean. Both women seek to let another truth be known, rather than letting the Masculine accept what has simply been put before them as right.
Christine uses impressive literary forms and strategies to bring her readers into the world of the Feminine. Within The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine writes three characters which guide narrator-Christine (for she is the main character) through her journey. She is like Parzival: she has been trapped in the realm of society, and has begun to believe that its words are truth. In a devastating plea to God, Christine asks, “Alas, Lord, why did You not bring me into the world a male, so that I would have the right qualities to serve You better and not go astray, and be as perfect as men claim to be?” (22-23). To this, God sends three divine ladies to aid Christine in a quest, like Parzival, to discover her inner self, and the world of the Feminine. These ladies proclaim, “We are here… to shed light on the misconceptions that have so clouded your judgment that you are rejecting what you know to be true and give credence to things merely by force of prevailing opinion, although you know better.” (Christine 23). Thus, Christine begins a journey to create the titular “City of Ladies”, a dream world in which the Feminine can exist unpersecuted. This City of Ladies is to Christine (and her readers) what the Grail Quest is to Parzival: a gateway into the subconscious and a call to understand oneself and one’s world in a different way.
Of Christine’s literary strategy of exposing societal misogyny, Dr. Sara Parvis, in a lecture about The City of Ladies, notes that “a certain literary outrageousness is built into the scheme as a whole”. Indeed, the building of a fictional city in which women live in harmony together, using stories as bricks, does seem outrageous. Yet, as Parvis ensures us, this is Christine’s strategy. The City is built within a dreamscape, a world beyond the physical world that Christine wrote from. It is a journey into the unconscious, a call to look into the beyond. Estes writes that “Art is not just for oneself, not just a marker of one’s own understanding. It is also a map for those who follow after us” (18). Indeed, The City of Ladies stands as a map, a guidebook of sorts, for her readers. It is an initiation into the world of the Wild Feminine, a trailpost that reads, in Christine’s own words, “Stand up, now, daughter. We must not lose any more time” (31).
Christine does not tread lightly within her work. She can’t. Had Cundrie treaded lightly, Parzival would not have embarked down the necessary path. Her words would not have carried the immense, commanding power that they need. Courtney Palmbrush, on Christne’s writings, notes that “Misogyny, for Christine, was not a matter of concern only for women. It pointed to a hermeneutical problem: if words and their meanings were arbitrary, one could say anything one liked about anything, true or false” (28). This directly correlates to Cundrie’s words towards Parzival: “I would that thy mouth might perish, yea, the tongue thy mouth within / For e’en as the heart the tongue is, in thine heart is the root of sin.” (Wolfram B. VI, L. 663-664).
Though City of Ladies concerns women’s dealings and sought to empower women, it is not meant solely for female readers — a point that is emphasized above by Palmbrush. Her words speak to all of society, and her letters within the Debat are written all to men. In fact, “Christine was responsible for packaging it and diffusing it to prominent members of the French court, in booklet format.” (Hult 3). Neither are Cundrie’s words directed at women — they are, in fact, spoken to a court of men. A distinct theme within both Cundrie and Christine’s words is the need for harmony between the Feminine and the Masculine, an understanding that there is not only one truth. It is a call for the Masculine within one’s psyche to accept the Feminine. Daniela Boccassini writes of this union: “In a nutshell, masculine consciousness must learn how to tap into the oracular feminine powers of its anima if it wishes to access the cosmological dimension of a vita nuova: a new life, for renewed earth” (43). This “tapping in” to the Feminine perspective is what Cundrie and Christine seek, and what allows Parzival to enter his quest.
In a lesser-known work of Christine’s, the Livre du Chemin de Long Estude, which shares its model with Dante’s Comedia, Virgil is replaced by ancient Greek priestess Cumaean Sibyl, and Dante with Christine. Having established narrator-Christine as the eye of the societal realm in City of Ladies, let us assume the same for narrator-Christine in the Chemin. Marilyn Desmond writes of the Sibyl within the Chemin as “a female prophet who possesses sufficient wisdom— both pagan and Christian—to guide narrator-Christine through the known world and beyond while explicating both the earth and the cosmos” (400). Though Christine is characterized as a woman within the Chemin, she also represents a soul who, like Dante, is lost and unsure at the beginning of the story. The Sibyl serves as the character who endows Christine with a newfound wisdom, like Virgil to Dante. Characterizing Virgil as the Sibyl is incredibly tactful on Christine’s part; we can view the Sibyl as the Wild Feminine, the source of deep cosmic wisdom for Christine, who represents the Masculine. Even within the Comedia, Virgil is tied to Beatrice and is being directed by her, the woman who serves as Dante’s Wild Feminine. Within the Comedia, Beatrice plays the same role of Cundrie and Christine (real-world Christine, rather than narrator-Christine as seen in City of Ladies and the Chemin), putting Dante on the path of Este’s descent and ascent, and opening the gateway for him to discover his inner world.
Christine also includes this appeal to the Masculine in her other works. In another letter to Gontier Col in 1401, she proclaims, “Do not allow your own whims to shut down the penetration of your mind!” (Hult 97). She asks Col, once again, to be open to the Feminine. Hult writes of Christine’s dialogue here, asserting that “what is crucial here is perhaps less the content of her arguments than the fact of establishing a dialogue with her interlocutors from a female perspective” (3). What is important to Christine within the Debat is recognition as a woman, as well as the inclusion of the Feminine perspective within the Debat, and within society. This echoes Boccassini’s further words about the union of the Feminine and the Masculine: “For those feminine wisdom riddles to be received, transmitted, and translated, it takes a masculine consciousness that has grown faithfully attuned to that higher feminine power” (45). In order for a deeper understanding of the world, one must include the Feminine.
This is also true of City of Ladies. Parvis pays special attention to the narratives included within the novel, citing that Christine purposefully includes “an entertaining collection of stories that both men and women could enjoy reading and talking about together”. This strategy on Christine’s part creates a real-word literary space that attempts to bring both the Feminine and the Masculine together through discussion.
In terms of Cundrie and the Feminine/Masculine dynamic, Wolfram makes it clear that her presence and words are what fully “unlock” Parzival. D.H. Green writes of Cundrie’s characterization within Parzival, and Pazival’s own revelation, that “it is independently confirmed by the narrator that the Round Table indeed learned all this only from Cundrie” (103). It is Cundrie’s presence as the Wild Feminine within the Masculine world of King Arthur’s court that finally allows for Parzival’s realization. Green also notes that “[Parzival’s] failure is made clear to us early on by the narrator, Parzival is given a number of early indications, but the full catastrophe strikes him only with Cundrie’s arrival at the Round Table in Book VI,” further crediting Cundrie’s Feminine presence and speech as the key to Parzival’s success (89).
I want now to return to Estes’ writing on the Wild Feminine, and how the Feminine influences us through words: “Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning…” (21). Cundrie came to us through a story. She exists as a character on a page. Christine’s writing was her power, she used words like Cundrie; to express a deep need for self reflection, truth, and an open mind. Both Parzival and the words of Christine carry a Feminine magic. Cundrie’s message for Parzival is one for us too: lead with your heart, look deeper, navigate the world with compassion. Christine tells us to create space for the Feminine, that in order to get the most out of our society, we must embrace more than just ourselves. Through words, their messages endure.
In her studies of the world of the Grail myth, early 19th century medievalist Jessie L. Weston (whose translation of Parzival I have used for this essay) wrote: “these studies will, I hope, and believe, be accepted as offering a definite contribution towards establishing the fundamental character of our material” (36). Weston rightfully sees the Grail myth as something deeper than a quest story. Like Christine’s writings, it is a manual on the self, a dive into the psyche, a look, as Weston describes, at “the fundamental character” of ourselves (36).
Though we spend one lifetime with the Wild Feminine, her voice is timeless. We pass her along to each other, and through words and memories she lives on. Christine once wrote, “If women had written the books, I know in truth that the facts would be different, for they know well that they have been wrongly condemned and that the shares have not been divided equitably.” (Hult 37). So let the facts be different, explore the world with an open heart, let the Wild Feminine live within you, and speak.
Imagine a sorceress.
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