"The American Scholar" and Philosophy

history of ideas is the history of redemptive questioning. Parzival at first failed to ask the redemptive question, "for courtesy's sake/' as Wolfram von Eschenbach puts it. When Anfortas, the wounded fisher king, had the Bleeding Lance and the Holy Grail brought into the room, Parzival did not ask the king what ailed him, or what all this meant. His teacher had told him that a courteous man does not ask too many questions, and he obeyed. But because of his silence the wasteland remained sterile, and the wound of Anfortas was not healed. Eventually Parzival, that brave man slowly wise, came back to the castle and asked Anfortas the redemptive question, "Oeheim, waz wirret dir?" "Uncle, what is wrong with you?" Only then was Anfortas healed, and only then did his land turn fertile.