Parzival and the Stone from Heaven: A Grail Romance Retold for Our Time (Paperback)

Drawing on Eschenbach, Clarke recounts the adventures of the royal-born Parzival, whose name means, "to pierce through the middle". Brought up by a mother crazed with grief at the death of her chivalrous husband on the battlefield, Parzival is initially ignorant of his destiny as a knight who must search for the Holy Grail and unite it with the earth. As Parzival's swashbuckling adventures lead him from ignorance and wounding to insight and healing, he meets King Arthur, the Gawain Knight and the mysterious Fisherman, the failed guardian of the Grail.

Clarke takes many liberties with Eschenbach's original, but tells a well-paced story, one whose characters are more archetype than individual. This is why, for Clarke, the story is universal and remains "a contemporary story and a salutary myth for our own troubled and exhilarating times". --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
Praise for Lindsay Clarke's Chymical Wedding: 'I'm awed by the web you've spun. Not only the beautiful complexities of it but the fine texture of the threads ... Full of wise things' Ted Hughes 'This dazzling novel left me stunned ... a modern masterpiece' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail 'A splendid writer - a stylish, gripping story of alchemy across the ages' Sunday Express

This book is almost unique. A serious yet exciting fantasy about Parzival, an innocent savage born of royal blood, and his adventures in a mediaeval world of knights and sorcery, it is also a work of academic interpretation and of literary translation. Lindsay Clarke's novel is based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's 13th-century epic poem of the same name (from which Wagner got his Parsifal), and expanded by the Gawain legends of mythology. Clarke's novelization stays true to the mediaeval spirit of von Eschenbach's poem while moulding it on more familiar and modern lines. And so readers are introduced to the tale by the high romanticism of a father who travels the world seeking glory in battle, and who dies leaving behind sons and heirs who are trapped by his reputation and marked by destiny. But midway through the novel shifts into a philosophical mode. By using supporting characters like symbols, Clarke initiates a dialogue about virtue and goodness, about ideals set to work in the crude environs of reality, and about the relationship moral judgement has with theology. The beauty of the novel is that it works both as a straightforward mediaeval romance set amidst Arthurian legends and as a far more complex commentary on ethics and psychology. In an Author's Afterword Clarke discusses the many levels of meaning explored by the story of Parzival's search for the Holy Grail. A remarkable achievement. (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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