TRISTAM AND ISEULT: INSPIRING TO RICHARD WAGNER

Tristam and Iseult

Today, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Chapter 47).

She has been reading about Tristam and Iseult two characters of the Arthurian Cycle who inspired one of the most popular Richard Wagner's operas, Tristan und Isolde. 

The Grandma is a great fan of opera and reading Tristam and Iseult listening this opera is something amazing.

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Tristam and Iseult is a tale made popular during the 12th century through Anglo-Norman literature, inspired by Celtic legend, particularly the stories of Deirdre and Naoise and Diarmuid Ua Duibhne and Gráinne. It has become an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristam and the Irish princess Iseult.

The narrative predates and most likely influenced the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere in the Matter of Britain and has had a substantial effect on Western art, the idea of romantic love, and Western literature since it first appeared in the 12th century. While the details of the story differ from one author to another, the overall plot structure remains much the same.

Tristam and Iseult

There are two main traditions of the Tristam legend. The early tradition comprised the French romances of two poets from the second half of the 12th century, Thomas of Britain and Béroul.

Later traditions come from the Prose Tristan (c. 1240), which was markedly different from the earlier tales written by Thomas and Béroul. The Prose Tristan became the common medieval tale of Tristan and Iseult that would provide the background for the writings of Sir Thomas Malory, the English author who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469).

The story and character of Tristam vary from poet to poet. Even the spelling of his name varies a great deal, although Tristan is the most popular spelling. Most versions of the Tristam story follow the same general outline.

After defeating the Irish knight Morholt, Tristam travels to Ireland to bring back the fair Iseult for his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, to marry. Along the way, they ingest a love potion which causes the pair to fall madly in love. 

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In the courtly version, the potion's effects last a lifetime, but, in the common versions, the potion's effects wane after three years. In some versions, they ingest the potion accidentally; in others, the potion's maker instructs Iseult to share it with Mark, but she deliberately gives it to Tristam instead. Although Iseult marries Mark, she and Tristam are forced by the potion to seek one another, as lovers.

Tristam and Iseult

While the typical noble Arthurian character would be shamed by such an act, the love potion that controls them frees Tristam and Iseult from responsibility. The king's advisors repeatedly endeavour to have the pair tried for adultery, but the couple continually use trickery to preserve their façade of innocence. In Béroul's version, the love potion eventually wears off, and the two lovers are free to make their own choice as to whether to cease their adulterous relationship or to continue.

As with the Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere love triangle, Tristam, King Mark, and Iseult of Ireland all love each other. Tristam honours, respects, and loves King Mark as his mentor and adopted father; Iseult is grateful that Mark is kind to her; and Mark loves Tristam as his son and Iseult as a wife. But every night, each has horrible dreams about the future. Tristam's uncle eventually learns of the affair and seeks to entrap his nephew and his bride. 

Also present is the endangerment of a fragile kingdom, the cessation of war between Ireland and Cornwall, Dumnonia. Mark acquires what seems proof of their guilt and resolves to punish them: Tristam by hanging and Iseult by burning at the stake, later lodging her in a leper colony. 

More information: Britannica

Tristam escapes on his way to the gallows. He makes a miraculous leap from a chapel and rescues Iseult. The lovers escape into the forest of Morrois and take shelter there until discovered by Mark. They make peace with Mark after Tristam's agreement to return Iseult of Ireland to Mark and leave the country. Tristam then travels to Brittany, where he marries, for her name and her beauty, Iseult of the White Hands, daughter of Hoel of Brittany and sister of Kahedin.

In the Prose Tristan and works derived from it, Tristan is mortally wounded by Mark, who treacherously strikes Tristam with a poisoned lance while the latter is playing a harp for Iseult. The poetic versions of the Tristam legend offer a very different account of the hero's death. 

Tristam and Iseult

According to Thomas' version, Tristam was wounded by a poison lance while attempting to rescue a young woman from six knights. Tristan sends his friend Kahedin to find Iseult of Ireland, the only person who can heal him.  

Tristam tells Kahedin to sail back with white sails if he is bringing Iseult, and black sails if he is not. Iseult agrees to return to Tristam with Kahedin, but Tristam's jealous wife, Iseult of the White Hands, lies to Tristam about the colour of the sails. Tristam dies of grief, thinking that Iseult has betrayed him, and Iseult dies swooning over his corpse. Several versions of the Prose Tristan include the traditional account of Tristam's death found in the poetic versions.

More information: Carolyn Emerick

In French sources, such as those carefully picked over and then given in English by the well-sourced and best-selling Belloc translation of 1903, it is stated that a thick bramble briar grows out of Tristam's grave, growing so much that it forms a bower and roots itself into Iseult's grave. It goes on that King Mark tries to have the branches cut three separate times, and each time the branches grow back and intertwine. This behaviour of briars would have been very familiar to medieval people who worked on the land. 

Later tellings sweeten this aspect of the story, by having Tristam's grave grow a briar, but Iseult's grave grow a rose tree, which then intertwine with each other. Further tellings refine this aspect even more, with the two plants being said to have been hazel and honeysuckle.

More information: Ireland Calling

A few later stories even record that the lovers had a number of children. In some stories they produced a son and a daughter they named after themselves; these children survived their parents and had adventures of their own. In the romance Ysaie the Sad, the eponymous hero is the son of Tristam and Iseult; he becomes involved with the fairy king Oberon and marries a girl named Martha, who bears him a son named Mark.

Tristam and Iseult

In its early stages, the tale was probably unrelated to contemporary Arthurian literature, but the earliest surviving versions already incorporated references to Arthur and his court. The connection between Tristam and Iseult and the Arthurian legend was expanded over time, and sometime shortly after the completion of the Vulgate Cycle, or the Lancelot-Grail, in the first quarter of the 13th century, two authors created the vast Prose Tristan, which fully establishes Tristam as a Knight of the Round Table who even participates in the Quest for the Holy Grail.

Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting.

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Wagner's composition of Tristan und Isolde was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, particularly The World as Will and Representation, as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, Tristan was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension.

The opera was enormously influential among Western classical composers and provided direct inspiration to composers such as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Karol Szymanowski, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg and Benjamin Britten. Other composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky formulated their styles in contrast to Wagner's musical legacy. 

Many see Tristan as the beginning of the move away from common practice harmony and tonality and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th century. Both Wagner's libretto style and music were also profoundly influential on the Symbolist poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century.

More information: The Guardian

 Love is as strong as death. 

Why be capable of feelings if we're not to have them? 

Why long for things if they're not meant to be ours? 

Isolde