Brangäne

“ Instead of falling dead, the lovers stand transfixed gazing at each other. Brangäne has changed the drinks, and they have drunk the draught of love for that of death. Wagner sometimes expects his artists to possess powers beyond those which are allotted to man. The actors have here to express by gesture the change of feeling which gradually comes over them. They start, tremble, the love-motive steals into and at last dominates the orchestra, and they fly into one another's arms. ”

“ In vain does Brangäne sing her song of warning from the tower; the lovers have been transported beyond all realization of their surroundings; they sing on, dream on in each other's arms, until at the moment of supremest ecstasy there comes a rude interruption. Kurwenal dashes in with a sword and a shout: "Save thyself, Tristan!" the king, Melot, and courtiers at his heels. Day, symbol of all that is fatal to their love, has dawned. Tristan is silent, though Marke bewails the treachery of his nephew and his friend. ”

“ In the entire text of Wagner there is nothing to indicate that he intended Brangäne to be regarded as anything but a simple-minded serving-woman, deeply attached to her mistress, acting in the matter of the potions on a blind and instantaneous impulse to save her mistress from death and murder. She is naïve in thought, superficial in reasoning, straightforward in emotion, and altogether transparent as crystal. Kurvenal's devotion to Tristan is essentially a masculine devotion, ready to face death, deploring dishonor, but not forsaking even in the face of shame. ”

“ He understands, and is ready with her to seek oblivion. Brangäne, bidden to bring the drink of death, hastily substitutes for it the love potion. She will do anything rather than slay her mistress; she condemns her to live and suffer. The words of Tristan as he stands with the cup in hand ready to drink show that he comprehends the situation. He has discovered that Isolde loves him; he knows that he loves her. He prefers death to a life of renunciation or dishonour. ”

“ The splendid figure of the Queen mother's confidante bewailing her momentary unwatchfulness and her loss of honor, ready for the sake of that betrayal of confidence to give up her now wretched life, is a vastly different creature from the Brangäne of Wagner, who administers the potion as the shortest way out of an impending trouble.
Again, remember that this deed is one of pure unthinking devotion to the mistress. The fatal drink is the visible embodiment of fate. ”

“ She burst softly into the Liebestod. Her face remained as immobile as ivory, but she threw the soul of Isolde into her voice. It floated upward in the first rapture of delirium, and few but saw the wild face of the dying queen rise above the body of Tristan, the castle towers, the dead Kurwenal, the weeping figures of King Mark and Brängane, the army of retainers in the background. Ordham, at least, shared Isolde’s vision of the valiant soul that had replaced the clay, as she sang, in tones heart-breaking in their sweet frenzy:
“Seht ihr’s Freunde? ”

“ Woman-like, she thinks that it is only a passing storm which she can lull with caressing words. Her scarcely veiled suggestion that, though Isolde may marry King Marke, she need not cease to love Tristan, shows the enormous gulf which separates her from her terrible mistress. She suggests administering the philtre which her mother has prepared for Marke to Tristan. The music, in which, so long as Brangäne is speaking, gaiety and tenderness are mingled, is permeated with the love-motive. ”

“ Had not all women once been silly girls? Suppose this lovely creature, under the tutelage of John Ordham and the brilliant society in which she was to spend her most plastic years, should develop into a clever, intellectual, subtle woman? Then, what of her, Margarethe Styr, a fixture in Munich, an outcast from the circles of which this girl would become a component part? She stretched out her arms and opened and shut her long flexible hands. If Mabel Cutting had chanced to sing the part of Brangäne to-night she would have been strangled in view of all Munich. ”

“ I have pointed out several examples in which the groups of instruments in the string band are divided within themselves, as in the prelude to “Lohengrin” and in the first act of “Die Walküre.” The entire string band can be divided and subdivided with telling effect, when done by a master. When in the second act of “Tristan” Brangäne warns the lovers from her position on the watch-tower, the accompaniment stirs the soul to its depth, because it gives the listener such a weird thrill of impending danger that he almost longs to inform the lovers of their peril. ”

“ Eber-brand and Ober-brand (the upper clearing) ; Newen-brand and Alten-brand (the old and new clearing) ; Brandenburg (the burned city) , so called, according to Buttman, by the Germans; by the Wends corrupted into Brennabor, and in their own language named Schorelitz (the destroyed city) , because, in their mutual wars, it had been destroyed by fire. Bran and Brant, in English names, are probably memorials of the original proprietors of the places, as in Brandon, Cumbran, Brandeston; Brantingham (the home of the children of Brand) —v. ING, INGEN.
BRASA (Sclav.) ”

“ The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally founded by Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions against raids of the wild Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic tribe which inhabited that region, were subjugated during the tenth century and their market-place, by the name of Brennabor, became the centre of and gave its name to the new province of Brandenburg.
During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a succession of noble families exercised the functions of imperial governor in this frontier state. ”

“ Brangwen never smoked cigarettes, yet he took the one offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began to talk, chiefly of horses.
Brangwen loved the other man for his exquisite graciousness, for his tact and reserve, and for his ageless, monkey-like self-surety. They talked of horses, and of Derbyshire, and of farming. The stranger warmed to the young fellow with real warmth, and Brangwen was excited. ”

“ Sure enough, some Markgraf must take charge of Brannibor,—he of the Lausitz eastward, for example, or he of Salzwedel westward:—that Brannibor, in time, will itself be found the fit place, and have its own Markgraf of Brandenburg; this, and what in the next nine centuries Brandenburg will grow to, Henry is far from surmising. Brandenburg is fairly captured across the frozen bogs, and has got a warden and ninth-man garrison settled in it: Brandenburg, like other things, will grow to what it can. ”

“ He could have been the product of no other land than Norway, and far less than other authors could he thrive in any but his native soil. In the year 1880, when the rumor spread through the German press, that Björnson, weary of continual wrangling at home, was about to settle in Germany, he wrote to me, "In Norway will I live, in Norway will I lash and be lashed, in Norway will I sing and die." To hold such intimate relations with one's fatherland is most fortunate for a person who is sympathetically comprehended by this fatherland. ”

“ This town was the stapol, port or mart, of the district of Barum, Braun, or Brannock, an Irish saint, confessor, and son-in-law to Brychan, King of Brecknock, who settled at Braunton, formerly Llan-Brynach, then Brannock-stow. The northern cheek of Barnstaple Bay is formed by a peninsula, the centre of which is this same Braunton, where Branock had his monastic establishment. ”

“ At his accession the greater part of his territory was occupied by strangers and devastated by war, and in European politics Brandenburg was merely an appendage of the empire. Its army was useless; its soil was poor; its revenue was insignificant. At his death the state of Brandenburg-Prussia was a power to be reckoned with in all European combinations. Inferior to Austria alone among the states of the Empire, it was regarded as the head of the German Protestantism; while the fact that one-third of its territory lay outside the Empire added to its importance. ”

“ The mark of Brandenburg, the mark against the Slave, has grown into the kingdom of Prussia, the Imperial state of Germany in its latest form. The Eastern mark, the mark against the Magyar, has grown into the archduchy which gave Germany so many kings, into the so-called Austrian ‘empire,’ into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of our own day. ♦Analogies between Brandenburg and other marchlands.♦ The growth of Brandenburg or Prussia again affords an instructive comparison with the growth of Wessex in England, of France in Gaul, and of Castile in Spain. ”

“ Brandenburg saw its towns sieged and sacked, its country populations driven to despair, by the one party and the other. Three times,—first in the Wallenstein Mecklenburg period, while fire and sword were the weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate stages of the struggle, when starvation had become the method—Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at their height. ”

“ The country [219] yields plenty of corn, hemp, flax, excellent pasture for numerous flocks of sheep, and a good breed of horses.—New Brandenburg is a neat and thriving town, very agreeably situated. The inhabitants carry on a considerable trade in hops, which grow in great abundance all around.
This country, which seems to be happy in its prince and other particulars, cannot rank among its blessings the neighbourhood of so great and warlike a monarch as the King of Prussia. ”

“ A Calvinist prince ruled a Lutheran people, and the new Elector, George William (1619–1640) , “of Christ-mild memory” but the weakest of his line, proved to be a puppet in the hands of Schwarzenburg, his Romanist prime-minister. Under such guidance did Brandenburg, ill-knit and ill-armed, become the battle-ground between Swede and Hapsburg in their struggle for faith and empire.
What Brandenburg suffered in the terrible decade 1630–1640, between the landing of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany and the accession of the Great Elector, can never be fully calculated. ”

“ All true Bornholmers are as proud of these stones as New Englanders are of Plymouth Rock, with its “1620;” for on this spot fell the Swedish commander, Printzenskjold—shot, time-honored tradition says, by a silver button, torn from the vest of the shooter and used as a bullet—when the Bornholmers rose in revolt against Swedish domination. By the treaty of Roskilde which followed Charles X’s unwelcome visit over the frozen Great Belt, the Swedish king, you may remember, secured several Danish provinces. Bornholm was one of these. ”

“ The same struggle for freedom and modern enlightenment which Björnson and his comrades in thought carry on in Norway, is fought in Denmark by the younger school of authors. Norwegians and Danes labor each in their own way to till the common soil of language and literature. I believe that the result will be similar to that which Björnson has described in the little legend that is the prelude to "Arne," and virtually to his tales of peasant life in general, where juniper, oak, fir, birch, and heather resolve to clothe the naked mountain lying before them. ”

“ Shortly thereafter the Brandenburg troops, acting with the Imperialists under Gallas, invaded Pomerania. At first the Swedes were driven back, but after they had received reinforcements of fourteen thousand men from home the fortunes of war changed, and they drove the Brandenburgers and Imperialists before them. The unfortunate people of Brandenburg suffered unspeakably at the hands of their former friends who believed that they had been treacherous, and for that reason became their bitter enemies. Their former troubles were light in comparison with those growing out of Sweden’s revenge. ”

“ The Landtag of Brandenburg was not cowed so easily into submission, but an increase of revenue was obtained, and the stubborn struggle which ensued in Prussia ended in a victory for the ruler. This increased income enabled the elector to take a more considerable part in European politics. In 1663 he assisted the imperialists in their struggle with the Turks; in 1666 the dispute over Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg was finally settled, and Brandenburg were confirmed in the possession of these lands; and in the same year a reconciliation was effected with Sweden. ”

“ Bornholm (35) , an island belonging to Denmark, in the Baltic; has no good harbour; agriculture, cattle-breeding, and fishing the occupation of the inhabitants.
Bornu (5,000) , a Mohammedan State in the Central Soudan, W. and S. of Lake Tehad; famed for a breed of horses; population mostly negroes; the ruling race of Arab descent, called Shuwas; climate hot and unhealthy in the low ground, but temperate in the high. ”

“ Brangwyn as well as Anders Zorn has been called a rough-and-ready artist. For exquisite tone and pattern we must go to Whistler and his school. Brangwyn is never exquisite, though he is often poetic, even epical. Look at that Bridge, Barnard Castle. It is noble in outline, lovely in atmosphere. Or at the Old Hammersmith—"swell," as the artist slang goes. The Mine is in feeling and mass Rembrandtish; and as we have used the name of the great Dutchman we may as well admit that to him, despite a world of difference, Brangwyn owes much. He has the sense of mass. ”