Isolde

“ She presses fondly against this unaccountably humble-minded mistress: "What are you dreaming, perverse one? Unloved? Where does the man live who would not love you? Who could see Isolde and not blissfully dissolve in love for her? But, if so were that he who has been chosen for you should be of a nature to that degree cold, if so were that some evil magic drew him away from you, I should know how very soon to bind the unkind one to you, the power of love should work its spell upon him...." She draws so near to Isolde that she can speak without fear of being overheard. ”

“ Brangäne seeks to comfort Isolde, but the latter, looking fixedly before her, confides, almost involuntarily, her love for Tristan.
It is clear, even from this brief description, with what constantly varying expression the narrative of Isolde is treated. Wrath, desire for vengeance, rapturous memories that cannot be dissembled, finally a confession of love to Brangäne—such are the emotions that surge to the surface.
They lead Brangäne to exclaim: "Where lives the man who would not love you?" Then she weirdly whispers of the love-potion and takes a phial from a golden salver. ”

“ And now, in his delirium, Tristan was telling of the ship which was bringing Isolde from Cornwall.
"Do you not see it?" he asked. "Look! the sails are all filled up, and the ship is steering straight for us. How high the waves pile up about the bows! There on deck is her- pavilion, just as it was on that other lonely voyage. And see! there she stands looking eagerly toward me, her hair garlanded with flowers and her arms outstretched! It is my Isolde! *Mine! She is forsaking all the world and its thrones to come to the side of a poor outcast. Ah, why is that music so sad? ”

“ Never has the ecstasy and the futility of love been expressed as here, and when Styr, her voice returning from those starry voids where Isolde’s soul had borne Tristan’s, passionately demanded death as the only relief for the insupportable tension of body and spirit, although she did not move, she conveyed the impression of a still more complete abandon. The tenor, being of immense proportions, and with his eyes seldom roving from the baton of the conductor, conveyed no such impression, or the scene might have been unbearably descriptive. ”

“ But of his desire for death she understands nothing; all through the duet it is she who desires to quench this desire with kisses. That was her conception of women's mission, and that was her own life with Owen; it was her love that compelled him to live down his despondencies. So her Isolde would have an intense and a personal life that no Isolde had had before. And in holding up her own soul to view, she would hold up the universal soul, and people would be afraid to turn their heads lest they should catch each other's eyes. ”

“ From Jerusalem Guido had sent to her a stick with a notch in it to signify his undying constancy. From Pannonia he sent a piece of board, and from Venetia about two feet of scantling. All these Isolde treasured. At night they lay beneath her pillow.
Then, after years of wandering, Guido had determined to crown his love with a final achievement for Isolde’s sake.
It was his design to return to Ghent, to scale by night the castle cliff and to prove his love for Isolde by killing her father for her, casting her stepmother from the battlements, burning the castle, and carrying her away. ”

“ Then he and Dame Bragwaine brought Tristram and Kehydius privately to the court, and to a chamber which Isolde had assigned for them. But to tell the joy of the meeting between Tristram and La Belle Isolde we shall not endeavor, for no tongue could tell it, nor heart think it, nor pen write it.
Yet misfortune still pursued these true lovers, and this time it came from friends instead of foes, for the presence of Kehydius in the castle led to the most doleful and melancholy misfortune which the world ever knew. ”

“ Ordham: You will recall that I told you it would be better to think of me as a stage woman only?—although at that time I did not include the greenroom among your possible experiences. If I cannot make you understand the fearful state of excitement which an opera like Isolde induces, then indeed I hope you will not forgive me, never come near me again. But I fancy that you have already forgiven me. I was a wild beast. The actress born with the power to portray Isolde has it in her to be the worst woman in the world—much simpler than to reach those heights (her heights) toward which, alas! ”

“ ACT II.--If the essence of the drama lies in contrast and surprises, then Tristan und Isolde may be called the most dramatic of Wagner's works. In the first act we had the picture of a woman of volcanic temperament goaded to fury by cruelty and insult; in the second we have the same woman gentle, light-hearted, caressing, with nothing left of her past self except the irresistible force of her will. Isolde is not restrained by any scruples about honour, nor need she have any; in full possession of the man she loves, she can abandon herself to the moment. ”

“ She comes, she calls him, holds her arms toward him; but he can only die at her feet, uttering for the last time the infinitely-beloved name. "Ah, live with me yet one hour, only an hour," cries the distracted Isolde in her despair. "I have only lived through so many days of anguish and desire to watch one hour with thee. Do not die of thy wound, let me heal thee, that safe and strong we may share the sainted delights of night." The flame is extinguished, the soul has fled. Isolde, always faithful, will follow Tristan in death. Already the loved one draws her toward the mysterious land ”

“ The relief of knowing Rallywood was safe jarred in her mind with the hideous suspicion that Isolde's allurements had after all conquered his allegiance to the Duke. He clearly recognised the cloak and believed her to be the Countess. She would have been more than woman not to take advantage of the mistake. ”

“ Again the shouts of the sailors are heard, and Tristan, seizing the goblet, raises it to his lips with the ecstasy of one from whose soul a great sorrow is about to be lifted. When he has half emptied it, Isolde wrests it from him and drains it.
The tremor that passes over Isolde loosens her grasp upon the goblet. It falls from her hand. She faces Tristan.
Is the weird light in their eyes the last upflare of passion before the final darkness? What does the music answer as it enfolds them in its wondrous harmonies? The Isolde Motive;—then what? Not the glassy stare of death ”

“ The philosophy of negation which saturates "Tristan und Isolde" is a deadly foe to your piping enthusiasm. The draining of the cup of death, averted by the temporizing policy of the silly Brangäne, would never have assumed the tragic proportions of Brünnhilde's terrible oath upon the spear. The wounded love of Isolde dwindles to petulance when brought to the side of the outraged majesty of the chaste and glorious Valkyr wife. ”

“ Kurwenal rushes in with drawn sword, crying: "Save yourself, Tristan!"
Hard upon his heels come Mark, Melot, and a flock of courtiers in hunting-attire. They stop in consternation before the lovers, who have seen nothing, heard nothing, and stand quietly lost in each other's embrace. It is only when Brangaene seizes her that Isolde becomes aware of the spectators. With a natural impulse of womanly shame she averts her face from all those eyes and hides it against the flowery bank. ”

“ Can you fail to prize and honour the man? Of great lineage and gentle nature, where is his equal in power and splendour? Who would not wish to share his good fortune, as consort to tarry beside him, whom the greatest of heroes so devotedly serves?" Isolde, but half heeding, has fallen again to her miserable brooding. Brangaene's last words find their way to her brain and produce an image there which she stares at with gloomy and tragic eyes. ”

“ We are on board a mediæval ship within a few hours' voyage of Cornwall, whither Tristan, knight and vassal, is bearing Isolde as bride of King Marke. Isolde is an Irish princess, daughter of a queen of like name with herself. The first scene [Pg 53] discloses her to be a woman of most tumultuous passion. Hearing the cheery song of a sailor, she bursts forth like a tempest and declares to her maid, Brangäne, that she will never set foot on Cornwall's shore. She deplores the degeneracy of her mother's sorcery, which can only brew balsamic potions instead of commanding the elements ”

“ Ah, Isolde! How every man that has a heart can echo that marvellous phrase with which Wagner makes Tristan breathe forth his first and last sigh of love insatiable! Queen of the tawny locks and stately tread, thou art first shown to us as a woman of the old barbaric grandeur, hurling the full tide of thy passions against the inexorable advancing prow of Fate. The gates of honor thrown down, thou art but a woman loved and loving; and, mourning over thy lost chastity, art ready to sink into fathomless night with Tristan. ”

“ In the service of Marke, Tristan kills Morald, the bridegroom of Isolde, and being wounded unto death, he is saved by Isolde. He asks her hand in marriage, for his uncle Marke, fulfils the condition of killing a dragon, and she follows him reluctantly to Kurnewal, where they travel by ship. On the journey they partake unwittingly of the disastrous love potion, which binds them together in frenzied passion. They betray the king, Marke, and on the wedding night Isolde’s faithful serving maid, Brangäne, represents the queen, and sacrifices her virginity to the king. ”

“ Tristan's will crumbles under it, the will which had kept him loyal to Mark, which had made him, to the point of offence, shun the Page 283 radius of her dangerous magnetism. Isolde's pride melts under it, which had enabled her to keep up with herself and him a fiction of hate for the man who had wronged her. All that keeps love within bounds being burned away, it towers in a sublime conflagration. Their sense of the change is that they have awakened from a dream ”

“ And there is every reason to believe that the women of 106Frauenlob’s period deserved his praises, because they were in æsthetic, moral, and intellectual culture far superior to the women before or directly after their time. We read in Gottfried von Strassburg’s poem how Tristan, while Isolde healed his wound, instructed her in the arts and manners of court life. Isolde knew French and Latin besides her own language. She played the violin and the harp, and sang; she wrote letters and poems, and would indeed have been a model of culture even at the present day. ”

“ In every garden there was a fountain or sheet of water with a small channelled way carrying the water to the castle and through the women's apartment. Sometimes these waterways were made use of by the lover as a means of communication with his beloved, as we read in the romance of Tristan and Isolde, where Tristan, to apprise his mistress that he is at their trysting-place in the garden, drops into the water small pieces of bark and twigs, which are quickly carried to the chamber where Isolde is waiting and watching. ”

“ When Brangäne rushes in and hurriedly announces that she has informed the King of the love-potion, and that he comes bringing forgiveness, Isolde heeds her not. As the Love-Death Motive rises softly over the orchestra and slowly swells into the impassioned Motive of Ecstasy, to reach its climax with a stupendous crash of instrumental forces, she gazes with growing transport upon her dead-246- lover, until, with rapture in her last glance, she sinks upon his corpse and expires. ”

“ It alternates effectively with the Fate Motive, and is used most dramatically throughout the succeeding scene between Tristan and Isolde. Sombrely impressive is the passage when he bids Isolde slay him with the sword she once held over him.
Shouts of the sailors announce the proximity of land. In a variant of her narrative theme Isolde mockingly anticipates Tristan's praise of her as he leads her into King Marke's presence. At the same time she hands him the goblet which contains, as she thinks, the death-potion and invites him to quaff it. ”

“ There is more in the music which supports your reading than I thought. In the passage where Isolde says to Brangäne, but really to herself, 'To die without having been loved by that man!' the love motive appears here for the first time, but more drawn out, broader than elsewhere. ”

“ Isolde is beautiful, winsome, desirable. Men [Pg 83] love her, but she does not dominate. Brünnhilde grows from a laughing light-elf to be a stricken woman, and thence is raised by the might of love to the majestic height of abstract womanhood divine. ”

“ It is vain; Kurwenal leaves no time for parley, but rushes upon them and is at once pierced through. He is just able to reach his master's body and die at his side; when Marke has forced an entry he finds nothing but death. Brangäne notices that Isolde is still living, and they now explain. The secret of the love-potion has been told to King Marke, and he has hurried up to renounce his intention of wedding Isolde and to unite her to Tristan. ”

“ The dignified, reserved knight of the first act, the impassioned lover of the second, is now a dream-haunted, longing, despairing, dying man, lying under a lime tree in the yard of his ancestral castle in Brittany, wasting his last bit of strength in feverish fancies and ardent yearnings touching Isolde. ”