[38.] Soph., Elektra, 1205 seq.
SCENE VI.--My purpose in these notes is to explain what may at first seem difficult; it is no part of my plan to expound the obvious. The following scene, where for the first time the two principal personages stand face to face, though the most important that we have met with so far, is perfectly clear, both in the music and the words. No one could mistake the force of the blasts of the wind instruments with which it opens (No. 8). The device of repeating a motive in rising thirds was adopted by Wagner from Liszt, and is very common in Tristan. We first met with it in the opening bars of the Prelude, where the love-motive is so repeated.
The first part of the scene is a trial of wits between Isolde and Tristan, in which the latter is helpless as a bird in the claws of a cat. The dialogue as such is a masterpiece, unrivalled in the works of any dramatic poet except Shakespeare. At last, crushed by her taunts, Tristan hands her his sword, asking her to pierce him through, only to be answered with scorn still more scathing than before. "No," she says. "What would King Marke say were I to slay his best servant?" There is not a trace of love in the scene; nothing but anger and contempt. In other parts of the act there are indications of smouldering fire which threatens to break out upon occasion, but there is nothing of the kind when they are together. If once, when he lay helpless and in her power, she was touched with pity for so noble a hero, that has long ago been overcome, or only remains as a distant memory of something long past and gone. It has been truly observed that Tristan and Isolde are not like Romeo and Juliet, two children scarcely conscious of what they are doing. Both are in the full maturity of life and in the vigour of their intellectual powers.
In keeping with the dialectic, argumentative character of the dialogue, the music is generally dry and formal, but broken through occasionally with rending cries of agony, and interpolated with moments of tender emotional beauty. The orchestra generally gives the tone to the situation, only occasionally departing from that rôle to enter at critical moments to support and enforce specific words or actions. The leading motive throughout is the one which I have quoted: "vengeance for Morold."
After some preliminary persiflage, in which she laughs to scorn the excuse which he offers for having kept away from her from a sense of propriety, she at once comes to the point:
Is. There is blood-feud between us!
Tr. That was expiated.
Is. Not between us!
Tr. In open field before all the host a solemn peace
was sworn.
Is. Not there it was that I concealed Tantris, that
Tristan fell before me. There he stood noble and
strong; but I swore not what he swore; I had
learned to be silent. When he lay sick in the silent
room speechless I stood before him with the sword.
My lips were silent, my hand I restrained, but the vow
passed by my hand and my lips, I silently swore to
keep. Now I will perform my oath.