The Wagnerian Romances

by Gertrude Hall Brownell

II

The introduction to the second act opens with the motif of the Day. It is no tender dawn described, with tremulous lights among the clouds; it has little of the touching Morgenpracht in Parsifal. It is a startling announcement of a fateful fact, an obtruder feared and unloved; it is like a clash of cymbals or call of trumpets summoning to unwelcome tasks, away from delights and dreams. It is indeed the day as it appears to lovers when, dispelling the gentle night which united them, with cruel golden shafts it drives them apart. The musical rendering follows upon it of love's impatient heart-beats, love's ungovernable eagerness for the beloved's presence, love listening for the footsteps of the beloved. The curtain rises upon a garden under a cloudless summer night. Beside the door of Isolde's apartment a torch is burning. The sound is heard of hunting-horns gradually retreating. Brangaene stands on the castle-steps, listening to these. Isolde, all in a happy agitation, hurries forth to ask if they still be audible. She herself cannot hear them any more. But to Brangaene's ear the sound is still distinct. Isolde listens again: No! Brangaene, she believes, is deceived by her over-great anxiety, deceived by the rustling of the leaves. "You," Brangaene retorts, "are deceived by the impetuosity of your desire! I hear the sound of the horns." Isolde again listens. "No!" she discourses in her over-running tender exhilaration, "the sound of horns was never so pleasing as that! It is the soft purling of the fountain whose music comes so sweetly borne to us; how could I hear it, if hunting-horns were still blaring near by? In the silence, all I hear is the murmured laughter of the fountain. The one who is waiting for me in the hushed night, are you determined to keep him away from me as if horns were still close at hand?"—"The one who is waiting for you—do but listen to my warning," Brangaene pleads, "there are spies in the night lying in wait for him! Because you are blind, do you believe the eyes of the world dulled to your actions and his?" Against Melot she warns her, Melot, who, when he came aboard the ship with King Mark to receive the bride,—and the kindly King was engrossed by anxiety for the condition of the pale and fainting princess,—with treacherous, suspicious eye, Brangaene had seen it, scrutinised the countenance of Tristan, to read in it what might thereafter serve his purpose. Often since then she has come upon him eavesdropping. Against Melot let Isolde be warned!... Melot? Isolde rejects the idea with light scorn. Is not he Tristan's dearest friend? When Tristan is forced to keep afar from her, with whom does he spend the time but Sir Melot? "The thing which makes him suspicious to me, to you endears him!" cries Brangaene, in despair at such wilful blindness. "From Tristan to Mark lies Melot's road. He there sows evil seed. This nocturnal hunting-party, so hurriedly concerted, has in view a nobler quarry than your fancy deems!"—"Melot," Isolde persists in his defence, "invented the stratagem, out of compassion for his friend. And do you make it into a reproach to him? He cares for me better than do you. He opens to me that which you close. Oh, spare me the misery of hesitation! The signal, Brangaene, give the signal! Extinguish the light to its last flicker. Beckon to the Night, that she may completely bend over us. Already she has poured her silence upon grove and house. Already she has filled the heart with her happy trepidation. Quench the light! Smother its frightening glare! Throw open the way to my beloved!"—"Oh, let the torch of warning stand!" Brangaene struggles with her still, "Let it stand to illumine your danger!" And she wrings her hands anew, lamenting over this which is the work of those unfaithful hands, in a single instance disobedient to the mistress's will. "Your work?" Isolde smiles, with that mortal lightness which is upon her to-night; "Oh, foolish girl! Do you not know the Lady of Love? Do you not know her power, her miracles? Queen of high hearts, ruler of earth's destinies, life and death are subject to her. She weaves them out of pain and pleasure. She can change hate into love. Presumptuous, I took in hand the work of death. The Lady of Love wrested it from me. The death-devoted she took into her keeping, she seized the work in her own hands. To whatever purpose she will to turn it, however she will to end it, whatever the doom she appoint me, I am become her own. Let me then show myself obedient to her!" Clearly, Isolde to-night is fey. A rapturous madness is upon her. Aphrodite, the Lady of Love, possesses her indeed, and no impression is to be made upon her great mood by anything Brangaene can say. The girl might talk more hopefully to a gust of summer wind. Poor-spirited and grey-hued she appears, with her anguish and forebodings, beside the glowing, rosily-smiling queen, in her secure expectation. Still she presses the prayer of her terror: Just this one night let Isolde listen to her pleading! Just this one night let her not put out the light! But the mad Queen declares bafflingly that Frau Minne, Madam Love, desires that it shall become night, that she herself may illumine the place whence Brangaene's torch banishes her. To the watch-turret with Brangaene, whence let her keep faithful look-out. "The torch," Isolde cries, grasping it, "were it the light of my life, laughing, without a tremor, I would put it out!" She dashes it to the ground, where it slowly dies. The troubled Brangaene disappears with heavy step up the stairway to the battlements.

Then is heard the motif again of love's impatience, of love listening. Isolde peers down the avenue of trees, strains her ear for the sound of footsteps. She waves her veil, which glimmers white in the darkness; she waves it, in her impatience, more and more quickly. She has caught sight of him, as an ecstatic gesture betrays. She hurries to the top of the stairs, the better to see him from afar and wave welcome to him. She rushes at last to meet him and they are gathered in each other's arms. So over-great is their joy that neither can believe the witness of his senses; nothing so good could be true as that this verily which can be seen and clasped should be the so sorely desired one. They vent themselves in such childish, fond, incredulous exclamations as: Is it you yourself? Are they your eyes? Are they your lips? Have I here your hand? Have I here your heart? Is it I? Is it you? Do I hold you close? Is it no fancy? Is it no dream? And, as if finally convinced, they burst forth in a hymn of thanksgiving and joy.

"The light! The light! Oh, that light!" the lover voices his grudge against it. "How long ere it went out! The sun sank, day departed, but the ill-will of the Day was still unsated. It lit a fearful danger-signal and fastened it at the beloved's door, to prevent me coming to her!"—"But the hand of the beloved extinguished the light," Isolde pacifies him; "What the handmaid refused, I feared not to do. At the command and under the protection of Great Love, I cried defiance to the Day!"—"The Day! The Day! the malignant Day!" he inveighs; "To that implacable enemy hate and reproach! Oh, might I, even as you quenched the light, put out the torches of the insolent Day, in vengeance for all the sufferings of love!"

There is a great deal in the often fanciful, yet ever earnest, conversation between the lovers, about the Day and the Night; the Day being devoted to their hate, the Night to their worship. It is not only, however, that the day divides them, and their trysts belong to the night. They make the image of Day to stand for falsehood and evil illusion, while Night represents truth. The reason of this is not far to seek. Their love is not like the love of other mortals. Inevitably in the latter many elements enter. Will controls it, at least to some extent; reason guides and bounds it; sense of humour even qualifies it. A thousand things besides love find room in the most enamoured human heart and brain: other persons, pursuits, interests,—what Rossetti calls "all life's confederate pleas, work, contest, fame." The many-sided nature of man is appealed to by myriad things. Only for brief moments do lovers stand on the high peaks of pure passion where Tristan and Isolde perpetually reside. Love they never so truly, lovers who have not quaffed the magic potion love great part of the time almost unconsciously, in a divine under-current,—no otherwise indeed than Tristan before the potion, when, despite the Image in his heart, he devoted thought to his career, cherished dreams of ambition. But after the cup Tristan and Isolde are lovers, nothing more,—or less. All the furniture of the day which has nothing to do with their love is therefore an impertinence, an obtrusion; all day's pageants and activities are a vanity, and a pernicious vanity; a glaring mask hiding from sight the only true and beautiful. Everything that the garish daylight shows, which can never show them the depths of the other's heart, is a false show, an ugly delusion. The night, during which all the troublesome, battering appeals of the day are suspended, in which everything fades from the eye, leaving it free to fix itself upon the only reality, love,—the night is fosterer and patroness of truth. To love the night, to yearn for it, to wish it forever prolonged, is natural in these lovers who have drank of the cup; and, by a natural step further, since earthly life affords no such night, to wish for the night of death, as we hear them presently doing, a night in which they picture themselves eternally floating in a state of ever-renewed joy in each other, ever fresh ardour, two and yet one. It is not in the least like Paradise. Paradise, with its interfering light and shows and other-souls-in-bliss, could be to them but another version of the Day. The Paradise of their desire is an eternal twilight, and nothing more asked for each than the heaven of the other.

Meanwhile they are talking together like commoner lovers, of the past, of their first meeting, the beginnings of their love. How, she asks him, very humanly, how could he do to her the thing he did, betray her as he had done, claim her for another, give her over to death? "It was the Day!" he explains. "The Day, shining about me, which showed Isolde, where she stood sun-like, in the splendour of glory and greatness, infinitely far removed. That which so ravished my eye, weighted down my heart to the earth. How, in the brilliant light of the Day, how could Isolde be mine?"—"Was she not yours, whose elect you were? What falsehoods did the evil Day tell you, that you should betray the faithful one, who had preferred you?" The love of glory it had been, he avows, which moved him. That sun of the Day, worldly honour, with its idle and false rays had allured him. An Image all the while lay in the deepest shrine of his heart, an unsleeping Image which had impressed itself while he was hardly aware, and lived in the chaste night there, closely shut in. Till a ray of the Day had penetrated even so deep, and that which was so secret and sacred that his eyes scarcely trusted themselves to look at it, that Image, smitten by Daylight, lay brilliantly revealed. And, Day-deluded, he had vaunted before the whole army that which seemed to him so desirable and beautiful, the fairest King's-bride of all the earth; and to silence the envy and hatred which had begun to make his honours heavy to him, to maintain his glory, he had undertaken that boldest exploit, his quest to Ireland. "Vain slave of the Day!" Isolde calls him. She tells her part of the story, and we are enlightened concerning the mood in which she proffered to him the death-draught: how, deceived she too by the Day, tortured in her love for him, she had, while ardently loving him, hated him to the bottom of her heart. From the light of Day, which showed him an ingrate and a traitor, she had longed to flee, to draw him along with her into the night, where her heart foretold an end of the mistake, a dispelling of the apprehended delusion; to drink to him eternal love and enter death simultaneously with him.

We learn thereupon the mood in which he accepted the cup from her. "When I recognised the sweet draught proffered by your hand, when intuition clearly and surely told me what it was the peace-drink promised me, there dawned in my bosom, mild and divine, the Night—my Day had reached its close!" In other words, when he had stood facing, as he knew, death, all the vain shows and disguises of the Day had melted away, he had seen for the first time clearly in his own heart. "O hail to the draught!" he exclaims, "Hail to its sublime magic! At the portal of death, where I quaffed it, it opened wide to me the region where I theretofore had wandered but in dream, the wonder-kingdom of the Night! From the Face in the innermost shrine of the heart it dispelled the deceiving glare of the Day, that my eyes, grown accustomed to the Night, might see it in its truth." But the Day, she carries on the conceit with gathering sadness, had its revenge! The Day entered into league with his sins, and that Face which the Night had vouchsafed him to see he had been forced to surrender to the royal power of the Day, and behold it shining lonesomely afar, in barren magnificence. "How have I endured it?" she moans, "How do I still endure it?" Nay, he comforts her, "We are now become the initiate of the Night. The malevolent Day, the cruel, can divide, but no longer deceive us. They whose eyes the Night has consecrated laugh to scorn Day's idle splendour, his braggart brilliancy. The fugitive flashes of his lightning cannot dazzle them more. He who has gazed longingly into the night of death, he to whom that Night has confided her deep secret, the lies of the Day, honour and glory, power and gain, lovely and shining though they be, like idle star-dust he sees them float past. Amid the vain delusions of the Day he is possessed by a single longing, the longing for the holy Night, in which the one thing from all eternity true, Love with its rapture, awaits him!" He draws her gently to a flowery bank, sinks kneeling before her and lays his head within her arm. And they breathe forth together, with an equal dreamy devoutness, their invocation to the Night. "Oh, close around us, night of love! Give forgetfuless of life! Gather us up in your arms, release us from the world!..." Quenched is the last torch, quenched all thought, all memory. In a sacred twilight full of wondrous divinations, the dread illusions of the world melt away, leaving free the spirit. And the sun in the breast having set, softly shine forth the stars of joy. And when, heart upon heart, lip against lip, breathing one breath, the lovers' eyes are blinded with joy, the world with its dazzling deceits fades from sight, the world which the Day had flashed before their eyes for their delusion, and they themselves are the world, and the world is life, is love, is joy, is a beautiful wish come true, from which there shall be no awakening....

Reaching completely the state they describe, of forgetfulness of the world and the Day, each the whole world to the other, they sink back side by side, cheek to cheek, among the flowers.

From the turret comes the lonely voice of Brangaene, warning the lovers to have a care, have a care, the night is nearly over! There is a leisurely moment. Isolde stirs: "Hark, beloved!" But Tristan, too deeply steeped in the languor of night and dreams, replies with a sigh: "Let me die!" Isolde raises herself a little: "Oh, envious sentinel!" Tristan remains reclining: "Never to waken!"—"But the Day must rouse Tristan?" she softly exhorts. "Let the Day yield unto death!" She considers this quietly: "Day and death then with a simultaneous stroke shall overtake our love?" He comes a little more awake to protest that death cannot destroy such love as theirs, that love is stronger than death, is eternally living, that all that could die in death would be the disturbing things which now prevent him from being always with her, whereas were they to die,—inseparable,—to all eternity one,—nevermore to awake,—nevermore to know fear,—nameless, close enfolded in love,—belonging singly to themselves,—they should live wholly for love!... She says the words after him, dreamily, charmed, allured by the vista they open before her. And when Brangaene's voice is heard again from her turret warning them to have a care, have a care, day is at hand, and Tristan bends over her smiling to ask: "Shall I heed?" she sighs, as he had done before: "Let me die!"—"Shall I awake?" he very gently teases. "Never to wake again!"—"Must the Day rouse Tristan?"—"Let the Day yield unto death!"—"We will brave then the threats of the Day?" With increasing earnestness she cries: "To be rid of his malice forever!"—"Day-break shall never more frighten us apart?"—"Eternal shall be our night!"

This is really but a lovers' device for clinging together a little longer; one does not feel that they have seriously determined to remain where they are till they shall have been discovered and sacrificed on the altar of a husband's honour. They plainly are in the state they have described: quenched is thought, is memory; they are intoxicated with the Liebes-wonne they celebrate, and so while day is whitening overhead, feeling really, as far as they are capable of thought, besottedly secure,—Frau Minne will protect!—they caress, clasped in each other's arms, the thought of the eternal night lying beyond the death they would die for love, where far from the sun, far from the lamentation of Day-decreed partings, delivered from fear, delivered from all ill, they shall dream, in exquisite solitude and in unbounded space, a super-adorable dream. He shall be Isolde, she Tristan,—but no, there shall be no more Tristan, no more Isolde, but undivided, inexpressible, they shall move to ever-new recognitions, new ardours, possessed in everlasting of a single consciousness—Ineffable joy of love! Their voices soar with these flights of fancy.... Of a sudden, as if with a crash, the sweet harmonies turn to discord. A shriek is heard from Brangaene. Kurwenal rushes in with drawn sword, crying: "Save yourself, Tristan!"