Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas / A Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of His Work

by W. J. Henderson

Mr. John P. Jackson makes this read in English thus:

"Day would I flee, Away to the Night Take me with thee To end the deception For me and for thee! Where end should all lies That our hearts could sever, Where together we'd drink Of rapture forever— And in love united there Death all-everlasting share!"

Tristan responds that he drank eagerly what he thought was the draught of death. Isolde complains that the draught was deceitful, for instead of sweeping them both into night, it left them in the cold glare of day, where was only separation for them. Tristan answers that with honour and fame both destroyed in the glare of day, their hearts can have but one vast yearning, the yearning for night. Then he leads her to the embowered seat, and there they sing together that marvellous duet beginning:

"O sink' hernieder Nacht der Liebe, gieb Vergessen dass ich lebe."

"O sink around us, night of love; grant forgetfulness that I live." From the tower floats down the warning of Brangäne. The lovers heed it not. Wrapped in each other's arms, they prate of odious day and love-giving night, the night of eternity. Then comes the awakening. Mark, led by Melot, surprises them. Tristan murmurs: "Der öde Tag zum letzten Mal" ("The hated day for the last time"). A moment later he raves at Mark and his courtiers as "Daylight's phantoms, morning's dreams." When the King has finished his long and pathetic address, Tristan turns to Isolde and asks her whether she is willing to follow him to the land where the sun never shines, the wondrous abode of night. Well she knows his meaning, and as he hesitated not on the ship, so she hesitates not now. Melot's sword is ready, and Tristan hurls himself upon it. The wound becomes a consecration, a deed of expiation and release. It takes the solemnity of the loftiest tragedy, leaving, a comet-flight below its elevation, the melodramatic wound of the legend whence Wagner drew his materials.

This is the wound that will not heal without the aid of Isolde's art. There is no jarring note in the Wagnerian version, no libertine Tristan aiding another in a rude liaison, no Isolde of the White Hand. There is only the one master passion. There is only one tragedy. In the third act we find the wounded, wasting, visionary man lying under a linden tree in the courtyard of his own castle at Kareol in Brittany, whither the faithful Kurvenal has borne him. A shepherd draws a melancholy wail from his pipe, and, in answer to Kurvenal's anxious question sighs, "Lone and bare is the sea." For these two are watching for the ship which shall bear the healer, Isolde, to the side of the stricken man. Kurvenal whispers words of encouragement to his lord, but Tristan shakes his head. He has awakened once more to the glare of sunlit noon, and once more the old fantasies of day and night rush through his brain.

When will the blazing of the torch cease to keep him sundered from Isolde? When shall it be night for these two? Kurvenal reveals that he has sent a ship to bring Isolde. The thought is new strength to Tristan. He bursts into a delirium of joy. He sees the ship, the flag waving at the mast. "Kurvenal, siehst du es nicht?" ("Kurvenal, seest thou it not?") Kurvenal sees no sail upon the sea. Again the weary man sinks back upon his rude couch. He relives the story of his love. He raves again as he curses the magic draught, which was not the drink of death. He faints, and for the moment Kurvenal thinks him dead. But no, he revives. He asks again if the ship is in sight. Kurvenal says to-day it must surely come. "And on it Isolde!" cries Tristan. Once more the waning spirit mounts a mighty billow of emotion. "Isolde, how holy and fair art thou! Kurvenal, man, art thou blind? Dost thou not see what I see? The ship! The ship! Isolde's ship! Seest thou it not?"

A new tune peals from the shepherd's pipe. The ship is sighted! The flag of good tidings streams from the mast, the flag which means that Isolde is on board. Fly thou, Kurvenal, to the strand to help her. To-day shall the lovers be united. Frenzy for the last time seizes Tristan. Once, wounded and bleeding, well-nigh slain by Morold, Isolde found him and nursed him back to life. Again shall she find him so. Off, then, foolish bandages. Let the red blood flow merrily. Isolde comes! He hears her calling. What is this? "Do I hear the light? The torch! The signal! It is extinguished! To her! To her!"

And so the hero sinks dying in her arms, and for him at last the longed-for night of total oblivion has come. Isolde prostrates herself upon his body. A second ship is sighted, bearing Mark. Kurvenal, misunderstanding the purpose of the King, resists the entrance of his guard and is slain, after himself giving a fatal wound to the false Melot. Mark has learned the secret of the potion. He recognises the truth that the unhappy pair have been the victims of Fate, and he has come to unite them. Alas, too late! The mightiest of monarchs, Death, has come before him. Isolde, her soul spreading its wings for flight, sings out her apostrophe to her dead hero, a marvellous pæan of praise, the echo of the duet of love, and sinks lifeless on his insensate form. Night and eternal oblivion have come for both. The tragedy is over.

That is the marvellous poem which Wagner made of the old story of Godfrey, a poem in itself worthy, despite its rugged diction, to stand beside the best dramatic literature of Germany, and never once to be thought of as an opera libretto. I have briefly noted some of the points at which Wagner has separated himself from the sources of his story. The manner in which he has in all his poems utilised the original suggestions stamps him as a dramatist of the highest rank, a poet of lofty gifts. In none is this more beautifully demonstrated than in "Tristan und Isolde." It is true that in some of the later versions of the old poem, when possibly the early faith in love philtres was fading, the idea exists that Tristan and Isolde loved one another from their first meeting; but, as Miss Weston properly notes, "there is little doubt that the Minstrel held the fatal passion of the two lovers to be due to the Minnetranc alone." The frequent appearance of magic drinks in old legends is familiar to all students of folk-tales and sagas. Wagner himself gives us another instance of it in the drinks administered to Siegfried by Hagen, an idea which he obtained from the old tales. In his "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama" (which I have been forced to parallel in rehearsing some parts of the story of "Tristan und Isolde") H.E. Krehbiel calls attention to the fact that the existence of the love before the incident of the potion provides that element of guilt which all the ancient dramatists required in order that too much sympathy might not be excited by the sufferings of the hero or heroine. On the whole, then, Wagner's treatment of this much-discussed drink is perfectly clear. There is no excuse for misunderstanding it. And it raises the tragic element of the drama far beyond the level of the early poems.