★★★★☆
My first introduction to the story of Tristan and Isolde was through Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. My dad loves the opera, but my mother doesn’t enjoy them. Luckily for my father, he discovered when I was relatively young that I was exactly the kind of child who loved the opera: big clothes, big voices, big drama, and I got to get dressed up, it was the kind of thing I lived for. I didn’t read the actual story until much later, but it will always be near to my heart. As a side note, the movie with James Franco is a delicious disaster.
The Romance of Tristan originated in 12th century poems by the authors Beroul and Thomas of Britain, this Penguin Classics focuses on Beroul’s version and is translated by: Tristan, nephew to the king of Cornwall, Mark, is orphaned at a young age and makes his way to uncle’s court while still in his youth. He easily wins favour with the king with his martial prowess, and rapidly rises in favour. When King Mark seeks a wife, Tristan travels to Ireland, where he wins the hand of the Irish king’s daughter, Isolde (Yseut in Beroul’s version) by slaying a dragon. On the journey back to Cornwall, Tristan and Yseut accidentally consume a love potion Yseut’s mother had given to Brangain, Yseut’s handmaiden to ensure she has a happy marriage, having mistaken it for wine. The two immediately fall passionately in love and consummate their relationship still at sea. After arriving in Cornwall, Yseut and Mark are quickly married, but she and Tristan continue their affair, despite the deep affection they both feel for the King.
Alan S. Fedrick has reformatted the poem into a prose text for the purposes of this edition, so the tale reads as a story. The text is fairly typical for a medieval story, and though I’ve never read the original, the translation seems good to me: it is readable, but maintains (at least some of) the stiltedness that we often find in medieval texts. I’m used to this style, the choppy, abrupt prose as this is what I do, but I understand that it could be a jarring experience for someone not as well-versed in medieval prose texts.
The love potion is the most interesting portion of the story to me, for while it functions as a perfectly good excuse as to why the lovers cannot control themselves, and continue their affair in spite of their loyalty to Mark, it doesn’t explain the callousness with which they treat him. The poem doesn’t offer the excuse of the potion altering their personalities, which is an interesting oversight. The lovers are hardly clandestine, and the text makes it clear that everyone in the royal court is aware of their affair, except for Mark. Jealous noblemen repeatedly try to create scenarios in which Mark will catch the two of them in the act, and they manage to wriggle free repeatedly, either by circumventing the noblemen’s trap, or by tricking Mark with clever wordplay: in one instance, Tristan, dressed as a leper, carries Yseut on his back across water. Afterwards, when questioned if Yseut has been unfaithful, she responds that the only two men who have ever been between her legs are her husband, and the leper.
The potion acts as a way to absolve the lovers of the sin of their infidelity, but does this extend to the lying and trickery as well? Neither of them seem remorseful until the potion wears off, but even then, the affair continues. They are still in love, and though regretful over what they’ve done, they see no issue carrying on. Surely, despite being desperately in love, they are capable of being honest? The love potion seems to strip away their agency, reducing them only to lovers, who cannot contain their lust.
“Who can be in love for a year or two and not reveal it? For love cannot be concealed.”
In some ways their romance is tragic, as they are destined to never be together through circumstance, and in other ways, they’re not particularly sympathetic. Pity only extends so far, and the fact that the two willingly lie to Mark repeatedly, and carry-on their affair with no regard for his feeling, even going so far as to attempt to escape their respective punishments makes them rather reprehensible.
Mark himself is a bit of a twit, and I have to wonder at how he was received by a medieval audience. By all accounts, he’s a good man, though exceedingly naïve, as he is continuously presented with evidence that his nephew and wife are having an affair, and yet is repeatedly convinced that it was all a lie, Yseut is faithful and innocent. I have to wonder if this text was intended as propaganda of sorts, making a mockery of an ineffectual, bumbling Cornish king, because Mark certainly does not come across as an intelligent leader.
The reaction of the people of Cornwall is likewise, baffling. The noblemen who try to bring the affair to light are thoroughly lambasted by Yseut, Tristan and the people of Cornwall as wicked, conniving snakes in the grass. When Mark attempts to punish the lovers, the people of Cornwall are said to have openly wept, and attempted to change Mark’s mind. It’s not clear if they believe the accusations to be false, if they know about the love potion and are sympathetic, or if they simply like Tristan and Yseut too much as people to see them punished.
The Romance of Tristan is a fun read, there’s everything you would expect of a medieval text: dragons, kings, battle, and, of course, melodrama that you wouldn’t believe. Tristan and Yseut have a complicated romance, one that is both morally wrong and yet justified and accepted by the text, and while the ending is tragic, and the reader does end up rooting for them to be together, I can’t help but feel that if they’d made some better decisions, it wouldn’t have ended up so poorly.
Lover Leabhar 