Tristan + Isolde

The "hyacinth girl" section is topped and tailed by quotations from Richard Wagner's music drama Tristan und Isolde, based on Arthurian legend.

The first is a song sung by a sailor, apparently lovesick for the girl he has left behind in Ireland: Fresh blows the wind/ towards the homeland/ My Irish child/ Where are you now? The story goes on as follows:


Act 1. Isolde, an Irish princess is being escorted by Tristan to Cornwall, where she is to be married (against her will) to King Marke. She resolves to die by poison, and also to poison Tristan, who killed her former fiance. Isolde's servant gives them a love potion rather than poison, however. (The Sailor's Song is at about 12.20 in the video below).

Act 2. In Cornwall, the passionate pair meet in secret at night, but are discovered together by King Marke. Tristan is wounded in a fight and flees to Brittany.

Act 3. The wounded and delirious Tristan waits for Isolde to join him, but there is no sign of her ship (Oed und leer das Meer - the sea is desolate and empty). At last Isolde arrives, but Tristan is already dead. King Marke, who has learned the truth about the love potion, then arrives, ready to forgive the lovers. Isolde has a vision of being reunited with Tristan, and dies beside him. (The quotation appears at about 10.20 in the video below).

The most obvious purpose of the quotations, which suggest loneliness, isolation and emptiness, is to provide a high cultural frame for the picture of a speaker who is unable to express his feelings to the "hyacinth girl", despite her encouraging words. His is an emotional waste land, symbolised by the desolate and empty sea.

The opera also foreshadows the poem's later explorations of Buddhist and Hindu concepts: Tristan and Isolde's physical desire for each other results in suffering for themselves and others around them; only when they leave their physical forms behind can they achieve a Nirvana-like transcendence.

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