The Tristan Story
The story of Tristan and Iseult (or Isolde) is an 11th century poem retelling incidents that happened during King Arthur’s reign.
King Mark of Cornwall asks his nephew Tristan to bring Iseult from Ireland to Cornwall to be his bride. Tristan and Iseult drink a love potion (accidentally) on the ship between Ireland and Cornwall, falling deeply and immutably in love.
Their adultery is discovered and King Mark banishes them. Tristan and Iseult live as a poor couple in the woods. They are found by King Mark, sleeping with a sword between them. Mark forgives Iseult, who rejoins him, but banishes Tristan.
Tristan goes to live in Brittany where he marries, in name only, another Iseult, Iseult of Brittany. Tristan is wounded in a battle and comes home to Brittany to die.
He asks his companion, Kaherdin, to find Iseult of Ireland and bring her to him before he dies. If she is on his ship, Kaherdin is to raise a white sail, otherwise the sail raised should be black.
Isolde is on her way to Tristan. Kaherdin raises a white sail, but Tristan’s wife, Iseult of Brittany, tells her husband the sail is black. Tristan dies. Isolde arrives and also dies.
Fellow Travelers
I’m writing here about the Showtime adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s novel, Fellow Travelers, which also was the basis of an opera by Gregory Spears (and which played here in Tucson, Arizona!). The Showtime series adds new material, especially about Lucy Smith, to Mallon’s story.
Let’s focus on the trio, Hawkins Fuller, Tim Laughlin, and Lucy Smith. Hawk and Tim begin a passionate love affair, which is interrupted when Hawk marries Lucy.
The focus in Matthew Arnold’s tragic love poem, Tristram and Iseult, is not the adultery, which is little more than backstory, but the contrast with Tristram’s feelings for his first love, Iseult of Ireland, and the woman he marries and has two children with, Iseult of Brittany.
There were two Iseults who did sway
Each her hour of Tristram’s day;
But one possess’d his waning time,
The other his resplendent prime.
Tristram has adventures after leaving Cornwall. He is a knight to King Arthur. I can’t resist quoting these lines from Arnold’s poem:
At Arthur’s side he fights once more
With the Roman Emperor.
There’s many a gay knight where he goes
Will help him to forget his care
Tristram is wounded in battle. Back in Brittany he is attended by his wife, Iseult of Brittany.
Tristram
Soft – who is that, stands by the dying fire?
The Page
Iseult.
Tristram
Ah! not the Iseult I desire.
The narrator says of Iseult of Brittany:
Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will—
Iseult of Ireland finally shows up and says these last words to Tristram:
Tristram!—Tristram!—stay—receive me with thee!
Iseult leaves thee, Tristram! never more.
In Fellow Travelers Hawk is Tristram, Tim Iseult of Ireland, and Lucy Iseult of Brittany, with whom Hawk has had two children. Hawk and Tim never cease to love one another, a circumstance Lucy suspects and finally comes to know.
The role of a love potion in Fellow Travelers is the chance meeting between Hawk and Tim in a Washington gay bar. Their eyes lock and nothing can stop them now. Imagine the famous Tristan chord played at that moment.
There are any number of love stories in which the love affair is sudden, intense, and tragic. Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, Brokeback Mountain, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. These stories locate a wedge that drives the lovers apart, a family feud, the social strictures against adultery, societal homophobia.
Fellow Travelers, as in the original Tristan myth and the Matthew Arnold poem, introduces a third party, an unloved partner, Lucy Smith. What kind of love story results?
A story in which love conquers all, literally. The Iseult of Brittany and her counterpart in Fellow Travelers, Lucy Smith, are emotionally starved. They are the collateral damage of an intense love between two other people.
Wagner likens the love between Tristan and Isolde to a drugged state (the love potion). The lovers in Act II despise the day (society) and long for the night (anything goes). Night for Hawk and Tim is Hawk’s bedroom, from whence Tim has to flee at first light.
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