GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG’s version of the TRISTAN
story sets in with a highly significant prologue in
which the narrator characterizes true love as a
quasi-eucharistic experience, possible only for those
with a noble heart, a spiritual form of nobility. The
ROMANCE begins with Tristan’s parents, Rivalin and
Blanscheflûr, who beget their child outside of wedlock.
Whereas Rivalin soon dies in battle, Blanscheflûr
succumbs during labor. The young orphan
is raised in hiding by the country’s marshall, Rual li
foitenant, and his wife, Floræte, and receives the best
possible education, soon proving to be a child
prodigy, excelling particularly in music and foreign
languages.When Norwegian merchants try to kidnap
him, a wild storm forces them to drop him at a
distant coast. From there he finds his way to the
court of King Mark, whom he does not yet recognize
as his uncle, until his tutor Rual arrives four
years later and explains the relationship. Subsequently
Tristan frees his deceased father’s country,
Parmenie, from King Morgan’s suppression by
killing his opponent, but he quickly returns to his
uncle, leaving Parmenie in Rual’s and his sons’
hands. In Cornwall Tristan proves his outstanding
chivalric abilities when he kills the Irish knight Morold,
who tried to collect tribute from Mark, but
Tristan is poisoned in the process. He finds healing
only with the Irish queen Isolde, who asks him to instruct
her daughter, Isolde the Fair, in the arts.After
Tristan has returned home, he faces serious envy on
the part of Mark’s barons, and to protect himself
from their enmity he promises to win Isolde the
Fair’s hand for Mark. Tristan accomplishes his goal
by killing a dragon that had ravaged Ireland, and so
he gains the right to ask for Isolde’s hand on behalf
ofMark.However,while traveling back to Cornwall,
the two young people drink a love potion—clearly
to be understood metaphorically—that her mother
had brewed for her daughter and her future husband.
Thus begins their lifelong love affair that occupies
the rest of the romance.
Tristan and Isolde soon fall under suspicion of
committing adultery, but they manage to hide their
affair for a while until bloodstains—Tristan had
jumped to Isolde’s bed to make love with her right
after a blood-letting session—on both their beds betray
them. Isolde denies the charges yet must undergo
an ordeal with the hot iron to prove her
innocence. Swearing to God, however, that she lay in
no other man’s arms than her husband’s and those
of a poor pilgrim who had carried her from the ship
to the shore and then had fallen, she tells the “truth”
and does not burn herself because she had asked
Tristan to pretend to be a pilgrim. In the meantime
Tristan wins, as a gift for Isolde, a magical dog, Petitcrîu,
whose bell hanging from its neck produces
music that makes every listener completely happy.
Nevertheless Isolde, realizing the deceptive quality
of this music, tears off the bell and destroys the
magic to protect her true love for Tristan. Mark,
however, clearly recognizes that his wife and
nephew love each other and expels both from his
court.
Tristan and Isolde retire into a love cave where
they enjoy each other as in an erotic utopia, until
one day Marke happens to discover the cave and observes
both sleeping next to each other in bed. Yet
even here he is deceived by Tristan, who makes him
believe that a strategically placed sword between
them confirms their innocence.Consequently Mark
allows them to return to his court, but they cannot
contain their love and are finally caught in flagrante.
This time Tristan leaves for good and traverses
various countries until he comes across another
young woman called Isolde (Whitehand). A new
love relationship develops, but it seems to be only
one-sided, as Tristan always longs for Isolde the Fair,
yet misleads Isolde Whitehand by apparently wooing
her. Since Gottfried’s text breaks off at this point,
we don’t know how he would have concluded his
romance. Both the Old French versions and the
13th-century German Tristan romances suggest a
number of variant conclusions, each of them leading
up to Tristan’s and Isolde’s deaths. Ultimately
Isolde emerges as the true heroine, fully capable of
manipulating her environment to her profit, maintaining
extraordinary self-control, and demonstrating
the highest degree of loyalty to her lover, whereas
Tristan begins to waver in his love and seems torn
between Isolde the Fair and Isolde Whitehand.
While Isolde has to go through a lengthy learning
process and then achieves the triumphs of a true
lover with a noble heart, Tristan hardly needs any
development and seems to pale as a character at the
end of the narrative in comparison with Isolde.
Bibliography
Bekker,Hugo. Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan: Journey
Through the Realm of Eros. Columbia, S.C.:
Camden House, 1987.
Chinca,Mark. Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Gottfried von Straßburg. Tristan. Edited by Karl
Marold.Werner Schröder, 1906. 3rd revised edition,
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969.
———. Tristan and Isolde. Edited and translated by
Francis Gentry. New York: Continuum, 1988.
Grimbert, Joan Tasker, ed. Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook.
Arthurian Characters and Themes, 2. New
York: Routledge, 2002.
Albrecht Classen