Tristan & Isolde is a great opera, one of the very greatest. The Act 1 Prelude, Isolde's Narrative and Curse, the Love Duet in Act 2 and the concluding Liebstod in which Isolde sings ecstatically of a transcendent union with Tristan after death are some of the most extraordinary moments in Western music. The impact of this opera was profound on late 19th century consciousness and marked all serious music subsequently. Countless writings testify to its enormous influence, and not just on composers but artists across the creative spectrum.
The music is extraordinary, and yet the message of this opera as it comes through in the libretto is one of spiritual decadence and death. Tristan, originally a solar hero, is undone by infatuation with a woman and consequently becomes a weak, pitiful figure whose inner sense of wholeness and integrity is completely undermined by his obsession. He seeks to shun the day and be absorbed in night, and this represents the overcoming of the spiritual strength of the sun by lunar forces which is essentially the overcoming of spirit by matter.
That is the very reverse of the true spiritual path, especially the masculine path, in which the self is raised to godlike potency through conscious alignment with divine reality. Instead, Tristan seeks to be merged back into the chaos of pre-creation from whence his soul emerged. Overcome by his sensual passions and losing control of his inner centre, he seeks a return to the emasculating arms of the primeval matriarchy and a pantheistic dissolution instead of following the path of becoming a radiant centre of light himself.
In this path he could still have loved Isolde but would not have let that love overwhelm his spiritual integrity. He would have been master of it although, in the context of the story, he would not have acted on it since she was betrothed to another man so he not only betrayed his oath of loyalty to the King, as related in King Mark's desolate lament, in my view the spiritual heart of the opera, but he also violated the sanctity of marriage.
This does not form part of Wagner's treatment of the legend but the story serves as an illustration of a test for an initiate (Tristan was a hero so at a high level of spiritual development) which he failed. There is no sense of this in the opera which is a straight paean to romantic love which, although ending in tragedy from the worldly point of view, sees the two protagonists finding their fulfilment in death with the implication they have moved onto a higher plane. But have they really or have they succumbed to idolatry? Real spiritual attainment only comes when the soul turns away from seeking fulfilment in creation, any aspect of creation, even a lover as soulmate, and looks for it in the Creator. Then the soul can turn back to creation and move in its confines without attachment or suffering.
Love is an excuse for anything runs the Romantic creed, a creed we have largely adopted today. But this is an illusion. There is love and then there is love. Jesus said that the greatest love is to lay down one's life for one's friends. Tristan and Isolde lay down their lives but not as acts of personal sacrifice. They are seeking the delights of heaven not renouncing these delights for the love of God. Only those who are prepared to sacrifice heaven for others are worthy to enter it.
There is a close parallel with that other Arthurian story of Lancelot and Guinevere. Here too sexual obsession and infidelity are the cause of spiritual failure and destroy an ideal kingdom. Lancelot was the greatest of knights but he proved unworthy at the final test, and, because he was the greatest, his downfall impacted the whole world in which he lived. Arthur's kingdom was destroyed. But unlike Tristan, Lancelot worked out his fault through renunciation and repentance as he lived the rest of his life as a monk just as Guinevere, his adulterous lover, became a nun in contrition for her part in the sin. Love does not justify everything. At least, what is called love does not do so. There are higher values which even love must obey.
Wagner's words may carry a misleading spiritual message because his metaphysical understanding was limited. He adopted Schopenhauer's misconception of Nirvana as non-being as Tristan's credo, and saw that as the peak of spiritual realisation. However, in Tristan & Isolde his musical understanding and power of expression exceed his intellectual and philosophical grasp as they also did in Parsifal which is a curious and unsatisfactory mish-mash of Christianity and Buddhism from the story point of view but contains music in the Prelude and Good Friday section that is amongst the most spiritually profound of anything heard in this world. Tristan & Isolde also has music that reaches further into the higher planes than practically any other, but one can see why some people have problems with Wagner. The music can seem too intense while the themes of some of his operas, and Tristan especially, do have something spiritually self-indulgent about them. Nonetheless, Wagner was clearly used by the powers that be to bring through something entirely new and open up higher levels of reality to the physical plane. He was certainly not a saint but then how many saints are creative artists of genius?
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