Books: Love’s Old Sad Song

THE ROMANCE OF TRISTAN AND ISEULT—Joseph Bédier—Pantheon Books ($3.50).

For more than a thousand years the legend of Tristan and Iseult has been one of the world’s best-loved love stories. Medieval ladies embroidered scenes from the tale on fine linen and silk; medieval craftsmen enshrined the lovers on gold and ivory and wood. Tristan and Iseult were also favored by scores of poets, including Chaucer, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, Tennyson, Hardy, Edwin Arlington Robinson and by Composer Richard Wagner, who built the legend into an opera.

The earliest version of the legend: around 800 A.D. there lived in northwest Britain a Pictish chief named Tristan, who slew a ravening monster and married a beautiful princess. From that point on, the story grew—with embroidery and embellishments.

Traveling minstrels sang Chief Tristan’s praises so plausibly that his legend was adopted by the Welsh, who spiced it up with some fey lore and turned it over to the Irish. Irish harpists remodeled Tristan along the general lines of a fighting Irishman and changed his princess into a pretty colleen. The Vikings got wind of the story and decided that so beautiful a woman must, of course, have had golden hair.

Meanwhile, in France and Germany, troubadours packed the swelling legend with local heroism, heart-interest, a couple of Greek legends and an anecdote from the Orient. Finally, Britain’s 15th-Century poet-knight, Sir Thomas Malory, conferred a Round Table knighthood on Tristan and made him and the lady now known as Iseult part of his famed Morte d’Arthur.

A young French poet and schoolmaster named Joseph Bédier decided, some 50 years ago, to examine all the thousands of variations on the theme and piece them together into an “authentic” version. After years of toil the Bédier Tristan was published in Paris in 1900; grateful Frenchmen gave Author Bédier a seat in the French Academy and bought 300 editions of his book. Last month Pantheon Books published the first complete English edition of Bédier’s work, brilliantly translated by Hilaire Belloc and Paul Rosenfeld, illustrated by Joet Nicolas.

The lovers are as fresh and eager after their long journey as when they were merely a pair of simple Picts. Unlike many medieval heroes and heroines (e.g., Lancelot and Guinevere), Tristan and Iseult are nearer to human than heroic size. Iseult the Fair has a whole bag of tricks up her flowing sleeves. Tristan is probably the most versatile hero of legendary history: he is not only death to dragons, but a first-rate harpist and singer and an ace huntsman and seaman. He is, notes the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “the Admirable Crichton of medieval romance [and] it must be regretfully admitted that he is also a most accomplished liar.”

Principal victim of Tristan’s and Iseult’s love and cunning is Cornwall’s noble (and mythical) King Mark. Tristan, Mark’s favorite nephew, goes to Ireland to bring back golden-haired Iseult to be his uncle’s bride. On shipboard, Tristan and Iseult accidentally drink a love-philtre. Cries Iseult’s horrified maidservant: “Friend Tristan, Iseult my friend . . . you have drunk not love alone, but love and death together.” But “the lovers held each other . . . and Tristan said, ‘Well, then, come Death.’ ”

But death is a dramatic climax to a host of assorted adventures. Tristan and Iseult is richly caparisoned in all the theatrical trappings of romance: disguises, secret messages, fake birdcalls (trilled by Tristan outside Iseult’s window), spying courtiers, venomous dwarfs, lepers, dragons, plots and counterplots, last-minute escapes. But throughout it retains the beauty and sense of fatality that have made it one of legendary literature’s most fascinating tales.

The good singers of old time . . , told this tale for lovers and none other. . . . They greet those who are cast down, and those in heart, those troubled and those fitted with desire, those who are overjoyed and those disconsolate, all lovers. May all herein find strength against inconstancy, against unfairness and despite and loss and pain and all the bitterness of loving.