Isolde leaned against her couch as pale as if all the blood in her veins had been consumed by fever, and waited in silence; in silence Tristan appeared on the threshold; both stood erect, drawn up to their full height, but the orchestra betrayed the unspeakable tumult of their hearts.
For Scruton, the essential difference between Wagner’s presentation of a Kantian world in Tristan und Isolde and Schopenhauer’s understanding and modification of Kant was the element of erotic love. Erotic love is essentially individualizing, notes Scruton; its intentional object is “the irreplaceable incarnate subjectivity of the other. . . What is valued in erotic love is precisely the ...
Tristan und Isolde is an opera of heroic sacrifice but not the sacrifice of compassion for others, agape, such as we find, for example in Parsifal, but of the sacrifice of the inner-self, of the eros.
Gabriele D’Annunzio, “ Tristan and Isolde.” Alex Graham, “ Jonathan Bowden’s Extremists.” Greg Johnson, “ My Ten Favorite Books of 2013.” Greg Johnson, “ Riccardo Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini.” Margot Metroland, “ Approaching D’Annunzio.” Karlheinz Weißman, “ Right-Wing Anarchism ” (Translations: Czech, Spanish).
Gabriele D’Annunzio, “ Tristan and Isolde.” Alex Graham, “ Jonathan Bowden’s Extremists.” Greg Johnson, “ My Ten Favorite Books of 2013.” Greg Johnson, “ Riccardo Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini.” Margot Metroland, “ Approaching D’Annunzio “ Karlheinz Weißman, “ Right-Wing Anarchism ” (Translations: Czech, Spanish)
Deep down, Brokeback Mountain is roughly the 175er version of the Tristan and Isolde story, but set in the Rockies and with an apparently endless whiskey bottle taking the place of the magic love potion.