Word: iseult
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...Eternal Return (Paulve; Discina). The medieval bards sang of Tristan and Iseult as huge, cloudy symbols of high romance; later storytellers (Swinburne, Wagner, Tennyson, E. A. Robinson et al.) further enriched (or corrupted) the tale with new ideas and idioms. Now the French poet-moviemaker, Jean Cocteau, has handsomely reset the legend in modern dress. His title, The Eternal Return, is the term Nietzsche gave to the mournfully romantic doctrine of endless historical repetition. The Nietzschean note tolls through the film like a sunken bell...
...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...
...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...
...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...
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...