Word: tristram
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...story of Tristram and Isolt--of all medieval stories--seems modern imagination. Wagner, Swinburne, Hardy, and Belloc have all retold it, each changing it somewhat to suit his own purposes, but treating it always for what it is--one of the greatest love stories in the world. And now that such an important poet as Mr. Robinson, in the third of his Arthurian poems, has retold it once again, it is a matter of considerable interest to see with what success he has done...
...verse which one expects of him. As in "Merlin" and "Lancelot", the chief emphasis is put upon the passionate and destructive love that burns his characters to ashes; and he has made every effort to make that love as real to his twentieth century readers as it was to Tristram and Isolt themselves. He has somewhat altered the story to do so. For example, the love drink is not one mentioned; Tristram and Isolt are consumed by a passion which it needs no magical agency to explain. And in other matters Mr. Robinson has altered his material...
...people, both violently in love with each other, and, without describing anything else about them, make them distinct; it is nevertheless a difficulty Mr. Robinson, if his poem was to be really successful, had to overcome. But this the very introspection and sensitivity with which he has invested Tristram and Isolt make them unreal. They move behind veils, they are half hidden in a midst. Not always, of course; occasionally the mist lifts, the characters appear, and we feel the intensity of their passion...
...Tristram! Tristram...
...intensity, a reality, which belongs to their story, not to them. Mr. Robinson's poem is moving, after all, for the same reason that the Twelfth century poem is moving because of the situation, not because Tristram and Isolt are two living people. The story has been retold, not remade...