The Romance of Tristan: The Tale of Tristan's Madness (Classics) Read online

  THE ROMANCE OF TRISTAN

  Nothing at all is known about BEROUL, one of the earliest poets to treat the Tristan legend. He wrote in about the middle of the twelfth century.

  •

  ALAN S. FEDRICK, M.A., PH.D., was born in Plymouth in 1937, and was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and Manchester University. He was lecturer at London University from 1963 until 1968 and subsequently Professor of Comparative Literature at Brandeis University, Massachusetts. His interest in the Tristan romances began during his undergraduate days at Oxford, and he published several articles on aspects of the legend. Alan Fedrick died in 1975.

  THE ROMANCE OF

  TRISTAN

  by Beroul

  AND

  THE TALE OF

  TRISTAN’S MADNESS

  *

  TRANSLATED TOGETHER

  FOR THE FIRST TIME

  by Alan S. Fedrick

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  This translation first published 1970

  23

  Copyright © Alan S. Fedrick, 1970

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

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  To My Parents

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  The Romance of Tristan

  1. Summary of early episodes not in the manuscript of Beroul’s poem: Tristan’s birth and childhood; Morholt of Ireland; the miraculous voyage for healing; the quest for Yseut; the love potion; the attempted murder of Brangain; the harp and the rote

  2. THE TRYST UNDER THE TREE

  3. THE FLOUR ON THE FLOOR

  4. THE CONDEMNATION AND ESCAPE OF THE LOVERS

  5. THE FOREST OF MORROIS

  6. KING MARK’S HORSE’S EARS

  7. THE HERMIT OGRIN. I

  8. TRISTAN’S DOG

  9. GOVERNAL’S VENGEANCE

  10. MARK’S DISCOVERY OF THE LOVERS

  11. THE LOVE POTION

  12. THE HERMIT OGRIN. II

  13. YSEUT’S RETURN TO KING MARK

  14. THE VINDICATION OF YSEUT

  15. YSEUT’S AMBIGUOUS OATH

  16. TRISTAN’S VENGEANCE [The manuscript of Beroul’s poem breaks off here]

  17. Summary of the following episodes: Tristan in Brittany

  18. TRISTAN’S MADNESS

  19. Summary of the concluding events of the romance: the death of the lovers

  Notes

  Index of Names

  INTRODUCTION

  BEROUL’S POEM

  TRISTAN and Yseut are not the only pair of tragic lovers the world has known, and they were certainly not the first. Yet this tragic tale of love, more than any other, has succeeded in capturing men’s imagination from the time when it first appeared in the twelfth century. For eight centuries it has been the inspiration of countless story-tellers, poets, dramatists, painters, sculptors and composers. The unique fascination of the Tristan legend seems to lie not in the accretions which have been added to it with the passage of time, however firmly attached to the Tristan legend these have become, but rather in the unadorned central theme: the unsought passion which draws Tristan and Yseut irresistibly together at a time when the memory of Tristan slaying Yseut’s uncle in combat is still fresh in their minds, and which compels them later to cut across the moral code and the social and family obligations which are the framework of their existence. Because of their passion they undergo a range of suffering through moral guilt, social degradation, and material hardships of all kinds until at last the anguish of separation is forced on them. Tristan’s unhappy life reaches a new intensity of grief when he is falsely told, as he lies desperately ill in Brittany, that his beloved Yseut has not answered his last plea and come from Cornwall to see him; his spirit can stand no more, and he dies thinking that his loved one has failed him at the last.

  The mystery which surrounds the cause of all this suffering, the love potion, is undeniably an essential part of the legend’s fascination. In the earliest versions of the story the love potion comes into the narrative suddenly and unexpectedly, and its effect is to bind together two people who have no reason to like each other and whose relations are indeed more hostile than friendly. The potion may well have been originally no more than a narrative device which supplied the mainspring of the story, but later adaptors, from Gottfried von Strassburg in the thirteenth century to Richard Wagner in the nineteenth, endowed it with immense symbolic value. The theme of the love potion is probably the best-known distinguishing feature of the Tristan legend, and it is in their attitude to this theme that later authors differ most widely. This is perhaps partly because in the very earliest poems the love potion is presented by the narrator with a complete absence of explanatory comment; so much is left unsaid that later authors are, as it were, invited to fill the artistic vacuum surrounding the potion with some sort of elucidation. But in Beroul’s poem we have not yet arrived at the, ‘explanatory’ stage of narrative fiction, and Beroul’s treatment of the potion theme is discussed below.

  There are in existence now hundreds of different versions of the Tristan legend, written in practically every European language, and the majority of them reflect an individual interpretation of the legend and treatment of its basic themes. In the early years of this century an epoch-making discovery was made by the great French scholar, Joseph Bédier: in the course of his studies of the Tristan legend, he found that all Tristan poems now known, medieval and modern, can be traced back to a single poem, now lost, which is the fountain-head of the whole tradition and the archetype of all Tristan stories.* Amongst all the extant romances, Beroul’s Tristan has a special claim on our attention not merely because it happens to be the oldest but because it comes closest to preserving what may be called the raw material of the legend.† Most of the unexplained and mysterious events of the story, which contributed so greatly to its fascination for later ages, are found in Beroul’s poem, and Beroul presents them just as they are without any attempt at explanation. In reading Beroul’s poem we are not only transported into the medieval setting for a tale of tragic love, but we are confronted with a conception of the story-teller’s art which is foreign to our own. Partly for this reason, Beroul’s poem contains much that will startle and baffle a present-day reader who judges it by the modern aesthetic criteria of fictional narratives. There is no doubt that Beroul’s poem is sadly defective by modern standards; for
it is far from easy to imagine that a piece of narrative fiction can exist as a serious work of art while dispensing with elements as fundamental as a coherent plot, an ordered flow of events with a clearly discernible causal nexus, and convincing characterization. Narratives of that kind existed nevertheless at a stage in the history of literature which is still only imperfectly understood, in the ‘pre-literary’ period before our present-day aesthetic began to be formed, when romances were designed for oral recitation and when men knew no better than to believe what they saw and heard. It is as a representative of this earlier aesthetic* that Beroul’s poem is to be judged, not as a quaint and clumsy attempt to write a story according to modern literary criteria. Before dealing with some of the strange features of Beroul’s poem, however, there is a problem which merits a brief preliminary consideration, namely the authorship of the poem.†

  The single manuscript of Beroul’s Tristan is faulty in several respects and wholly unworthy of the poem.* The text has been much studied and the puzzles it presents are the centre of controversy amongst scholars. In an effort to solve some of the literary problems a number of ingenious theories have been evolved concerning the actual composition of the manuscript. It has been suggested that the manuscript is in fact riddled with interpolations; and philological experts have claimed to detect features showing that the early part of the poem was written by a different author from the later. The philological evidence adduced looks extremely convincing, although I am not sufficiently well-informed to pass opinion. However, it is obvious that theories of multiple authorship or heterogeneous composition leave the literary problems of the text intact. The mere fact that controversy over the authorship exists, with scholars of international distinction on both sides, suggests strongly that there is little to be lost by simply taking the text as it stands. It does not require a trained scholar to point out the oddities of this poem, and the philologists’ theories have only brought confusion worse confounded. Let us begin instead with what we know: I do not think the fact is contested that one man was responsible for the romance as it is now preserved in the manuscript; behind him there may have been dozens of unknown contributors, but there is no doubting the reality of what we may call the man behind the manuscript. This shadowy figure may have been in reality a humble scribe, acting for whatever mundane practical reasons and utterly ignorant of the literary implications of what he did, nonetheless one man composed what is now preserved in that manuscript. Our concern here is with the poem as a piece of literature: we should tackle its problems in literary terms without making a priori assumptions of its faulty transmission. If elements of doubt subsist, let us give the benefit to Beroul* by granting that the poem which was actually written was also the poem he meant to write.

  We may pass without further preamble to some of the strange features of Beroul’s poem, beginning with a consideration of the poet’s techniques of characterization. It is immediately apparent that at least one aspect is different from modern practice, namely the complete absence of what Jean Genet has called, in a perceptive phrase, ‘the author’s politeness towards the reader’, signifying that the author does not seek to impose his own judgements. Thus, an author who wished to portray a virtuous character would not now be content with stating that this character is virtuous: on the contrary, he would present a character who thought virtuously and acted virtuously; it would then be up to the reader to draw his own conclusions, or if the author did pronounce an explicit judgement there would at least be no question of the reader disagreeing. This will doubtless seem too obvious to be worth saying; but the curious thing is that Beroul’s technique is quite different. In the manner of the poets of the Old French epic poems, the chansons de geste, Beroul never argues the case for his characters: in Genet’s sense, Beroul is far from ‘polite’, for he constantly intervenes in the narrative to proclaim his sympathy for the lovers and his hostility to their enemies. But there is more to this than the question of whether or not the author makes his sympathies known, for Beroul’s expressed opinions are at times not wholly borne out by the facts he presents.

  A brief example will illustrate this point: at the court of King Mark there are three barons, almost always described as ‘the three villains’, who are both cowardly and jealous of Tristan’s prowess. When they are introduced at the beginning of the episode in which they try to trap Tristan the narrator says (p. 60): ‘You never saw more wicked men!’ The narrator goes on not, as we might have expected, to speak of the fearful crimes these men had committed, but to say that they were resolved to ask King Mark to banish Tristan. Their reason for this was that they had seen Tristan with Yseut in situations that were evidently compromising (p. 60), and specifically lying together naked in the king’s bed several times. Now, nothing could be more reasonable or loyal than the barons’ resolve, without taking their motives into account: the fidelity of the king’s wife was essential both for the king’s honour and to ensure the unquestioned succession of his heirs to his lands and titles; and Mark had taken a wife for the explicit purpose of begetting heirs. The barons’ behaviour in this respect does not seem to be objectionable and it hardly justifies the poet’s opinion. The barons suggest to Mark a stratagem by which he can find out for himself the truth of their accusations, and they take into their counsel a dwarf who is a magician. This action is somewhat underhand out of necessity, although it is excusable in terms of protecting the king’s honour. But when the dwarf comes on the scene (p. 61), what a flood of invective the poet hurls at him! Dwarfs in medieval romance are traditionally evil creatures, and Frocin was no exception. Even so, the poet’s strong language is hardly borne out by what follows, for the dwarf merely suggests an ingenious means of proving to the king that Tristan and Yseut are in fact lovers – a means, moreover, which is very nearly successful. To counterbalance the poet’s attitude, it should be stressed that it was imperative for the king to know if his wife was unfaithful, hence that even clandestine attempts to prove this were justifiable, not to say laudable. Nonetheless, the poet persists in heaping abuse on the dwarf and on the three barons until each of them meets his death. I hold no brief for the three barons, but the issue of their villainy is certainly less clear-cut than the poet’s attitude suggests; at the same time, the themes of their cowardice and their jealousy of Tristan are sufficiently prominent for us not to be shocked by the arbitrariness of the poet’s hostility. But the poet’s attitude to these men who were acting in the king’s interest bespeaks a strong prejudice: what are we to make of this prejudice?

  One answer that can readily be given is that the poet has great sympathy for Tristan and Yseut whatever happens, hence a corresponding dislike of their enemies regardless of the grounds of their antagonism. In this way the barons’ villainy is a function of their hostility to Tristan. The three barons are not villains so much because of what they do as because the poet says they are; for whatever action they take is presented as a piece of villainy. At this point we begin to glimpse a surprising and significant aspect of Beroul’s aesthetic, which depends on nothing less than an unquestioning acceptance of the narrator’s attitudes. We shall return to this point later. Meanwhile, let us consider for a moment the other side of the narrator’s hostility to the three barons, to see whether the lovers really merit the sympathy he has for them.

  We are told countless times that Yseut is noble, wise and fair and that Tristan is noble, brave and strong; but a certain amount of explanation is needed, for it must be admitted that they do not always act in a way that is noticeably noble or wise. As a pair of lovers indulging in an adulterous passion, their conduct is apparently de facto reprehensible without further discussion. On the other hand, if the love potion is considered to be at once the cause and the justification of their passion, it relieves them of responsibility for their crime (see below pp. 20–24). Even if the potion does excuse their passion, however, it is still difficult at times to see how it can excuse what seem to be the lovers’ attitudes to their illicit love. The scene
at which the Beroul manuscript begins offers a case in point, for Yseut is seen less as the archetype of a noble suffering lover than as one of those cunning and deceitful wives familiar in the pages of the Decameron. When she declares (p. 48) that she has never loved anyone except the man to whom she came as a maiden, she knows that Mark will take this to mean that she has always been faithful to him. It might perhaps be argued at this point that Yseut makes her declaration with the best intentions, that she is seeking to avoid hurting Mark by revealing the truth about her love for Tristan. But such an interpretation would hardly be consistent with the account which Yseut gives later to Brangain pp. 54–5), for Yseut sees it only as a piece of deception successfully carried out, which is going to make things easier for herself and Tristan. Equally, her words to Mark (pp. 55–8) bear out the conclusion that her only object was to deceive the king. If the love potion did compel Yseut to follow a course of action which she did not choose, it is at least plain that she managed to keep all her wits about her.

  There is a further factor which needs to be taken into account in considering the lovers’ behaviour, for our attitude to Tristan and Yseut is closely bound up with the role which God plays in the story. In discussing this role, which is no less active than it is ambiguous, we should perhaps not take too literally the exclamations uttered by Brangain and Governal at moments after a crisis has passed, when they thank God for performing a miracle on behalf of the lovers. But there are other cases which cannot be glossed over so easily: for example, when Tristan is taken captive by the three barons (p. 65) he is careful to behave correctly and submit to this indignity, for the poet tells us that his trust in God is so great that he knows he will be successful in a judicial combat. The combat Tristan is thinking of would presumably have been on the issue of whether or not he had an illicit love for the queen. Now, Tristan’s skill as a warrior is well known, and it is likely that he would not find an opponent; but on what does he base his trust in God?.