[In the following essay, Bédier examines the origin and development of the Tristan and Isolde legend and maintains that there was one single source poem from which the extant versions proceeded.]

In all the realm of legends, there is none more wonderful than the story of Tristan and Isolt. Long ago, a trouvère, dedicating it to posterity, wrote in gentle verse: “I have told this tale for those who love, and for none else. May it go down through the ages to those who are thoughtful, to those who are happy, to those who are dissatisfied, to those who are full of longings, to those who are joyful, to those who are troubled, to all lovers.” More than seven centuries have passed and from the time of Gottfried von Strassburg to Wagner, the philtre of love and death has not lost its power to intoxicate the hearts of men. But, strong as is its hold upon men's hearts and dear as its theme is to the poets, the legend of Tristan is not less beautiful in the eyes of the philologist. In this rests its supreme dignity. Even as it has caused the birth of noble poems within our own times, so it has further inspired the admirable scholarly works of men like Gaston Paris, Zimmer, and Golther. Among all the problems that the legend of Tristan offers to the critic, I choose here to treat the one that is highest and most delicate: the problem of its origin and formation.

There is no lack of hypotheses and heated discussions which seek to explain in detail the mystery of its genesis and development. But there is one general opinion which all critics share indiscriminately and which dominates and overshadows their differences.

It is this: born of the “depths of Celtic thought,” the legend of Tristan is not the sudden creation of one man, nor of a generation of men; centuries have collaborated in its formation. The day it crossed the confines of its own Celtic country, the type of Tristan had already passed through many avatars. Notwithstanding, what the Celts transmitted to the Germano-Roman world was not a wholly organized and determinate legend, it was simply this one central theme: Tristan and Isolt bound to one another by the power of love. There were a few lays, that is, short, episodical stories, independent of each other, gravitating around the principal theme as around a nucleus of crystallization. It was these lays, these short stories recited to the accompaniment of the harp, that the French jongleurs took up. At first they were content simply to repeat them, with a passive and delighted docility; soon, however, in their turn, they made bold to imagine analogous stories. These were the French lays, very similar to the Celtic lays, but more intricate, of varied motives, old epic or adventurous themes taken from the universal folk-lore, and according to the poet's caprice, united or disunited, bound together or separate. In the hands of these poets the legend was still a sort of indefinite and movable material whereon lay the dust of a hundred contradictory stories. Later, they sought to collect these incongruous lays, to bind them into consecutive narratives, but without success; it was at this time that they united the two oldest of these romances, those of Béroul and Eilhart, under the title of the “Version des Jongleurs,”—a name which in itself implies that the legend, given up to the nomadic poets, retained the alluring freedom and uncertainty of their life, and that their poems were only large aggregates of related pieces, or, to use the word universally adopted,—compilations. And when at length the more thoughtful poets of the court, Thomas and Gottfried von Strassburg, endeavored to introduce in them more order, their effort met with only a partial success; beneath their jointures and their paintings over, beneath the wholly superficial homogeneity of their works, there is still betrayed the incoherence of the amalgamated stories.

Every one recognizes this theory; it is a mere application of the one formulated to account for the Homeric poems. Scholars tried to apply it likewise to the Germanic epic poems and to the French “chansons de geste.” But when they sought to apply this theory to the Spanish cantares their efforts met with a dismal failure. Just as the French “chansons de geste” are, as some still believe, “chapelets” or “bouquets de cantalinas,” so the stories of Tristan must be mere collections of lays, French and Celtic. It is doubtful, however, whether this theory as to the formation of epics and legends by simple, mechanical juxtaposition, is a key that will fit all locks.

We wish to reduce the theory to its true value and determine exactly at what point it ceases to be true in the present case. We wish to show that in order to understand the history of the legend of Tristan, we must imagine one great workman instead of this anonymous and almost unconscious activity of several generations of jongleurs, acting by fragmentary inventions and unwittingly collaborating; instead of this indefinite development of the poem from generation to generation, we must picture one sovereign hour, one moment when the man, the individual, appeared, the conscious poet, the Homer who, taking possession of the vague, amorphous formations of earlier times, destined, but for him, to oblivion, laid his law upon them, breathed into them the life of his genius, and alone, the true creator, formed them for the coming ages. We wish to show that underlying all these poems of Tristan which have come down to us, there has been one great, single poem, from which all the others have proceeded. And if our theory prevails, our conclusions, exceeding the legend of Tristan, will themselves contain, perchance, some instruction.

I.

It has been proved that the Celts related stories of Tristan before the French. But, if we seek to discover what tales they related, we know how difficult the conditions of the problem are; it is the same with any legend whatever in the “Matière de Bretagne.” Aside from a few rare allusions, in Welsh literature, to the lovers of Cornwall, the Celtic originals,—if, indeed, they were ever set down in writing,—have perished, and we have merely the French poems, or derivatives from the French poems, to go by, the oldest of which date back to the second half of the twelfth century. It is from these late texts that we must draw the archaic elements which they, perchance, may conceal. And first, something of the history of the characters in the drama may be revealed to the linguist by the different names they bear.

At the foundation of this onomastic research, and as its firm support, stands the beautiful discovery of M. Zimmer. In many Welsh texts, our hero is named Drystan, son of Tallwch; now, in the “Annals of Tigernach” and in the “Annals of Ulster,” which contain lists of the kings who reigned from the sixth to the eighth centuries in the Pict marshlands of the present Scotland and Northumberland, figure the names of the kings Drest, Drust, or (the derivative form) Drostán, and these last named alternate with kings who are named Talorc. One king who reigned over the Picts from 780 to 785 was called Drest filius Talorgen. This name Talorc is found only among the Picts, just as the name of Tallwch is found only among the Welsh, and in those passages alone where the father of Drystan is referred to. Phonetically, Drystan is the derivative of Drostán, Tallwch of Talorc, and the Welsh Drystan, son of Tallwch is identical with the Drostán, son of Talorc of the Picts. If we add, with M. Ferdinand Lot, that Loonois, the country of Tristan, and Morois, the forest in which part of the action of our stories takes place, are identical with the two ancient divisions of Scotland, Loonia and Moravia, formerly occupied by the Picts, we come to these surprising conclusions: the hero, whose life, according to the French stories, is passed almost entirely in Cornwall, Wales, and Brittany, was originally a stranger to these countries; without the knowledge of our trouvères, Tristan of Loonois was originally called Drostán, son of Talorc; he was a hero of the Picts and his legend was lived in Lothian, on the present confines of England and Scotland, and in Murray, on the plateau of the Scottish Highlands. And, as M. Gaston Paris writes, “there is something fascinating and almost touching in the thought that the soul of this vanished people, who have left us only their name and those of a few of their chiefs, with three or four words of their language, should survive even now in our souls, thanks to one of the most beautiful poetical creations of humanity.”

There is nothing, however, to indicate that this Pict Tristan was already celebrated for love adventures; perhaps he was a purely epic hero and warrior. The Welsh, it seems, were the first to transfer him to their own country, to adopt him and make him the rival in love of King Marc of Cornwall, a semi-historical character of their literature. Whether the Pict Tristan was already a famous lover or whether the Welsh were the first to conceive the consummation of his heroic type through love, it was they who made him the lover of King Marc's wife and located his principal adventures in Tintagel, on the coast of Cornwall.

Many of the proper names in our stories bear witness to the activity of the Welsh; take, for instance, that minor character, the seneschal, Dinas of Lidan, whose name, misunderstood by the trouvères, means, in Welsh, the “lord of the great fortress.” But there are other names which indicate that if the first stage of the legend was Pict and the second Welsh, still a third people collaborated with the Welsh: Perinis, Isolt's servant, Hoël de Carhaix, Duke of Brittany, Rivalin, the father of Tristan, Donoalen, the traitor, and many other characters in the stories, bear Breton rather than Welsh names, and we must admit that when the legend was received by the French poets, it was composed of Welsh and Armorican deposits.

Many hypotheses have been suggested to explain these facts but we shall limit ourselves here to pointing out the one that seems the most probable. From the tenth century on, the Norman and Breton aristocracy had become allied by frequent inter-marriage, till a Norman castle was more than half Breton. And from very ancient times, the Breton jongleurs had made the Armorican harp resound within these Norman castles, and by their lays, half sung and half recited, they had provoked the first awakening of the Romance imagination to the legends of Brittany. Then came the conquest of England by Duke William, and the whole Romance civilization just as it was, found itself suddenly transplanted into the castles beyond the channel. The Armorican jongleurs, who were more than half romanticized, and who lived in the service of the Norman lords, followed their patrons into their new conquest; there they renewed their acquaintance with the Welsh tribes from whom they had been so long separated; they learned certain of their legends, recognized the relationship of these with the legends that they themselves had brought, and leavened the one with the other; it was they who acted as the agents of transmission between the Welsh and the Romance peoples.

Whatever may be the value of this hypothesis, the Celtic, Welsh, and Armorican names, which abound in our poems, prove by their very reiteration, that the Celts bequeathed to the Romance poets many legendary themes. But what were these? Are we authorized to conclude sweepingly, because of the many Celtic names, that the legend of Tristan was drawn entirely from “the Celtic soul”? In what measure, in its Welsh period, did it resemble the legend we now know? Is it not possible that the characters in our stories have only their names in common with their Celtic prototypes? Might we not imagine, for example, that, among the Welsh, Tristan, like Cuchulain, the hero of the Irish epic, may have had a legend with many variants among which his love for Isolt was merely an episode? What part did the French jongleurs play in their reception of the legend? Were they simply transposers and rhapsodists, or were they real creators?

To these questions it is scarcely necessary to say that all the researches of onomatechny cannot supply even the beginning of an answer, and we must now enter upon an entirely new field of inquiry; we must bring before us the whole tradition of mediæval poetry and sum up the Celtic elements which it has preserved, excerpting from the texts the features and the episodes which imply a civilization neither feudal nor French, and which send us back to very archaic conceptions, to the ways and customs of the Celts. This method has been applied often, and with a bold and deceitful rashness by certain critics; and, indeed, it is easy for any one, endowed with a little imagination, so to transform our French poems as to produce a Welsh romance of Tristan that will have all the coloring of the Eddas or of the Nibelungen. But the more difficult thing in trying to determine the ethnical elements of a narration is, on the contrary, to yield nothing to one's imagination. Nevertheless, when this research has once been conducted with the necessary critical scepticism, when we have eliminated many of those pretended mythical features that array Tristan sometimes as a solar god and sometimes as a Theseus, when we have set aside-many bold combinations which seek to discover, on every page of the French romances, pre-Christian, pre-Romance, and Welsh survivals, there still remain a few ideas and a few episodes that are assuredly Celtic. If we group them together, we may form some idea of what the legend was at the time the Celts parted with it.

II.

At the outset, we note several features in the character of Tristan, so peculiar, so foreign, and so strangely in contrast with the knights of the “chansons de geste” or of the romances of chivalry, that we are forced to admit they were not drawn by French poets. There is, first, the fact that Tristan knows how to imitate perfectly the song of all the birds; what French poet would have imagined that of any knight? Further, he fashions and makes the bow, Arc-Qui-ne-faut, which always hits its object, man or beast, in the spot aimed at! Also, alone of all the epic heroes, he possesses, not a horse, but a favorite dog, loved equally with his dearest friends, and, doubtless, according to the older stories, enchanted like his bow. Let us add that King Marc (whose name, in many Celtic languages, means horse) hides fantastically the ears of a horse beneath his headdress, and these four features will suffice to relate Tristan and his rival with the times of barbarity, and to match them with heroes of the most authentic Welsh story, the mabinogi of Kullwch and Olwen.

There remains, also, the fact that the castle of Tintagel is a “chastel faé,” which twice a year “loses itself” and disappears from mortal eyes; such is the castle of the Irish magician, Cúroi. There is also the hall of glass, suspended in the air, whither Tristan, in his feigned madness, tries to carry away Isolt; such, again, in the Irish epic, is the chamber of brilliant windows, to which Mac Oc carried Etain Echraide.

Finally, there are several scenes in the legend which we cannot explain if we attribute them to the French poets. First, there is the one in which Tristan, forbidden the sight of Isolt, hews down branches, carves them in marvelous fashion, and throws them into a stream, to warn his loved one that he is waiting for her beneath a tree that overhangs the brook; this stream flows through Isolt's very chamber and we must necessarily picture to ourselves, not a feudal castle, but a hut,—with floor of beaten earth.

There is also this scene: Tristan, separated from Isolt, takes refuge with King Arthur. To befriend his love, Arthur and Gawain and many followers, go out to hunt in a forest near Tintagel and, pretending to be lost, request King Marc to give them a night's hospitality. The latter admits them and bids all his guests lie down in the same hall where he and the queen sleep in two separate beds. But, the better to guard Isolt, the king has caused to be placed in the hall some wolf traps equipped with newly sharpened scythes. When every one is asleep, Tristan draws near in the darkness to the bed of the queen, and is cruelly cut by the scythes. He binds his wound with a bandage taken from his hempen shirt, comes to the edge of Isolt's couch, and, vexed, tells her his disaster. What shall he do? His blood is flowing and in the morning he will be discovered. He awakens his companions who take counsel with him and Kei invents a splendid stratagem. Upon his advice, all the knights rise from their beds and, pretending to quarrel, revile each other in the darkness and fight among themselves, pell-mell, and each is careful to throw himself upon the snares and receive wounds from the sharp steel. The good Kei, faithful to his heroi-comic character, and instigator of the plot, alone tries to escape the scythes, but Gawain pushes him upon them and Kei is wounded more cruelly than the others. Then, when all are wounded and the blood is flowing on every side, Kei cries, “Does he hunt wolves in his hall that such machines are placed here? Is this the hospitality of King Marc?” What is there left for King Marc but to quiet the quarrel and excuse himself for having caused such snares to be laid? All go to sleep again, while Tristan rejoins the queen, this time without peril. In the morning, since all the guests are equally wounded, no one dreams of molesting Tristan who passes unobserved among the crowd of limping hunters.

If we attribute this scene to the Celtic period of the legend, it is not merely on account of its magnificent, light hearted barbarity. It is because it is impossible to represent it as taking place in a feudal castle. Eilhart d’Oberg, who relates it, tells us of his surprise and his embarrassment. In the twelfth century, it may well have happened that guests of distinction were lodged in the lord's own bed-chamber, but not the thirty or forty strangers that were necessarily introduced in the scene of the scythes. It must have taken place originally in the same large royal hut through which the stream forced its passage.

Let us add, as the third Celtic episode, the one given us in a Welsh triad, the sixty-third of the “Livre Rouge,” whose archaic character has been vainly suspected: Tristan sends the swine-herd of King Marc to demand an interview with Isolt. He, himself (disguised, doubtless, in the swine-herd's rags), watches the herd until the return of his messenger. Arthur, Kei, March, and Bedwyr come up unexpectedly and (knowing his disguise) amuse themselves by trying to rob him of his beasts, first by strategy, then by violence, and lastly by larceny; but they do not succeed in getting even a single sow away from him.

These are the scenes which we may safely call Celtic. We might, perhaps, by analogy and by making our way from point to point, add a few episodes closely related or bound to these; take, for example, the scene where Marc, clinging to the branches of a tree, his bow in his hand, spies upon the lovers who have made their tryst beneath him. Happily, by the rays of the moonlight, they see Marc's shadow reflected in the stream which flows at their feet and are careful; by clever words, they succeed in deceiving the jealous king and winning his pity. This episode follows almost necessarily that in which Tristan, in order to call Isolt, threw into this same stream the branches so wonderfully fashioned. Perhaps, since it is hard to represent it in the room of a castle, we might further retain the scene where a traitor, perched upon a window, watches an interview between the lovers. Isolt, who has seen the spy, tells Tristan in a low voice, to string his bow. He bends it, astonished, only half understanding. Isolt takes an arrow, notches it with her own hand, and looks to see if the cord be good: “Aim well, Tristan!” He takes his position, raises his head, and sees the traitor's shadow upon a curtain stretched across the room. The long arrow whistles through the air, pierces the traitor's eye, and goes through his brain.

Now, if we consider these several scenes as assuredly or very probably Celtic, what is their evident character? They are violent tales stained with blood. This swine-herd, Tristan, the wonderful archer, master of an enchanted dog and bow, this Tristan with the almost supernatural gift of being able, at his pleasure, to imitate the songs of all the birds, this Tristan of the marvelously cut branches, and among the wolf snares, this Tristan appears to us like the hero of a sort of barbaric “Decameron.” It is a romancero of cynical love, at times sad, wherein we see simply a dissembling woman and her lover, famous for his mastery in all the primitive arts, duping a jealous and powerful husband. The trinity of the husband, the wife, and the lover, the lover possessing the woman by the sole supremacy of physical beauty, strength, and strategy, the tricks that they play at the risk of their life, this is what is brought before us in the several scenes which seem authentically Celtic.

Is it really this, is it these brutal, half barbaric stories, that make up what we call the legend of Tristan? What do we understand, we men of today, Romanticists, Celtists, or simple literary men, with our knowledge of the story gained either by critical, scholarly study or by simply hearing one of Wagner's operas, what do we understand when we repeat the names of the lovers of Cornwall or what did Béroul or Gottfried von Strassburg understand, when they told their story long ago for the men of earlier times and for the men of today? What are Tristan and Isolt? They are lovers who drank a philtre and, held captive by its power, suffered the fatality of this love against their will. The bitter conflict of love and law; this is the whole of the legend.

Now, are we authorized in believing that the Celts, beside their bloody tales, invented also this central conception without which the legend would not exist: two central figures, chained by love, but feeling upon them the pressure of the social law which subjects the vassal to his lord, and the wife to her husband, and suffering from this law in such a manner that every one of their pleasures is mingled with horror?

To begin with, we cannot feel at all certain that the invention of the love philtre is Celtic; we merely know that neither the ancient literature of Ireland, nor that of Wales, offers any example of such an enchantment. But even so, considering this negative statement to be of little value, if we admit that already in the Welsh story Tristan and Isolt had drunk a love philtre, can we believe that this enchantment had already had for the Celts the same value as for the French trouvères? that even among the Celts the two heroes endured their love as a fatality at once delightful and bitter? The following remarks would seem to contradict this.

That two rivals should contend passionately for a woman, is the most elementary of instincts. That others, spectators of the fight, should be amused or moved by it, is also primitive, belonging specifically to neither the Cymri nor the French; the men of the stone age may already have possessed the rudiments of stories analogous to that of Tristan as swineherd. But that the woman and her lover should suffer from this struggle and suffer from their very triumphs, implies a state of culture far more complex. An “epic of adultery” can take place only among a people for whom marriage is an indissoluble and formidable bond. Only those who recognize a strongly imperative, rigid, and stern social law, can build a poem on this social law hostile to love.

But, as we read the Welsh “Mabinogion,” or the Irish epics, or the pictures drawn by the historians of the old Celtic civilizations, as we read especially the corpus of the institutions of Wales, compiled from the tenth to the twelfth century, under the title of “Les Lois de Howel le Bon,” we see that the most peculiar feature of Celtic life is the fragility of the conjugal bond. No legislation has ever been more significant. Marriage remained uninfluenced by either Roman or Christian ideals. It consisted simply, without any religious sanction ever being thought of, in the surrender, at a stipulated price, of the young girl by her father, surrounded by her relatives. The rupture of this contract was a peculiarly easy thing: if the husband and wife agreed to separate, they divorced each other with no further ceremony. If only one desired to separate, the husband could repudiate his wife; if he could produce a grievance against her, for example, that of her having given another man a single kiss, he was entitled, in putting her away, to retain her dowry; if he could produce any accusation, he might still send her away when he pleased but he must give back her dowry. In return the wife may leave her husband if she wishes, and in certain well defined cases she may retain her dowry, but only upon the condition that she gives it up, can she divorce herself without reason.

If Tristan and Isolt were purely Welsh conceptions, how, in the poems known to us, could they think and feel as their congeners had never thought or felt? By what unforeseen reversal of the natural order of things, at the very moment when passion was let loose in their hearts, overwhelming them, were they to rise to higher moral ideas, foreign to their wisest legislators? According to Welsh customs, King Marc had power over Isolt's dowry, but not over her life; she was free to leave him; why, with or without her dowry, did she not do so? Tristan did not even need to abduct her; the doors were open to her; she could go. Only, if she did, there would be no story left. King Marc might, out of tyrannic jealousy, keep possession of her and imprison her, but according to Welsh ideas her body alone would be captive; she would be bound only by an unjust physical constraint; in her heart she would feel free,—and the story as we have it would not exist. Tristan might abduct her, Marc, recapture her, Tristan carry her off again,—and in all this there would be room for bloody tales such as we have just been dealing with. Tristan might take her with him to the depths of the forest of Morois; but, once they had entered there, once they had enjoyed there, even for an hour, within the hut of branches, that true life which alone is worthy of their barbaric love, then how could any power except the physical strength of their enemies ever drag them away from it? Or, in case they grew weary of living in the forest, why should not Tristan take Isolt to Ireland, where she is queen? or to his castles of Loonois, where he is king, and where he could defend her? Only, if he did so, the story would fall in pieces.

The very life of the story as we have it, lies in the fact that nowhere, in any of the known poems, does Isolt dream of leaving King Marc, nor Tristan of carrying her away. It is against their will, that, tracked and hunted, they submit to a common exile in the forest of Morois, but as soon as Tristan feels that the king's wrath is softened, his only thought is to give him back Isolt. Their love is not a restless lust, seeking to justify itself by the romantic argument of the sovereign rights of passion. Tristan is not in revolt against society, he does not repudiate the social institution, on the contrary, he respects it, he suffers on account of it, and this suffering alone imparts the beauty to his actions. He is the nephew and the adopted son of King Marc; he does not dispute the law of gratitude, he violates it and, in violating it, he suffers. He is King Marc's vassal; he does not dispute the law of a vassal's honor, he violates it and, in violating it, he suffers. The “idea” of the legend is not that the social law is bad; in all the extant poems of the Middle Ages, it is rather that love brings face to face with the law a world of rights, not superior to the social rights, but without common measure with them, and that it creates between law and nature a struggle which God Himself must judge. The legend is founded wholly upon a social law, recognized as good, necessary, and just. It is founded upon an indissoluble marriage bond. How, then, can it have been conceived by a people who looked upon marriage as the most easily broken of ties? If, however, this is the poetical foundation and framework of the story of Tristan, we may say that the legend is not Welsh,—I mean the tragic mood of the legend.

We may go further; we may set down this proposition as an axiom: the legend of Tristan had neither beauty nor even life until the day when a romance of Tristan existed. By romance, we do not mean necessarily a written, completed poem, but at least an epic subject somewhat richly developed. The subject of the “Chevalier au lion,” of “Erec,” or of “Perceval” may be contained in three or four little lays artificially brought together. But the fundamental theme of the legend of Tristan implies something more. It implies the two lovers bound together in life and death, a permanent and manifold conflict between love and the law. So long as this conflict finds expression only in one lay, in one short story, or in a series of little, similar stories (such as the narrations of the feminine strategies by which King Marc is deceived), we may say that the legend does not yet live. It comes to life only on the day when a poet, or a generation of men, represent the development of this conflict in a series of adventures, of struggles, and of obstacles, which attend the lovers from their birth until their death; it exists only from the day when a biographical character is given to the love of Tristan and Isolt.

Now, it is contrary to all that we know of the stories of Brittany and of the modes of epic recitation among the Celts, to suppose that they ever possessed a great romance of love about Tristan. It is, however, conformable to all that we know of the poetry of either the Cymri or the Irish, to believe that they possessed and could have transmitted nothing else but lays concerning Tristan; and these were, doubtless, as we have seen, simple stories of adultery. The question, then, is this: what is there at the basis of the French poetical tradition? Lays, episodical narrations, vaguely related to one another? Or is there, indeed, a regular poem?

III.

When we approach the comparative study of the poems of Tristan, the first impressions that we receive confirm the pre-conceived theory that these romances are rhapsodies, or “compilations.” What favors this theory is, first of all, the multiplicity of the versions: the English “Sir Tristrem,” the Scandinavian Saga, the Tzech “Tristan,” the poems of Gottfried von Strassburg, of Heinrich von Freyberg, of Ulrich von Türheim, the romances in French, German, Italian, and Spanish prose, and twenty other texts which cross and intertwine; secondly, there is the diversity of the different forms which these texts offer for every episode, the slowness of the critic to unravel the relations of these versions, the extreme complications in the method of classing them, all these points strengthening the opinion that we are face to face with an inextricable multitude of amalgamated stories, with a confused material, incompletely organized; and we are ready to believe that a vast “sea of stories” is spreading out before us. Nevertheless, according as we grow more intimate with the texts, and as we profit more and more by the philological works that have accumulated in the last thirty years, we perceive that the tradition is not nearly as rich and diverse as we had imagined, that the greater part of the versions must be eliminated entirely as translations or unimportant after products of preserved works, and we find that the whole legend of Tristan is contained in four, or perhaps five, primary versions, namely:—

1. The poem by Béroul, written in Normandy about 1160, of which we possess only a fragment of three thousand lines with a false sequel, added to it about 1200, by an unknown French jongleur.

2. The French poem, written in England about the same date, 1160, by Thomas, the trouvère, which has come down to us in a very mutilated condition, but whose tenor we are able to reconstruct from the various different versions of it in foreign languages.

3. The poem, composed about 1190, by Eilhart d’Oberg, vassal of Henry the Lion, Duke of Brunswick.

4. The romance in French prose, written about 1230, and later rewritten and added to indefinitely, in which, however, it is easy to find the disjecta membra of an archaic poem.

5. The episodical French poem of the “Folie Tristan,” preserved in a manuscript at Berne, and composed in the second half of the twelfth century.

If we compare these primary versions, we see that they are made up of about sixty episodes, twenty of which appear separately, contained in one single romance, while the forty others figure in all five romances or in three or four among them. These sixty episodes, forty of which are preserved in three, four, or five copies, embrace the whole of the legend of Tristan. Beyond them there is nothing, and what impresses us now is not the richness and the multiplicity but the dearth of these legendary themes. In order to examine these, let us, for once, cease to confine our attention exclusively to the criticism of their differences; let us make up, on the contrary, the sum of the episodes common to all and presented in the same order by at least three of the versions. We may imagine as many lost intermediary versions between these primary ones as we wish; but in any case we must find, at the common foundation of these works, one intelligent and conscious thought which first united the common themes in the following order:—

In the olden times, when King Marc reigned in Cornwall, he received at his court a young man, a stranger; this was Tristan, the son of his sister Blanchefleur, whose birth had cost his mother her life and who had grown up, an orphan, in a distant land. King Marc, in whom dwelt all nobility and goodness, loved him from the day he saw him, even before he recognized in him the son of his sister Blanchefleur: Tristan owed to King Marc all that a son can owe to his father; to the king's infinite tenderness, he replied with an equal tenderness. On the very day that he is armed as a knight, Tristan is so happy as to be able to repay to Marc something of his many benefits: Morholt, a famous knight, comes to Cornwall to claim, in the name of the King of Ireland, a shameful tribute of young men and maidens. No one dared oppose him; Tristan alone engages him in battle; he kills Morholt, leaving a fragment of his sword buried in the skull of his adversary; he has freed King Marc's land from the tribute but he is himself wounded by Morholt's poisoned wooden spear. Feeling that he is about to die, he causes himself to be laid upon a barge, and the sea carries him to Dublin, to the hands of the Queen of Ireland and her daughter Isolt; this, above all others, is the country of danger, for Isolt is Morholt's niece, but no one recognizes the murderer in Tristan, for the venom in his wound has disfigured his features, and very soon the Queen of Ireland sends him back, cured, to Cornwall. No sooner has he reached there than, at Marc's command, he sets forth again for Dublin, at the peril of his life; Marc has commissioned him to bring back Isolt, his enemy's daughter, for he wishes to make her his bride. It happened that the King of Ireland has promised to give Isolt in marriage to whoever shall deliver his country from a terrible dragon, who is devastating it. Tristan kills the dragon, and cuts out his tongue, but, poisoned by the monster's venom, he falls senseless among the grasses in a swamp. An impostor cuts off the dragon's head and, pretending to have killed it, claims the promised reward. But Isolt has discovered Tristan in the swamp and transports him secretly to the castle where she restores him to his senses and makes him well again. One day, when he is in a bath which she has prepared for him, she notices that his sword is notched; she takes the bit of steel that she has formerly drawn from the head of Morholt and it fits exactly into the sword; she recognizes the murderer of her uncle, and grasping the huge weapon, wishes to kill Tristan while he is in the bath. He quiets her with skilful words and after confounding the impostor by producing the dragon's tongue, he reveals to the King of Ireland that he is a messenger from King Marc of Cornwall. He has won the girl both by strategy and by force and he swears upon the relics of the saints, before all the barons of Ireland and before a hundred knights of Cornwall, who are his companions, that he will conduct her loyally to her husband, King Marc.

We pass on from one scene to another; Tristan and Isolt, by mistake, drink a love philtre while at sea,—Marc weds Isolt and the latter substitutes her servant, Brangien, for herself in the king's bed, etc. ∗ ∗ ∗ we may follow it in this way until the death of the lovers. And thus we obtain a scenario containing three quarters of all the known episodes of the legend,—all that are essential. Now, if we look carefully at this scenario, we are struck by its inward logic, by the harmony of its organic structure. It is not, as the theory of the “lays” and “compilations” sought to prove, a series of episodes whose order we may arrange and rearrange, at pleasure, as we may do without injury to the stories of the knightly deeds of Gawain or Lancelot in the romances of chivalry. Rather, it is a work of the conscious creative will, in which the unity of creation is superbly shown.

This unity of creation shows itself first in what constitutes the scenario, the harmonious series of combinations which lead the two central figures from one vicissitude to another, according to a law of logical progression.

All the incidents of the beginning, which we have just summed up, are put together in such a way that Tristan appears to us dependent upon his uncle Marc (by the ties of blood, of gratitude, and of a vassal's honor) and yet he appears to us quite independent of him, materially, for he may, if he pleases, go back to a kingdom which is his own. These incidents tend likewise to show Tristan as independent of Isolt, who hates in him the murderer of Morholt, and who remains for a long time indifferent to him, until the day when the love philtre makes him as dependent upon her as possible. And all these incidents are so ordered that Tristan's crime seems inexcusable in the eyes of the world and pardonable to those who know and understand.

It is a real uniformity of “preparations” which has brought into play a sort of obscure fatality weighing upon Tristan, and tending to set forth strongly the conflict of love and law. The lovers have drunk of the “vin herbé”; the action is begun. After that, many scenes are unrolled wherein the joys and torments of the two lovers are skilfully graduated. The law of progression is this: the lovers pass through many phases in which they suffer trials constantly increasing in severity, each of these phases brings in a mode of suffering unknown to the preceding period of their life, and is made more intricate with the addition of the kinds of suffering endured in all the preceding periods.

1. Remorse. In the first phase, their love is not suspected by any one. As yet, they suffer only from the necessity of hiding their fault (the substitution of Brangien for Isolt) and from the fear which the agitation of their hearts arouses in them (Brangien delivered over to the serfs).

2. Remorse and public shame. In the second phase, besides the suffering caused by betraying the king, there is added the shame of feeling that they are watched by traitors, and suspected by Marc (Tristan's dismissal from the palace, the first lies, and the scene in which Marc spies upon them, hidden in the branches of the tree).

3. Remorse, public shame, and exile. The king, convinced at length, has driven them both away. They live, as outlaws, in the forest. This is the culminating point of the legend, where the greatest joys of their love and their worst social miseries meet. They suffer physical pain which is added to their increasing remorse and to their growing shame at being exiled from the life of men.

4. Remorse, public shame, exile, and separation. Until now, they have, at least, lived near one another. But now a worse trial arises: separation. Isolt is reinstated in her queenly dignity but henceforth she will always be watched and tormented by Marc's jealousy. Tristan, alone, continues his life of exile. (Episodes of their exile, and those where Tristan, at the peril of his life, endeavors to see the queen secretly once more.)

5. Remorse, public shame, exile, separation, and jealousy. Tristan, tortured by the long silence of separation, ends by believing that Isolt no longer loves him. At this time, in a fit of despair, he marries another Isolt, the daughter of the Duke of Brittany. But scarcely has he wedded her when he realizes his offence and repents. Isolt the Golden-Haired learns of his marriage and now suspicion and jealousy separate them. Thus is completed, by the most cruel torture of all, the progression of their sufferings. It is no longer their bodies merely, it is their hearts that are henceforward distant from one another. With a ceaseless, obstinate persistency, in every vile disguise, as Tristan the madman, as Tristan the pilgrim, as Tristan the leper, he comes back to the queen, at the risk of being beaten by servants or killed as a common thief. Each of these meetings, the monotony of which is intentional and powerful, does nothing but increase the torments of the two wretched lovers. And what constitutes the grandeur of these episodes where the lover returns to his beloved, suspecting her even as she suspects him, exiled again and yet again returning, is the desolate feeling of the solitude of their souls. Then, the full cup of misery drunk to the very dregs, there is but one more trial, or rather refuge, and that is,

6. Death. In this plan, in this framework common to all the known versions, beautiful even in the schematic form to which we are here forced to reduce it, how can we doubt the unity of creation? It stands out clearly not only from the ingenious rigor of this scenario, but from the fact that the situations in it are always subordinate to the characters. Brief as is the summary we have just made, it is alone sufficient to give some idea of their consistency and strength: Tristan, knightly and loyal, bringing to his uncle the wife he might instead have robbed him of; disloyal, in spite of himself, and retaining until death his early tenderness for Marc whom he betrays; Isolt, sorrowful and strong, loving in the midst of the blood that is shed for her; Marc, more beautiful than the lovers, living solely for the love that he bears to his adopted son and then to his queen, punishing them without being able to drive them from his heart, and ending, perchance, by the very strength of his compassion, in half divining the secret of the love philtre ∗ ∗ ∗ truly, some one, at some time, must have combined this plan and these characters.

It is certain, as we have said before, that this some one did have Celtic stories to work on. Further than this, it is possible, it is even infinitely probable, that he did not come directly in contact with the original Celtic stories but that he started from scattered French or English stories, more or less passive translations, more or less remodeled imitations, of the Celtic lays. But is it not possible, some one will ask, that among these varied stories he might have found one that was already enriched with moral ideas foreign to the Celts, and that this privileged story may have provided him with the tone, the key note, and the color for his work? And further, is it not possible that the beginnings of great romances in Roman or in Saxon lands may have preceded his romance and that his may be derived from them? It is possible, certainly. Every trick of logic is permissible here; since there is not one text that can hinder your hypotheses, all are possible, and as there is none to hinder so there is none to confirm them and all are vain. Our scenario reveals the activity of a man who feels his responsibility as the narrator of so tremendous a romance. Had he forerunners, you ask. What matter, if these forerunners are condemned to remain purely people of our own creation? Non sunt entia multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. This one thing, indeed, is undisputed, that all the tradition known to us, implies this single scenario: there is not a poem preserved to us, that does not refer to it or adapt itself to it; not an episode nor a feature that differs from it or contradicts it. Suppose there did exist poems anterior to this archetype, what do they matter, since they have all been absorbed into this one, and have no life except in and through it? if they are for us as if they never had been? and if all the stories known to us bring us back to this one poem?

IV.

It is, indeed, the name of poem that we must use henceforth, rather than retain longer the ruder name of scenario. Let us venture to take up one of our romances, that by Béroul. Many intermediaries, perhaps, separate him from the original trouvère. Observe, however, and see if, for a long series of adventures, we are not sure of finding herein the very sub-soil, the immediate invention of one single creator.

Through the treachery of a dwarf, Tristan is surprised by King Marc almost in flagrant fault. He is bound with ropes. The circumstances are such that there is nothing, it would seem, for him but to admit his crime. He should confess it; nevertheless, he denies: “King, if there be a man in thy house, brave enough to uphold this lie that I have loved the queen with a guilty love, let him stand before me in an enclosed field.” He demands judgment: the judiciary combat; he calls upon God; he relies on God to fight with him. Is this a vulgar imposture? Perhaps; yet we see that the poet feels as he does, “Tristan put his faith in God, for he believed and knew that, if a regular judgment was instituted, no one would dare to wield a weapon against him.” And we see further that, in the city of Tintagel, all the wealthy middle class and the humble people feel the same way. “The king commanded that a ditch should be dug in the earth and filled with vine branches and black and white thorns torn up by the roots. At the hour of prime, a ban is cried throughout the country in order to assemble immediately all the men of Cornwall. They come together with great noise, and there is not one who does not weep, except the dwarf of Tintagel. Then the king declares to all the people that he has had this pyre erected for his nephew and for the queen. But they all cry, ‘King! this would be a crime. You must judge them first. Judgment first! and then, if so it be, punishment! But until judgment, mercy and pardon for them!’”

Is it a mere sentimental tenderness that thus makes the people of the crowd, the accomplices of the lovers? Again perhaps; but let us read further.

At the foot of the pyre, Dinas of Lidan, the king's seneschal, arises and declares, like the folk of Tintagel, that he cannot burn Tristan and Isolt without committing a crime. Dinas demands, not the pity of King Marc, but his justice; he claims the plaid, a remittance of hostages, the judiciary combat. The king refuses to listen to him; his anger blinds him. He orders that the fire be lighted and that some one seek the prisoners in the castle. The thorn branches blaze up, the people are silent, the king waits.

Then God Himself intervenes by miracles.

“Now listen how the Seigneur God was full of pity. He, who does not desire the death of the sinner, did not take amiss the tears and the supplications of the poor people who entreated Him for the tortured lovers. Near the road where Tristan passed, bound with cords and led by guards, on the summit of a rock stood a chapel, overlooking the sea. The wall of the apse was built close to a cliff, steep, rocky, and with pointed escarpments; in the apse, over the precipice, was a purple window, the work of a saint. Tristan says to those who are leading him: ‘Sirs, see this chapel; permit me to enter it. My death is near; I will pray God that He have mercy upon me, who have so greatly sinned against Him. Sirs, the chapel has no other entrance than this ∗ ∗ ∗ each one of you has his sword. You see clearly that I cannot pass out except by this door, and when I have prayed to God, I must needs give myself back into your hands.’

“The guards allow him to enter. He runs through the chapel, crosses the choir, reaches the saint's window in the apse, seizes its frame, opens it, and throws himself out. Rather this fall than death upon the pyre, before such an assembly!

“But know, seigneurs, that God gave him great mercy; the wind catches in his clothes, supports him, and sets him gently down on a large stone at the foot of the rock. The people of Cornwall still call this rock Tristan's Leap. And before the church, the guards still waited for him. But in vain. God gave him great mercy. He flees, the sand falls in behind his footsteps. In the distance he sees the pyre, the flames crackle, the smoke rises, he flees.”

Thus Tristan is delivered by a miracle from God, but Isolt is left in the hands of those who seek to torture her.

“She is led, in her turn, to the pyre. She stands upright before the flames. The crowd shriek about her, cursing the king, cursing the traitor. The tears roll down her face. She is clothed in a strait grey tunic, wherein is woven a narrow thread of gold, and a golden thread is braided in her hair that falls even to her feet. He who could see her, standing there, so beautiful, without having compassion upon her, must have the heart of a scoundrel. Ah! God! how harshly her arms are bound! Now a hundred lepers, hastening thither upon their crutches, amid the clapping of their rattles, crowd before the pyre, and Yvain, their chief, cries to the king in a piercing voice:—

“‘Sire, you wish to throw your wife upon this funeral pile; it is worthy justice, but too brief. This great fire will burn her quickly, this great wind will scatter her ashes too soon. And when the flames die down, her pain will be at an end. Do you wish me to teach you a worse punishment? so that she shall live, but in great dishonor, and ever seeking death? King, do you wish this?’ The king replies: ‘Yes, let her live, but in great dishonor, and worse than death. Whoever will teach me such punishment, I will love him the better for it.’ ‘Sire, I will tell you briefly then, my thought. See, I have here one hundred companions; give us Isolt and let her be common to us all! Our disease inflames our desires. Give her to your lepers, and never lady of high degree shall have come to so fearful an end. See, our rags are glued to our festering sores. She, who near thee, was pleased with richest stuffs furred with vair, with jewels, and with halls of marble, she, who enjoyed good wine, and honor, and joy, when she sees the court of thy lepers, when she must enter their hovels, then Isolt the Beautiful, Isolt the Golden-Haired will know her sin and will long for this fire of thorns.’ The king listens to him, rises, and stands for a long time motionless. At length he moves towards the queen and takes her by the hand. She cries: ‘In pity, Sire, burn me rather than that, burn me!’ The king hands her to Yvain, who receives her, and the hundred lepers crowd about her. At the sound of their crying and yelping, every heart is wrung with pity, but Yvain is joyful; Isolt is going away and Yvain is leading her! The hideous cortège disappears beyond the city.”

“But God has received her into His mercy” and as He has delivered Tristan, so He will deliver the queen. He allows Tristan, who is in ambush with his squire, to tear her from the lepers; and the two lovers bury themselves in the forest of Morois. Then, in the presence of this double miracle, the idea is thrust upon you and you realize that, for the poet, it is not the deed which proves the crime, it is the judgment, the judgment pronounced by God Himself. But King Marc, in his wrath, does not feel so, and he lays a price upon the head of the fugitives. They wander in the depths of the wild forest, amidst great hardships, tracked like wild animals, and they scarcely dare come back at night to the lodging of the night before. They eat nothing but the flesh of deer and long for the taste of salt and of bread. Their thin faces grow pale and their garments hang in rags. They love and they do not suffer. Beneath the tall friendly trees, they lead a life “stern and hard” and delicious; but they still protest their innocence, and when Ogrin, the old hermit, whom they meet in the forest, exhorts them to repentance, they declare that God Himself holds them in His keeping. More and more we feel that the whole story is built upon a naïvely subtile conception of justice, and at the same time, also, upon the innocent duplicity of the lovers, upon their “bel mentir,” Tristan perhaps counting, in case of a judiciary duel, upon his physical strength and upon his prowess to manifest his innocence.

For a long time Marc persists in his anger, but now the day is drawing near when he, in his turn, shall feel with the lovers, with the humble people of Tintagel, and with the poet, that God alone is judge of their innocence or crime.

“Seigneurs, it was upon a summer's day, in the time of the harvest, a little after Pentecost, and the birds were singing in the dew of the approaching dawn. Tristan went out from the hut, girded on his sword, prepared his bow, Arc-Qui-ne-faut, and went away alone to hunt in the woods ∗ ∗ ∗ When he came back from the chase, tired with the great heat, he took the queen within his arms.

“‘Beloved, where have you been?’ she asked.

“‘Chasing a deer who has tired me completely. See how the sweat runs down my limbs, I would fain lie down and sleep.’

“Beneath the hut built of green branches, and strewn with fresh grasses, Isolt lies down first. Tristan throws himself beside her and lays his naked sword between their bodies. For their good fortune, they have not laid off their garments. Upon her finger, the queen wears the golden ring with beautiful emeralds that Marc gave her on the day of their betrothal; her fingers have become so thin that the ring nearly falls off. Thus they sleep, one of Tristan's arms beneath the head of his loved one and the other thrown about her beautiful body, in close embrace; but their lips do not touch. There is not a breath of wind stirring, and not a leaf that trembles. Through the roof of green foliage, a ray of sunlight falls upon the face of Isolt, making it to shine like ice.

“Now a forester has found a place in the wood where the grasses were crushed; the lovers had slept there the night before, but he does not recognize the imprint of their bodies, and following the tracks, comes to their dwelling. He sees who are sleeping there, recognizes them, and flees, fearful of Tristan's terrible awaking.”

He flees even to Tintagel, two leagues from there, and, taking the king aside, tells him how, in a hut in the forest, he has surprised the queen and Tristan, sleeping in each other's arms.

“‘Come quickly, if you wish to wreak your vengeance.’

“‘Go and wait for me,’ replies the king, ‘on the outskirts of the forest, at the foot of the Red Cross. Do not speak to any one of what you have seen; I will give you gold and silver, as much as you can carry away.’

“Marc causes his horse to be saddled, girds on his sword, and, without any retainers, escapes from the city. As he rides on, alone, he remembers the night when he had seized his nephew; what tenderness Isolt the Beautiful, with the fair white face, had then shown to Tristan! If he takes them now, he will punish these great sins, he will avenge himself upon those who have dishonored him ∗ ∗ ∗ At the Red Cross he finds the forester.

“‘Go before me; lead me straight and quickly.’

“The dark shade of the great trees envelops them. The king follows the spy. He trusts his good sword, which has formerly dealt many a noble blow. Ah! if Tristan awakes, one of the two, and God alone knows which, will lie dead upon the ground. At length the forester whispers softly, ‘King, we draw near.’ He holds the king's stirrup and ties the reins of the horse to the branches of a green apple tree. They approach nearer still and suddenly, in a sunlit clearing, they see the flowering hut.

“The king unties his mantle with golden strings, throws it off, and his splendid body stands free and bold. He draws his sword from its scabbard and says once more in his heart that he wishes to die if he does not kill them. The forester has followed him, and the king makes a sign for him to go back.

“He enters alone into the hut, his sword bare, and he brandishes it ∗ ∗ ∗ Ah! what sorrow if he strikes the blow! But he sees that their lips do not touch and that a bare sword lies between them.

“‘God,’ he says to himself, ‘what do I see here? Should I kill them? If they loved each other with a wicked love, they who have lived so long together in the forest, would they have placed a naked sword between them? If they loved wickedly, would they rest so purely? No, I will not kill them; it would be a great sin to strike them; and if I should awake this sleeper and one of us should die, it would be talked of for long ages, and to our great shame. But I will do something so that when they wake, they shall know that I have found them sleeping, that I did not seek their death, and that God has had mercy upon them.’

“The sunlight, filtering through the leaves, burned upon the white face of Isolt; the king took his gloves adorned with ermine. ‘It was she,’ he thought, ‘who brought them to me not so long ago from Ireland!’ He laid them among the branches, to close the hole through which the sunlight entered, then he slowly drew off the ring with the emerald stones that, in days gone by, he had given to the queen; he had to press a little upon it before he could pass it over her finger then, now her fingers were so thin that the ring came off without an effort, and in its place the king slipped the ring which Isolt had formerly brought to him. Then he took up the sword that separated the lovers; that, too, he recognized,—it had been notched in Morholt's skull,—he laid his own in its place, went out from the hut, jumped into his saddle, and said to the forester:—

“‘Fly now, and save thy body, if thou canst!’

“Now Isolt had a vision in her sleep. She was beneath a rich tent in the midst of a great wood. Two lions threw themselves upon her and fought to have possession of her ∗ ∗ ∗ she uttered a cry and awoke ∗ ∗ ∗ the gloves adorned with white ermine fell upon her breast. At her cry, Tristan jumped to his feet, sought to pick up his sword, and recognized that of the king by its golden handle. And the queen sees upon her finger the ring she had given Marc.”

During this scene, at the time the bare sword met his glance, what passed in Marc's heart? As before, the night when he had surprised the lovers, he had received indications of their crime, but not proofs; just as they had appealed to the judgment of God and did not dispense with it, so this bare sword was a sign of their chastity, appealing, in its turn, to a regular judgment. Did Marc, at this moment, admit as possible, their innocence? or rather, making himself in his turn the accomplice of their duplicity, in the tender weakness of his heart and in order to take back the queen, did he only pretend to believe in it? We do not know, but this glvoe that he left amid the branches of the hut is the sign that henceforth he, too, shares the idea of the lovers and of the poet: he is ready, not to pardon, but to judge.

It is judgment, indeed, not pardon, that Tristan ceaselessly demands. In a letter which he dictates to Ogrin, the hermit, and which is addressed to the king, he repeats that he has not loved Isolt with a guilty love, that he was forced and constrained to carry her away into the forest in order to save her life, that God has manifested his innocence by two miracles, and that he is ready to uphold what he says against any comer in judiciary battle. Marc, indeed, organizes the judgment. At the White Lands, Tristan solemnly presents himself for combat. There is no champion found to uphold the accusation, either because every one recognizes the protection of God visibly extended to Tristan and the queen, or because the barons, fearing Tristan's strength and participating in their turn in the “bel mentir” of the lovers, pretend to believe them innocent. From that time on, Tristan is not pardoned, but justified. For want of an accuser he is absolved, and Marc is juridically at peace with himself and his barons; he may take back the queen and his love is an accomplice of his justice.

Is it not true that all this long series of adventures is entirely built upon very particular moral and social postulates? a very specific conception of justice? Suppose the idea were destroyed that the lovers, held by the power of the philtre, are innocent, or that they can juridically appear so, that God absolves them, that they have nothing to fear from a judgment, that the proofs of the deed stand for nothing, then in a trice, the whole romance appears ridiculous and incoherent. Marc is a mere Dandin and the admirable scene of the gloves serves only to bring out his stupid good nature. Ogrin, the venerable hermit, is only a pander; the romance itself is only a mockery of the idea upon which the men of the Middle Ages built their whole system of justice. Is it not true that all these scenes can have been invented only in feudal times, at the very moment when, the method of the judiciary duel being still in high favor, men were, nevertheless, beginning, almost unconsciously perhaps, to admit that a little strategy and strength might often help one of the champions? Is it not true that we have here something primary, before which there had been nothing and after which there could be nothing but a pitiful deformation? On the one hand, we cannot take these scenes and try to bring them back to a more archaic type; let any one attempt it, and see the ruin he will make! On the other hand, they cannot be made over to fit a later age, in any way whatsoever; two posterior poets, Thomas and Gottfried von Strassburg, tried to do it, the idea of the judgment of God being already for them something weak and untenable; but all this part of the story, of which they have striven hard to preserve some fragments (the betrayal by the dwarf, the life in the forest, and the episode of the gloves), is in their versions a lamentable and ridiculous failure. All the episodes of the treason of the dwarf, the lovers being sent to the pyre, the tears of the people of Tintagel, the intervention of Dinas, the seneschal, the leap from the chapel, the scene with the lepers, the life in the forest of Morois, the rôle of Ogrin, the hermit, the scene of the gloves, Tristan's message to Marc, the assembly at the White Lands, and the surrender of the queen to the hands of Marc, all these episodes follow one another, imply one another, and mutually uphold each other; each is beautiful and luminous with the beauty and the light of all the others. They owe their existence to one common leaven, to this conception of justice which the poet sets forth and develops through them, and for whose sake alone they exist, to serve as its dramatic illustration. Each is one of the terms of a series to which the assembly of the White Lands alone gives a meaning and conclusion. It follows, then, that all these episodes, written each for the other, must have been composed at one single time by one single poet. We may suppose as many lost intermediaries as we wish between this poet and Béroul, but this part at least, the remoulders thus supposed have not dared to remould, and in it we reach the primitive.

V.

But have we not exposed ourselves to a grave objection, by having here attached so much importance to the feudal belief in the judgment of God, behind which Tristan takes shelter and which serves to give unity to the poem? “Is not this,” some one may object, “an artifice or resource which indicates a late rather than a primitive state of the poem? is it not a sort of justification of the lovers, by a juridical trick, attempted as an after-thought? is it not more probably the invention of a man unfitted to understand the earlier state of the legend, in which love would not take refuge behind the law, but would find its justification in itself, in its own fatal power, and in the heavy sacrifices it imposes upon its victims?” To reply to this, we should have now to show that between this part of the poem and all the others, there are manifold relations of such sort that the apparent discordances resolve into one intimate and profound harmony, and this would be a long undertaking. All the preceding observations have led us to place at the foundation of the French and Germanic tradition, not an amorphous vulgate, made up of a mechanical assemblage of scattered narrations, but a regular poem, all the parts of which, created in relation one to another, were bound together by a strong synergy, one and complex. Nevertheless, we cannot doubt but that some one may oppose our views, till now based principally on logical deductions, with other logical combinations. It is enough for us to have proposed here a hypothesis, born of the observation of the facts, which does not meet with any obstacles in the facts, and to have presented it favorably, perhaps, to the attention of criticism. It will remain a hypothesis, we know, so long as we shall be forced to see so dimly this archetype, of which we can give here only a suggestion to the reader.

Since the five romances upon which depend all the known texts (those by Béroul, Eilhart, Thomas, the romance in French prose, and the poem of the “Folie Tristan”) all proceed from it, directly or indirectly, but independently of each other, a comparison of the differences in these five versions will allow us to restore it. By means of a philological operation the mechanism of which it would take too long to describe here, it will be reborn in all its archaic grace, more beautiful than all the romances derived from it,—the primitive poem, at once harsh and delicious, voluptuous and cruel, grave and charming, and with an extraordinary, passionate, and sorrowful exaltation. We must imagine the author of this archetype, doubtless an Anglo-Norman, as living in an early period, and his work was doubtless the venerable contemporary of the “Pèlerinage de Charlemagne” or the “Chanson de Roland.” Before him there must certainly have been, in the Celtic country, scattered stories of Tristan, that gave the first impetus to his genius; but these stories would have lived obscurely and have fallen into oblivion but for him, who, alone, gave to them an unforeseen value and meaning; it was through him alone that the legend of the fatal love, stronger than law, stronger than honor, came into being and had life, and this love, being absolute, created a sort of mysterious legitimacy for itself. After him, there were only the remouldings of his poem, very beautiful, assuredly. But what do the works of Thomas and Gottfried von Strassburg represent? They are the reduction to the tone of court poetry, the transposition into the “precieux” manner, of a poem originally foreign to the “precieux” and courtly mind. Charming and exquisite as they are when they embellish and soften the inventions of the primitive poet, these remoulders are great only when they preserve them without daring to touch them. The primitive poet alone was the sovereign poet. The theory according to which a legend, slowly elaborated by thousands of poetic hearts, is the fruit of the collaboration of divers peoples and of manifold generations of bards, has, indeed, a certain romantic nobility. Yet there is another sight no less inspiring: that of a man who, by the power of his heart and of his imagination, starting from a few legendary ideas received from outside, creates heroes that will live, creates the “geste” which is to stir the hearts of men throughout long centuries. Then, too, what matters it whether this sight be the more beautiful or not, sentimentally? It is the more beautiful, only if it is the truer.