Before making response to your last,
Woodduck, let me first correct the omission of a crucial word in my own last post (which I've just corrected).
I wrote: "
Tristan is W's affirmation that although those "ideals and longings of his youth" were (and probably still are) denied him personally they are nevertheless real, achievable possibilities." That should have read (the omitted word here in all caps): "
Tristan is W's affirmation that although those "ideals and longings of his youth" were (and probably still are) denied him REALIZATION personally they are nevertheless real, achievable possibilities."
Now, on to my response to your last.
I am very surprised that anyone who has studied the life of Wagner, his intellectual development, the revolutionary influence of Schopenhauer on his worldview, his own constant testimony to it, the profound alteration in the meaning of his own Ring cycle after Tristan, and the renunciation, embodied explicitly in every one of his works after Siegfried, of precisely the notion of the redeeming power of erotic love, could actually believe in the reality of any sort of mystical union of Tristan and Isolde outside of Isolde's imaginings.
Do you imagine it was W's intention to end this music-drama tragically by turning Isolde into a grief-stricken, hallucinating madwoman who expires on the spot falling finally dead upon the breast of her already dead-by-his-own-doing lover Tristan? That's what you seem to be saying here. But if that was truly W's intent he wrote some inexplicably malapropos music to express that and gave the episode an inexplicably malapropos designation (viz., a Verklärung). To quote myself (from my linked SF piece):
=== Begin Quote ===
Well, if dead-dead [that is, ordinarily dead] for them both [i.e., Tristan and Isolde] is what Wagner had wanted, it could certainly have been a valid ending to this music-drama - were it not for the music, that is. Had Wagner envisaged dead-dead for his two lovers, then he would not - could not - have written the music he did for the music-drama's close; music ending, as it does, with that sublime [long-awaited] resolution in the orchestra.... Dead-dead for both lovers would have made for a pathetically tragic close to the music-drama and there's nothing of the pathetically tragic in the closing music of
Tristan und Isolde.
=== End Quote ===
Tristan represented the transitional moment in Wagner's thinking and work. It is simultaneously a celebration of eros - which the young Wagner regarded as a redemptive force for the individual and society - and a renunciation of it in the post-Schopenhauer recognition of sexual passion as the quintessential representation of the ever-striving and never-satisfied "will" which must be overcome (and is, in Parsifal). The ultimate mythic symbol for the extinction of the "will" is death - total oblivion. And this is the union - the only union - which Tristan and Isolde attain.
That's correct. Total oblivion in the desire- and delusion-ridden realm of Day, and eternal union in the desire- and delusion-free realm of Night, to use W's symbols for those two realms. To quote once again from my linked S&F piece:
=== Begin Quote ===
Isolde, however, in keeping with Wagner's career-long way with his heroines, does finally understand, but comes to that understanding only at drama's close when confronted with the dead Tristan (it's not for nothing that Wagner takes the music for the Verklärung from the music of the [Act II] Liebesnacht almost note for note). And what Isolde comes to understand in a moment of radiant clarity is that ordinary death is not the way to that transcendent realm of Night free of desire and delusion, but rather, to use the apposite Schopenhauerian construction, that a surrender of the Will to life (the abode of which Will is, of course, the deceiving realm of Day) is the only transport to that transcendent realm wherein she and Tristan will become one with the World Soul,
far from the sun,
far from the day's
lamentations....
[...]
enfolded in sweet darkness.
Without separating,
without parting,
dearly alone,
ever at one,
in unbounded space....
[...]
No more Tristan!
[...]
No more Isolde!
[...]
No names,
no parting;
[...]
ever, unendingly,
one consciousness....
And so Wagner has Isolde
sinkt, wie verklärt [sink as if transfigured] in a state of
höchste Lust [supreme bliss] in that surrender rather than merely
sinkt [sink] or
sinkt entseelt [sink lifeless] as would be his typical direction at such a point, and then gives to the orchestra - and the drama - that sublime resolution at music-drama's close because with Isolde's transfiguration she becomes, as declared in the mystical metaphysics of the Liebesnacht, "one consciousness," both Tristan and Isolde, which could in no way have been the case had Isolde herself ended up ordinarily dead to "join" the already ordinarily dead Tristan.
=== End Quote ===
[Y]our last point, I fear, remains beyond any credibility. The whole idea of Marke "blessing" - by what procedure, exactly? Leaving the lovers and running about sprinkling holy water? - a bunch of bodies scattered all over the stage, upstage and down, half of whom are of no dramatic interest when all our focus is properly on the lovers, is utterly risible as a dramatic idea or a bit of stagecraft.
Don't be absurd. Engage your theatrical imagination, please, (which I assume you possess in at least a rudimentary degree). Marke merely has to stand close to the collapsed but entwined bodies of Isolde and Tristan and with his hand or hands make some sort of silent sign of blessing and then, merely turning while standing in the same spot, face the rest of the fallen bodies scattered about the stage and make the same silent sign.
--
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