Famous even among those who are not particularly fond of Wagner's music-dramas is Isolde's third-act Tristan und Isolde swan song, commonly called the Liebestod (Love-death). This is Isolde's closing apostrophe (also the last thing sung in the music-drama) wherein, kneeling by the fallen body of her dead lover, the dead-by-his-own-hand Tristan, she, in ecstatic transport, sees him alive, his figure in splendor shining before her on high amid perfumed billows, on seeing which and rhapsodizing upon it to some of the most affectingly beautiful music ever written (drawn from the love music of the second act), she finally sinks apparently lifeless onto Tristan's corpse as the orchestra, the music-drama's principal voice, sounds for the first and only time the harmonic resolution that has been repeatedly evaded throughout the music-drama's entire length.
The question is: At music-drama's close, should we take it that Isolde is dead or not? To ninety-nine percent of those who know this work, even to those who consider they know it well, the question would seem absurd. Of course she's dead!, would be the astonished response. Isn't her closing apostrophe called the Liebestod?
Well, actually, no, it's not. Or rather, Wagner himself didn't refer to it as such. He reserved Liebestod to refer to the prelude to the music-drama's first act, and referred to Isolde's closing apostrophe as the Verklärung (Transfiguration).
So, which is it? A death or a transfiguration? Or both? When we consult the score itself, always the only permissible authority in such matters, we find Wagner being somewhat ambiguous on the matter — at least at first glance. His stage directions at this point read:
Isolde sinkt, wie verklärt, in Brangänes Armen sanft auf Tristans Leiche. Große Rührung und Entrücktheit unter den Umstehenden. Marke segnet die Leichen (Isolde, as if transfigured, sinks in Brangäne's arms gently onto Tristan's corpse. Deep emotion and state of rapture (or exaltation, or ecstasy) among the onlookers. Marke blesses the corpses [that lie about him]).
It's that little word "wie" ("as if") in wie verklärt that's the culprit.
So, how are we to understand the final resolution of this music-drama? A tragic double suicide, or ... What?
The Schopenhauerian metaphysics of Tristan is formidable, and penetrating to its core is made even more difficult by the text's (purposely?) obscure language. And it does no good knowing certain biographical and historical facts about Wagner, or facts about his sources and influences, or even about his own before- or after-the-fact and outside-the-score comments. The only thing pertinent in a matter such as this is what Wagner's creative unconscious — the animating and informing force behind the creation of all his mature works, and Tristan most particularly — intended in the heat of the creative act itself, as that creative unconscious, the key to Wagner's genius, was all but infallible. And the key to understanding the intentions of that creative unconscious is the score itself. As I've already noted, it's the only permissible authority, and so we must make do using what's there written to puzzle it all out. (And from this point forward, I must assume on the part of the reader, as I haven't up to now, a fair knowledge of Tristan, as there's simply no other reasonable way to go about this.)
That Wagner intended something quite different for Isolde at music-drama's end than he intended for the heroines of his other music-dramas and operas is unquestionable. Instead of his typical formula of a mere sinkt or sinkt entseelt (sinking or sinking lifeless), he makes a point in the score of indicating (if not as decisively as he might have, as I've already pointed out) of just what that sinking consists; namely, a Verklärung ("wie verklärt"). And that's perfectly in keeping with the underlying metaphysics and dramatic context of all that preceded it.
But we can, and must, do better than this equivocal indication.
Consider, please, that if Tristan and Isolde are both ordinarily dead at music-drama's end, that means they cannot become one with the World Soul in that transcendent realm free of desire and delusion about which so much was made in Act II (referred to there as the realm of Night in symmetrical opposition to the hated realm of Day which is the abode of desire and delusion). They're merely and ordinarily dead, and dead is dead, and that's the end of everything as far as the two of them are concerned.
Well, if dead-dead for them both 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 resolution in the orchestra, the music-drama's principal voice, as I've above noted. 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.
True, there's tragedy enough in Tristan's suicide; a suicide made doubly tragic because it's not merely that Tristan's a suicide, but that he's a suicide because he himself, Isolde's "teacher," so to speak, doesn't really understand the "lessons" he taught her during the Liebesnacht (Night of Love) of Act II; that is, he doesn't understand that dead is dead, and that suicide is not a passport to the desire-and-delusion-free realm of Night (which realm Tristan wrongly — and tragically — equates with physical death) where "I myself am the world" (the "I" here referring to both Tristan and Isolde).
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 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" in a state of "höchste Lust" (supreme bliss) in that surrender rather than merely sinkt or sinkt entseelt 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.
On the evidence of the score, then, I think we can answer the question and make the case that at music-drama's close we may take it that Isolde is not dead in the ordinary sense (had she been, the onlookers would hardly be described as being in a state of Entrücktheit (rapture, exaltation, or ecstasy)), but rather has undergone a Verklärung and all that implies within the context of the metaphysics of Tristan und Isolde.*
Now, aren't you glad you stopped by today?
* Isolde's Verklärung is actually a kind of death; a death, that is, to the realm of appearances, desire, and delusion, which is the hated realm of Day made so much of in the Liebesnacht.
On The Road To Prohibition
