Joseph Bedier, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult

Introduction

Opening Passage: I'll give the full opening passage, despite its length, since it is the key background story. I'll take it from Belloc's original version, rather than the version supplemented by Paul Rosenfield, which is slightly longer.

My lords, if you would hear a high tale of love and of death, here is that of Tristan and Queen Iseult; how to their full joy, but to their sorrow also, they loved each other, and how at last they died of that love together upon one day; she by him and he by her.

Long ago, when Mark was King over Cornwall, Rivalen, King of Lyonesse, heard that Mark’s enemies waged war on him; so he crossed the sea to bring him aid; and so faithfully did he serve him with counsel and sword that Mark gave him his sister Blanchefleur, whom King Rivalen loved most marvellously.

He wedded her in Tintagel Minster, but hardly was she wed when the news came to him that his old enemy Duke Morgan had fallen on Lyonesse and was wasting town and field. Then Rivalen manned his ships in haste, and took Blanchefleur with him to his far land; but she was with child. He landed below his castle of Kanoël and gave the Queen in ward to his Marshal Rohalt, and after that set off to wage his war.

Blanchefleur waited for him continually, but he did not come home, till she learnt upon a day that Duke Morgan had killed him in foul ambush. She did not weep: she made no cry or lamentation, but her limbs failed her and grew weak, and her soul was filled with a strong desire to be rid of the flesh, and though Rohalt tried to soothe her she would not hear. Three days she awaited re-union with her lord, and on the fourth she brought forth a son; and taking him in her arms she said:

“Little son, I have longed a while to see you, and now I see you the fairest thing ever a woman bore. In sadness came I hither, in sadness did I bring forth, and in sadness has your first feast day gone. And as by sadness you came into the world, your name shall be called Tristan; that is the child of sadness.”

Summary: The tale of Tristan and Iseult is perhaps famous enough that there is no need to re-tell it; but it is worth a moment to re-trace its lineaments nonetheless. Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, comes to serve his uncle. Hardly has he arrived when he takes up the challenge to fight the greatest champion of Ireland for his uncle's honor and to win the right of Cornwall to be free of tribute; he kills the champion but is wounded with a poisoned sword. (Poison is a theme throughout the story.) Tristan begs his uncle a last favor, which is simply to go out to sea, perhaps to find some land where he can be healed, and it is granted; he is too weak to use sail or oar, so he is simply laid in the boat with his harp and set adrift. Eventually he is discovered, on the verge of death, by fishermen, who bring them to their lady, a generous woman of extraordinary ability in herbs and the like, which she had learned from her mother. The lady's name was Iseult the Fair, or Iseult of the Golden Hair, and she was a princess in Ireland. Not realizing it, she healed the wounds of her country's greatest enemy, the wounds inflicted by her country's greatest champion. He returns home for a while, and, because Mark, having no son, treats Tristan as if he were a son, some of Mark's other barons are jealous. They attempt to get him to marry, but as it happens their attempt leads to Tristan setting sail to retrieve for Mark Iseult the Fair. He does this by slaying a dragon, thus both managing to remain alive once the Irish know who he is, and get Mark a queen, and establish peace between Ireland and Cornwall. His handling of it, however, already shows a devious streak. All this is merely preparatory.

Iseult's mother gives Iseult's lady-in-waiting a special philtre. This potion is to be placed in the cups of Mark and Iseult on their wedding night; and its result will be to make them love each other wholly for their whole lives. Due to mischance, Tristan and Iseult happen to drink of it, and thus the second phase of the tale begins. They are both seized with an obsessive love. Up to this point, Tristan has done everything for honor and his king and uncle. These never cease to be important to him; but now he feels bound to Iseult in his every thought and desire. It is the beginning of the destruction of everything Tristan is; and it is also the beginning of the destruction of Iseult, as well. The philtre, of course, is not a mere appurtenance; it is utterly essential to the course of the tale. What seizes Tristan and Iseult is in itself not their fault, and it is not in itself resistible. This is the primary reason the two lovers can be reasonable objects of sympathy through the rest of the tale; the madness that has seized them will end up degrading them in ways neither could have imagined, but precisely because it is a kind of madness it shields their honor from their shame. In some versions of the tale it is made clear that at some point their actions are motivated less by the madness of the philtre than by their complacency in the deed, so that necessity transforms into an excuse for sin, as it often does; but Bedier carefully leaves it more ambiguous, so that by default compulsion remains the most obvious explanation until the end -- but it is notable that Tristan and Iseult both refuse penance.

The tale continues from there with many twists and turns. There is much trickery and both Tristan and Iseult expend considerable ingenuity in deceiving Mark and others without actually lying. They are not exactly in a state conducive to prudence, however, and they eventually are caught and have to go on the run. This problem is resolved, but they end up in a forced separation, painful to them both. For this is a significant feature of their love: they literally love so much it hurts, "Anguish without end". And yet -- when each is offered a chance to ease the hurt, each gives it up because they each refuse to be comforted if the other suffers.

The third phase of the story sees them both increasingly irrational due to their separation. They both become paranoid that the other might be falling out of love. Tristan, for reasons that are obscure -- but all their reasons become increasingly obscure -- and to a woman who, rather ominously, is named Iseult as well, Iseult of the White Hands. One of the important aspects of the story is the sheer burden Tristan and Iseult place on the two originally innocent people in the arrangement, Mark and Iseult of the White Hands; Iseult the Fair and Tristan marry them already betraying them. And yet, because Mark truly loves Iseult the Fair and Iseult of the White Hands truly loves Tristan, they both exhibit the same symptoms, the same irrationalities, and they both do terrible things. The only thing that makes them less sympathetic is that they were not poisoned by the philtre.

Tristan eventually is wounded by a poisoned spear, and symmetry asserts itself. Tristan sends for Iseult the Fair; but he fears that she no longer loves him, so he arranges a sign. If the ship returns with white sail, Iseult comes; if the ship returns with black sail, she does not. Unfortunately, Iseult of the White Hands overhears the arrangement and its reason, and when the ship appears on the horizon with white sails, she reports that its sails are black. Tristan dies of grief even as Iseult the Fair comes to shore; and she dies of grief beside him. The philtre as a poison was long in acting and there was never any guarantee of when it would achieve its mark; but it was an effective one, and more effective than the poisons that were designed to kill. They at least had a cure.

In passing, talking about some of Mark's barons, who were almost obsessively out to foil the two lovers, the narrator describes how they, too, will die, and says, "Thus God who hates all excess will avenge the lovers on their enemies" (p. 97). It is a remarkable thing to say in a story in which no one acts with moderation. But it is consistently true that the only excesses in the story that do not automatically call forth their own punishments are those committed early on by Tristan and Iseult, operating under the influence of the philtre. And the implacable enmity with which the narrator regards the barons is not entirely misplaced. They are the ones who started it all. Tristan destroyed the Irish champion because the barons would not; their jealous intrigue leads to Tristan's return to Ireland; and when he returns they aggravate every situation. They don't genuinely care about the honor of Mark, as Tristan and Iseult both do even while disgracing it; they are doing it to maintain their power and influence in the kingdom, and to get rid of Tristan, who seems likely to be Mark's heir and yet is too talented to kill directly. It's a twist that I think can easily be lost in the rest of the story: Tristan and Iseult do what is dishonorable but nonetheless struggle to do what is honorable, whereas the barons do what is superficially honorable out of dishonorable motives. And thus we see another aspect of it: despite the wild excesses of Tristan and Iseult -- they are trying to be moderate. We see this reflected in the fact that, to the end, they are both comforters of the poor and suffering around them. It's just that under the circumstances there is no way they can succeed very well. The barons, on the other hand, never try to moderate themselves; they only stay their hand out of fear or calculation.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the story is how it reflects the paradox of love. Love raised to passionate excess is folly, shame, death. Yet something in love seems only to attain perfection when it is love so great one may die of it. The tale itself provides no solution, only the paradox. Well, perhaps it does suggest a solution, in Ogrin the Hermit's insistence on penance; but of that route the story can tell us nothing.

Favorite Passage:

One day when the wind had fallen and the sails hung slack Tristan dropped anchor by an Island and the hundred knights of Cornwall and the sailors, weary of the sea, landed all. Iseult alone remained aboard and a little serving maid, when Tristan came near the Queen to calm her sorrow. The sun was hot above them and they were athirst and, as they called, the little maid looked about for drink for them and found that pitcher which the mother of Iseult had given into Brangien’s keeping. And when she came on it, the child cried, “I have found you wine!” Now she had found not wine — but Passion and Joy most sharp, and Anguish without end, and Death.

The Queen drank deep of that draught and gave it to Tristan and he drank also long and emptied it all.

Brangien came in upon them; she saw them gazing at each other in silence as though ravished and apart; she saw before them the pitcher standing there; she snatched it up and cast it into the shuddering sea and cried aloud: “Cursed be the day I was born and cursed the day that first I trod this deck. Iseult, my friend, and Tristan, you, you have drunk death together.”

Recommendation: The tale in general is one of those that every educated person should have read in some form, and Bédier's is easily the most accessible and coherent of the versions. Highly recommended.

Potentiality and Actuality

In what I am now there lies something that I am now not actually, but will become actually at some time in the future. And what I now am actually, I already was previously, but not actually. My present being contains the possibility for future actual being and supposes a possibility in my earlier being. My present being is at once actual and potential being; and insofar as it is actual, it is the actualization of a potency that already exited earlier. As modes of being, actuality and potentiality are contained in the sheer fact of being [schlichte Seinstatsche] and from it they are to be inferred.

St. Edith Stein, Potency and Act, Redmond, tr. ICS Publications [Washington, DC: 2009] p. 12.

I have very little serious German. I take it that 'schlichte Seinstatsche' literally means something like 'definitive apprehension of being'? [ADDED LATER: Arsen notes that it's a typo (mine, rather than Redmond's) -- it should actually be 'Seinstatsache', which means pretty straightforwardly 'fact of being'.]

Too Fierce for Bodies of Mortals

Libera Me
by Ernest Dowson

Goddess the laughter-loving, Aphrodite, befriend!
Long have I served thine altars, serve me now at the end,
Let me have peace of thee, truce of thee, golden one, send.

Heart of my heart have I offered thee, pain of my pain,
Yielding my life for the love of thee into thy chain;
Lady and goddess be merciful, loose me again.

All things I had that were fairest, my dearest and best,
Fed the fierce flames on thine altar: ah, surely, my breast
Shrined thee alone among goddesses, spurning the rest.

Blossom of youth thou hast plucked of me, flower of my days;
Stinted I nought in thine honouring, walked in thy ways,
Song of my soul pouring out to thee, all in thy praise.

Fierce was the flame while it lasted, and strong was thy wine,
Meet for immortals that die not, for throats such as thine,
Too fierce for bodies of mortals, too potent for mine.

Blossom and bloom hast thou taken, now render to me
Ashes of life that remain to me, few though they be,
Truce of the love of thee, Cyprian, let me go free.

Goddess the laughter-loving, Aphrodite, restore
Life to the limbs of me, liberty, hold me no more
Having the first-fruits and flower of me, cast me the core.

Aristotle and Absolute Space and Time

In Aristotle's physics, is there an absolute space and time (or absolute motion and rest)? I've come across a number of places in which people assume that it does. Obviously, to some extent it depends on what you mean by absolute space and time. Suppose we use Newton's definition of absolute space and absolute time from the Principia:

I. Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.

II. Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is commonly taken for immovable space; such is the dimension of a subterraneous, an aerial, or celestial space, determined by its position in respect of the earth.

By these definitions Aristotle's physics has no absolute space and no absolute time -- indeed, in Aristotle's physics absolute space and absolute time are simply impossible. 'When' for Aristotle is by definition relative to motion; 'where' is by definition relative to body. This is why we get the kinds of discussions in physics that we find in the medieval scholastics; whenever they talk about time, they are always talking about clocks, and whenever they talk about space they are always talking about containers (in a broad sense of the term). Aristotle's physics has no absolute time or absolute space in Newton's sense; time is always relative to some clock and space is always relative to some container.

Indeed, given some of the way Newton phrases things, I actually wonder if Newton might be deliberately anti-Aristotelian here. Newton posits absolute space and absolute time because his physics crucially requires us to break away from the purely sensible -- Newtonian physics can explain a great many things, but it does so by abstraction from the sensible. Taking time itself, or space itself, to be a measure, as Aristotelian physics effectively does, from his perspective means that physical theories never talk about realities, but only about measurements. At least, this seems to be one of the ways his scholium on the subject can be read.

There is a sense, though, in which the Aristotelians admitted something that we could think of as absolute space and time. For while time is relative to clocks or changes and place to containers, the old Aristotelian universe had something capable of operating as a general clock or container: the primum mobile, which as that which has the first and most general change can serve as both a universal clock and a universal container. Time is necessarily relative to a change that can act as (in some sense) a clock -- but there happens to be a change that can be a clock for any other change. Place is necessarily relative to a body that can act as (in some sense) a container -- but there happens to be a body that can be a container for every other body. If by 'There is an absolute time' we meant 'There is a universal clock', and by 'There is an absolute space' we meant 'There is a universal container', the Aristotelians typically did hold that there was an absolute space and time. But this does need to be distinguished from Newton's sense; these things are relative, not absolute, space and time for Newton.

(The fact that Newton thinks of relative space and time as tied to the senses does complicate this conclusion somewhat, it should be said; the way in which the primum mobile works as a 'clock' or a 'container' in Aristotelian physics doesn't so obviously tie it to the senses. There are also some variations among Aristotelians, and there was some puzzlement arising from the fact that if place is relative to a container, the primum mobile is not in any place, which sounds a bit odd.)

A Brief Guide to Reading Kant

Today we started Kantianism in my ethics course. Very difficult to teach students properly. Here's the one-page reading guide I gave them.

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A Brief Guide to Reading Kant

1. Don’t panic. If you have difficulty understanding him on your first reading, you’re in the position practically everyone is. The flip side of this is that if you think you’ve understood him on your first reading, you should stop lying to yourself.

2. Kant likes to approach the same ideas from multiple angles. If you don’t understand something, read on, and he will likely cover the same ground in a different way later on.

3. The key concept for understanding Kant is a priori, which in the Kantian context means ‘prior to, and thus independent of, experience’. All of Kant’s philosophy consists of arguing that much of the order with which we experience the world does not come from the world but from our minds; he thus is trying to identify the features of our mind that make it possible for us to interpret the world in the way we do. This includes our experience of the world in a moral way.

4. If you’re having difficulty with a passage, you might consider reading it out loud. Many of Kant’s stylistic peculiarities are linked to the fact that he tends to write as if he were lecturing. Hearing the lecture rather than trying just to look at it on the page can often make a difference. When heard rather than simply read, one often finds that the style is more accessible than it might at first appear.

5. Much of the key to understanding Kant lies in the vocabulary; he’s using a technical and quasi-technical vocabulary that would have been very familiar to educated people in his day, even if it has since become less common. Don’t just skip words you don’t know! Sometimes they are the key to the whole argument.

6. Kant is a systematizer. It’s never enough merely to understand particular arguments; you also need to understand how they fit into the overall structure of thought he is trying to build.

7. There is some excellent Kant scholarship out there. Onora O’Neill, David Velleman, and others have often studied particular passages in close detail and also have written useful summaries of basic ideas. Don’t be afraid to draw on the secondary scholarship – it’s foolhardy to study someone like Kant entirely on your own, no matter how clever you are. If you come across a difficult passage, you can practically guarantee that someone else has looked at it in close detail, so look around to see what other people are saying. When you’re reading Kant, it is time to take some initiative.

8. There are reasons Kant is so influential, and there are reasons why reading groups sprang up to read Kant when his work first came out. If you aren’t seeing them, you need to look harder for the unique and distinctive features of his ideas. He will often take an idea, even a very mundane idea, and raise it to an entirely new level.

The End of the World Was Long Ago

Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.

Before the gods that made the gods
Had drunk at dawn their fill,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was hoary on the hill.

Age beyond age on British land,
Aeons on aeons gone,
Was peace and war in western hills,
And the White Horse looked on.

For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know;
He saw the first oar break or bend,
He saw heaven fall and the world end,
O God, how long ago.

For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

For some reason I've been thinking recently of G. K. Chesterton's best poem, The Ballad of the White Horse, which is a serious candidate for the best narrative poem of the twentieth century. The above, which opens Book I, is about the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire, the end of the world long ago, as the barbarians began to march. In the midst of the chaos, the hero of the story, Alfred, becomes King of Wessex in a time of Danish invasion, when it seems that Wessex might not survive. He attempts to stave it off, but then there comes an invasion he cannot hold off. He has a vision of the Virgin Mary and asks her what the fate of his people will be. And she tells him that while the pagans may mark their times and triumphs, the fate of those who drink the blood of God is to go singing to their deaths, to have joy when there is no cause for it, and to have faith when there is no hope.

In Book II Alfred begins to gather his army, and when they ask why they should come, he tells them the truth:

"I am that oft-defeated King
Whose failure fills the land,
Who fled before the Danes of old,
Who chaffered with the Danes with gold,
Who now upon the Wessex wold
Hardly has feet to stand.

"But out of the mouth of the Mother of God
I have seen the truth like fire,
This—that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher."

And they come, to fight and die.

In Book III, Alfred is surveying the territory when he is captured by a band of Danes, who, not recognizing him and seeing that he has a harp, drag him back to the army, vast like the sea, to play for the chieftains. Other bards play, singing songs of ancient defeat and the dark fate of the world, and then Alfred sings his defiant song in response:

"What sign have we save blood and smoke?
Here is my answer then.

"That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.

"That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

"That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.

Book IV, after he has escaped, gives the famous story of Alfred and the cakes, and the army of Alfred goes to war. Book V sees preparations for the Battle of Ethandune, which we see in Book VI as the chiefs of Alfred's army fall in battle, one by one; and in Book VII Alfred leads the last desperate charge:

Wild stared the Danes at the double ways
Where they loitered, all at large,
As that dark line for the last time
Doubled the knee to charge—

And caught their weapons clumsily,
And marvelled how and why—
In such degree, by rule and rod,
The people of the peace of God
Went roaring down to die.

But Alfred sees the Virgin again, and the tide of battle turns. Guthrum the pagan king dies; and Book VII ends lauding him for his greatness and burying him. With Book VIII, we find Alfred prophesying of things to come: heathen will again come to conquer, with new ways:

"By all men bond to Nothing,
Being slaves without a lord,
By one blind idiot world obeyed,
Too blind to be abhorred;

"By terror and the cruel tales
Of curse in bone and kin,
By weird and weakness winning,
Accursed from the beginning,
By detail of the sinning,
And denial of the sin;

"By thought a crawling ruin,
By life a leaping mire,
By a broken heart in the breast of the world,
And the end of the world's desire;

"By God and man dishonoured,
By death and life made vain,
Know ye the old barbarian,
The barbarian come again—

But how such barbarians are to be defeated, Alfred does not know; but he rides off to finish his task.

Antony on Epistemic Peers

I've had a significant upsurge of hits for this old post on epistemic peers and equal weight arguments. I think the reason is probably due to this interview on atheism with Louise Antony in "The Stone", in which the topic comes up:

G.G.: No, they may both be rational. But suppose you and your theist friend are equally adept at reasoning, equally informed about relevant evidence, equally honest and fair-minded — suppose, that is, you are what philosophers call epistemic peers: equally reliable as knowers. Then shouldn’t each of you recognize that you’re no more likely to be right than your peer is, and so both retreat to an agnostic position?

L.A.: Yes, this is an interesting puzzle in the abstract: How could two epistemic peers — two equally rational, equally well-informed thinkers — fail to converge on the same opinions? But it is not a problem in the real world. In the real world, there are no epistemic peers — no matter how similar our experiences and our psychological capacities, no two of us are exactly alike, and any difference in either of these respects can be rationally relevant to what we believe.

G.G.: So is your point that we always have reason to think that people who disagree are not epistemic peers?

L.A.: It’s worse than that. The whole notion of epistemic peers belongs only to the abstract study of knowledge, and has no role to play in real life. Take the notion of “equal cognitive powers”: speaking in terms of real human minds, we have no idea how to seriously compare the cognitive powers of two people.

Very much agreed with Antony on this; I discussed something in the broad vicinity of Antony's argument in another post on epistemic peers. In any case, it's nice to see a top-notch epistemologist pointing it out.

ADDED LATER

Helen De Cruz has an interesting counterargument on the point. It seems to me that the argument conflates epistemic peerage with another kind of peerage, which I call intellectual peerage in the post at the link in the last paragraph above. But this is a purely practical assessment. And contrary to her suggestion, I see no way in which it can salvage Gutting's argument; why would one think that disagreement of informed people or even experts should lead to agnosticism, given that the differences will in principle allow you to assess which one is right, or more likely to be right? All we seem to get is that each person should continue to develop their views, taking into account the arguments and reasons of the other, not retreat to agnosticism.