Wagner has immortalised
the metaphysical form of synthetic love; his importance to synthetic
love surpasses Dante's importance to deification.
Already in the first act the exchange of love-potion and death-draught
is profoundly significant: both Tristan and Isolde seek death because
they are alarmed by the external obstacles to their love. But the
thought of death and love, the foreboding that their love can find rest
only in the ultimate, in finality, has been in their hearts from the
outset. Together they receive new life from love, and together love
leads them, step by step, to death. In the profoundest sense no exchange
of potions has taken place, but the power of the love-potion has made
them conscious of what was latent in their souls, waiting to burst into
life. At the very moment when Isolde proffers Tristan the death-draught,
the conviction flashes into his soul that she is giving him death
through love: "When thy dear hand the goblet raised, I recognised that
death thou gav'st.
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