The work suffers everywhere from a lack of balance. It is an almost
inevitable defect, arising from its very grandeur. A mediocre work may
quite easily be perfect of its kind; but it is rarely that a work lofty
aim attains perfection. A landscape of little dells and smiling meadows
is brought more readily into pleasing harmony than a landscape of
dazzling Alps, torrents, glaciers, and tempests; for the heights may
sometimes overwhelm the picture and spoil the effect. And so it is with
certain great pages of _Tristan_. We may take for example the verses
which tell of excruciating expectation--in the second act, Isolde's
expectation on the night filled with desire; and, in the third act,
Tristan's expectation, as he lies wounded and delirious, waiting for the
vessel that brings Isolde and death--or we may take the Prelude, that
expression of eternal desire that is like a restless sea for ever
moaning and beating itself upon the shore.
* * * * *
The quality that touches me most deeply in _Tristan_ is the evidence of
honesty and sincerity in a man who was treated by his enemies as a
charlatan that used superficial and grossly material means to arrest and
amaze the public eye.
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