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Updated: June 22, 2025
A sing-song shout interrupts them, the voices of the sailors hauling at ropes, taking in sail, a reminder to Isolde that the land, the terrible land, is near. Kurwenal hurries in: "Up, up, you ladies! Briskly and cheerily! Quickly prepare to land! Ready at once, nimble and spry!
As he reads in Kurwenal's looks that she is not yet in sight, he once more threatens to become violent, when suddenly the joyful tune, the signal of Isolde's approach, is heard. SCENE II. The catastrophe which now follows is one of the most terrible ever conceived by a dramatist. Directly Kurwenal is away, Tristan begins to toss in his bed; he seems almost to rise from the dead.
"But you, wretch, are a traitor too!... Do you see her again?" "Not yet!" "Lost!" wails Tristan but at Kurwenal's shout in a moment more that the ship has cleared the rocks and is sailing up the safe channel into port, springs again to the peaks of joy and promises Kurwenal the bequest of all his worldly goods.
Do you shut your heart to my complaint?... Only once... only once more!... Look, he wakes! Beloved!..." Consciousness mercifully forsakes her. She sinks senseless upon his body. Kurwenal has been standing apart with eyes bent in dumb and rigid despair upon his master. A confused tumult of arms is heard. The shepherd climbs hurriedly over the parapet with the announcement: "A second ship!"
But tell me the truth, old friend, what has happened to our master?" "Let be that question!" Kurwenal heavily turns from it: "not for any asking can you learn! Keep diligent look-out; go, and when you see a ship pipe loud and merrily." The shepherd shades his eyes and looks off over the endless blue waste of the waters. "Barren and empty the sea!"
It must be in sight. Kurwenal, have you no eyes? Isolde's ship! A merry tune bursts from the shepherd's pipe: It is the ship! What flag flies at the peak? The flag of "All's well!" Now the ship disappears behind a cliff. There the breakers are treacherous. Who is at the helm? Friend or foe? Melot's accomplice? Are you, too, a traitor, Kurwenal?
Kurwenal sadly shakes his head. "Even if he should awake, it would only be to take his leave forever, unless the Physician, the only one who can help us, should first arrive...." Has he seen nothing, he inquires, no ship on the sea? "In that case you should hear a different tune," the shepherd answers, "as merry a one as I can play!
Kurwenal, who has vainly striven to calm his frenzy, now sees him with horror relapsed into deathlike stillness; he calls him, laments over him and over this fatal love, the world's loveliest madness, which rewards so ill those who follow its lure. "Are you then dead?" he weeps, "Do you still live?... Have you succumbed to the curse?"
Kurwenal points overboard. Tristan stares landward, not comprehending. The men shout and wave their caps. "Hail, King Mark!" "What is it?" Isolde inquires, reached in her trance by the clamour; "Brangaene, what cry is that?" "Isolde, mistress," the distraught Brangaene implores, "self-control for this one day!" "Where am I?" the bewildered lady asks helplessly.
Life endures but for one embrace, one glance, one word: "Isolde!" While Isolde lies mortally stricken upon Tristan's corpse, Marke and his train arrive upon a second ship. Brangane has told the secret of the love-draught, and the king has come to unite the lovers. But his purpose is not known, and faithful Kurwenal receives his death-blow while trying to hold the castle against Marke's men.
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